A Poor Man's House Part 25

"When?"

"Now--so sune as I can get enough bait. I've a-got a beautiful cod's head towards it. Back about midnight, I daresay."

"All right."

"Put some clothes on your back. I'll bring a bottle o'tay--better than brewers' tack--an' go'n get the boat ready. Take the _Moondaisy_.... Eh?"

Tony, just downstairs and still rubbing his eyes (when he snoozes he goes right to bed), asked what was up. "Shrimping wi' Uncle Jake," I replied. "That'll gie thee a doing!" he said. "Yu ask George. George used to be Uncle Jake's mate. 'Tis, 'Back oar-for'ard--back wi'

inside--steady--steady--d.a.m.n yer eyes!' George couldn't put up wi' it.

Jake don' never sleep hisself, and wuden' let he sleep."

The poor little _Moondaisy_, lying on ways at the water's edge, looked as if she had a small deckhouse aft. Sixteen boat-nets,[19] with their lines and corks, were piled up on the stern seats. In the stern-sheets were two baskets, one of them very smelly, and a newspaper parcel that reeked. Piled up in the bows were bits of old rope, sacks and bags (very catty), chips of wood, empty tea-bottles, and all the litter that collects in a boat used by Uncle Jake.

[19] Boat-nets are the same in construction as setting-nets (see p. 192), but upwards of a yard in diameter. Instead of a cord and stick, they have attached to them four or five fathoms of gra.s.s line. A few small flat oval corks are spliced at short intervals into the end of the line remote from the net, and at the extremity is a cork buoy about half as large as a man's head.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"_I_ knows; but if anybody asks yu where we'm going, or where we've been, don't yu tell 'em. Don't want none o' they treble-X-ers on our ground. You say like ol' p.u.s.s.ey Pengelly used to: 'Down to Longo.' I don't hae n.o.body 'long wi' me what can't keep a quiet tongue.--I can see some o' they h.e.l.lers down there now, but they ain't so far west as we'm going, not by a long way. An' yu wuden' see 'em where they be if they didn't think 'twas going to be a quiet night with not much pulling attached to it. But _I_ shuden' be surprised to see a breeze down easterly 'fore morning. Don't du to get caught down to Longo be an easterly breeze. Lord, the pulls I've a-had to get home 'fore now!"

[Sidenote: _THE HIGH-TIDE WAVES_]

A very old-fashioned figure Uncle Jake looked, standing up in the stern-sheets and bending rhythmically, sweep and jerk, sweep and jerk, to his long oar, as if there were wires inside him. His grey picture-frame beard seems to have the effect of concentrating the expressiveness of his face, the satiric glint of his eyes, the dry smile, the straightness of his shaven upper lip, and the kindly lighting-up of the whole visage when he calls to the sea-gulls and they answer him back, and he says with the delight of a child, "There! Did 'ee hear thic?" Keeping close along sh.o.r.e in order to avoid the strength of the flood tide against us, we rode with a perfection of motion on the heave of the breaking swell. As we were pa.s.sing over the inside of Broken Rocks, three waves ran far up the beach. "Did 'ee hear thic rattle?" Uncle Jake exclaimed. "That was the high-tide wave, then, whatever the tide-tables say. Yu'll hear the low tide t'night if yu listens."

Once I backed the boat ash.o.r.e for Uncle Jake to go and look at one of the numerous holes under the cliffs, in every one of which he has wreckage stored up for firewood against the winter. He can at least depend on having warmth. When he is nowhere to be found, he is a as a rule down-sh.o.r.e carrying jetsam into caves. Much of it he gives away for no other payment than the privilege of talking sarcastically at those who don't trouble to go and of blazing forth at them when they do.

The November sun went down while we rowed, an almost imperceptible fading of daylight into delicate thin colours and finally into a shiny grey half-light. More and more the cliffs lowered above us. They lost their redness except where a glint of the sun burned splendidly upon them; coloured shadows, as it were, came to life in the high earthern flanks, lifted themselves off, and floated away into the sunset, until the land stood against and above the sea, black and naked, crowned with distorted thorn bushes. Very serene was the sky, but a little hard.

"Wind down east t'morrow," Uncle Jake repeated. We pa.s.sed Refuge Cove, over Dog Tooth Ledge, and along Landlock Bay. We tossed over the Brandy Mull, a great round pit in a reef, where even in calm weather the tide boils always. No further were there any beaches. The sea washed to the sheer cliffs through tumbled heaps of rocks. "_'Tis_ an ironbound shop!" said Uncle Jake. "Poor fellows, that gets wrecked hereabout! I knows for some copper bolts when they rots out o' the wreck where they be."

We had rowed down to Longo on the calm sea; we were on the sea, almost in it, in so small a boat; and sh.o.r.ewards were the tide-swirls, the jagged rocks, the high black cliffs. The relation of sea and land was become reversed for us. The sea was no longer a thirsty menace, an unknown waste. It was the land, the rocks and the cliffs, which threatened hungrily. Night-fears, had there been any, would surely have sprung out from the land.

