by Anya Seton
His wife, Cap’n Caswell, the other couples, the girls and the young fishermen all made similar farewells and filed out.
The Honeywood family was left with Johnnie Peach, and the old man who seemed to be asleep by the fire.
“Disgusting occurrence—” said Roger. “Put a hole right through the kitchen wall. Molesting innocent people. I’d like to have the law on him. That’s what comes of ever having gotten mixed up with—” He checked himself, remembering that he was not alone with his wife. He scooped a mugful of punch from the depleted bowl, and swallowed it irritably. “What’s to be done with that old tramp?” he said, pointing.
Susan had started piling the used mugs on a tray, and crumbing the table. There were mounds of gingerbread, brandy snaps, and saffron tarts still untouched.
“Never mind him, Roger,” she answered quietly. “I’ll care for him. You go to bed. Hes and Johnnie’ll help me clear up.”
Roger grunted. “Well, good night, all. If that bostard comes back, don’t let him in.” And his use of the universal Marblehead epithet marked the extent of his perturbation. He stalked out.
Susan put down the tray of mugs; she and Johnnie both looked at Hesper. “What happened, Hes? Tell us quick, from the beginning.”
Hesper complied, speaking in short, nervous whispers, while Johnnie and her mother listened anxiously.
“Now what’s to be done—” said Susan shaking her head. “How’ll we get ’em out o’ here?”
The old man raised his head, pushing off his hood. “Where’s the fiddler?” he said.
Susan jumped. “I’d clean forgot you, sir. The fiddler bolted the minute Clarkson opened the door, he looked pretty skeered.”
The old man nodded. “Too bad. He knew something of what was up. But he’ll be no use now. You got your boat ready?” he asked Johnnie.
“Aye. She’s pulled behind a rock, windward side o’ Gerry’s Island, nobody’d see her there tonight. I calc’lated we could sneak ’em down through the Honeywood lot, and across Little Harbor to the island near dry-shod before the water rises much. Row ’em over to Cat from there.”
“Good. But can you manage alone?”
“ ’Twill be hard. Tide and wind’s both against.”
“I’d help you—though I’ve a feeble back and no knowledge of the water—except that I’m worse needed for decoy.” His bearded lips lifted. “I know our friend the slave-catcher’s mind better than he knows it himself. Having drawn a blank here, he’s lurking outside to follow me. I’ll lead him a good chase, make it interesting enough to keep him with me, it’ll give you time.” He stood up and went to the table, crammed a tart into his mouth, and a handful of gingerbread into his pocket. “By your leave, ma’am.”
“O’ course—take all—you’ve got spunk, sir. I hope we’ve as much. We’ll do our best. But after this the U.G. mustn’t use us. Roger’s dead agin it. I had to diddle him tonight.”
“Yes, I saw.” He smiled his singularly sweet and warming smile. “Anyway we’re building up the overland line, westward to the border. I must hurry, but who’s to help you row, young man?” he added frowning.
“I am,” said Hesper firmly. “I’d thought of it earlier.”
Johnnie’s worried face cleared. “Gorm—I guess you could at that, Hes. You used to be right handy for a girl.”
Susan opened her mouth and shut it again. It was the only solution now, but her heart misgave her. There was always danger on the sea—who to know better than she who had lost sons, and her father too ? If anything should happen to Hes, and Roger not knowing either. Still, what was right was right and risks must be taken.
“You sure o’ the brig, sir?” she said rolling up the brandy snaps in a napkin and handing them to the old man.
He nodded. “Cap’n Nelson never fails. He’s heart and soul for the cause and well paid too. Good luck. God’ll rejoice in you for this night’s work. I daren’t shake hands, for I believe our bloodhound’s lurking by that window. Give us twenty minutes, then move fast.” He wrapped himself in his cloak and shuffled across the floor and out the taproom door.
“Hes,” said Susan briskly, handing Hesper a diluted mug of punch. “Drink this.”
Hesper obeyed, startled. Ma’d never let her touch anything stronger than dandelion wine. It tasted awful, for a second she thought she must retch, then a pleasing tingle of warmth glowed in her stomach.
