When first the Trinity Brothers put a light out yonder by the Gunnel
Rocks, it was just a trifling makeshift affair for the time--none of
your proper lightships with a crew of twelve or fourteen hands; and
my father and I used to tend it, taking turn and turn with two other
fellows from the Islands. I'm talking of old days. The rule then--
they have altered it since--was two months afloat and two ashore; and
all the time we tossed out there on duty, not a soul would we see to
speak to except when the Trinity boat put off with stores for us and
news of what was doing in the world. This would be about once a
fortnight in fair weather; but through the winter time it was oftener
a month, and provisions ran low enough, now and then, to make us
anxious. "Was the life dreary?" Well, you couldn't call it gay;
but, you see, it didn't kill me.
For the first week I thought the motion would drive me crazy--up and
down, up and down, in that everlasting ground-swell--although I had
been at the fishing all my life, and knew what it meant to lie-to in
any ordinary sea. But after ten days or so I got not to mind it.
And then there was the open air. It was different with the poor
fellows on the Lighthouse, eighteen miles to seaward of us, to the
south-west. They drew better pay than ours, by a trifle; but they
were landsmen, to start with; and cooped in that narrow tower at
night, with the shutters closed and the whole building rocking
like a tree, it's no wonder their nerves wore out. Four or five days
of it have been known to finish a man; and in those times a
lighthouse-keeper had three months of duty straight away, and only a
fortnight on shore. Now he gets only a fortnight out there, and six
weeks to recover in. With all that, they're mostly fit to start at
their own shadow when the boat takes them off.
But on the lightship we fared tolerably. To begin with, we had the
lantern to attend to. You'd be surprised how much employment that
gives a man--cleaning, polishing, and trimming. And my father,
though particular to a scratch on the reflector, or the smallest
crust of salt on the glass, was a restful, cheerful sort of a man to
bide with. Not talkative, you understand--no light-keeper in the
world was ever talkative--but with a power of silence that was more
comforting than speech. And out there, too, we found all sorts of
little friendly things to watch and think over. Sometimes a school
of porpoises; or a line of little murrs flying; or a sail far to the
south, making for the Channel. And sometimes, towards evening, the
fishing-boats would come out and drop anchor a mile and a half to
south'ard, down sail, and hang out their riding lights; and we knew
that they took their mark from us, and that gave a sociable feeling.
On clear afternoons, too, by swarming up the mast just beneath the
cage, I could see the Islands away in the east, with the sun on their
cliffs; and home wasn't so far off, after all. The town itself,
which lay low down on the shore, we could never spy, but glimpsed the
lights of it now and then, after sunset. These always flickered a
great deal, because of the waves, like little hills of water, bobbing
between them and us. And always we had the Lighthouse for company.
In daytime, through the glass, we could watch the keepers walking
about in the iron gallery round the top: and all night through there
it was beckoning to us with its three white flashes every minute.
No, we weren't exactly gay out there, and sometimes we made wild
weather of it. Yet we did pretty well; except for the fogs, when our
arms ached with keeping the gong going.
But if we were comfortable then, you should have seen us at the end
of our two months, when the boat came off with the relief, and took
us on shore. John and Robert Pendlurian were the names of the
relief; brothers they were, oldsters of about fifty-five and fifty;
and John Pendlurian, the elder, a widow-man same as my father, but
with a daughter at home. Living in the Islands, of course I'd known
Bathsheba ever since we'd sat in infant-school; and what more natural
than to ask after her health, along with the other news? But Old
John got to look sly and wink at my father when we came to this
question, out of the hundred others. And the other two would take it
up and wink back solemn as mummers. I never lost my temper with the
old idiots: 'twasn't worth while.
But the treat of all was to set foot on the quay-steps, and the
people crowding round and shaking your hand and chattering; and
everything ashore going on just as you'd left it, and you not wishing
it other, and everybody glad to see you all the same; and the smell
of the gardens and the stinking fish at the quay-corner--you might
choose between them, but home was in both; and the nets drying; and
to be out of oilskins and walking to meeting-house on the Sunday, and
standing up there with the congregation, all singing in company,
and the women taking stock of you till the newness wore off; and the
tea-drinking, and Band of Hopes, and courants, and dances.
