V
He walked slowly over ledges and grass, the long shadows creeping to meet him. The sunlight stole upward, left his face, left the white birch tops, left the fir points, and was gone from the island. The breeze grew cool. And when he stood on the pink ledge above the downward pass to Black Harbor, lights already twinkled from the town, and the northern headlands were black against the afterglow. He stood looking for a while, his joy quiet and deep. Yesterday, and the two years before, he had been a cheerful runaway, letting money and goods lie fallow ashore, rejoicing in bare, hard life and in youth. He had come over to this island to fill an idle day or two,—and here was Helen,—and in the twinkling of an eye life had changed, had grown more complex, serious, yet strangely fortunate. He had given some fugitive thought to such matters. "But I did n't know it would be like this, exactly," he said to himself. Always before he had craved to have things go swiftly ahead, event succeeding event while his mind still tugged forward to the future; but now a little pause in the present, a breathing-space to look happily about in, was his sole desire. It was only his promise to Helen that made him renounce the temptation of smoking his pipe and thinking there on the summit, and go slowly down through the black firs.
For the first few steps he could look down the evergreen glacier, miles down, it seemed, upon the dimly shining harbor, two or three boats at anchor, the dark curve of the bar, and a sombre headland along which a single belated gull went winging swiftly. Then he was immersed in darkness. As he stumbled downward he found his thoughts strangely mingled: Helen with her shining hair confused somehow amid a newborn pity for her father, a new inquisitiveness as to his life and the lives of others, the man with the blue-veined forehead, his pert little brother, the fishermen silent in their cups. "He must have had a hard deal sometime, her father," thought the young man; "and the others, too." Last night they had seemed mere figures in the darkness, the pawns in a game of adventure, the "persons who do not count." To-night he would like to learn more of them.
In this friendly spirit he finally broke into the open, on the hillside behind the huts. The barroom, as he passed, was lighted, but empty, save for the little man waiting before his bottles. Archer went on, through the stink of fish among the gray huts, down to the beach; and here he came upon small groups, some twenty men in all, smoking, talking, and looking down over the long slope of wet pebbles and seaweed to where a few boats waited at the water's edge.
One of the groups he joined, with an odd reluctance. They peered at him through the dusk, with perhaps a little surprise, then smoked and spat in unconcern. They were sober to-night. By their faces—all dark and thin, some vicious, some dull—they were simple men enough, quiet, ordinary, and poor.
"Wha' d'ye git under-runnin' yer trawl, Kellum?" one asked finally, between puffs.
"Nothin' but hakes and skates," answered a sad-faced little old man, whom Archer recognized as the dulse-gatherer of the night before. Back into his yellow-stained beard he thrust his pipe, like a stopper to his mouth.
"I seen him knockin' 'em off," said a young man, with a loud, empty laugh. Then conversation flagged.
"The' must 'a' been thirty-five bar'ls in the Grab- All to-night," said the first speaker. "She did n't hold a tubful o' herrin' last tide. They 're comin' in, I tell ye."
"Thirty-five berrils!" twanged a Yankee voice. "They was forty in that wyre if they was a fish. They 're thick as fiddlers in Tophet."
"Well," replied the other peaceably, "we 'll git some more this flood, spudgin', anyway." Silence fell again.
"Cap'n Kellum, you was sayin'," ventured another, as if resuming a debate which Archer had interrupted, "you was sayin' that the Regina had a centreboard. Now that's no kind o' use on a schooner. She's too big a bo't."
"Too big a bo't fer you, 'cause you'd knock the bottom out of 'er," retorted Kellum placidly. "Some men is proper fools about bo'ts, if they hev been out from Gloucester."
"Haw, haw!" the loud young man shouted in ecstasy.
"That shows how much ye know," the old one went on, suddenly excited. He took out his pipe, and argued with bent fingers pegging at his opponent in the dusk. "The longer yer bo't, the more wood ye got at each end o' the hole to keep 'er solid. The Regina,—if I had the money to buy 'er back, I'd not stay in this stinkin ' cove,—why, I see 'er comin ' out from Freeport with 'er centreboard down, an', by Godfrey, she'd go like a horse!"
"Yeah, she'd go like a horse," assented the Yankee. "That's right."
Another listener wagged his head. "She would, too. She'd go like a horse."
The loud young man laughed again. "I seen 'er," he echoed. "She'd go like—like a horse."
This simile exhausted by popularity, the group was silent once more, with pipes glowing in the dark. A bent figure slouched past them down the beach.
"Hey, Mulb'ry," some one called after it. "Goin' out a'ready?" There was no answer. "Mulb'ry's sore 'cause he didn't git all that bottle o' gin las' night," mocked the Yankee.
