"And, master or hand, we're surely all shipmates," he added; to which
again I said nothing.
"Will you take Saul Haverick for dory mate?" he said again.
"I bear Saul Haverick no great love," I said; "but I have never heard he
wasn't a good fisherman, and who should ask more than that of his mate
in a dory?"
He looked out at me once more from the eyes that seemed so far back in
his head; and from me he looked to the flag that was still to the
half-mast of his vessel for the loss of Arthur Snow.
"We might ask something more in a dory mate at times, but he is a good
fisherman," he answered at last. "A good hand to the wheel of a vessel,
too, a cool head in danger, and one of the best judges of weather ever I
sailed with. We're putting out in the morning. You can have the chance."
As to what was in my heart when I chose to ship with Hugh Glynn, I
cannot say. There are those who tell us how they can explain every
heart-beat, quick or slow, when aught ails them. I never could. I only
know that standing on the steps of Mary Snow's house the night before,
all my thought was of Mary Snow sitting at the window and looking down
the street after Hugh Glynn. And "God help you, Simon Kippen!" I found
myself saying--"it's not you, nor Saul Haverick, nor any other living
man will marry Mary Snow while Hugh Glynn lives, for there is no
striving against the strength of the sea, and the strength of Hugh Glynn
is the strength of the sea." But of what lay beyond that in my heart I
could not say.
And now I was to sea with Hugh Glynn, and we not four days out of
Gloucester when, as if but to show me the manner of man he was, he runs
clear to the head of Placentia Bay, in Newfoundland, for a baiting on
our way to the banks; and whoever knows Placentia Bay knows what that
means, with the steam-cutters of the Crown patrolling, and their
sleepless watches night and day aloft, to trap whoever would try to buy
a baiting there against the law.
No harm fell to Hugh Glynn that time. No harm ever fell to him,
fishermen said. Before ever the cutters could get sight of him he had
sight of them; and his bait stowed below, safe away he came, driving
wild-like past the islands of the bay, with never a side-light showing
in the night, and not the first time he had done so.
"What d'y' say to that, Simon? Didn't we fool 'em good?" he asked, when
once more we were on the high seas and laying a free course for the
western banks.
"I'm grateful you did not ask me to go in any dory to bring the bait
off," I answered.
"Why is that, Simon?" he asked, as one who has no suspicion.
"It was against the law, Captain Glynn."
"But a bad law, Simon?"
"Law is law," I answered to that.
He walked from the wheel, where I was, twice to the break of the vessel
and back again and said, in a voice no louder than was needful to be
heard above what loose water was splashing over her quarter to my feet:
"Don't be put out with me for what I'll tell you now, Simon. You're a
good lad, Simon, and come of good people, but of people that for
hundreds o' years have thought but one way in the great matters of life.
And when men have lived with their minds set in the one way so long,
Simon, it comes hard for them to understand any other way. Such
unfrequent ones as differed from your people, Simon, them they cast out
from among them. I know, I know, Simon, because I come from people
something like to them, only I escaped before it was too late to
understand that people who split tacks with you do not always do it to
fetch up on a lee shore."
"And from those other people, no doubt, Captain Glynn, you learned it
was right to break a country's laws?"
"It wasn't breaking our country's law, Simon, nor any good man's law, to
get a baiting last night. There are a lot of poor fishermen, Simon--as
none know better than yourself--in Placentia Bay who have bait to sell,
and there is a law which says they must not. But whose law? An American
law? No. God's law? No. The law of those poor people in Placentia Bay?
No. Some traders who have the making of the laws? Yes. And there you
have it. If the Placentia Bay fishermen aren't allowed to sell bait to
me, or the like of me, they will have to sell it to the traders
themselves, but have to take their one dollar, where we of Gloucester
would pay them five, and, paying it, would give some of them and their
families a chance to live."
He stood there in his rubber boots to his hips and his long greatcoat to
his ankles--he was one who never wore oilskins aboard ship--swinging
with the swing of the plunging vessel as if he was built into her, and
with his head thrown back and a smile, it may be, that was not a smile
at all, and kept looking at me from out of eyes that were changeable as
the sea itself.
"Don't you be getting mad with me, Simon, because we don't think alike
in some things. To the devil with what people think of you--I've said
that often enough, Simon, but not when they're good people. If some
people don't like us, Simon, there will come no nourishment to our
souls. Some day you're going to come to my way o' thinking, Simon,
because we two are alike underneath."
"Alike!" I smiled to myself.
"Ay, alike at heart, Simon. We may look to be sailing wide apart
courses now, but maybe if our papers were examined 'twould be found we'd
cleared for the same last port of call, Simon."
And no more talk of anything like that between us until the night before
we were to leave the fishing grounds for home. In the afternoon we had
set our trawls, and, leaving the vessel, the skipper had said, "Our last
set, boys. Let 'em lay to-night, and in the morning we'll haul;" and,
returning aboard after setting, we had our supper and were making ready,
such as had no watch to stand, to turn in for a good, long sleep against
the labor of the morrow.
It was an oily sea that evening--a black, oily-smooth surface, lifting
heavy and slow to a long swell. A smooth, oily sea--there is never any
good comes out of it; but a beautiful sea notwithstanding, with more
curious patterns of shifting colors than a man could count in a year
playing atop of it. The colors coming and going and rolling and
squirming--no women's shop ashore ever held such colors under the bright
nightlights as under the low sun we saw this night on the western
banks. It was a most beautiful and a most wicked sea to stop and look
at.
