CAPTAIN CHRISTY
I
The harbor, brimful with the tide, was blue as morning sky, and motionless as high summer clouds. Along the grass-grown wharves,—silver-gray piles which crumbled at the ends into a jackstraw heap of rotting logs,—there was no human stir. Over one gray shanty the red ensign, a fold showing the yellow crown of Her Majesty's customs, hung limp from the staff. The thirty-foot flood had moved in imperceptibly, and lay, from the wharves to the distant islands, like a floor of steel. The masts of pinkies at their moorings plunged in deep, straight lines of black reflection, save where some profound, mysterious tremor of the tide shivered the mirror, and sent the phantom spars in wriggling fragments to the depths. A lone sandpiper, skimming the surface, mated with a flying shadow; and two or three, wheeling together, doubled into a little flock that swerved, divided, and rejoined. The long water-front of gray houses, and behind them the treeless, empty street of pink sand, lay asleep in peaceful desolation.
The hum of voices, however, came from on board a small two-masted schooner made fast to a mouldering wharf. And on the sunny side of the mainsail, that was half hoisted to dry in the morning air, sat a little group of men in varied postures of idleness. A tawny-haired youth in a Scotch cap straddled the rail, spitting overside, kicking the woodwork sonorously, and fingering off the flakes of blistered paint. The others, all old men, basked on the cabin roof, sat on the bleached and ancient boom, perched on a coil of frayed hawser, or tilted back on chairs and boxes. All, except one, were men of a bygone generation, whose faces, placid and weather-seamed, and whose beards, of every cut, from the white, wide-forked whisker to the fiery chin-strap of Ireland, marked them for men who kept the ways of the old country. The one exception sat in a kitchen chair by the wheel,—a long-limbed old man, of quick eye and humorous wrinkles, by every feature a Yankee among Canadians. His big, brown, cramped hands, tattooed with a blue five-spot at the fork of either thumb, whittled busily at a peg.
"Harbor-master sayed so, too," the old man with the forked beard was declaring, from his perch on the mainboom. "Sayed, ain't no vessel o' tonnage worth countun' ever clearrs out o' this porrt nowadays, or enterrs. An' it lies right in my own memory when they used to come in, brigs an' ships an' all, crowdud: carrgoes an' settlerrs!" The speaker waved his hand slowly, as in admiration of a broad picture. "An' the Loodianah would be sailun' from Liverrpool, bang up again this w'arf as ever was, a-landin' swarrms; an' Danny Eustis had a barr an' lodgun's right on ut, there where the timberr's sunk in. Times has changed." He sighed, and letting his head sink, spread out the white flanges of his beard across his chest.
The youth who straddled the rail turned his freckled face toward the company, grinning malignly, as one adept in putting his finger on the main trouble.
"This schooner's the only thing bigger'n a pinky that's seaworthy in the who!' bloomin' harbor," he sneered. "An' she ain't left her pier fer—how long is it, Cap'n Christy?—fer"—
The old Yankee at the wheel caught him up.
"Look here. Master Kibben," he said mildly, "I'd ruther you'd let that paint alon' there on that rail. Wear an' tear 'll take it off in time, 'thout you pickin' at it." The captain turned again to his contemporaries, sweeping their semicircle with candid blue eyes. "I hate to see folks frettin' an' piddlin' with their fingers," he explained. "If a man ain't anything to make, let him set still an' not distroy."
The youth, abashed, was left to drop pebbles overside and watch the circles that widened on the water and set the sunlight fluttering in oozy, volatile spots of brightness under the vessel's quarter. But his question had started other circles widening in the conversation.
"Why do n't you let her out to some one?" asked an old man who sat, with upright dignity, on the coil of hawsers. Of stiffer carriage than the others, and dressed in worn tweeds, with a stock collar, a rusty black string tie, and across his stomach a small cable of blond hair braided into a watch-guard, he had an air of faded and uncouth smartness. His formal face, red nose, and smug white mutton-chop whiskers, wore the slow importance of the old school.
