In all this time I have said little enough of Twist Tickle, never a
word (I think) of Twin Islands, between whose ragged shores the
sheltering tickle winds; and by your favor I come now gratefully to
the task. 'Tis a fishing outport: a place of rock and sea and windy
sky--no more than that--but much loved by the twelvescore simple souls
of us, who asked for share of all the earth but salt-water and a
harbor (with the winds blowing) to thrive sufficient to ourselves and
to the world beyond. Had my uncle sought a secret place to foster the
child that was I--which yet might yield fair wage for toil--his quest
fortuitously ended when the _Shining Light_ ran dripping out of the
gale and came to anchor in the quiet water of the tickle. But more
like 'twas something finer that moved him: in that upheaval of his
life, it may be, 'twas a wistful turning of the heart to the paths and
familiar waters of the shore where he lived as a lad. Had the _Shining
Light_ sailed near or far and passed the harbor by, the changed
fortunes of--but there was no sailing by, nor could have been, for the
great wind upon whose wings she came was passionate, too, and
fateful.
If 'tis a delight to love, whatever may come of it (as some hold), I
found delight upon the grim hills of Twin Islands....
* * * * *
They lie hard by the coast, but are yet remote: Ship's Run divides
them from the long blue line of main-land which lifts its barren hills
in misty distance from our kinder place. 'Tis a lusty stretch of gray
water, sullen, melancholy, easily troubled by the winds, which
delight, it seems, sweeping from the drear seas of the north, to stir
its rage. In evil weather 'tis wide as space; when a nor'easter lifts
the white dust of the sea, clouding Blow-me-down-Billy of the
main-land in a swirl of mist and spume, there is no departure; nor is
there any crossing (mark you) when in the spring of the year a
southerly gale urges the ice to sea. We of Twin Islands were cut off
by Ship's Run from all the stirring and inquisitive world.
According to Tumm, the clerk of the _Quick as Wink_, which traded our
harbor, Twin Islands are t' the west'ard o' the Scarf o' Fog, a bit
below the Blue Gravestones, where the _Soldier o' the Cross_ was
picked up by Satan's Tail in the nor'easter o' the Year o' the Big
Shore Catch. "Oh, I knows un!" says he. "You opens the Tickle when you
rounds Cocked Hat o' the Hen-an'-Chickens an' lays a course for
Gentleman Cove, t'other side o' the bay. Good harbor in dirty
weather," says he: "an', ecod! my lads, a hearty folk." This is
forbidding enough, God knows! as to situation; but though the ancient
islands, scoured by wind and rain, are set in a misty isolation and
show gray, grimly wrinkled faces to the unkind sea, betraying no
tenderness, they are green and genial in the places within: there are
valleys; and the sun is no idler, and the lean earth of those parts is
not to be discouraged.
"God-forsaken place, Nick!" quoth Tom Bull, at the Anchor and Chain.
"How was you knowin' that, Tom?" says my uncle. "You isn't never
_been_ there."
"_Sounds_ God-forsaken."
"So does hell."
"Well, hell _is_."
"There you goes again, Tom Bull!" cries my uncle, with a sniff and
wrathful twitch of the lip. "There you goes again, you dunderhead--jumpin'
t' conclusions!"
Tom Bull was shocked.
"Hell God-forsaken!" growls my uncle. "They's more hard labor for the
good Lord t' do in hell, Tom Bull, than any place I knows on; an' I
'low He's right there, kep' double watches on the jump, a-doin' of
it!"
Twist Tickle pursues an attenuated way between the Twins, broadening
into the harbor basin beyond the Pillar o' Cloud, narrowing at the
Finger and Thumb, widening, once more, into the lower harbor, and
escaping to the sea, at last, between Pretty Willie and the Lost Soul,
which are great bare heads. You get a glimpse of the Tickle from the
deck of the mail-boat: this when she rounds the Cocked Hat and
wallows off towards Gentleman Cove. 'Tis but a niggardly glimpse at
best, and vastly unfair to the graces of the place: a white house, wee
and listlessly tilted, gripping a rock, as with expiring interest; a
reach of placid water, deep and shadowy, from which rise the hills,
gray, rugged, splashed with green; heights beyond, scarfed with
clinging wisps of mist.
The white houses are builded in a fashion the most disorderly at the
edge of the tickle, strung clear from the narrows to the Lost Soul and
straying somewhat upon the slopes, with the scrawny-legged flakes
clinging to the bare declivities and the stages squatted at the
water-side; but some houses, whose tenants are solitary folk made
morose by company, congregate in the remoter coves--where the shore is
the shore of the open sea and there is no crowd to trouble--whence
paths scramble over the hills to the Tickle settlement. My uncle's
cottage sat respectably, even with some superiority, upon a narrow
neck of rock by the Lost Soul, outlooking, westerly, to sea, but in
the opposite direction dwelling in a way more intimate and fond upon
the unruffled water of Old Wives' Cove, within the harbor, where rode
the _Shining Light_.
"An' there she'll lie," he was used to saying, with a grave and
mysteriously significant wink, "until I've sore need o' she."
"Ay," said they, "or till she rots, plank an' strand."
"An she rots," says my uncle, "she may rot: for she'll sail these
here waters, sound or rotten, by the Lord! an I just put her to it."
Unhappy, then, perhaps, Twin Islands, in situation and prospect; but
the folk of that harbor, who deal barehanded with wind and sea to
catch fish, have this wisdom: that a barren, a waste of selfish water,
a low, soggy sky have nothing to do with the hearts of men, which are
independent, in love and hope and present content, of these unfeeling
things. We were seafaring men, every jack of the place, with no
knowledge of a world apart from green water, which forever confronted
us, fashioning our lives; but we played the old comedy as heartily,
with feeling as true and deep, the same fine art, as you, my
gentlefolk! and made a spectacle as grateful to the gods for whom the
stage (it seems) is set.
* * * * *
And there is a road from the Tickle to the sea--to an outer cove,
high-cliffed, frothy, sombre, with many melancholy echoes of wind and
breakers and listless human voices, where is a cluster of hopeless,
impoverished homes. 'Tis a wilful-minded path, lingering indolently
among the hills, artful, intimate, wise with age, and most indulgently
secretive of its soft discoveries. It is used to the lagging feet of
lovers. There are valleys in its length, and winding, wooded
stretches, kindly places; and there are arching alders along the way
to provide a seclusion yet more tender. In the moonlight 'tis a path
of enchantment--a way (as I know) of pain and high delight: of a
wandering hope that tantalizes but must in faith, as we are men, be
followed to its catastrophe. I have suffered much of ecstasy and
despair upon that path. 'Tis the road to Whisper Cove.
Judith dwelt at Whisper Cove....