On the Key to Grief the green waves rub all day. White at the summit,
black at the base, the shafted rocks rear splintered pinnacles,
slanting like channel buoys. On the polished pillars sea birds
brood--white-winged, bright-eyed sea birds, that nestle and preen and
flap and clatter their orange-coloured beaks when the sifted spray
drives and drifts across the reef.
As the sun rose, painting crimson streaks criss-cross over the waters,
the sea birds sidled together, huddling row on row, steeped in downy
drowse.
Where the sun of noon burnished the sea, an opal wave washed, listless,
noiseless; a sea bird stretched one listless wing.
And into the silence of the waters a canoe glided, bronzed by the
sunlight, jewelled by the salt drops stringing from prow to thwart,
seaweed a-trail in the diamond-flashing wake, and in the bow a man
dripping with sweat.
Up rose the gulls, sweeping in circles, turning, turning over rock and
sea, and their clamour filled the sky, starting little rippling echoes
among the rocks.
The canoe grated on a shelf of ebony; the seaweed rocked and washed;
the little sea crabs sheered sideways, down, down into limpid depths of
greenest shadows. Such was the coming of Bud Kent to the Key to Grief.
He drew the canoe halfway up the shelf of rock and sat down, breathing
heavily, one brown arm across the bow. For an hour he sat there. The
sweat dried under his eyes. The sea birds came back, filling the air
with soft querulous notes.
There was a livid mark around his neck, a red, raw circle. The salt
wind stung it; the sun burned it into his flesh like a collar of
red-hot steel. He touched it at times; once he washed it with cold salt
water.
Far in the north a curtain of mist hung on the sea, dense, motionless
as the fog on the Grand Banks. He never moved his eyes from it; he knew
what it was. Behind it lay the Island of Grief.
All the year round the Island of Grief is hidden by the banks of mist,
ramparts of dead white fog encircling it on every side. Ships give it
wide berth. Some speak of warm springs on the island whose waters flow
far out to sea, rising in steam eternally.
The pelt hunter had come back with tales of forests and deer and
flowers everywhere; but he had been drinking much, and much was
forgiven him.
The body of the college youth tossed up in the cove on the mainland
was battered out of recognition, but some said, when found, one hand
clutched a crimson blossom half wilted, but broad as a sap pan.
So Kent lay motionless beside his canoe, burned with thirst, every
nerve vibrating, thinking of all these things. It was not fear that
whitened the firm flesh under the tan; it was the fear of fear. He
must not think--he must throttle dread; his eyes must never falter, his
head never turn from that wall of mist across the sea. With set teeth
he crushed back terror; with glittering eyes he looked into the hollow
eyes of fright. And so he conquered fear.
He rose. The sea birds whirled up into the sky, pitching, tossing,
screaming, till the sharp flapping of their pinions set the snapping
echoes flying among the rocks.
Under the canoe's sharp prow the kelp bobbed and dipped and parted; the
sunlit waves ran out ahead, glittering, dancing. Splash! splash! bow
and stern! And now he knelt again, and the polished paddle swung and
dipped, and swept and swung and dipped again.
Far behind, the clamour of the sea birds lingered in his ears, till
the mellow dip of the paddle drowned all sound and the sea was a sea of
silence.
No wind came to cool the hot sweat on cheek and breast. The sun blazed
a path of flame before him, and he followed out into the waste of
waters. The still ocean divided under the bows and rippled innocently
away on either side, tinkling, foaming, sparkling like the current in
a woodland brook. He looked around at the world of flattened water, and
the fear of fear rose up and gripped his throat again. Then he lowered
his head, like a tortured bull, and shook the fear of fear from his
throat, and drove the paddle into the sea as a butcher stabs, to the
hilt.
So at last he came to the wall of mist. It was thin at first, thin and
cool, but it thickened and grew warmer, and the fear of fear dragged at
his head, but he would not look behind.
Into the fog the canoe shot; the gray water ran by, high as the
gunwales, oily, silent. Shapes flickered across the bows, pillars of
mist that rode the waters, robed in films of tattered shadows. Gigantic
forms towered to dizzy heights above him, shaking out shredded shrouds
of cloud. The vast draperies of the fog swayed and hung and trembled as
he brushed them; the white twilight deepened to a sombre gloom. And now
it grew thinner; the fog became a mist, and the mist a haze, and the
haze floated away and vanished into the blue of the heavens.
All around lay a sea of pearl and sapphire, lapping, lapping on a
silver shoal.
So he came to the Island of Grief.