I heard that; and I put my anxious ear close.
“I’m gettin’ kind o’ cold,” says he. “Is ye got a fire in the cabin?”
I had not.
“Get one,” says he.
I got a fire alight in the cabin. ’Twas a red, roaring fire. I called my uncle from the cabin door. The old man gave the wheel to the fool and came below in a humor the most genial: he was grinning, indeed, under the crust of ice upon his beard; and he was rubbing his stiff hands in delight. He was fair happy to be abroad in the wind and sea with the Shining Light underfoot.
“Ye got it warm in here,” says he.
“I got more than that, sir,” says I. “I got a thing to please you.”
Whereupon I fetched the bottle of rum from my bag.
“Rum!” cries he. “Well, well!”
I opened the bottle of rum.
“Afore ye pours,” he began, “I ’low I’d best—God’s sake! What’s that?”
’Twas a great sea breaking over us.
“Moses!” my uncle hailed.
The schooner was on her course: the fool had clung to the wheel.
“Ice in that sea, Dannie,” says my uncle. “An’ ye got a bottle o’ rum! Well, well! Wonderful sight o’ ice t’ the nor’ard. Ye’ll find, I bet ye, that the fishin’ fleet is cotched fast somewheres long about the straits. An’ a bottle o’ rum for a cold night! Well, well! I bet ye, Dannie,” says he, “that the Likely Lass is gripped by this time. An’ ye got a bottle o’ rum!” cries he, in a beaming fidget. “Rum’s a wonderful thing on a cold night, lad. Nothin’ like it. I’ve tried it. Was a time,” he confided, “when I was sort o’ give t’ usin’ of it.”
I made to pour him a dram.
“Leave me hold that there bottle,” says he. “I wants t’ smell of it.”
’Twas an eager sniff.
“’Tis rum,” says he, simply.
I raised the bottle above the glass.
“Come t’ think of it, Dannie,” says he, with a wistful little smile, “that there bottle o’ rum will do more good where you had it than where I’d put it.”
I corked the bottle and returned it to my bag.
“That’s good,” he sighed; “that’s very good!”
I made him a cup o’ tea.…
When I got the wheel, with Moses Shoos forward and my uncle gone asleep below, ’twas near dawn. We were under reasonable sail, running blindly through the night: there were no heroics of carrying-on—my uncle was not the man to bear them. But we were frozen stiff—every block and rope of us. And ’twas then blowing up with angrier intention; and ’twas dark and very cold, I recall—and the air was thick with the dust of snow, so that ’twas hard to breathe. Congealing drops of spray came like bullets: I recall that they hurt me. I recall, too, that I was presently frozen to the deck, and that my mitts were stuck to the wheel—that I became fixed and heavy. The old craft had lost her buoyant will: she labored through the shadowy, ghostly crested seas, in a fashion the most weary and hopeless. I fancied I knew why: I fancied, indeed, that she had come close to her last harbor. And of this I soon made sure: I felt of her, just before the break of day, discovering, but with no selfish perturbation, that she was exhausted. I felt of her tired plunges, of the stagger of her, of her failing strength and will; and I perceived—by way of the wheel in my understanding hands—that she would be glad to abandon this unequal struggle of the eternal youth of the sea against her age and mortality. And the day broke; and with the gray light came the fool of Twist Tickle over the deck. ’Twas a sinister dawn: no land in sight—but a waste of raging sea to view—and the ship laden forward with a shameful burden of ice.
Moses spoke: I did not hear him in the wind, because, I fancy, of the ice in my ear.
“Don’t hear ye!” I shouted.
“She’ve begun t’ leak!” he screamed.
I knew that she had.
“No use callin’ the skipper,” says he. “All froze up. Leave un sleep.”
I nodded.
“Goin’ down,” says he. “Knowed she would.”
My uncle came on deck: he was smiling—most placid, indeed.
“Well, well!” he shouted. “Day, eh?”
“Leakin’,” says Moses.
“Well, well!”
“Goin’ down,” Moses screamed.
“Knowed she would,” my uncle roared. “Can’t last long in this. What’s that?”
’Twas floe ice.
“Still water,” says he. “Leave me have that there wheel, Dannie. Go t’ sleep!”
I would stand by him.
“Go t’ sleep!” he commanded. “I’ll wake ye afore she goes.”
