The Sea-Story Megapack: 30 Classic Nautical Works

by Jack Williamson

  “Brother,” the parson answered, accusingly, “it is in the Bible; it must be true.”

  “’Tis where?” my uncle demanded, confounded.

  “In the Bible, sir.”

  “An’ it—it—must be—”

  “True, sir.”

  My uncle sighed; and—for I know his loving-kindness—’twas a sigh that spoke a pain at heart.

  “It must be true,” reiterated the wretched parson, now, it seemed, beset by doubt. “It must be true!”

  “Why, by the dear God ye serve, parson!” roared my uncle, with healthy spirit, superior in faith, “I knows ’tis true, Bible or St. John’s noospaper!”

  Aunt Esther put her gray head in at the door. “Is the kettle b’ilin’?” says she.

  The kettle was boiling.

  “Ah!” says she—and disappeared.

  “‘Though I walk,’” the parson repeated, his thin, freckled hands clasped, “‘through the valley of the shadow of death!’”

  There was no doctor at Twist Tickle: so the parson lay dead—poor man!—of the exposure of that night, within three days, in the house of Parson Stump.…

  XV

  A MEASURE OF PRECAUTION

  With the threats of the gray stranger in mind, my uncle now began without delay to refit the Shining Light: this for all the world as though ’twere a timely and reasonable thing to do. But ’twas neither timely, for the fish were running beyond expectation off Twist Tickle, nor reasonable, for the Shining Light had been left to rot and foul in the water of Old Wives’ Cove since my infancy. Whatever the pretence he made, the labor was planned and undertaken in anxious haste: there was, indeed, too much pretence—too suave an explanation, a hand too aimless and unsteady, an eye too blank, too large a flow of liquor—for a man who suffered no secret perturbation.

  “In case o’ accident, Dannie,” he explained, as though ’twere a thing of no importance. “Jus’ in case o’ accident. I wouldn’t be upset,” says he, “an I was you.”

  “Never you fear,” says I.

  “No,” says he; “you’ll stand by, Dannie!”

  “That I will,” I boasted.

  “Ye can’t delude me,” says he. “I knows you. I bet ye you’ll stand by, whatever comes of it.”

  ’Tis quite beyond me to express my gratification. ’Twas a mysterious business altogether—this whim to make the Shining Light ready for sea. I could make nothing of it at all. And why, thinks I, should the old craft all at once be troubled by all this pother of block and tackle and hammer and saw? ’Twas beyond me to fathom; but I was glad to discover, whatever the puzzle, that my uncle’s faith in the lad he had nourished was got real and large. ’Twas not for that he bred me; but ’twas the only reward—and that a mean, poor one—he might have. And he was now come near, it seemed, to dependence upon me; there was that in his voice to show it—a little trembling, a little hopelessness, a little wistfulness: a little weakening of its quality of wrathful courage.

  “You’ll stand by,” he had said; and, ay, but it fair saddened me to feel the appeal of his aging spirit to my growing years! There comes a time, no doubt, in the relationship of old and young, when the guardian is all at once changed into the cherished one. ’Tis a tragical thing—a thing to be resolved, to be made merciful and benign, only by the acquiescence of the failing spirit. There is then no interruption—no ripple upon the flowing river of our lives. As for my uncle, I fancy that he kept watch upon me, in those days, to read his future, to discover his achievement, in my disposition. Stand by? Ay, that I would! And being young I sought a deed to do: I wished the accident might befall to prove me.

  “Accident?” cries I. “Never you fear!”

  “I’ll not fear,” says he, “that ye’ll not stand by.”

  “Ay,” I complained; “but never you fear at all!”

  “I’ll not fear,” he repeated, with a little twinkle of amusement, “that ye’ll not stand by, as best ye’re able.”

  I felt now my strength—the greatness of my body and the soaring courage of my soul. This in the innocent way of a lad; and by grace of your recollection I shall not be blamed for it. Fourteen and something more? ’Twas a mighty age! What did it lack, thinks I, of power and wisdom? To be sure I strutted the present most haughtily and eyed the future with as saucy a flash as lads may give. The thing delighted my uncle; he would chuckle and clap me on the back and cry, “That’s very good!” until I was wrought into a mood of defiance quite ridiculous. But still ’tis rather grateful to recall: for what’s a lad’s boasting but the honest courage of a man? I would serve my uncle; but ’twas not all: I would serve Judith. She was now come into our care: I would serve her.

