The Unknown Sea Part 1

The Unknown Sea.

by Clemence Housman.

CHAPTER I

A solitary fisher ploughed the lively blue of a southern sea. Strength of limb, fair hair, and clear grey eyes told of a northern race, though his skin had been tanned to a red-brown, dark as the tint of the slender, dark-eyed, olive-skinned fishers born under these warm skies. In stature and might a man, he was scarcely more than a boy in years; beardless yet, and of an open, boyish countenance. As his boat raced eagerly forward he laughed for pride of heart, and praised her aloud after a fashion native to the south: she was his beloved, his bird, his blossom, his queen; and for his warrant well built she was, promising strength and speed in due degrees, and beautiful obedience to him. Her paint was bright, her ruddy canvas unstained, in contrast to a pile of tackle, black from age and use: the nets and the weighted cross-beams of coral fishing.

White wings against the sky, and white crests upon the sea, broke the entire blue. Far away to eastward, faint and hazy, suave lines extended; but a coast that the boy neared lifted gaunt and desolate cliffs, overlooking a waste of roaring breakers. Midmost of these, sheer and black as the crags beyond, a dark ma.s.s rose dominant, like a sullen outcast from the land holding rule, whose mere aspect fitted well the name, Isle Sinister, without an evil implication that went therewith. The young fisher's memory was stored with dark tales, born long ago to night and fear, cherished by generations into fine growth, not by such as he to be utterly scouted. The sound of buoy-bells reached his ears for warning, but he eyed the intricate lines of breakers, he recalled ominous reports, only to estimate the nerve of body and mind needful to any mortal bent there upon a perilous trespa.s.s.

For a tale went that kept every fisher well aloof, to shun a danger worse than shipwreck. Little gain was it held for any once driven within the buoy-bells to work clear again to open sea, since sorrow and disaster would dog thenceforward, nor cease till due forfeit were paid: the boat broken up and burnt, her very ashes delivered to the sea. Woe even to the man who dare take any least splinter to burn on his hearth, for sickness and death would desolate his home. Nay, if a shifting wind but carried the ashes landwards, blight or murrain would follow surely. So went tradition, and conviction attended it well, since not within memory had any hardy or unfortunate supplied a living test. Now truly this boy, who came coasting perilously, needed to have in his veins the blood of an alien race, over and above youth and great strength, to be traversing a superst.i.tion of such dark credit, in others bred deep and strong.

Years ago he had been fascinated by the terrors and mystery of the place, and with a human desire after the unattainable, most strong and unregulated in youth, he had fearfully longed for a strength to do and a heart to dare more than all his world: to get footing where never man had stood: to face black luck and its befitters with a higher faith, defying a supremacy of evil. Very early, out of the extravagant vagaries of a child's brain, an audacious word had escaped, sped by a temper aflame, for which he had suffered--from youngsters a day's derision, from a strict elder a look that was worse disgrace. He deemed that might come to be recalled to his credit. Now that he was grown to a strength unmatched, with a heart proud and eager, impatient of any mastery not of love and reverence, a notion pleased him that like enough these tales had been magnified to recover the self-esteem of balked adventurers: a presumption not extreme in one whose superb strength had lowered old records, who found that none could withstand him to his full satisfaction. Here in the bright sunshine of high day, the year's eager spring quick in every vein, young virile audacity belittling all hazards, the lad's heart rode so high and sure that he could laugh outright in answer to the expostulation of the Sinister buoys. Yet he crossed himself more than once.

'We will do it, Beloved, you and I.'

To and fro he hovered awhile to consider the lie of the reefs and select his way. Then the sail clapped and swelled again, and the boat heeled, as boldly he turned her, and steered within the buoy-bells away for the breakers. Again he crossed himself as now were he and his boat committed on a challenge to fortune.

Gracious to bold and dexterous handling the boat glided into the maze.

The disposition of the outer channels was so favourable as to have gone far in beguiling the boy to his rash undertaking; but there were hedges of wicked breakers that thwarted him and turned him aside disappointed.

Creeping along warily with only a corner of sail, steering with fine sleight through the narrows, and avoiding eddies, he carried his boat unscathed where never another man he knew could dare to follow. But ah!

how meagre was that satisfaction, since far, yet too far from him the Isle Sinister held reserve. But at least he was able to scan the rocky ma.s.s to advantage. It towered up with straight, repellent walls towards the land; it sloped down steeply where he desired to win; but there to balk him, minatory in aspect, stood the Warders--five detached rocks--so lofty that the highest columns of surf spouting there fell short of their crowns. The ugliest threat he recognised bided there, close against success.

'No fault is yours, Beloved, if we cannot do it: nor hardly mine either, I think. Were but one other with us we might be well-nigh confident. With Philip at the oars! None we wanted to share with us--and yet! Ah! no. Not he nor any would.'

He was deeply involved. At least a mile of grim discouragement stretched on every hand. Then he came upon the sunken hulk of an old wreck.

Fiercer eddies and narrower channels constrained him to drop sail and take to the oars. A hard, dangerous, disheartening struggle set him nearer by a poor measure, but lost him in hope on the way.

