time.  The situation was desperate; but he could not find it in his heart to regret the day’s work; for there was the girl with the sea-eyes, lying safe in his own house this very minute!  A thrill, sweet yet bitter, went through his blood at the thought.  No other woman had ever caused him a choking pang like this.  The remembrance of those clear eyes shook him to the very soul and quenched his burning anger with a wave of strangely mingled adoration and desire.  He was little more than a fine animal, after all.  The man in him lay passive and undeveloped under the tides of passion, craving, brute-pride and crude ambitions.  But the manhood was there, as his flawless courage and unconsidered kindness to women and children indicated.  But he was self-centred, violent, brutally masterful.  Women and children had always seemed to him (until now) helpless, harmless things, that had a right to the protection of men even as they had a right to remain ashore from the danger of wind and sea.  The stag caribou and the dog-wolf have the same attitude toward the females of their races.  It is a characteristic which is natural to animals and boasted of by civilized men.  Dogs and gentlemen do not bite and beat their females; and if Black Dennis Nolan resembled a stag, a he-wolf, and a dog in many points, in this particular he also resembled a gentleman.  Like some hammering old feudal baron of the Norman time and the finer type, his battles were all with men.  Those who did not ride behind him he rode against.  He feared the saints and a priest, even as did the barons of old; but all others must acknowledge his lordship or know themselves for his enemies.  To Black Dennis Nolan the law of the land was a vague thing not greatly respected.  To Walter, Lord of Waltham, William the Red was a vague personage, not greatly respected.  Walter, Lord of Waltham, son of Walter and grandson of Fitz Oof of Normandy; Skipper of Chance Along, son of Skipper Pat and grandson of Skipper Tim—­the two barons differed only in period and location.  In short, Black Dennis Nolan possessed many of the qualities of strong animals, of a feudal baron, and one at least of a modern gentleman.

The skipper was overtaken and joined by his young brother at the edge of the barrens above Chance Along.  They scrambled swiftly down the path to the clustered cabins.  At their own door Cormick plucked the skipper’s sleeve.

“They was talkin’ o’ witches,” he whispered.  “Dick Lynch an’ some more o’ the lads.  They says as how the comather was put on to ye this very mornin’, Denny.”

The skipper paused with his hand on the latch and eyed the other sharply.

“Witches, ye say?  An’ Dick Lynch was talkin’, was he?  Who did they figger as put the spell on to me?”

“The lass ye saved from the fore-top.  Sure, that’s what they all bes sayin’, Denny.  Mermaid, they calls her—­an’ some a fairy.  A witch, anyhow.  They says as how yer luck bes turned now—­aye, the luck o’ the entire harbor.  ‘Twas herself—­the spell o’ her—­kilt the t’ree lads in the cabin, they be sayin’.  Their talk was desperate black, Denny.”