  “They won’t nothin’ hurt she!” thinks I.

  I am glad to recall that this boyish love took a turn so chivalrous.…

  * * * *

  When ’twas noised abroad that my uncle was to refit the Shining Light, Twist Tickle grew hilarious. “Laugh an you will, lads,” says my uncle, then about the business of distributing genial invitations to the hauling-down. “’Tis a gift o’ the good Lord t’ be able t’ do it. The ol’ girl out there haven’t a wonderful lot to admire, an’ she’s nowhere near t’ windward o’ forty; but I’ll show ye, afore I’m through, that she’ll stand by in a dirty blow, an I jus’ asks she t’ try. Ye’ll find, lads,” says he, “when ye’re so old as me, an’ sailed t’ foreign parts, that they’s more to a old maid or a water-side widow than t’ many a lass o’ eighteen. The ol’ girl out there haves a mean allowance o’ beauty, but she’ve a character that isn’t talked about after dark; an’ when I buys her a pair o’ shoes an’ a new gown, why, ecod, lads, ye’ll think she’s a lady. ’Tis one way,” says he, “that ladies is made.”

  This occurred at Eli Flack’s stage of an evening when a mean, small catch was split and the men-folk were gathered for gossip. ’Twas after sunset, with fog drifting in on a lazy wind: a glow of red in the west. Our folk were waiting for the bait-skiff, which had long been gone for caplin, skippered, this time, by the fool of Twist Tickle.

  “Whatever,” says my uncle, “they’ll be a darn o’ rum for ye, saved and unsaved, when she’ve been hauled down an’ scraped. An’ will ye come t’ the haulin’-down?”

  That they would!

  “I knowed ye would,” says my uncle, as he stumped away, “saved an’ unsaved.”

  The bait-skiff conch-horn sounded. The boat had entered the narrows. ’Twas coming slowly through the quiet evening—laden with bait for the fishing of tomorrow. Again the horn—echoing sweetly, faintly, among the hills of Twin Islands. ’Twas Moses Shoos that blew; there was no mistaking the long-drawn blast.

  * * * *

  Ah, well! She needed the grooming, this Shining Light, whatever the occasion. ’Twas scandalous to observe her decay in idleness. She needed the grooming—this neglected, listless, slatternly old maid of a craft. A craft of parts, to be sure, as I had been told; but a craft left to slow wreck, at anchor in quiet water. Year by year, since I could remember the days of my life, in summer and winter weather she had swung with the tides or rested silent in the arms of the ice. I had come to Twist Tickle aboard, as the tale of my infancy ran, on the wings of a nor’east gale of some pretensions; and she had with heroic courage weathered a dirty blow to land me upon the eternal rocks of Twin Islands. For this—though but an ancient story, told by old folk to engage my presence in the punts and stages of our harbor—I loved her, as a man, Newfoundland born and bred, may with propriety love a ship.

  There are maids to be loved, no doubt, and ’tis very nice to love them, because they are maids, fashioned in a form most lovely by the good Lord, given a heart most childlike and true and loving and tenderly dependent, so that, in all the world, as I know, there is nothing so to be cherished with a man’s last breath as a maid. I have loved a maid and speak with authority. But there is also a love of ships, though, being inland-born, you may not know it. ’Tis a surpassing faith and affection, inspired neither by bea
uty nor virtue, but wilful and mysterious, like the love of a maid. ’Tis much the same, I’m thinking: forgiving to the uttermost, prejudiced beyond the perception of any fault, savagely loyal. ’Twas in this way, at any rate, that my uncle regarded the Shining Light; and ’twas in this way, too, with some gentler shades of admiration, proceeding from an apt imagination, that I held the old craft in esteem.

  “Dannie,” says my uncle, presently, as we walked homeward, “ye’ll ’blige me, lad, by keepin’ a eye on the mail-boat.”

  I wondered why.

  “You keep a eye,” he whispered, winking in a way most grave and troubled, “on that there little mail-boat when she lands her passengers.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “Brass buttons,” says he.

  ’Twas now that the cat came out of the bag. Brass buttons? ’Twas the same as saying constables. This extraordinary undertaking was then a precaution against the accident of arrest. ’Twas inspired, no doubt, by the temper of that gray visitor with whom my uncle had dealt over the table in a fashion so surprising. I wondered again concerning that amazing broil, but to no purpose; ’twas ’beyond my wisdom and ingenuity to involve these opposite natures in a crime that might make each tolerable to the other and advantage them both. ’Twas plain, at any rate, that my uncle stood in jeopardy, and that of no trivial sort: else never would he have employed his scant savings upon the hull of the Shining Light. It grieved me to know it. ’Twas most sad and most perplexing. ’Twas most aggravating, too: for I must put no questions, but accept, in cheerful serenity, the revelations he would indulge me with, and be content with that.

