The Sea-Story Megapack

by Jack Williamson

  “An’ how much was that, Moses?”

  “Mother,” he observed, “didn’t hold a wonderful lot with half measures.”

  ’Twas no answer to my question.

  “She always ’lowed,” says he, with a mystifyingly elaborate wave and accent, “that doin’ was better than gettin’.”

  I still must wait.

  “‘Moses,’ says she,” he pursued, “‘don’t you mind the price o’ fish; you cotch un. Fish,’ says she, ‘is fish; but prices goes up an’ down, accordin’ t’ the folly o’ men. You do,’ says she; ‘an’ you leave what you gets t’ take care of itself.’ An’ I ’low,” says Moses, gently, a smile transfiguring his vacant face, “that mother knowed.”

  ’Twas all, it seemed to me, a defensive argument.

  “An’ mother ’lowed, afore she died,” he added, looking up to a gray sky, wherein a menace of snow dwelt, “that a good man would save his Queen from rascals.”

  “Ay,” I complained; “but what was the bid that won from Eli Flack?”

  “The bid?”

  “Ay; the bid.”

  “Not expensive,” says he.

  “But how much, Moses?”

  “Well, Dannie,” he answered, with a sigh and a rub of his curly, yellow beard, “I ’lowed mother wouldn’t charge much for servin’ the Queen: for,” says he, enlivened, “’twould be too much like common labor t’ carry Her Majesty’s mail at a price. An’ I bid,” he added, eying me vaguely, “accordin’ t’ what I ’lowed mother would have me do in the Queen’s service. Fac’ is, Dannie,” says he, in a squall of confidence, “I ’lowed I’d carry it free!”

  ’Twas this contact with the world of Jimmie Tick’s Cove that embarked the fool upon an adventurous enterprise. When, in the spring of that year, the sea being open, the Quick as Wink made our harbor, the first of all the traders, Tumm, the clerk, was short-handed for a cook, having lost young Billy Rudd overboard, in a great sea, beating up in stress of weather to the impoverished settlement at Diamond Run. ’Twas Moses, the choice of necessity, he shipped in the berth of that merry, tow-headed lad of tender voice, whose songs, poor boy, would never again be lifted, o’ black nights in harbor, in the forecastle of the Quick as Wink. “Ay, Dannie,” says Moses, “you’d never think it, maybe, but I’m shipped along o’ Tumm for the French shore an’ the Labrador ports. I’ve heared tell a wonderful lot about Mother Burke, but I’ve never seed the ol’ rock; an’ I’ve heared tell a wonderful lot about Coachman’s Cove an’ Conch an’ Lancy Loop an’ the harbors o’ the straits shores, but I’ve never seed un with my own eyes, an’ I’m sort o’ wantin’ t’ know how they shapes up alongside o’ Twist Tickle. I ’low,” says he, “you don’t find many harbors in the world like Twist Tickle. Since I been travellin’ t’ Jimmie Tick’s Cove with the mail,” he continued, with a stammer and flush, like a man misled from an austere path by the flesh-pots of earth, “I’ve cotched a sinful hankerin’ t’ see the world.”

  I wished he had not.

  “But mother,” he added, quickly, in self-defence, “always ’lowed a man ought t’ see the world. So,” says he, “I’m shipped along o’ Tumm, for better or for worse, an’ I’m bound down north in the Quick as Wink with the spring supplies.”

  ’Twas a far journey for that sensitive soul.

  “Dannie,” he asked, in quick alarm, a fear so sudden and unexpected that I was persuaded of the propriety of my premonition, “what you thinkin’ about? Eh, Dannie?” he cried. “What you lookin’ that way for?”

  I would not tell him that I knew the skipper of the Quick as Wink, whose butt the fool must be.

  “You isn’t ’lowin’,” Moses began, “that mother—”

  “Not at all, Moses!” says I.

  ’Twas instant and complete relief he got from this denial. “We sails,” says he, with all a traveller’s importance, “at dawn o’ tomorrow. I’ll be gone from Twist Tickle by break o’ day. I’ll be gone t’ new places—t’ harbors I’ve heared tell of but never seed with my own eyes. I’m not quite knowin’,” says he, doubtfully, “how I’ll get along with the cookin’. Mother always ’lowed,” he continued, with a greater measure of hope, “that I was more’n fair on cookin’ a cup o’ tea. ‘Moses,’ says she, ‘you can brew a cup o’ tea so well as any fool I ever knowed.’ But that was on’y mother,” he added, in modest self-deprecation. “Jus’ mother.”

