Paid in Full: Schooner Days DCCCLXXV (875)

by C. H. J. Snider

CAPT. JOHNNY NEWBROOM, who got his first chance as master because everybody else had wound up each season with the ungainly little vessel "in the hole," left no stone unturned in his effort to make the Paddy Young pay. Brought up in the stonehooking trade, he did not hesitate to put her into that humble calling, despised of the coal, grain and lumber carriers, when he could not get other work for her. She was suitable for the work, being shoal draught and low in the side, easily loaded and capable of coming in close on the beach. She had a spoon bow and a scow stern.

He got a chance to deliver a cargo of shingles to a place called Dexter, of which he knew nothing, two hundred miles away at the foot of Lake Ontario. He found the place, though it was tucked away behind an impassable bar, bumped his shingles over the hurdle, and came back home, cargoless, through the Bay of Quinte, hoping to do a little grain carrying, but finding no freight.

He put into one of the beautiful little natural harbors which gash those historic shores. It was in the heart of the thousand-acre farm grant an old United Empire Loyalist had bequeathed to his heirs. Over the tall tree-crowned bank near the mouth, boulders had been dumped in clearing the fields. They formed a little reef at the foot of the bluff, and were of no use to anyone. The harbor would be the better for their removal. They would make a cargo which might gross $50 or $60 for the schooner, if he could get them to the stone-crusher in Toronto. There they would sell at $5 a toise; so Capt. Newbroom and his crew set to work to load them, working up to the waist in water with long-handled rake and crowbar piling the retrieved stone into the punt or scow the little schooner had used in unloading her shingles.

RAINING ROCKS

Suddenly the trees above them seemed to be raining rocks. The clear water of the cove boiled with fragments of tree-limbs, stones, mud, shale and hard-heads. Big stones and little stones showered down. One of the Paddy Young boys was knocked out, with his shoulder crushed. All were cut and bruised. The scow was stove in and sunk. High on the bank above, three men and a woman were quarrying the limestone with crowbars and heaving at those below with wicked intent.

Heigh, be careful, we're working below" shouted Capt. Johnny from the water, thinking the party on the bank could not see them through the trees.

"Well, you won't work any more!" yelled a farmer derisively. "I'll give you all the stone ye want! I'll sink ye where ye stand! Give 'em another volley, boys!"

"This is murder!" called Capt. Newbroom.

"Too good for you!" yelled the tormentor. "Take it and like it!"

There was no way of carrying on the unequal battle against foes entrenched forty feet overhead with endless supplies of ammunition, so the bruised crew, swimming and pushing their shattered scow, beat a retreat to the schooner. When they got their breath they wanted to land and storm the heights and throw the farmers into the lake, but Capt. Newbroom forbade it. He said he was within his rights, for they were working outside the statutory limit of the shore-line and not trespassing, and he wanted to appeal to the law, not to break it.

But he got little comfort when he applied to a magistrate. "I could give you a summons against these people for assault," said the justice, "but you will have to identify them before it can be served, and they may not come when the case is called, and then you will have to serve them again, or have them arrested, and it will mean you will lose a lot of time back and forth in the court."

He applied to another J.P. and got a similar discouragement. He reported to his owner, Chas. Robertson, in Toronto, but the latter was not strong on trying to prosecute someone down in the Bay of Quinte, for damage to his property—the scow. It was not his shoulder that had been bruised nor his skin that had been broken. So he advised letting the matter "stand," which meant dropping it.

NO PLASTER SAINT

But Capt. John Newbroom was never of the plaster saint type.

Three years later he came back to the Bay of Quinte. He was no longer in command of the poor half-scow P. E. Young, which had sought a share in the barley trade of the Bay, and had been refused even a stone, except as missiles. He was master now of a smart out-and-out schooner, the W. T. Greenwood, which claimed and got cargoes of grain and coal and lumber as her right; and one of her cargoes was coal from Oswego for the Deaf and Dumb Institute in Belleville.