  “An’ if ye sees so much as a single brass button comin’ ashore,” says he, “ye’ll give me a hail, will ye not, whereever I is?”

  This I would do.

  “Ye never can tell,” he added, sadly, “what’s in the wind.”

  “I’m never allowed t’ know,” said I.

  He was quick to catch the complaint. “Ye’re growin’ up, Dannie,” he observed; “isn’t you, lad?”

  I fancied I was already grown.

  “Ah, well!” says he; “they’ll come a time, lad, God help ye, when ye’ll know.”

  “I wisht ’twould hasten,” said I.

  “I wisht ’twould never come at all,” said he.

  ’Twas disquieting.…

  * * * *

  Work on the Shining Light went forward apace and with right good effect. ’Twas not long—it might be a fortnight—before her hull was as sound as rotten plank could be made with gingerly calking. ’Twas indeed a delicate task to tap the timbers of her: my uncle must sometimes pause for anxious debate upon the wisdom of venturing a stout blow. But copper-painted below the water-line, adorned above, she made a brave showing at anchor, whatever she might do at sea; and there was nothing for it, as my uncle said, but to have faith, which would do well enough: for faith, says he, could move mountains. When she had been gone over fore and aft, aloft and below, in my uncle’s painstaking way—when she had been pumped and ballasted and cleared of litter and swabbed down and fitted with a new suit of sails—she so won upon our confidence that not one of us who dwelt on the neck of land by the Lost Soul would have feared to adventure anywhere aboard.

  The fool of Twist Tickle pulled a long face.

  “Hut, Moses!” I maintained; “she’ll do very well. Jus’ look at her!”

  “Mother always ’lowed,” says he, “that a craft was like a woman. An’ since mother died, I’ve come t’ learn for myself, Dannie,” he drawled, “that the more a woman haves in the way o’ looks the less weather she’ll stand. I’ve jus’ come, now,” says he, “from overhaulin’ a likely maid at Chain Tickle.”

  I looked up with interest.

  “Jinny Lawless,” says he. “Ol’ Skipper Garge’s youngest by the third.”

  My glance was still inquiring.

  “Ay, Dannie,” he sighed; “she’ve declined.”

  “You’ve took a look,” I inquired, “at the maids o’ Long Bill Hodge o’ Sampson’s Island?”

  He nodded.

  “An’ they’ve—”

  “All declined,” says he.

  “Never you care, Moses,” said I. “Looks or no looks, you’ll find the Shining Light stand by when she puts to sea.”

  “I’ll not be aboard,” says he.

  “You’re not so sure about that!” quoth I.

  “I wouldn’t ship,” he drawled. “I’d never put t’ sea on she: for mother,” he added, “wouldn’t like t’ run the risk.”

  “You dwell too much upon your mother,” said I.

  “She’s all I got in the way o’ women,” he answered. “All I got, Dannie—yet.”

  “But when you gets a wife—”

  “Oh,” he interrupted, “Mrs. Moses Shoos won’t mind mother!”

  “Still an’ all,” I gravely warned him, “’tis a foolish thing t’ do.”

  “Well, Dannie,” he drawled, in a way so plaintive that I found no answer to his argument, “I is a fool. I’m told so every day, by men an’ maids, wherever I goes; an’ I jus’ can’t help bein’ foolish.”

  “God made you,” said I.

  “An’ mother always ’lowed,” said Moses, “that He knowed what He was up to. An’, Dannie,” says he, “she always ’lowed, anyhow, that she was satisfied.”

