The Deemster Part 14

At that he was making for the deck; but Dan, whose face, full of the fire of the liquor he had taken, grew in one moment old and ugly, leaped to his feet in a tempest of wrath, overturned his stool, and rushed at Ewan with eyes aflame and uplifted hand, and suddenly, instantly, like a flash, his fist fell, and Ewan rolled on the floor.

Then the men jumped up and crowded round in confusion. "The parzon! the parzon! G.o.d preserve me, the parzon!"

There stood Dan, with a ghastly countenance, white and convulsed, and there at his feet lay Ewan.

"G.o.d A'mighty! Mastha Dan, Mastha Dan," cried Davy. Before the men had found time to breathe, Davy had leaped back from the deck to the c.o.c.kpit, and had lifted Ewan's head on to his knee.

Ewan drew a long breath and opened his eyes. He was bleeding from a gash above the temple, having fallen among some refuse of iron chain. Davy, still moaning piteously, "Oh, Mastha Dan, G.o.d A'mighty, Mastha Dan,"

took a white handkerchief from Ewan's breast, and bound it about his head over the wound. The blood oozed through and stained the handkerchief.

Ewan rose to his feet pale and trembling, and without looking at any one, steadied himself by Davy's shoulder, and clambered weakly to the deck. There he stumbled forward, sat down on the coil of rope that had been his seat before, and buried his uncovered head in his breast.

The sun had now risen above Contrary, and the fair young morning light danced over the rippling waters far and near. A fresh breeze blew from the land, and the boats of the fleet around and about scudded on before the wind like a flight of happy birds, with outspread wings.

The "Ben-my-Chree" was then rounding the head, and the smoke was beginning to coil up in many a slender shaft above the chimneys of the little town of Peel. But Ewan saw nothing of this; with head on his breast, and his heart cold within him, he sat at the bow.

Down below, Dan was then doing his best to make himself believe that he was unconcerned. He whistled a little, and sang a little, and laughed a good deal; but the whistle lost its tune, and the song stopped short, and the laugh was loud and empty. When he first saw Ewan lie where he fell, all the fire of his evil pa.s.sion seemed to die away, and for the instant his heart seemed to choke him, and he was prompted to drop down and lift Ewan to his feet; but at that moment his stubborn knees would not bend, and at the next moment the angel of G.o.d troubled the waters of his heart no more. Then the fisher-fellows overcame their amazement, and began to crow, and to side with him, and to talk of his pluck, and what not.

"The parzons--och, the parzons--they think they may ride a man down for half a word inside his gills."

"'Cowards'--och, 'skulking cowards,' if you plaize--right sarved, say I!"

Dan tramped about the cabin restlessly, and sometimes chuckled aloud and asked himself what did he care, and then laughed noisily, and sat down to smoke, and presently jumped up, threw the pipe into the open stove, and took the brandy bottle out of the locker. Where was Ewan? What was he doing? What was he looking like? Dan would rather have died than humbled himself to ask; but would none of these grinning b.o.o.bies tell him? When Teare, the mate, came down from the deck and said that sarten sure the young parzon was afther sayin' his prayers up forrard Dan's eyes flashed again, and he had almost lifted his hand to fell the sn.i.g.g.e.ring waistrel. He drank half a tumbler of brandy, and protested afresh, though none had yet disputed it, that he cared nothing, not he, let them say what they liked to the contrary.

In fifteen minutes from the time of the quarrel the fleet was running into harbor. Dan had leaped on deck just as the "Ben-my-Chree" touched the two streams outside Contrary. He first looked forward, and saw Ewan sitting on the cable in the bow with his eyes shut and his pallid face sunk deep in his breast. Then a strange, wild light shot into Dan's eyes, and he reeled aft and plucked the tiller from the hand of Corlett, and set it hard aport, and drove the boat head on for the narrow neck of water that flowed between the mainland and the island-rock on which the old castle stood.

"Hould hard," shouted old Billy Quilleash, "there's not water enough for the like o' that--you'll run her on the rocks."

Then Dan laughed wildly, and his voice rang among the coves and caves of the coast.

"Here's for the harbor or--h.e.l.l," he screamed, and then another wild peal of his mad laughter rang in the air and echoed from the land.

"What's agate of the young mastha?" the men muttered one to another; and with eyes of fear they stood stock-still on the deck and saw themselves driven on toward the shoals of the little sound.

In two minutes more they breathed freely. The "Ben-my-Chree" had shot like an arrow through the belt of water and was putting about in the harbor.

Dan dropped the tiller, reeled along the deck, scarcely able to bear himself erect, and stumbled under the hatchways. Old Billy brought up the boat to its moorings.

"Come, lay down, d'ye hear? Where's that lad?"

