"In a case like this," Moses confided, "mother always 'lowed a man
_ought_ to."
"But your wife?" I demanded.
"Oh, my goodness, Dannie!" cries he. "For shame!"
"Tell me quickly, Moses."
"Mrs. Moses Shoos," he answered, with gravest dignity, "_always_
'lows, agreein' with me--that _mother_ knowed!"
'Twas in this way that Moses Shoos shipped on the _Shining Light_....
* * * * *
Shortly now, by an arrangement long made and persistently continued,
we had the _Shining Light_ ready for sea--provisioned, her
water-casks full. I ran through the house upon a last survey; and I
found my uncle at the pantry door, his bag on his back, peering into
the dark interior of the little room, in a way most melancholy and
desirous, upon the long row of bottles of rum. He sighed, closed the
door with scowling impatience, and stumped off to board the ship: I
was not heroic, but subtracted one from that long row, and stowed it
away in a bag I carried. We dropped the anchor of the _Shining Light_,
and beat out, through the tickle, to the wide, menacing sea, with the
night coming down and a gale of wind blowing lustily up from the gray
northeast. 'Twas thus not in flight the _Shining Light_ continued her
cruise, 'twas in pursuit of the maid I loved: a thing infinitely more
anxious and momentous--a thing that meant more than life or death to
me, with the maid gone as cook on a Labrador craft. 'Twas sunset time;
but there was no sunset--no fire in the western sky: no glow or
effulgent glory or lurid threat. The whole world was gone a dreary
gray, with the blackness of night descending: a darkening zenith, a
gray horizon lined with cold, black cloud, a coast without tender
mercy for the ships of men, a black sea roughening in a rage to the
northeast blasts. 'Twas all hopeless and pitiless: an unfeeling sea,
but troubled, it seemed to me, by depths of woe and purpose and
difficulty we cannot understand. We were bound for Topmast Harbor, on
a wind favorable enough for courageous hearts; and my uncle had the
wheel, and the fool of Twist Tickle and I kept the deck to serve him.
He did not call upon us to shorten sail, in answer to the old
schooner's complaint; and I was glad that he did not, as was the fool
also....
* * * * *
'Twas night when we put into Topmast Harbor; but my uncle and the fool
and I awoke the place without regard for its way-harbor importance or
number of houses. There was no maid there, said they; there had been a
maid, come at dawn, but she was fortunately shipped, as she wished to
be. What maid was that? They did not know. Was she a slender,
tawny-haired, blue-eyed, most beauteous maid? They did but sleepily
stare. I found a man, awakened from sound slumber, who remembered: ay,
there was a maid of that description, who had shipped for cook on the
_Likely Lass_. And whence the _Likely Lass_? Bonavist' Bay, says he,
put in for rest: a seventy-tonner, put out on the favoring wind. And
was there another woman aboard? Ecod! he did not know: 'twas a craft
likely enough for any maid, other woman aboard or not. And so we set
out again, in the night, dodging the rocks of that tickle, by my
uncle's recollection, and presently found ourselves bound north, in
search of the _Likely Lass_, towards a sea that was bitter with cold
and dark and wind, aboard a schooner that was far past the labor of
dealing with gusts and great waves.
And in the night it came on to blow very hard from the east, with a
freezing sleet, which yet grew colder, until snow mixed with it, and
at last came in stifling clouds. It blew harder: we drove on,
submerged in racing froth to the hatches, sheathed in ice, riding on a
beam, but my uncle, at the wheel, standing a-drip, in cloth of ice, as
long ago he had stood, in the first of the cruise of the _Shining
Light_, would have no sail off the craft, but humored her northward in
chase of the _Likely Lass_. 'Twas a reeling, plunging, smothered
progress through the breaking sea, in a ghostly mist of snow swirling
in the timid yellow of our lights, shrouding us as if for death in the
rush and seethe of that place. There was a rain of freezing spray upon
us--a whipping rain of spray: it broke from the bows and swept past,
stinging as it went. 'Twas as though the very night--the passion of
it--congealed upon us. There was no reducing sail--not now, in this
cold rage of weather. We were frozen stiff and white: 'twas on the
course, with a clever, indulgent hand to lift us through, or 'twas
founder in the crested waves that reached for us.
"Dannie!" my uncle shouted.
I sprang aft: but in the roar of wind and swish and thud of sea could
not hear him.
"Put your ear close," he roared.