THE HERRING BREAKFAST
It was between four o'clock and five when the fleet ran into Peeltown
harbor after the first night of the herring season, and toward eight the
fisher-fellows, to the number of fifty at least, had gathered for their
customary first breakfast in the kitchen of the "Three Legs of Man."
What sport! What noisy laughter! What singing and rollicking cheers! The
men stood neither on the order of their coming nor their going, their
sitting nor their standing. In they trooped in their woolen caps or
their broad sou'westers, their oilskins or their long sea-boots swung
across their arms. They wore their caps or not as pleased them, they
sang or talked as suited them, they laughed or sneezed, they sulked or
snarled, they were noisy or silent, precisely as the whim of the
individual prescribed the individual rule of manners. Rather later than
the rest Dan Mylrea came swinging in, with a loud laugh and a shout, and
something like an oath, too, and the broad homespun on his lips.
"Billy Quilleash--I say, Billy, there--why don't you put up the young
mastha for the chair?"
"Aw, lave me alone," answered Billy Quilleash, with a contemptuous toss
of the head.
"Uncle Billy's proud uncommon of the mastha," whispered Davy Fayle, who
sat meekly on a form near the door, to the man who sat cross-legged on
the form beside him.
"It's a bit free them chaps is making," said old Billy, in a
confidential undertone to Dan, who was stretching himself out on the
settle. Then rising to his feet with gravity, "Gen'l'men," said
Quilleash, "what d'ye say now to Mistha Dan'l Mylrea for the elber-cheer
yander?"
At that there was the response of loud raps on the table with the heels
of the long boots swung over various arms, and with several clay pipes
that lost their heads in the encounter. Old Billy resumed his seat with
a lofty glance of patronage at the men about him, which said as plainly
as words themselves, "I tould ye to lave it all to me."
"Proud, d'ye say? Look at him," muttered the fisherman sitting by Davy
Fayle.
Dan staggered up and shouldered his way to the elbow-chair at the head
of the table. He had no sooner taken his seat than he shouted for the
breakfast, and without more ado the breakfast was lifted direct on to
the table from the pans and boilers that simmered on the hearth.
First came the broth, well loaded with barley and cabbage; then suet
puddings; and last of all the frying-pan was taken down from the wall,
and four or five dozen of fresh herrings were made to grizzle and
crackle and sputter over the fire.
Dan ate ravenously, and laughed noisily, and talked incessantly as he
ate. The men at first caught the contagion of his boisterous manners,
but after a time they shook their tousled heads and laid them together
in gravity, and began to repeat in whispers, "What's agate of the young
mastha, at all, at all?"
Away went the dishes, away went the cloth, an oil-lamp with its open
mouth--a relic of some monkish sanctuary of the Middle Ages--was lifted
from the mantel-shelf and put on the table for the receipt of custom; a
brass censer, choked with spills, was placed beside it; pipes emerged
from waistcoat-pockets, and pots of liquor with glasses and bottles came
in from the outer bar.
"Is it heavy on the liquor you're going to be, Billy?" said Ned, the
mate; and old Billy replied with a superior smile and the lifting up of
a whisky bottle, from which he had just drawn the cork.
Then came the toasts. The chairman arose amid hip, hip, hooraa! and gave
"Life to man and death to fish!" and Quilleash gave "Death to the head
that never wore hair!"
Then came more noise and more liquor, and a good deal of both in the
vicinity of the chair. Dan struck up a song. He sang "Drink to Me Only,"
and the noisy company were at first hushed to silence and then melted to
audible sobs.
"Aw, man, the voice he has, anyway!"
"And the loud it is, and the tender, too, and the way he slidders up and
down, and no squeaks and jumps."
"No, no; nothin' like squeezin' a tune out of an ould sow by pulling the
tail at her."
Old Billy listened to this dialogue among the fisher-fellows about him,
and smiled loftily. "It's nothin'," he said, condescendingly--"that's
nothin'. You should hear him out in the boat, when we're lying at
anchor, and me and him together, and the stars just makin' a peep, and
the moon, and the mar-fire, and all to that, and me and him lying aft
and smookin', and having a glass maybe, but nothin' to do no
harm--that's the when you should hear him. Aw, man alive, him and me's
same as brothers."
"More liquor there," shouted Dan, climbing with difficulty to his feet.
