All the Brothers Were Valiant Part 1

All the Brothers Were Valiant.

by Ben Ames Williams.

I

The fine old house stood on Jumping Tom Hill, above the town. It had stood there before there was a town, when only a cabin or two fringed the woods below, nearer the sh.o.r.e. The weather boarding had been brought in ships from England, ready sawed; likewise the bricks of the chimney.

Indians used to come to the house in the cold of winter, begging shelter.

Given blankets, and food, and drink, they slept upon the kitchen floor; and when Joel Sh.o.r.e's great-great-grandfather came down in the morning, he found Indians and blankets gone together. Sometimes the Indians came back with a venison haunch, or a bear steak ... sometimes not at all.

The house had, now, the air of disuse which old New England houses often have. It was in perfect repair; its paint was white, and its shutters hung squarely at the windows. But the gra.s.s was uncut in the yard, and the lack of a veranda, and the tight-closed doors and windows, made the house seem lifeless and lacking the savor of human presence. There was a white-painted picket fence around the yard; and a rambler rose draped these pickets. The buds on the rose were bursting into crimson flower.

The house was four-square, plain, and without any ornamentation. It was built about a great, square chimney that was like a spine. There were six flues in this chimney, and a pot atop each flue. These little chimney pots breaking the severe outlines of the house, gave the only suggestion of lightness or frivolity about it. They were like the heads of impish children, peeping over a fence....

Across the front of this house, on the second floor, ran a single, long room like a corridor. Its windows looked down, across the town, to the Harbor. A gla.s.s hung in brackets on the wall; there was a hog-yoke in its case upon a little table, and a ship's chronometer, and a compa.s.s....

There were charts in a tin tube upon the wall, and one that showed the Harbor and the channel to the sea hung between the middle windows. In the north corner, a harpoon, and two lances, and a boat spade leaned. Their blades were covered with wooden sheaths, painted gray. A fifteen-foot jawbone, cleaned and polished and with every curving tooth in place, hung upon the rear wall and gleamed like old and yellow ivory. The chair at the table was fashioned of whalebone; and on a bracket above the table rested the model of a whaling ship, not more than eighteen inches long, fashioned of sperm ivory and perfect in every detail. Even the tiny harpoons in the boats that hung along the rail were tipped with bits of steel....

The windows of this place were tight closed; nevertheless, the room was filled with the harsh, strong smell of the sea.

Joel Sh.o.r.e sat in the whalebone chair, at the table, reading a book. The book was the Log of the House of Sh.o.r.e. Joel's father had begun it, when Joel and his four brothers were ranging from babyhood through youth.... A full half of the book was filled with entries in old Matthew Sh.o.r.e's small, cramped hand. The last of these entries was very short. It began with a date, and it read:

"Wind began light, from the south. This day came into Harbor the bark _Winona_, after a cruise of three years, two months, and four days.

Captain Chase reported that my eldest son, Matthew Sh.o.r.e, was killed by the fluke of a right whale, at Christmas Island. The whale yielded seventy barrels of oil. Matthew Sh.o.r.e was second mate."

And below, upon a single line, like an epitaph, the words:

"'All the brothers were valiant.'"

Two days after, the old man sickened; and three weeks later, he died. He had set great store by big Matt....

Joel, turning the leaves of the Log, and scanning their brief entries, came presently to this--written in the hand of his brother John:

"Wind easterly. This day the _Betty_ was reported lost on the j.a.pan grounds, with all hands save the boy and the cook. Noah Sh.o.r.e was third mate. Day ended as it began."

And below, again, that single line:

"'All the brothers were valiant.'"

There followed many pages filled with reports of rich cruises, when ships came home with bursting casks, and the brothers of the House of Sh.o.r.e played the parts of men. The entries were now in the hand of one, now of another; John and Mark and Joel.... Joel read phrases here and there....

"This day the _Martin Wilkes_ returned ... two years, eleven months and twenty-two days ... died on the cruise, and first mate John Sh.o.r.e became captain. Day ended as it began."

And, a page or two further on:

"... _Martin Wilkes_ ... two years, two months, four days ... tubs on deck filled with oil, for which there was no more room in the casks ...

Captain John Sh.o.r.e."

Mark Sh.o.r.e's first entry in the Log stood out from the others; for Mark's hand was bold, and strong, and the letters sprawled blackly along the lines. Furthermore, Mark used the personal p.r.o.noun, while the other brothers wrote always in the third person. Mark had written:

"This day, I, Mark Sh.o.r.e, at the age of twenty-seven, was given command of the whaling bark _Nathan Ross_."