Another figure tramped down through the pebbles.
"Muckahi!" came a yell from a neighboring group. "Sebattis, ain't you got that bo't down yet?"
The soft voice of an Indian replied. With quiet command of the vernacular, he advised his questioner to go deeper than Purgatory. Old Kellum straightened his curved shoulders.
"Sebattis," he shouted, "you go git that bo't off 'fore I give ye a lift."
There came the hollow grating of a boat pulled down to the water. "That Injun 'll be takin' charge round here," growled Kellum.
Other figures went crunching downward through the dark, till the footsteps glimmered with phosphorus on the distant seaweed. A newcomer joined the group. "Here's Blue Peter," said the Yankee.
"I was puttin' another bow on my dip-net," explained the deep voice of Archer's young friend. The net, on its long pole, stood high above his head, like some drooping standard obscure in the starlight. "Beaky's b'ot's off a'ready," he added, "an' Joe's, an' Benny's."
The men started down the beach.
"Can I go out with you, Peter?" asked Archer, on the impulse.
The reply came in an odd tone of surprise mingled with something else.
"Oh, that you, sir? Yes, sure, if you'd like." As Archer slipped his money into his shirt, and threw his coat on the beach, he wondered at the touch of respect.
They trooped down together. Under the heavy boots, glow-worm drops of phosphorus filled the wet seaweed with spreading blots of brightness. To the "chock-chock" of oars on thole-pins, some half-dozen boats were already crowding out through the gap in the sea-wall, every keel a running line of blue-gold fire. Among the half-dozen more which now put out, Archer found himself in the bow of Peter's roomy skiff. "Let me row," Hippolyte had begged. So the youngster pulled out ably, while Peter sat in the stern. Liquid gold dripped from the oars; fan-shaped clouds of blue-gold smoke swept astern with each pull; and to Archer, in the bow, seeing the dim shining of the oarblades, the bright arrowhead of ripples that spread from the cut-water behind him, it seemed that they must be rowing forward into the lights of a great town. So strong was the delusion that he turned his head, and was surprised to find only the looming of the sea-wall as the boat slipped through, the blackness of the ocean outside, the running lines of golden fire under the other keels.
Their small flotilla moved somewhere to the southeast, hugging the shore under the cliffs, skirting the bunts of a weir or two, rugged blacknesses picked out with lapping phosphorus round the foot of the poles. A deep, irregular drumming started up ahead, like horses running confusedly across a bridge, or empty trucks rumbling over a stony road.
"What's that?" said Archer.
"They 're spudgin'," replied Peter, from the stern. "Show him, boy."
The youngster began jumping his oars about on the gunwale. The boats astern took it up, till the wide air rumbled with the heavy drumming and the echoes of the cliffs.
"It 'll make 'em rise," Peter explained. "You take the oars, sir, and Hippolyte, you come down stern here. I 'll go in the bow."
They crawled past each other over the thwarts. Archer soon caught the knack of drumming and rowing by turns. The boy pounded the sides with both fists.
"See," called Peter suddenly. "There's some."
The water was stirred into millions of tiny golden globules; golden streaks shot in crisscross multitudes, like tiny comets smothered in deep sea. Peter plied his dip-net swiftly. With a swash and a thump, some half-barrel of herring fell aboard, in a writhing, flipping heap, alight with phosphorus.
More splashing, and a few more tumbled in. "’T won't do," grunted Peter. "Not 's many 's they seem. Head 'er out again, sir. They 're tryin' to drive 'em—with the torches."
Archer turned the boat, and pulled out to sea, until the order came to turn again.
"I 'll light the dragon," said Peter. "This is against the law, ye know, sir, but the law ain't got 's long an arm 's they say."
With a crackle of birch-bark and the smell of burning kerosene, a light flared up as if their bow had been on fire. Other torches flared far along the water, coursing shoreward till the giant shadows of men and rocks tossed and swung high on the dim red crags.
"Keep 'er headed just as she is," commanded Peter. "Now pull like the devil, sir."
Archer obeyed till the sweat trickled down his forehead. "A little faster, sir—a little faster"—his captain kept urging; and Archer tugged with all his young muscles. Other boats flamed alongside of them. "We 've caught up, going famously," he thought.
Just why it happened he never could have told. Suddenly a torch-lighted bow swerved astern of them,—nearly ran them down; and he saw above the smoky flame the goblin face of Beaky Lehane,—the flat, cartilaginous nose, the wide-spaced teeth, the evil little eyes, a face distorted in a mania of drunken passion.
"Git out o' my way!" he raved, with a fierce oath.
