The Cruise of the Shining Light Part 34

"Ay," I complained; "but what was the bid that won from Eli Flack?"

"The bid?"

"Ay; the bid."

"Not expensive," says he.

"But how much, Moses?"

"Well, Dannie," he answered, with a sigh and a rub of his curly, yellow beard, "I 'lowed mother wouldn't charge much for servin' the Queen: for," says he, enlivened, "'twould be too much like common labor t' carry Her Majesty's mail at a price. An' I bid," he added, eying me vaguely, "accordin' t' what I 'lowed mother would have me do in the Queen's service. _Fac' is, Dannie_," says he, in a squall of confidence, "_I 'lowed I'd carry it free!_"

'Twas this contact with the world of Jimmie Tick's Cove that embarked the fool upon an adventurous enterprise. When, in the spring of that year, the sea being open, the _Quick as Wink_ made our harbor, the first of all the traders, Tumm, the clerk, was short-handed for a cook, having lost young Billy Rudd overboard, in a great sea, beating up in stress of weather to the impoverished settlement at Diamond Run.

'Twas Moses, the choice of necessity, he shipped in the berth of that merry, tow-headed lad of tender voice, whose songs, poor boy! would never again be lifted, o' black nights in harbor, in the forecastle of the _Quick as Wink_. "Ay, Dannie," says Moses, "you'd never think it, maybe, but I'm shipped along o' Tumm for the French sh.o.r.e an' the Labrador ports. I've heared tell a wonderful lot about Mother Burke, but I've never seed the ol' rock; an' I've heared tell a wonderful lot about Coachman's Cove an' Conch an' Lancy Loop an' the harbors o' the straits sh.o.r.es, but I've never seed un with my own eyes, an' I'm sort o' wantin' t' know how they shapes up alongside o' Twist Tickle. I 'low," says he, "you don't find many harbors in the world like Twist Tickle. Since I been travellin' t' Jimmie Tick's Cove with the mail,"

he continued, with a stammer and flush, like a man misled from an austere path by the flesh-pots of earth, "I've cotched a sinful hankerin' t' see the world."

I wished he had not.

"But mother," he added, quickly, in self-defence, "always 'lowed a man _ought_ t' see the world. So," says he, "I'm shipped along o' Tumm, for better or for worse, an' I'm bound down north in the _Quick as Wink_ with the spring supplies."

'Twas a far journey for that sensitive soul.

"Dannie," he asked, in quick alarm, a fear so sudden and unexpected that I was persuaded of the propriety of my premonition, "what you thinkin' about? Eh, Dannie?" he cried. "What you lookin' that way for?"

I would not tell him that I knew the skipper of the _Quick as Wink_, whose b.u.t.t the fool must be.

"You isn't 'lowin'," Moses began, "that mother--"

"Not at all, Moses!" says I.

'Twas instant and complete relief he got from this denial. "We sails,"

says he, with all a traveller's importance, "at dawn o' to-morrow.

I'll be gone from Twist Tickle by break o' day. I'll be gone t' new places--t' harbors I've heared tell of but never seed with my own eyes. I'm not quite knowin'," says he, doubtfully, "how I'll get along with the cookin'. Mother always 'lowed," he continued, with a greater measure of hope, "that I was more'n fair on cookin' a cup o' tea.

'Moses,' says she, 'you can brew a cup o' tea so well as any fool I ever knowed.' But that was on'y mother," he added, in modest self-deprecation. "Jus' mother."

I wished again that the fool had not fallen into the mercilessly facetious company of Skipper Saucy Bill North of the schooner _Quick as Wink_.

"An', Dannie," says Moses, "I'm scared I'll fail with all but the tea."