I went to sleep: but the fool, I recall, beat me at it; he was in a moment snoring.…
When I awoke ’twas broad day—’twas, indeed, late morning. The Shining Light was still. My uncle and the fool sat softly chatting over the cabin table, with breakfast and steaming tea between. I heard the roar of the wind, observed beyond the framing door the world aswirl and white; but I felt no laboring heave, caught no thud and swish of water. The gale, at any rate, had not abated: ’twas blowing higher and colder. My uncle gently laughed, when I was not yet all awake, and the fool laughed, too; and they ate their pork and brewis and sipped their tea with relish, as if abiding in security and ease. I would fall asleep again: but got the smell of breakfast in my nose, and must get up; and having gone on deck I found in the narrow, white-walled circle of the storm a little world of ice and writhing space. The Shining Light was gripped: her foremast was snapped, her sails hanging stiff and frozen; she was listed, bedraggled, encrusted with ice—drifted high with snow. ’Twas the end of the craft: I knew it. And I went below to my uncle and the fool, sad at heart because of this death, but wishing very much, indeed, for my breakfast. ’Twas very warm and peaceful in the cabin, with pork and brewis on the table, my uncle chuckling, the fire most cheerfully thriving. I could hear the wind—the rage of it—but felt no stress of weather.
“Stove in, Dannie,” says my uncle. “She’ll sink when the ice goes abroad.”
I asked for my fork.
“Fill up,” my uncle cautioned. “Ye’ll need it afore we’re through.”
’Twas to this I made haste.
“More pork than brewis, lad,” he advised. “Pork takes more grindin’.”
I attacked the pork.
“I got your bag ready,” says he.
Then I had no cause to trouble.…
’Twas deep night, the gale still blowing high with snow, when the wind changed. It ran to the north—shifted swiftly to the west. The ice-pack stirred: we felt the schooner shiver, heard the tumult of warning noises, as that gigantic, lethargic mass was aroused to unwilling motion by the lash of the west wind. The hull of the Shining Light collapsed. ’Twas time to be off. I awoke the fool—who had still soundly slept. The fool would douse the cabin fire, in a seemly way, and put out the lights; but my uncle forbade him, having rather, said he, watch the old craft go down with a warm glow issuing from her. Presently she was gone, all the warmth and comfort and hope of the world expiring in her descent: there was no more a Shining Light; and we three folk were cast away on a broad pan of ice, in the midst of night and driving snow. Of the wood they had torn from the schooner against this time, the fool builded a fire, beside which we cowered from the wind; and soon, the snow failing and the night falling clear and starlit, points of flickering light appeared on the ice beyond us. There were three, I recall, diminishing in the distance; and I knew, then, what I should do in search of Judith when the day came. Three schooners cast away beyond us; one might be the Likely Lass: I would search for Judith, thinks I, when day came. ’Twas very long in coming, and ’twas most bitter cold and discouraging in its arrival: a thin, gray light, with no hopeful hue of dawn in the east—frosty, gray light, spreading reluctantly over the white field of the world to a black horizon. I wished, I recall, while I waited for broader day, that some warm color might appear to hea
rten us, some tint, however pale and transient, to recall the kindlier mood of earth to us; and there came, in answer to my wishing, a flush of rose in the east, which waxed and endured, spreading its message, but failed, like a lamp extinguished, leaving the world all sombre and inimical, as it had been.
I must now be off alone upon my search: my wooden-legged uncle could not travel the ice—nor must the fool abandon him.
“I ’lowed ye would, lad,” says he, “like any other gentleman.”
I bade them both good-bye.
“Three schooners cast away t’ the nor’ard,” says he. “I’m hopin’ ye’ll find the Likely Lass. Good-bye, Dannie. I ’low I’ve fetched ye up very well. Good-bye, Dannie.”
I was moved away now: but halted, like a dog between two masters.
“Good-bye!” he shouted. “God bless ye, Dannie—God bless ye!”
I turned away.
“God bless ye!” came faintly after me.