And the sun went down that evening on a banking of clouds no less
beautiful; a copper-red sun, and after 'twas gone, in lovely massy forms
and splendid colors, were piled the clouds in all the western quarter.
Such of the crew as stopped to speak of it did not like at all the look
of that sea and sky, and some stopped beside the skipper to say it, he
leaning against the main rigging in the way he had the while he would be
studying the weather signs; but he made no answer to the crew, to that
or any other word they had this evening--except to Saul Haverick, and to
him only when he came up from supper complaining of not feeling well.
He was one could drive his crew till they could not see for very
weariness; but he was one could nurse them, too. "Go below and turn in,"
was his word to Saul, "and stay there till you feel better. Call me,
Simon, if I'm not up," he then said to me. "I'll stand Saul's watch with
you, if Saul is no better."
It was yet black night when I was called to go on watch, and, Saul
Haverick still complaining, I went to call the skipper. But he was
already up and had been, the watch before me said, for the better part
of the night. I found him leaning over the gunnels of the wind'ard nest
of dories when I went on deck, gazing out on a sea that was no longer
oily-smooth, though smooth enough, too, what was to be seen of it, under
the stars of a winter night.
I stood on the break and likewise looked about me. To anchor, and alone,
lay the vessel, with but her riding-light to mark her in the dark; alone
and quiet, with never a neighbor to hail us, nor a sound from any living
thing whatever. The very gulls themselves were asleep; only the fores'l,
swaying to a short sheet, would roll part way to wind'ard and back to
loo'ard, but quiet as could be even then, except for the little tapping
noises of the reef-points when in and out the belly of the canvas would
puff full up and let down again to what little wind was stirring.
It was a perfect, calm night, but no calm day was to follow. "Wicked
weather ahead," said Hugh Glynn, and came and stood beside me on the
break. "A wicked day coming, but no help for it now till daylight comes
to see our trawls to haul 'em." And, as one who had settled that in his
mind, he said no more of it, but from mainm'st to weather rail he paced,
and back again, and I took to pacing beside him.
A wonderful time, the night-watches at sea, for men to reveal
themselves. Night and sky overhead and the wide ocean to your elbow--it
drives men to thought of higher things. The wickedest of men--I have
known them, with all manner of blasphemies befouling their lips by day,
to become holy as little children in the watches of the night.
No blasphemer was Hugh Glynn, nor did the night hold terror for him;
only as we paced the break together he spoke of matters that but himself
and his God could know. It was hard to listen and be patient, though
maybe it was as much of wonder as of impatience was taking hold of me as
I listened.
"Do you never fear what men might come to think of you, Captain Glynn,"
I said, "confessing your very soul?"
"Ho, ho, that's it, is it?" He came to a sudden stop in our walking. "I
should only confess the body--is that it, Simon Kippen? And, of course,
when a man confesses to one thing of his own free will, you know there
must be something worse behind? Is that it, Simon?" He chuckled beside
me and, as if only to scandalize me, let his tongue run wilder yet.
His tales were of violations of laws such as it had been my religion to
observe since I was a boy, and little except of the comic, ridiculous
side of them all. The serious matters of life, if 'twas to judge by what
he spoke to me that night, had small interest for him. But the queer
power of the man! Had it been light where he could see me, I would have
choked before ever I would let him hear me laugh; but he caught me
smiling and straightened up, chuckling, to say: "Many other things you
would smile at, too, Simon, if your bringing up would but allow the
frost to thaw from your soul."
"And are reckless carryings-on and desperate chancing things to smile
at?"
"O Simon, Simon, what a righteous man you're to be that never expects to
see the day when no harbor this side of God's eternal sea will offer you
the only safe and quiet mooring!"
Again I saw Mary Snow sitting at the window and looking down the street,
and remembering how she had spoken of his lonely home, I said: "No doubt
a man, like a vessel, Captain Glynn, should have always a mooring
somewhere. A wonder you never thought of marrying again?"
"I have thought of it."
"And with some one woman in mind?"
"It may be." He answered that, too, without a pause.
"And does she know?"
"It may be she knows. No knowing when they know, Simon. As men best
understand the soul, so it is woman's best gift to understand the heart.
But no fair play in me to ask her. I've had my great hour, and may not
have it again with another. To offer the woman I have in mind anything
less than a great love--it would be to cheat, Simon. No, no, no--it's
not the kind of a man I am now, but the kind you are, Simon, should
marry."
"It's not my kind that women like best, captain," I said.
"There are women to like every kind, Simon, and almost any kind of a
woman would like your kind, Simon, if you would only learn to be less
ashamed of what should be no shame. And it is you, already in love,
who----"
"Me--in love?" I was like a vessel luffing to escape a squall, he had
come on me so quickly.
"There it is, Simon--the upbringing of you that would never own up to
what you think only yourself know. Three weeks to sea now you've been
with me, and never a gull you've seen skirling to the west'ard that your
eyes haven't followed. By no mistake do you watch them flying easterly.
And when last evening I said, 'To-morrow, boys, we'll swing her off and
drive her to the west'ard--to the west'ard and Gloucester!' the leaping
heart in you drove the blood to your very eyes. Surely that was not in
sorrow, Simon?"