“Boys,” said the young skipper, “I’s able to see ahead to the day whin there’ll be no want in Chance Along, but the want we pretends to fool the world wid.  Aye, ye may take Dennis Nolan’s word for it!  We’ll eat an’ drink full, lads, an’ sleep warm as any marchant i’ St. John’s.”

“What damn foolery has ye all bin at now?” inquired a sneering voice.

All turned and beheld Foxey Jack Quinn standing near at hand, a leer on his wide mouth and in his pale eyes, and his nunney-bag on his shoulder.  His skinnywoppers (high-legged moccasins of sealskin, hair-side inward) were glistening with moisture of melted snow, and his face was red from the rasp of raw wind.  He looked as if he had slept in his clothes—­which was, undoubtedly, the case.  He glared straight at the skipper with a dancing flame of devilment in his eyes.

“What ye bin all a-doin’ now for to make extry work for yerselves?” he asked.

There followed a brief silence, and then Black Dennis Nolan spoke quietly.

“Why bain’t ye over to Squid Beach, standin’ yer trick at look-out?” he inquired.

Foxey Jack’s answer was a harsh, jeering laugh, and words to the effect that life was too short to spend five days of it lonely and starving with cold, in a hut not fit for a pig.

“Ye kin do what ye likes, yerself—­ye an’ them as be fools like yerself; but Jack Quinn bain’t a-goin’ to lend a hand a yer foolishness, Denny Nolan,” he concluded.

“Turn round an’ git back to yer post wid ye,” said the skipper.

“Who be ye, an’ what be ye, to give that word to me?”

“Ye knows who I be.  Turn round an’ git!”

“To hell wid ye!  I turns round for no man!”

“Then ye’d best drop yer nunney-bag, ye foxey-headed fool, for I bes a-comin’ at ye to larn ye who bes skipper here.”

Quinn let his nunney-bag fall to the snow behind him—­and in the same instant of time the skipper’s right fist landed on his nose, knocking him backward over the bag, clear off his feet, and staining his red whiskers to a deeper and brighter red.  But the big fellow came up to his feet again as nimbly as a cat.  For a moment the two clinched and swayed in each other’s straining arms, like drunken men.  The awed spectators formed a line between the two and the edge of the cliff.  Foxey Jack broke the hold, leaped back and struck a furious, but ill-judged blow which glanced off the other’s jaw.  Next instant he was down on the snow again, with one eye shut, but up again as quickly.

Again they clinched and swayed, breast to breast, knee to knee.  Both were large men; but Foxey Jack was heavier, having come to his full weight.  This time it was the skipper who tried to break the hold, realizing that his advantage lay in his fists, and Quinn’s in the greater weight of body and greater strength of back and leg.  So the skipper twisted and pulled; but Quinn held tight, and slowly but surely forced the younger man towards the edge of the cliff.  Suddenly the skipper drew his head back and brought it forward and downward again, with all the force of his neck and shoulders, fair upon the bridge of his antagonist’s nose.  Quinn staggered and for a second his muscles relaxed; and in that second the skipper wrenched away from his grasp and knocked him senseless to the ground.