Acadia Part 9

Tea being over, the "cluck" of the row-locks woke the echoes of the twilight bay, as our little yawl put off again for the new town, with a gay evening party, consisting of the captain, his lady, the baby, Picton and myself, with a brace of Newfoundland oarsmen. If our galley was not a stately one, it was at least a cheerful vessel, and as the keel grated on the snow-white pebbles of the beach, Picton and I sprang ash.o.r.e, with all the gallantry of a couple of Sir Walter Raleighs, to a.s.sist the queen of the "Balaklava" upon _terra firma_. Her majesty being landed, we made a royal procession to the largest hutch on the green slope before us, the captain carrying the insignia of his marital office (the baby) with great pomp and awkward ceremony, in front, while his lady, Picton and I, loitered in the rear. We had barely crossed the sill of the hutch-door, before we felt quite at home and welcome. The same cheery fire in the chimney-place, the spotless floor, the tidy rush-bottomed chairs, and a whole nest of little white-heads and twinkling eyes, just on the border of a bright patchwork quilt, was invitation enough, even if we had not been met at the threshold by the master himself, who stretched out his great arms with a kind, "Come-in-and-how-are-ye-all."

And what a wonderful evening we pa.s.sed in that other hutch, before the blazing hearth-fire! What stories of wrecks and rescues, of icebergs and whales, of fogs and fisheries, of domestic lobsters that brought up their little families, in the mouths of the sunken cannon of the French frigates; of the great sharks that were sometimes caught in the meshes of the set-nets! "There was one shark," said our host, another old fisherman, who, by the way, wore a red skull-cap like a cardinal, and had a habit of bobbing his head as he spoke, so as to put one continually in mind of a gigantic woodp.e.c.k.e.r--"there was one shark I mind particular. My two boys and me was hauling in the net, and soon as I felt it, says I, 'Boys, here's something more than common.' So we all hauled away, and O my!

didn't the water boil when he come up? Such a time! Fortnatly, he come up tail first. LORD, if he'd a come up head first he'd a bit the boat in two at one bite! He was all hooked in, and twisted up with the net. I s'pose he had forty hooks in him; and when he got his head above water, he was took sick, and such a time as he had! He must a' vomited up about two barrels of bait--true as I set here. Well, as soon as he got over that, then he tried to get his head around to bite! LORD, if he'd got his head round, he'd a bit the boat in two, and we had it right full of fish, for we'd been out all day with hand-lines. He had a nose in front of his gills just like a duck, only it was nigh upon six feet long."

"It must have been a shovel-nose shark," said Picton.

"That's what a captain of a coaster told me," replied Red-Cap; "he said it must a been a shovel-nose. If he'd only got that shovel-nose turned around, he'd a shovelled us into eternity, fish and all."

"What prevented him getting his head around?" said Picton.

"Why, sir, I took two half-hitches round his tail, soon as I see him come up. And I tell ye when I make two half-hitches, they hold; ask captain there, if I can't make hitches as will hold. What say, captain?"

Captain a.s.sented with a confirmatory nod.

"What did you do then?" said Picton. "Did you get him ash.o.r.e?"

"Get him ash.o.r.e?" muttered Red-Cap, covering his mouth with one broad brown hand to m.u.f.fle a contemptuous laugh; "get him ash.o.r.e! why, we was pretty well off sh.o.r.e for such a sail."

"You might have rowed him ash.o.r.e," said Picton.

"Rowed him ash.o.r.e?" echoed Red-Cap, with another contemptuous smile under the brown hand; "rowed him ash.o.r.e?"

The traveller, finding he was in deep water, answered: "Yes; that is, if you were not too far out."

"A little too far out," replied Red-Cap; "why if I had been a hundred yards only from sh.o.r.e, it would ha' been too far to row, or sail in, with that shovel-nose, without counting the set-nets."

"And what did you do?" said Picton, a little nettled.

"Why," said Red-Cap, "I had to let him go, but first I cut out his liver, and that I did bring ash.o.r.e, although it filled my boat pretty well full.

You can judge how big it was: after I brought it ash.o.r.e I lay it out on the beach and we measured it, Mr. McAlpin and me, and he'll tell you so too; we laid it out on the beach, that ere liver, and it measured seventeen feet, and then we didn't measure all of it."

