The Cruise of the Shining Light

“An’ it–it–must be–”

“True, sir.”

My uncle sighed; and–for I know his loving-kindness–’twas a sigh that spoke a pain at heart.

“It must be true,” reiterated the wretched parson, now, it seemed, beset by doubt. “It must be true!”

“Why, by the dear God ye serve, parson!” roared my uncle, with healthy spirit, superior in faith, “I knows ’tis true, Bible or St. John’s noospaper!”

Aunt Esther put her gray head in at the door. “Is the kettle b’ilin’?” says she.

The kettle was boiling.

“Ah!” says she–and disappeared.

“‘Though I walk,’” the parson repeated, his thin, freckled hands clasped, “‘through the valley of the shadow of death!’”

There was no doctor at Twist Tickle: so the parson lay dead–poor man!–of the exposure of that night, within three days, in the house of Parson Stump…

XV

A MEASURE OF PRECAUTION

With the threats of the gray stranger in mind, my uncle now began without delay to refit the Shining Light: this for all the world as though ’twere a timely and reasonable thing to do. But ’twas neither timely, for the fish were running beyond expectation off Twist Tickle, nor reasonable, for the Shining Light had been left to rot and foul in the water of Old Wives’ Cove since my infancy. Whatever the pretence he made, the labor was planned and undertaken in anxious haste: there was, indeed, too much pretence–too suave an explanation, a hand too aimless and unsteady, an eye too blank, too large a flow of liquor–for a man who suffered no secret perturbation.

“In case o’ accident, Dannie,” he explained, as though ’twere a thing of no importance. “Jus’ in case o’ accident. I wouldn’t be upset,” says he, “an I was you.”

“Never you fear,” says I.

“No,” says he; “you’ll stand by, Dannie!”

“That I will,” I boasted.

“Ye can’t delude me,” says he. “I knows you. I bet ye you’ll stand by, whatever comes of it.”

’Tis quite beyond me to express my gratification. ’Twas a mysterious business altogether–this whim to make the Shining Light ready for sea. I could make nothing of it at all. And why, thinks I, should the old craft all at once be troubled by all this pother of block and tackle and hammer and saw? ’Twas beyond me to fathom; but I was glad to discover, whatever the puzzle, that my uncle’s faith in the lad he had nourished was got real and large. ’Twas not for that he bred me; but ’twas the only reward–and that a mean, poor one–he might have. And he was now come near, it seemed, to dependence upon me; there was that in his voice to show it–a little trembling, a little hopelessness, a little wistfulness: a little weakening of its quality of wrathful courage.

“You’ll stand by,” he had said; and, ay, but it fair saddened me to feel the appeal of his aging spirit to my growing years! There comes a time, no doubt, in the relationship of old and young, when the guardian is all at once changed into the cherished one. ’Tis a tragical thing–a thing to be resolved, to be made merciful and benign, only by the acquiescence of the failing spirit. There is then no interruption–no ripple upon the flowing river of our lives. As for my uncle, I fancy that he kept watch upon me, in those days, to read his future, to discover his achievement, in my disposition. Stand by? Ay, that I would! And being young I sought a deed to do: I wished the accident might befall to prove me.

“Accident?” cries I. “Never you fear!”

“I’ll not fear,” says he, “that ye’ll not stand by.”

“Ay,” I complained; “but never you fear at all!”

“I’ll not fear,” he repeated, with a little twinkle of amusement, “that ye’ll not stand by, as best ye’re able.”

I felt now my strength–the greatness of my body and the soaring courage of my soul. This in the innocent way of a lad; and by grace of your recollection I shall not be blamed for it. Fourteen and something more? ’Twas a mighty age! What did it lack, thinks I, of power and wisdom? To be sure I strutted the present most haughtily and eyed the future with as saucy a flash as lads may give. The thing delighted my uncle; he would chuckle and clap me on the back and cry, “That’s very good!” until I was wrought into a mood of defiance quite ridiculous. But still ’tis rather grateful to recall: for what’s a lad’s boasting but the honest courage of a man? I would serve my uncle; but ’twas not all: I would serve Judith. She was now come into our care: I would serve her.

“They won’t nothin’ hurt she!” thinks I.

I am glad to recall that this boyish love took a turn so chivalrous…

When ’twas noised abroad that my uncle was to refit the Shining Light, Twist Tickle grew hilarious. “Laugh an you will, lads,” says my uncle, then about the business of distributing genial invitations to the hauling-down. “’Tis a gift o’ the good Lord t’ be able t’ do it. The ol’ girl out there haven’t a wonderful lot to admire, an’ she’s nowhere near t’ windward o’ forty; but I’ll show ye, afore I’m through, that she’ll stand by in a dirty blow, an I jus’ asks she t’ try. Ye’ll find, lads,” says he, “when ye’re so old as me, an’ sailed t’ foreign parts, that they’s more to a old maid or a water-side widow than t’ many a lass o’ eighteen. The ol’ girl out there haves a mean allowance o’ beauty, but she’ve a character that isn’t talked about after dark; an’ when I buys her a pair o’ shoes an’ a new gown, why, ecod! lads, ye’ll think she’s a lady. ’Tis one way,” says he, “that ladies is made.”

