by Neil M. Gunn
He knew the effect that his treatment of Roddie would have on Dunster and he was prepared to provide certain boats with nets at a figure profitable to himself. He would make them scrape together whatever money they had to pay part of these nets at once. Boat crews would go shares in this debt. They would be dependent on him. He would treat them reasonably. They would be his men, and if incoming curers offered better money, he would tell his men to hang on to the end of the season and trust him. This was only a beginning. They would want bigger boats, money advanced….
But supposing the boats caught nothing, not even one barrel? Then there would be no money due to the fishermen, none to the gutting crews, the salt would keep…. He worked out his dead loss and knew he could stand it easily. He would always work out a dead loss, before starting up, say, in Helmsdale, in Lybster, in Wick itself….
His mind could not dream. It got congested with excitement. And, by God, with a roaring fishing here he might make enough profit in drink to cover all his working expenses this year!…
As he emerged from his private room he met his wife who asked him, “Did you remember to pay Roddie his threepence for the fish?”
“What fish?” asked her husband. Then, remembering, he snorted with sarcasm and entered the bar as if he had been treated to a peculiar kind of joke.
On a Saturday night, about a fortnight later, Roddie and the three members of his crew entered the bar. It was crowded, for already the inn-keeper was finding business brisk. Now he at once and abruptly hailed Roddie. The flap was lifted. “This way, men.” Down the passage he roared, “Johan!” His wife appeared and took command of the bar.
The men in the bar looked at one another, but did not say much. Their eyes were bright. The new boat had made a tremendous impression. Roddie and three of a crew had sailed her into the bay. No man grudged Roddie his high distinction, because he was not only a daring and persevering seaman but also had the quiet independent mind that would curry favour with no one. There were those who said he did not know his own strength, and in his twenty-first year, at the November market, with three glasses of whisky inside him, he had thrashed three men and might have killed one of them had he not been powerfully restrained. But normally he was mild-mannered and pleasant and very obliging.
It was the first time the three members of his crew had ever been in the inner room and they sat on the form to Roddie’s right, like scholars in a row. Next to the door was Red Daun, a rounded stocky figure, with close-cropped red hair, small eyes, and great strength for a slow heave. He was three years older than Roddie. His palms occasionally took the weight of his body and moved it from hip to hip.
Don Sutherland was six feet two inches, dark, good-natured, slow-mannered, and about Roddie’s own age. He sat quietly, prepared to listen. The youngest of the crew was Rob Maclean. He was only nineteen, but had a habitual solemn expression beyond his years. When he was six, grown folk would ask him questions in order to hear his “old-fashioned” replies. He was very dark, of middle size, with rather small features, and listened with an occasional crinkling of the eyelids. He could tell a legendary story as if it had all happened to himself.
From the recess in the wall the inn-keeper took down his bottle of “special”.
“Now you’ve brought her home, we’ll wet her!” he said heartily, and poured out five drinks. “Well, boys, here’s good luck to you! I know you’ll do your best and not let me down.”
Roddie politely stood up and the others followed him. “Here’s good health to you, Mr. Hendry. We can do no more than our best, but we’ll do that. We would like to thank you very much. Good health!”
“Good health!” echoed the three.
Then they politely sat down.
“Have you agreed on everything among yourselves?”
“Yes,” answered Roddie.
“Fine. It’s not for me to interfere in your business, but you know how, if I can help you, I will. And if things don’t turn out as well as we have every reason to expect, there will always be another season for you to pay off your debt.”
“Thank you,” said Roddie. “What we have agreed is that when you are paid back, we’ll share expenses and what we’ll make among us equally.”
“That seems simple enough,” said Mr. Hendry. “But what about your own personal position as skipper? I mean, someone must have the final say in things.”
“That’s true,” answered Roddie simply. “I’ll have always the final say. But the money due to you must come out of the boat’s earnings. All of us, therefore, must have a share in the boat equal to that amount.”
“Very good. But what if anyone wants to leave—or has to leave—the boat?” asked Mr. Hendry, looking closely at Roddie.
“In that case,” said Roddie, “I’ll pay him out his share, and that’s the end of it.”
Hendry nodded slowly. “You have a clear head, Roddie—and a generous one. You might have kept an extra share for yourself. I hope”—and he looked at the three others—“that you appreciate this.”
“We do that,” said Rob. “But it’s the way he would have it himself.” His solemnity sounded comical, and they all smiled.
“Well, Roddie, as I say, it seems clear and generous.”
“You were more than generous to me.”
Mr. Hendry closed his mouth, then nodded once or twice. “All right,” he said. But the quiet way in which Roddie led his men brought enthusiasm upon him, and in a moment the latest news of the rise of the fisheries was flowing in a torrent. “The Moray Firth is burning, from Fraserburgh, along the whole south coast, Macduff, Banff, Buckie, Lossiemouth, Brochead and a score of villages besides. We’ve got to go ahead. No half measures now. The money will be flowing like the river. As one man said in Wick: the creels of silver herring will turn into creels of silver crowns. And by God, boys, Dunster has to go into the lead. You’ll have to fish up. Boats from the south side will be here. You’ll have to beat them; you’ll have to show the Wickers and Buckers a thing or two. You’re the leaders now and I’m relying on you.”
