THE RAKING BLACK SCHOONER.
I met Belle and Dan with the boy with them at the big stones away below
the peat hags where the sea lies open to a man's look, and I took the
young boy on my shoulder and laughed at Belle when she would be saying
he was too big to be carried, and there was the look of pride in the
swarthy face, pride and tenderness, as she stood, her hand on the arm
of her man. But Dan kent me better.
"Out with it, Hamish. What good news gars ye giggle like a lass?"
"Man," I said, "have ye no' heard?--McKinnon's son is home, and has
word o' Bryde. Betty will be seeing him with this boy in his arms yet.
Bryde is coming home."
Belle's hands came to her heart for a little, and then her arms were
round Dan like a wild thing.
"Oh, man, man, are you not glad?" she cried--"are you not glad?"
"Glad!" said Dan, and swallowed hard. "Ay, lass, glad is not the
word," and then he kept shaking my hand, and looking at me without
words, but Belle was afire.
"Hamish," she cried, clinging to me with her daftlike foreign ways,
"will you always be bringing me good news till I am old and ugly?"
That night old Betty forgot her growing-pains and sang to the boy,
Hamish Og, and it was a mercy that he had not much of the Gaelic so
far, for the songs were not very douce, and not what a body might be
expecting from an old woman that had seen much sorrow; but I am often
thinking that she would have her good days too, for she would be
enjoying her biting, and putting a pith into it that made Dan himself
stare in wonder.
And I told my uncle and my aunt the news when Margaret was not by, for
I kept mind of her talk of old wives' havers, and I kent the mother of
Margaret would not be telling her, nor the Laird either for that part,
for he was a good deal under her thumb in these matters; but for all
that I might have been sparing myself the bother, for this is what came
of it.
We were gathered for the reading and Hugh a little late, as was usual
when he went 'sourrying--God forbid that he should--when he went
courting, and after the reading there was a little time to talk, and,
said he, stretching his legs--
"Helen was telling me Bryde will be home one of these days."
Now here, thinks I, is a bonny kettle of fish, for Margaret was sitting
with us, but for all the suddenness of it she never geed her beaver,
and I kent then that she had word some way.
"Mistress Helen has quick news," said I.
"She has a maid yonder, Dol Beag's lass, and she brought the word frae
McKinnon's son, it seems; Kate Dol Beag had the news."
"Imphm," said I, for Margaret was looking down and smiling in a way
that angered me a little--"imphm," said I. "Did she say was he
bringing his wife with him?"
"Wife?" said Hugh with a start.
Margaret was not smiling now, but I will say this; she was making a
brave try at it.
"Some lady in Jamaica," said I, "wi' bonny bright eyes, young McKinnon
was thinking."
At that Hugh left us, smiling.
"Hamish," said Margaret, "you are not being kind to me any more--it is
not true."
"Margaret, when did you see Ronald's son?"
"Oh, I was looking for a sailor coming home," said she, "since yon day
we went to old Mhari nic Cloidh's, and then the lassies told me
Ronald's boy was home--and--and the night you were at Dan's they
brought him here--a nice quiet boy--and I _happened_ to go into the
kitchen when he was there . . . and, Hamish, it is not nice to be
unfriends like this, you and me, and I would not be meaning yon I said
to you about old wives' havers--_now_," and after that she came and sat
beside me, and put an arm round my neck.
"Will you tell me this, Hamish?" says she in her wheedling voice.
"Will you tell me truly?"
"What is it?" said I.
"Did McKinnon's son say anything about bonny bright eyes?"
"He said there were bonny bright eyes in Jamaica and the towns
thereabout, Margaret, and he kind o' looked as though maybe he was
wearying to be back there."
"Poof!" said she, "and was that all. I am thinking I would maybe be
like that myself, if the Lord had made me a boy."
"Well, my lass, there's nane will deny that Bryde was a little that way
himself--he would aye have a quick eye for a likely lass from what I
can mind."
"Well," said she, being very merry and bold, and showing herself before
me, "am not I a likely lass, Hamish, my dear?"
Now the old folk will use that expression with a very definite meaning,
and when I thought of that I was feeling my face smiling, and me trying
not to, as I looked at the lass.
"Hamish," she cried, "did you ever look at a lass like that before--it
is a wonder to me you are not married long ago," and then with a frown
on her face, but half laughing yet, "I ken," she cried, "she was
married already, poor Hamish--was it Belle?"
But I was thinking it was time to be putting an end to her daffing.
"Listen, my dear," said I; "I ken another likely lass."
"Oh?"
"Helen," said I.
"Likely," she cried--"likely, the likeliest lass I will ever be seeing,
Hamish--_for a sister_."
But for all that she would be jibing at Hugh and his marriage.