The boy in the stern half rose in terror. Behind the grinning face a hand left the pole of a dip-net, and tried to catch Lehane by the shoulder. But in the same instant he swung out savagely with the torch. The iron-shod stake crashed down on the head of the little boy, who fell with a kind of whimper into the bottom of the boat. Archer, rising in a rage, heard Peter roar at his back, and felt him leap astern. But he himself had the better place, and swung the oar like an axe with all his strength. It struck Lehane with a wooden resonance and a tingling shock that ran through Archer's forearms. Both boats upset in a souse of phosphorus.
The water was shockingly cold. Squirting a salt and golden jet from his mouth, he looked about. Two black hands, the fingers spread stiffly apart, sank in the boiling witch-fire. They were too large to be the boy's. Next instant he bumped into Peter, whose face was smeared with an unearthly glow as if rubbed with wet matches, and who held the little body under one arm, while he lashed out the other through the blue-lighted spray.
"No, no!" gasped Peter. "You can't help! Swim ashore! I 've got him. They can all swim. Get out! Swim to the ledge, anyway. Go on, man. Oh, my God!" He was sobbing as he swam.
Archer could see other men splashing lustily away in luminous patches.
"It's every man for himself," he thought, and struck out vaguely for the shore. Through the cold, shining water he swam, through shoals of fish quick and startling to the touch, and at last pulled himself out, shedding glow-worm drops, upon the round stones of the sea-wall. Here he waited. But by the torches, the other boats seemed to be looking for something. He dimly saw men pulled aboard, and still the search went on. No one came to join him. Then he remembered a little ledge offshore, bare at low tide. The others must have swum to that. He grew very cold as he waited; still the torches hovered aimlessly in the distance; and at last, with teeth chattering in the night air of autumn, he clambered over the breakneck stones, followed the inside curve of the wall, until, after many falls and infinite groping, he stumbled upon his coat. Carefully drying his hands in the beach-grass, he hunted matches out of the pocket. Old grass, broken fish-flakes, and cedar shavings from weir-poles, soon snapped and blazed on the pebbles. He sat drying himself as well as might be, and waited for news of this sudden and strange mishap. He was uneasy over the stroke he had dealt with the oar; yet the thought of the little boy braced his conscience at the same time that it made his heart sink.
In these thoughts by the fire, growing warm and sleepy, he was startled by a growling voice.
"Who the hell are you, buildin' fires on my beach?" The speaker was a man of middle height, prodigiously broad and bulky, with a wide red face in which the eyes were so staring and the big red nostrils so far apart that he had the aspect of a bull. As the question came rumbling again in a thick bass. Archer noticed that the hands, in the firelight, were fat, freckled, and immensely powerful, like the hand thrust in at the barroom door. This, then, was the Old Man, and, by the resemblance to the face at which Archer had swung his oar, it was Beaky Lehane's father.
"Oh, go to the devil," he answered, too cold, and tired, and bitter to let any man stare at him so. "This isn't your beach, anyway. It's Mr. Powell's. Go stare at somebody else."
"Well, by the"—wheezed the man, and stopped, cut speechless by wonder and rage. Then the hulking body lurched nearer.
"Look here!" cried Archer, jumping up and shaking his fist. He had lost his temper, as in a bad dream. "Be off with you! This is my beach as much as yours, if it comes to that. I 've lighted a fire, and I'm going to sit alone by it. Alone, do you hear? You 're only a squatter. Well, here I squat, too. You'd better go look after your son,—he's got himself into a pretty mess, and serve him good and right!"
He expected that on the heels of this they would be rolling down the pebbles in a clinch. Instead, the big man breathed hard with a startled puff, and asked anxiously:—
"Where? Where is he? What was it?"
"Oh, over there," said Archer wearily, pointing by guess toward the foot of the cliffs. "Been a fight—overboard—I don't know, go look for yourself."
The man reeled off into the dark. Archer was so tired that he merely felt relieved, as from a bore. He piled the fire till it blazed high, dried himself fairly well, and waited sleepily. Still nothing appeared from harbor mouth or sea-wall. Suddenly it flashed through his drowsy brain that he was expected back at Powell's that night. This bit of civilized obligation came like something laughable, out of some other person's life. It was in a droll dismay that he hurried off up the hill.
Once, through a gap in the black layers of the fir branches, he caught the shine of lights far below. "Let them go till morning. I 'll be back," he thought. Perhaps the little boy was not hurt so much, after all. Like one in a heavy dream he climbed wearily over the hill and downward through starlit fields to the house.
A candle, burning low, waited for him in the little brown hall. He locked the door without a sound. "What a mess for a visitor!" he pondered ruefully. But the thought that Helen was in the same house, even though she were asleep, came to him like a comfort.