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HARBOR TALES DOWN NORTH
* * * * *
WORKS OF NORMAN DUNCAN
The Soul of the Street
The Way of the Sea
Doctor Luke of the Labrador
The Mother
Doctor Grenfell's Parish
The Adventures of Billy Topsail
The Cruise of the Shining Light
Every Man for Himself
The Suitable Child
Going Down from Jerusalem
Higgins: A Man's Christian
Billy Topsail and Company
The Measure of a Man
The Best of a Bad Job
Finding His Soul
The Bird Store Man
Australian By-Ways
Billy Topsail, M.D.
Battles Royal Down North
Harbor Tales Down North
[Illustration: (signed) Norman Duncan 1871-1916]
* * * * *
HARBOR TALES DOWN NORTH
by
NORMAN DUNCAN
Author of
"Doctor Luke of the Labrador," Etc.
With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D.
Illustrated
New York Chicago
Fleming H. Revell Company
London and Edinburgh
Copyright, 1918, by
Fleming H. Revell Company
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
APPRECIATION BY WILFRED T. GRENFELL, M.D. 5
I. MADMAN'S LUCK 17
II. THE SIREN OF SCALAWAG RUN 59
III. THE ART OF TERRY LUTE 91
IV. THE DOCTOR OF AFTERNOON ARM 115
V. A CROESUS OF GINGERBREAD COVE 141
VI. A MADONNA OF TINKLE TICKLE 165
VII. THE LITTLE NIPPER O' HIDE-AN'-SEEK HARBOR 189
VIII. SMALL SAM SMALL 223
IX. AN IDYL OF RICKITY TICKLE 255
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
Norman Duncan _Title_
"Well, I'm off, whatever comes of it" 48
"'You're a coward, God help you,' Skipper Tom groaned" 108
"If he comes by the bight he'll never get here at all" 126
"We found Skipper Sammy squatted on a pan of ice" 250
NORMAN DUNCAN
An Appreciation by
WILFRED T. GRENFELL, M.D.
As our thoughts fly back to the days when the writer of these stories
was a guest aboard our little hospital vessel, we remember realizing
how vast was the gulf which seemed to lie between him and the
circumstances of our sea life in the Northland. Nowhere else in the
world, perhaps, do the cold facts of life call for a more unrelieved
material response. It is said of our people that they are born with a
netting needle in their hand and an ax by the side of their cradle.
Existence is a daily struggle with adamantine facts and conditions;
and quick, practical response, which leaves little encouragement or
opportunity for dreamers, is, often enough, the only dividing line
between life and death. As I write these lines the greatest physical
battle the world has ever seen is being fought. Yet here, as my eyes
wander over the great ocean around me, nothing but absolute peace
meets my view. But it too has its stormy times and its days when its
strength and its mighty depths of possibilities are the most insistent
points about it. And this spirit of the deep Norman Duncan seems to
have understood as did no other of our visitors.
Our experience of the men from the hubs of existence had led us to
regard them all as hardened by a keener struggle than ours, and
critical, if not suspicious, of those who were satisfied to endure
greater physical toil and discomfort than they for so much smaller
material return. In the Labrador even a dog hates to be laughed at,
and the merest suspicion of the supercilious makes a gap which it is
almost impossible to bridge. But Norman Duncan created no such gap. He
was, therefore, an anomaly to us--he was away below the surface--and
few of us, during the few weeks he stayed, got to know him well enough
to appreciate his real worth. Yet men who "go down to the sea in
ships" have before now been known to sleep through a Grand Opera, or
to see little to attract in the works of the Old Masters. And so we
gather comfort for our inability to measure this man at his full
stature.
All who love men of tender, responsive imagination loved Duncan. It
was quite characteristic of the man that though he earned large sums
of money by his pen, he was always so generous in helping those in
need--more especially those who showed talents to which they were
unable, through stress of circumstances, to give expression--that he
died practically a poor man. He was a high-souled, generous idealist.
All his work is purposeful, conveying to his readers a moral lesson.
He had the keenest appreciation of the feelings of others and
understood the immense significance of the little things of life--a
fact evidenced by his vivid descriptions of the beauties of Nature,
which he first appreciated and then, with his mastery of English, so
ably described. His own experience of poverty and struggle after
leaving the university opened to him channels for his sympathetic
portrayal of humble life. Physically he was never a fighter or an
athlete; but he proved himself possessed of singular personal courage.
He fought his best fights, however, on fields to which gladiators have
no entry and in battles which, unlike our physical contests, are not
spasmodic, but increasing and eternal. Norman Duncan's love and
affection for the people whom we also found joy in serving naturally
endeared him to us. He was ever a true knight, entering the lists in
behalf of those principles which make up man's real inner life; and we
realize that his love for men who embody characteristics developed by
constant contact with the sea--fortitude, simplicity, hardiness--died
only with his own passing.
The stories here brought together are woven out of experiences
gathered during his brief periods of contact with our life. But how
real are his characters! Like other famous personalities in
fiction--Mr. Pickwick, Ebenezer Scrooge, Colonel Newcome, Tom Jones,
and a thousand others--who people a world we love, they teach us,
possibly, more of high ideals, and of our capacities for service than
do the actual lives of some saints, or the biographies of
philosophers. And how vivid the action in which his characters take
part! In the external circumstances of his life and in his literary
art and preferences he was singularly like his elder brother in
romance, Robert Louis Stevenson. Both were slight in physique but
manly and vigorous in character and mission in life. Both were
wanderers over the face of the globe. Both loved the sea passionately,
and were at their best in telling of the adventures of those who spend
their lives on the great waters. Both, finally, died at the height of
power, literally with pen in hand, for both left recent and unfinished
work. And the epitaph of either might well be the noble words of
Stevenson from his brave essay on the greatness of the stout heart
bound with triple brass:
"Death has not been suffered to take so much as an illusion from his
heart. In the hot-fit of life, a-tiptoe on the highest point of being,
he passes at a bound on the other side. The noise of the mallet and
chisel is scarcely quenched, the trumpets are hardly done blowing,
when, trailing clouds of glory, this happy-starred, full-blooded
spirit shoots into the spiritual land."