“We’ll do our best,” said Roddie.
“I know,” answered Hendry, but as if that weren’t the point, as if the affair were bigger than the mere doing of one’s best. They felt this undertow of excitement, this bigness, this portentous looming of tremendous things.
Mr. Hendry let them out by the back door of the inn, for in their present mood they wanted to be by themselves to go over again and again every aspect of their position. Although they took a dram now and then they were not used to more than the customary small glass, and Hendry’s generous portion had gone a little to their heads.
They withdrew into the shadow of a wood. Rob broke the silence by remarking in his dry, solemn way, “He seems anxious for us to do well.” In their excitement they began to laugh softly.
Meantime, Mr. Hendry had returned to the bar. He stood still and cast his eyes over the silent, watching faces. “You, James, and you, Alastair, and you, William—will you come in?” He lifted the flap and the three skippers filed through without a word.
*
Never had Dunster known such talk, such expectation, such secret groupings and meetings. Where husbands or sons were shy or backward their womenfolk encouraged them. Women who knew how to spin hemp taught others. In the meeting-or ceilidh-houses at night nothing was talked about but the coming fishing. “Creels of silver herring will turn into creels of silver crowns” became the joke that never lost its gleam. There were two creel-makers in Dunster, and they worked all day and far into the night.
Yet this busy expectation was quite consumed in the fires of excitement that spread throughout Dunster when unknown curers, and boats, and fishermen, with Scots tongues that few could understand, turned the foreshore into Babel in the first week of July.
Along the cliff-heads, from every cottage door within sight, eyes watched the fleet of boats as in the late afternoon they put out to sea. Hope and rivalry ran high.
But the first few da
ys were almost blank, such herring as were caught being small or in poor condition. In the early morning the crews of women and girls gathered for the gutting, waited until the boats came in, and slowly drifted home. Despondency touched the quickened spirit of Dunster. Hendry could not sit still. The fishing would last only about seven weeks, and already one week was almost gone. From Scrabster round to Wick there had been good shots caught and landed. Then word came that the herring were off Clyth. On the Friday afternoon, Roddie’s boat, the Morning Star, was the first to put to sea. He had decided to go and meet the herring. Up went his brown sail in a pleasant wind off the land. South-side boats were soon after him, and tailing far behind came the small local craft on their oars.
“That’s Roddie leading the way,” said young lads from the cliff-tops. The bellying sail sent a thrill through them. The sail was the thing! Watching it, fascinated, they felt charged with adventure and great deeds.
But in the morning it seemed that luck had still avoided Dunster. Small boats drew up on the edge of the tide and fishermen carried their empty nets behind the gutting stations to spread them on the green. Then a boat arrived with three crans of full herring, another with two, another with five. Voices began to rise. The creels poured their silver treasure into the gutting boxes.
But George Bremner stood idly beside Mr. Hendry. An hour later the total catch of nine boats out of their fleet of ten was four crans. The tenth boat, the Morning Star, had yet to come.
It was a small fishing, voices cried, but it was a beginning! A few of the larger boats were still to come, however. One arrived with seven crans, a second with only a creel, but the Thistle of Buckie put in with the top shot of the day, eleven crans.
Mr. Hendry could not contain himself, and above the hubbub shouted in English to the skipper:
“Any sign of the Morning Star?”
“Ay, he’s comin’.”
“Has he any herring?”
“Judging by the maas aboot him, I’d say he hes; but he wis well to the east’ard of us.”
The Officer of the Board of Fisheries, who now arrived on the scene, had a look at the herring.
“They’ll take the ‘Crown Full’ brand, Officer?” said the curer concerned.
The Officer nodded. “Yes, I’ll give you the ‘Full’ brand for them all right,” he answered with a smile.
The branding of the Crown with a hot iron on the barrel of cured herring indicated the quality and assured the payment of the four-shilling bounty. Herring of the best quality, herring that were not spent, had the word “Full” branded below the Crown. The foreign merchant accepted these brands, and bought and sold on them, in a faith that was never let down.
The curer to whom the Thistle was engaged began poking sly fun at Mr. Hendry, who grew more restless with his voice tending to rise into a shout. He was defiant, because inwardly he Was fearful and cast down. If only the Morning Star would arrive with, say, twelve or thirteen crans, by God, that would show them! He stumped away to keep his anxiety within bounds. If, on the other hand, Roddie arrived with no more than a creel or two…. Feeling his hopes crashing in upon him, Mr. Hendry was unable to pursue the thought further.
But when, at long last, the Morning Star was seen coming round the Head, low to the sea, as if nearly sunk, Mr. Hendry stood dead still. A voice cried, “By the Lord, he’s in them to the gunnels!”
Women excitedly crowded to the crest of the beach, shoving their way among the men and boys. The Morning Star approached slowly under four oars, followed by a whirling cloud of maas (gulls). The early breath of sea wind had taken off and the water swung and glittered under a bright sky. The two after oars were shipped and Roddie, at the tiller, guided the forefoot of his boat gently on to the sloping shingle.
