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Lee diegremmes suivents illustrent la mathode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 MICROCOPY >tS0lUTION TiSI CHART (ANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No. 2) A APPLIED IIVHGE Inc ^5^ 1653 Eost Mom Street g'.S RQchesUf, New York 1*609 USA ^^5 (716) *B2 - 0300 - Phone ^S ("S) 288- 5989 -Fa» HARBOR TALES DOWN NORTH WOUKS op NORMAN DUNCAN llwSouIaltlieStfwt The Way of U» Sea Doctor Luke of the Labrador The Mother Doctor Grenfell'i Parish The Adveotum of Billy Topaail The Cruiae of the Shining Light Every Man for Buntelf Tie Suitable Child Going Dowa from Jeruialeoi Higgina: A Man'a Chriatian BiUy Topsail and Company The Measure of a Man Hie Best of a Bad Job Ibding His Sou] Hie Bird Store Man Australian By-Waya BiUy Topniil, M. D. Battles Boyal Down Nortli Harbor Tales Down North AU*wt«>-A '* -'^^A^i.^.s.C* 0rt^ HAi-'OK TALES Ov \ NORTH )R\1 -. -^ DLNTAN i.t^jL u. ,1 iMRicvii'^a, ' etc. r. okJv',m;ll, mm'. "'.'• .y/v.-iy Fleminti ?i Kovell Company %>«^ ^•\ -/^ 'i-«-4^C HARBOR TALES DOWN NORTH /^t££. BV NORMAN DUNCAN AVTKOI or "Doctoi Lnti or Tm Lawudoi," etc. Vruk m AftTKlatim ty WnJMD T. CRENFELL, V X ILLUSTRATED ^ Niw You CmcAoo Fleming H. Rcvell Company LOKOOB AHD EdiKbdegb Copyright, ijiS, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANy 250376 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. London: 31 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street CONTENTS CBAPTn Appreciatiation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. Madman's Luck The Siren op Scalawag Run . The Art op Terry Lute The Doctor op Afternoon Arm A Croesus op Gingerbread Cove . VI. A Madonna op Tinkle Tickle VII. The Little Nipper o' Hide-an'- Seek Harbor VIII. Small Sam Small IX. An Idyl of Rickity Tickle . I. II. III. IV. V. S 59 91 "S 141 16s 189 223 ass ILLUSTRATIONS VAcmo Nonnan Duncan t^ "Well, I'm off, whatever comes of it" . . . 48 " 'You're a coward, God help you,' SHpper Tom groped" j^g " If he comes by the bight he'll never get here **«"" 1.6 " We found Skipper Sammy squatted on a pan 350 NORMAN DUNCAN An Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M. D. AS our thoughts fly back to the days when ^ the writer of these stories was a guest aboard our little hospital vessel, we re- member realizing how vast was the gulf which seemed to lie between him and the circumstances of our sea life in th/- Northland. Nowhere else in the world, perhaps, do the cold facts of life call for a more unrelieved material response. It is said of our people that they are bom with a netting needle in their hand and an ax by the side of their cradle. Existence is a daily struggle with adamantine facts and conditions; and quick, prac- tical response, which leaves little encouragement or opportunity for dreamers, is, often enough, the only dividing line between life and death. As I write these lines the greatest physical battle the worid has ever seen is being fought. Yet here, as my eyes wander over the great ocean around me, nothing but absolute peace meets my view. But it too has its stormy times and its days when its strength and its mighty depths of possibilities are the most insistent points about it. And this spirit 6 Norman Duncan of the deep Norman Duncan seems to have under- stood as did no other of our visitors. Our experience of the men from the hubs of existence had led us to regard them all as hardened by a keener struggle than outs, and critical, if not suspicious, of those who were satisfied to endure greater physical toil and discomfort than they for so much smaller material return. In the Labrador even a dog hates to be laughed at, and the merest suspicion of the supercilious makes a gap which it is almost impossible to bridge. But Norman Duncan created no such gap. He was, therefore, an anomaly to us — ^he was away below the surface — and few of us, during the few weeks he stayed, got to know him well enough to appreciate his real worth. Yet men who "go down to the sea in ships" have before now been known to sleep through a Grand Opera, or to see little to attract in the works of the Old Masters. And so we gather comfort for our inability to measure this man at his full stature. All who love men of tender, responsive imagina- tion loved Duncan. It was quite characteristic of the man that though he earned large sums of money by his pen, he was always so generous in helping those in need — ^more especially those who showed talents to which they were unable, through stress of circumstances, to give expression — that he died practically a poor man. He was a high-souled, generous idealist. All his work is purposeful, con- An Appreciation 7 veying to his readers a moral lessoa He had the keenest appreciation of the feelings of others and understood the immense significance of the little things of life — a fact evidenced by his vivid de- scriptions of the beauties of Nature, which he first appreciated and then, with his mastery of English, so ably described. His own experience of poverty and struggle after leaving the university opened to him channels for his sympathetic portrayal of humble life. Physicall'- he was never a fighter or an athlete; but he provea himself possessed of sin- gular personal courage. He fought his best fights, however, on fields to which gladiators have no entry and in battles which, unlike our physical contests, are not spasmodic, but increasing and eternal. Norman Duncan's love and affection for the people whom we also found joy in serving naturally en- deared him to us. He was ever a true knight, entering the lists in behalf of those principles which make up man's real inner life; and we realize that his love for men who embody characteristics de- veloped by constant contact with the sea — fortitude, simplicity, hardiness — died only with his own passing. The stories here brought together are woven out of experiences gathered during his brief periods of contact with our life. But how real are his char- acters! Like other famous personalities in fiction —Mr. Pickwick, Ebenezer Scrooge, Colonel New- come, Tom Jones, and a thousand others — who 8 Norman Duncan people a world we love, they teach us, possibly, more of high ideals, and of our capacities for serv- ice tiian do the actual lives of some saints, or the biographies of philosophers. And how vivid the action in which his characters take part! In the external circumstances of his life and in his literary art