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
In the blood of Norman Duncan lived a spirit of romance and a love of
adventure which make the chronicle of his short life a record of
change and movement. He was born in Brantford, on the Grand River, in
Western Ontario, July 2, 1871, and though he passed most of the years
of his manhood in the United States, he never took out citizenship
papers in the Republic. After a boyhood spent in various towns in
Canada, he entered Toronto University, where in his four years of
undergraduate life he participated eagerly in all forms of social and
literary activity.
In 1895 he joined the reportorial staff of the _Auburn_ (N.Y.)
_Bulletin_, which position he held for two years. Then followed four
years of congenial work on the staff of the _New York Evening Post_,
where he served successively as reporter, copy editor on city desk,
special writer for the city, and, finally, editor of the Saturday
supplement. The editors of the _Post_ were quick to recognize Duncan's
ability in descriptive writing and character delineation, and under the
spur of their encouragement he did his first important literary work, a
series of short-stories of life in the Syrian quarter of New York City,
published first in _The Atlantic Monthly_ and _McClure's Magazine_ and
gathered subsequently into a book entitled _The Soul of the Street_.
About the time of the appearance of this book the author's temperament
reacted against the atmosphere which it embodied, and in the summer of
1900 by an arrangement with _McClure's Magazine_ he went to
Newfoundland to gather impressions and material for a series of
sea-tales. Up to this time he had never spent a night on the ocean nor
been at sea on a sailing vessel; in his boyhood he had rather feared
the great gray ocean, and only later in life did he become so strongly
attracted by its power and mystery and by the impression of its eternal
struggle against those who must wrest a precarious living from its
depths that it provided the background for his most striking and
characteristic stories. Three summers in Newfoundland and one on the
Labrador Coast resulted in _The Way of the Sea_, _Doctor Luke of the
Labrador_, and other books and short-stories, including those of the
present collection.
In 1901 Duncan was appointed assistant to the professor of English at
Washington and Jefferson College, and one year later he was elected
Wallace Professor of Rhetoric at the same institution, a post which he
held until 1906. His duties were comparatively light so that he was
able to devote much of his time to literary work. While occupying this
position he enjoyed the companionship of his brother, Robert Kennedy
Duncan, Professor of Chemistry at the college and later President of
the Mellon Institute of the University of Pittsburgh, and the
prominent author of a well-known series of text books in chemistry,
who died in 1914.
In 1907 and 1908 Norman Duncan was special correspondent for _Harper's
Magazine_ in Palestine, Arabia, and Egypt, and in 1912 and 1913 he was
sent by the same magazine to Australia, New Guinea, the Dutch East
Indies, and the Malay States. Between these travel periods he acted
for two years as adjunct professor of English at the University of
Kansas. Not any of Duncan's foreign travel seems to have impressed him
as did his visits to Newfoundland and the Labrador coast, and some of
his best tales are those of the Northland--powerful stories of life
reduced to its elements. Of these tales those of the present
collection are a good representation.
The creator of these great stories was cut off at the height of his
power; he died very suddenly of heart-disease while playing a
golf-match in Fredonia, New York, on October 18, 1916. He lies buried
in Brantford, Ontario, the town of his birth.
Few modern writers of tales and short-stories have drawn their
materials from sources as scattered as those which attracted Norman
Duncan. Among the immigrants of the East Side of New York, the rough
lumber-jacks of the Northwest, and the trappers and deep-sea fishermen
of Newfoundland and The Labrador he gathered his ideas and
impressions. But though his characters and incidents are chosen from
such diverse sources, the characteristics of his literary art remain
constant in all his books, for the personality of the author did not
change.
Norman Duncan was a realist in that he copied life. But his realism is
that of Dickens and Bret Harte and Kipling rather than that of Mrs.
Freeman and Arthur Morrison and the Russian story-tellers. He cared
less for the accuracy of details than for the vividness of his general
impressions and the force of his moral lessons. Like Bret Harte he
idealized life. Like Harte, too, he was fond of dramatic situations
and striking contrasts, of mixing the bitter and the sweet and the
rough and the smooth of life; his introduction of the innocent baby
into the drunkard-filled bar-room in _The Measure of a Man_ is
strikingly like Bret Harte's similar employment of this sentimental
device in _The Luck of Roaring Camp_, and the presence of Patty Batch
among the soiled women of Swamp's End in the same tale and of the
tawdry Millie Slade face to face with the curate in _The Mother_ is
again reminiscent of Harte's technique. Like Dickens and like Bret
Harte, Duncan was a frank moralist. His chief concern was in winnowing
the souls of men and women bare of the chaff of petty circumstances
which covered them. His stories all contain at least a minor chord of
sentiment, but are usually free from the sentimentality which mars
some of Harte's sketches. He is not ashamed to employ pathos, but his
tragic situations are rarely overstrained and maudlin. He has all the
tenderness of Dickens; his _Christmas Eve at Topmast Tickle_ may well
be compared with _A Christmas Carol_. Norman Duncan never married, but
few Canadian or American authors have understood women as did the
creator of high-spirited Bessie Roth and her noble mother in _Doctor
Luke of the Labrador_, of naive little Patty Batch, and of Millie
Slade, glorified by her love for her son. In the delicacy and
sensibility of his delineation of women he undoubtedly surpasses Bret
Harte, most of whose women are either exaggerated or colorless.
