He had made four miles of his journey when he halted, turned and looked back along the desolate barrens and the irregular edge of the cliffs. Misgivings assailed him. Was Flora safe? What if something should happen--had already happened, perhaps--to stir his treacherous fellows to mutiny again? Any little accident might do it if they knew that he was on his way to Witless Bay. If one of them should cut his foot with an axe, or drop a tree on one of his comrades, it would be enough (with the skipper out of the way) to raise the suspicion of witchcraft and curses in their silly, mad souls again. And then what would happen? What would happen to Flora, the helpless, wonderful, most beautiful creature in the world. He stared back along his path, but the many curves and breaks in the cliff hid from him every sign of Chance Along. Not a roof, chimney, or streamer of smoke broke the desolation. In all the frozen scene he could find no mark of man or man's handiwork. South and north, east and west, lay the frosted barrens, the gray sea, the edge of the cliff twisting away to nothingness around innumerable lifeless bays and coves, and the far horizons fencing all in a desolate circle. But what mattered to the skipper, what weighed on his heart like despair was the fact that he was out of sight of Chance Along--of the roof that sheltered the girl he had saved from the wreck. He felt the loneliness of that dreary season and coast--for the first time in his life, I think. Anxiety was his teacher.
And now he knew that he must go on to Witless Bay, and so prove himself a fool for not having sent one of the men, or else face and act upon the thought lurking in the back of his mind. He drew the letter from his pocket and looked at it for a long time, turning it over and over between his fur-clad hands.
"She'll soon be forgettin'," he said. "Come summer-time, she'll be forgettin'. I bes rich--an' when she sees the grand house I kin build for her she'll marry me, sure, an' be happy as a queen. An' why not? Bain't I rich as any marchant? She'll be wearin' gold an' silk every day, an' eatin' like any queen--an' bain't that better for a grand lady nor singin' songs for a livin'?--nor singin' songs for her bread an' baccy like old Pat Kavanagh wid the wooden leg?"