Joel read this sentence thrice. There was a bold pride in it, and a strong and reckless note which seemed to bring his brother before his very eyes. Mark had always been so, swift of tongue, and strong, and sure. Joel turned another page, came to where Mark had written:

"This day I returned from my first cruise with full casks in two years, seven months, fifteen days. I found the _Martin Wilkes_ in the dock. They report Captain John Sh.o.r.e lost at Vau Vau in an effort to save the ship's boy, who had fallen overboard. The boy was also lost."

And, below, in bold and defiant letters:

"'All the brothers were valiant.'"

There were two more pages of entries, in Mark's hand or in Joel's, before the end. When he came to the fresh page, Joel dipped his pen, and huddled his broad shoulders over the book, and slowly wrote that which had to be written.

"Wind northeast, light," he began, according to the ancient form of the sea, which makes the state of wind and weather of first and foremost import. "Wind northeast, light. This day the _Martin Wilkes_ finished a three year cruise. Found in port the _Nathan Ross_. She reports that Captain Mark Sh.o.r.e left the ship when she watered at the Gilbert Islands.

He did not return, and could not be found. They searched three weeks.

They encountered hostile islanders. No trace of Mark Sh.o.r.e."

When he had written thus far, he read the record to himself, his lips moving; then he sat for a s.p.a.ce with frowning brows, thinking, thinking, wondering if there were a chance....

But in the end he cast the hope aside. If Mark lived, they would have found him, would surely have found him....

And so Joel wrote the ancient line:

"'All the brothers were valiant.'"

And below, as an afterthought, he added: "Joel Sh.o.r.e became first mate of the _Martin Wilkes_ on her cruise."

He blotted this line, and closed the book, and put it away. Then he went to the windows that looked down upon the Harbor, and stood there for a long time. His face was serene, but his eyes were faintly troubled. He did not see the things that lay outspread below him.

Yet they were worth seeing. The town was old, and it had the fragrance of age about it.

Below Joel, on the hill's slopes, among the trees, stood the square white houses of the town folk. Beyond them, the white spire of the church with its weather vane atop. Joel marked that the wind was still northeast. The vane swung fitfully in the light air. He could see the masts and yards of the ships along the waterfront. The yards of the _Nathan Ross_ were canted in mournful tribute to his brother. At the pier end beside her, he marked the ranks of casks, brown with sweating oil. Beyond, the smooth water ruffled in the wind, and dark ripple-shadows moved across its surface with each breeze. There were gulls in the air, and on the water.

Such stillness lay upon the sleepy town that if his windows had been open, he might have heard the harsh cries of the birds. A man was sculling sh.o.r.eward from a fishing schooner that lay at anchor off the docks; and a whaleboat crawled like a spider across the harbor toward Fairhaven on the other side.

On a flag staff above a big building near the water, a half-masted flag hung idly in the faintly stirring air. It hung there, he knew, for his brother's sake. He watched it thoughtfully, wondering.... There had been such an abounding insolence of life in big Mark Sh.o.r.e.... It was hard to believe that he was surely dead.

A woman pa.s.sed along the street below the house, and looked up and saw him at the window. He did not see her. Two boys crawled along the white picket fence, and p.r.i.c.ked their fingers as they broke half-open cl.u.s.ters from the rambler without molestation. A gray squirrel, when the boys had gone, came down from an elm across the street and sprinted desperately to the foot of the great oak below the house. When it was safe in the oak's upper branches, it scolded derisively at the imaginary terrors it had escaped. A blue jay, with ruffled feathers--a huge, blue ball in the air--rocketed across from the elm, and established himself near the squirrel, and they swore at each other like coachmen. The squirrel swore from temper and disposition; the jay from malice and derision. The bird seemed to have the better of the argument, for the squirrel suddenly fell silent and departed, his emotions revealing themselves only in the angry flicks of his tail. When he was gone, the jay began to investigate a knot in a limb of the oak. The bird climbed around this knot with slow motions curiously like those of a parrot.

A half-grown boy came up the street and turned in at the gate. Joel remained where he was until the boy manipulated the knocker on the door; then he went down and opened. He knew the boy; Peter How. Peter was thin and freckled and nervous; and he was inclined to stammer. When Joel opened the door, Peter was at first unable to speak. He stood on the step, jerking his chin upward and forward as though his collar irked him.

Joel smiled slowly.

"Come in, Peter," he said.

Peter jerked his chin, jerked his whole head furiously. "C--C--C--" he said. "Asa W-W-Worthen wants to s-s-see you."

Asa Worthen was the owner of the _Martin Wilkes_, and of the _Nathan Ross_. Joel nodded gently.

"Thank you, Peter," he told the boy. "I'll get my hat and come."

Peter jerked his head. He seemed to be choking. "He's a-a-a-a-at his office," he blurted.