Davy was standing by the young parson.

"You idiot waistrel, why d'ye stand prating there? I'll pay you, you beachcomber."

The skipper was making for Davy, when Ewan got up, stepped toward him, looked him hard in the face, seemed about to speak, checked himself, and turned away.

Old Billy broke into a bitter little laugh, and said, "I'm right up and down like a yard o' pump-water, that's what I am."

The boat was now at the quay-side, and Ewan leaped ash.o.r.e. Without a word or a look more, he walked away, the white handkerchief, clotted with blood, still about his forehead, and his hat carried in his hand.

On the quay there were numbers of women with baskets waiting to buy the fish. Teare, the mate, and Crennel, the cook, counted the herrings and sold them. The rest of the crew stepped ash.o.r.e.

Dan went away with the rest. His face was livid in the soft morning sunlight. He was still keeping up his brave outside, while the madness was growing every moment fiercer within. As he stumbled along the paved way with an unsteady step his hollow laugh grated on the quiet air.

CHAPTER XI

THE HERRING BREAKFAST

It was between four o'clock and five when the fleet ran into Peeltown harbor after the first night of the herring season, and toward eight the fisher-fellows, to the number of fifty at least, had gathered for their customary first breakfast in the kitchen of the "Three Legs of Man."

What sport! What noisy laughter! What singing and rollicking cheers! The men stood neither on the order of their coming nor their going, their sitting nor their standing. In they trooped in their woolen caps or their broad sou'westers, their oilskins or their long sea-boots swung across their arms. They wore their caps or not as pleased them, they sang or talked as suited them, they laughed or sneezed, they sulked or snarled, they were noisy or silent, precisely as the whim of the individual prescribed the individual rule of manners. Rather later than the rest Dan Mylrea came swinging in, with a loud laugh and a shout, and something like an oath, too, and the broad homespun on his lips.

"Billy Quilleash--I say, Billy, there--why don't you put up the young mastha for the chair?"

"Aw, lave me alone," answered Billy Quilleash, with a contemptuous toss of the head.

"Uncle Billy's proud uncommon of the mastha," whispered Davy Fayle, who sat meekly on a form near the door, to the man who sat cross-legged on the form beside him.

"It's a bit free them chaps is making," said old Billy, in a confidential undertone to Dan, who was stretching himself out on the settle. Then rising to his feet with gravity, "Gen'l'men," said Quilleash, "what d'ye say now to Mistha Dan'l Mylrea for the elber-cheer yander?"

At that there was the response of loud raps on the table with the heels of the long boots swung over various arms, and with several clay pipes that lost their heads in the encounter. Old Billy resumed his seat with a lofty glance of patronage at the men about him, which said as plainly as words themselves, "I tould ye to lave it all to me."

"Proud, d'ye say? Look at him," muttered the fisherman sitting by Davy Fayle.

Dan staggered up and shouldered his way to the elbow-chair at the head of the table. He had no sooner taken his seat than he shouted for the breakfast, and without more ado the breakfast was lifted direct on to the table from the pans and boilers that simmered on the hearth.

First came the broth, well loaded with barley and cabbage; then suet puddings; and last of all the frying-pan was taken down from the wall, and four or five dozen of fresh herrings were made to grizzle and crackle and sputter over the fire.

Dan ate ravenously, and laughed noisily, and talked incessantly as he ate. The men at first caught the contagion of his boisterous manners, but after a time they shook their tousled heads and laid them together in gravity, and began to repeat in whispers, "What's agate of the young mastha, at all, at all?"

Away went the dishes, away went the cloth, an oil-lamp with its open mouth--a relic of some monkish sanctuary of the Middle Ages--was lifted from the mantel-shelf and put on the table for the receipt of custom; a bra.s.s censer, choked with spills, was placed beside it; pipes emerged from waistcoat-pockets, and pots of liquor with gla.s.ses and bottles came in from the outer bar.

"Is it heavy on the liquor you're going to be, Billy?" said Ned, the mate; and old Billy replied with a superior smile and the lifting up of a whisky bottle, from which he had just drawn the cork.

Then came the toasts. The chairman arose amid hip, hip, hooraa! and gave "Life to man and death to fish!" and Quilleash gave "Death to the head that never wore hair!"

Then came more noise and more liquor, and a good deal of both in the vicinity of the chair. Dan struck up a song. He sang "Drink to Me Only,"

and the noisy company were at first hushed to silence and then melted to audible sobs.

"Aw, man, the voice he has, anyway!"

"And the loud it is, and the tender, too, and the way he slidders up and down, and no squeaks and jumps."

"No, no; nothin' like squeezin' a tune out of an ould sow by pulling the tail at her."