  I wished again that the fool had not fallen into the mercilessly facetious company of Skipper Saucy Bill North of the schooner Quick as Wink.

  “An’, Dannie,” says Moses, “I’m scared I’ll fail with all but the tea.”

  ’Twas come near the evening of that mellow Sunday. On the Whisper Cove road and the greening hills of Twin Islands, where Moses and I had walked in simple companionship, the birds had been mating and nesting in the thick sunshine of the afternoon. Chirp and flutter and shrill song! ’Twas a time for the mating of birds. The haste and noise and pomposity of this busy love-making! The loud triumph and soft complaint of it! All the world of spruce and alder and sunlit spaces had been a-flutter. But the weather was now fallen gloomy, the sky overcast, the wind blowing in from the black, uneasy sea, where floes and gigantic bergs of ice drifted, like frozen ghosts, cold and dead and aimlessly driven; and the hopeful sunshine had left the hills, and the piping and chirping were stilled, and I heard no more fluttering wings or tender love-songs. The fool of Twist Tickle paused in the road to stare vacantly northward. ’Twas there dark with menacing clouds—thick, sombre clouds, tinged with a warning blue, rising implacably above the roughening black of the sea. He wondered, it may be, in his dull, weakling way, concerning the coasts beyond the grave curtain, which he must discover—new coasts, dealing with us variously, as we disclose them to our hearts. I watched him with misgiving. To be sure, the skipper of the Quick as Wink was an unkind man, cynical and quick to seek selfish laughter, whatever the wound he dealt; but Tumm, our friend and the genial friend of all the world, thinks I, more hopefully, would not have the poor fool wronged.

  “Dannie,” says Moses, turning, “I’m scared my cookin’ won’t quite fit the stomachs o’ the crew o’ the Quick as Wink.”

  “Ay, Moses,” says I, to hearten him; “but never a good man was that didn’t fear a new task.”

  He eyed me doubtfully.

  “An’,” I began, “your mother, Moses—”

  “But,” he interrupted, “mother wasn’t quite t’ be trusted in all things.”

  “Not trusted!” I cried.

  “You’ll not misunderstand me, Dannie?” he besought me, putting a hand on my shoulder. “You’ll not misunderstand, will you? But mother wasn’t quite t’ be trusted,” says he, “when it come t’ the discussion,” says he, pausing to permit a proper appreciation of the learned word, which he had appropriated from my tutor’s vocabulary, “o’ my accomplishments.”

  It had never occurred before.

  “For mother,” he explained, “was somehow wonderful fond o’ me.”

  The church-bell called him.

  “Hear her voice, Dannie?” said he. “Hear her voice in that there bell? ‘Come—dear!’ says she. ‘Come—dear! Come—dear!’ Hear it ring out? ‘Come—dear! Come—dear! Come—dear!’”

  I bade him Godspeed with a heart that misgave me.

  “I’ll answer,” said he, his face lifted to the sky, “to that voice!”

  The clouds in the west broke, and through the rift a shaft of sunlight shot, glad to be free, and touched our world of sea and rock with loving finger-tips, but failed, as I turned homeward, hearing no voice of my unknown mother in the wandering call of the bell; and all the world went gray and sullenly mute, as it had been.…

  XIX

  A WORD OF WARNING

  Presently my uncle and I made ready to set out for St. John’s upon the sinister business which twice a year engaged his evil talents at the wee waterside place wherein he was the sauciest dog in the pack. There was now no wandering upon the emotionless o
ld hills of Twin Islands to prepare him, no departure from the fishing, no unseemly turning to the bottle, to factitious rage; but he brooded more despairingly in his chair by the window when the flare of western glory left the world. At evening, when he thought me gone upon my pleasure, I watched him from the shadows of the hall, grave with youth, wishing, all the while, that he might greet the night with gratitude for the mercy of it; and I listened to his muttering—and I saw that he was grown old and weak with age: unequal, it might be, to the wickedness he would command in my service. “For behold the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with the flames of fire.” For me ’twas still sweet to watch the tender shadows creep upon the western fire, to see the great gray rocks dissolve, to hear the sea’s melodious whispering; but to him the sea spoke harshly and the night came with foreboding. I wished that he would forsake the evil he followed for my sake. I would be a club-footed, paddle-punt fisherman, as the gray little man from St. John’s had said, and be content with that fortune, could my uncle but look into the eyes of night without misgiving.