and preferences he was singularly like his elder brother in romance, Robert Louis Stevenson. Both were slight in physique but manly and vigorous in character and mission in life. Both were wander- ers over the face of the globe. Both loved the sea passionately, and were at their best in telling of the adventures of those who spend their lives on the great waters. Both, finally, died at the height of power, literally with pen in hand, for both left recent and unfinished work. And the epitaph of either might v/ell be the noble words of Stevenson from his brave essay on the greatness of the stout heart bound with triple brass: "Death has not been suffered to take so much as an illusion from his heart. In the hot-fit of life, a-tiptoe on the highest point of being, he passes at a bound on the other side. The noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, the trumpets are hardly done blowing, when, trailing clouds of glory, this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the spiritual land." BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE IN the blood of Nonnan Duncan lived a spirit of romance and a love of adventure which make the chronicle of his short life a record of change and movement. He was bom in Brant- ford, on the Grand River, in Western Ontario, July 2, 1871, and though he passed most of the years of his manhood :i the United States, he never took out citizenship papers in the Republic. After a boyhood spent in various towns in Canada, he entered Toronto University, where in his four years of undergraduate life he participated eagerly in all forms of social and literary activity. In 1895 he joined the reportorial staff of the Auburn (N. Y.) Bulletin, which position he held for two years. Then followed four years of con- genial work on the staff of the New York Even- ing Post, where he served successively as reporter, copy editor on city desk, special writer for the city, and, finally, editor of the Saturday supple- ment. The editors of the Post were quick to recog- nize Duncan's ability in descriptive writing and character delineation, and under the spur of their encouragement he did his first important literary work, a series of short-stories of life in the Syrian quarter of New York City, published first g 10 Norman Duncan in Th* Atlantic Monthly and McClur^s Maga- tine and gathered subsequently into a book entitled The Soul of the Street. About the time of the appearance of this book the author's tem- perament reacted against the atmosphere which it embodied, and in the summer of 1900 by an arrangement with McClure's Magasine he went tv. Newfoundland to gather impressions and material for a series of sea-tales. Up to this time he had never spent a night on the ocean nor been at sea on a sailing vessel; in his boyhood he had rather feared the great gray ocean, and only later in life did he become so strongly attracted by its power and mystery and by the impression of its eternal struggle against those who must wrest a precarious living from its depths that it provided the back- ground for his most striking and characteristic stories. Three summers in Newfoundland and one on the Labrador Coast resulted in The Way of the Sea, Doctor Luke of the Labrador, and other books and short-stories, including those of the present collection. In 1901 Duncan was appointed assistant to the professor of English at Washington and Jefferson College, and one year later he was elected Wallace Professor of Rhetoric at the same institution, a post which he held until 1906. His duties were comparatively light so that he was able to devote much of his time to literary work. While occupy- ing this position he enjoyed the companionship of Biographical Note II hi. brother. Robert Kennedy Duncan. Profewor of Oietnistry at the college and later President of the Mellon Institute of the University of Pittsburgh, ^. ^'kLT'"*"' """^"^ *'^ "^ well-known series of text books in chemistry, who died in 1014 In 1907 and 1908 Norman Duncar was special correspondent for Harper's Magazine in Pale2,e, Arabia, and Egypt, and in 1912 and 1913 he was sent by the same magazine to Australia, New Guinea, the Dutch East Indies, and the Malay States. Between these travel periods he acted for wo years as adjunct professor of English at the University of Kansas. Not any of Duncan's for- eign travel seems to have impressed him as did his visits to Newfoundland and the Ubrador coast, and some of his best tales are those of the North- land-powerful stories 01 life reduced to its ele- ments. Of these tales those of the present coUection are a good representation. ♦(, '^J'^Tf .?^ *"'* ^"' "t""** *" cut off at the height of his power; he died verj suddenly of heart-disease while playing a golf-match in Fre- don^ New York, on October 18, 1916. He lies buried m Brantford, Ontario, the town of his birth. Few modern writers of tales and short-stories have drawTi their materials from sources as scat- tered as those which attracted Norman Duncan Among the immigrants of the East Side of New rA '°"^'' lumber-Jacks of the Northwest, and the trappers and deep-sea fishermen of New- It Norman Duncan foundland and The Labrador he gathered hit ideas and impressions. But though his characters and incidents are chosen from such diverse sources, the characteristics of bis literary art remain constant in all his books, for the personality of the author did not change. Norman Duncan was a realist in that he copied life. But his realism is that of Dickens and Bret Harte and Kipling rather than that of Mrs. Freeman and Arthur Morrison and the Russian story-tellers. He cared less for the accuracy of details than for the vividness of his general impressions and the force of his moral lessons. Like Bret Harte he idealized life. Like Harte, too, he was fond of dramatic situations and striking contrasts, of mix- ing the bitter and the sweet and the rough and the smooth of life; his introduction of the innocent baby into the drunkard-filled bar-room in The Measure of a Man is strikingly like Bret Harte's similar employment of this sentimental device in The Luck of Roaring Camp, and the presence of Patty Batch among the soiled women of Swamp's End in the same tale and of the tawdry Millie Slade face to face with the curate in The Mother is again reminiscent of Harte's technique. Like Dickens and like Bret Harte, Duncan was a frank moralist His chief concern was in winnowing the souls of men and women bare of the chaf.' of petty