This occurred at Eli Flack’s stage of an evening when a mean, small catch was split and the men-folk were gathered for gossip. ’Twas after sunset, with fog drifting in on a lazy wind: a glow of red in the west. Our folk were waiting for the bait-skiff, which had long been gone for caplin, skippered, this time, by the fool of Twist Tickle.

“Whatever,” says my uncle, “they’ll be a darn o’ rum for ye, saved and unsaved, when she’ve been hauled down an’ scraped. An’ will ye come t’ the haulin’-down?”

That they would!

“I knowed ye would,” says my uncle, as he stumped away, “saved an’ unsaved.”

The bait-skiff conch-horn sounded. The boat had entered the narrows. ’Twas coming slowly through the quiet evening–laden with bait for the fishing of to-morrow. Again the horn–echoing sweetly, faintly, among the hills of Twin Islands. ’Twas Moses Shoos that blew; there was no mistaking the long-drawn blast.

Ah, well! she needed the grooming, this Shining Light, whatever the occasion. ’Twas scandalous to observe her decay in idleness. She needed the grooming–this neglected, listless, slatternly old maid of a craft. A craft of parts, to be sure, as I had been told; but a craft left to slow wreck, at anchor in quiet water. Year by year, since I could remember the days of my life, in summer and winter weather she had swung with the tides or rested silent in the arms of the ice. I had come to Twist Tickle aboard, as the tale of my infancy ran, on the wings of a nor’east gale of some pretensions; and she had with heroic courage weathered a dirty blow to land me upon the eternal rocks of Twin Islands. For this–though but an ancient story, told by old folk to engage my presence in the punts and stages of our harbor–I loved her, as a man, Newfoundland born and bred, may with propriety love a ship.

There are maids to be loved, no doubt, and ’tis very nice to love them, because they are maids, fashioned in a form most lovely by the good Lord, given a heart most childlike and true and loving and tenderly dependent, so that, in all the world, as I know, there is nothing so to be cherished with a man’s last breath as a maid. I have loved a maid and speak with authority. But there is also a love of ships, though, being inland-born, you may not know it. ’Tis a surpassing faith and affection, inspired neither by beauty nor virtue, but wilful and mysterious, like the love of a maid. ’Tis much the same, I’m thinking: forgiving to the uttermost, prejudiced beyond the perception of any fault, savagely loyal. ’Twas in this way, at any rate, that my uncle regarded the Shining Light; and ’twas in this way, too, with some gentler shades of admiration, proceeding from an apt imagination, that I held the old craft in esteem.

“Dannie,” says my uncle, presently, as we walked homeward, “ye’ll ’blige me, lad, by keepin’ a eye on the mail-boat.”

I wondered why.

“You keep a eye,” he whispered, winking in a way most grave and troubled, “on that there little mail-boat when she lands her passengers.”

“For what?” I asked.

“Brass buttons,” says he.

’Twas now that the cat came out of the bag. Brass buttons? ’Twas the same as saying constables. This extraordinary undertaking was then a precaution against the accident of arrest. ’Twas inspired, no doubt, by the temper of that gray visitor with whom my uncle had dealt over the table in a fashion so surprising. I wondered again concerning that amazing broil, but to no purpose; ’twas ’beyond my wisdom and ingenuity to involve these opposite natures in a crime that might make each tolerable to the other and advantage them both. ’Twas plain, at any rate, that my uncle stood in jeopardy, and that of no trivial sort: else never would he have employed his scant savings upon the hull of the Shining Light. It grieved me to know it. ’Twas most sad and most perplexing. ’Twas most aggravating, too: for I must put no questions, but accept, in cheerful serenity, the revelations he would indulge me with, and be content with that.

“An’ if ye sees so much as a single brass button comin’ ashore,” says he, “ye’ll give me a hail, will ye not, whereever I is?”

This I would do.

“Ye never can tell,” he added, sadly, “what’s in the wind.”

“I’m never allowed t’ know,” said I.

He was quick to catch the complaint. “Ye’re growin’ up, Dannie,” he observed; “isn’t you, lad?”

I fancied I was already grown.

“Ah, well!” says he; “they’ll come a time, lad, God help ye! when ye’ll know.”

“I wisht ’twould hasten,” said I.

“I wisht ’twould never come at all,” said he.