Moreover, Norman Duncan possessed a very genuine understanding of
children, particularly of young boys, of whom he was exceedingly fond.
There are few more sympathetic pictures of children in American
literature than those of David Roth and the Lovejoy twins in _Doctor
Luke of the Labrador_, and of Donald, Pale Peter's lad, in _The
Measure of a Man_; and in Billy Topsail Duncan has created a real boy,
a youngster as red-blooded and manly and keen for excitement in his
numerous thrilling adventures in the frozen North as are any of
Stevenson's boy heroes.
Variety and color in characters and situations, vividness of
descriptions--especially in those of the stormy sea--rapidity of
movement and dramatic intensity in narratives, genuine sentiment and
real tenderness, humor, and pathos, and, above all, a healthy,
vigorous, Anglo-Saxon morality--all of these qualities make of Norman
Duncan's books and short-stories literature that is distinctly worthy
and permanent in character.
* * * * *
I
MADMAN'S LUCK
* * * * *
I
MADMAN'S LUCK
It was one thing or the other. Yet it might be neither. There was a
disquieting alternative. No doubt the message disposed of the delicate
affair for good and all in ten terse words. The maid had made up her
mind; she had disclosed it in haste: that was all. It might be,
however, that the dispatch conveyed news of a more urgent content. It
might be that the maid lay ill--that she called for help and comfort.
In that event, nothing could excuse the reluctance of the man who
should decline an instant passage of Scalawag Run with the pitiful
appeal. True, it was not inviting--a passage of Scalawag Run in the
wet, gray wind, with night flowing in from the sea.
No matter about that. Elizabeth Luke had departed from Scalawag Harbor
in confusion, leaving no definite answer to the two grave suggestions,
but only a melting appeal for delay, as maids will--for a space of
absence, an interval for reflection, an opportunity to search her
heart and be sure of its decision. If, then, she had communicated that
decision to her mother, according to her promise to communicate it to
somebody, and if the telegram contained news of no more consequence,
a good man might command his patience, might indulge in a reasonable
caution, might hesitate on the brink of Black Cliff with the sanction
of his self-respect. But if Elizabeth Luke lay ill and in need, a
passage of Scalawag Run might be challenged, whatever came of it. And
both Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl knew it well enough.
Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl, on the return from Bottom Harbor to
Scalawag Run, had come to Point-o'-Bay Cove, where they were to lie
the night. They were accosted in haste by the telegraph operator.
"Are you men from Scalawag?" she inquired.
She was a brisk, trim young woman from St. John's, new to the
occupation, whose administration of the telegraph office was
determined and exact.
"We is, ma'am," Sandy Rowl replied.
"It's fortunate I caught you," said the young woman, glowing with
satisfaction. "Indeed it is! Are you crossing at once?"
Sandy Rowl smiled.
"We hadn't thought of it, ma'am," said he. "I 'low you don't know much
about Scalawag Run," he added.
The young woman tossed her red head.
"When you _have_ thought of it, and made up both your minds," she
replied tartly, "you might let me know. It is a matter of some
importance."
"Ay, ma'am."
By this time Tommy Lark had connected the telegraph operator's concern
with the rare emergency of a message.
"What you so eager t' know for?" he inquired.
"I've a dispatch to send across."
"Not a telegram!"
"It is."
"Somebody in trouble?"
"As to that," the young woman replied, "I'm not permitted to say. It's
a secret of the office."
"Is you permitted t' tell who the telegram is from?"
The young woman opened her eyes. This was astonishing simplicity.
Permitted to tell who the telegram was from!
"I should think not!" she declared.
"Is you permitted t' tell who 'tis for?"
The young woman debated the propriety of disclosing the name.
Presently she decided that no regulation of the office would be
violated by a frank answer. Obviously she could not send the message
without announcing its destination.
"Are you acquainted with Mrs. Jacob Luke?" said she.
Tommy Lark turned to Sandy Rowl. Sandy Rowl turned to Tommy Lark.
Their eyes met. Both were concerned. It was Tommy Lark that replied.
"We is," said he. "Is the telegram for she?"
"It is."
"From Grace Harbor?"
"I'm not permitted to tell you that."
"Well then, if the telegram is for Mrs. Jacob Luke," said Tommy Lark
gravely, "Sandy Rowl an' me will take a look at the ice in Scalawag
Run an' see what we makes of it. I 'low we'll jus' _have_ to. Eh,
Sandy?"
Sandy Rowl's face was twisted with doubt. For a moment he deliberated.
In the end he spoke positively.
"We'll take a look at it," said he.
They went then to the crest of Black Cliff to survey the ice in the
run. Not a word was spoken on the way. A momentous situation, by the
dramatic quality of which both young men were moved, had been
precipitated by the untimely receipt of the telegram for Elizabeth
Luke's mother.
* * * * *
Point-o'-Bay, in the lee of which the cottages of Point-o'-Bay Cove
were gathered, as in the crook of a finger, thrust itself into the
open sea. Scalawag Island, of which Scalawag Harbor was a sheltered
cove, lay against the open sea. Between Point-o'-Bay and Scalawag
Island was the run called Scalawag, of the width of two miles, leading
from the wide open into Whale Bay, where it was broken and lost in the
mist of the islands. There had been wind at sea--a far-off gale,
perhaps, then exhausted, or plunging away into the southern seas,
leaving a turmoil of water behind it.
