WITH HER CREW AND CARGO
Long after the time of those who write and those who read this history,
the name of Zebedee Tugwell will be flourishing at Springhaven.
To achieve unmerited honor is the special gift of thousands, but to
deserve and win befalls some few in every century, and one of these few
was Zebedee. To be the head-man of any other village, and the captain of
its fishing fleet, might prove no lofty eminence; but to be the leader
of Springhaven was true and arduous greatness. From Selsey Bill to
Orfordness, taking in all the Cinque Ports and all the port of London,
there was not a place that insisted on, and therefore possessed, all
its own rights so firmly as this village did. Not less than seven stout
fishing-smacks--six of them sloops, and the seventh a dandy--formed the
marine power of this place, and behaved as one multiplied by seven. All
the bold fishermen held their line from long-established ancestry, and
stuck to the stock of their grandfathers, and their wisdom and freedom
from prejudice. Strength was condensed into clear law with them--as
sinew boils down into jelly--and character carried out its force as the
stamp of solid impress. What the father had been, the son became, as the
generation squared itself, and the slates for the children to do their
copies were the tombstones of their granddads. Thus brave Etruria grew,
and thus the Rome which was not built in a day became the flower of the
world, and girt in unity of self seven citadels.
There was Roman blood--of the Tenth Legion, perhaps--in the general
vein of Springhaven. There was scarcely a man who pretended to know much
outside of his own business, and there was not a woman unable to
wait (when her breath was quite gone) for sound reason. Solidity,
self-respect, pure absence of frivolous humor, ennobled the race and
enabled them to hold together, so that everybody not born in Springhaven
might lament, but never repair, his loss.
This people had many ancient rules befitting a fine corporation, and
among them were the following: “Never do a job for a stranger; sleep in
your own bed when you can; be at home in good time on a Saturday; never
work harder than you need; throw your fish away rather than undersell
it; answer no question, but ask another; spend all your money among your
friends; and above all, never let any stranger come a-nigh your proper
fishing ground, nor land any fish at Springhaven.”
These were golden laws, and made a snug and plump community. From the
Foreland to the Isle of Wight their nets and lines were sacred, and no
other village could be found so thriving, orderly, well-conducted, and
almost well-contented. For the men were not of rash enterprise, hot
labor, or fervid ambition; and although they counted things by money,
they did not count one another so. They never encouraged a friend to
work so hard as to grow too wealthy, and if he did so, they expected him
to grow more generous than he liked to be. And as soon as he failed upon
that point, instead of adoring, they growled at him, because every one
of them might have had as full a worsted stocking if his mind had been
small enough to forget the difference betwixt the land and sea, the tide
of labor and the time of leisure.
To these local and tribal distinctions they added the lofty expansion of
sons of the sea. The habit of rising on the surge and falling into the
trough behind it enables a biped, as soon as he lands, to take things
that are flat with indifference. His head and legs have got into a state
of firm confidence in one another, and all these declare--with the rest
of the body performing as chorus gratis--that now they are come to a
smaller affair, upon which they intend to enjoy themselves. So that,
while strenuous and quick of movement--whenever they could not help
it--and sometimes even brisk of mind (if anybody strove to cheat them),
these men generally made no griefs beyond what they were born to.
Zebedee Tugwell was now their chief, and well deserved to be so. Every
community of common-sense demands to have somebody over it, and nobody
could have felt ashamed to be under Captain Tugwell. He had built with
his own hands, and bought--for no man's work is his own until he has
paid for as well as made it--the biggest and smartest of all the fleet,
that dandy-rigged smack, the Rosalie. He was proud of her, as he well
might be, and spent most of his time in thinking of her; but even she
was scarcely up to the size of his ideas. “Stiff in the joints,” he now
said daily--“stiff in the joints is my complaint, and I never would have
believed it. But for all that, you shall see, my son, if the Lord should
spare you long enough, whether I don't beat her out and out with the
craft as have been in my mind this ten year.”
But what man could be built to beat Zebedee himself, in an age like
this, when yachts and men take the prize by profundity of false keel?
Tugwell yearned for no hot speed in his friends, or his house, or his
wife, or his walk, or even his way of thinking. He had seen more harm
come from one hour's hurry than a hundred years of care could cure, and
the longer he lived the more loath he grew to disturb the air around
him.
“Admirable Nelson,” he used to say--for his education had not been so
large as the parts allotted to receive it; “to my mind he is a brave
young man, with great understanding of his dooties. But he goeth too
fast, without clearing of his way. With a man like me 'longside of 'un,
he'd have brought they boats out of Bulong. See how I brings my boats
in, most particular of a Saturday!”
