by Neil M. Gunn
Suddenly he hated what he had seen‚ hated it in dumb, frightened anger, hated its bodily crush, its tragic pallor, and moved swiftly on to the moor, as if the ghost of his father had come up behind him.
*
After that night Finn cunningly hid things inside himself, yet at the same time found a greater release in life. Not only did the croft work occupy his mind in a more man-like way, but he also looked for companionship outside the home. Increasingly his evenings were spent in other houses with lads of his own age and older, gay evenings, with songs and story-telling, and, above all, with talk of the sea. The great rendezvous for sea-talk was the kitchen of Meg, the net-maker. And one Monday evening Finn scored a triumph there—and took into himself a new and haunting disquiet.
It was a memorable Monday from the first entrance of “the professor” into the long, low thatched building that was his school. Education was a voluntary affair, but respect for learning was deep in the minds of the folk, because it came out of a very ancient tradition, the tradition of the bards with their classic poetry, in epic and in song, and their extensive knowledge of history, particularly the real and legendary history of their own race. While each scholar took a peat with him every morning, on Monday he also took a penny.
*
The long plank seats were crowded with boys and men, smooth-faced and heavily bearded, when “the professor” strode in and, whisking off his bonnet, dumped it upon a wooden peg, completely unaware that he had also removed his wig. Eyes gleamed and young bodies squirmed to repress their mirth at sight of the wigless head. But prayer first. Then a chapter of the Bible. Mr. Gordon went for his hat to collect the pennies and discovered his wig. “Ha,” he said, “ha, now I understand! Hm!” He put on his wig and with his hat held out in front of him moved along the back seat collecting his pennies. While he turned to the next seat, two boys slipped from the off end of it into the back seat. The bulk of the school saw the manœuvre and waited. Along came Mr. Gordon and saw nothing. The two young rascals had saved their pennies. Beards shook at them, but the eyes above were merry. For the professor had obviously got some sort of bee in his wig this morning.
The reading was perfunctory; the writing, as always, strictly supervised, but no more; so it must be the arithmetic. It was.
“Most of you here are interested in the industry that is concerned with catching white herrings. Very well. Instead of directing our attention to the consideration of number in an abstract way, I propose to-day to apply it to this particular industry. As a people you may be in danger, as you have been in the past, of being taken advantage of by governing forces superior in possessions, in craft, and in knowledge—particularly in knowledge of arithmetic. I should not like it to rest at my door that, in this matter of preparing you to judge your own respective positions, I had failed in so elementary a duty as providing you with the necessary knowledge.”
They liked this sort of talk for its difficult words and the fine rhythm of the sentences rather than for its meaning. Moreover, Mr. Gordon was inclined to be a rebel against “authority”, as his ambition to enter the ministry had been balked several years before by “governing forces”.
He was a tall, lean, drooping man, with a manner often absent-minded but occasionally extremely pointed and alive. Obviously he had been thinking over the questions which he now proceeded to put to them:
“How many women are there in a gutting crew, and what do they do?”
“Three. Two gutters and one packer.”
“What do they jointly earn for gutting and packing one barrel of herring? You!”
“Fourpence,” said the fisherman.
“How many herring are there in a barrel?”
All were very interested now, and as the number varied according to the size and quality of the herring, Mr. Gordon agreed: “There can be 800. So let us call it 800. Now what I want you to tell me is: What does a woman get for gutting 100 herrings?”
He turned away to give them time. “Well? You, Donald.”
But they were troubled.
“Take it home with you and bring me the answer tomorrow,” said Mr. Gordon, before they had proper time to work it out. “Now,” he continued briskly, “we have in our midst a lady who is a distinguished craftswoman in net-making. I assume you know to whom I refer?”
“Meg,” said one of the boys who had saved his penny, and the school laughed.
“How much is paid to this lady for the making of a net?”
“One pound.”
“What is the length of a net? You.”
“Twenty-five fathom,” answered a skipper.
When Mr. Gordon had this translated into fifty yards and had discovered that the depth of the net was fourteen yards and that the mesh from knot to knot must be one inch, he asked for the number of meshes in the net, and in due course was given the correct answer.
“Now,” said Mr. Gordon, “each mesh is contained by—how many knots?”
“Four.”
“Four. Agreed. Well now, how many knots are there in the net?” He dusted the chalk from his palms and was turning away when he said, “What! Already?”
The answer given was four times the number of meshes.
“You all appear to be agreed?” And then it was that Finn made the impatient movement with his hand. “Someone seems to be troubled,” remarked Mr. Gordon, giving Finn time.
He walked up and down the floor, with a dry smile.
They all got troubled. They began to make dots on their slates and saw at once that four times the number of meshes was absurd.
“Well?”
Finn raised his head. “The number of knots along the top is 1,801. The number down from that 504. So there are 505 lines of 1,801 in each. The total”—he paused to add on his slate—“is 909,505 knots.”
“Very good, indeed. I compliment you. Excellent.” He was so delighted that he drew a small net on the blackboard and illustrated the problem at length.
“Finally,” said Mr. Gordon, “how many knots does Meg—I mean the lady who makes the net—how many knots has she to tie to earn one penny, ignoring fractions?”
