The Manxman Part 81

Supper was served, the pump was worked, the lights were run up, the small boat was sent round with a flare to fright away the evil spirits, and then the night came down--a dark night, without moon or stars, shutting out the island, though it stood so near, and even the rocks of the Hen and Chicken. The first man for the look-out took up his one hour's watch at the helm, and the rest went below.

Pete's bunk was under the binnacle, and the light of its lamp fell on a stamped envelope which he took out of his breast-pocket from time to time that he might read the inscription. It ran--

Capn Peatr Quilliam,

Lm Cottig Ramsey I O Man.

He looked at it lovingly, fondly, yearningly, yet with a certain awe, too, as if it were the casket of some hidden treasure, and he hardly knew what it contained. The dim-lit cabin was quiet, the net boiler sparched drops of hot water at intervals, the fire of the cooking stove slid and fell, the men breathed heavily from unseen beds, and the sea washed as the boat rolled.

"What's she saying, I wonder! I wonder! G.o.d bless her!" he mumbled, and then he, too, fell asleep.

Two hours before hauling, they proved the fishing by taking in a "pair"

of the net, found good herring, and blew the horn as signal that they were doing well. Then out of the black depths around, wherein no boat could be seen, the lights of other boats came floating silently astern, until the company about them in the darkness was like a little city of the sea and the night.

At the first peep of morning over the round shoulder of the Calf, the little city awoke. There were the clicks of the capstan, and the shouts of the men as the nets came back to the boats, heavy and white with fish. All being aboard, the men went down on the deck, according to their wont, every man on his knee with his face in his cap, and then leapt up with a shout (perhaps an oath), swung to the wind, hoisted the square sails, and made for home. The dark northwest was lowering by this time, and the sea was beginning to jump.

"Breakfast, boys," sang out Pete, with his head above the companion, and all but the helmsman went below. There was a pot full of the drop-fish, and every man ate his warp of herring. It had been a great night's fishing. Some of the boats were full to the mouth, and all had plenty.

"We'll do middling if we get a market," said Pete.

"We've got to get home first," said the master, and at the same moment a sea struck the windward quarter with the force of a sledge-hammer, and the block at the masthead began to sing.

"We'll run for Peel this morning, boys," said Pete, smothering his voice in a mouthful.

"Peel?" said the master, shooting out his lip. "They've got no harbour there at all with a cat's paw of a breeze, let alone a northwester."

"I'm for going up to the meeting," said Pete in an incoherent way.

Then they tacked before the rising gale, and went off with the fleet as it swirled like a flight of gulls abreast of the wind. The sea came tumbling down like a shoal of seahogs, and washed the faces of the men as they sat in oilskins on the hatch-head, shaking the herring out of the nets into the hold.

But their work only began when they came into Peel. The tide was down; there was no breakwater; the neck of the harbour was narrow, and four hundred boats were coming to take shelter and to land their cargoes. It was a scene of tumult and confusion--shouting, swearing, and fighting among the men, and crushing and cranching among the boats as they nosed their way to the harbour mouth, threw ropes on to the quay, where fifty ropes were round one post already, or cast anchors up the bank of the castle rock, which was steep and dangerous to lie on.

Pete got landed somehow, but his Nickey with half the fleet turned tail and went round the island. As he leapt ash.o.r.e, the helpless harbour-master, who had been bellowing over the babel through a cracked trumpet, turned to him and said, "For the Lord's sake, Capt'n Quilliam, if you've got a friend that can lend us a hand, go off to the meeting at seven o'clock."

"I mane to," said Pete, but he had something else to do first. It was the task that had brought him to Peel, and no eye must see him do it.

Slowly and slyly, like one who does a doubtful thing and pretends to be doing nothing, he went stealing through the town--behind the old Court-house and up Castle Street, into the market-place, and across it to the line of shops which make the princ.i.p.al thoroughfare.

At one of these shops, a little single-roomed place, with its small shutter still up, but the door half open and a noise of stamping going on inside, he stopped in a lounging way, half twisting on his heel as if idly looking back. It was the Post-Office.

With a stealthy look around, he put a trembling hand into his breast-pocket, drew out the letter, screened it by the flat of his big palm, and posted it. Then he turned hurriedly away, and was gone in a moment, like a man who feared pursuit, down a steep and tortuous alley that led to the sh.o.r.e. The morning was early; the shops were not yet open; only the homes of the fishermen were putting out curling wreaths of smoke; the silent streets echoed to his lightest footstep.

But the sh.o.r.e road was busy enough. Fishermen in sea-boots and sou'westers, with oilskin over one arm and a string of herring in the other hand, were trooping from the harbour up to the Zigzag by the rock called the Creg Malin. It was at the end of the bay, where cliff and beach and sea together form a bag like the cod-end of the trawl net.

"It's not the fishermen at all--it's the farmers they're thinking of,"

said one.

"You're right," said Pete, "and it's some of ourselves that's to blame for it."

"How's that?" said somebody.

"Aisy enough," said Pete. "When I came home from Kimberly I met an ould fisherman--_you_ know the man, Billy--well, _you_ do, Dan--Phil Nelly, of Ramsey. 'How's the fishing, Phil?' says I. He gave me a Hm! and a heise of his neck, and 'I'm not fishing no more,' says he. 'The wife's keeping a private hotel,' says he. 'And what are you doing yourself,'

says I. 'I'm walking about,' says he, and, gough bless me, if the man wasn't wearing a collar and carrying a stick, and prating about advertising the island, if you plaze."

At the sound of Pete's voice a group of the men gathered about him.