“Change your clothes—I’ll give you Willy’s oilskins. Johnnie, keep watch outside, be sure he’s gone.” Susan bustled her daughter upstairs. As soon as Hesper had taken off the blue poplin, her mother reappeared with a flannel shirt and complete set of oilskins. She kept her drowned sons’ clothes in a locked sea chest in her bedroom though the fact was never mentioned.
“Good thing you’re tall—” she said grimly. She pulled down the braid of red hair and tucked it inside the stiff yellow jacket, jammed on the stiffer back-brimmed sou’wester and fastened it under Hesper’s chin. “Anybody at ten paces’d take you for a fisher boy—” and suddenly she leaned near and kissed Hesper on the cheek, an occurrence so unprecedented that they were both flooded with embarrassment.
“Well, are your feet glued to the floor—” snapped Susan. “Get moving—hurry.”
They found Johnnie pacing up and down the kitchen, also attired in his oilskins. “Gorm—” he stared at Hesper—“I’d never’ve known ye.” He chuckled and gave her shoulder a resounding thwack—“M’ hearty young fisherman!” But catching Susan’s minatory eye he went on quickly—“They’ve gone, all right. Old man stumpin’ along up Circle Street an’ the slave-catcher creepin’ through the shadows a few rods behind. Wind’s slackenin’ some—praise be—but tide’s cornin’ in fast.”
Susan pulled the window curtains tighter and opened the closet door. “Call ’em, Hes!”
The girl manipulated the panel and ascended the narrow steps, her creaking clumsy oilskins catching against the chimney’s rough stone. “Come down,” she called gently into the darkness. “It’s safe now.”
There was a soft movement in the hidey-hole, and Hesper backed down the steps. The mulatto girl followed at once. She stood crouching over the baby, and trembling. Her black eyes slid from one to the other of them, her golden-brown face was a mask of fear.
“Here now—” said Susan, “stop shaking. You’re almost free. These two’ll get you to the ship.” She doused the candle and opened the back door.
Johnnie went first, then the slave girl, then Hesper. The moonless night was overcast with heavy dark clouds, yet was not too dark for Hesper and Johnnie’s keen young eyes. They followed the familiar path between the vegetable and herb patches past the apple trees and around the great elm tree that marked the eastern boundary of the Honeywood lot. They crept in the shadow of Pitman’s fish warehouse, and Johnnie paused to inspect the cove. All the fish flakes had been covered with tarpaulin for the night, all dories beached and made fast. Their peering eyes could discern no movement in the darkness. There was no noise but the lap and suck of the water on the shingle, and then the crunch of their heavy fishing boots as Johnnie led the way over the shore pebbles to the strip of land which at low tide connected the mainland and Gerry’s Island. The slave girl glided silent as a forest doe between them. As they reached the island the rising waters wet her feet and she gasped from the sudden cold, but made no other sound.
They crossed the bare little island to the ocean side where Johnnie had hidden his new green dory between two sheltering rocks. Johnnie tugged until it floated, then guided the two girls while they clambered in. He placed the slave girl in the stern, and as she settled herself the baby woke up and gave a fretful cry. She crouched lower over it, a dark shape against the darker rocks behind, and they heard her crooning—“Hush—Hush—Hush.” Johnnie put Hesper on the forward thwart, and himself amidships. He fitted in the oars. He had set the tholepins earlier,’ then wrapped them round with sacking. “All set—Hes,” he whispered. “Pull slow and steady. Don’t get winded
and don’t get skeered.”
“ ’Course not,” she answered scornfully, for they were still in the lee of Peach’s Point, and the rowing easy. She had never rowed this mile-and-a-half stretch to Cat Island before, but she had sailed it several times. Of late years since the Salem Steamboat Company had bought the island and built there a large summer hotel, it had been rechristened Lowell’s Island, and become a favorite sailing goal for Marblehead children, who amused themselves gaping at the fashionably dressed excursionists the steamer deposited at the wharf. In the last century the island had had still another name—Hospital Island, from the smallpox pesthouse situated upon it, but Marbleheaders, ever indifferent to ephemeral fancies, continued to call it by its original name.
Hesper and Johnnie rowed steadily towards the east and the four heavy eight-foot oars dipped together in a smooth rotating rhythm, until gradually they drew abreast of the lighthouse on the Point of the Neck to the south.