This time there was no catch. Meg had to tie 3,789 knots for one penny.
The number was so large that it made them twinkle with mirth. She fairly earned her penny!
At home that evening Finn got up to go out.
“Where are you off to now?” asked Kirsty.
“Over to Meg’s.”
“It’s no business of mine,” said Kirsty, pressing spiritedly on the treadle of her spinning-wheel.
Catrine looked up at him from her carding-combs and smiled. “Don’t be late.”
He walked out without answering. The dumb mood was on him as he entered at Meg’s door, and he was taken aback when greeted with, “Here comes the professor!” There was laughter. “Tell Meg about her knots!” cried Wull. Then Finn understood and flushed.
George, the foreman, paused in his measurement of the meshes with a yard stick. Meg, seated at her new net, turned her head and welcomed Finn: “Come away, laddie.” She spoke the word in English. She often used an English word, and her voice had the south-side accent, for her mother had come from Macduff. Sometimes when they were in a good mood they would mimic her accent and English words. She was a little woman, tidy as a provident hen, her head sleek with dark hair that showed no grey though she was over sixty. Her house was astonishingly clean, with plates and bowls gleaming from high dresser shelves in the light that leapt and winked from the fire and burned more steadily from the cruisie-lamp near her shoulder. This lamp was no more than an iron saucer, filled with clear fish oil, from which a wick burned. The wick was the white pith of a bulrush looped where it lay in the oil, the lighted end leaning against a shallow spout in the rim of the saucer. This was the common lamp, but folk did not use it unless at labour, because oil was dear. Meg made her own oil, keeping all the livers she could get from the fishermen in a little barrel. In the last few years since cured herring had becom
e plentiful, Meg had found it much easier to get white-fish livers.
There were nearly a score of persons in the room, and often it was packed to the door. Bearded young fishermen, a few of the older men like Wull, lads crushed together, and two or three married women and unmarried girls, apparently anxious to study Meg’s art, but otherwise intent on keeping the fun going.
Finn’s entrance created a great hubbub, and while he was having his leg pulled, George resumed his measurement and counting. Then he clapped Meg on the shoulder. “Very good,” he said, quietly for him.
But Wull was watching. “Big enough to let whales through, George?” he called.
“They are right,” said George, “according to law.”
There was laughter at that, for sometimes, behind his back, George was called “According-to-law”. Wull’s eyes twinkled, for he liked to be the author of merriment. “They may be right according to law, but are they right according to the herring?” he asked.
This droll question did not allay the mirth for it was deeper than it seemed, but a young woman falling backward among the boys set up a noisy tumult.
It was at this moment, as he turned his head away, smiling, from the scrabble on the floor, that Finn encountered Una’s face, the dark eyes full upon him. She was twelve years old.
There had been one memorable morning in Finn’s young life when, cautiously approaching a grey boulder in the burn, hoping to see a yellow trout, he beheld the long straight back of a sea-trout. The excitement had been so intense that it quivered with something like fear.
Once—and only once—he had seen a squirrel in the Steep Wood. He had been sitting quietly and, hearing a strange sound, had turned his head. From a fork in a tree, the unknown, beautiful wild thing had looked down at him.
Una was not unknown to Finn, but she lived a considerable distance from his home, on the other side of the river. Never before, however, had her eyes thus rested upon him.
In the bewildering stress of the moment, he turned upon unoffending Donnie and cried, “Watch who you’re shoving!” and dug him in the ribs with his elbow.
“You should take some lessons in arithmetic from Finn,” George was answering Wull. “Or the professor. They seem to know a lot about nets!”
“What’s wrong with arithmetic? Isn’t it according to law, too?”
“Pach!” snorted George. “If Meg there makes thirty-six meshes to the yard, how many will there be after the hemp has been in the bark and the sea once or twice? Ask the professor that.”
“That’s true enough,” said Daun. “They shrink a good lot.”
“Of course they shrink,” said George. “And according to law a mesh must not be less than one inch from knot to knot at any time. It’s herrings the net is for, not sellags.”
George was pleased with the laughter, for actually the mesh was on the big side, measuring a bare thirty to the yard. But here he was not merely keeping on the right side of the law, he was also following out Mr. Hendry’s private policy, for in the matter of price, big herring were better than small herring. The agents for the foreign market wanted them big. True, the large mesh might not catch so many herring, and if that was against the fishermen’s interests now, still, in the long run, it might not be. Who could say?
For what was deemed a terrible calamity had befallen the herring industry: the Government had stopped payment of the bounty.
Finn had listened to endless arguments over the last two or three years. Mr. Hendry at first had said that they might as well haul their boats and close down. From four shillings on the barrel the bounty had gone down to three shillings, to two shillings, to one shilling, to nothing.
There had been meetings in Mr. Hendry’s little room, meetings on the shore, meetings everywhere.
But if the price per cran had been reduced, the fishing had not stopped. On the contrary, all over the coasts, it had gone ahead in a striking manner; and it looked now as if it might even still increase. So that the tension of concern was lessening, and Wull could say to George:
“You and your bounty! Why should the Government pay the curer the bounty? It’s the fisherman who should have got it anyway. Didn’t he catch the herrings?”