Directly into the run, rolling from the open, the sea was swelling in
gigantic billows. There would have been no crossing at all had there
not been ice in the run; but there was ice in the run--plenty of ice,
fragments of the fields in the Labrador drift, blown in by a breeze of
the day before, and wallowing there, the wind having fallen away to a
wet, gray breeze which served but to hold the ice in the bay.
It seemed, from the crest of Black Cliff, where Tommy Lark and Sandy
Rowl stood gazing, each debating with his own courage, that the ice
was heavy enough for the passage--thick ice, of varying extent, from
fragments, like cracked ice, to wide pans; and the whole, it seemed,
floated in contact, pan touching pan all the way across from the feet
of Black Cliff to the first rocks of Scalawag Harbor.
What was inimical was the lift and fall of the ice in the great swells
running in from the open sea.
"Well?" said Tommy Lark.
"I don't know. What do you think?"
"It might be done. I don't know."
"Ay; it might be. No tellin' for sure, though. The ice is in a
wonderful tumble out there."
"Seems t' be heavy ice on the edge o' the sea."
"'Tis in a terrible commotion. I'd not chance it out there. I've never
seed the ice so tossed about in the sea afore."
Tommy Lark reflected.
"Ay," he determined at last; "the best course across is by way o' the
heavy ice on the edge o' the sea. There mus' be a wonderful steep
slant t' some o' them pans when the big seas slips beneath them. Yet a
man could go warily an' maybe keep from slidin' off. If the worst
comes t' the worst, he could dig his toes an' nails in an' crawl. 'Tis
not plain from here if them pans is touchin' each other all the way
across; but it looks that way--I 'low they _is_ touchin', with maybe a
few small gaps that a man could get round somehow. Anyhow, 'tis not
quite certain that a man would cast hisself away t' no purpose out
there; an' if there's evil news in that telegram I 'low a man could
find excuse enough t' try his luck."
"There's news both good and evil in it."
"I don't know," said Tommy Lark uneasily. "Maybe there is. 'Tis awful
t' contemplate. I'm wonderful nervous, Sandy. Isn't you?"
"I is."
"Think the wind will rise? It threatens."
"I don't know. It has a sort of a switch to it that bodes a night o'
temper. 'Tis veerin' t' the east. 'Twill be a gale from the open if it
blows at all."
Tommy Lark turned from a listless contemplation of the gray reaches of
the open sea.
"News both good an' evil!" he mused.
"The one for me an' the other for you. An' God knows the issue! I
can't fathom it."
"I wish 'twas over with."
"Me too. I'm eager t' make an end o' the matter. 'Twill be a sad
conclusion for me."
"I can't think it, Sandy. I thinks the sadness will be mine."
"You rouse my hope, Tommy."
"If 'tis not I, 'twill be you."
"'Twill be you."
Tommy Lark shook his head dolefully. He sighed.
"Ah, no!" said he. "I'm not that deservin' an' fortunate."
"Anyhow, there's good news in that telegram for one of us," Sandy
declared, "an' bad news for the other. An' whatever the news,--whether
good for me an' bad for you, or good for you an' bad for me,--'tis of
a sort that should keep for a safer time than this. If 'tis good news
for you, you've no right t' risk a foot on the floe this night; if
'tis bad news for you, you might risk what you liked, an' no matter
about it. 'Tis the same with me. Until we knows what's in that
telegram, or until the fall of a better time than this for crossin'
Scalawag Run, we've neither of us no right t' venture a yard from
shore."
"You've the right of it, so far as you goes," Tommy Lark replied; "but
the telegram may contain other news than the news you speaks of."
"No, Tommy."
"She said nothin' t' me about a telegram. She said she'd send a
letter."
"She've telegraphed t' ease her mind."
"Why to her mother?"
"'Tis jus' a maid's way, t' do a thing like that."
"Think so, Sandy? It makes me wonderful nervous. Isn't you wonderful
nervous, Sandy?"
"I am that."
"I'm wonderful curious, too. Isn't you?"
"I is. I'm impatient as well. Isn't you?"
"I'm havin' a tough struggle t' command my patience. What you think
she telegraphed for?"
"Havin' made up her mind, she jus' couldn't wait t' speak it."
"I wonder what----"
"Me too, Sandy. God knows it! Still an' all, impatient as I is, I can
wait for the answer. 'Twould be sin an' folly for a man t' take his
life out on Scalawag Run this night for no better reason than t'
satisfy his curiosity. I'm in favor o' waitin' with patience for a
better time across."
"The maid might be ill," Tommy Lark objected.
"She's not ill. She's jus' positive an' restless. I knows her ways
well enough t' know that much."
"She _might_ be ill."
"True, she might; but she----"
"An' if----"
Sandy Rowl, who had been staring absently up the coast toward the sea,
started and exclaimed.
"Ecod!" said he. "A bank o' fog's comin' round Point-o'-Bay!"
"Man!"
"That ends it."
"'Tis a pity!"
"'Twill be thick as mud on the floe in half an hour. We must lie the
night here."
"I don't know, Sandy."
Sandy laughed.
"Tommy," said he, "'tis a wicked folly t' cling t' your notion any
longer."
"I wants t' know what's in that telegram."
"So does I."
"I'm fair shiverin' with eagerness t' know. Isn't you?"
"I'm none too steady."
"Sandy, I jus' _got_ t' know!"
"Well, then," Sandy Rowl proposed, "we'll go an' bait the telegraph
lady into tellin' us."
* * * * *
It was an empty pursuit. The young woman from St. John's was obdurate.
