harbor, and did not fail to point out persistently and authoritatively
that chains and ropes designed to facilitate the saving of freights
would also facilitate the saving of human lives. The skipper agreed with
him respectfully.

On the morning of Father McQueen's arrival in Chance Along, the skipper
dispatched Nick Leary to Witless Bay to learn whether or no Jack Quinn
had reached that place. Leary returned on the evening of the following
day with the expected information that nothing had been seen of the
missing man in Witless Bay. In his pocket he brought a recent issue of
St. John's newspaper, for which he had paid two shillings and two drams
of rum. This he brought as an offering to the skipper--for the skipper
could read print almost as well as a merchant and had a thirst for
information of the outside world.

The first item of news which the skipper managed to spell out was the
notice of a reward of five hundred pounds awaiting the person who
should recover Lady Harwood's necklace of twelve diamonds and fourteen
rubies and deliver it to Mr. Peter Wren, solicitor, Water Street, St.
John's. The notice went on to say that this necklace, together with
other smaller and less valuable articles of jewelry, had been taken by
force from the shipwrecked company of the bark _Durham Castle_, which
had gone ashore and to pieces in a desolate place called Frenchman's
Cove, on the east coast. It also gave the date of the wreck and stated
that if the necklace should be returned undamaged, no questions would be
asked. The skipper saw in a moment that the reward was offered for the
stones which he had found in the deserted berth and which Quinn had
robbed him of. Five hundred pounds? He shook his head over that. He had
read somewhere, at some time, about the value of diamonds, and he felt
sure that the necklace was worth many times the money offered for its