“And who paid the fisherman?” asked George.
“The curer,” said Wull. They all laughed, Wull with them.
“Would Meg be making this net? Would the thousands of pounds that came into Dunster these last years have come in, if it wasn’t for the curer? Would——”
“Would you be here yourself?” interrupted Wull.
“No,” began George.
“Ah, that would have been the greatest loss of all,” said Wull, wagging his head sadly.
They shook with the mirth they loved.
Una did not laugh; her eyes lighted up and glanced.
They were wide-spaced, and in the dim light looked black. To Finn, her clear face seemed so vivid, so unusual, that he wondered how others did not want to stare at her. He was inclined to be boisterous. Meg removed the small S-shaped piece of stiff wire; hitched the net forward, and fixed the wire again. The part of the net she was working on was attached to the wall and reached her in a downward slant. The flat bone needle, with its body of twine and pointed end, slid in and out with remarkable speed. A couple of hitches—over, under—in movements quicker than the eye could follow, and she was on to the next knot. The rasp of the needle could be heard quite distinctly, and sometimes she smoothed it with a touch of coarse fat. She spoke little when the men were talking, but sometimes she told very interesting stories of life around Banff and Macduff when she was a young girl.
“How could it pay the Government to pay the money out?” asked Wull.
“It paid them all right,” said George.
“If you think it will pay you to give me four shillings—put them there,” said Wull, holding out his hand.
“That’s all you know,” George snorted. “You can’t see farther than your nose.”
“Put them there—and watch if I can’t see farther than my nose.”
“If I put four shillings there with this hand and received back five shillings from you with my other hand, I would be better off, wouldn’t I?”
“You would be a living marvel,” said Wull.
Una glanced up at her sister Mary, who was nineteen, and full of frolic; then Finn saw Una looking at him, though he wasn’t looking anywhere near her.
“What’s wrong with you,” said George, “is that you know about as much of the world and its commerce as Meg’s needle there. Here we are sending our barrels of herring——”
“And well-coopered barrels, I admit that,” said Wull with an innocence.
“All over the world,” cried George, who was getting angry. “Ireland, the West Indies, the Baltic——”
“You send the fulls to the Baltic.” Wull nodded with understanding.
“And—and what does that mean?”
Wull’s mouth opened respectfully.
“It means,” cried George, “that we are exporting all that. Money, export trade, sea-carrying trade, possessions abroad—and what does all that do, but increase the wealth of our country? And if the wealth of our country is increased, then the revenue is increased. And it’s out of that revenue that we got our four shillings. They gave us four shillings and got five back. But there are some who would need a few more brains to see that.”
It was a point! For a moment their little world opened out into the great world. They glimpsed regions far beyond the waters of their creek.
Una’s eyes looked from one face to another while she sat quietly by her sister. Clearly this was the great world for her, with the surge and clash of personalities like the roar of the sea What was said did not matter except as it moved and swayed bodies and brought living words from their mouths and the warmth of fun.
But George was getting heated, and Wull, who could not let a personal thrust pass, was sarcastically hitting back. Other voices were taking points up. “George is right,�
�� said Daun. “There’s something in it,” said Hamish Sinclair, scratching his ginger beard. “If the Government gets more money——” “But if the money——” “It doesn’t matter about that. It’s purely a question of the money——”
Discussing money gave a man a feeling of importance. Some of the girls got talking together, because the “points” about money, over which the men could become so heated, grew very dry after a time. Occasionally a girl would say to her brother, “Ach, be quiet!”
For the unity of the gathering was getting broken up. In twos and threes men argued under the louder noise of George’s main argument. The young lads listened. The girls got talking about their gutting experiences and more personal matters.
Meg’s needle went on, over—under, weaving the net that would catch the bigger herring for the bigger price, the white bone glistening in arabesques of movement.
When George felt he had sufficiently dominated the scene, he took his departure, carrying his measuring stick with him. But even the few things that were said behind his back created argument. A pest on their arguments! Men were like that!
They began to go home. Mary cried merrily to Meg, “We’ll be back to see you with the new moon.”
Outside, the old moon had just risen. It was a clear night. Dark bodies parted, sometimes calling back from a little distance with a girl’s laugh, then disappeared their various ways. Una looked small as she walked beside Mary.
Finn went home the top road with Donnie—the shortest way from Meg’s to Donnie’s house. Thus they did not require to come near the river and the ruins of the House of Peace. Finn now knew about the ruins’ being haunted and how grown men, with the exception of Roddie, would not pass them alone at night.
They talked away about the fishing and George and Wull and argued some of the points over again. For one day each of them would be the skipper of a boat. They would sail the sea and catch so many herrings that it would not matter whether there was a bounty or not. They began to tell each other how a skipper knew when there was herring about. Gulls and porpoises and whales. They talked in the friendliest, confidential tones as the whale grew in size before the inward eye, grew until each jaw was bigger than the floor of a room, as big as a field—it might easily be as big as a field, mightn’t it?—a great monster of a whale?—and then when the jaws closed …
