The Black Buoy

 

Louisbourg April thick fog pervades the town and harbour. In the silence between the foghorn hoots a high-powered patrol boat has looked in the harbour and raced away again. Word spreads It sparks enough interest that a dozen men or so wander down to have a looksee.  Their eyes search the fog again patrol boat looks in at the dock and turns back out the harbour searchlight scanning the foggy harbour slob ice scattering. This happens twice more in the next 2 hours. Then there is a new sound a different boat chugs through the night and carefully emerges through the gloom to tie up as the patrol boat comes minutes later and lays alongside mounties quickly boarding.  

A Mountie runs to the townsfolk. Quick we need a doctor. Is there a hospital four men have been gassed? There is no hospital the men are carried to Bessie Shaw's boarding house almost next to the government wharf. The men are bedded down and the doctor arrives. More mounties arrive from Sydney and take charge everybody else is sent away. The boat is searched and sealed and the house put under guard. Nobody is allowed to talk to the men. When Charlie shaw arrives at the door they have to let him in it is his house.

The gassed men recovered slowly but in a week or so they were recovered enough to sit up and talk and were soon going to be moved to Sydney. charlie thought a little shot of rum might help their recovery and soon he got the story. Before they headed in the Harbour they had managed to put the cargo in a large net and sank it under the ice near black point and marked it with a black buoy. At this point, the men had no interest in salvaging the cargo as they were of getting rid of the evidence.

Charlie soon gathered four friends and a boat and a pile of burlap potato sacks

It made for a long night but they soon had the sacks filled and hidden in the ruins of the fort. So there was no trouble taking the boat home. The next they retrieved their booty. Sacks were buried, bottles stashed everywhere Charlie liked the lumber yard next to his house. Cape Bretoners are generous folks of course and the town was pretty well drunk for the next year or so. Bessie snow soon learned to follow charlie through the lumber yard and one of the McIntyre's was taken to hospital with the Blind staggers.