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THE UNKNOWN SEA
BY
CLEMENCE HOUSMAN
[Decoration]
LONDON _DUCKWORTH and CO._ 3 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C. 1898
_All rights reserved_
Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty
THE UNKNOWN SEA
CHAPTER I
A solitary fisher ploughed the lively blue of a southern sea. Strength of
limb, fair hair, and clear grey eyes told of a northern race, though his
skin had been tanned to a red-brown, dark as the tint of the slender,
dark-eyed, olive-skinned fishers born under these warm skies. In stature
and might a man, he was scarcely more than a boy in years; beardless yet,
and of an open, boyish countenance. As his boat raced eagerly forward he
laughed for pride of heart, and praised her aloud after a fashion native
to the south: she was his beloved, his bird, his blossom, his queen; and
for his warrant well built she was, promising strength and speed in due
degrees, and beautiful obedience to him. Her paint was bright, her ruddy
canvas unstained, in contrast to a pile of tackle, black from age and
use: the nets and the weighted cross-beams of coral fishing.
White wings against the sky, and white crests upon the sea, broke the
entire blue. Far away to eastward, faint and hazy, suave lines extended;
but a coast that the boy neared lifted gaunt and desolate cliffs,
overlooking a waste of roaring breakers. Midmost of these, sheer and
black as the crags beyond, a dark mass rose dominant, like a sullen
outcast from the land holding rule, whose mere aspect fitted well the
name, Isle Sinister, without an evil implication that went therewith. The
young fisher's memory was stored with dark tales, born long ago to night
and fear, cherished by generations into fine growth, not by such as he to
be utterly scouted. The sound of buoy-bells reached his ears for warning,
but he eyed the intricate lines of breakers, he recalled ominous reports,
only to estimate the nerve of body and mind needful to any mortal bent
there upon a perilous trespass.
For a tale went that kept every fisher well aloof, to shun a danger worse
than shipwreck. Little gain was it held for any once driven within the
buoy-bells to work clear again to open sea, since sorrow and disaster
would dog thenceforward, nor cease till due forfeit were paid: the boat
broken up and burnt, her very ashes delivered to the sea. Woe even to the
man who dare take any least splinter to burn on his hearth, for sickness
and death would desolate his home. Nay, if a shifting wind but carried
the ashes landwards, blight or murrain would follow surely. So went
tradition, and conviction attended it well, since not within memory had
any hardy or unfortunate supplied a living test. Now truly this boy, who
came coasting perilously, needed to have in his veins the blood of an
alien race, over and above youth and great strength, to be traversing a
superstition of such dark credit, in others bred deep and strong.
Years ago he had been fascinated by the terrors and mystery of the place,
and with a human desire after the unattainable, most strong and
unregulated in youth, he had fearfully longed for a strength to do and a
heart to dare more than all his world: to get footing where never man had
stood: to face black luck and its befitters with a higher faith, defying
a supremacy of evil. Very early, out of the extravagant vagaries of a
child's brain, an audacious word had escaped, sped by a temper aflame,
for which he had suffered--from youngsters a day's derision, from a
strict elder a look that was worse disgrace. He deemed that might come to
be recalled to his credit. Now that he was grown to a strength
unmatched, with a heart proud and eager, impatient of any mastery not of
love and reverence, a notion pleased him that like enough these tales had
been magnified to recover the self-esteem of balked adventurers: a
presumption not extreme in one whose superb strength had lowered old
records, who found that none could withstand him to his full
satisfaction. Here in the bright sunshine of high day, the year's eager
spring quick in every vein, young virile audacity belittling all hazards,
the lad's heart rode so high and sure that he could laugh outright in
answer to the expostulation of the Sinister buoys. Yet he crossed himself
more than once.
'We will do it, Beloved, you and I.'
To and fro he hovered awhile to consider the lie of the reefs and select
his way. Then the sail clapped and swelled again, and the boat heeled, as
boldly he turned her, and steered within the buoy-bells away for the
breakers. Again he crossed himself as now were he and his boat committed
on a challenge to fortune.
Gracious to bold and dexterous handling the boat glided into the maze.
The disposition of the outer channels was so favourable as to have gone
far in beguiling the boy to his rash undertaking; but there were hedges
of wicked breakers that thwarted him and turned him aside disappointed.
Creeping along warily with only a corner of sail, steering with fine
sleight through the narrows, and avoiding eddies, he carried his boat
unscathed where never another man he knew could dare to follow. But ah!
how meagre was that satisfaction, since far, yet too far from him the
Isle Sinister held reserve. But at least he was able to scan the rocky
mass to advantage. It towered up with straight, repellent walls towards
the land; it sloped down steeply where he desired to win; but there to
balk him, minatory in aspect, stood the Warders--five detached rocks--so
lofty that the highest columns of surf spouting there fell short of their
crowns. The ugliest threat he recognised bided there, close against
success.
'No fault is yours, Beloved, if we cannot do it: nor hardly mine either,
I think. Were but one other with us we might be well-nigh confident. With
Philip at the oars! None we wanted to share with us--and yet! Ah! no. Not
he nor any would.'
He was deeply involved. At least a mile of grim discouragement stretched
on every hand. Then he came upon the sunken hulk of an old wreck.
Fiercer eddies and narrower channels constrained him to drop sail and
take to the oars. A hard, dangerous, disheartening struggle set him
nearer by a poor measure, but lost him in hope on the way.