That night I found Judith with the crew of the Likely Lass, sound asleep, her head lying, dear child! On the comfortable breast of the skipper’s wife. And she was very glad, she said, that I had come.…
XXVI
THE DEVIL’S TEETH
’Twill not, by any one, be hard to recall that the great gale of that year, blowing unseasonably with snow, exhausted itself in three days, leaving the early birds of the Labrador fleet, whose northward flitting had been untimely, wrecked and dispersed upon the sea. In the reaction of still, blue weather we were picked up by the steamer Fortune, a sealing-craft commissioned by the government for rescue when surmise of the disaster grew large; but we got no word of my uncle and the fool of Twist Tickle until the fore-and-after Every Time put into St. John’s with her flag flying half-mast in the warm sunshine. ’Twas said that she had the bodies of men aboard: and ’twas a grewsome truth—and the corpses of women, too, and of children. She brought more than the dead to port: she brought the fool, and the living flesh and spirit of my uncle—the old man’s body ill-served by the cold, indeed, but his soul, at sight of me, springing into a blaze as warm and strong and cheerful as ever I had known. ’Twas all he needed, says he, t’ work a cure: the sight of a damned little grinnin’ Chesterfieldian young gentleman! Whatever the actual effect of this genteel spectacle, my uncle was presently on his feet again, though continuing much broken in vigor; and when he was got somewhat stronger we set out for Twist Tickle, to which we came, three days later, returning in honor to our own place.
The folk were glad that we were all come back to them.…
I loved Judith: I loved the maid with what exalted wish soul and body of me understood—conceiving her perfect in every grace and spiritual adornment: a maid lifted like a star above the hearts of the world. I considered my life, and counted it unworthy, as all lives must be before her: I considered my love, but found no spot upon it. I loved the maid: and was now grown to be a man, able, in years and strength and skill of mind and hand, to cherish her; and I would speak to her of this passion and dear hope, but must not, because of the mystery concerning me. There came, then, an evening when I sought my uncle out to question him; ’twas a hushed and compassionate hour, I recall, the sunset waxing glorious above the remotest sea, and the night creeping with gentle feet upon the world, to spread its soft blanket of shadows.
I remembered the gray stranger’s warning.
“Here I is, lad,” cries my uncle, with an effort at heartiness, which, indeed, had departed from him, and would not come again. “Here I is—havin’ a little dram o’ rum with Nature!”
’Twas a draught of salt air he meant.
“Dannie,” says he, in overwhelming uneasiness, his voice become hoarse and tremulous, “ye got a thing on your mind!”
I found him very old and ill and hopeless; ’twas with a shock that the thing came home to me: the man was past all labor of the hands, got beyond all ships and winds and fishing—confronting, now, with an anxious heart, God knows! A future of dependence, for life and love, upon the lad he had nourished to the man that was I. I remembered, again, the warning of that gray personage who had said that my contempt would gather at this hour; and I thought, as then I had in boyish faith most truly believed, that I should never treat my uncle with unkindness. ’Twas very still and glowing and beneficent upon the sea; ’twas not an hour, thinks I, whatever the prophecy concerning it, for any pain to come upon us. My uncle was fallen back in a great chair, on a patch of greensward overlooking the sea, to which he had turned his face; and ’twas a kindly prospect that lay before his aged eyes—a sweep of softest ocean, walled with gentle, drifting cloud, wherein were the fool’s great Gates, wide open to the glory beyond.
“I’m wishing, sir,” said I, “to wed Judith.”
“’Tis a good hope,” he answered.
I saw his hand wander over the low table beside him: I knew what it sought—and that by his will and for my sake it must forever seek without satisfaction.
“Sir,” I implored, “I’ve no heart to ask her!”
He did not answer.
“And you know why, sir,” I accused him. “You know why!”
“Dannie,” says he, “ye’ve wished for this hour.”
“And I am ready, sir.”
He drew then from his pocket a small Bible, much stained and wrinkled by water, which he put on the table between us. “Dannie, lad,” says he, “do ye now go t’ your own little room, where ye was used t’ lyin’, long ago, when ye was a little lad.” He lifted himself in the chair, turned upon me—his eyes frankly wet. “Do ye go there,” says he, “an’ kneel, like ye used t’ do in the days when ye was but a little child, an’ do ye say, once again, for my sake, Dannie, the twenty-third psa’m.”
I rose upon this holy errand.
“‘The Lord is my shepherd,’” my uncle repeated, looking away to the fool’s great Gates, “‘I shall not want.’”
That he should not.
“‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.’”
And so it should be.
“Dannie,” my uncle burst out, flashing upon me with a twinkle, as when I was a lad, “I ’low I’ve fetched ye up very well: for say what ye will, ’twas a wonderful little anchor I give ye t’ hold to!”
