THE SERVICE ON THE SHORE
It was the spring of the year when the examining chaplain gave the
verdict which for good or ill put Dan out of the odor of sanctity. Then
in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, he haunted the shore where old
Billy and his mates were spreading their nets and barking them in
preparation for the herring season that was soon to begin. There it was,
while stretched on the warm shingle, with old Billy Quilleash sitting
near, smoking his black cutty and mending the meshes broken by the
dogfish of last year, that Dan hit on the idea of a new course in life.
This was nothing better or worse than that of turning fisherman. He
would buy a smack and make old Billy his skipper; he would follow the
herrings himself, and take up his own share and the share of the boat.
It would be delightful, and, of course, it would be vastly profitable.
Everything looked plain and straight and simple, and though old Billy
more than half shook his gray head at the project, and let fall by
several inches his tawny face, and took his pipe out of his mouth and
cleared his throat noisily, and looked vacantly out to sea, and gave
other ominous symptoms of grave internal dubitation, Dan leaped to his
feet at the sudden access of new purpose, and bowled off in hot haste to
tell the Bishop.
The Bishop listened in silence at first, and with a sidelong look out at
the window up to the heights of Slieu Dhoo, and when Dan, in a hang-dog
manner, hinted at certain new-born intentions of reform, there was a
perceptible trembling of the Bishop's eyelids; and when he gathered
voice and pictured the vast scheme of profit without loss, the Bishop
turned his grave eyes slowly upon him, and then Dan's own eyes suddenly
fell, and the big world began to shrivel up to the pitiful dimensions of
an orange with the juice squeezed out of it. But the end of it all was
that the Bishop undertook to become responsible for the first costs of
the boat, and, having made this promise with the air of a man who knows
too well that he is pampering the whim of a spoiled boy, he turned away
rather suddenly, with his chin a thought deeper than ever in his breast.
What hurry and bustle ensued. What driving away to north, south, east,
and west, to every fishing port in the island where boats were built or
sold! At length a boat was bought on the chocks at Port le Mary, a
thirty-ton boat of lugger build, and old Billy Quilleash was sent south
to bring it up through the Calf Sound to the harbor at Peeltown.
Then there was the getting together of a crew. Of course old Billy was
made skipper. He had sailed twenty years in a boat of Kinvig's with
three nets to his share, and half that time he had been admiral of the
Peeltown fleet of herring boats, with five pounds a year for his post of
honor. In Dan's boat he was to have four nets by his own right, and one
for his nephew, Davy Fayle. Davy was an orphan, brought up by Billy
Quilleash. He was a lad of eighteen, and was to sail as boy. There were
four other hands--Crennel, the cook; Teare, the mate; Corkell, and
Corlett.
Early and late Dan was down at the harbor, stripped to the woolen shirt,
and tackling any odd job of painting or carpentry, for the opening of
the herring season was hard upon them. But he found time to run up to
the new Ballamona to tell Mona that she was to christen his new boat,
for it had not been named when it left the chocks; and then to the old
Ballamona, to persuade Ewan to go with him on his first trip to the
herrings.
The day appointed by custom for the first takings of the herring came
quickly round. It was a brilliant day in early June. Ewan had been
across to Slieu Dhoo to visit his father, for the first time since his
marriage, more than half a year ago, in order to say that he meant to go
out for the night's fishing in Dan's new boat, and to beg that his young
wife, who was just then in delicate health, might be invited to spend
the night of his absence with Mona at the new Ballamona. The Deemster
complied with a grim face; Ewan's young wife went across in the early
morning, and in the afternoon all four, the Deemster and Mona, Ewan and
his wife, set off in a lumbering, springless coach--the first that the
island had yet seen--to witness the departure of the herring fleet from
Peeltown, and to engage in that day's ceremony.
The salt breath of the sea was in the air, and the light ripples of the
bay glistened through a drowsy haze of warm sunshine. It was to be high
water at six o'clock. When the Deemster's company reached Peeltown, the
sun was still high over Contrary Head, and the fishing boats in the
harbor, to the number of two hundred, were rolling gently, with their
brown sails half set, to the motion of the rising tide.
There was Dan in his guernsey on the deck of his boat, and, as the coach
drew up near the bottom of the wooden pier, he lifted his red cap from
his curly head, and then went on to tie a bottle by a long blue ribbon
to the tiller. There was old Billy Quilleash in his sea-boots, and there
was Davy Fayle, a shambling sort of lad, long rather than tall, with
fair hair tangled over his forehead, and a face which had a simple,
vacant look that came of a lagging lower lip. Men on every boat in the
harbor were washing the decks, or bailing out the dingey, or laying down
the nets below. The harbor-master was on the quay, shouting to this boat
to pull up or to that one to lie back. And down on the broad sands of
the shore were men, women, and children in many hundreds, sitting and
lying and lounging about an empty boat with a hole in the bottom that
lay high and dry on the beach. The old fishing town itself had lost its
chill and cheerless aspect, and no longer looked hungrily out over miles
of bleak sea. Its blind alleys and dark lanes, its narrow, crabbed,
crooked streets were bright with little flags hung out of the little
stuffed-up windows, and yet brighter with bright faces that hurried to
and fro.