"Why don't you let her out?" he repeated. "Provided you 're not going to sea yourself, Captain Christy, if you understand me."
The captain understood. He bent over his whittling till only his white beard showed below the brim of the rustic straw hat. Now he looked up, quick and shrewd. The boy in the Scotch cap was grinning once more. Deliberately the captain pulled his tall body from the chair, walked to the cabin door, fitted the hasp on the staple, thrust in the half-finished peg, eyed it with displeasure, and tugged it out. Then he turned to the company. Under shaggy white eyebrows, a curious fold of wrinkles in the upper lids gave his eyes a triangular appearance. They were very blue, and sharp, and whimsical.
"Mr. Beatty," he said to his questioner, "ye ain't cal'latin' to let any rooms to boarders an' mealers up to your house, are ye?"
A slow shock ran through the group. This question to the chief gentleman, of the chief residence, in the seaport! Mr. Beatty, outraged, sat glaring and pursing his mouth rapidly in a bewildered effort to frame the reply tremendous.
"No?" the captain resumed kindly. "No. Now I thought ye would n't, somehow. Well, ye see, same way I would n't let no one else take this schooner a v'yage. She's mine, has be'n so thirty-seven year; an' Zing Turner an' me has sailed her everywheres coastwise, an' for a bo't o' her tonnage, consid'able deepwater." The captain's glance wandered off, across the sunlit floor of the harbor, past the dark fir-crowned islets, toward the dazzling path that led to open sea. "No, sir," he concluded calmly, "if I can't take her out, no one else ain't goin' to." He sat down again by the wheel, and cut critical shavings from the peg; and when Mr. Beatty would have pursued the subject further, he stopped it coldly. "If she went to sea, we all would n't be sittin' here enjoyin' life, for one thing."
Feet scuffed along the deck, and a new-comer, skirting the cabin, halted in the open space. He was a brown little man, of sun-dried aspect; under a drooping black rat-tail mustache his teeth gleamed in a row of golden "crowns;" and the dismal, hollow contour of his face seemed to denote a weary cynicism, until one saw the dull good-humor of his eyes. Sunken and opaque, they contained a smoky gleam, like bits of isinglass.
"Mornin', cap'n," he saluted, with an auriferous grin. "Say, the' ain't no weeck in the big lantrun. Kin I git one ashore, s'pose?" He spoke as if this schooner, idle for years, had just tied up at some bewildering foreign quay.
"Well, Zing," responded his captain, "you'd ought to know by this time. But I guess you can git a weeck;—what between Tommy Carroll's rum-shop an' the town lockup, I guess you might git a fortni't."
A heavy chuckle moved round the company, ending in a belated explosion of laughter from Bunty Gildersleeve of the forked beard. The mate was puzzled, then aggrieved.
"I don't touch a drop, cap'n," he appealed; "you know I don't, well enough."
"Course ye don't, Zing," the captain soothed him. "That was a joke."
The other returned serenely to his proposal:—
"Well, then I 'll git one fer the lantrun?"
"Do so, Zing." The captain, solemnly ratifying it, returned to his peg.
The lean little man hopped from rail to wharf, and shuffled off toward the street.
After him Mr. Beatty stared with disapproval. "There goes the biggest fool in town," he dogmatized.
"Oh, no, he ain't," objected Captain Christy. "Beggin' your pardon, he ain't. The' 's lots bigger fools, an' worse men, than Zwinglius Turner. He ain't quick, but he sticks by ye. He's ben with me ever sence he was a orphan boy. An' while he ain't no navigator, he's able, for things aboard ship, ropes an' taykle an' gear, right under his nose. O' course"—the captain smiled indulgence. "Well, Zing Turner has ben sailin' round here an'—elsewhere,"—the captain waved generously towards the world,—"sailin' round for over twenty year, an' he don't know a landmark yet 'cept Hood's Folly Light, and that's because his uncle kep' it all his life. I says to him one mornin' 'fore daylight, 'Where's she layin', Zing?' an' says he, 'I-god, I dunno, cap'n, guess we 're off the Oak Bay River.' We was just passing L'Etang!"