'Fools and cowards all! Pleased would they be were I foiled, they knowing. How they would jeer; ay, with worse, too. It might go hard with me. But you, Beloved, never fear that I should fail you, if they tried--no, they would not,--not if they care for whole bones.

'To think that if we win, not for months may I praise you by the tale, not till we both have disproved and outlived the following of bad luck.

Defend us from one spying us here.'

The boy glanced about with anxiety, giving special scrutiny to one high cliff opposite. There, scarcely distinguishable from the crags, stood up a grey tower, the bell-tower of an ancient devout inst.i.tution, the House Monitory. His face grew rigid under a sudden apprehension. If he were sighted from above, what should stay those bells from knelling for him.

He held his breath, and listened for them to break silence on the instant, realising one peril which he had not before considered. 'Hark!'

would go the word, 'why does the House Monitory ring? in daylight, in fair weather? Who can be in peril off the Isle Sinister?' From cliffs to coves the word would drop, and start the swiftest sails out to investigate, for his exposure to ridicule or worse.

In a past century three bells had been towered there: consecrated and named after three Saints, to knell for souls that pa.s.sed, unconfessed, unhouseled, in that place of wrecks; to be potent against the dominion of powers darker than death, too regnant there. The best, the only, succour was this that human fellowship could accomplish for doomed lives. Now, though cultured intelligence smiled at the larger superst.i.tion, the simple held it at its old worth; and still, to the comfort of their souls, a pious community kept the custom, serving the bells; and for their more tangible welfare tended a beacon light.

A little chill ran in the boy's veins as he antic.i.p.ated the outbreak of those ominous bells; never yet had they rung for any, far involved as he, who had known escape. He betook himself more desperately to his endeavour. Necessity pressed him hard, for the tide ran, and suddenly declared that retreat to the open sea was cut off: where he had sailed free channels rocks grinned; reason withstood a fancy that they had lain in ambush, and risen actually to hem him in. Twice he risked with the narrowest of chances, and slid safe on the heave of a wave; on the third challenge a treacherous, swirling eddy caught the boat, swung it aslant, crashed it upon a lurking rock. A plank gave way splintered, and water spirted within.

The boy rowed desperate, straining by quick strokes and few, after deliverance from the narrows. Yet when he dared to lay aside the oars for an instant to check the leak, the boat was pitching with threats close in on every side. He could spare only a moment to catch up his coat, plug with it hastily, and drag atop the heavy cross-beams of his tackle; quick upon the oars again he needed to be, desperate of baling. Still the water oozed and trickled in, to lie up to his ankles and slowly to rise. There was no making out to sea; from the Isle Sinister he owned himself cut off by thick-set barriers; only the sh.o.r.e remained not absolutely unattainable though furthest it was.

Patiently and cautiously the boy felt his way. From stroke to stroke he held on safely, steady, quick-eyed, but told by the gradual water against his shins that his boat must shortly founder. Conscience smote him hard; the near sure prospect of swimming for bare life among the breakers opened his eyes. He had held as his very own to risk at will his boat and his life; now, with pangs of remorse, he recognised the superior claim of a grey-haired couple, who had been parents to him, who bereft of him would go down to the grave in grief and poverty. Of life, and the means of living, but little right had he to dispose, considering their due and their need.

The gunwale sank low, lower, till a lurch might displace the cross-beams, for they lost in weight as the water within the boat deepened. Yet point by point success attended, and released the foolhardy lad and his boat from dire extremity. They have chance of clean deliverance; they are past the last girdle of breakers, hardly a furlong from the sh.o.r.e; they are upon sleek water, with the tide against them but lazily.

The boy rowed on with long, smooth strokes; the mere sway of his body was as much as the boat could carry, so little above the water was the gunwale. He had halved the distance, when down she went beneath him; and he swam, waded, stood ash.o.r.e, the first man who had ever won there living by way of the sea.

But little elate could he be. He could glean drifting oars and stretchers, his boat might be recovered from the out tide, but the Isle Sinister lay remote as ever. And his heart had fallen.

Ugly necessity gave no choice but to face the breakers again in retrace of his perilous way; for an alternative he could not entertain that would entail certain evils more to be dreaded than any risk.

Straying aimlessly along the desolate sh.o.r.e, the boy pondered, nervous now of many risks he had braved hardily. He stopped once at sight of a grey patch of calcined rock. There it must have been that, not so long ago, wreckage had been gathered and burned scrupulously, and with it the bodies of two drowned men, according to the custom of the coast.

Instinctively he crossed himself, with a brief prayer for the souls of those two, cut off from life in that evil place, where no help had reached but the heavy knell, pitiful.

Greatly desiring the silence of the bells, if he were to escape with life, the boy turned his eyes aloft, inclining to bespeak it. A lively suspicion of hunger impelled decision; and up the cliff he went, his abashed vigour fain of any new output. An uncertain path promised fairly till half way, where a recent lapse turned him aside on to untried slopes and ledges: a perilous ascent to any not bold and sure and practised. The spice of danger kindled the boy's blood; he won to the top with some loss of breath, but his head was high, and his heart was high, and ultimate failure envisaged him no longer.