cir- cumstances which covered them. His stories all contain at least a minor chord of sentiment, but Biographical Note is are ustiaUy free from the sentimentality which mars •ome of Harte's sketches. He is not ashamed to employ pathos, but his tragic situations are rarely overstrained and maudlin. He has aU the tender- ness of Dickens; his Christmas Eve at Topmast Tickle may well be compared with A Christnuu Carol. Norman Duncan never married, but few Canadian or American authors have understood women as did the creator of high-spirited Bessie Roth and her noble mother in Doctor Luke of the Labrador, of naive little Patt>- Batch, and of Millie Siade, glorified by her love for her son. In the delicacy and sensibility of his delineation of women he undoubtedly surpasses Brei Harte, most of whose women are either exaggerated or colorless. More- over, Norman Duncan possessed a very genuine understanding of children, particularly of young boys, of whom he was exceedingly fond. There arc few more sympathetic pictures of children in Amer- ican literature than those of David Roth and the Lovejoy twins in Doctor Luke of the Labrador, and of Donald, Pale Peter's lad, in The Measure of a Man; and in Billy Topsail Duncan has created a real boy, a youngster as red-blooded and manly and keen for excitement in his numerous thrilling adventures in the frozen North as are any of Stevenson's boy heroes. _ Variety and color in characters and situations, vividness of descriptions— especially in those of the stormy sea— rapidity of movement and dramatic 14 Norman Duncan intensity in narratives, genuine sentiment and real tenderness, humor, and pathos, and, above all, a healthy, vigorous, Anglo-Saxon morality — all of these qualities make of Norman Duncan's books and short-stories literature that is distinctly worthy and nermanent in character. I MADMAN'S LUCK MADMAN'S LUCK IT was one thing or the other. Yet it might be neither. There was a disquieting altema- t've. No doubt the message disposeu of the dehcate L^fair for good and aU in ten terse words. The maid had made up her mind; she had dis- closed It ,n haste: that was all. It might be. how- ever, that the dispatch conveyed news of a more urgent content. It might be that the maid lay ill- that she called for help and comfort. In that event nothing could excuse the reluctance of the man who should decline an instant passage of Scalawag Run with the pitiful appeal. True, it was not in- vitmg-a passage of Scalawag Run in the we' gray wind, with night flowing in from the sea " No matter about that. Elizabeti, Luke had departed from Scalawag Harbor in confusion, leav- ing no definite answer to the two grave suggestions, but only a melting appeal for delay, as maids wiU —tor a space of absence, an interval for reflection an opportunity to search her heart and be sure of Its decision. If. Uien, she had communicated that decision to her mother, according to her promise to commumcate it to somebody, and if the telegram 17 13 Harbor Tales Down North contained news of no more consequence, a good man might command his patience, might indulge in a reasonable caution, might hesitate on the brink of Black Cliff with the sanction of his self-respect. But if Elizabeth Luke lay ill and in need, a pas- sage of Scalawag Run might be challenged, what- ever came of it. And both Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl knew it well enough. Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl, on the return from Bottom Harbor to Scalawag Run, had come to Point-o'-Bay Cove, where they were to lie the night. They were accosted in haste by the tele- graph operator. "Are you men from Scalawag?" she inquired. She was a brisk, trim young woman from St. John's, new to the occupation, whose administration of the telegraph office was determined and exact. "We is, ma'am," Sandy Rowl replied. "It's fortunate I caught you," said the young woman, glowing with satisfaction. "Indeed it is ! Are you crossing at once?" Sandy Rowl smiled. "We hadn't thought of it, ma'am," ssud he. "I 'low you don't know much about Scalawag Run," he added. The young woman tossed her red head. "When you have thought of it, and made up both your minds," she replied tartly, "you might let me know. It is a matter of some importance." "Ay, ma'am." I Madman's Luck 19 By this time Tommy Lark had connected the telegraph operator's concern with the rare emer- gency of a message. "What you so eager t' know for?" he inquired 1 ve a dispatch to send across." "Not a telegram I" "It is." "Somebody in trouble?" "As to that," the young woman replied, "I'm not permitted to say. It's a secret of the office " from?"''"" P''""'""' *' *'" ^^° *e telegram is The young woman opened her eyes. This was astomshing simplicity. Permitted to tell who the telegram was from ! "I should think not!" she declared. "Is you permitted t' tell who 'tis for?" The young woman debated the propriety of dis- closing the name. Presentiy she decided tiiat no legulation of the office would be violated by a frank answer. Obviously she could not send tiie message without announcing its destinatioi.. "Are you acquainted witii Mrs. Jacob Luke?" said she. Tommy Lark turned to Sandy Rowl. Sandy Rowl turned to Tommy Lark Their eyes met Both were concerned. It v.as Tommy Lark tiiat replied. "We is." said he. "Is the telegram for she?" It is." so Harbor Tales Down North "From Grace Harbor?" "I'm not permitted to tell you that" "Well then, if the telegram is for Mrs. Jacob Luke," said Tommy Lark gravely, "Sandy Rowl an' me will take a look at the ice in Scalawag Run an' see what we makes of it. I 'low we'll jus' have to. Eh, Sandy?" Sandy Rowl's face was twisted with doubt. For a moment he deliberated. In the end he spoke positively. "We'll take a look at it," said he. They went then to the crest of Black Oiff to survey the ice in the run. Not a word was spoken on the way. A momentous situation, by the dra- matic quality of which both young men were moved, had been precipitated by the untimely re- ceipt of the telegram for Elizabeth Luke's mother. Point-o'-Bay, in the lee of which the cottages of Point-o'-Bay Cove were gathered, as in the crook of a finger, thrust itself into the open sea. Scala- wag Island, of which Scalawag Harbor was a shel- tered cove, lay against the open sea. Between Point-o'-Bay and Scalawag Island was the run called Scalawag, of the width of two miles, leading from the wide open into Whale Bay, where it was broken and lost in