We had all the luck of these; for the two Pendlurians, being up in
years and easily satisfied so long as they were left quiet, were
willing to take their holidays in the dull months, beginning with
February and March. And so I had April and May, when a man can
always be happy ashore; and August and September, which is the best
of the fishing and all the harvest and harvest games; and again,
December and January, with the courants and geesy-dancing, and carols
and wassail-singing. Early one December, when he came to relieve us,
Old John said to me in a haphazard way, "It's all very well for me
and Robert, my lad; for us two can take equal comfort in singin'
'_Star o' Bethl'em_' ashore or afloat; but I reckon 'tis somebody's
place to see that Bathsheba don't miss any of the season's joy an'
dancin' on our account."
Now, Bathsheba had an unmarried aunt--Aunt Hessy Pendlurian we called
her--that used to take her to all the parties and courants when Old
John was away at sea. So she wasn't likely to miss any of the fun,
bein' able to foot it as clever as any girl in the Islands. She had
the love of it, too--foot and waist and eyes all a-dancing, and body
and blood all a-tingle as soon as ever the fiddle spoke. Maybe this
same speech of Old John's set me thinking. Or, maybe I'd been
thinking already--what with their May-game hints and the loneliness
out there. Anyway, I dangled pretty close on Bathsheba's heels all
that Christmas. She was comely--you understand--very comely and
tall, with dark blood, and eyes that put you in mind of a light
shining steady upon dark water. And good as gold. She's dead and
gone these twelve years--rest her soul! But (praise God for her!)
I've never married another woman nor wanted to.
There, I've as good as told you already! When the time came and I
asked her if she liked me, she said she liked no man half so well:
and that being as it should be, the next thing was to put up the
banns. There wasn't time that holiday: like a fool, I had been
dilly-dallying too long, though I believe now I might have asked her
a month before. So the wedding was held in the April following, my
father going out to the Gunnel for a couple of days, so that Old John
might be ashore to give his daughter away. The most I mind of the
wedding was the wonder of beholding the old chap there in a
long-tailed coat, having never seen him for years but in his
oilskins.
Well, the rest of that year seemed pretty much like all the others,
except that coming home was better than ever. But when Christmas
went by, and February came and our turn to be out again on the
Gunnel, I went with a dismal feeling I hadn't known before.
For Bathsheba was drawing near her time, and the sorrow was that she
must go through it without me. She had walked down to the quay with
us, to see us off; and all the way she chatted and laughed with my
father as cheerful as cheerful--but never letting her eyes rest on
me, I noticed, and I saw what that meant; and when it came to
goodbye, there was more in the tightening of her arms about me than
I'd ever read in it before.
The old man, I reckon, had a wisht time with me, the next two or
three weeks; but, by the mercy of God, the weather behaved furious
all the while, leaving a man no time to mope. 'Twas busy all, and
busy enough, to keep a clear light inside the lantern, and warm souls
inside our bodies. All through February it blew hard and cold from
the north and north-west, and though we lay in the very mouth of the
Gulf Stream, for ten days together there wasn't a halliard we could
touch with the naked hand, nor a cloth nor handful of cotton-waste
but had to be thawed at the stove before using. Then, with the
beginning of March, the wind tacked round to south-west, and stuck
there, blowing big guns, and raising a swell that was something
cruel. It was one of these gales that tore away the bell from the
lighthouse, though hung just over a hundred feet above water-level.
As for us, I wonder now how the little boat held by its two-ton
anchors, even with three hundred fathom of chain cable to bear the
strain and jerk of it; but with the spindrift whipping our faces, and
the hail cutting them, we didn't seem to have time to think of
_that_. Bathsheba thought of it, though, in her bed at home--as I've
heard since--and lay awake more than one night thinking of it.
But the third week in March the weather moderated; and soon the sun
came out and I began to think. On the second afternoon of the fair
weather I climbed up under the cage and saw the Islands for the first
time; and coming down, I said to my father:
"Suppose that Bathsheba is dead!"
We hadn't said more than a word or two to each other for a week;
indeed, till yesterday we had to shout in each other's ear to be
heard at all. My father filled a pipe and said, "Don't be a fool."
"I see your hand shaking," said I.
Said he, "That's with the cold. At my age the cold takes a while to
leave a man's extremities."
"But," I went on in an obstinate way, "suppose she is dead?"