The Cruise of the Shining Light

Judith had vanished! Our maid-servant, astir in the child’s behalf before dawn, in her anxious way, was returned breathless from Whisper Cove with the report. There was no Judith with the wife of Moses Shoos: nor had there been that night. ’Twas still but gray abroad–a drear dawn: promising a belated, sullen day. We awoke the harbor to search the hills, the ledges of the cliffs, the surf-washed shore. ’Twas my uncle hither, the maid-servant thither, myself beyond. Clamorous knocking, sudden lights in the cottages, lights pale in the murky daylight, and a subdued gathering of our kind men-folk: I remember it all–the winged haste, the fright of them that were aroused, the shadows and the stumbling of the farther roads, the sickly, sleepy lights in the windows, the troubled dawn. We dispersed: day broadened, broke gray and glum upon Twin Islands–but discovered no lost maid to us.

’Twas whispered about, soon, that the women had spoken evil of Judith in our harbor; and pursuing this ill-omened rumor, in a rage I could not command, I came at last upon the shameful truth: the women had spoken scandal of the maid, the which she had learned from Aunt Esther All, the Whisper Cove gossip. The misfortune of gentle Parson Stump, poor man! who had in the ear of Eli Flack’s wife uttered a sweetly jocular word concerning Judith and the honorable intention of John Cather, who walked with her alone on the roads, about his love-making. But, unhappily, the parson being absent-minded, ’twas into the dame’s deaf ear he spoke, and his humor became, in transmission, by pure misfortune, an evil charge.

There was then no help for it, old wives being what they are: authorized by the gentle parson, depending upon the report of a dame of character, the tittle-tattle spread and settled like a mist, defiling Judith to the remotest coves of Twin Islands. And Judith was vanished! I knew then, in the gray noon of that day, why the child had cried in that leafy nook of the Whisper Cove road that she could go nowhere.

I cursed myself.

“Stop, Dannie!” cries my uncle. “She’s still on the hills–somewheres there, waitin’ t’ be sought out an’ comforted an’ fetched home.”

I thought otherwise.

“She’ve lied down there,” says he, “t’ cry an’ wait for me an’ you.”

I watched him pace the garden-path.

“An’ I’m not able, the day, for sheer want o’ rum,” he muttered, “t’ walk the hills.”

I looked away to the sombre hills, where she might lie waiting for him and me; but my glance ran far beyond, to the low, gray sky and to a patch of darkening sea. And I cursed myself again–my stupidity and ease of passion and the mean conceit of myself by which I had been misled to the falsely meek conclusion of yesterday–I cursed myself, indeed, with a live wish for punishment, in that I had not succored the maid when she had so frankly plead for my strength. John Cather? what right had I to think that she had loved him? On the hills? nay, she was not there; she was not on the hills, waiting for my uncle and me–she was gone elsewhere, conserving her independence and self-respect, in the womanly way she had. My uncle fancied she was a clinging child: I knew her for a proud and impulsively wilful woman. With this gossip abroad to flout her, she would never wait on the hills for my uncle and me: ’twas the ultimate pain she could not bear in the presence of such as loved and trusted her; ’twas the event she had feared, remembering her mother, all her life long, dwelling in sensitive dread, as I knew. She would flee the shame of this accusation, without fear or lingering, unable to call upon the faith of us. ’Twas gathering in my mind that she had fled north, as the maids of our land would do, in the spring, with the Labrador fleet bound down for the fishing. ’Twas a reasonable purpose to possess her aimless feet. She would ship on a Labradorman: she might, for the wishing–she would go cook on a north-bound craft from Topmast Harbor, as many a maid of our coast was doing. And by Heaven! thinks I, she had.

Her mother’s punt was gone from Whisper Cove.

“She’ve lied down there on the hills,” my uncle protested, “t’ cry an’ wait. Ye’re not searchin’, Dannie, as ye ought. She’ve jus’ lied down, I tell ye,” he whimpered, “t’ wait.”

’Twas not so, I thought.

“She’ve her mother’s shame come upon her,” says he, “an’ she’ve hid.”

I wished it might be so.

“Jus’ lied down an’ hid,” he repeated.

“No, no!” says I. “She’d never weakly hide her head from this.”

He eyed me.

“Not Judith!” I expostulated.

“She’d never bear her mother’s shame, Dannie,” says he. “She’d run away an’ hide. She–she–told me so.”

I observed my uncle: he was gone with the need of rum–exhausted and unnerved: his face all pallid and splotched. ’Twas a ghastly thing to watch him stump the gravelled walk of our garden in the gray light of that day.

“Uncle Nicholas, sir,” says I, for the moment forgetting the woe of Judith’s hapless state in this new alarm, “do you come within an’ have a dram.”

“Ye’re not knowin’ how t’ search,” he complained. “Ye’re but a pack o’ dunderheads!”

“Come, sir!” I pleaded.