'Twas come near the evening of that mellow Sunday. On the Whisper Cove road and the greening hills of Twin Islands, where Moses and I had walked in simple companionship, the birds had been mating and nesting in the thick sunshine of the afternoon. Chirp and flutter and shrill song! 'Twas a time for the mating of birds. The haste and noise and pomposity of this busy love-making! The loud triumph and soft complaint of it! All the world of spruce and alder and sunlit s.p.a.ces had been a-flutter. But the weather was now fallen gloomy, the sky overcast, the wind blowing in from the black, uneasy sea, where floes and gigantic bergs of ice drifted, like frozen ghosts, cold and dead and aimlessly driven; and the hopeful sunshine had left the hills, and the piping and chirping were stilled, and I heard no more fluttering wings or tender love-songs. The fool of Twist Tickle paused in the road to stare vacantly northward. 'Twas there dark with menacing clouds--thick, sombre clouds, tinged with a warning blue, rising implacably above the roughening black of the sea. He wondered, it may be, in his dull, weakling way, concerning the coasts beyond the grave curtain, which he must discover--new coasts, dealing with us variously, as we disclose them to our hearts. I watched him with misgiving. To be sure, the skipper of the _Quick as Wink_ was an unkind man, cynical and quick to seek selfish laughter, whatever the wound he dealt; but Tumm, our friend and the genial friend of all the world, thinks I, more hopefully, would not have the poor fool wronged.

"Dannie," says Moses, turning, "I'm scared my cookin' won't quite fit the stomachs o' the crew o' the _Quick as Wink_."

"Ay, Moses," says I, to hearten him; "but never a good man was that didn't fear a new task."

He eyed me doubtfully.

"An'," I began, "your mother, Moses--"

"But," he interrupted, "mother wasn't quite t' be trusted in all things."

"Not trusted!" I cried.

"You'll not misunderstand me, Dannie?" he besought me, putting a hand on my shoulder. "You'll not misunderstand, will you? But mother wasn't quite t' be trusted," says he, "when it come t' the discussion," says he, pausing to permit a proper appreciation of the learned word, which he had appropriated from my tutor's vocabulary, "o' my accomplishments."

It had never occurred before.

"For mother," he explained, "was somehow wonderful fond o' me."

The church-bell called him.

"Hear her voice, Dannie?" said he. "Hear her voice in that there bell?

'Come--dear!' says she. 'Come--dear! Come--dear!' Hear it ring out?

'Come--dear! Come--dear! Come--dear!'"

I bade him G.o.d-speed with a heart that misgave me.

"I'll answer," said he, his face lifted to the sky, "to that voice!"

The clouds in the west broke, and through the rift a shaft of sunlight shot, glad to be free, and touched our world of sea and rock with loving finger-tips, but failed, as I turned homeward, hearing no voice of my unknown mother in the wandering call of the bell; and all the world went gray and sullenly mute, as it had been....

XIX

A WORD OF WARNING

Presently my uncle and I made ready to set out for St. John's upon the sinister business which twice a year engaged his evil talents at the wee waterside place wherein he was the sauciest dog in the pack. There was now no wandering upon the emotionless old hills of Twin Islands to prepare him, no departure from the fishing, no unseemly turning to the bottle, to fact.i.tious rage; but he brooded more despairingly in his chair by the window when the flare of western glory left the world. At evening, when he thought me gone upon my pleasure, I watched him from the shadows of the hall, grave with youth, wishing, all the while, that he might greet the night with grat.i.tude for the mercy of it; and I listened to his muttering--and I saw that he was grown old and weak with age: unequal, it might be, to the wickedness he would command in my service. "_For behold the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with the flames of fire._" For me 'twas still sweet to watch the tender shadows creep upon the western fire, to see the great gray rocks dissolve, to hear the sea's melodious whispering; but to him the sea spoke harshly and the night came with foreboding. I wished that he would forsake the evil he followed for my sake. I would be a club-footed, paddle-punt fisherman, as the gray little man from St.

John's had said, and be content with that fortune, could my uncle but look into the eyes of night without misgiving.

But I must not tell him so....

We left John Cather behind.

"Uncle Nick," says I, "I 'low we'd best have un along."

"An' why?" cries he.

"I don't know," says I, honestly puzzled.

He looked at me quizzically. "Is you sure?" he asked. His eyes twinkled. "Is you sure you doesn't know?"