the mist of the islands. There had been wind at sea — a far-off gale, perhaps, *hen exhausted, or plunging away into the southern seas, leavmg a turmoil of water behind it. Madman's Luck SI DirecUy into the run, rolling from the open, the sea was swelling in gigantic billows. There would have been no crossing at all had there not been ice in the run; but there was ice in the run— plenty of ice, fragments of the fields in the Labrador drift, blown in by a breeze of the day before, and wal- lowing there, the wind having f aUen away to a wet, gray breeze which served but to hold the ice in the bay. It seemed, from the crest of Black Qif*, where Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl stood gazing, each debating with his own courage, that the ic^ was heavy enough for the passage— thick ice, of vary- ing extent, from fragments, like cracked ice, to wide pans; and the whole, it seemed, floated in con- tact, pan touching pan all the way across from the feet of Black Cliff to the first rocks of Scalawag Harbor. VVhat was inimical was the lift and fall of the ice in the great swells running in from the open sea. "Well?" said Tommy Urk. "I don't know. What do you think ?" "It might be done. I don't know." "Ay; it might be. No tellin' for sure, though. The ice is in a wonderful tumble out there." "Seems t' be heavy ice on the edge o' the sea." " 'Tis in a terrible commotion. I'd not chance it out there. I've never seed the ice so tossed about in the sea afore." 22 Harbor Tales Down North Tommy Lark reflected. "Ay," he determined at last; "the best course across is by way o' the heavy ice on the edge o' the sea. There mus' be a wonderful steep slant t' some o' them pans when the big seas slips be- neath them. Yet a man could go warily an' maybe keep from slidin' off. If the worst comes t' the worst, he could dig his toes an' nails in an' crawl. 'Tis not olain from here if them pans is touchin' each other all the way across; but it looks that way — I 'low they w touchin', with maybe a few small gaps tliat a man could get round somehow. Anyhow, 'tis not 4uite certain that a man would cast hisself away t' no purpose out there; an' if there's evil news in that telegram I 'low a man could find excuse enough t' try his luck." "There's news both good and evil in it." "I don't know," said Tommy Lark uneasily. "Maybe there is. 'Tis awful t' contemplate. I'm wonderful nervous, Sandy. Isn't you?" "I is." "Think the wind will rise? It threatens." "I don't know. It has a sort of a switch to it that bodes a night c' temper. 'Tis veerin' f the east. 'Twill be a gale from the open if it blows at all." Tommy Lark turned from a listless contempla- tion of the gray reaches of the open sea. "News both good an' evil I" he mused. Madman's Luck 98 "The one for me an' the other for you. An' God knows the issue! I can't fathom it." "I wish 'twas over with." "Me too. I'm eager t' make an end o' the matter. 'Twill be a sad conclusion for me." "I can't think it, Sandy. I thinks the sadness will be mine." "You rouse my hope, Tommy." "If 'tis not I, 'twiU be you." "'Twill be you." Tommy Lark shook his head dolefully. He sighed. "Ah, no I" said he. "I'm not that deservin' an' fortunate." "Anyhow, there's good news in that telegram for one of us," Sandy declared, "an' bad news for the other. An' whatever the news, — whether good for me an' bad for you, or good for you an' bad for me, — 'tis of a sort that should keep for a safer time than this. If 'tis good news for you, you've no right t' risk a foot on the floe this night; if 'tis bad news for you, you might risk what you liked, an' no matter about it. 'Tis the same with me. Until we knows what's in that telegram, or until the fall of a better time than this for erossin' Scalawag Run, we've neither of us no right t' venture a yard from shore." "You've he right of it, so far as you goes," Tommy Lark replied ; "but the telegram may con- tain other news than the news you speaks of." i 24 Harbor Tales Down North "No. Tommy." "She said nothin' t' me about a telegram. She said she'd send a letter." "She've telegraphed t' ease her mind." "Why to her mother?" " 'Tis jus' a maid's way, t' do a thing like that." "Think so, Sandy? It makes me wonderful nervous. Isn't you wonderful nervous, Saady?" "I am that" "I'm wonderful curious, too. Isn't you?" "I is. I'm impatient as well. Isn't you?" "I'm havin' a tough struggle t' command my patience. What you think she telegraphed for ?" "Havin' made up her mind, she jus' couldn't wait t' speak it" "I wonder what " "Me too, Sandy. God knows it! Still an' all, impatient as I is, I can wait for the answer. 'Twould be sin an' folly for a man t' take his life out on Scalawag Run this night for no better rea- son than t' satisfy his curiosity. I'm in favor o' waitin' with patience for a better time across." "The maid might be ill," Tommy Lark objected. "She's not ill. She's jus' positive an' restless. I knows her ways well enough t' know that much." "She might be iU." "True, she might; but she " "An' if " Sandy Rowl, who had been staring absently up the coast toward the sea, started and exclaimed. Madman's Luck tS "Ecod t" said he. "A bank o' fog*! comin' round Point-o'-Bayl" "Man I" "That ends it" "Tisapity!" " 'Twill be thick as mud on the floe in half an hour. We must lie the night here." "I don't know, Sandy." Sandy laughed. "Tommy," said he, " 'tis a wicked folly t' cling t' your notion any longer." "I wants t' know what's in that telegram." "So does I." "I'm fair shiverin' with eagerness t* know. Isn't you?" "I'm none too steady." "Sandy, I jus' got f know!" "Well, then," Sandy Rowl proposed, "we'll go an' bait the telegraph lady mto tellin* us." It was an empty pursuit The young woman from St John's was obdurate. Not a hint escaped her in response to the baiting and awkward inter- rogation of Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl; and the more they besought her, the more suspicious she grew. She was an obstinate young person — she was precise, she was scrupulous, she was of a se- cretive, untrustful turn of mind; and as she was am- bitious for advancement from the dreary isolation of Point-o'-Bay Cove, she was not to be entrapped 96 Harbor Talea Down North or entreated into what >he had determined was a breach of discipline. Moreover, it appeared to her suspicious intelligence that these young men were too eager for information Who were they? She had not been long in charge of the office at Point- o'-Bay Cave. She