  ’Twas of a Sunday evening—upon the verge of twilight: with the light of day still abroad, leaving the hills of Twin Islands clear-cut against the blue sky, but falling aslant, casting long shadows. Came, then, straggling from the graveyard in the valley by Thunder Head, the folk of our harbor. ’Twas all over, it seemed; they had buried old Tom Hossie. Moses and I sat together on the hill by Old Wives’ Cove, in the calm of the day and weather: there was no wind stirring—no drip of oar to be heard, no noise of hammer, no laughter of children, no cry or call of labor. They had buried old Tom Hossie, whom no peril of that coast, savagely continuing through seventy years, had overcome or daunted, but age had gently drawn away. I had watched them bear the coffin by winding paths along the Tickle shore and up the hill, stopping here to rest and there to rest, for the way was long; and now, sitting in the yellow sunshine of that kind day, with the fool of Twist Tickle for company, I watched them come again, their burden deposited in the inevitable arms. I wondered if the spirit of old Tom Hossie rejoiced in its escape. I wondered if it continued in pitiable age or had returned to youth—to strength for action and wish for love. I wondered, with the passionate curiosity of a lad, as I watched the procession of simple folk disperse, far off, to supper and to the kisses of children, if the spirit of old Tom Hossie had rather sail the seas he had sailed and love the maids of our land or dwell in the brightest glory painted for us by the prophets. I could, then, being a lad, conceive no happier world than that in which I moved, no joy aside from its people and sea and sunlight, no rest apart from the mortal love of Judith; but, now, grown older, I fancy that the spirit of old Tom Hossie, wise with age and vastly weary of the labor and troublous delights of life, hungered and thirsted for death.

  The church bell broke upon this morbid meditation.

  “Hark!” says Moses. “’Tis the first bell.”

  ’Twas a melodious call to worship—throbbing sweetly across the placid water of our harbor, beating on, liquidly vibrant, to rouse the resting hills of Twin Islands.

  “You’ll be off, Moses?”

  “Ay,” says he; “for mother always ’lowed ’twas good for a man t’ go t’ church, an’ I couldn’t do nothin’, Dannie, that mother wouldn’t like. I seem, lad, t’ hear her callin’, in that bell. ‘Come—dear!’ says she, ‘Come—dear! Come—dear!’ Tis like she used t’ call me from the door. ‘Come, dear,’ says she; ‘you’ll never be hurt,’ says she, ‘when you’re within with me.’ So I ’low I’ll go t’ church, Dannie, where mother would have me be. ‘You don’t need t’ leave the parson scare you, Moses,’ says she; ‘all you got t’ do, dear,’ says she, ‘is t’ remember that your mothe
r loves you. You’re so easy to scare, poor lad!’ says she; ‘but never forget that’ says she, ‘an’ you’ll never be feared o’ God. In fair weather,’ says she, ‘a man may need no Hand t’ guide un; but in times o’ trouble,’ says she, ‘he’ve jus’ got t’ have a God. I found that out,’ says she, ‘jus’ afore you was born an’ jus’ after I knowed you was a fool. So I ’low, Moses,’ says she, ‘you’d best go t’ church an’ make friends with God, for then,’ says she, ‘you’ll not feel mean t’ call upon Him when the evil days comes. In times o’ trouble,’ says mother, ‘a man jus’ can’t help singin’ out for aid. An’ ’tis a mean, poor man,’ says she, ‘that goes beggin’ to a Stranger.’ Hark t’ the bell, Dannie! Does you not hear it? Does you not hear it call the folk t’ come?”

  ’Twas still ringing its tender invitation.

  “’Tis jus’ like the voice o’ mother,” said the fool of Twist Tickle. “Like when she used t’ call me from the door. ‘Come, dear!’ says she. Hark, Dannie! Hear her voice? ‘Come—dear! Come—dear! Come—dear!’”

  God help me! But I heard no voice.…

  * * * *

  Well, now, my uncle was in no genial humor while the work on the Shining Light was under way: for from our house, at twilight, when he paced the gravelled path, he could spy the punts come in from the grounds, gunwale laden, every one. ’Twas a poor lookout, said he, for a man with thirty quintal in his stage and the season passing; and he would, by lamplight, with many sighs and much impatient fuming, overhaul his accounts, as he said. ’Tis a mystery to me to this day how he managed it. I’ve no inkling of the system—nor capacity to guess it out. ’Twas all done with six round tin boxes and many sorts of shot; and he would drop a shot here and drop a shot there, and empty a box and fill one, and withdraw shot from the bags to drop in the boxes, and pick shot from the boxes to stow away in the bags, all being done in noisy exasperation, which would give way, presently, to despair, whereupon he would revive, drop shot with renewed vigor, counting aloud, the while, upon his seven fingers, until, in the end, he would come out of the engagement grimly triumphant. When, however, the Shining Light was ready for sea, with but an anchor to ship for flight, he cast his accounts for the last time, and returned to his accustomed composure and gentle manner with us all.