"Why the devil," said Picton, "didn't you measure all of it?"

"Well," replied Red-Cap, "because we hadn't a measure long enough."

Meantime the good lady of the hutch was busy arranging some tumblers on the table, and to our great surprise and delight a huge yellow pitcher of milk soon made its appearance, and immediately after an old-fashioned iron bake-pan, with an upper crust of live embers and ashes, was lifted off the chimney trammel, and when it was opened, the fragrance of hot ginger-bread filled the apartment. Then Red-Cap bobbed away at a corner cupboard, until he extracted therefrom a small keg or runlet of St. Croix rum of most ripe age and choice flavor, some of which, by an adroit and experienced crook of the elbow, he managed to insinuate into the milk, which, with a little brown sugar, he stirred up carefully and deliberately with a large spoon, Picton and I watching the proceedings with intense interest. Then the punch was poured out and handed around; while the good wife made little trips from guest to guest with a huge platter filled with the brown and fragrant pieces of the cake, fresh from the bake-pan. And so the baby having subsided (our baby of the "Balaklava"), and the twilight having given place to a grand moonlight on the bay, and the fire sending out its beams of warmth and happiness, glittering on the utensils of the dresser, and tenderly touching with rosy light the cheeks of the small, white-headed fishermen on the margin of the patchwork quilt; while there was no lack of punch and hospitality in the yellow pitcher, who shall say that we were not as well off in the fisherman's hutch as in a grand saloon, surrounded with frescoes and flunkeys, and served with thin lemonade upon trays of silver?

I do not know why it is, but there always has been something very attractive to me in the faces of children; I love to read the physiognomy of posterity, and so get a history of the future world in miniature, before the book itself is fairly printed. And insomuch as Nova Scotia and Newfoundland are said to be the nurseries of England's seamen, it was with no little interest that I caught a glimpse of two boys, one thirteen, the other eleven years old, the eldest children of our friend Red-Cap.

They came in just as we entered the hutch, and quietly seated themselves together by the corner of the fire-place, after modestly shaking hands with all the guests. They were dressed in plain home-spun clothes, with something of a sailor rig, especially the neat check shirts, and old-fashioned, little, low-quartered, round-toed shoes, such as are always a feature in the melo-drama where Jack plays a part. It is not usual, too, to see such stocky, robust frames as these fisher-boys presented; and in all three, in the father and his two sons, was one general, pervading idea of cleanliness and housewifery. And then, to notice the physiognomy again, each small face, though modest as that of no girl which I could recall at the moment, had its own tale of hardihood to tell; there was a something that recalled the open sea, written in either countenance; courage and endurance; faith and self-reliance; the compa.s.s and the rudder; speaking plainly out under each little thatch of white hair. And indeed, as we found out afterwards, those young countenances told the truth; those fisher-boys were Red-Cap's only boat-crew. In all weathers, in all seasons, by night and by day, the three were together, the parent and his two children, upon the perilous deep.

"If I were the father of those boys," I whispered to Red-Cap, "I would be proud of them."

"Would ye?" said he, with a proud, fatherly glance towards them; "well, I thought so once mysel'; it was when a schooner got ash.o.r.e out there on the rocks; and we could see her, just under the lights of the lighthouse, pounding away; and by reason of the ice, n.o.body would venture; so my boys said, says they, 'Father, we can go, any way.' So I wouldn't stop when they said that, and so we laid beside the schooner and took off all her crew pretty soon, and they mostly dead with the cold; but it was an awful bad night, what with the darkness and the ice. Yes," he added, after a pause, "they are good boys now; but they won't be with me many years."

"And why not?" I inquired, for I could not see that the young Red-Caps exhibited any migratory signs of their species to justify the remark.

"Because all our boys go to the States just as soon as they get old enough."

"To the States!" I echoed with no little surprise; "why, I thought they all entered the British Navy, or something of that kind."

"Lord bless ye," said Red-Cap, "not one of them. Enter the British Navy!

Why, man, you get the whole of our young people. What would they want to enter the British Navy for, when they can enter the United States of America?"