Not a hint escaped her in response to the baiting and awkward
interrogation of Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl; and the more they besought
her, the more suspicious she grew. She was an obstinate young
person--she was precise, she was scrupulous, she was of a secretive,
untrustful turn of mind; and as she was ambitious for advancement from
the dreary isolation of Point-o'-Bay Cove, she was not to be
entrapped or entreated into what she had determined was a breach of
discipline. Moreover, it appeared to her suspicious intelligence that
these young men were too eager for information. Who were they? She had
not been long in charge of the office at Point-o'-Bay Cove. She did
not know them. And why should they demand to know the contents of the
telegram before undertaking the responsibility of its delivery?
As for the degree of peril in a crossing of Scalawag Run, she was not
aware of it; she was from St. John's, not out-port born. The ice in
the swell of the sea, with fog creeping around Point-o'-Bay in a
rising wind, meant nothing to her experience. At any rate, she would
not permit herself to fall into a questionable situation in which she
might be called severely to account. She was not of that sort. She had
her own interests to serve. They would be best served by an exact
execution of her duty.
"This telegram," said she, "is an office secret, as I have told you
already. I have my orders not to betray office secrets."
Tommy Lark was abashed.
"Look you," he argued. "If the message is of no consequence an' could
be delayed----"
"I haven't said that it is of no consequence."
"Then _'tis_ of consequence!"
"I don't say that it is of consequence. I don't say anything either
way. I don't say anything at all."
"Well, now," Tommy complained, "t' carry that message across Scalawag
Run would be a wonderful dangerous----"
"You don't have to carry it across."
"True. Yet 'tis a man's part t' serve----"
"My instructions," the young woman interrupted, "are to deliver
messages as promptly as possible. If you are crossing to Scalawag
Harbor to-night, I should be glad if you would take this telegram with
you. If you are not--well, that's not my affair. I am not instructed
to urge anybody to deliver my messages."
"Is the message from the maid?"
"What a question!" the young woman exclaimed indignantly. "I'll not
tell you!"
"Is there anything about sickness in it?"
"I'll not tell you."
"If 'tis a case o' sickness," Tommy declared, "we'll take it across,
an' glad t' be o' service. If 'tis the other matter----"
"What other matter?" the young woman flashed.
"Well," Tommy replied, flushed and awkward, "there was another little
matter between Elizabeth Luke an'----"
The young woman started.
"Elizabeth Luke!" she cried. "Did you say Elizabeth Luke?"
"I did, ma'am."
"I said nothing about Elizabeth Luke."
"We knows 'tis from she."
"Ah-ha!" the young woman exclaimed. "You know far too much. I think
you have more interest in this telegram than you ought to have."
"I confess it."
The young woman surveyed Tommy Lark with sparkling curiosity. Her eyes
twinkled. She pursed her lips.
"What's your name?" she inquired.
"Thomas Lark."
The young woman turned to Sandy Rowl.
"What's your name?" she demanded.
"Alexander Rowl. Is there--is there anything in the telegram about me?
Aw, come now!"
The young woman laughed pleasantly. There was a romance in the wind.
Her interest was coy.
"Would you like to know?" she teased, her face dimpling.
Sandy Rowl responded readily to this dimpling, flashing banter. A
conclusion suggested itself with thrilling conviction.
"I would!" he declared.
"And to think that I could tell you!"
"I'm sure you could, ma'am!"
The young woman turned to Tommy Lark.
"Your name's Lark?"
"Yes, ma'am. There's nothin'--there's nothin' in the telegram about a
man called Thomas Lark, is there?"
"And yours is Rowl?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"I'm new to these parts," said the young woman, "and I'm trying to
learn all the names I can master. Now, as for this telegram, you may
take it or leave it, just as you will. What are you going to do? I
want to close the office now and go home to tea."
"We'll take it," said Sandy Rowl. "Eh, Tommy?"
"Ay."
"An' we'll deliver it as soon as we're able. It may be the night. It
may not be. What say t' that, Tommy?"
"We'll take it across."
* * * * *
With that the young woman handed the sealed envelope to Tommy Lark and
bade them both goodnight.
Tommy Lark thrust the telegram in his waistcoat pocket and buttoned
his jacket. Both men turned to the path to the crest of Black Cliff,
whence a lesser foot-path led to the shore of the sea.
"One o' the two of us," said Sandy Rowl, "is named in that telegram.
I'm sure of it."
Tommy Lark nodded.
"I knows it," Sandy proceeded, "because I seed a flicker in the
woman's eye when she learned the two names of us. She's a sly one,
that young woman!"
"Ay."
"You is chosen, Tommy."
"No, 'tis not I. 'Tis you. You is selected, Sandy. The woman twinkled
when she named you. I marked it t' my sorrow."
"The maid would not choose me, Tommy," Sandy replied, his face awry
with a triumphant smile, "when she might have you."
"She've done it."
In advance, on the path to the crest of Black Cliff, Tommy Lark was
downcast and grim. Of a faithful, kindly nature in respect to his
dealings with others, and hopeful for them all, and quick with an
inspiring praise and encouragement, he could discover no virtue in
himself, nor had he any compassion when he phrased the chapters of his
own future; and though he was vigorous and decisive in action, not
deterred by the gloom of any prospect, he was of a gray, hopeless mind
in a crisis.
Rowl, however, was of a saucy, sanguine temperament; his faith in his
own deserving was never diminished by discouragement; nor, whatever
his lips might say, was he inclined to foresee in his future any
unhappy turn of fortune. The telegraph operator, he was persuaded, had
disclosed an understanding of the situation in a twinkle of her blue
eyes and an amused twist of her thin lips; and the twinkle and the
twist had indicated the presence of his name in Elizabeth Luke's
telegram. Rowl was uplifted--triumphant.