It was Saturday now, when Miss Dolly was waiting to see this great
performance, of which she considered herself, as the daughter of
an admiral, no mean critic. And sure enough, as punctual as in a
well-conducted scheme of war, and with nice forecast of wind and tide,
and science of the supper-time, around the westward headland came the
bold fleet of Springhaven!
Seven ships of the line--the fishing line--arranged in perfect order,
with the Rosalie as the flag-ship leading, and three upon either
quarter, in the comfort and leisure of the new-born peace, they spread
their sails with sunshine. Even the warlike Dolly could not help some
thoughts of peacefulness, and a gentle tide of large good-will submerged
the rocks of glory.
“Why should those poor men all be killed?” she asked herself, as a new
thing, while she made out, by their faces, hats, fling of knee or
elbow, patch upon breeches, or sprawl of walking toward the attentive
telescope, pretty nearly who everybody of them was, and whatever else
there was about him. “After all, it is very hard,” she said, “that they
should have to lose their lives because the countries fight so.”
But these jolly fellows had no idea of losing their lives, or a hair of
their heads, or anything more than their appetites, after waging hot
war upon victuals. Peace was proclaimed, and peace was reigning; and
the proper British feeling of contempt for snivelly Frenchmen, which
produces the entente cordiale, had replaced the wholesome dread of them.
Not that Springhaven had ever known fear, but still it was glad to leave
off terrifying the enemy. Lightness of heart and good-will prevailed,
and every man's sixpence was going to be a shilling.
In the tranquil afternoon the sun was making it clear to the coast
of Albion that he had crossed the line once more, and rediscovered a
charming island. After a chilly and foggy season, worse than a brave
cold winter, there was joy in the greeting the land held out, and in the
more versatile expression of the sea. And not beneath the contempt of
one who strives to get into everything, were the creases and patches of
the sails of smacks, and the pattern of the resin-wood they called their
masts, and even the little striped things (like frogs with hats on, in
the distance) which had grown to believe themselves the only object the
sun was made to shine upon.
But he shone upon the wide sea far behind, and the broad stretch of
land before them, and among their slowly gliding canvas scattered soft
touches of wandering light. Especially on the spritsail of the Rosalie,
whereunder was sitting, with the tiller in his hand and a very long pipe
in his mouth, Captain Zebedee Tugwell. His mighty legs were spread at
ease, his shoulders solid against a cask, his breast (like an elephant's
back in width, and bearing a bright blue crown tattooed) shone out of
the scarlet woolsey, whose plaits were filled with the golden shower of
a curly beard, untouched with gray. And his face was quite as worthy as
the substance leading up to it, being large and strengthful and slow to
move, though quick to make others do so. The forehead was heavy, and the
nose thickset, the lower jaw backed up the resolution of the other, and
the wide apart eyes, of a bright steel blue, were as steady as a brace
of pole-stars.
“What a wonderful man!” fair Dolly thought, as the great figure, looking
even grander in the glass, came rising upon a long slow wave--“what a
wonderful man that Tugwell is! So firmly resolved to have his own way,
so thoroughly dauntless, and such a grand beard! Ten times more like an
admiral than old Flapfin or my father is, if he only knew how to hold
his pipe. There is something about him so dignified, so calm, and so
majestic; but, for all that, I like the young man better. I have a great
mind to take half a peep at him; somebody might ask whether he was there
or not.”
Being a young and bashful maid, as well as by birth a lady, she had
felt that it might be a very nice thing to contemplate sailors in the
distance, abstract sailors, old men who pulled ropes, or lounged on the
deck, if there was one. But to steal an unsuspected view at a young man
very well known to her, and acknowledged (not only by his mother
and himself, but also by every girl in the parish) as the Adonis of
Springhaven--this was a very different thing, and difficult to justify
even to one's self. The proper plan, therefore, was to do it, instead of
waiting to consider it.
“How very hard upon him it does seem,” she whispered to herself, after a
good gaze at him, “that he must not even dream of having any hope of
me, because he has not happened to be born a gentleman! But he looks a
thousand times more like one than nine out of ten of the great gentlemen
I know--or at any rate he would if his mother didn't make his clothes.”
For Zebedee Tugwell had a son called “Dan,” as like him as a tender pea
can be like a tough one; promising also to be tough, in course of time,
by chafing of the world and weather. But at present Dan Tugwell was as
tender to the core as a marrowfat dallying till its young duck should be
ready; because Dan was podding into his first love. To the sympathetic
telescope his heart was low, and his mind gone beyond astronomical
range, and his hands (instead of briskly pairing soles) hung asunder,
and sprawled like a star-fish.
“Indeed he does look sad,” said Miss Dolly, “he is thinking of me, as
he always does; but I don't see how anybody can blame me. But here comes
daddy, with dear old Flapfin! I am not a bit afraid of either of them;
but perhaps I had better run away.”