Bay of Spirits: A Love Story

by Farley Mowat

  In the eerie dawn light, they looked not unlike a Dürer print of mourners come to claim a corpse. In truth they were there to bless Happy Adventure in her reincarnation, to wash away her Protestant taint and make an honest woman of her.

  As they came crowding into the cabin, the Father seemed preoccupied. While the boys intoned a prayer, he uncorked a large bottle of holy water and poised it over our small saloon table. Sniffing softly because he had a cold, he pronounced the blessing. Then, as he uttered the new Basque name of our little vessel, he sneezed. Hugely.

  Holy water flew in all directions. The embarrassed Father beat a hasty retreat. Being a good dogan, Mike’s sympathy for the priest was deeper than mine.

  “Don’t snigger, Farley,” he said as he mopped holy water off his sleeping bag. “Just you try saying the new name of this silly boat and see what happens.”

  Why don’t you, dear reader, try it for yourself?

  Itxaxozale Alai, pronounced Itchatchozale Alai.

  Newfoundlanders have a saying that a voyage badly begun will come to a good conclusion. It was so with this affair. Heedless of the early hour and the drizzling rain, Théo climbed down into our little dinghy and began painting the vessel’s new name in gold on both bows and across her stern. Martin shook out the large Basque flag Madame Detcheverry had made for us. It was a gorgeous concoction of silk and satin embroidered with gold thread. Emblazoned on a red background was a green-and-white cross and the crests of the Seven Provinces which had comprised Basque country before the French seized four of them and the Spaniards the other three.

  Martin formally opened a squat bottle of a green liquor unfamiliar to me.

  “This is Izaro. National drink of the Basques. We will toast Itxaxozale Alai in her native drink.”

  As we did this I ceased to wonder why it had taken the French and the Spanish eight hundred years to overcome the Basques and why they have not yet completely succeeded in doing so.

  By eleven o’clock, the hour set for the public celebration, the rain had ceased. A crowd gathered on the wharf and on nearby vessels was in a festive mood. Acting as chef de protocol, Martin mounted to the roof of Paulo’s launch while a musical group in traditional Basque costume sounded a fanfare. Then Martin called on Madame Detcheverry, godmother to the vessel, to do her duty.

  She did it with a will, swinging a ribbon-tethered bottle of Izaro with such vigour it missed its target and soared across our deck to smash with a gratifying explosion against the wharf, while vessels’ horns and sirens shrilled from all around the harbour and the hoarse bellow of the shipyard steam engine joined the tribute. As the echoes died away, we all adjourned to l’Éscale to celebrate the reappearance, after an absence of some hundreds of years, of the Basque flag flown by a Basque vessel.

  L’Éscale was one of several bars ranged around the place offering comfort and conviviality to men from the fleets of France, Portugal, and Spain who fished the Grand Banks but came into St. Pierre for shelter from bad storms, for repairs, or for supplies. L’Éscale was most mariners’ first choice, not because it had anything special to offer in the way of food or drink, but because of its proprietor, Madame Ella Geradin, a brassy blonde with a wicked sense of humour and a weakness for strays. Ella had decided at first meeting that Mike and I and our little vessel belonged in the latter category.

  With Ella’s blessing and connivance, the party celebrating Itxaxozale Alai’s christening became a prolonged and memorable occasion. I can’t recall all of it. What I do remember is realizing early on that life without the ongoing companionship of Claire Wheeler would be an intolerable prospect. And I remember the way Mike Donovan resolved the problem of how to deal with my schooner’s new name.

  At some point in the evening Mike swayed to his feet to propose a toast that went something like this: “Cracking fine boat, that one. So what I say is”–he paused to refill his glass and hoist it high–“may the good Lord give her tight seams and a bloody good pump; and don’t ever let the little bitch get far from shore. Here’s to Itchy-ass Sally….”

  His version of the name was certainly easier to say and to remember, if altogether lacking in dignity. I became used to it in time, and even to its diminutive, which would follow the vessel almost to the end of her days.

  Itchy.

