The skipper, Bill Brennen and Nick Leary left their cabins stealthily
about midnight, met on the snowy barren above the harbor, and tramped
southward to the vicinity of Nolan's Cove. They worked for a little
while in a clump of spruce-tuck, then moved off to another thicket about
half a mile away, and there worked again.

"There bes some men in this harbor I wouldn't trust as far as I could
t'row 'em over my back," said the skipper.

Bill and Nick agreed with him. The skipper glanced up at the starless
sky.

"There'll be snow by sun-up," he said.

"Aye, skipper, a desperate flurry out o' the nor'-west," replied
Brennen.

"D'ye mean wind, too?"

"Aye, skipper, mark that!"

All three felt a breath on their faces like the very essence of cold.
They turned northward and set out on the homeward way. All were snug in
their beds long before the first pale hint of dawn. The icy draft from
the northwest was a little stronger by that time, and it puffed a haze
of dry and powdery snow before it. The night was full of faint,
insistent voices. The roofs of the cabins snapped and creaked as if icy
fingers were prying them apart. A sharp crackling sound came up from the
harbor, where the tide fumbled at the edges of black ice. A dull, vast
moaning that was scarcely a sound at all--something as vague, yet mighty