The Unknown Sea Part 4

'And you've broken Philip's head within two minutes of touching, I believe.'

''Twas done out of no ill-will,' protested Christian. 'A dozen swarmed over, for all the world as if she were just carrion for them to rummage like crabs. So I hitched one out again--the biggest by preference,--and he slipped as you called to speed me off here. If he took it ill, 'tis no great matter to square.'

'I would for this once he or any were big enough to break your head for you as well as you deserve,' said Giles savagely.

'We're of a mind there,' said Christian, meekly and soberly.

Giles perversely took this as a scoff, and fumed.

'Here has the wife been in a taking along of you; never saying a word, going about like a stiff statue, with a face to turn a body against his victuals; and I saying where was the sense? had you never before been gone over a four-and-twenty hours? And now to fix her, clean without a cause, you bring back a hole to have let in Judgment-day. Now will come moils to drive a man daft.

'And to round off, by what I hear down yonder, never a civil answer but a broken head is all you'll give. "Look you there now," says Philip, and I heard him, and he has a hand clapped to his crown, and he points at your other piece of work, and he says, says Philip: "Look you there now, _he_ was never born to drown," and he laughs in his way. Well, I thought he was not far out, take it either way, when I see how you have brought the poor thing in mishandled. It pa.s.ses me how you kept her afloat and brought her through. Let's hear.'

Though Giles might rate, there was never a rub. Years before the old man and the boy had come to a footing strangely fraternal, set there by a common despair of satisfying the strict code of Lois.

Again Christian shook his head. Giles reached up a kindly hand to his shoulder.

'What's amiss, boy? It's new for you to show a cross grain. A poor spirit it is that can't take blame that is due.'

Christian laughed, angry and sore.

'O Dad!' he said, 'I must blame myself most of all. Have your say. Give me a taste of the sort of stuff I may have to swallow. But ask nothing.'

Giles rubbed his grey locks in perplexity, and stared at the perverse boy.

'It can't be a venture--no,' he thought aloud. 'Nor none hinted that.

'Well, then; you've been and taken her between the Tortoises, and bungled in the narrows.'

Christian opened his mouth to shout derision at the charge, gasped, and kept silence.

'There's one pretty guess to go abroad. Here's another: You've gone for the Land's End, sheared within the Sinister buoys, and got right payment.

That you can't let pa.s.s.'

'Why not that?' Christian said, hoping his countenance showed no guilt.

'Trouble will come if you don't turn that off.'

'Trouble! Let them prate at will.'

'Well,' complained Giles, 'I won't say I am past work, but I will own that for a while gone I had counted on the near days when I might lie by for a bit.'

'But, Dad, that's so, all agreed, so soon as I should have earned a boat of my own, you should have earned holiday for good.'

'Then, you fool, speak clear, and fend off word of the Sinister buoys, or not a soul but me will you get aboard for love or money.'

Eager pride wanted to speak. Giles would not let it.

'You think a mere breath would drive none so far. Ay, but you are not one of us, and that can't be forgot with your outlandish hair and eyes. Then your strength outdoes every man's; then you came by the sea, whence none know, speaking an unknown tongue; and then----' Giles paused.

The heart of the alien swelled and shrank. He said very low: 'So I have no friends!'

'Well,' Giles admitted, 'you would be better liked but for a way you have sometimes of holding your head and shutting your mouth.'

He mimicked till Christian went red.

'Do I so? Well,' he said, with a vexed laugh, 'here's a penance ready against conceit. The Tortoises! I indeed! and I must go humble and dumb.'

'Such tomfoolery!' cried Giles, exasperated. 'And why? why? There's something behind; you've let out as much. I don't ask--there, keep your mystery if you will; but set yourself right on one point--you will--for my sake you will.'

Christian looked at the old man, bent, shrunken, halt, and smiled out of bland confidence.

'The burden shall not light on you, Dad. And has no one told you what I have done single-handed? just for display of her excellent parts, worked the boat and the nets too, and hauled abreast of any. Not a boat that watched but cheered the pair of us.'

'I heard, I heard,' said Giles ungraciously. 'A show off for an hour or two. What's that to work week in, week out?'

Christian was looking aside. He saw the head of Lois leaning out, attentive to all.

He took a heavy heart out of her sight. 'She does not trust me,' he said of her face.

CHAPTER V

Scattered far and wide over the fishing-grounds lay the coral fleet.

There, a solitary, went Christian to a far station. Yet not as an outcast. He had tried his strength against his world, and the victory inclined to him. For a week he had been baited hard and cut off, as Giles had forewarned; and through it all he had kept his own counsel, and his temper, and his place with the fleet, defiant, confident, independent.

And luck attended his nets. Therefore another week saw unsubstantial suspicion waning; scoffs had their day and died of inanition; and the boy's high-hearted flouting of a hard imposition annulled its rigour. Not a few now would be fain to take their chance with him. For Giles's consolation he had not rejected all advances, yet as often as not he still went alone, declining another hand. Thrift and honest glorying in his strength so inclined him, though a perverse parade may not be disclaimed. Yet none of these accounted for a distinct gladness for solitude that grew unawares.

What colour were her eyes? The moonlight had withheld certainty, and he had not given his mind to it then. Dark, he knew, to match her hair: rare eyes, like pansies dewy in shade?

Down swung with their swags of netting the leaded cross-beams from his hands into the shadowed water, and its dark, lucid green was faced with eddies. Down, deeper than the fathoming of his eyes, plunged his spirit, and walked the sea's mysteries in vain imaginings. Mechanically he set the boat crawling while he handled the guys. A trail of weed swam dim below; it entangled. His wits said weed, nothing but weed, but his pulse leapt. Day after day, not to be schooled, it had quickened so to half-expectancy of a glimpse at some unguessed secret of the deeps. He was glad to be alone.

Body and mind he bent to the draught, till the cross-beams rose, came out dripping up to the gunwale, and neatly to rest. A ruddy tangle hung among the meshes. He paused before out-sorting to resolve an importunate doubt: was this more than mere luck to his nets? It was not the first time he had had occasion to debate an unanswerable question. The blank westward seas, near or far, returned no intelligence to his eager survey, nothing to signify he was not quit of obligation.

A witch she was, of an evil breed, one to be avoided, pitied, and abhorred. No conscious impulse moved Christian to seek her again, though her beauty was a wonder not to be forgotten, and she had dealt with him so kindly. Yet of the contrary elements of that strange encounter the foul stood unchanged, but the fair had suffered blight, because from the small return demanded of him his mother's heart had taken hurt. A full confession would indeed but change the current of distrust. He sighed, yet smiled a little; he would have to own that a wish persisted to know the colour of those eyes.

From the sweat and ache of toil he paused a moment to see where he lay.

Under a faint breath from the south he had been drifting; the fleet also had drifted to leeward.

Within a grand enclosure, satisfying coolness and peace, and splendid shade reigned, for no man's solace and reward.

The sun rode high, and the west breathed in turn, bringing a film of haze. A delicate blue veil, that no eye could distinguish from the melting blue of sea and heaven, an evanescent illusion of distance, hung, displacing the real.

Above the boy's head a seagull dipped and sailed. It swooped low with a wild note, 'Diadyomene, Diadyomene,' and flew west.

Christian upturned a startled face. The drifting fleet had vanished; he was alone with the gracious elements.