'Fools and cowards all! Pleased would they be were I foiled, they
knowing. How they would jeer; ay, with worse, too. It might go hard with
me. But you, Beloved, never fear that I should fail you, if they
tried--no, they would not,--not if they care for whole bones.
'To think that if we win, not for months may I praise you by the tale,
not till we both have disproved and outlived the following of bad luck.
Defend us from one spying us here.'
The boy glanced about with anxiety, giving special scrutiny to one high
cliff opposite. There, scarcely distinguishable from the crags, stood up
a grey tower, the bell-tower of an ancient devout institution, the House
Monitory. His face grew rigid under a sudden apprehension. If he were
sighted from above, what should stay those bells from knelling for him.
He held his breath, and listened for them to break silence on the
instant, realising one peril which he had not before considered. 'Hark!'
would go the word, 'why does the House Monitory ring? in daylight, in
fair weather? Who can be in peril off the Isle Sinister?' From cliffs to
coves the word would drop, and start the swiftest sails out to
investigate, for his exposure to ridicule or worse.
In a past century three bells had been towered there: consecrated and
named after three Saints, to knell for souls that passed, unconfessed,
unhouseled, in that place of wrecks; to be potent against the dominion of
powers darker than death, too regnant there. The best, the only, succour
was this that human fellowship could accomplish for doomed lives. Now,
though cultured intelligence smiled at the larger superstition, the
simple held it at its old worth; and still, to the comfort of their
souls, a pious community kept the custom, serving the bells; and for
their more tangible welfare tended a beacon light.
A little chill ran in the boy's veins as he anticipated the outbreak of
those ominous bells; never yet had they rung for any, far involved as he,
who had known escape. He betook himself more desperately to his
endeavour. Necessity pressed him hard, for the tide ran, and suddenly
declared that retreat to the open sea was cut off: where he had sailed
free channels rocks grinned; reason withstood a fancy that they had lain
in ambush, and risen actually to hem him in. Twice he risked with the
narrowest of chances, and slid safe on the heave of a wave; on the third
challenge a treacherous, swirling eddy caught the boat, swung it aslant,
crashed it upon a lurking rock. A plank gave way splintered, and water
spirted within.
The boy rowed desperate, straining by quick strokes and few, after
deliverance from the narrows. Yet when he dared to lay aside the oars for
an instant to check the leak, the boat was pitching with threats close in
on every side. He could spare only a moment to catch up his coat, plug
with it hastily, and drag atop the heavy cross-beams of his tackle; quick
upon the oars again he needed to be, desperate of baling. Still the water
oozed and trickled in, to lie up to his ankles and slowly to rise. There
was no making out to sea; from the Isle Sinister he owned himself cut off
by thick-set barriers; only the shore remained not absolutely
unattainable though furthest it was.
Patiently and cautiously the boy felt his way. From stroke to stroke he
held on safely, steady, quick-eyed, but told by the gradual water
against his shins that his boat must shortly founder. Conscience smote
him hard; the near sure prospect of swimming for bare life among the
breakers opened his eyes. He had held as his very own to risk at will his
boat and his life; now, with pangs of remorse, he recognised the superior
claim of a grey-haired couple, who had been parents to him, who bereft of
him would go down to the grave in grief and poverty. Of life, and the
means of living, but little right had he to dispose, considering their
due and their need.
The gunwale sank low, lower, till a lurch might displace the cross-beams,
for they lost in weight as the water within the boat deepened. Yet point
by point success attended, and released the foolhardy lad and his boat
from dire extremity. They have chance of clean deliverance; they are past
the last girdle of breakers, hardly a furlong from the shore; they are
upon sleek water, with the tide against them but lazily.
The boy rowed on with long, smooth strokes; the mere sway of his body was
as much as the boat could carry, so little above the water was the
gunwale. He had halved the distance, when down she went beneath him; and
he swam, waded, stood ashore, the first man who had ever won there
living by way of the sea.
But little elate could he be. He could glean drifting oars and
stretchers, his boat might be recovered from the out tide, but the Isle
Sinister lay remote as ever. And his heart had fallen.
Ugly necessity gave no choice but to face the breakers again in retrace
of his perilous way; for an alternative he could not entertain that would
entail certain evils more to be dreaded than any risk.
Straying aimlessly along the desolate shore, the boy pondered, nervous
now of many risks he had braved hardily. He stopped once at sight of a
grey patch of calcined rock. There it must have been that, not so long
ago, wreckage had been gathered and burned scrupulously, and with it the
bodies of two drowned men, according to the custom of the coast.
Instinctively he crossed himself, with a brief prayer for the souls of
those two, cut off from life in that evil place, where no help had
reached but the heavy knell, pitiful.
Greatly desiring the silence of the bells, if he were to escape with
life, the boy turned his eyes aloft, inclining to bespeak it. A lively
suspicion of hunger impelled decision; and up the cliff he went, his
abashed vigour fain of any new output. An uncertain path promised fairly
till half way, where a recent lapse turned him aside on to untried slopes
and ledges: a perilous ascent to any not bold and sure and practised. The
spice of danger kindled the boy's blood; he won to the top with some loss
of breath, but his head was high, and his heart was high, and ultimate
failure envisaged him no longer.
He stood among graves.