did not know them. And why should they demand to know the contents of the telegram before undertaking the responsibility of its delivery? As for the degree of peril in a crossing of Scala- wag Run, she was not aware of it; she was from St. John's, not out-port bom. The ice in the swell of the sea, with fog creeping around Point-o'-Bay in a rising wind, meant nothing to her experience. At any rate, she would not permit herself to fall into a questionable situation in which she might be called severely to account. She was not of that sort. She had her own interests to serve. They would be best served by an exact executiotr of her duty. "This telegram," said she, "is an office secret, as I have told you already. I have my orders not to betray office secrets." Tommy Lark was abashed. "Look you," he argued. "If the message is of no consequence an' could be delayed " "I haven't said that it is of no consequence." "Then 'tis of consequence!" "I don't say that it is of consequence. I don't Msdnum's Luck «7 •ay anything either way. I don'f say anything at all." * "Well, now," Tommy compUined, "t' carry that message across Scalawag Run would be a wonder- ful dangerous——" "You don't have to carry it across." "True. Yet 'tis a man's part t' serve " "My instructions," the young woman interrupted, "are to deliver messages as promptly as possible. If you are crossing to Scalawag Harbor to-night, I should be glad if you would take this telegram with you. If you are not— well, that's not "my affair. I am not instructed to urge anybody to deliver my messages." "Is the message from the maid?" "What a question!" the young woman exclaimed indignantly. "I'll not tell you!" "Is there anything about sickness in it?" "m not tell you." "If 'tis a case o' sickness," Tommy declared, "well take it across, an' glad t' be o' service. If 'tis the other matter " "What other matter?" the young woman flashed. "Well," Tommy replied, flushed and awkward, "there was another little matter between Elizabeth Luke an' " The young woman started. "Elizabeth Luke!" she cried. "Did you say Elizabeth Luke?" "I did, ma'am." 28 Harbor Tales Down North "I said nothing about Elizabeth Luke." "We knows 'tis from she." "Ah-ha!" the young woman exclaimed. "You know far too much. I think you have more inter- est in this telegram than you ought to have." "I confess it." The young woman surveyed Tommy Lark with sparkling curiosity. Her eyes twinkled. She pursed her lips. "What's your name?" she inquired. "Thomas Lark." The young woman turned to Sandy Rowl. "What's your name?" she demanded. "Alexander Rowl. Is there — is there anything in the telegram about me? Aw, come now!" The young woman laughed pleasantly. There was a romance in the wind. Her interest was coy. "Would you like to know?" she teased, her face dimpling. Sandy Rowl responded readily to this dimpling, flashing banter. A conclusion suggested itself with thrilling conviction. "I would !" he declared. "And to think that I could tell you!" "I'm sure you could, ma'am !" The young woman turned to Tommy Lark. "Your name's Lark?" "Yes, ma'am. There's nothin' — there's nothin' in the telegram about a man called Thomas Lark, is there?" Madman's Luck 29 "And yours is Rowl?" "Yes, ma'am." " J rmTrJ^ th«e parts." said the young woman, and Im trymg to learr: J, the «ames I can mas- ter Now. as for this .elegram. yo,. maylke t or leave ,t. just as you wiU. What are you7o„g to do?^ I want to close the o.u.e now and go Lmf ToZyP" '^''^ '*'" '''' ^^'y Ro-'- "Eh. "Ay." "An* we'll deliver it as soon as we're able It "We'll take it across." With that the young woman handed the sealed e jelope to Tommy Uric and bade them S. go^ Tommy Lark thrust the telegram in his waist- tulrl' ^''^''""'^-d his jacket. Both m«. turned to the path to the crest of Black Giff, whence a lesser foot-path led to the shore of the sU. One o the two of us." said Sandy Rowl. "is named m that telegram. I'm sure of it " Tommy Lark nodded. "I knows it," Sandy proceeded, "because I seed a flicker m the woman's eye when she learned the two^ names of us. She's a sly one. that youn^ } so Harbor Tales Down North "Ay." "You is chosen, Tommy." "No, 'tis not I. 'Tis you. You is selected, Sandy. The woman twinkled when she named you. I marked it t' my sorrow." "The maid would not choose me. Tommy," Sandy replied, his face awry with a triumphant smile, "when she might have you." "She've done it." In advance, on the path to the crest of Black Cliff, Tommy Lark was downcast and grim. Of a faithful, kindly nature in respect to his dealings with others, and hopeful for them all, and quick with an inspiring praise and encouragement, he could discover no virtue in himself, nor had he any compassion when he phrased the chapters of his own future; and though he was vigorous and decisive in action, not deterred by the gloom of any prospect, he was of a gray, hopeless mind in a crisis. Rowl, however, was of a saucy, sanguine tem- perament ; his faith in his own deserving was never diminished by discouragement; nor, whatever his lips might say, was he inclined to foresee in his fu- ture any unhappy turn of fortune. The telegraph operator, he was persuaded, had disclosed an under- standing of the situation in a twinkle of her blue eyes and an amused twist of her thin lips ; and the twinkle and the twist had indicated the presence of his name in Elizabeth Luke's telegram. Rowl was uplifted — ^triumphant. Madman's Luck si In the wake of Tommy Lark he grinned, his teeth bare with delight and trimiiph. And as for Tommy Lark, he plodded on, striving grimly up the hill, his mind sure of its gloomy inference, his heart wrenched, his purpose resolved upon a worthy course of feeling and conduct. Let the dear maid have her way! She had chosen her happiness. And with that a good man must be content. In the courtship of pretty Elizabeth Luke, Tommy Lark had acted directly, bluntly, impetu- ously, according to his nature. And he had been forehanded with his declaration. It was known to him that Sandy Rowl was pressing the same pur- suit to a swift conclusion. Tommy Lark loved the maid. He had told her so with indiscreet precip- itation; and into her confusion he had flung the momentous question. "Maid," said he, "I loves you! WiU you wed me?" Sandy Rowl, being of a more subtle way in all things, had proceeded to the issue with delicate caution, creeping toward it by inches, as a man stalks a caribou. He too had been aware of rivalry ; and, having surmised