Early in the afternoon the wind was coming in black squalls, accompanied by a rolling mist. As I looked towards the mainland I saw a fishing boat coming, leaning hard to the strong gale. An hour later Sammy and his man landed in the tiny cove and the old fellow came rushing towards me.
"You is wanted to come ter onst," he said. "They is a man come yisterday on that white yacht. He went up th" river fur salmon, jist after his boat left, and bruk the leg o" he slippin" on the rocks. Yer got to come right now,"
I took the small package he brought me and rushed up to the house with it The improvement had continued, and I gave careful directions in regard to continuing the treatment. After this I descended to the tiny beach where the boat was waiting.
"She be nasty when yer gets from the lee o" the island," Sammy informed me. "I mistrust its gettin" worse and some fog rollin" in wid" it. Mebbe yer doesn"t jist feel like reskin" it?"
"How about your wife and children, Sammy?" I asked. "There is no one depending on me."
He took a long look, quietly gauging the possibilities.
"I"m a-thinkin" we"s like to make it all right," he finally told me.
"And what about you and the little boy, Frenchy?" I asked the other man.
"Me go orright," he answered. "Me see heem baby again."
So we jumped aboard. The tiny cove was so sheltered that we had to give a few strokes of the oars before, suddenly, the little ship heeled to the blow.
CHAPTER III
_From John Grant"s Diary_
In a few minutes the slight protection afforded us by Will"s Island was denied us. I was anxious to ask further details about this injured man we were hurrying to see, but the two fishermen had no leisure for conversation. A few necessary words had to be shrieked. Even before I had finished putting on my oilskins the water was dashing over us, and old Sammy, at the tiller, was jockeying his boat with an intense preoccupation that could not be interfered with.
The smack was of a couple of tons" burden, undecked, with big fish-boxes built astern and amidships. She carried two slender masts with no bowsprit to speak of, having no headsails, and her two tanned wings bellied out while the whole of her fabric pitched and rolled over the white crested waves. The fog was growing denser around us, as if we had been journeying through a swift-moving cloud. It was scudding in from the Grand Banks, pushed by a chill gale which might first have pa.s.sed over the icy plateaux of inner Greenland.
This lasted for a long time. We were all staring ahead and seeking to penetrate the blinding veil of vapor, and I felt more utterly strayed and lost than ever in my life before. Our faces were running with the salt spray that swished over the bows or flew over the quarters, to stream down into the bilge at our feet, foul with fragments of squid and caplin long dead. We were also beginning to listen eagerly for other sounds than the wind hissing in the cordage, the breaking of wave-tops and the hard thumping of the blunt bows upon the seas.
"Look out sharp, byes, I"m mistrusting"," roared old Sammy.
There were some long tense moments, ended by a shriek from Frenchy by the foremast.
"Hard a-lee!"
The sails shook in the wind and swung in-board, and out again, with a rattling of the little blocks. The forefoot rose high, once or twice, with the lessened headway, and a great savage ma.s.s of rock pa.s.sed alongside, stretching out jagged spurs, like some wild beast robbed of its prey. Frenchy, ahead, crossed himself quietly, without excitement, and again peered into the fog.
"Close call!" I shouted to the skipper, after I had recovered my breath, since I am not yet entirely inured to the risks these men constantly run.
"We nigh got ketched," roared back Sammy Moore. "I were mistrustin" the tide wuz settin" insh.o.r.e furder"n common. But I knows jist where I be now, anyways."
His grim wrinkled face was unmoved, for during all his life he had been staring death in the face and such happenings as these were but incidents in the day"s work.
"I doesn"t often git mistook," he shouted, "but fer this once it looks like the joke were on me."
The little smack continued to rise and fall over the surge. Yves, the Frenchman, remained at his post forward, holding on to the foremast and indifferent to the spray that was drenching him as he stared through the fog, keenly. My attention was becoming relaxed for, after all, I was but a pa.s.senger. Despite Sammy"s close shave I maintained a well-grounded faith in him. It was gorgeous to see him speed his boat over the turbulent waters with an inbred skill and ease which reminded one of seagulls buffeting the wind or harbor seals playing in their element.
Like these the man was adapted to his life, not because he possessed wonderful intelligence but owing to the brine which, since childhood, had entered his blood. The vast ice-pans had revealed their secrets to him and the North Atlantic gales had become the breath of his nostrils.
I can remember a time when I had an idea that I could handle a boat fairly well, but now I was compelled to recognize my limitations, while I really enjoyed the exhibition of Sammy"s skill.
"We"d ought ter be gettin" handy," roared the latter to Frenchy, who nodded back, turning towards us his dripping, bearded face, for an instant.