About five o'clock, as the sun was dipping seaward across the back of
Contrary, leaving the brown sails in the harbor in shade, and glistening
red on the sides of the cathedral church on the island-rock that stood
twenty yards out from the mainland, there was a movement of the people
on the shore toward the town behind them, and of fisher-fellows from
their boats toward the beach. Some of the neighboring clergy had come
down to Peeltown, and the little Deemster sat in his coach, thrown open,
blinking in the sun under his shaggy gray eyebrows. But some one was
still looked for, and expectation was plainly evident in every face
until a cheer came over the tops of the houses from the market-place.
Then there was a general rush toward the mouth of the quay, and
presently there came, laboring over the rough cobbles of the tortuous
Castle Street, flanked by a tumultuous company of boys and men,
bareheaded women, and children, who halloed and waved their arms and
tossed up their caps, a rough-coated Manx pony, on which the tall figure
of the Bishop sat.
The people moved on with the Bishop at their head until they came to the
beach, and there, at the disused boat lying dry on the sand, the Bishop
alighted. In two minutes more every fisherman in the harbor had left his
boat and gathered with his fellows on the shore. Then there began a
ceremony of infinite pathos and grandeur.
In the open boat the pale-faced Bishop stood, his long hair, sprinkled
with gray, lifted gently over his drooping shoulders by the gentle
breeze that came with its odor of brine from the sea. Around him, on
their knees on the sand, were the tawny-faced, weather-beaten fishermen
in their sea-boots and guernseys, bareheaded, and fumbling their soft
caps in their hands. There, on the outside, stood the multitude of men,
women, and young children, and on the skirts of the crowd stood the
coach of the Deemster, and it was half encircled by the pawing horses of
some of the black-coated clergy.
The Bishop began the service. It asked for the blessing of God on the
fishing expedition which was about to set out. First came the lesson,
"And God said, let the waters bring forth abundantly"; and then the
story of Jesus in the ship, when there arose a great tempest while He
slept, and His disciples awoke Him, and He arose and rebuked the waves;
and then that other story of how the disciples toiled all night and took
nothing, but let down their nets again at Christ's word, and there came
a great multitude of fishes, and their nets brake. "Restore and continue
to us the harvest of the sea," prayed the Bishop, with his face
uplifted; and the men on their knees on the sand, with uncovered heads
and faces in their caps, murmured their responses in their own tongue,
"Yn Meailley."
And while they prayed, the soft boom of the unruffled waters on the
shore, and the sea's deep murmur from away beyond the headland, and the
wild jabbering cries of a flight of sea-gulls disporting on a rock in
the bay, were the only sounds that mingled with the Bishop's deep tones
and the men's hoarse voices.
Last of all, the Bishop gave out a hymn. It was a simple old hymn, such
as every man had known since his mother had crooned it over his cot. The
men rose to their feet, and their lusty voices took up the strain; the
crowd behind, and the clergy on their horses, joined it; and from the
Deemster's coach two women's voices took it up, and higher, higher,
higher, like a lark, it floated up, until the soft boom and deep murmur
of the sea and the wild cry of the sea-birds were drowned in the broad
swell of the simple old sacred song.
The sun was sinking fast through a red haze toward the sea's verge, and
the tide was near the flood, when the service on the shore ended, and
the fishermen returned to their boats.
Billy Quilleash leaped aboard the new lugger, and his four men followed
him. "See all clear," he shouted to Davy Fayle; and Davy stood on the
quay with the duty of clearing the ropes from the blocks, and then
following in the dingey that lay moored to the wooden steps.
Dan had gone up to the Deemster's coach and helped Mona and the young
wife of Ewan to alight. He led them to the quay steps, and when the
company had gathered about, and all was made ready, he shouted to old
Billy to throw him the bottle that lay tied by the blue ribbon to the
tiller. Then he handed the bottle to Mona, who stood on the step, a few
feet above the water's edge.
Mona was looking very fresh and beautiful that day, with a delicious joy
and pride in her deep eyes. Dan was talking to her with an awkward sort
of consciousness, looking askance at his big brown hands when they came
in contact with her dainty white fingers, then glancing down at his
great clattering boots, and up into her soft, smooth face.
"What am I to christen her?" said Mona, with the bottle held up in her
hand.
"Mona," answered Dan, with a shamefaced look and one hand in his brown
hair.
"No, no," said she, "not that."
"Then what you like," said Dan.
"Well, the 'Ben-my-Chree,'" said Mona, and with that the bottle broke on
the boat's side.
In another instant Ewan was kissing his meek little wife, and bidding
her good-by, and Dan, in a fumbling way, was, for the first time in his
life, demurely shaking Mona's hand, and trying hard to look her in the
face.
"Tail on there," shouted Quilleash from the lugger. Then the two men
jumped aboard, Davy Fayle ran the ropes from the blocks, the admiral's
boat cleared away from the quay, and the admiral's flag was shot up to
the masthead. The other boats in the harbor followed one by one, and
soon the bay was full of the fleet.
As the "Ben-my-Chree" stood out to sea beyond the island-rock, Dan and
Ewan stood aft, Dan in his brown guernsey, Ewan in his black coat; Ewan
waving his handkerchief, and Dan his cap; old Billy was at the tiller,
Crennel, the cook, had his head just above the hatchways, and Davy was
clambering hand-over-hand up the rope by which the dingey was hauled to
the stern.
Then the herring fleet sailed away under the glow of the setting sun.