The Cruise of the Shining Light, Norman Duncan [epub e ink reader .txt] 📗

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 to-morrow. 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 beauty 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