“She has thirty crans,” cried George Bremner, “if she has a herring!”
But Hendry could not answer him. He could not speak. Indeed the boat wavered before him and he impatiently swept the back of a hand across his eyes. Then he roared at Roddie, “Well done!” and waved his fist.
Roddie smiled.
*
That Saturday evening, the inn was besieged by a vast crowd, more varied and strange-tongued than in all its history, and it had a clan battle of sorts to its credit or discredit.
A few grey-beards from outlying crofts wandered down to warm themselves at the fires of life that had come to Dunster. Had they accepted all the hospitality offered them by open-handed seamen they would never have managed home on their own feet. As it was, two of them experienced slight, but not unpleasant, difficulty in following the uneven paths.
“We are living in strange times,” said Donald.
“Strange times, indeed. What with Boney off to St. Helena besides,” replied Lachie.
“The world is growing young.”
“And we are growing old, sorrow take it.”
“When I looked on that young fellow and thought to myself that in one night he had made more money than we will make off a croft in a twelve-month—it was hard to believe. There must be a terrible lot of money in all the world.”
“Think of Wick and Fraserburgh and Helmsdale and all the other places on the Moray Firth—it beats me where the money can come from.”
“It’s enough almost to frighten a man. Do you think it can last?”
“I have a misgiving myself. It seems hardly right.”
“Even my feet are astonished,” said Donald.
“Let us take it easy,” said Lachie, whose own feet were a trifle wayward.
The two old men sat down and looked back towards the inn and caught a distant glimpse of the high sea. They spoke of the harshness of landlords and of the ills that had befallen their folk. They recalled pleasant days of their distant youth. Perhaps happiness would come to the folk again and more money than ever they had known. For the sea was free to all. They looked upon it, bright still in the darkling night.
“Do you know, man, Lachie, when I saw that lad Roddie, tall and fair, with his blue eyes and his quiet ways, I had the sort of feeling that he had come himself up out of the sea like—like one sent to deliver us.”
“Had you now?” asked Lachie, with a glance at Donald.
“I just saw him like that.”
“Who knows? Perhaps you’re right. It felt to me myself like the beginning of strange and wonderful things. But maybe we’d better be going, or they will be saying stranger things to us when we get home.”
Donald’s blue eyes glimmered like a boy’s as he stared away at the sea. Then his grey beard doubled on his chest as he got carefully to his feet.
CHAPTER V
FINN AND THE BUTTERFLY
The first day he had seen the two white butterflies flitting about the cabbages, little Finn had stared with great astonishment, but after a time had summoned courage to approach them, whereupon they had risen high over his head and got tossed away on the air like flakes of snow. This had excited him keenly, and when he asked his mother in the evening, as she tucked him into bed, what they were, she said they were called “grey fools”.
“But they’re not grey, Mama.”
“What colour, then?”
“White.”
“That’s right. You’re Mama’s clever boy, aren’t you? And when you grow up to be a big man …”
But he was not interested in her words and words to-night. “Where do they come from, Mama?”
“Oh, well, you see, they come from—from many places.”
“Do they? What places?”
“Many and many a place.”
“Do they come from Helmsdale?”
“Yes.”
“And do they come from Canada?”
“Well, I don’t know if they come from Canada. They would have to cross the sea.”
“What’s the sea, Mama? Is it a big, big place full of water?”
“Yes.”
“How big is it?”
“It’s very, very big. It’s bigger than all the moor at the back, away, away to
Morven, and farther than that.”
“Is it? It must be awful big.”
“Yes. Now, come, say your prayer and go to sleep, for if little boys don’t sleep they won’t grow into big men, and what——”
“Mama? Couldn’t the grey fools cross above the sea in the air?”
“They might. But it would be such a long, long way that they would grow tired and then what would happen to them?”
“What?”
“What do you think?”
“Would they fall into the sea and be drowned?”
“Yes. Just as little boys will be drowned if they fall into the river. And that’s why I have told you never to——”
“Did you ever know anyone who was drowned, Mama? Did you, Mama?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“Now go to your sleep. I can’t stay here with you all night. Come. To-night as I lie down——”
“Mama, tell me, where do the grey fools go when they fly away from the garden?”
But altogether his mother had been very unsatisfactory, and her final admission that it was God who made grey fools was nothing new, for God made everything. You can always tell when an old person is going to say it is God.
But the butterflies excited him in a way nothing had ever excited him before. They appeared suddenly out of nowhere, like magic, and were white, white. They would wait on a cabbage leaf until you almost had them and then—they were off, not like a bird, but drifting up and down in the strangest way.
Until one day he so nearly caught one that he leapt after it in the air and fell. This time the butterfly merely flitted to another young cabbage, and being angry against it for making him fall, he stalked it with a stone in his hand.
But once again the butterfly eluded him, and he threw the stone at it The butterfly drifted over the low wall, and he ran after it and saw it meet another butterfly. Together they danced in the air, until one slanted away and alighted on a green leaf. Finn was so eager now that, once over the wall, he rushed up to the butterfly as if he might be swift enough to stamp on it with his foot.