  The French Isles

  I had assumed that Itchy’s new port of registry, emblazoned on her stern, would be St. Pierre, but I found Théo had painted Miquelon under her new name. When I asked why, he explained: “She is Basque, n’est-ce pas? So that is your new home port. You must sail her there at once to show the flag.”

  This sounded like a good idea, especially if I could persuade Mademoiselle Wheeler to come along.

  Resplendent in her new paint, her new flag flying gaudily from her main truck, her compass adjusted, and her bullgine temporarily amenable, Itchy looked and even seemed to be a well-found little ship, worthy of admiration. I hoped her captain would be found deserving of some too, and when Claire accepted my invitation I was delighted, even ecstatic.

  Itchy was seriously overcrowded but fine weather, good company, and much good food and drink made the outward voyage a convivial frolic. I put George Etcheverry at the vessel’s helm so I could concentrate on posturing as the salty master of an ocean-going vessel for Claire’s benefit.

  Even with a brisk favouring breeze, it took us six hours to sail to Anse au Miquelon. As we rounded Chatte Rock, we could see people launching large, multicoloured dories from Miquelon’s great sweep of cobble beach. By the time we were half a mile off the small and exposed wharf in the centre of the curving shoreline, we had an escort of several dories. Their crews appeared friendly, though not demonstratively so.

  “That is the Basque way,” Martin explained to me. “Cautious with strangers.”

  Only later did we learn that the dorymen had hurried to meet us in the expectation that we were customers from Newfoundland come to purchase firewater.

  As we bore down toward the semicircle of weathered wooden houses behind the beach, our new Basque flag snapping overhead seemed to be exchanging greetings with a larger version flying from a staff at the end of the dock. We moored and went ashore to mingle with the few people and many dogs and horses straggling along a track that was the only “street.” It led past a cavernous grey barn of a church to the wind-battered house of a fisherman of eighty-odd years who seemed to be the leader of this isolated community of some two hundred people. Martin explained who we were and why we were there, and we were gravely invited to make ourselves at home.

  There being no hotel, my crew was offered quarters for the night in private houses, but I was uneasy about leaving Itchy unattended in her exposed position at the wharf so I returned there to keep her company. Near midnight Mike decided to rejoin me at the boat. By then the unlighted street had become a dormitory for the many small black ponies and large black dogs that roamed the village by day. It was Mike’s misfortune to stumble over one of these.

  Polite as always, Mike apologized.

  “Sorry, doggie. Nice doggie. Won’t happen again.”

  When the dog replied with a shrill whinny, Mike jumped backward and collided with a second slumbering beast. Again he apologized, but this time was careful not to mistake the creature’s identity.

  “Sorry, horsie! Really very sorry!”

  Feeling his way with extreme caution now, he eventually reached the boat.

  “Listen, Farl,” he told me uneasily. “I think we oughta get the hell out of this place. It’s bad enough being whinnied at by a goddamn dog but when the horses start growling at you, it’s time to be on your way!”

  Heavy fog rolling in on a light easterly made me so uneasy I was unable to sleep. Sometime in the pre-dawn hours I heard the distant beat of a make-and-break engine. Before long something bumped gently against Itchy’s hull. I went on deck and helped two oilskin-clad figures clamber aboard.

  They introduced themselves as John and Spence Manuel from Connaigre Bay on
Newfoundland’s Sou’west Coast. They were shy at first, but at length admitted they had made the thirty-mile crossing in their old trap skiff “to get a drop of the good stuff, you understand. They’s three weddings on the go and nary a drop to be had around the Bay. Hard toimes, me son, ’less some of we don’t do somethin’ about it.”

  I warmed them with coffee and rum then accompanied them to the house of a fisherman who ran a small export business. We sat in his kitchen for a while sampling the goods and talking about the “trade.”

  I learned it had begun a century and a half earlier when the British authorities in Newfoundland decided to put an end to the age-old duty-free commerce between St. Pierre and Miquelon and Newfoundland. Revenue cutters had been built and manned, and a constabulary put on guard along the coast. With minimal effect. On foggy nights small boats had continued to put out from the little outports of southern Newfoundland to make their way in darkness to the French Isles, where the crews traded fish bait, salmon, firewood, caribou meat, and furs for sugar, flour, clothing, tea, and, by no means least, rum from the French islands in the Caribbean.

