"'_The Lord is my shepherd,_'" my uncle repeated, looking away to the
fool's great Gates, "'_I shall not want._'"
That he should not.
"'_He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside
the still waters._'"
And so it should be.
"Dannie," my uncle burst out, flashing upon me with a twinkle, as when
I was a lad, "I 'low I've fetched ye up very well: for say what ye
will, 'twas a wonderful little anchor I give ye t' hold to!"
* * * * *
I went then to the little bed where as a child I lay waiting for sleep
to come bearing fairy dreams. 'Twas still and dusky in the room: the
window, looking out upon the wide, untroubled waters, was a square of
glory; and the sea whispered melodiously below, as it had done long,
long ago, when my uncle fended my childish heart from all the fears of
night and day. I looked out upon the waste of sea and sky and rock,
where the sombre wonder of the dusk was working, clouds in embers,
cliffs and water turning to shadows; and I was comforted by this
returning beauty. I repeated the twenty-third psalm, according to my
teaching, reverently kneeling, as I was bid; and my heart responded,
as it has never failed to do. I remembered: I remembered the windless
dusks and fresh winds and black gales through which as a child I had
here serenely gone to sleep because my uncle sat awake and watchful
below. I remembered his concern and diffident caresses in the night
when I had called to him to come: I remembered all that he had borne
and done to provide the happiness and welfare he sought in loving
patience to give the child he had. Once again, as when I was a child,
the sea and sunset took my soul as a harp to stir with harmonious
chords of faith; and I was not disquieted any more--nor in any way
troubled concerning the disclosure of that black mystery in which I
had thrived to this age of understanding. And 'twas in this mood--this
grateful recollection of the multitudinous kindnesses of other
years--that I got up from my knees to return to my uncle.
"Dannie," says he, having been waiting, it seemed, to tell me this,
first of all, "ye'll remember--will ye not?--for your guidance an'
comfort, that 'tis not a tie o' blood betwixt you an' ol' Nick Top.
He's no kin t' shame ye: he's on'y a chance acquaintance."
The tale began at the waning of the evening glory....
* * * * *
"Your father an' me, lad," said my uncle, "was shipmates aboard the
_Will-o'-the-Wisp_ when she was cast away in a nor'east gale on the
Devil's Teeth, near twenty year ago: him bein' the master an' me but a
hand aboard. How old is you now, Dannie? Nineteen? Well, well! You was
but six months come from above, lad, when that big wind blowed your
father's soul t' hell; an' your poor mother was but six months laid
away. We was bound up from the Labrador that night, with a cargo o'
dry fish, picked up 'long shore in haste, t' fill out a foreign bark
at Twillingate. 'Twas late in the fall o' the year, snow in the wind,
the sea heapin' up in mountains, an' the night as black as a wolf's
throat. Your father was crowdin' on, Dannie, in the way he had, bein'
a wonderful driver, an' I 'lowed he was fetchin' too close t' the
Harborless Shore for safety; but I wouldn't tell un so, lad, for I
didn't know un so well as I knows you, bein' on'y a hand aboard, ye
see, with a word or two t' le'ward of what ye might call a speakin'
acquaintance with the skipper. I 'lowed he'd strike the Rattler; but
he cleared the Rattler, by good luck, an' fetched up at dawn on the
Devil's Teeth, a mean, low reef o' them parts, where the poor
_Will-o'-the-Wisp_ broke her back an' went on in splinters with the
sea an' wind. 'Twas over soon, Dannie; 'twas all over soon, by
kindness o' Providence: the ol' craft went t' pieces an' was swep' on
t' le'ward by the big black waves."
In the pause my uncle's hand again searched the low table for the
glass that was not there.
"I'm not wantin' t' tell ye," he muttered.