Tommy Lark's intention, he had sought the maid out unwittingly, not an hour after her passionate adventure with Tommy Lark, and had then cast the die of his own happiness. In both cases the effect had been the same. Eliza- beth Luke had wept and fled to her mother like a 32 Harbor Tales Down North frightened chUd; and she had thereafter protested, with tears of indecision, torn this way and that until her heart ached beyond endurance, that she was not sure of her love for either, but felt that she loved both, nor could tell whom she loved the most, if either at all. In this agony of confusion, terrifying for a maid, she had fled beyond her mother's arms, to her grandmother's cottage at Grace Harbor, there to deliberate and decide, as she said; and she had promised to speed her conclusion with all the determination she could command, and to retuiii a letter of decision. In simple commuiuties, such as Scalawag Har- bor, a telegram is a shocking incident. Bad news must be sped; good news may await a convenient time. A telegram signifies the very desperation of haste and need-^t conveys news only of the most momentous import; and upon every man into whose hands it falls it lays a grave obligation to expedite its delivery. Tommy Lark had never be- fore touched a telegram; he had never before, clapped eyes on one. He viras vaguely aware of the telegram as a mystery of wire and a peculiar cun- ning of men. Telegrams had come to Scalawag Harbor in times of disaster in the course of Tommy Lark's nineteen years of life. Widow Mull, for example, when the White Wolf was cast away at the ice, with George MuU f oimd frozen on the floe, had been told of it in a telegram. AM Ae while, thus. Tommy Lark's conception of Madman's Luck 33 the urgency of the matter mounted high and op- pressed him. Elizabeth Luke would not lightly dis- patch a telegram from Grace Harbor to her mother at Scalawag. All the way from Grace Harbor? Not so ! After all, this could be no message having to do with the affairs of Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl. Elizabeth would not have telegraphed such sentimental news. She would have written a letter. Something was gone awry with the maid. She was in trouble. She was in need. She was ill. She might be dying. And the more Tommy Lark re- flected, as he climbed the dripping Black Qiff path, the more surely was his anxious conviction of Eliza- beth Luke's need confirmed by his imagination. When Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl came to the crest of Black Qiif, a drizzle of rain was falling in advance of the fog. The wind was clipping past in soggy gusts that rose at intervals to the screaming pitch of a squall. A drab mist had crept around Point-o'-Bay and was spreading over the ice in Scalawag Ruil Presently it would He thick between Scalawag Island and the mainland of Point-o'-Bay Cove. At the edge of the ice, where the free black water of the open met the huddled floe, the sea was break- ing. There was a tossing line of w^'te water — the crests of the breakers flying away in spindrift like long white manes in the wind. Even from the crest of Black Qiff, lifted high above the ice and water of the gray prospect below, it vras plain that 84 Harbor Tales Down North a stupendous sea was running in from the dark- ening open, slipping under the floe, swelling through the run, and subsiding in the farthest reaches qf the bay. From the broken rock of Black Giif to the coast of Scalawag Run, two miles beyond, where Scala- wag Harbor threatened to fade and vanish in the fog and falling dusk, the ice was in motion, great pans of the pack tossing like chips in the gigantic waves. Nowhere was the ice at rest. It was neither heavy enough i;or yet sufficiently close packed to flatten the sea with its weight. And a survey of the creeping fog and the ominous approach of a -.vindy night portended that no more than an hour of drab light was left for the passage. " 'Tis a perilous task t' try," said Tommy Lark. "I never faced such a task afore. I fears for my Ufe." " 'Tis a madcap thing t' try!" "Ay, a madcap thing. A man will need mad- man's luck t' come through with his life." "Pans as steep as a roof out there !" "Slippery as butter, Sandy. 'Twill be ticklish labor t' cling t' some o' them when the sea cants them high. I wish we had learned t' swim, Sandy, when we was idle lads t'gether. We'll sink like two jiggers if we slips into the water. Is you comin' along, Sandy? It takes but one man t' bear a message. I'll not need you." Madman's Luck 35 "Tommy," Sandy besou^t, "will you not listen t' reason an* wisdom?" "What wisdom, Sandy?" "Lave us tear open the telegram an' read it" "Hoosh!" Tommy ejaculated. "Such a naughty trick as that! I'll not do it. I jus' couldn't." " 'Tis a naughty trick that will save us a pother o' trouble." "I'm not chary o' trouble in the maid's behalf." " 'Twill save us peril." ^ "I've no great objection t' peril in her service. I'll not open the telegram; I'll not intrude on the poor maid's secrets. Is you comin' along?" Sandy Rowl put a hand on Tommy Lark's shoulder. "What moves you," said he impatiently, "to a mad venture like this, with the day as far soed as it is?" *^ "I'm impelled." "What drives you?" "The maid's sick." "Huh !" Sandy scoffed. "A lusty maid like that I She's not sick. As for me, I'm easy about her health. She's as hearty at this minute as ever she was in her life. An' if she isn't, we've no means o' bein' sure that she isn't. 'Tis mere guess-work. We've no certainty of her need. T' be drove out on the ice o' Scalawag Run by the guess-work o' fear an* fancy is a foUy. 'Tis not demanded. 88 Harbor Tales Down North We've every excuse for lyin' the night at Pdnt-o'- Bay Cove." "I'm not seddn' excuse." "You've no need to seek it. It tiirusts itself upon fOU." "Maybe. Yet I'll have none of it 'Tis a craven thing t' deal with." " 'Tis mere caution." "Well, well! I'll have no barter with caution in a case like this. I crave service. Is you comin' along?" Sandy Rowl laughed his disbelief. "Service!" said he. "You heed the clamor o' your curiosity. That's all that stirs you." "No," Tommy Lark replied. "My curiosity asks me no questions now. Comin' up the hill, with this here telegram in my pocket, I made up my mind. 