"The air of Cape Breton is certainly favorable to health," said I, in a whisper, to Picton; "look, for example, at the mistress of the hutch!" and so surely as I have a love of womanity, so surely I intended to convey a sentiment of admiration in the brief words spoken to Picton. The wife of _Bonnet Rouge_ was at least not young, but her cheek was smooth, and flushed with the glow of health; her eyes liquid and bright; her hair brown, and abundant; her step light and elastic. Although neither Picton, captain, or anybody else in the hutch would remind one of the Angel Raphael, yet Mrs. Red-Cap, as

----"With dispatchful looks, in haste She turned, on hospitable thoughts intent,"

was somewhat suggestive of Eve; her movements were grand and simple; there was a welcome in her face that dimpled in and out with every current topic; a Miltonic grandeur in her air, whether she walked or waited. I could not help but admire her, as I do everything else n.o.ble and easily understood. Mrs. Red-Cap was a splendid woman; the wife of a fisherman, with an unaffected grace beyond the reach of art, and poor old Louisburgh was something to speak of. Picton expressed his admiration in stronger and profaner language.

We were not the only guests at Red-Cap's. The lighthouse keeper, Mr.

Kavanagh, a bachelor and scholar, with his sister, had come down to take a moonlight walk over the heather; for in new Scotland as in old Scotland, the bonny heather blooms, although not so much familiarized there by song and story. But we shall visit lighthouse Point anon, and spend some hours with the two Kavanaghs. Forthright, into the teeth of the harbor, the wind is blowing: "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou nearest the sound therof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth." How long the "Balaklava" may stay here is yet uncertain. So, with a good-night to the Red-Caps and their guests, we once more bear away for the cabin of the schooner and another night's discomfort.

As I have said before in other words, this province is nothing more than a piece of patchwork, intersected with petty boundary lines, so that every nation is st.i.tched in and quilted in spots, without any harmony, or coherence, or general design. The people of Louisburgh are a kind, hospitable, pleasant people, tolerably well informed for the inhabitants of so isolated a corner of the world; but a few miles further off we come upon a totally different race: a canting, covenanting, oat-eating, money-griping, tribe of second-hand Scotch Presbyterians: a transplanted, degenerate, barren patch of high cheek-bones and red hair, with nothing cleaving to them of the original stock, except covetousness and that peculiar cutaneous eruption for which the mother country is celebrated.

But we shall soon have enough of these Scotsmen, good reader. Our present visit is to Lighthouse Point, to look out upon the broad Atlantic, the rocky coast, and the island battery, which a century since gave so much trouble to our filibustering fathers of New England. As we walked towards the lighthouse over the pebbly beach that borders the green turf, Picton suddenly starts off and begins a series of great jumps on the turf, giving with every gra.s.shopper-leap a sort of interjectional "Whuh! whuh!" as though the feat was not confined to the leg-muscles only, but included also a necessary exercise of the lungs. And although we shouted at the traveller, he kept on towards the lighthouse, uttering with every jump, "Heather, heather." At last he came to, beside a group of evergreens, and grew rational. The springy, elastic sod, the heather of old Scotland, reproduced in new Scotland, had reminded him of reels and strathspeys, "for," said he, "n.o.body can walk upon this sort of thing without feeling a desire to dance upon it. Thunder and turf! if we only had the pipes now!"

And sure enough here was the heather; the soft, springy turf, which has made even Scotchmen affectionate. I do not wonder at it; it answers to the foot-step like an echo, as the string of an instrument answers its concord; as love answers love in unison. I do not wonder that Scotchmen love the heather; I am only surprised that so much heather should be wasted on Scotchmen.

We had antic.i.p.ated a fine marine view from the lighthouse, but in place of it we could only see a sort of semi-luminous vapor, usually called a fog, which enveloped ocean, island, and picturesque coast. We could not discover the Island Battery opposite, which had bothered Sir William in the siege of '45; but nevertheless, we could judge of the difficulty of reaching it with a hostile force, screened as it was by its waves and vapors. The lighthouse is striped with black and white bars, like a zebra, and we entered it. One cannot help but admire such order and neatness, for the lighthouse is a marvel of purity. We were everywhere--in the bed-rooms, in the great lantern with its glittering lamps, in the hall, the parlor, the kitchen; and found in all the same pervading virtue; as fresh and sweet as a bride was that old zebra-striped lighthouse. The Kavanaghs, brother and sister, live here entirely alone; what with books and music, the ocean, the ships, and the sky, they have company enough.

