An Iceland Fisherman Part 5

So they sang, like a couple of children.

Yann little troubled whether or no he was handsome and good-looking. He was boyish only with Sylvestre, it is true, and sang and joked with no other; on the contrary, he was rather distant with the others and proud and disdainful--very willing though, when his help was required, and always kind and obliging when not irritated.

So the twain went on singing their song, with two others, a few steps off, singing another, a dirge--a clashing of sleepiness, health, and vague melancholy. But they did not feel dull, and the hours flew by.

Down in the cabin a fire still smouldered in the iron range, and the hatch was kept shut, so as to give the appearance of night there for those who needed sleep. They required but little air to sleep; indeed, less robust fellows, brought up in towns, would have wanted more. They used to go to bed after the watch at irregular times, just when they felt inclined, hours counting for little in this never-fading light.

And they always slept soundly and peacefully without restlessness or bad dreams.

"Jean Francois de Nantes; Jean Francois, Jean Francois!"

They looked attentively at some almost imperceptible object, far off on the horizon, some faint smoke rising from the waters like a tiny jot of another gray tint slightly darker than the sky's. Their eyes were used to plumbing depths, and they had seen it.

"A sail, a sail, thereaway!"

"I have an idea," said the skipper, staring attentively, "that it's a government cruiser coming on her inspection-round."

This faint smoke brought news of home to the sailors, and among others, a letter we wrote of, from an old grandam, written by the hand of a beautiful girl. Slowly the steamer approached till they perceived her black hull. Yes, it was the cruiser, making the inspection in these western fjords.

At the same time, a slight breeze sprang up, fresher yet to inhale, and began to tarnish the surface of the still waters in patches; it traced designs in a bluish green tint over the shining mirror, and scattering in trails, these fanned out or branched off like a coral tree; all very rapidly with a low murmur; it was like a signal of awakening foretelling the end of this intense torpor. The sky, its veil being rent asunder, grew clear; the vapours fell down on the horizon, ma.s.sing in heaps like slate-coloured wadding, as if to form a soft bank to the sea. The two ever-during mirrors between which the fishermen lived, the one on high and the one beneath, recovered their deep lucidity, as if the mists tarnishing them had been brushed away.

The weather was changing in a rapid way that foretold no good. Smacks began to arrive from all points of the immense plane; first, all the French smacks in the vicinity, from Brittany, Normandy, Boulogne, or Dunkirk. Like birds flocking to a call, they a.s.sembled round the cruiser; from the apparently empty corners of the horizon, others appeared on every side; their tiny gray wings were seen till they peopled the pallid waste.

No longer slowly drifting, for they had spread out their sails to the new and cool breeze, and cracked on all to approach.

Far-off Iceland also reappeared, as if she would fain come near them also; showing her great mountains of bare stones more distinctly than ever.

And there arose a new Iceland of similar colour, which little by little took a more definite form, and none the less was purely illusive, its gigantic mountains merely a condensation of mists. The sun, sinking low, seemed incapable of ever rising over all things, though glowing through this phantom island so tangible that it seemed placed in front of it.

Incomprehensible sight! no longer was it surrounded by a halo, but its disc had become firmly spread, rather like some faded yellow planet slowly decaying and suddenly checked there in the heart of chaos.

The cruiser, which had stopped, was fully surrounded by the fleet of Icelanders. From all boats were lowered, like so many nut-sh.e.l.ls, and conveyed their strong, long-bearded men, in barbaric-looking dresses, to the steamer.

Like children, all had something to beg for; remedies for petty ailments, materials for repairs, change of diet, and home letters.

Others came, sent by their captains, to be clapped in irons, to expiate some fault; as they had all been in the navy, they took this as a matter of course. When the narrow deck of the cruiser was blocked-up by four or five of these hulking fellows, stretched out with the bilboes round their feet, the old sailor who had just chained them up called out to them, "Roll o' one side, my lads, to let us work, d'ye hear?" which they obediently did with a grin.

There were a great many letters this time for the Iceland fleet. Among the rest, two for "_La Marie_, Captain Guermeur"; one addressed to "Monsieur Gaos, Yann," the other to "Monsieur Moan, Sylvestre." The latter had come by way of Rykavyk, where the cruiser had taken it on.