In the wake of Tommy Lark he grinned, his teeth bare with delight and
triumph. And as for Tommy Lark, he plodded on, striving grimly up the
hill, his mind sure of its gloomy inference, his heart wrenched, his
purpose resolved upon a worthy course of feeling and conduct. Let the
dear maid have her way! She had chosen her happiness. And with that a
good man must be content.
* * * * *
In the courtship of pretty Elizabeth Luke, Tommy Lark had acted
directly, bluntly, impetuously, according to his nature. And he had
been forehanded with his declaration. It was known to him that Sandy
Rowl was pressing the same pursuit to a swift conclusion. Tommy Lark
loved the maid. He had told her so with indiscreet precipitation; and
into her confusion he had flung the momentous question.
"Maid," said he, "I loves you! Will you wed me?"
Sandy Rowl, being of a more subtle way in all things, had proceeded to
the issue with delicate caution, creeping toward it by inches, as a
man stalks a caribou. He too had been aware of rivalry; and, having
surmised Tommy Lark's intention, he had sought the maid out
unwittingly, not an hour after her passionate adventure with Tommy
Lark, and had then cast the die of his own happiness.
In both cases the effect had been the same. Elizabeth Luke had wept
and fled to her mother like a frightened child; and she had
thereafter protested, with tears of indecision, torn this way and that
until her heart ached beyond endurance, that she was not sure of her
love for either, but felt that she loved both, nor could tell whom she
loved the most, if either at all. In this agony of confusion,
terrifying for a maid, she had fled beyond her mother's arms, to her
grandmother's cottage at Grace Harbor, there to deliberate and decide,
as she said; and she had promised to speed her conclusion with all the
determination she could command, and to return a letter of decision.
In simple communities, such as Scalawag Harbor, a telegram is a
shocking incident. Bad news must be sped; good news may await a
convenient time. A telegram signifies the very desperation of haste
and need--it conveys news only of the most momentous import; and upon
every man into whose hands it falls it lays a grave obligation to
expedite its delivery. Tommy Lark had never before touched a telegram;
he had never before clapped eyes on one. He was vaguely aware of the
telegram as a mystery of wire and a peculiar cunning of men. Telegrams
had come to Scalawag Harbor in times of disaster in the course of
Tommy Lark's nineteen years of life. Widow Mull, for example, when the
_White Wolf_ was cast away at the ice, with George Mull found frozen
on the floe, had been told of it in a telegram.
All the while, thus, Tommy Lark's conception of the urgency of the
matter mounted high and oppressed him. Elizabeth Luke would not
lightly dispatch a telegram from Grace Harbor to her mother at
Scalawag. All the way from Grace Harbor? Not so! After all, this could
be no message having to do with the affairs of Tommy Lark and Sandy
Rowl. Elizabeth would not have telegraphed such sentimental news. She
would have written a letter. Something was gone awry with the maid.
She was in trouble. She was in need. She was ill. She might be dying.
And the more Tommy Lark reflected, as he climbed the dripping Black
Cliff path, the more surely was his anxious conviction of Elizabeth
Luke's need confirmed by his imagination.
When Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl came to the crest of Black Cliff, a
drizzle of rain was falling in advance of the fog. The wind was
clipping past in soggy gusts that rose at intervals to the screaming
pitch of a squall. A drab mist had crept around Point-o'-Bay and was
spreading over the ice in Scalawag Run. Presently it would lie thick
between Scalawag Island and the mainland of Point-o'-Bay Cove.
At the edge of the ice, where the free black water of the open met the
huddled floe, the sea was breaking. There was a tossing line of white
water--the crests of the breakers flying away in spindrift like long
white manes in the wind. Even from the crest of Black Cliff, lifted
high above the ice and water of the gray prospect below, it was plain
that a stupendous sea was running in from the darkening open,
slipping under the floe, swelling through the run, and subsiding in
the farthest reaches of the bay.
From the broken rock of Black Cliff to the coast of Scalawag Run, two
miles beyond, where Scalawag Harbor threatened to fade and vanish in
the fog and falling dusk, the ice was in motion, great pans of the
pack tossing like chips in the gigantic waves. Nowhere was the ice at
rest. It was neither heavy enough nor yet sufficiently close packed to
flatten the sea with its weight. And a survey of the creeping fog and
the ominous approach of a windy night portended that no more than an
hour of drab light was left for the passage.
"'Tis a perilous task t' try," said Tommy Lark. "I never faced such a
task afore. I fears for my life."
"'Tis a madcap thing t' try!"
"Ay, a madcap thing. A man will need madman's luck t' come through
with his life."
"Pans as steep as a roof out there!"
"Slippery as butter, Sandy. 'Twill be ticklish labor t' cling t' some
o' them when the sea cants them high. I wish we had learned t' swim,
Sandy, when we was idle lads t'gether. We'll sink like two jiggers if
we slips into the water. Is you comin' along, Sandy? It takes but one
man t' bear a message. I'll not need you."
"Tommy," Sandy besought, "will you not listen t' reason an' wisdom?"
"What wisdom, Sandy?"
"Lave us tear open the telegram an' read it."
"Hoosh!" Tommy ejaculated. "Such a naughty trick as that! I'll not do
it. I jus' couldn't."
"'Tis a naughty trick that will save us a pother o' trouble."
"I'm not chary o' trouble in the maid's behalf."
"'Twill save us peril."
"I've no great objection t' peril in her service. I'll not open the
telegram; I'll not intrude on the poor maid's secrets. Is you comin'
along?"