[Sidenote: _A COD'S HEAD_]

We rowed into a bay whose wide-spreading arms were like an amphitheatre of shadows.

"Take thees yer oar," said Uncle Jake. "Wer's thic cod's head?"

Everywhere in the boat, to judge by one's nose. He found it, hacked it, then beat it with a pebble, and hacked again, and tore. From it came two awful separate smells--one like that of a dissecting room, the other like bad crab's inside, or like fearfully perverted cocoa, just wetted--a sort of granulated stink that stopped one's breath. Beautiful bait!

"Now then, while I fixes the bait between the thirts," said Uncle Jake, "yu paddle westward. Keep 'en straight, else if a bit of a breeze comes, us'll never find the buoys." While I rowed very slowly, he flung overboard first a buoy and then its net, a buoy and its net, till he had hove the whole sixteen with about four boat's lengths between each.

The _plop_ was echoed from the cliff, and as the nets sank the sea-fire glittered green upon them. He drew on a ragged pair of oilskin trousers, stationed himself on the starboard side of the stern-sheets, and grasped the longer tiller. On account of the ebb tide and consequent lay of the corks, we worked back, in reverse order, eastwards. It was for me to row the boat up until the bow was just inside the large buoy. Then Uncle Jake's directions, more or less abbreviated, came fast one after another:

_Back outside oar_ (or _Pull inside oar_), to bring the bows round towards the buoy.

_Pull both oars_, to bring the boat up to the buoy.

_Pull outside oar_, to bring the stern of the boat a nice striking distance from the line between the buoy and the small corks. (Uncle Jake strikes under and up with the tiller.)

_Pull both oars_, while he hauls in the loose line.

_Back both_, to stop the boat's way.

_Back outside oar_, to keep the line just clear of the gunwale.

_Stop_, while he hauls very slowly and stealthily at first, lest prawns and lobsters jump out, then swiftly, raising his arms high above his head, until the net is aboard.

So, in single and even half strokes, with variations according to current and wind, for all the sixteen buoys and nets. Whilst Uncle Jake, on his part, dropped the prawns into a bag which hung from his neck, flung the wild-crabs amidships, and the lobsters under the stern seat, and hove out the net again a few yards from where it was at first--I, on my part, had to spy the next buoy, a mere rocking blot on the water, to find out how the line lay from it, and then to hold the boat steady till he was ready with the tiller. After a time, one became a little mazed, one's head ached with s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g it round to sight the buoys, and his directions ceased so long as everything was going right.

[Sidenote: _MAKING THE ROUNDS_]

Very wonderful, even exhilarating was the silence and loneliness, the feeling that ourselves only, of all the world, were in that beautiful mysterious place. Had I had prayers to say, I should have said them, sure that some sort of a G.o.d was brooding on the waters and suspicious perhaps, at the back of my mind, that where the black cliffs upreared themselves, there the devil was.

After we had hauled and shot again the sixteenth net, Uncle Jake counted one hundred and seventy odd prawns from his bag into the basket. "Do 'ee see how whitish they be?" he asked. "They'm al'ays like that in the dirty water after a gale. Lord, what a battering they poor things must get when it blows on thees yer coast!" He picked over the lobsters to see if any were saleable, but found only small ones--c.o.c.kroaches--that, as he said, "it don't do to let the bogie-man [fishery inspector] glimpse.--An' I've a-catched," he added, "more than five shill'orth o' fine lobsters in one round of the prawn-nets 'fore they b.l.o.o.d.y men from the west'ard came up hereabout wi' their pots. Ah, shrimpin' ain't what 't used to be!"

We made three more rounds in that bay, then hauled all our nets into the boat, rowed further west, and shot our nets round a submarine ledge, the whereabouts of which Uncle Jake knew to a yard. A couple of rounds there, and we brought up to the buoy of a lobster pot (for the ebb tide, washing round the headland, kept on hurtling us out to sea), had our supper, and waited. Prawns take longer to go into the nets after a second round in the same water.

A haziness that had been in the sky, strengthened into a lurry of little cloudlets between us and the stars. "That's where 'tis going to be," said Uncle Jake. "Easterly! Do 'ee feel this bit of a swell? Us won't be here to-morrow night.--There! Did 'ee hear that? Eh?"

Two waves gave forth a peculiar confidential chuckle, long drawn out and very gentle, very fatigued--as if the sea were making some signal to us; as if it wished to say that it was tired of ebbing and flowing.

The cliff shadow listened, I thought, immovable and pitiless, but I fancy that I heard the cry of a bird a quarter of a mile to the eastward. Sea life wakes up with the flow of the tide. I had forgotten the gulls and the ravens; had forgotten the existence of all living things except prawns, lobsters and wild-crabs. No more waves chuckled.... "That's the low tide waves sure 'nuff--thic chuckle.

There's mostly three on 'em. An' I can al'ays hear the rattle of the high tide waves tu--iss, even in a gale o' wind. What a rattle they makes on the beach, to be sure! They fules o' visitors 'ould laugh at 'ee if yu was to tell 'em that--they've a-laughed at me--but 'tis true.

Yu've heard, an't 'ee?"

