Read Ebook: The Cruise of the Shining Light by Duncan Norman

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Ebook has 1591 lines and 71384 words, and 32 pages

My uncle touched me again--moving nearer, now, that his hand might lie upon me. "Dannie," he whispered, "if you must sin the sins of us--"

"Ay, sir?"

"They'll be some poor folk t' suffer. An' Dannie--"

I was very grave in the pause.

"You'll not forget t' be kind, will you," he pleaded, "t' them that suffer for your sins?"

"I will not sin," I protested, "t' the hurt of any others."

He seemed not to hear. "An' you'll bear your own pain," he continued, "like a man, will you not?"

I would bear it like a man.

"That's good," said he. "That's very good!"

The moon was now risen from the sea: the room full of white light.

"Me? Oh no!"

"He'll remember," said I, confidently, "that you was once a little lad--jus' like me."

"God knows!" said he.

I was then bade go to sleep....

Presently I fell asleep, but awoke, deep in the night, to find my uncle brooding in a chair by my bed. The moon was high in the unclouded heaven. There was no sound or stirring in all the world--a low, unresting, melancholy swish and sighing upon the rocks below my window, where the uneasy sea plainted of some woe long forgot by all save it, which was like a deeper stillness and silence. The Lost Soul was lifted old and solemn and gray in the cold light and shadow of the night. I was troubled: for my uncle sat in the white beam, striking in at my window, his eyes staring from cavernous shadows, his face strangely fixed and woful--drawn, tragical, set in no incertitude of sorrow and grievous pain and expectation. I was afraid--'twas his eyes: they shook me with fear of the place and distance from which it seemed he gazed at me. 'Twas as though a gulf lay between, a place of ghostly depths, of echoes and jagged rock, dark with wind-blown shadows. He had brought me far upon a journey, leading me; and having now set my feet in other paths and turned my face to a City of Light, lifted in glory upon a hill, was by some unworthiness turned back to his own place, but stayed a moment upon the cloudy cliff at the edge of darkness, with the night big and thick beyond, to watch me on my way.

"Uncle Nick," said I, "'tis wonderful late in the night."

"Ay, Dannie," he answered; "but I'm wantin' sore t' sit by you here a spell."

"I'll not be able," I objected, "t' go t' sleep."

"'Twill do no hurt, lad," said he "if I'm wonderful quiet. An' I'll be quiet--wonderful quiet."

"Ah, well," said he, "I'll not trouble you, then. I would not have you lie awake. I'll go. Good-night. God bless you, lad!"

I wish I had not driven him away....

TWIN ISLANDS

If 'tis a delight to love, whatever may come of it , I found delight upon the grim hills of Twin Islands....

They lie hard by the coast, but are yet remote: Ship's Run divides them from the long blue line of main-land which lifts its barren hills in misty distance from our kinder place. 'Tis a lusty stretch of gray water, sullen, melancholy, easily troubled by the winds, which delight, it seems, sweeping from the drear seas of the north, to stir its rage. In evil weather 'tis wide as space; when a nor'easter lifts the white dust of the sea, clouding Blow-me-down-Billy of the main-land in a swirl of mist and spume, there is no departure; nor is there any crossing when in the spring of the year a southerly gale urges the ice to sea. We of Twin Islands were cut off by Ship's Run from all the stirring and inquisitive world.

"God-forsaken place, Nick!" quoth Tom Bull, at the Anchor and Chain.

"So does hell."

"There you goes again, Tom Bull!" cries my uncle, with a sniff and wrathful twitch of the lip. "There you goes again, you dunderhead--jumpin' t' conclusions!"

Tom Bull was shocked.

"Hell God-forsaken!" growls my uncle. "They's more hard labor for the good Lord t' do in hell, Tom Bull, than any place I knows on; an' I 'low He's right there, kep' double watches on the jump, a-doin' of it!"

Twist Tickle pursues an attenuated way between the Twins, broadening into the harbor basin beyond the Pillar o' Cloud, narrowing at the Finger and Thumb, widening, once more, into the lower harbor, and escaping to the sea, at last, between Pretty Willie and the Lost Soul, which are great bare heads. You get a glimpse of the Tickle from the deck of the mail-boat: this when she rounds the Cocked Hat and wallows off towards Gentleman Cove. 'Tis but a niggardly glimpse at best, and vastly unfair to the graces of the place: a white house, wee and listlessly tilted, gripping a rock, as with expiring interest; a reach of placid water, deep and shadowy, from which rise the hills, gray, rugged, splashed with green; heights beyond, scarfed with clinging wisps of mist.