His listeners laughed, slowly, incredulously.
"He don't so much as know their names yet," Captain Christy went on. "But for all that"—
The hollow bumping of an oar, and a hail from alongside, stopped the defense of Zwinglius.
"On deck, Rapscull'on!" croaked a hoarse voice. "Finnan haddies, all ready for the butter! Lobsters, praise the Lord, that 'll put hair on yer chest and joy in yer soul! Cap'n-Christy-God-bless-ye-brother-how-de-do?—Fresh clams, baked yisterday and dug to-morrer!—Ahoy!"
"Fisherman Gale's in," said the captain.
The hoarse roar, which shattered the silence of the harbor, and reverberated along the water-front of gray shanties, came from a grizzled fisherman sculling a boat shoreward. Bending to his sweep, straddling a thwart smeared with blood and scales, a filthy giant in the bright sun, he stared up at the schooner's company, with black eyes shining fiery from an obscene tangle of gray elf-locks.
"The Good Lord bless ye," he croaked with a voice of despair. "May He keep ye all, bretherin. Haddick?"
The boat, rocking past, left a wake of ripples and a smell of fish stealing over the pale, hot surface of the harbor; the fisherman, bellowing to the empty street ahead, shot his offal-smeared craft under the Rapscallion's bowsprit, and made fast beside a rickety stair that mounted from the water into a patch of dusty burdocks. The men on the schooner left their host, the captain, and dispersed slowly, each one rising, stretching, clambering to the foot of the shrouds for a clumsy leap to the broken string-piece of the pier. Lazy and old, they straggled away to group themselves again in the burdock patch; unmoved by the fisherman's harangue, they deliberated over their fish for dinner; and presently, in a slow and scattered file of ones and twos, through the wide, glaring street of pink sand, moved homeward, each swinging by a bit of rope-yarn a scarlet lobster or a pale, limp haddock.
All but Captain Christy: he remained leaning with elbows on the schooner's rail, staring hard into the green depths, where sunfish wavered past, vague disks of bending pulp. Once he shook his head as if something would never do; once he cast a slow survey over his vessel, from stern davits to round, apple bow, from the gray old planks underfoot up to the drooping dog-vane; but for a long time he leaned motionless, looking down at a black tress of seaweed in the water. At last, with something like a sigh, he turned away, and walked over to the cabin door.
He was staring at the finished peg in the staple, when Zwinglius Turner swung himself aboard, flapping a white strip of lantern-wick, and grinning.
"Zing," the captain began with a stern face; then stopped, and winked as if a weighty joke were to follow. "Zing, that's a fine mornin's work for a grown man."
The mate broadened his shining grin, much as a sleepy dog hastens the wagging of his tail at a word from the one beloved master. Then, after labor:—
"Better 'n nothin', cap'n," he retorted cheerfully.
"Yes, that's it," said Captain Christy; "better 'n nothin'. Well, let's lower away, Mr. Turner."
Together they lowered the dark mainsail, and made all snug. Deft, serious, a transfigured helper, Zwinglius was everywhere at once, working with swift economy of motion. When he had carried the boxes and chair into the cabin, shut the door, and hammered the peg home with his fist, he turned to find his captain waiting at the side. The old man ran his big, brown hand, in one passionate gesture, down over his bearded cheeks. Under the jutting penthouse fringe of white brows, his eyes were like dark pools with fire in them,—brightness playing over depth.
"Look here, you Zing Turner," he demanded harshly. "What d 'ye mean by stayin' round here, marooned-like in this sort o' town, doin' nothin'? For four year you ain't done a tap, 'cept this kind o' foolin'—playin' at ship—for four year. What d 'ye mean?"