'Tis not I that the maid loves. It couldn't be. I'm not worthy. Still an' all, I'll carry her message t' Scalawag Harbor. An' if I'm overcome I'll not care very much — save that 'twill sadden me t' know at the last that I've failed in her service. I've no need o' you, Sandy. You've no call to come. You may do what you likes an' be no less a man. As you will, then. Is you comin' ?" Sandy reflected. "Tommy," said he then, reluctantly, "will you listen t' what I should tell you?" "I'll listen." "An' will you believe me an' heed me?" Madman's Luck 87 "I'll believe you, Sandy." "You've fathomed the truth o' this matter. Tis lot you that the maid loves. 'Tis I. She've not told me. She've said not a word that you're not aware of. Yet I knows that she'U choose me. I've loved more maids than one. I'm acqrainted with their ways. An* more niiids than one have loved me. I've mastered the signs o' love. I've studied them; I reads them like print It pleases me t' see them an' read them. At first. Tommy, a maid wiU not^ teU. She'U not teU even herself. An' then she's overcome; an', try as she may to conceal what she feels, she's not able at aU t' do it. The signs Tommy? Why, they're all as plain in speech as words themselves could be ! Have you seed any signs boy? No. She'U not wed you. 'Tis not in her heart t' do it, whatever her mind may say. She'U wed me. I knows it An' so I'U teU you that you'H waste your labor if you puts out on Scalawag Run with the notion o' winnin' the love o' this maid with bold behavior in her service. If that's in your mind, put it away. Turn with me f Point-o'-Bay Cove an' lie safe the night I'm sorry, Tommy. You'U grieve, I knows, t' lose the maid. I could live without her. True. There's other maids as fair as she t' be found in the world. Yet I loves this maid more than any maid that ever I knowed; an' I'd be no man at aU if I yielded her to you because I pitied your grief." "I'm not askin' you t' yield her." 88 Harbor Tales Down North "Nor am I wrerJn' her away. She've jus' chose for herself. Is she ever said she cared for you, Tommy?" "No." "Is there been any sign of it?" "She've not misled me. She've said not a word that I could blame her for. She — she've been timid in my company. I've frightened her." "She's merry with me." "Ay." "Her tongue jus' sounds like brisk music, an' her laughter's as free as a spring o' water." "She've showed me no favor." "Does she blush in your presence?" "She trembles an' goes pale." "Do her eyes twijikl? with pleasure?" "She casts them down." "Does she take your arm an' snuggle close?" "She shrinks from me." "Does she tease you with pretty tricks?" "She does not," poor Tommy replied. "She says, Tes, sir!' an' 'No, sir!' t' me." "Ha!" Sandy exclaimed. "'Tis I that she'll wed!" "I'm sure of it. I'm content t' have her follow her will in all things. I loves the maid. I'll not pester her with complaint. Is you comin' along?" " 'Tis sheer madness!" "Is you comin' along?" Madman's Luck 39 Sandy Rowl 8wq)t his hand over the prospect of fog and spindrift and wind-swept ice. "Man," he cried, "look at that I" "The maid's sick," Tommy Lark replied dog- gedly. "I loves her. Is you comin' along?" "You dunderhead I" Sandy Rowl stormed. "I got t' got Can't you understand that? You leaves me no choicer When Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl had leaped and crept through half the tossing distance to Scala- wag Harbor, the fog had closed in, accompanied by the first shadows of dusk, and the coast and hills of Scalawag Island were a vague black hulk beyond, slowly merging with the color of the advancing night. The wind was up— blowing past with spin- drift and a thin rain; but the wind had not yet packed the ice, which still floated in a loose, shift- ing floe, spotted and streaked with black lakes and lanes of open water. They had taken to the sea- ward edge of the pack for the advantage of heavier ice. A line of pans, sluggish with weight, had lagged behind in the driving wind of the day before, and was now closing in upon the lighter fragments of the pack, which had fled in advance and crowded the bay. Whatever advantage the heavier ice offered in the solidity of its footing, ?.nd whatever in the speed with which it might be traversed by agile, daring men, was mitigated by another condition in- 40 Harbor Tales Down North volved in its exposed situation. It lay against the open sea ; and the sea was high, rolling directly into Scalawag Run, in black, lofty billows, crested with seething white in the free reaches of the open. The swells diminished as they ran the length of the run and spent themselves in the bay. Their maximum of power was at the edge of the ice. In Scalawag Run, thus, the ice was like a strip of shaken carpet — its length rolling in lessening waves from first to last, as when a man takes the comers of an end of the strip and snaps the whole to shake the dust out of it ; and the spindrift, blown in from the sea and snatched from the lakes in the mist of the floe, may be likened to clouds of white dust, half realized in the dusk. As the big seas slipped under the pack, the pans rose and fell; they were never at rest, never hori- zontal, except momentarily, perhaps, on the crest of a wave and in the lowest depths of a trough. They tipped — ^pitched and rolled like the deck of a schooner in a gale of wind. And as the height of the waves at the edge of the ice may fairly be estimated at thirty feet, the incline of the pans was steep and the surface slippery. Much of the ice lying out from Point-o'-Bay was wide and heavy. It could be crossed without peril by a sure-footed man. Midway of the run, how- ever, the pans began to diminish in size and to thin in quantity ; and beyond, approaching the Scalawag coast, where the wind was interrupted by the Scala- Madman's Luck ^,^ wag hills, the floe wai loose and composed of a field of lesser fragmenU. There was stUl a general contact— pan lightly touching pan; but many of the pans were of an extent so precariously narrow that their pitching surface could be crossed only on hands and knees, and in imminent peril of being flung off into the gaps of open water. It was a feat of lusty agility, of delicate, expe- nenced skiU, of steadfast courage, to cross the stretches of loose ice, heaving, as they were, in the swell of the sea. The foothold was sometimes impermanent— blocks of ice capable of susuining the weight of a man through merely a momenUry opportunity to leap again; and to the scanty chance was added the peril of the angle of the ice and the uncertainty of the path beyond. Once Tommy Lark slipped when he landed on an inclined pan midway of a patch of water between two greater