He stood among graves.

CHAPTER II

The lonely community had laid its bones to rest in a barren acre. No flower could bloom there ever, only close, dun turf grew. Below, the broken, unquiet sea dirged ceaselessly. The spot was in perfect keeping with the sovereign peace of the grave; that blank, unadorned environment of nature had the very beauty that can touch human sense with the concord of death. The young fisher stood motionless, as if his presence were outrage to the spirit of the silent dwellers below, so eager was he for life, so brim with pa.s.sion and play and hearty thirst for strong years of sunshine and rain. 'Yet how so,' said his heart, 'for I too shall come to die?'

Softly and soberly he took his way past the ranks of low mounds, and considered his approach to the House Monitory, whose living dwellers might be less tolerant of his trespa.s.s. For he realised that he had come within their outer precincts unallowed. On the one hand lay a low wall to indicate reserve; on the other he approached the base of the bell-tower itself, and the flanks of the House Monitory. He looked up at the walls, fully expecting to be spied and brought to rebuke; but all was blank and quiet as among the dead outside. The tower rose sheer into the air; for the rest, a tier of the cliff had been fashioned for habitation by the help of masonry and some shaping and hollowing of the crude rock.

The window lights were high and rare. Except from the tower, hardly could a glimpse below the sky-line be offered to any within.

He came upon a door, low and narrow as the entrance of a tomb. It looked so obdurate he never thought to knock there. Then the sound of low, monotonous chanting, by women's voices, poor and few, told him that he stood without their chapel; and he understood that the low door giving upon the place of graves had not been fashioned for the living. Truly he was alien and incongruous, although that day he had surely been many degrees nearer death than any dweller there.

He made for the boundary wall, overleaped it, and then by legitimate pathways came before the entrance door. There he stood long, not finally determined what he had come to say. It was repugnant to him to ask of any mortal cover for his doings, the more when they were somewhat amiss.

While he stood, casting about for decision, he was a-stare heedlessly on a rocky spur near by that bore the moulding of three figures. High upon its face they stood, where a natural suggestion had been abetted by man, a rough pediment shaped above, a rough base below, and the names hewn large: St. Mary, St. Margaret, St. Faith. Of life size they were, and looked towards the sea.

Ashamed of his own indecision, the boy lifted his hand and knocked at the wicket, so to force a resolution within the limit of seconds left. The stone figures clapped back an echo. His heart sprang an invocation in response, and straightway he relinquished thought of asking an irksome favour of lower agents. So when the wicket opened, this was all he had to say: 'Of your charity give food to a hungry body.'

To the pale, spare Monitress, half shrouded in the gloom, the ruddy young giant, glowing in the sunshine, said this: 'Of your charity give food to a hungry body.' She paused and looked at the boy, for his great stature, his fair hair, and grey eyes made him very singular.

The questioning he half feared and expected did not come. The Monitress withdrew silently, and presently returning handed a portion of bread. She said, 'Not food for the body, but prayer for the soul is chiefly asked of our charity.'

The boy's face flamed, understanding how he was rebuked. Thanks stumbled on his tongue, and no word to excuse could come; so the wicket closed upon his silence.

Not so closely but that the Monitress could look again, to sigh over that creature of gross wants with angel-bright hair. Surprised, she saw that he was instantly away, and mounted high by the three stone saints. She saw that he touched their feet reverently, that he knelt down, crossed himself and prayed, in a very seemly fashion. She went away, of her charity in prayer for his soul.

He stood there still, after his prayer was finished, and his bread, and looked over the sea long and earnestly; for from that high ledge he saw away to the Isle Sinister, encompa.s.sed with its network of reefs; the tide running low showed them in black lines, outspread like a map below.

An audacious design he revolved, no less than to achieve the Isle Sinister yet. The long lines of reefs forbade his boat, but him they fairly invited, if strong swimming and deft footing could pa.s.s him on, from rock to wave, and from wave to rock, out to the far front of the great ma.s.s where the Warders stood.

He argued with his conscience, that it was no such risk as that he was bound to encounter for regaining the open sea, since this attempt need never commit him past retreat.

Sighting his boat uncovered, without delay he went down. He got it emptied, the leak plugged quite sufficiently for the time, the anchor set out against the return of the tide; then he raced, plunged, and swam for the Isle Sinister.

The first stretch went fairly; he met the rough handling of the waves as a st.u.r.dy game, and opposed with an even heart. Before long he had to recognise grim earnest, and do battle with all his might, so hard were the elements against him and so cruel. The waves hustled and buffeted and hurled; and though he prevailed by slow degrees, the rocks connived for his detriment. Again and again he won to a resting-place, so battered, breathless, and spent, that to nourish fort.i.tude, he needed to consider the steady ascent of the vast rock up from the horizon against his nearing. A moment of elation it was, when, looking back to compare, he noted that the sh.o.r.e cliffs were dwarfed by the nearer proportions of the Isle.