  The pattern had changed somewhat in recent times. Although there was no longer a shortage of staples in southern Newfoundland, a shortage of alcohol persisted, so the trade continued to thrive. Customers arriving in Miquelon no longer bartered but paid spot cash for what they wanted. And what they wanted most was no longer rum but high-potency grain alcohol.

  Alky, as it was called, came in wooden cases, each containing two ten-litre cans. It cost fifty cents a litre. One litre, well diluted, packed a wallop equal to that obtainable from three or four quart bottles of “store liquor” as retailed by the government in St. John’s. There was no contest between alky and the government product.

  Prior to Newfoundland’s merger with Canada, efforts to prevent smuggling had depended on a few aging cutters crewed by men recruited from the thirsty outports. In consequence, few arrests were made. After Confederation, however, prevention became the responsibility of the federal government’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who, as the Manuel brothers remarked, were “a different kittle of fish.” The RCMP deployed a fleet of big, swift new vessels such as the Commissioner Wood, a gunboat built like a destroyer, manned by a dozen policemen, and armed with a quick-firing cannon. Fitted with high-powered radar and supported by aerial surveillance, she and the rest of the Mountie fleet should have been able to suppress the trade. That they had signally failed to do so was a fitting tribute to the skills, hardihood, and thirst of the fishermen of southern Newfoundland.

  I helped the Manuels load their skiff. The cargo consisted of six crates–twelve cans in all. As each crate went aboard, one of the brothers attached sacks filled with salt to it. This, they explained, was the “insurance.”

  “If one of they Mountie cutters happens onto we, us’ll heave bags and all over the side. The salt sinks the boxes straight to the bottom, and there they stops ’til the salt melts into the water. How long it takes depends on how much salt you puts in to the bags. You can time it pretty close. When the boxes floats up they’ll be a scattering of skiffs or dories handy, jiggin’ cod as innocent as you please. And the Mounties never a whit the wiser.”

  Waking groggily soon after dawn, I decided to clear my head with a quick plunge from the end of the wharf. I was flailing about in the frigid water when I glimpsed several shark-like dorsal fins slicing toward me. For a terrible moment I thought I was under attack, then I realized that the fins belonged to dolphins.

  They raced toward me like a spread of torpedoes. As I trod water, uncertain what to do, they went shooting past on either side so close I imagined I could feel the caress of their sleek bodies. I recognized them by their black and tan colours as white-sided dolphins. They seemed to want to play. As I waited in wonderment, the pod swiftly circled, sped seaward, then abruptly turned and came for me again, still at flank speed. This time the leader shot bodily out of the water and passed almost directly over my head, a hundred-pound projectile travelling so fast he, or she, was barely more than a flashing blur. One by one the followers repeated their leader’s acrobatics.

  Then they were gone.

  I swam to the ladder, climbed up, and waited hopefully on the pier-head, but the dolphins did not return, nor could I see any further trace of them on a sea now glowing an opalescent rose under a rising sun. They had, as seamen say, “made their signal” and gone their way.

  The bells of the gaunt old church intruded into my thoughts, which were not so much about the extraordinary behaviour of the dolphins as about whether Miss Wheeler would have been as moved as I had been. Somehow I thought she would have been.

  Once all hands were aboard again we hoisted sail and set course back to St. Pierre. The wind proving fickle, I started the bull-gine. It decided to be recalcitrant, refusing to run unless I squeezed into the tiny engine room and, squatting beside it, opened and closed the igniter manually. This was an odious business for I was deafened by thunderous explosions and almost asphyxiated by exhaust fumes from a leaky gasket. Even worse was the apprehension that I would appear incompetent in Claire Wheeler’s eyes. My fears on that score were put to rest when, unasked, she brought me a long drink of gin and gently squeezed my arm before going back up on deck. I knew then that whatever else she might prove to be, she would be a good shipmate.