I went then to the little bed where as a child I lay waiting for sleep to come bearing fairy dreams. ’Twas still and dusky in the room: the window, looking out upon the wide, untroubled waters, was a square of glory; and the sea whispered melodiously below, as it had done long, long ago, when my uncle fended my childish heart from all the fears of night and day. I looked out upon the waste of sea and sky and rock, where the sombre wonder of the dusk was working, clouds in embers, cliffs and water turning to shadows; and I was comforted by this returning beauty. I repeated the twenty-third psalm, according to my teaching, reverently kneeling, as I was bid; and my heart responded, as it has never failed to do. I remembered: I remembered the windless dusks and fresh winds and black gales through which as a child I had here serenely gone to sleep because my uncle sat awake and watchful below. I remembered his concern and diffident caresses in the night when I had called to him to come: I remembered all that he had borne and done to provide the happiness and welfare he sought in loving patience to give the child he had. Once again, as when I was a child, the sea and sunset took my soul as a harp to stir with harmonious chords of faith; and I was not disquieted any more—nor in any way troubled concerning the disclosure of that black mystery in which I had thrived to this age of understanding. And ’twas in this mood—this grateful recollection of the multitudinous kindnesses of other years—that I got up from my knees to return to my uncle.
“Dannie,” says he, having been waiting, it seemed, to tell me this, first of all, “ye’ll remember—will ye not?—for your guidance an’ comfort, that ’tis not a tie o’ blood betwixt you an’ ol’ Nick Top. He’s no kin t’ shame ye: he’s on’y a chance acquaintance.”
The tale began at the waning of the
evening glory.…
“Your father an’ me, lad,” said my uncle, “was shipmates aboard the Will-o’-the-Wisp when she was cast away in a nor’east gale on the Devil’s Teeth, near twenty year ago: him bein’ the master an’ me but a hand aboard. How old is you now, Dannie? Nineteen? Well, well! You was but six months come from above, lad, when that big wind blowed your father’s soul t’ hell; an’ your poor mother was but six months laid away. We was bound up from the Labrador that night, with a cargo o’ dry fish, picked up ’long shore in haste, t’ fill out a foreign bark at Twillingate. ’Twas late in the fall o’ the year, snow in the wind, the sea heapin’ up in mountains, an’ the night as black as a wolf’s throat. Your father was crowdin’ on, Dannie, in the way he had, bein’ a wonderful driver, an’ I ’lowed he was fetchin’ too close t’ the Harborless Shore for safety; but I wouldn’t tell un so, lad, for I didn’t know un so well as I knows you, bein’ on’y a hand aboard, ye see, with a word or two t’ le’ward of what ye might call a speakin’ acquaintance with the skipper. I ’lowed he’d strike the Rattler; but he cleared the Rattler, by good luck, an’ fetched up at dawn on the Devil’s Teeth, a mean, low reef o’ them parts, where the poor Will-o’-the-Wisp broke her back an’ went on in splinters with the sea an’ wind. ’Twas over soon, Dannie; ’twas all over soon, by kindness o’ Providence: the ol’ craft went t’ pieces an’ was swep’ on t’ le’ward by the big black waves.”
In the pause my uncle’s hand again searched the low table for the glass that was not there.
“I’m not wantin’ t’ tell ye,” he muttered.
I would not beg him to stop.
“Me an’ your father, Dannie,” he continued, presently, dwelling upon the quiet sunset, now flaring with the last of its fire, “somehow cotched a grip o’ the rock. ’Twas a mean reef t’ be cast away on, with no dry part upon it: ’twas near flush with the sea, an’ flat an’ broad an’ jagged, slimy with seaweed; an’ ’twas washed over by the big seas, an’ swam in the low roll o’ the black ones. I ’low, Dannie, that I was never afore cotched in such a swirl an’ noise o’ waters. ’Twas wonderful—the thunder an’ spume an’ whiteness o’ them big waves in the dawn! An’ ’twas wonderful—the power o’ them—the wolfish way they’d clutch an’ worry an’ drag! ’Twas a mean, hard thing t’ keep a grip on that smoothed rock; but I got my fingers in a crack o’ the reef, an’ managed t’ hold on, bein’ stout an’ able, an’ sort of savage for life—in them old days. Afore long, your poor father crep’ close, lad, an’ got his fingers in the same crack. ’Twas all done for you, Dannie, an’ ye’ll be sure t’ bear it in mind—will ye not?—when ye thinks o’ the man hereafter. I seed the big seas rub un on the reef, an’ cut his head, an’ break his ribs, as he come crawlin’ towards me. ’Twas a long, long time afore he reached the place. Ye’ll not forget it—will ye lad?—ye’ll surely not forget it when ye thinks o’ the man that was your father.”
The Sea-Story Megapack Page 107