This was easy, thought Hesper, not near as bad as Johnnie seemed to think. But in another moment they reached the open channel, and the brisk north wind hit them full force. The waves, at first merely choppy, grew bigger until their tumbling white crests slid by at eye-level in the darkness. The staunch little dory shuddered and twisted and climbed and slipped down again into the troughs. Hesper lost her stroke, and found that over and over she was beating her oars on empty air. Spray showered on her back and ran down the oilskins.
The slave girl began to cry softly—“Oh lawdy, lawdy, save us—” and they heard her retching.
“Steady on—Hes!” cried Johnnie twisting his head. “Ship your port oar, bear all you’ve got to starboard, we’re bein’ blown off course.”
She obeyed, pulling now with both hands at the leeward oar, trying to time it with Johnnie’s powerful strokes. The dory swung slowly back into the wind. Sweat poured down her face and neck and between her breasts, her arms and shoulders began to ache with a fiery pain. The grayish white-tipped masses rocked beneath them, the bilges sloshed with deepening water.
Hesper clenched her teeth and pulled, watching the lighthouse creep inch by inch astern. She heard Johnnie’s unconscious grunts as he exerted all his strength on each down pull. I can’t go on—she thought once, as her oar twisted and buried itself in a mountain of water. Her hands were raw inside the leather fishing mittens, a knife was twisting in her shoulder blades. But she clung to the oar, yanked it out, and went on. Forward—pull—back. Forward—pull—back. Mechanical and mindless. There was no room for fear, nor pity for the poor drenched seasick creature on the stern seat, no room for anything but tough jaw-clenching struggle. On and on through the night and the wind and the savage tossing sea.
She was even unaware of Johnnie, and his triumphant shout took a moment to rouse her. “Well done, Hes. Here’s the island. Ye can rest a bit now.” After a moment she turned her stiff neck and saw the dark mound rising up before them, and the shape of the hotel, now closed, on the northwest tip. Johnnie pulled them in close to the shore and the water suddenly grew calm. She slumped forward on her oar, panting.
Johnnie reached back and patted her on the knee. “Get your breath, Hessie. I couldn’t a asked for better help. It’ll be easier goin’ home with the tide, poor lass.”
She couldn’t answer, but she heard the new note in his voice as he spoke to her, and the pounding of her heart and the pain in her back subsided a little.
Johnnie rowed almost noiselessly around the southern point. He knew the island was deserted at this season, the hotel wouldn’t be open for another three months, but there might be a caretaker.
“Yonder’s the brig—sure enough—” he cried triumphantly, as they glided to seaward of the island. “Chirk up—slave girl, you’re purty nigh safe!”
The dark figure raised her head, they all three stared through the gloom at a silent black hull that loomed against the grayer sky. The brigrocked quietly at anchor two hundred yards off shore, and not a light showed on her, but as they drifted nearer, the clouds lifted and a few stars pricked out between the masts.
Johnnie rowed up close amidships, and the brig’s broad white strip below her square ports glowed like a ghostly ribbon above their heads. “Ahoy there! Brig ahoy!” he shouted through his cupped hands. There was a footfall on deck, a head peered over the rail and vanished, but there was no answering hail.
The slave girl spoke then for the first time. “Dey mus’ want de password, massa—” she said softly. “Tell ’em ‘cat.’”
Johnnie cupped his hands again. “Brig ahoy—Cat! Have ye a cat on board to quell your rats ? But anyway I bring ye a cat, a cat and a kitten! That ought to be enough cats to ease their minds,” he chuckled to Hesper.
Apparently it was. A head reappeared at the rail, and a dark lantern cast its wavering beam down on the dory. “Ahoy there!” called a man’s voice. “Ye’ve been long enough deliverin’ your cats, I’d near given ye up.” The voice had an intonation like that of the men off the Nova Scotian coalers.
“Aye, well we’d a bit o’ trouble, here’n there—” answered Johnnie cheerfully. “Will ye take ’em aboard now? My mate and me must get back.”
“Stand by for the ladder,” responded the voice and the head disappeared.
Suddenly the slave girl came to life. She leaned forward from the stern and spoke with harsh breathlessness. “Ah doan know how ter thank you-all, yo buckra been maughty good ter me up No’th. Cain’ take it een ah’ll get to mah husban’ in Halifax now. He runned off a year gone, he been waitin’ fo’ me.”