  It had been my plan to sail Itchy back to Newfoundland waters in mid-August so Mike could at least make the gesture of assessing library needs in the Burin Peninsula. Now I decided we could not leave St. Pierre until the engine had been completely overhauled. In truth I did not want to leave so long as Claire remained on the island, and she was supposed to continue her studies at the École Orale for another two weeks.

  Through Paulo I arranged for a mechanic to deal with the bull-gine and was not unhappy to learn he would be unable to work on it for some days, so Itchy would remain moored to the wharf while the world unfolded as it ought.

  One afternoon Mike, who was at least as observant as the next man, informed me he intended to spend a night ashore. He told me he and Paulo had arranged to give a dinner at l’Éscale in honour of some of the lady students of l’École Orale. Blandly he inquired if I would care to come.

  Ella Giradin, Mistress of l’Éscale.

  It was a perfectly splendid party attended by a lot of Detcheverrys, Dutins, and other local people. And by Claire. This time Paulo acted as chef de protocol and when he judged the time was right (sometime before dawn) spirited Claire and me out of l’Éscale and escorted us across the dark and silent Place to Itchy, drowsing at the dockside with her head under her wing. Paulo, Mike, and one or two other worthies then mounted guard at a discreet distance from the vessel to ensure there would be no untoward disturbances for the remainder of that magic night.

  There followed halcyon times.

  In the mornings I would waken to the sound of the harbour waters slapping gently against the hull where we lay snug against the jetty. I would climb lazily out of the bunk to stick my head out through the fore hatch and sniff the mingled aroma of cod, coal smoke, and cooking from the town, then go back below and make a cup of tea for my sleeping love.

  When she was up and ready we would amble across the place to l’Éscale, where Madame Ella, having seen us coming, would have freshly baked croissants with honey waiting for us. Quiet fellows wearing dark blue berets and sitting at little iron tables having coffee or a drop of something stronger would give us a smile and a casual bonjour, and we would listen respectfully while they discussed all manner of things dealing with the world of ocean, which was the only world they really cared about.

  Later my love would go shopping for hot and crunchy bread from the tiny boulangerie, and fresh milk from a wooden cart pulled by a big black dog and loaded with old wine bottles filled with still-warm milk. Or she might amble to the fishermen’s stalls for fresh halibut steaks, a chunk of salmon, or some sole fillets, before visiting the épicerie for cheese from some far-off vale in the Fre
nch Alps.

  After lunch, if the fog held off, we might climb the treeless hills behind the town and walk through fields of blue lupines and scented grasses to the high dome of Cap Diable. From there we could look southeast over the neat rectangles of the weathered little town below, across the double harbour past Galantry Head to a distant curl of foam marking the haunted reef called les Enfants Perdus, beyond which lay the grey shores of Newfoundland.

  If the fog came rolling in we might make our way through ghostly streets to Le Select, from behind whose long bar Jean Corbier would pour us a noggin and tell us yarns of the great days of le whiskey when St. Pierre and Miquelon were targets of interest and sometimes of the guns of prohibition-smitten Americans. Jean brought to life for us the row of windowless concrete warehouses, built like wartime bunkers, that lined the waterfront but were now hollowly empty. In the 1920s and early 1930s they had been stacked to the rafters with thousands of cases of whiskey, brandy, rum, and wines. He recalled for us the elusive, hard-faced men who had manned swift and sometimes nameless vessels that came and went from St. Pierre by night to rendezvous with black-painted motorboats off the coasts of the New England states. And he showed us the table in Le Select where legendary U.S. gangster Al Capone had held court when visiting this outpost of his empire.

  There was much to do and see and hear in the days when Claire and I were weaving the first strands of the tapestry that would become our lives together.

  One day Théo came by to invite us along on an expedition in Oregon to Miquelon’s Great Barachoix. He had agreed to deliver Martin Dutin and his friend Bernard and their wives to their campsite there. Mike could not join us. He had to return to work and since Itchy was unable to carry him back to Newfoundland, the local ferry would. We said a fond à bientôt to him, with never a suspicion that this was the last voyage he would ever make with us. All too soon cancer would take him.