The purser, diving into his post-bags of sailcloth, distributed them all round, often finding it hard to read the addresses, which were not always written very skilfully, while the captain kept on saying: "Look alive there, look alive! the barometer is falling."

He was rather anxious to see all the tiny yawls afloat, and so many vessels a.s.sembled in that dangerous region.

Yann and Sylvestre used to read their letters together. This time they read them by the light of the midnight sun, shining above the horizon, still like a dead luminary. Sitting together, a little to one side, in a retired nook of the deck, their arms about each other's shoulders, they very slowly read, as if to enjoy more thoroughly the news sent them from home.

In Yann's letter Sylvestre got news of Marie Gaos, his little sweetheart; in Sylvestre's, Yann read all Granny Moan's funny stories, for she had not her like for amusing the absent ones you will remember; and the last paragraph concerning him came up: the "word of greeting to young Gaos."

When the letters were got through, Sylvestre timidly showed his to his big friend, to try and make him admire the writing of it.

"Look, is it not pretty writing, Yann?"

But Yann, who knew very well whose hand had traced it, turned aside, shrugging his shoulders, as much as to say that he was worried too often about this Gaud girl.

So Sylvestre carefully folded up the poor, rejected paper, put it into its envelope and all in his jersey, next his breast, saying to himself sadly: "For sure, they'll never marry. But what on earth can he have to say against her?"

Midnight was struck on the cruiser's bell. And yet our couple remained sitting there, thinking of home, the absent ones, a thousand things in reverie. At this same moment the everlasting sun, which had dipped its lower edge into the waters, began slowly to reascend, and lo! this was morning.

PART II -- IN THE BRETON LAND

CHAPTER I--THE PLAYTHING OF THE STORM

The Northern sun had taken another aspect and changed its colour, opening the new day by a sinister morn. Completely free from its veil, it gave forth its grand rays, crossing the sky in fitful flashes, foretelling nasty weather. During the past few days it had been too fine to last. The winds blew upon that swarm of boats, as if to clear the sea of them; and they began to disperse and flee, like an army put to rout, before the warning written in the air, beyond possibility to misread.

Harder and harder it blew, making men and ships quake alike.

And the still tiny waves began to run one after another and to melt together; at first they were frosted over with white foam spread out in patches; and then, with a whizzing sound, arose smoke as though they burned and scorched, and the whistling grew louder every moment.

Fish-catching was no longer thought of; it was their work on deck. The fishing lines had been drawn in, and all hurried to make sail and some to seek for shelter in the fjords, while yet others preferred to round the southern point of Iceland, finding it safer to stand for the open sea, with the free s.p.a.ce about them, and run before the stern wind. They could still see each other a while: here and there, above the trough of the sea, sails wagged as poor wearied birds fleeing; the masts tipped, but ever and anon righted, like the weighted pith figures that similarly resume an erect att.i.tude when released after being blown down.

The illimitable cloudy roof, erstwhile compacted towards the western horizon, in an island form, began to break up on high and send its fragments over the surface. It seemed indestructible, for vainly did the winds stretch it, pull and toss it asunder, continually tearing away dark strips, which they waved over the pale yellow sky, gradually becoming intensely and icily livid. Ever more strongly grew the wind that threw all things in turmoil.

The cruiser had departed for shelter at Iceland; some fishers alone remained upon the seething sea, which now took an ill-boding look and a dreadful colour. All hastily made preparations for bad weather. Between one and another the distance grew greater, till some were lost sight of.

The waves, curling up in scrolls, continued to run after each other, to rea.s.semble and climb on one another, and between them the hollows deepened.

In a few hours, everything was belaboured and overthrown in these regions that had been so calm the day before, and instead of the past silence, the uproar was deafening. The present agitation was a dissolving view, unconscientious and useless, and quickly accomplished.

What was the object of it all? What a mystery of blind destruction it was!

The clouds continued to stream out on high, out of the west continually, racing and darkening all. A few yellow clefts remained, through which the sun shot its rays in volleys. And the now greenish water was striped more thickly with snowy froth.