“Is ye been t’ Skeleton Droch?” he demanded. “She’ve a habit o’ readin’ there. No!” he growled, in a temper; “you isn’t had the sense t’ go t’ Skeleton Droch.”

“A dram, sir,” I ventured, “t’ comfort you.”

“An’ ye bide here, ye dunderhead!” he accused.

I put my hand on his shoulder: he flung it off. I took his arm: he wrenched himself free in an indignant passion.

“Ye’re needin’ it, sir,” says I.

“For God’s sake, child!” he cried; “do you go find the maid an’ leave me be. God knows I’ve trouble enough without ye!”

The maid was not at Skeleton Droch: neither on the hills, nor in the hiding-places of the valleys, nor lying broken on the ledges of the cliffs, nor swinging in the sea beneath–nor was she anywhere on the land of Twin Islands or in the waters that restlessly washed the boundary of gray rock. ’Twas near evening now, and a dreary, angrily windy time. Our men gathered from shore and inland barren–and there was no Judith, nor cold, wet body of Judith, anywhere to be found. ’Twas unthinkingly whispered, then, that the maid had fled with John Cather on the mail-boat: this on Tom Tulk’s Head, in its beginning, and swiftly passed from tongue to tongue. Being overwrought when I caught the surmise–’twas lusty young Jack Bluff that uttered it before me–I persuaded the youth of his error, which, upon rising, he admitted, as did they all of that group, upon my request, forgiving me, too, I think, the cruel abruptness of my argument, being men of feeling, every one. The maid was not gone with John Cather, she was not on the hills of Twin Islands; she was then fled to Topmast Harbor for self-support, that larger settlement, whence many Labradormen put out at this season for the northerly fishing. And while, sheltered from the rising wind, the kind men-folk of our harbor talked with my uncle and me on Eli Flack’s stage, there came into the tickle from Topmast Harbor, in quest of water, a punt and a man, being bound, I think, for Jimmie Tick’s Cove. ’Twas by him reported that a maid of gentle breeding had come alone in a punt to Topmast in the night. And her hair? says I. She had hair, and a wonderful sight of it, says he. And big, blue eyes? says I. She had eyes, says he; an’ she had a nose, so far as he could tell, which had clapped eyes on the maid, an’ she had teeth an’ feet, himself being able to vouch for the feet, which clipped it over the Topmast roads quite lively, soon after dawn, in search of a schooner bound down the Labrador.

I knew then into what service the Shining Light should be commissioned.

“Ay, lad,” says my uncle.

“And will you ship, sir?”

“Why, Lord love us, shipmate!” he roared, indignantly, to the amazement of our folk; “is ye thinkin’ I’m past my labor?”

I nodded towards Whisper Cove.

“The man,” he agreed.

It came about thus that I sought out Moses Shoos, wishing for him upon this high adventure because of his chivalry. Nay, but in Twist Tickle, whatever the strength and courage and kindliness of our folk, there was no man so to be desired in a crucial emergency. The fool of the place was beyond purchase, beyond beseeching: kept apart by his folly from every unworthy motive to action. He was a man of pure leading, following a voice, a vision: I would have him upon this sacred adventure in search of the maid I loved. ’Twas no mean errand, no service to be paid for; ’twas a high calling–a ringing summons, it seemed to me, to perilous undertakings, rewarded by opportunity for peril in service of a fond, righteous cause. Nay, but I would have this unspoiled fool: I would have for companion the man who put his faith in visions, could I but win him. I believed in visions–in the deep, limpid, mysterious springs of conduct. I believed in visions–in the unreasoning progress, an advance in the way of life not calculated, but made in unselfish faith, with eyes lifted up from the vulgar, swarming, assailing advantages of existence. My uncle and the fool and I! there was no peril upon the sea to daunt us: we would find and fetch, to her own place, in perfect honor, the maid I loved. And of all this I thought, whatever the worth of it, as I ran upon the Whisper Cove road, in the evening of that gray, blustering day.

Moses was within.

“Here you is,” he drawled. “I ’lowed you’d come. How’s the weather?”

“’Twill blow big guns, Moses,” I answered; “and I’ll not deceive you.”

“Well, well!” he sighed.

And would he go with us?

“I been waitin’ for you, Dannie,” says he. “I been sittin’ here in the kitchen–waitin’.”

’Twas a hopeful word.

“If mother was here,” he continued, “she’d have ’lowed I’d better wait. ‘You wait for Dannie,’ mother would have ’lowed, ‘until he comes.’ An’ so I been waitin’.”

Well, there I was.

“That was on’y mother,” he added; “an’, o’ course, I’m married now.”

Walrus Liz of the Labrador came in. I rose–and was pleasantly greeted. She sat, then, and effaced herself.

“Mrs. Moses Shoos,” says Moses, with a fond look upon that woman of ill-favor and infinite tenderness, “haves jus’ got t’ be consulted.”