Capt. Newbroom made friends wherever he went. While unloading by the patient horse-and-bucket method in Belleville he was invited to an entertainment at the institute, and he made more friends by the way he threw himself into brightening the silence for these afflicted but happy folk. He was a good dancer and he clicked his heels and spun and stepped and pirouetted until they broke into rounds of applause.

Among the acquaintances he formed was a gentleman who had a friend most desirous of going to Oswego in a sailing vessel. He did not say that this was because it might cost him nothing, but Capt. Newbroom said he would not think of making a charge, and would be glad to oblige a friend of his friend. So when the Greenwood was unloaded the friend brought his friend aboard, and Capt. Johnny made him comfortable with the best the cabin afforded. The man was a complete stranger, apparently a retired, farmer.

SCENE OF THE CRIME

They slipped down the Bay briskly towards Indian Point, where you turn out into the lake for Oswego by the Upper Gap. As they went, Capt. Newbroom pointed out the of a natural harbor they passed.

"I'll tell you a good joke," said his non-paying guest. "One time what you'd call a stonehooker came into that there harbor when I was on that very farm. They began to work under that bank. I got everybody together, and we piled up all the rocks we could find, behind the trees at the top. Then when they came close below, to turn their boat around did we let them have it! We slugged it into them and shovelled the top of the bank down on them. It was as easy as rollin' off a log. We had them in a trap, yellin' for mercy, for we bust their punt and the beggars couldn't get up at us. I near died a-laffin'. The blood was runnin' from them and one feller was knocked out completely, and they had to swim him out to the stonehooker and near drowned doin' it."

"What like was the vessel?"

"Half as big as this mebbe; white, with a red bottom. We saw her name. It was P. E. Young. Ever see her?"

"And you were the man who did this trick?"

" 'Course I did. Never had so much fun in my life. Why?"

WHY, OH WHY?

"Haul her up for the Main Duck when she'll clear that island," said the captain abruptly, giving a sudden course order as they entered the Upper Gap and Isle La Force came in view. It was all Greek to his passenger.

The hours and the water slipped by. The Greenwood brought the Main puck abeam and hove to in its lee—the Main Duck, twelve miles from the nearest land, desolate then as Alexander Selkirk's island.

"What a lonesome place!" said the passenger. "What are we stopping here for, captain?"

"Lower the boat!" said his taciturn host to the mate. "Put a couple of hands in her, and tell them to bring along that old shovel. Now, mister, get down into that yawlboat, pronto. I was master of the P. E. Young when you were having your fun with us."

The man turned white and mauve and blue and green. He tried to speak, but what he thought was a revolver poked in his back sped him over the side and into the boat. It kept him quiet while the boat was sculled ashore.

A fifty-foot log lay on the Stoney beach. From it fifty water snakes; slithered off over the hot stones as the boat grounded.

"Take that shovel," said Capt Newbroom, "and dig your grave."

The man pecked around till he found a soft spot among the gravel and dug feverishly.

"Hurry up; we can't wait here all day," snapped the captain.

Obediently he hurried the preparations for his own funeral.

"Make it deeper," Capt. Newbroom told him, and deeper he dug.

"Now kneel down and shut your eyes and say your prayers. You have just five minutes more."

The man flung himself on his knees, shut his eyes tight and began to pray vociferously, with the tears forcing their way between his screwed-up lids.

Capt. Newbroom nodded to the boat's crew. They pushed off behind the praying man's back. The yawl had returned to the Greenwood before he knew they were gone. She filled away for Oswego, and the last they heard of the hero of the harbor he was still praying, raving like a crazy man, with his eyes tight shut.

This is a true story. But Johnny's name wasn't Newbroom.

SCHOONER "P. E. YOUNG' of PORT DOVER, known on Toronto's waterfront as the "Paddy." She was blown up for Exhibition fireworks in 1898, to represent the destruction of the U.S.S. MAINE in Havana