By midday the _Marie_ was made completely snug for dirty weather: her hatches battened down, and her sails storm-reefed; she bounded lightly and elastic; for all the horrid confusion, she seemed to be playing like the porpoises, also amused in storms. With her foresail taken in, she simply scudded before the wind.

It had become quite dark overhead, where stretched the heavily crushing vault. Studded with shapeless gloomy spots, it appeared a set dome, unless a steadier gaze ascertained that everything was in the full rush of motion; endless gray veils were drawn along, unceasingly followed by others, from the profundities of the sky-line--draperies of darkness, pulled from a never-ending roll.

The _Marie_ fled faster and faster before the wind; and time fled also--before some invisible and mysterious power. The gale, the sea, the _Marie_, and the clouds were all lashed into one great madness of hasty flight towards the same point. The fastest of all was the wind; then the huge seething billows, heavier and slower, toiling after; and, lastly, the smack, dragged into the general whirl. The waves tracked her down with their white crests, tumbling onward in continual motion, and she--though always being caught up to and outrun--still managed to elude them by means of the eddying waters she spurned in her wake, upon which they vented their fury. In this similitude of flight the sensation particularly experienced was of buoyancy, the delight of being carried along without effort or trouble, in a springy sort of way. The _Marie_ mounted over the waves without any shaking, as if the wind had lifted her clean up; and her subsequent descent was a slide. She almost slid backward, though, at times, the mountains lowering before her as if continuing to run, and then she suddenly found herself dropped into one of the measureless hollows that evaded her also; without injury she sounded its horrible depths, amid a loud splashing of water, which did not even sprinkle her decks, but was blown on and on like everything else, evaporating in finer and finer spray until it was thinned away to nothing. In the trough it was darker, and when each wave had pa.s.sed the men looked behind them to see if the next to appear were higher; it came upon them with furious contortions, and curling crests, over its transparent emerald body, seeming to shriek: "Only let me catch you, and I'll swallow you whole!"

But this never came to pa.s.s, for, as a feather, the billows softly bore them up and then down so gently; they felt it pa.s.s under them, with all its boiling surf and thunderous roar. And so on continually, but the sea getting heavier and heavier. One after another rushed the waves, more and more gigantic, like a long chain of mountains, with yawning valleys.

And the madness of all this movement, under the ever-darkening sky, accelerated the height of the intolerable clamour.

Yann and Sylvestre stood at the helm, still singing, "Jean Francois de Nantes"; intoxicated with the quiver of speed, they sang out loudly, laughing at their inability to hear themselves in this prodigious wrath of the wind.

"I say, lads, does it smell musty up here too?" called out Guermeur to them, pa.s.sing his bearded face up through the half-open hatchway, like Jack-in-the-box.

Oh, no! it certainly did not smell musty on deck. They were not at all frightened, being quite conscious of what men can cope with, having faith in the strength of their barkey and their arms. And they furthermore relied upon the protection of that china Virgin, which had voyaged forty years to Iceland, and so often had danced the dance of this day, smiling perpetually between her branches of artificial flowers.

Generally speaking, they could not see far around them; a few hundred yards off, all seemed entombed in the fearfully big billows, with their frothing crests shutting out the view. They felt as if in an enclosure, continually altering shape; and, besides, all things seemed drowned in the aqueous smoke, which fled before them like a cloud with the greatest rapidity over the heaving surface. But from time to time a gleam of sunlight pierced through the north-west sky, through which a squall threatened; a shuddering light would appear from above, a rather spun-out dimness, making the dome of the heavens denser than before, and feebly lighting up the surge. This new light was sad to behold; far-off glimpses as they were, that gave too strong an understanding that the same chaos and the same fury lay on all sides, even far, far behind the seemingly void horizon; there was no limit to its expanse of storm, and they stood alone in its midst!

A tremendous tumult arose all about, like the prelude of an apocalypse, spreading the terror of the ultimate end of the earth. And amidst it thousands of voices could be heard above, shrieking, bellowing, calling, as from a great distance. It was only the wind, the great motive breath of all this disorder, the voice of the invisible power ruling all. Then came other voices, nearer and less indefinite, threatening destruction, and making the water shudder and hiss as if on burning coals; the disturbance increased in terror.