"Ay, look here. D'ye hear, down yander? Give us a swipe o' them
speerits. Right. More liquor for the chair!" said Billy Quilleash. "And
for some one besides?--is that what they're saying, the loblolly-boys?
Well, look here, bad cess to it, of coorse, some for me, too. It's
terrible good for the narves, and they're telling me it's morthal good
for steddyin' the vi'ce. Going to sing? Coorse, coorse. What's that from
the elber-cheer? Enemy, eh? Confound it, and that's true, though. What's
that it's sayin'? 'Who's fool enough to put the enemy into his mouth to
stale away his brains?' Aw, now, it's the good ould Book that's fine at
summin' it all up."
Then there was more liquor and yet more, till the mouth of the monastic
lamp ran over with chinking coin. Old Billy struck up his song. It was a
doleful ditty on the loss of the herring fleet on one St. Matthew's Day
not long before.
An hour before day,
Tom Grimshaw, they say,
To run for the port had resolved;
Himself and John More
Were lost in that hour,
And also unfortunate Kinved.
The last three lines of each verse were repeated by the whole company in
chorus. Doleful as the ditty might be, the men gave it voice with a
heartiness that suggested no special sense of sorrow, and loud as were
the voices of the fisher-fellows, Dan's voice was yet louder.
"Aw, Dan, man, Dan, man alive, Dan," the men whispered among themselves.
"What's agate of Mastha Dan? it's more than's good, man, aw, yes, yes,
yes."
Still more liquor and yet more noise, and then, through the dense fumes
of tobacco-smoke, old Billy Quilleash could be seen struggling to his
feet. "Silence!" he shouted; "aisy there!" and he lifted up his glass.
"Here's to Mistha Dan'l Mylrea, and if he's not going among the parzons,
bad cess to them, he's going among the Kays, and when he gets to the big
house at Castletown, I'm calkerlatin' it'll be all up with the lot o'
them parzons, with their tithes and their censures, and their customs
and their canons, and their regalashuns agen the countin' of the
herrin', and all the rest of their messin'. What d'ye say, men?
'Skulking cowards?' Coorse, and right sarved, too, as I say. And what's
that you're grinning and winkin' at, Ned Teare? It's middlin' free
you're gettin' with the mastha anyhow, and if it wasn't for me he
wouldn't bemane himself by comin' among the like of you, singin' and
makin' aisy. Chaps, fill up your glasses every man of you, d'ye hear?
Here's to the best gen'l'man in the island, bar none--Mistha Dan'l
Mylrea, hip, hip, hooraa!"
The toast was responded to with alacrity, and loud shouts of "Dan'l
Mylrea--best gen'l'man--bar none."
But what was going on at the head of the table? Dan had risen from the
elbow-chair; it was the moment for him to respond, but he stared wildly
around, and stood there in silence, and his tongue seemed to cleave to
his mouth. Every eye was now fixed on his face, and that face quivered
and turned white. The glass he had held in his hand fell from his
nerveless fingers and broke on the table. Laughter died on every lip,
and the voices were hushed. At last Dan spoke; his words came slowly,
and fell heavily on the ear.
"Men," he said, "you have been drinking my health. You call me a good
fellow. That's wrong. I'm the worst man among you. Old Billy says I'm
going to the House of Keys. That's wrong, too. Shall I tell you where I
am going? Shall I tell you? I'm going to the devil," and then, amid
breathless silence, he dropped back in his seat and buried his head in
his hands.
No one spoke. The fair head lay on the table among broken pipes and the
refuse of spilled liquor. There could be no more drinking that morning.
Every man rose to his feet, and picking up his waterproofs or his long
sea-boots, one after one went shambling out. The room was dense with
smoke; but outside the air was light and free, and the morning sun shone
brightly.
"Strange now, wasn't it?" muttered one of the fellows.
"Strange uncommon!"
"He's been middlin' heavy on the liquor lately."
"And he'd never no right to strike the young parzon, and him his cousin,
too, and terrible fond of him, as they're saying."
"Well, well, it's middlin' wicked anyway."
And so the croakers went their way. In two minutes more the room was
empty, except for the stricken man, who lay there with hidden face, and
Davy Fayle, who, with big tears glistening in his eyes, was stroking the
tangled curls.