Pocket Island

MP3 Audio CD. Pocket Island

CHAPTER I.

POCKET ISLAND.


In the year 185- a Polish Jew peddler named Wolf and a roving Micmac
Indian met at a small village on Annapolis Bay, in Nova Scotia, and
there and then formed a partnership.

It was one of those chance meetings between two atoms tossed hither and
thither in the whirligig of life; for the peddler, shrewd, calculating
and unscrupulous, was wandering along the Acadian shores driving hard
bargains in small wares; and the Indian, like his race, fond of a
roaming life, was drifting about the bay in a small sloop he owned,
fishing where he would, hunting when he chose, stopping a week in some
uninhabited cove to set traps, or lounging in a village drinking or
gambling.

The Jew had a little money and, what was of more value, brains and
audacity. He also knew the conditions then prevalent along the Maine
coast, and all the risks, as well as the profit, to be obtained in
smuggling liquor. Rum was cheap in Nova Scotia and dear in Maine. The
Indian with his sloop formed one means to an end; his money and cunning
the other. A verbal compact to join these two forces on the basis of
share and share alike for mutual profit, was entered into, and Captain
Wolf and the Sea Fox, as the sloop was named, with the Indian and his
dog for crew, began their career.