"An' there she'll lie," he was used to saying, with a grave and mysteriously significant wink, "until I've sore need o' she."

"Ay," said they, "or till she rots, plank an' strand."

"An she rots," says my uncle, "she may rot: for she'll sail these here waters, sound or rotten, by the Lord! an I just put her to it."

Unhappy, then, perhaps, Twin Islands, in situation and prospect; but the folk of that harbor, who deal barehanded with wind and sea to catch fish, have this wisdom: that a barren, a waste of selfish water, a low, soggy sky have nothing to do with the hearts of men, which are independent, in love and hope and present content, of these unfeeling things. We were seafaring men, every jack of the place, with no knowledge of a world apart from green water, which forever confronted us, fashioning our lives; but we played the old comedy as heartily, with feeling as true and deep, the same fine art, as you, my gentlefolk! and made a spectacle as grateful to the gods for whom the stage is set.

And there is a road from the Tickle to the sea--to an outer cove, high-cliffed, frothy, sombre, with many melancholy echoes of wind and breakers and listless human voices, where is a cluster of hopeless, impoverished homes. 'Tis a wilful-minded path, lingering indolently among the hills, artful, intimate, wise with age, and most indulgently secretive of its soft discoveries. It is used to the lagging feet of lovers. There are valleys in its length, and winding, wooded stretches, kindly places; and there are arching alders along the way to provide a seclusion yet more tender. In the moonlight 'tis a path of enchantment--a way of pain and high delight: of a wandering hope that tantalizes but must in faith, as we are men, be followed to its catastrophe. I have suffered much of ecstasy and despair upon that path. 'Tis the road to Whisper Cove.

Judith dwelt at Whisper Cove....

A MAID O' WHISPER COVE

Fourteen, then, and something more: a footloose lad of Twist Tickle--free to sail and wander, to do and dream, to read the riddles of my years, blithe and unalarmed. 'Tis beyond the will and wish of me to forget the day I lay upon the Knob o' Lookout, from afar keeping watch on the path to Whisper Cove--the taste of it, salty and cool, the touch of it upon my cheek and in my hair, the sunlight and scampering wind: the simple haps and accidents, the perception, awakening within me, and the portent. 'Twas blowing high and merrily from the west--a yellow wind from the warm west and from the golden mist and low blue line of coast at the other side of the bay. It rippled the azure floor between, and flung the spray of the breakers into the sunshine, and heartily clapped the gray cliff, and pulled the ears of the spruce, and went swinging on, in joyous mood, to the gray spaces of the great sea beyond Twin Islands. I shall not forget: for faith! the fates were met in conspiracy with the day to plot the mischief of my life. There was no warning, no question to ease the issue in my case: 'twas all ordained in secret; and the lever of destiny was touched, and the labor of the unfeeling loom went forward to weave the pattern of my days.

Judith washed her mother's face and hands with conscientious care: 'twas her way. Doubtless, in the way she had, she chattered, the while, a torrent of affectionate reproof and direction, which gave no moment for promise or complaint, and at last, with a raised finger and a masterful little flash of the eye, bade the flighty woman keep out of mischief for the time. What then, 'tis easy to guess: she exhausted the resources of soap and water in her own adornment , and set out by the path from Whisper Cove to Twist Tickle, with never a glance behind, but a prim, sharp outlook, from shyly downcast eyes, upon all the world ahead. A staid, slim little maid, with softly fashioned shoulders, carried sedately, her small head drooping with shy grace, like a flower upon its slender stalk, seeming as she went her dainty way to perceive neither scene nor incident of the passage, but yet observing all in swift, sly little flashes.

I followed.

I feigned astonishment. "Hello!" quoth I; "what you doin' here?"

She turned away--the eager expectation all fled from her face: I saw it vanish.

She sniffed: 'twas a frank sniff of contempt--pain, like a half-heard sob, mixed with the scorn of it.

"What you doin' here?"

I stood reproached; she had achieved it in a glance--a little shaft of light, darting upon me, departing, having dealt its wound.

"Well, maid," cries I, the smart of her glance and silence enraging me, "is you got no tongue?"

She puckered her brows, pursed her lips; she sighed--and concerned herself with her hair-ribbon, quite placid once more. 'Twas a trick well known to me. 'Twas a trick aggravating to the temper. 'Twas a maid's trick--an ensnaring, deadly trick. 'Twas a trick ominous of my imminent confusion.

"Eh?" I demanded.

"Dannie, child," she admonished, gently, "God hates a liar!"

I might have known.

"T' make believe," cries she, "that I'd not be here! How could you!"

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