The Cruise of the Shining Light

I wished he had not.

“But mother,” he added, quickly, in self-defence, “always ’lowed a man ought t’ see the world. So,” says he, “I’m shipped along o’ Tumm, for better or for worse, an’ I’m bound down north in the Quick as Wink with the spring supplies.”

’Twas a far journey for that sensitive soul.

“Dannie,” he asked, in quick alarm, a fear so sudden and unexpected that I was persuaded of the propriety of my premonition, “what you thinkin’ about? Eh, Dannie?” he cried. “What you lookin’ that way for?”

I would not tell him that I knew the skipper of the Quick as Wink, whose butt the fool must be.

“You isn’t ’lowin’,” Moses began, “that mother–”

“Not at all, Moses!” says I.

’Twas instant and complete relief he got from this denial. “We sails,” says he, with all a traveller’s importance, “at dawn o’ to-morrow. I’ll be gone from Twist Tickle by break o’ day. I’ll be gone t’ new places–t’ harbors I’ve heared tell of but never seed with my own eyes. I’m not quite knowin’,” says he, doubtfully, “how I’ll get along with the cookin’. Mother always ’lowed,” he continued, with a greater measure of hope, “that I was more’n fair on cookin’ a cup o’ tea. ‘Moses,’ says she, ‘you can brew a cup o’ tea so well as any fool I ever knowed.’ But that was on’y mother,” he added, in modest self-deprecation. “Jus’ mother.”

I wished again that the fool had not fallen into the mercilessly facetious company of Skipper Saucy Bill North of the schooner Quick as Wink.

“An’, Dannie,” says Moses, “I’m scared I’ll fail with all but the tea.”

’Twas come near the evening of that mellow Sunday. On the Whisper Cove road and the greening hills of Twin Islands, where Moses and I had walked in simple companionship, the birds had been mating and nesting in the thick sunshine of the afternoon. Chirp and flutter and shrill song! ’Twas a time for the mating of birds. The haste and noise and pomposity of this busy love-making! The loud triumph and soft complaint of it! All the world of spruce and alder and sunlit spaces had been a-flutter. But the weather was now fallen gloomy, the sky overcast, the wind blowing in from the black, uneasy sea, where floes and gigantic bergs of ice drifted, like frozen ghosts, cold and dead and aimlessly driven; and the hopeful sunshine had left the hills, and the piping and chirping were stilled, and I heard no more fluttering wings or tender love-songs. The fool of Twist Tickle paused in the road to stare vacantly northward. ’Twas there dark with menacing clouds–thick, sombre clouds, tinged with a warning blue, rising implacably above the roughening black of the sea. He wondered, it may be, in his dull, weakling way, concerning the coasts beyond the grave curtain, which he must discover–new coasts, dealing with us variously, as we disclose them to our hearts. I watched him with misgiving. To be sure, the skipper of the Quick as Wink was an unkind man, cynical and quick to seek selfish laughter, whatever the wound he dealt; but Tumm, our friend and the genial friend of all the world, thinks I, more hopefully, would not have the poor fool wronged.

“Dannie,” says Moses, turning, “I’m scared my cookin’ won’t quite fit the stomachs o’ the crew o’ the Quick as Wink.”

“Ay, Moses,” says I, to hearten him; “but never a good man was that didn’t fear a new task.”

He eyed me doubtfully.

“An’,” I began, “your mother, Moses–”

“But,” he interrupted, “mother wasn’t quite t’ be trusted in all things.”

“Not trusted!” I cried.

“You’ll not misunderstand me, Dannie?” he besought me, putting a hand on my shoulder. “You’ll not misunderstand, will you? But mother wasn’t quite t’ be trusted,” says he, “when it come t’ the discussion,” says he, pausing to permit a proper appreciation of the learned word, which he had appropriated from my tutor’s vocabulary, “o’ my accomplishments.”

It had never occurred before.

“For mother,” he explained, “was somehow wonderful fond o’ me.”

The church-bell called him.

“Hear her voice, Dannie?” said he. “Hear her voice in that there bell? ‘Come–dear!’ says she. ‘Come–dear! Come–dear!’ Hear it ring out? ‘Come–dear! Come–dear! Come–dear!’”

I bade him God-speed with a heart that misgave me.

“I’ll answer,” said he, his face lifted to the sky, “to that voice!”