One could not help liking them, they have such cheerful faces, and are so kind and hospitable. Good bye, good friends, and peace be with you always!

On our route schooner-ward we danced back over the heather, Picton with great joy carrying a small basket filled with his national fruit--a present from the Kavanaghs. What a feast we shall have, fresh fish, lobster, and above all--potatoes!

It is a novel sight to see the firs and spruces on this stormy sea-coast.

They grow out, and not up; an old tree spreading over an area of perhaps twenty feet in diameter, with the inevitable spike of green in its centre, and that not above a foot and a half from the ground. The trees in this region are possessed of extraordinary sagacity; they know how hard the wind blows at times, and therefore put forth their branches in full squat, just like country girls at a pic-nic.

On Sunday the wind is still ahead, and Picton and I determine to abandon the "Balaklava." How long she may yet remain in harbor is a matter of fate; so, with brave, resolute hearts, we start off for a five-mile walk, to McGibbet's, the only owner of a horse and wagon in the vicinity of Louisburgh. Squirrels, robins, and rabbits appear and disappear in the road as we march forwards. The country is wild, and in its pristine state; nature everywhere. Now a brook, now a tiny lake, and "the murmuring pines and the hemlocks." At last we arrive at the house of McGibbet, and encounter new Scotland in all its original brimstone and oatmeal.

CHAPTER VIII.

A Blue-Nosed Pair of the most Cerulean Hue--Prospects of a Hard Bargain--Case of Necessity--Romantic Lake with an Unromantic Name--The Discussion concerning Oatmeal--Danger of the Gasterophili--McGibbet makes a Proposition--Farewell to the "Balaklava"--A Midnight Journey--Sydney--Boat Excursion to the Mic Macs--Picton takes off his Mackintosh.

Some learned philosopher has a.s.serted that when a person has become accustomed to one peculiar kind of diet, it will be expressed in the lineaments of his face. How much the constant use of oatmeal could produce such an effect, was plainly visible in the countenances of McGibbet and his lady-love. Both had an unmistakable equine cast; McGibbet, wild, scraggy, and scrubby, with a tuft on his poll that would not have been out of place between the ears of a plough-horse, stared at us, just as such an animal would naturally over the top of a fence; while his gentle mate, who had more of the amiable draught-horse in her aspect, winked at us with both eyes from under a close-crimped frill, that bore a marvellous resemblance to a head-stall. The pair had evidently just returned from kirk. To say nothing of McGibbet's hat, and his wife's shawl, on a chair, and his best boots on the hearth (for he was walking about in his stockings), there was a dry _preceese_ air about them, which plainly betokened they were newly stiffened up with the moral starch of the conventicle, and were therefore well prepared to drive a hard bargain for a horse and wagon to Sydney. But what surprised me most of all was the imperturbable coolness of Picton. Without taking a look scarcely at the persons he was addressing, the traveller stalked in with an--"I say, we want a horse and wagon to Sydney; so look sharp, will you, and turn out the best thing you have here?"

The moral starch of the conventicle stiffened up instantly. Like the blacksmith of Cairnvreckan, who, as a _professor_, would drive a nail for no man on the Sabbath or kirk-fast, unless in a case of absolute necessity, and then always charged an extra saxpence for each shoe; so it was plain to be seen that McGibbet had a conscience which required to be p.r.i.c.ked both with that which knows no law, and the saxpence extra. He turned to his wife and addressed her in _Gaelic_! Then we knew what was coming.

Mrs. McGibbet opened the subject by saying that they were both accustomed to the observance of the Sabbath, and that "she didn't think it was right for man to transgress, when the law was so plain"----

Here McGibbet broke in and said that--"He was free to confess he had commeeted a grreat menny theengs kwhich were a grreat deal worse than Sabbath-breaking."

Upon which Mrs. McG. interrupted him in turn with a few words, which, although in Gaelic, a language we did not understand, conveyed the impression that she was not addressing her liege lord in the language of endearment, and again continued in English: "That it was held sinful in the community to wark or do anything o' the sort, or to fetch or carry even a sma bundle"----

"For kwich," said McGibbet, "is a fine to be paid to the meenister, of five shillins currency"----

Here Picton stopped whistling a bar of "Bonny Doon," and observed to me: "About a dollar of your money. We'll pay the fine."