Keen and strong, and steady to-night in the gathering dusk, the wind is
coming up the firth out of the east. Darkling clouds roll low along the
sky, and, before the breeze, the waves in their unnumbered hosts, like
dark hussars white-crested, ride past to break upon the beach-sands
yonder inland at Fort George. The full, deep gale brings with it out of
the shadowy east the health of a hundred tumbling seas, and sets the
glad life dancing in lip, and eye, and heart; while the music of the
rushing waves, like the drums of far-off armies, stirs the soul with
the daring of great purposes. Little need, therefore, is there to pity
the fisher women and children far out at the ebb-tide edge gathering
bait among the reefs. Clear are their eyes as the sea-pools over which
they bend, and while sun and wind have made their skins brown as the
wet sand itself, many a drawing-room beauty would give her diamonds
for such a wealth of raven hair. Even at this distance the happy voices
of the children, a pleasant murmur, speak of free and simple hearts.
Sport on, happy children! Rejoice in your brown brood, simple mothers!
Not yours are the pale cheek and the wasted form, the lifeless eye
and the languid step. Sometimes, it may be, when the winds rise and
the waves come thundering upon the beach, there are anxious hours for
you because of husband or father tossing out there somewhere in the
darkness; sometimes, alas! a sore heart and many tears when the little
knot of sad and silent men come up from the beach and lay gently upon
its pillow the pale wet face that will speak to you no more. But yours,
at least, are not the fetid atmosphere of cities and their weary miles
of pavement; for you the smile of Heaven is not veiled by a sin-black
pall of smoke; and when the dark angel does come to your humble
dwellings, and the last “Good-byes!” have to be said, it is not amid
the heartless roar and the squalor of city streets, but amid the sweet,
salt smell, and listening to the strange and solemn “calling” of the
sea.
A race by themselves are these fisher-folk, mixing little with the
people of the upper town, and keeping very much by customs of their
own. Danish, very likely, or Norse, in origin, their blood remains
all but as pure yet as it was when their forefathers landed on these
shores. Seven miles to the eastward along the coast, where the white
sand-line gleams on the horizon, in places exposed by the shifting
dunes, are still to be found the remains of villages which belonged
to the ancestors of these folk, and by these remains--bronze pins,
fish-hooks, broken pottery, and shell heaps--it seems clear that the
ancient villagers lived very much the same life as is lived here
to-day. Only, of late years the steamship and the School Board have
made some invasions upon traditional ideas.
At hand, spread on the bent-grass to dry, and brown as seaweed itself,
lie miles of fishing-nets, with their rows of worn cork floats; for the
herring fishery of the season is over, the west coast boats have gone
home through the Canal, and the gear is being laid by for the winter.
In the end of April it will be wanted again for the Loch Fyne fishing,
but it will be the end of June before the herring nets are used on
the east coast again. The good woman coming up the shore below with
her creel and pail of bait--mussels, sand-worms, and silver-gleaming
needle-fish--is going now to bait for the later white-fishing the “long
lines,” with their hundreds of hooks, which her husband and his sons
will take out to set before daylight. To-morrow morning, when the boat
comes home, she will have to fill her creel with the haddocks, and
sell them along the country-side; or perhaps the fish will be bought
at auction by the curers, to be smoked with the smoke of fragrant
fir-cones into succulent, appetising “speldings.”
The quay-head in the morning, when the fish auction is going on,
makes a characteristic sight, and displays the only occasion on which
anything like business wakens in the quiet place.
The boats have come in with the running tide, and lie moored to great
iron rings in the landing-place. Curious names they have, mostly
double--the “Elspat and Ann,” or the “Ann and Margaret”--probably
to represent the wives or sweethearts of two partners. In the boats
themselves lie together heaps of lines, ropes, and sails, with fish
gleaming here and there among them; while the quay is littered with
oars and spars and cables, enough to make walking a fine art. The fish
have been lifted out of each boat by its crew, and when the women have
divided them into glittering heaps--a heap for each man and one for the
boat--the skipper sells the boat’s heap, and its price settles that of
the others. Here the shrewd bargaining power of the fisher-folk comes
out, trained, as it is, by the narrow path they tread between means and
ends; while here the women who have no man’s hand to bring them home
the harvest of the deep contrive to find their bread by buying the fish
they will afterwards retail. The whole transaction is primitive in the
extreme, but one that sufficiently serves its purpose.
A life of which this is the busiest scene may appear monotonous to
the dweller in cities, but again and again there come hours of stern
excitement which prove the manhood of the race. There have been times
when every boat of the fishing fleet as it came rushing ashore had to
be caught, at peril of life and limb, breast-deep in the furious surf,
and landed safely with its occupants. Yet men are ever most plentiful
when the work is most dangerous, and never yet has the lifeboat lacked
a crew.
Once, indeed, a few years ago it happened that the men, all but one or
two, were away at the fishing, when word was brought that a Norwegian
timber-ship was going to pieces on the treacherous shifting sands
yonder, seven miles away. A tremendous surf was beating upon the beach,
and the lifeboat coxswain and crew were riding the storm out, cabled
to their herring-nets somewhere in the North Sea. In the upper town,
however, there was visiting his brother just then the captain of an
East Indiaman, home upon holiday, and the message was handed to him as
he sat at breakfast. In half an hour, sailor-like, he had the lifeboat
out, manned with a scratch crew of volunteers, and run down the beach.
Then began the difficulty and peril. By strong and willing hands the
boat was run out into the surf, but again and again she was caught by
a huge wave and driven back. Three-quarters of an hour’s hard rowing
it took to pull her out to the fourth sea. A little longer, and she
hoisted her sail, and went plunging off into the howling wilderness of
waters.
Would she accomplish her mission? Would she and the brave hearts on
board her ever themselves come back? Old men and fishers’ wives watched
her from the quay-head till she disappeared among the waves, and then
they waited, anxious and fearful.
The day passed without tidings of her, and at last night began to fall.
The anxiety of the watchers had become intense, when suddenly some
one caught a glimpse of white bows gleaming far out over the waves.
There she was, clearly now, coming like a sea-bird through the driving
spray. Who could tell whether she had won or lost lives? Presently her
thwarts were seen black with men. She had accomplished her mission; but
the question yet remained--how were they to be landed? Alas! all might
yet be lost in the terrible surf. There was a strong hand at the helm,
however; the full tide had covered the bar, and, with a single swoop,
she shot into the harbour, every man safe, amid the wild huzzas of the
waiting throng.
One glad heart there was too full for words. Among the ringing cheers,
as the crowd made way for its hero, she could only in silence take her
husband’s arm. It was the captain’s wife.