The poor mate was stunned. He shifted his feet, looked up, down, and sidewise, fear slowly erasing his smile.
"Why, cap'n," he stammered. "Why, cap'n"— This sudden examination of a latent leading motive seemed to torture him. "Why—I dunno—why, I was jes' waitin' round till we went another voyage, cap'n—jes' kind o’"—
"That's it!" cried the old man. "There ye are, again, waitin' round an' waitin' round. 'T ain't no use, an' you know it. This schooner 'll never put out no more, nor me neither. What's the use o' pretendin' to wait? You know how She feels about it."
The tirade stopped short, the fierce look vanished. "Ye see, Zing," he continued, with gentle gravity, "we could n't go, very well. She would n't want to be left, sick an' all. Women hev some queer idees, an' hev to be humored. Ain't like ships. You 'ain't no wife. Zing, now, hev ye?—An' I 've kind o' promised.—It's stay here, I guess."
As they left the wharf, a bell, somewhere in the town, broke into loud clamor. At the sound, a rusty Newfoundland dog, sole figure in the street, roused himself from a sunbath on the pink sand, howled funereally, and slunk off among the gray buildings.
"Noon—most dinner time," said Captain Christy. "Good-by, Zing. Same time to-morrer mornin'?"
"Yessir," said Zwinglius cheerfully. The sore subject would not be touched on for another fortnight. Where land and wharf met the two men parted.
"Pollick, cap'n?" roared Fisherman Gale, from his deserted market among the broken fish-flakes. He mopped his forehead with a red bandanna, then whisked away the flies. "Pollick? Mackereel?—Glory amen! Shell clams an' finnan haddie! God bless ye, brother Christy! For His mercy indooreth forever!" he chanted in a hoarse rapture, to the silent village. "Satisfieth my mouth with good things, so that my youth is renooed like—like the American eagle, hey, cap'n?—I al'ays loved the dear old stars 'n' strikes. What 'll ye take home this noon? An' how's yer wife, that blessed sister?—lookin' young an' handsome as a wax doll, but a dear true follerer."
The captain approached, dredging from a pocket his meagre handful of coins. He eyed the dirty fanatic with a mild pity.
"What's a haddie to-day, Cap'n Gale?" he said. "The Black Hawk minds her helium jest as clever, I s'pose?" And, by the habit of patience, he listened through the fisherman's wild outpouring,—each symptom of his crazy schooner, and body, and soul.
… "Doubts an' backslidin's, an' turrible cracklin's in the drums o' my head, like fish a-fryin'. But I persevere a-sailin' alone, an' keep her on the lubber p'int for heaven!" Gale concluded, and mopped his dirty beard.
Captain Christy nodded. Thrusting a big forefinger through the rope-yarn ring at the apex of the finnan haddie, and swinging his purchase meditatively, he moved away.
"Hold her to it, cap'n," he assented gravely. "That's the course for all of us."
In a grass-grown lane among the side- streets he clicked a wooden gate behind him, traversed a gravel path between two rows of conch shells, and stood upon his own doorsteps. At the sound of his tread a woman's voice called fretfully from within the house:—
"So you 're back at last, after your gadding and gossiping? Time, I should say! Hope you 've enjoyed yourself, because I 've got a piece of news for you."
The captain shook his gray head wearily. On the iron bootscraper he cleaned his soles of imaginary dirt, and then entered the "front hall," stepping lightly on the checkered oil-cloth.
In the sitting-room, from her pillowed chair beside a window-sill lined with vials, his wife turned on him her heavy, sallow face and malevolent eyes. To her hooked nose she held a camphor bottle, which she fitfully lowered and clapped into position again.
"I've made up my mind," she declared, between whiffs. "Now hark! You've wasted enough time among those good-for-nothings. You must sell that old hulk of a schooner."