Sandy Rowl put a hand on Tommy Lark's shoulder.
"What moves you," said he impatiently, "to a mad venture like this,
with the day as far sped as it is?"
"I'm impelled."
"What drives you?"
"The maid's sick."
"Huh!" Sandy scoffed. "A lusty maid like that! She's not sick. As for
me, I'm easy about her health. She's as hearty at this minute as ever
she was in her life. An' if she isn't, we've no means o' bein' sure
that she isn't. 'Tis mere guess-work. We've no certainty of her need.
T' be drove out on the ice o' Scalawag Run by the guess-work o' fear
an' fancy is a folly. 'Tis not demanded. We've every excuse for lyin'
the night at Point-o'-Bay Cove."
"I'm not seekin' excuse."
"You've no need to seek it. It thrusts itself upon you."
"Maybe. Yet I'll have none of it. 'Tis a craven thing t' deal with."
"'Tis mere caution."
"Well, well! I'll have no barter with caution in a case like this. I
crave service. Is you comin' along?"
Sandy Rowl laughed his disbelief.
"Service!" said he. "You heed the clamor o' your curiosity. That's all
that stirs you."
"No," Tommy Lark replied. "My curiosity asks me no questions now.
Comin' up the hill, with this here telegram in my pocket, I made up my
mind. 'Tis not I that the maid loves. It couldn't be. I'm not worthy.
Still an' all, I'll carry her message t' Scalawag Harbor. An' if I'm
overcome I'll not care very much--save that 'twill sadden me t' know
at the last that I've failed in her service. I've no need o' you,
Sandy. You've no call to come. You may do what you likes an' be no
less a man. As you will, then. Is you comin'?"
Sandy reflected.
"Tommy," said he then, reluctantly, "will you listen t' what I should
tell you?"
"I'll listen."
"An' will you believe me an' heed me?"
"I'll believe you, Sandy."
"You've fathomed the truth o' this matter. Tis not you that the maid
loves. 'Tis I. She've not told me. She've said not a word that you're
not aware of. Yet I knows that she'll choose me. I've loved more maids
than one. I'm acquainted with their ways. An' more maids than one have
loved me. I've mastered the signs o' love. I've studied them; I reads
them like print. It pleases me t' see them an' read them. At first,
Tommy, a maid will not tell. She'll not tell even herself. An' then
she's overcome; an', try as she may to conceal what she feels, she's
not able at all t' do it. The signs, Tommy? Why, they're all as plain
in speech as words themselves could be! Have you seed any signs, boy?
No. She'll not wed you. 'Tis not in her heart t' do it, whatever her
mind may say. She'll wed me. I knows it. An' so I'll tell you that
you'll waste your labor if you puts out on Scalawag Run with the
notion o' winnin' the love o' this maid with bold behavior in her
service. If that's in your mind, put it away. Turn with me t'
Point-o'-Bay Cove an' lie safe the night. I'm sorry, Tommy. You'll
grieve, I knows, t' lose the maid. I could live without her. True.
There's other maids as fair as she t' be found in the world. Yet I
loves this maid more than any maid that ever I knowed; an' I'd be no
man at all if I yielded her to you because I pitied your grief."
"I'm not askin' you t' yield her."
"Nor am I wrestin' her away. She've jus' chose for herself. Is she
ever said she cared for you, Tommy?"
"No."
"Is there been any sign of it?"
"She've not misled me. She've said not a word that I could blame her
for. She--she've been timid in my company. I've frightened her."
"She's merry with me."
"Ay."
"Her tongue jus' sounds like brisk music, an' her laughter's as free
as a spring o' water."
"She've showed me no favor."
"Does she blush in your presence?"
"She trembles an' goes pale."
"Do her eyes twinkle with pleasure?"
"She casts them down."
"Does she take your arm an' snuggle close?"
"She shrinks from me."
"Does she tease you with pretty tricks?"
"She does not," poor Tommy replied. "She says, 'Yes, sir!' an' 'No,
sir!' t' me."
"Ha!" Sandy exclaimed. "'Tis I that she'll wed!"
"I'm sure of it. I'm content t' have her follow her will in all
things. I loves the maid. I'll not pester her with complaint. Is you
comin' along?"
"Tis sheer madness!"
"Is you comin' along?"
Sandy Rowl swept his hand over the prospect of fog and spindrift and
wind-swept ice.
"Man," he cried, "look at that!"
"The maid's sick," Tommy Lark replied doggedly. "I loves her. Is you
comin' along?"
"You dunderhead!" Sandy Rowl stormed. "I got t' go! Can't you
understand that? You leaves me no choice!"
* * * * *
When Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl had leaped and crept through half the
tossing distance to Scalawag Harbor, the fog had closed in,
accompanied by the first shadows of dusk, and the coast and hills of
Scalawag Island were a vague black hulk beyond, slowly merging with
the color of the advancing night. The wind was up--blowing past with
spindrift and a thin rain; but the wind had not yet packed the ice,
which still floated in a loose, shifting floe, spotted and streaked
with black lakes and lanes of open water. They had taken to the
seaward edge of the pack for the advantage of heavier ice.
A line of pans, sluggish with weight, had lagged behind in the driving
wind of the day before, and was now closing in upon the lighter
fragments of the pack, which had fled in advance and crowded the bay.
Whatever advantage the heavier ice offered in the solidity of its
footing, and whatever in the speed with which it might be traversed by
agile, daring men, was mitigated by another condition involved in its
exposed situation. It lay against the open sea; and the sea was high,
rolling directly into Scalawag Run, in black, lofty billows, crested
with seething white in the free reaches of the open. The swells
diminished as they ran the length of the run and spent themselves in
the bay. Their maximum of power was at the edge of the ice.
