"Well, skipper, I'll tell 'e what I makes o' her. 'Twas afore yer day,
lad--aye, as much as t'irty year ago--arter just sich weather as this,
an' this time o' year, a grand big ship altogether went all abroad on
these here rocks. Aye, skipper, a grand ship. Nought come ashore but a
junk o' her hull an' a cask o' brandy, an' one o' her boats wid the name
on all complete. The _Manchester City_ she was, from Liverpool. We
figgered as how she was heading for the gulf--for Quebec, like as not.
So I makes it, skipper, as how this here vessel may be bound for Quebec,
too."

Black Dennis Nolan took a lantern from another man, and led the way down
the broken slope to the beach. The gear was passed down and piled at the
edge of the tide. Dry wood--the fragments of ships long since broken on
the outer rocks--was gathered from where it had been stranded high by
many spring tides, and heaped on a wide, flat rock half-way up the
slope. Another heap of splintered planks and wave-worn timbers was
constructed on the level of the beach, close to the water--all this by
the skipper's orders. The sea hammered and sobbed among the rocks, and
splintered the new ice along the land-wash.

"If she comes ashore we'll be needin' more nor candle-light to work
wid," remarked the skipper.

Again the dull boom of a gun drifted in through the fog.

"Aye, lads, she bes a-drawin' in to us," said old Barney Keen, with a
note of intense satisfaction in his rusty voice.