"That's not the worst neither," said he. "The other day I tumbled over Tom Hommy--_you_ know Tom Hommy, yes, you do, the lil deaf man up Ballure. He was lying in the hedge by the public-house, three sheets in the wind. 'Why aren't you out with the boats, Tom?' says I. 'Wash for should I go owsh wish the boash, when the childer can earn more on the roads?' says the drunken wastrel. 'And is yonder your boys and girls tossing summersaults at the tail of the trippers' car?' says I. 'Yesh,'

says he; 'and they'll earn more in a day at their caperings than their father in a week at the herrings.'"

"I believe it enough," said one. "The man's about right," said another; and a querulous voice behind said, "Wonderful the prosperity of the island since the visitors came to it."

"Get out with you, there, for a disgrace to the name of Manxman," sang out Pete over the heads of those that stood between. "With the farming going to the dogs and the fishing going to the divil, d'ye know what the ould island's coming to? It's coming to an island of lodging-house keepers and hackney-car drivers. Not the Isle of Man at all, but the Isle of Manchester."

There was a tremendous shout at this last word. In another minute Pete was lifted shoulder high over the crowd on to the highest turn of the zigzag path, and bidden to go on. There were five hundred faces below him, putting out hot breath in the cool morning air. The sun was shooting over the cliffs a canopy as of smoke above their heads. On the top of the crag the sea-fowl were jabbering, and the white sea itself was climbing on the beach.

"Men," said Pete, "there's not much to say. This morning's work said everything. We'd a right fishing last night, hadn't we? Four hundred boats came up to Peel, and we hadn't less than ten maise apiece.

That's--you that's smart at your figguring and ciphering, spake out now--that's four thousand maise isn't it?" (Shouts of "Right.") "Aw, you're quick wonderful. No houlding you at all when it's money that's in. Four thousand maise ready and waiting for the steamers to England--but did we land it? No, nor half of it neither. The other half's gone round to other ports, too late for the day's sailing, and half of that half will be going rotten and getting chucked back into the sea. That's what the Manx fishermen have lost this morning because they haven't harbours to shelter them, and yet they're talking of levying harbour dues."

"Man veen, he's a boy!"--"He's all that"--"Go it, Capt'n. What are we to do?"

"Do?" cried Pete. "I'll tell you what you're to do. This is Friday. Next Thursday is old Midsummer Day. That's Tynwald Coort day. Come to St.

John's on Thursday--every man of you come--come in your sea-boots and your jerseys--let the Governor see you mane it. 'Give us raisonable hope of harbour improvement and we'll pay,' says you. 'If you don't, we won't; and if you try to make us, we're two thousand strong, and we'll rise like one man.'Don't be freckened; you've a right to be bould in a good cause. I'll get somebody to spake for you. You know the man I mane.

He's stood the fisherman's friend before to-day, and he isn't going taking off his cap to the best man that's setting foot on Tynwald Hill."

It was agreed. Between that day and Tynwald day Pete was to enlist the sympathy of Philip, and to go to Port St. Mary to get the co-operation of the south-side fishermen. The town was astir by this time, the sun was on the beach, and the fishermen trooped off to bed.

IV.

Pete was back in his ship's cabin in the garden the same evening with a heart the heavier because for one short hour it had forgotten its trouble. The flowers were opening, the roses were creeping over the porch, the blackbird was singing at the top of the tree; but his own flower of flowers, his rose of roses, his bird of birds--where was she?

Summer was coming, coming, coming--coming with its light, coming with its music, coming with its sweetness--but she came not.

The clock struck seven inside the house, and Pete, pipe in hand, swung over to the gate. No need to-night to watch for the postman's peak, no need to trace his toes.

"A letter for you, Mr. Quilliam."

Hearing these words, Pete, his eyes half shut as if dosing in the sunset, wakened himself with a look of astonishment.

"What? For me, is it? A letter, you say? Aw, I see," taking it and turning it in his hand, "just'a line from the mistress, it's like. Well, well! A letter for me, if you plaze," and he laughed like a man much tickled.

He was in no hurry. He rammed his dead pipe with his finger, lit it again, sucked it, made it quack, drew a long breath, and then said quietly, "Let's see what's her news at all."

He opened the letter leisurely, and read bits of it aloud, as if reading to himself, but holding the postman while he did so in idle talk on the other side of the gate. "And how are you living to-day, Mr. Kelly? Aw, h'm--_getting that much better_ it's extraordinary--Yes, a nice everin', very, Mr. Kelly, nice, nice--_that happy and comfortable and Uncle Joe is that good_--heavy bag at you to-night, you say? Aw, heavy, yes, heavy--_love to Grannie and all inquiring friends_--nothing, Mr. Kelly, nothing--just a scribe of a line, thinking a man might be getting unaisy. She needn't, though--she needn't. But chut! It's nothing.

Writing a letter is nothing to her at all. Why, she'd be knocking that off, bless you," holding out a half sheet of paper, "in less than an hour and a half. Truth enough, sir." Then, looking at the letter again, "What's this, though? PN. They're always putting a P.N. at the bottom of a letter, Mr. Kelly. P.N.--_I was expecting to be home before, but I wouldn't get away for Uncle Joe taking me to the theaytres_. Ha, ha, ha! A mighty boy is Uncle Joe. But, Mr. Kelly, Mr. Kelly," with a solemn look, "not a word of this to Caesar?"

The postman had been watching Pete out of the corners of his ferret eyes. "Do you know, Capt'n, what Black Tom is saying?"

"What's that?" said Pete, with a sudden change of tone.