  But I must not tell him so.…

  We left John Cather behind.

  “Uncle Nick,” says I, “I ’low we’d best have un along.”

  “An’ why?” cries he.

  “I don’t know,” says I, honestly puzzled.

  He looked at me quizzically. “Is you sure?” he asked. His eyes twinkled. “Is you sure you doesn’t know?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered, frowning. “I don’t know at all.”

  “Dannie,” says he, significantly, “’tisn’t time yet for John Cather t’ go t’ St. John’s. You got t’ take your chance.”

  “What chance?” I demanded.

  “I don’t know,” says he.

  I scowled.

  “But,” says he, “an I was you I wouldn’t fear on no account whatever. No,” he repeated, “I wouldn’t fear—an I was you.”

  So John Cather was left with Judy and the watchful maid-servant who loved her, having no child of her own, when my uncle and I fared out of the tickle upon the outside boat. I was troubled in the dark and wash and heave of that night, but could not for the life of me tell why. John Cather had bade me good-bye with a heartening laugh and clap on the shoulder. ’Twas with gratitude—and sure persuasion of unworthiness—that I remembered his affection. And Judy had given me a sisterly kiss of farewell which yet lingered upon my lips so warmly that in my perplexity I was conscious of it lying there and must like a thirsty man feel the place her moist mouth had touched. ’Twas grief, thinks I, because of parting with my friend John Cather; and I puzzled no longer, but devoted myself to the accomplishment of manners, as I had been taught, and now attended with interest, having grown old and wise. ’Twas rainy weather, windy, with the sea in an ugly pother off the rocks of our hard coast. ’Twas wet, blustering weather, indeed, all the hapless time we were gone from Twist Tickle: the tap-rooms of St. John’s, I recall, disagreeably steamed and reeked. My uncle put me to bed that night with a motherly injunction to recite the twenty-third psalm for safety against the perils of the sea and the machinations of wicked men, and to regard the precepts of the noble Lord Chesterfield for guidance in more difficult waters: the man being quite sober for the first time in all my life upon these occasions of departure.

  “Dannie, lad,” says he, “you cling t’ that there little anchor I’m give ye t’ hold to.”

  I asked him mechanically what that was.

  “The twenty-third psa’m,” says he.

  To this I promised.

  “An’, Dannie,” says he, drawing the great bandanna handkerchief from his trousers-pocket to blow his nose, “don’t ye be gettin’ lonely: for Dannie—”

  I must sharply attend.

  “I’m for’ard,” he declared, “standin’ by!”

  He could not perceive, poor man, that I was no longer to be dealt with as a child.

  There befell me in the city a singular encounter. ’Twas of a soggy, dismal day: there was a searching wind abroad, I recall, to chill the marrow of impoverished folk, a gray light upon all the slimy world, a dispiriting fog flowing endlessly in scowling clouds over the hills to thicken and eddy and drip upon the streets and harbor. It being now at the crisis of my uncle’s intoxication, I was come from my hotel alone, wandering without aim, to speed the anxious hours. Abreast of the familiar door of the Anchor and Chain, where long ago I had gratefully drunk with Cap’n Jack Large, I paused; and I wondered, as I stared at the worn brass knob, now broken into beads of cold sweat with the weather, whether or not I might venture some persuasion upon my perverse uncle, but was all at once plucked by the tail of my coat, and turned in a rage to resent the impudence. ’Twas but a scrawny, brass-buttoned boy, however, with an errand for the lad with the rings, as they called me. I followed, to be sure, and was by this ill-nourished messenger led to the crossing of King Street with Water, where my uncle was used to tap-tapping the pavement. Thence in a moment we ascended to a group of office-rooms, on the opposite side of the street, wherein, having been ceremoniously ushered, I found the gray stranger who had called me a club-footed, ill-begotten young whelp, on that windy night at Twist Tickle, and had with meaning complacency threatened my uncle’s assassination.

  I had not expected it.

  “Ha!” snaps he. “Here you are, eh?”

  To my amazement.

  “You know me?” he demanded.

  I did not know his quality, which seemed, however, by the state he dwelt in, by the deference he commanded from the scrawny, brass-buttoned, ill-nourished, tragically obsequious child who had fetched me, to be of distinction.

  “Sit down,” he bade me.

  I would not.

  “Well, well!” cries he. “You’ve manners as brief as your memory.”