The clouds in the west broke, and through the rift a shaft of sunlight shot, glad to be free, and touched our world of sea and rock with loving finger-tips, but failed, as I turned homeward, hearing no voice of my unknown mother in the wandering call of the bell; and all the world went gray and sullenly mute, as it had been…

XIX

A WORD OF WARNING

Presently my uncle and I made ready to set out for St. John’s upon the sinister business which twice a year engaged his evil talents at the wee waterside place wherein he was the sauciest dog in the pack. There was now no wandering upon the emotionless old hills of Twin Islands to prepare him, no departure from the fishing, no unseemly turning to the bottle, to factitious rage; but he brooded more despairingly in his chair by the window when the flare of western glory left the world. At evening, when he thought me gone upon my pleasure, I watched him from the shadows of the hall, grave with youth, wishing, all the while, that he might greet the night with gratitude for the mercy of it; and I listened to his muttering–and I saw that he was grown old and weak with age: unequal, it might be, to the wickedness he would command in my service. “For behold the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with the flames of fire.” For me ’twas still sweet to watch the tender shadows creep upon the western fire, to see the great gray rocks dissolve, to hear the sea’s melodious whispering; but to him the sea spoke harshly and the night came with foreboding. I wished that he would forsake the evil he followed for my sake. I would be a club-footed, paddle-punt fisherman, as the gray little man from St. John’s had said, and be content with that fortune, could my uncle but look into the eyes of night without misgiving.

But I must not tell him so…

We left John Cather behind.

“Uncle Nick,” says I, “I ’low we’d best have un along.”

“An’ why?” cries he.

“I don’t know,” says I, honestly puzzled.

He looked at me quizzically. “Is you sure?” he asked. His eyes twinkled. “Is you sure you doesn’t know?”

“I don’t know,” I answered, frowning. “I don’t know at all.”

“Dannie,” says he, significantly, “’tisn’t time yet for John Cather t’ go t’ St. John’s. You got t’ take your chance.”

“What chance?” I demanded.

“I don’t know,” says he.

I scowled.

“But,” says he, “an I was you I wouldn’t fear on no account whatever. No,” he repeated, “I wouldn’t fear–an I was you.”

So John Cather was left with Judy and the watchful maid-servant who loved her, having no child of her own, when my uncle and I fared out of the tickle upon the outside boat. I was troubled in the dark and wash and heave of that night, but could not for the life of me tell why. John Cather had bade me good-bye with a heartening laugh and clap on the shoulder. ’Twas with gratitude–and sure persuasion of unworthiness–that I remembered his affection. And Judy had given me a sisterly kiss of farewell which yet lingered upon my lips so warmly that in my perplexity I was conscious of it lying there and must like a thirsty man feel the place her moist mouth had touched. ’Twas grief, thinks I, because of parting with my friend John Cather; and I puzzled no longer, but devoted myself to the accomplishment of manners, as I had been taught, and now attended with interest, having grown old and wise. ’Twas rainy weather, windy, with the sea in an ugly pother off the rocks of our hard coast. ’Twas wet, blustering weather, indeed, all the hapless time we were gone from Twist Tickle: the tap-rooms of St. John’s, I recall, disagreeably steamed and reeked. My uncle put me to bed that night with a motherly injunction to recite the twenty-third psalm for safety against the perils of the sea and the machinations of wicked men, and to regard the precepts of the noble Lord Chesterfield for guidance in more difficult waters: the man being quite sober for the first time in all my life upon these occasions of departure.

“Dannie, lad,” says he, “you cling t’ that there little anchor I’m give ye t’ hold to.”

I asked him mechanically what that was.

“The twenty-third psa’m,” says he.

To this I promised.

“An’, Dannie,” says he, drawing the great bandanna handkerchief from his trousers-pocket to blow his nose, “don’t ye be gettin’ lonely: for Dannie–”

I must sharply attend.

“I’m for’ard,” he declared, “standin’ by!”

He could not perceive, poor man! that I was no longer to be dealt with as a child.

There befell me in the city a singular encounter. ’Twas of a soggy, dismal day: there was a searching wind abroad, I recall, to chill the marrow of impoverished folk, a gray light upon all the slimy world, a dispiriting fog flowing endlessly in scowling clouds over the hills to thicken and eddy and drip upon the streets and harbor. It being now at the crisis of my uncle’s intoxication, I was come from my hotel alone, wandering without aim, to speed the anxious hours. Abreast of the familiar door of the Anchor and Chain, where long ago I had gratefully drunk with Cap’n Jack Large, I paused; and I wondered, as I stared at the worn brass knob, now broken into beads of cold sweat with the weather, whether or not I might venture some persuasion upon my perverse uncle, but was all at once plucked by the tail of my coat, and turned in a rage to resent the impudence. ’Twas but a scrawny, brass-buttoned boy, however, with an errand for the lad with the rings, as they called me. I followed, to be sure, and was by this ill-nourished messenger led to the crossing of King Street with Water, where my uncle was used to tap-tapping the pavement. Thence in a moment we ascended to a group of office-rooms, on the opposite side of the street, wherein, having been ceremoniously ushered, I found the gray stranger who had called me a club-footed, ill-begotten young whelp, on that windy night at Twist Tickle, and had with meaning complacency threatened my uncle’s assassination.