In Scalawag Run, thus, the ice was like a strip of shaken carpet--it's
length rolling in lessening waves from first to last, as when a man
takes the corners of an end of the strip and snaps the whole to shake
the dust out of it; and the spindrift, blown in from the sea and
snatched from the lakes in the mist of the floe, may be likened to
clouds of white dust, half realized in the dusk.
As the big seas slipped under the pack, the pans rose and fell; they
were never at rest, never horizontal, except momentarily, perhaps, on
the crest of a wave and in the lowest depths of a trough. They
tipped--pitched and rolled like the deck of a schooner in a gale of
wind. And as the height of the waves at the edge of the ice may fairly
be estimated at thirty feet, the incline of the pans was steep and the
surface slippery.
Much of the ice lying out from Point-o'-Bay was wide and heavy. It
could be crossed without peril by a sure-footed man. Midway of the
run, however, the pans began to diminish in size and to thin in
quantity; and beyond, approaching the Scalawag coast, where the wind
was interrupted by the Scalawag hills, the floe was loose and
composed of a field of lesser fragments. There was still a general
contact--pan lightly touching pan; but many of the pans were of an
extent so precariously narrow that their pitching surface could be
crossed only on hands and knees, and in imminent peril of being flung
off into the gaps of open water.
It was a feat of lusty agility, of delicate, experienced skill, of
steadfast courage, to cross the stretches of loose ice, heaving, as
they were, in the swell of the sea. The foothold was sometimes
impermanent--blocks of ice capable of sustaining the weight of a man
through merely a momentary opportunity to leap again; and to the
scanty chance was added the peril of the angle of the ice and the
uncertainty of the path beyond.
Once Tommy Lark slipped when he landed on an inclined pan midway of a
patch of water between two greater pans. His feet shot out and he
began to slide feet foremost into the sea, with increasing momentum,
as a man might fall from a steep, slimy roof. The pan righted in the
trough, however, to check his descent over the edge of the ice. When
it reached the horizontal in the depths of the trough, and there
paused before responding to the lift of the next wave, Tommy Lark
caught his feet; and he was set and balanced against the tip and fling
of the pan in the other direction as the wave slipped beneath and ran
on. When the ice was flat and stable on the crest of the sea, he
leaped from the heavy pan beyond, and then threw himself down to rest
and recover from the shudder and daze of the fate he had escaped. And
the dusk was falling all the while, and the fog, closing in, thickened
the dusk, threatening to turn it impenetrable to the beckoning lights
in the cottages of Scalawag Harbor.
* * * * *
Having come, at last, to a doubtful lane, sparsely spread with ice,
Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl were halted. They were then not more than
half a mile from the rocks of Scalawag. From the substantial ground of
a commodious block, with feet spread to brace themselves against the
pitch of the pan as a man stands on a heaving deck, they appraised the
chances and were disheartened. The lane was like a narrow arm of the
sea, extending, as nearly as could be determined in the dusk, far into
the floe; and there was an opposite shore--another commodious pan. In
the black water of the arm there floated white blocks of ice. Some
were manifestly substantial: a leaping man could pause to rest; but
many--necessary pans, these, to a crossing of the lane--were as
manifestly incapable of bearing a man up.
As the pan upon which Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl stood lay near the
edge of the floe, the sea was running up the lane in almost
undiminished swells--the long, slow waves of a great ground swell, not
a choppy wind-lop, but agitated by the wind and occasionally
breaking. It was a thirty-foot sea in the open. In the lane it was
somewhat less--not much, however; and the ice in the lane and all
round about was heaving in it--tumbled about, rising and falling, the
surface all the while at a changing slant from the perpendicular.
Rowl was uneasy.
"What you think, Tommy?" said he. "I don't like t' try it. I 'low we
better not."
"We can't turn back."
"No; not very well."
"There's a big pan out there in the middle. If a man could reach that
he could choose the path beyond."
"'Tis not a big pan."
"Oh, 'tis a fairish sort o' pan."
"'Tis not big enough, Tommy."
Tommy Lark, staggering in the motion of the ice, almost off his
balance, peered at the pan in the middle of the lane.
"'Twould easily bear a man," said he.
"'Twould never bear two men."
"Maybe not."
"Isn't no 'maybe' about it," Rowl declared. "I'm sure 'twouldn't bear
two men."
"No," Tommy Lark agreed. "I 'low 'twouldn't."
"A man would cast hisself away tryin' t' cross on that small ice."
"I 'low he might."
"Well, then," Rowl demanded, "what we goin' t' do?"
"We're goin' t' cross, isn't we?"
"'Tis too parlous a footin' on them small cakes."
"Ay; 'twould be ticklish enough if the sea lay flat an' still all the
way. An' as 'tis----"
"'Tis like leapin' along the side of a steep."
"Wonderful steep on the side o' the seas."
"Too slippery, Tommy. It can't be done. If a man didn't land jus'
right he'd shoot off."
"That he would, Sandy!"
"Well?"
"I'll go first, Sandy. I'll start when we lies in the trough. I 'low I
can make that big pan in the middle afore the next sea cants it. You
watch me, Sandy, an' practice my tactics when you follow. I 'low a
clever man can cross that lane alive."
"We're in a mess out here!" Sandy Rowl complained. "I wish we hadn't
started."
"'Tisn't so bad as all that."
"A loud folly!" Rowl growled.
"Ah, well," Tommy Lark replied, "a telegram's a telegram; an' the need
o' haste----"
"'Twould have kept well enough."
"'Tis not a letter, Sandy."