The end buoy was troublesome to find. And in the middle of the round, I rowed up to a shadow thinking to find a buoy, and there close beside the boat, revealed as the swell sank, was a reef of rock, humped and covered with seaweed which stood up on end as the water flowed shallowly over the ledge. It was like a grisly great head, ages old, immense, and of terrible aspect, heaving itself up through the sea at us.

[Sidenote: _UNCLE JAKE'S MATES_]

With much careful working of the boat, we picked up the middle buoys from the ledge, and hove them further to sea. Uncle Jake swore at the reef, at the nets, at himself, at his luck. "_'Tis_ a b.l.o.o.d.y crib!

Didn't think the tide was going to fall so far. This same happened the very last time I was down yer wi' old Blimie--old Sublime, us calls 'en. 'Let's get out o' this!' he said. 'Leave the blasted nets an'

let's get out o' it quick!' But I 'ouldn't let 'en, not I--us had three thousand shrimps thic night; an' he very nearly cried, he did. '_Tis_ some mates I've had for thees yer job. Most of 'em won't come when they can pay the brewer any other way. _I'll_ never come out again wi' the last three on 'em, not if I starves for it. One of 'em went to sleep; t'other cuden' see the buoys; an' old Blimie was blind and not willing neither. 'Wer be the cursed things?' he'd say. 'Back!' I'd say. 'Back oars! You'm on top o' it!' 'Well, I be backing, bain't I?' he'd say, an' go on pulling jest the same. Then 'er said 'er was ill and wanted to go home. _He_ won't come no more, not if he starves, an' me too.

I won't hae 'en!"

A ripple came down from the east. The sound of its _lap-lap-lap_ under the boat stole on one's ears sleepily, but it roused Uncle Jake to quick action. "Do 'ee see thees little c.o.c.kle on the water?" he said.

"Do 'ee feel the life o'it in the boat? Must get out of thees yer, else we shan't never find the buoys."

We picked up the buoys--those we had shifted out of line were hard to find, for the stars were now all hidden by cloud--and a little breeze followed the ripple from the east. Rowing along under the cliffs, even inside some of the rocks, through pa.s.sages that only Uncle Jake is sure of, we caught the young flood tide. The north-easter, that blew out freshly from the Seacombe valley, chilled us to the bone.

Seacombe was asleep. No one was on the Front. We had to carry the nets up from the water's edge to the seawall before our utmost straining could drag the _Moondaisy_ up the bank of shingle. For more than an hour we hauled.

When at last it was over, I brought Uncle Jake in house and made him a cup of cocoa. We had been nine hours' rowing. Though he could have done the same again, without food or rest, he looked a little haggard. It seemed impossible to believe that the grey old man with disordered hair and beard, clothed in rags and patches, sipping cocoa in a windsor chair, was that same alert shadow who had been reckoning up life, so humorously and wisely, in the darkness under the cliffs. He referred again to the winter's pinch. It must mean that he has not enough money put by from summer for the days coming, when even he will not be able to find some odd job. Yet, as I know very well, when the pinch does come he will go short and say nothing whatever to anybody. He will be merely a shade more sarcastic. One of the children may come home saying that 'thic Uncle Jake an't had half a pound of b.u.t.ter all this week,'

or that he has been in one of his pa.s.sions with Aunt Jake for taking in a loaf of bread without paying cash for it. He will bring out a ha'penny from a little screw of newspaper to buy milk for his cats, and he will take some crumbs to leave on dry rocks under the cliffs for the robins that flutter after him there. "Poor things!" he'll say. And to people he will still be saying what he thinks, fair or foul, gentle or hard. To understand his sternness and his kindness, it needs to go with him wrinkling in the sunshine and prawning in the dark. He is become very like his beloved rocks and cliffs. He is, as one might say, a voice for them, and his words and deeds are what one would expect their words and deeds to be, did they not stand there, warm, sunny and graciously coloured, or dark and stern, fronting the sea immovably, as Uncle Jake fronts life. "Du _I_ want to die?" he says when asked his age. "Why, I'd like to live a thousand years!"

14

[Sidenote: _NARCOTICS AND STIMULANTS_]

Tony is singularly free from any craving either for narcotics or stimulants. Most people I know, especially those who do brain work or live in cities, are satisfied if they can strike a working balance between the two. Granfer must have his gla.s.s of beer regularly, but neither smokes nor drinks much tea; Uncle Jake snuffs and loves his tea, but drinks no alcohol whatever; John Widger smokes heavily; and I have never known Mrs Widger get up in the morning without her cup o'

tay. Tony, on the other hand, smokes, for politeness' sake, an occasional cigarette when it is offered him, does not hanker after his tea, and scarcely ever drinks alone. He gets drunk now and then, not because he greatly wants to, but socially; because, when half-a-dozen of them are drinking in rounds, 'What can a fellow du?' Even then he often leaves untouched a gla.s.sful that has been ordered for him, though all the while after his third or fourth gla.s.s, he may be asking other men to 'drink up and hae another.' Drinking with him is an expression of jollity, not the means of it.