“Aye—” said Johnnie soothingly. “You don’t have to thank us.”
The girl went on unheeding, the words spurting from her. “Massa he beat me, he lash me wid th’ bull whip, but Ah wouldn’ tell him where Cato he run ter. Then Massa, he seed Ah’m yaller gal, not bad lookin’—he quit bearin’, an’ he use me—” She stopped.
There were voices on deck and the outline of a ladder appeared over the rail aft of them. Johnnie let the dory drift to position, and Hesper, startled by bewildered pity, said the first thing that came into her head. “How glad your husband’ll be to see the baby too!”
“Ah doan know,” answered the voice from the stern, and now it was weighted with a stony resignation. “Ah reckon so—but Ah doan rightly know effen hit’s Cato’s chile or de massa’s.”
Hesper stiffened. What did that mean ? How could it be she didn’t know? Something ugly—something disgusting and frightening like a bloated dead snake she had found beside the kitchen step.
“Trim ship—Hes,” ordered Johnnie sharply. He was standing on the floor boards, holding the wooden ladder with one hand and supporting the slave girl with the other. Hesper slid hastily along the thwart to the gunnel. The slave girl knotted her shawl tight about the baby, and climbed to the waiting hands reached down to help her.
They lifted her over the rail, and at the same moment a voice boomed, “Avast heaving there! Lay aft to the jib halliards!” followed by running footsteps and the creak of windlass.
Johnnie shoved off and began to row. The slave girl leaned over the rail. “Good-bye—” she called. “De Lawd bless you—Buckra.”
“Good luck—” shouted Johnnie, and Hesper whispered “Good-bye.” She watched the three jibs spring like white triangles from the bowsprit. She heard the thud of the anchor on deck—the long thrilling call—“All hands make sai-il-l-l ...” The square sails burgeoned one after another up the two high masts. The brig veered slowly off the wind, the sails slatted and filled. She gained headway, and glided eastward into the starlit night.
We did it, thought Hesper, we did it! She was suddenly caught up outside her tired body by a golden spring of joy. And in this moment of exaltation while she watched the brig vanish, she apprehended the rare purity of accomplishment which brought no personal gain. They had all of them, her mother and Johnnie and the old man, submitted themselves to worry and actual danger in behalf of an ideal, nothing more. Maybe the slave girl wouldn’t be happy after
she achieved freedom, maybe the obscure ugly things she had suffered would not let her really be free. But it didn’t matter to those who helped her. It was not the past or the future but the cat itself that counted, the act of liberation.
“Matter, Hes?” asked Johnnie, rowing past the rocks at the tip of the island. “D’you feel bad?”
“No—” she said, stirring. She tightened her grasp of the oars and she began to row. “I feel good. Kind of windswept and clean. Like sometimes at meeting, when we sing ‘Jerusalem the Golden.’” She didn’t care if Johnnie laughed at her. She no longer minded the pain in her back muscles or the raw sores in her hands. They were good clean pains.
Johnnie didn’t laugh. He said “Aye—” in a thoughtful voice, and nothing more.
They emerged from Cat Island’s lee into open water again, but the wind had slacked off, and the sea flattened to lazy billows. The tide flowed shoreward beneath their keel, and the lighthouse on the Neck danced fleetly past them. The sleeping town lay huddled amongst her rocky ledges, scarce visible even as they crossed the mouth of the Great Harbor except that here and there, in Barnegat or high on Training Field Hill, a mother tended a sick child, and a window glimmered yellow in the darkness.
As they sped once more between Fort Sewall Point and Gerry’s Island the church bells chimed twice.
Johnnie beached his dory in her usual place, near the path that led up to his home in Barnegat. Hesper neatly shipped her oars and pulled out the tholepins, but when she tried to jump ashore as Johnnie had, she found that her legs were numb and would not move.
“Criminy!” she dropped back on the thwart, with a small embarrassed laugh. “I’m stiff as a frozen herring.”
“It’ll soon pass,” said Johnnie still in the grave, tender voice that was so unlike him. He waded into the water, scooped her out of the boat and carried her, oilskins and all, high up on the beach.
She swayed as he set her down, and he kept his arm about her. She looked up and she could see his face a little higher than hers dim beneath the sou’wester in the starlight.