Suddenly he extended his arm.
"Me see. To port!" he shouted.
Dimly, veiled by the fog curtain, of ghostly outline, a jutting cliff appeared and Sammy luffed slightly. On both sides of us the seas were dashing up some tremendous rocks, but directly ahead there was an opening between the combers that hurled themselves aloft, roaring and impotent, to fall back into seething ma.s.ses of spume. There was a suggestion of tremendous walls over which voices were shrieking in the battle of unending centuries between the moving turmoil and the stolid cliffs, defying the battering waves.
Our little boat flew on, and suddenly the rolling and pitching ceased as if some magic had oiled the waters. Within the land-locked cove the wind no longer howled and the surface was smooth. It was like awaking from the unrest of a nightmare to the peace of one"s bed. We glided on, losing headway, for Frenchy had let the sheets run. With movements apparently slow, yet with the deftness which brings quick results, the sails were gathered about the masts and made fast, and presently we drifted against the small forest of poles supporting the flakes and fishhouses. These were black and glistening with the rain and from them came an odor, acrid and penetrating, of decaying fish in ill-emptied gurry-b.u.t.ts and of putrefying livers oozing out a black oil in open casks.
We made our way over the precarious footing of unstable planks and shook ourselves like wet dogs, while Sammy stopped for a moment to hunt beneath his oilskins for a sodden plug of tobacco, from which he managed to gnaw off a satisfactory portion.
"Well, we"s here, anyways," he observed, quietly.
"Sammy, you"re a wonderful man!" I exclaimed, earnestly.
The old fellow looked at me, but his seamed face appeared devoid of understanding. Slowly there seemed to dawn upon his mind the idea that this might be some sort of jest on my part, and the tanned leather of his countenance wrinkled further into a near approach to a smile, as we started up the steep path leading up to the village.
Yet I had meant no pleasantry whatever, for really I was awed by the mystery of it all. In the fog that rolled in with the north-east gale we had left Will"s Island, ten miles away, and skirted, without ever seeing them, some miles of cliffs. We had avoided scores of rocks over which the seas broke fiercely, and had finally dashed through a narrow opening in the appalling face of the huge ledge, unerringly. To me it seemed like a gigantic deed, beyond the powers of man.
The path began to widen, and Sammy again vouchsafed some information, taking up his slender thread of narrative as if it had never been interrupted.
"So they carries him up to th" house, on a fishbarrow, an" they sends for me, an" wuz all talkin" to onst, sayin" I must git you quick an" never mind what it costs. Them people don"t mind what-nothin" costs, "pears to me."
By this time we had risen well above the waters of Sweetapple Cove. The few scattered small houses appeared through the mist, their eaves dripping in unclean puddles. The most pretentious dwelling in the place is deserted. It boasts a small veranda and a fairly large front window over which boards have been nailed. In very halt and ill-formed letters a sign announces "The Royal Shop," a t.i.tle certainly savoring of affluence.
But it is a sad commentary upon the prosperity of the Cove that even a Syrian trader has tried the place and failed to eke out a living there.
Some dispirited goats forlornly watched our little procession for a moment, and resumed their mournful hunt outside the palings of tiny enclosures jealously protected against their incursions among a few anemic cabbages.
A little farther on the only cow in the place, who is descended from the scriptural lean ones, was munching the discarded tail of a large codfish which probably still held a faint flavor of the salt with which it had been preserved. Nondescript dogs, bearing very little resemblance to the original well-known breed, wandered aimlessly under the pelting rain.
Frenchy reached his dilapidated shack, and was the first to stop.
"Vell, so long," he said.
"_Au revoir a demain_!" I answered, as well as I could.
His somber, swarthy face brightened at the sound of words of his own tongue. I believe that to him they were a tiny glimpse of something well-beloved and of memories that refused to grow dim. For a moment he stood at the door, beaming upon me. A small boy came out, very grimy of face and hands and with a head covered with yellow curls. He was chiefly clad in an old woollen jersey repaired with yarn of many hues, that nearly reached his toes.
"_Papa Yves_!" he cried, leaping up joyfully, quite heedless of Frenchy"s dripping oilskins.
The sailor lifted up the child and kissed him, whereupon he grasped the man"s flaring ears as they projected from the huge tangled beard, and with a burst of happy laughter kissed him on both cheeks, under the eyes, in the only bare places.
We hurried on and soon reached one of the few houses distinguished from others by a coat of paint. By this time the evening was near at hand, yet the darkness would not have justified as yet a thrifty Newfoundland housewife in burning valuable kerosene. But from the windows of this place poured forth abundant light showing recklessness as to expense.