  ’Twas a vivid recollection that had shorn my manner to the bare. My uncle had not been quick enough to sweep the lamp from the table: I remembered this man. ’Twas he who had of that windy night most cruelly damned me; ’twas he who had struck my uncle.

  “I’ve not forgot you, sir,” says I.

  He was gray: he was indeed most incredibly gray—gray of hair and eye and brow and flesh, gray of mood and outlook upon the world, forever dwelling, as it seemed, in a gray fog of suspicion and irascibility. I was gone over, from pate to shrinking club-foot, with more intimate and intelligently curious observation than ever a ’longshore jack or coastwise skipper had achieved in the years when I wore rings. Never before had I suffered a stare more keen and unabashed: ’twas an assurance stripped of insolence by some tragical need and right. He sat beyond a broad, littered table, leaning forward upon it, his back to the riley light, his drawn face nestled within the lean, white hands of him; and ’twas now a brooding inspection I must bear—an unself-conscious thing, remote from my feeling, proceeding from eyes as gray as winter through narrow slits that rapidly snapped shut and flashed open in spasmodic winking. He was a man of fashion, of authority, of large affairs, it seemed—a gentleman, according to my uncle’s code and fashion-plates. But he was now by my presence so wretchedly detached from the great world he moved in that for a moment I was stirred to pity him. What had this masterful little man, thinks I, to fear from Dannie Callaway of Twist Tickle?

  Enough, as it turned out; but ’twas all an unhappy mystery to me on that drear, clammy day.

  “Come, sir!” says I, in anger. “You’ve fetched me here?”

  He seemed not to hear.

  “What you wantin’ of me?” I brusquely asked.

  “Yes,” says he, sighing; “you are here, aren’t you?” He fingered the papers on his table in a way so desultory and weak that once more I was moved to pity him. Then, with blank eyes, and hopelessly hanging lip, a lean finger still continuing to rustle the forgotten documents, he looked out of the window, where ’twas all murky and dismal, harbor and rocky hill beyond obliterated by the dispiriting fog. “I wish to warn you,” he cont
inued. “You think, perhaps,” he demanded, looking sharply into my eyes, “that you are kin of mine?”

  I had no such dreadful fear, and, being an unkind lad, frankly told him.

  “You dream,” he pursued, “that you were born to some station?”

  I would not have him know.

  “Daniel,” says he, with a faint twinkle of amusement and pity, “tell me of that wretched dream.”

  ’Twas a romantic hope that had lingered with me despite my wish to have it begone: but I would not tell this man. I had fancied, as what lad would not? but with no actual longing, because of love for Judith, that the ultimate revelation would lift me high in the world. But now, in the presence of this gray personage, under his twinkle and pitying grin, the fancy forever vanished from me. ’Twas comforting to know, at any rate, that I might wed Judith without outrage. There would be small difficulty, then, thinks I, in winning the maid; and ’twas most gratifying to know it.

  “Daniel,” says he, in distress, “has that rascally Top misled you to this ridiculously romantic conclusion?”

  “No, sir,” I answered.

  “You are the son,” he declared, with thin-lipped deliberation, by which I was persuaded and sorely chagrined, “of Tom Callaway, who was lost, with all hands but the chiefest rascal it has been my lot to encounter, in the wreck of the Will-o’-the-Wisp. Tom Callaway, master: he was your father. Your mother,” he continued, “was a St. John’s waterside maid—a sweet and lovely wife, who died when you were born. I was myself not indifferent to her most pure and tender charms. There is your pedigree,” says he, his voice fallen kind. “No mystery, you see—no romance. Tom Callaway, master: he was your father. This man Top,” he snapped, “this vulgar, drunken, villanous fellow, into whose hands you have unhappily fallen and by whose mad fancies you will inevitably be ruined, is the sole survivor of the Will-o’-the-Wisp, with which your father very properly went down. He is nothing to you—nothing—neither kith nor kin! He is an intruder upon you: he has no natural right to your affection; nor have you a natural obligation to regard him. He has most viciously corrupted you into the fantastic notion that you are of gentle and fortunate birth. With what heart, in God’s name!” the gray man cried, clapping his lean hands in a passion, “he will face you when he must disclose the truth, I cannot conceive. Mad! The man is stark mad: for tell you he must, though he has in every way since your childhood fostered within you a sense of honor that will break in contempt upon him! Your attitude, I warn you, will work wretchedness to you both; you will accuse and flout him. Daniel,” the man solemnly asked, “do you believe me?”