"Hughie," she would cry, "the fine sunny days are passing. When I get
a man I am thinking it will be half the joy of it to be out with him on
the hills and among the trees, and maybe on the sea. You will be
waiting till the rainy days come, and that will not be so lucky."
"Och," said Hugh, "I will be sitting inside with the lass I marry on
the wet days."
"Yes, Hugh; but I would be liking to be out with him in the rain and
laughing at it and loving it, because I would be with him."
"The Lord should have made you a man," said I, "for you would be
kissing your lass on some hill-top with the rain in her brown face and
clinging to her curls, Margaret."
"Brown face and curls," she cried. "I wonder. Would my lass have been
like that, Hamish, like Belle, or with a look--like Mistress Helen
maybe; but I would be loving the kissing anyway," said she.
And Helen Stockdale was often with us, whiles, to my thinking, a little
skeich[1] with Hugh, as though maybe she would rouse the temper in him,
for that she seemed to delight in, but never would she be telling us
what her man should be like.
"Husban'," she would say, with a shrug of her shoulder, "_il faut
necessaire_--one must, I think, be sensible; is it not so?--perrhaps in
anozer world one may know from the beginning," and I often wondered if
she had forgotten how something should leap up at her heart. She would
talk to Margaret about her gowns, using terms that never before had I
heard tell of, and sending as far as Edinburgh for her braws, which, I
am thinking, was a waste of good money, but I kept my thumb on that.
For the wedding was to come off at the back-end, and I would be hoping
that the weather would keep up, and the harvest be well got, wedding or
not.
And in these long summer evenings very often I would be taking one of
the men with me and a net, and taking the boat from the beach we would
go out with the splash-net, for I would be fond of the sport as well as
of the daintiness of the eating in salmon trout. In the dusk we would
be leaving, and whiles not coming in till it was two or three o'clock
in the morning.
I am thinking that maybe long ago the folk on the island would be
watching for an enemy landing from the water, for with the sea as calm
as a mill-pond and just the loom of the land--maybe through a haze--the
senses will become very alert, and any little noise without the boat a
man will be hearing, and wondering about, as well as listening to the
splash of a fish falling into the water after a gladsome leap, and the
noise of splashing of the oars to frighten the salmon-trout into the
meshes.
On an August evening we were in the little bay near the rock at the
mouth of the wee burn that passes the great granite stone on the
shore--for that is a namely place for trout. There was a bright golden
gleam as the oars dipped, and a swirl of phosphor fire at the stern
like little wandering stars, when I heard the noise of oars and the
creak of thole-pins, and I turned to look, thinking maybe some other
was at the fishing, but the boat was heading for the port at the
Point--wrack-grown now, and only to be seen at low tide.
In the bay at anchor was a schooner, a low raking black schooner, with
the gleam of her riding light reflecting a long way over the water
toward the shore--a sign of rain, we say. In a little I heard a gruff
voice in the English, for the words came to me plainly--
"Easy, starbo'd; easy, all," and then the scrunch of a keel on sand,
and after a little time I heard a boat being shoved off and the thrust
of oars, and then the same voice again--
"Give way together," and it came to me that the quick command had the
ring of a Government ship, and I was wondering if the _Gull_ was making
for her home port, for my heart somehow warmed to the _Gull_, and
McNeilage, when I would be looking at the loom of that raking black
schooner, and hearing the quick short strokes of the oars of the
row-boat with no singing or any laughter. We had a good catch of fish
when we got started to row back to the place where we beached the
little boat, and it would be the best of an hour's rowing to get there.
Little we spoke passing round the Point, except maybe to voice a wonder
that a boat should come in there. And never another word was said till
such times as we would be going gently, feeling, as it were, for the
little gut in the rock, where we made a habit of coming ashore.
The sky was clearing to the eastward, the light giving a droll shape to
the bushes, and showing a little mist hanging low when the keel grated
on the gravel, and there on the shore-head was a man standing, a
sea-coat, as I think they name it, round him. The eeriness of the dim
light, the wild squawks of the sea-birds in the ears, and that great
dark figure standing motionless, put a dread on the serving-man.
"In the name of God," said he, "cho-sin (who is it)?"
"If he is Finn himself," said I, trying to be bold, "he will be giving
us a hand with the skiff whatever."
There came a ringing laugh from the stranger.
"Well done, Hamish; ye'll aye make good your putt--a bonny lan' tack
they would make wanting you."
"It is he," cried the serving-man.
"Bryde," I cried, "what is it makes you come back this way and at this
time of the night?"
These were the daftlike words I had for him, and me holding his hand
and clapping him on the back, as if he were a wean again.
"It was a notion I had," said he, "to come back the way I would be
leaving yon time--in the dark."
[1] Frisky.