pans. His feet shot out and he began to slide feet foremost into the sea, with increasing momentum, as a man might fall from a steep, slimy roof. The pan righted in the trough, how- ever, to check his descent over the edge of the ice. When it reached the horizontal in the depths of the trough, and there paused before responding to the lift of the next wave. Tommy Lark caught his feet; and he was set and balanced against the tip and fling of the pan in the other direction as the wave slipped beneath and ran on. When the ice was flat and stable on the crest of the sea, he leaped from 42 ;Jarbor Tales Down North the heavy pan beyond, and then threw himself down to rest and recover from the shudder and daze of the fate he had escaped. And the dusk was fall- ing all the while, and the fog, closing in, thickened the dusk, threatening to turn it impenetrable to the beckoning lights in the cottages of Scalawag Harbor. Having come, at last, to a doubtful lane, sparsely spread with ice. Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl were halted. They were then not more than half a mile from the rocks of Scalawag. From the substantial ground of a commodious block, with feet spread to brace themselves against the pitch of the pan as a man stands on a heaving dedc, they appraised the chances and were disheartened. The lane was like a narrow arm of the sea, extending, as nearly as could c ' determined in the dusk, far into the floe; and thcie was an opposite shore — another commo- dious pan. In the black water of the arm there floated white blocks of ice. Some were manifestly substantial: a leaping man could pause to rest; but many — necessary pans, these, to a crossing of the lane — were as manifestly incapable of bearing a man up. As the pan upon which Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl stood lay near the edge of the floe, the sea was running up the lane in almost undiminished swells — ^the long, slow waves of a great ground swell, not a choppy wind-lop, but agitated by the Madman's Luck 48 wind and occasionally breaking. It was a thirty- foot sea in the open. In the lane it was somewhat less— not much, however; and the ice in the lane and all round about was heaving in it— tumbled about, rising and falling, the surface all the while at a changing slant from the perpendicular. Rowl was uneasy. "WTiat you think, Tommy?" said he. "I don't like t' try it. I 'low we better not." "We can't turn back." "No; not very well." "There's a big pan out there in the middle. If a man could reach that he could choose the path beyond." " 'Tis not a big pan." "Oh, 'tis a fairish sort o' pan." " 'Tis not big enough. Tommy." Tommy Lark, staggering in the motion of the ice, almost off his balance, peered at the pan in the middle of the lane." " 'Twould easily bear a man," said he. " 'Twould never bear two mea" "Maybe not." "Isn't no 'maybe' about it," Rowl declared. "I'm sure 'twouldn't bear two men." "No," Tommy Urk agreed. "I 'low 'twouldn't." "A man would cast hisself away tryin' t' cross on that small ice." "I 'low he might" 44 Harbor Tales Down North > i i ! "Well, then," Rowl demanded, "what we goin' f do?" "We're goin' t* cross, isn't we?" " 'Tis too parlous a f ootin' on them small cakes." "Ay; 'twould be ticklish enough if the sea lay flat an' still all the way. An' as 'tis " " 'Tis like leapin' along the side of a steep." "Wonderful steep on the side o' the seas." "Too slippery, Tommy. It can't be done. If a man didn't land jus' right he'd shoot off." "That he would, Sandy!" "Well?" "I'll go first, Sandy. I'll start when we lies in the trough. I 'low I can make that big pan in the middle afore the next sea cants it. You watch me, Sandy, an' practice my tactics when you follow. I low a clever man can cross that lane alive." "We're in a mess out herel" Sandy Rowl com- plained. "I wish we hadn't started." " 'Tisn't so bad as all that." "A loud folly!" Rowl growled. "Ah, well," Tommy Lark replied, "a telegram's a telegram ; an' the need o' haste " " 'Twould have kept well enough." " 'Tis not a letter, Sandy." "Whatever it is, there's no call for two men t' come into peril o' their lives " "You never can tell." "I'd not chance it again for " "We isn't drowned yet." Madman's Luck 45 "Yet!" Rowl exclaimed. "No— not yet! We've a minute or so for prayers 1" Tommy Lark laughed. "I'll get under way now," said he. "I'm not so very much afraid o' failin'." There was no melodrama in the situation. It was a commonplace peril of the coast; it was a rea- sonable endeavor. It was thrilling, to be sure — the conjunction of a living peril with the emer- gency of the message. Yet the dusk and sweeping drizzle of rain, the vanishing lights of Scalawag Harbor, the interruption of the lane of water, the mounting seas, their declivities flecked with a path of treacherous ice, all were familiar realities to Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl. Moreover, a tele- gram was not a letter. It was an urgent message. It imposed upon a man's conscience the obligation to speed it It should be delivered with determined expedition. Elsewhere, in a rural community, for example, a good neighbor would not hesitate to har- ness his horse on a similar errand and travel a deep road of a dark nig^t in the fall of the year; nor, with the snow falling thick, would he confront a midnight trudge to his neighbor's house with any louder complaint than a fretful growL It was in this spirit, after all, touched with an intimate solicitude which his love for Elizabeth Luke aroused, that Tommy Lark had undertaken the passage of Scalawag Run. The maid was ill — 46 Harbor Tales Down North , I'. her message snould be sped. As he paused on the brink of the lane, however, waiting for the ice to lie flat in the trough, poised for the spring to the first pan, a curious apprehension for the safety of Sandy Rowl took hold of him, and he delayed his start "Sandy," said he, "you be careful o' yourself." "I will that!" Sandy declared. He grinned. "You've no need t' warn me. Tommy," he added. "If aught should go amiss with you," Tommy explained, " 'twould be wonderful hard — on Eliza- beth." Sandy Rowl caught the honest truth and unsel- fishness o'' the warning in Tommy Lark's voice. "I thi is you, Tommy," said he. " 'Twas well spoken." "Oh, you owes me no thanks," Tommy replied simply. "I'd not have the maid grieved for all the world." "I'll tell her that you said so" Tommy was startled. "You speak, Sandy," said he in gloomy fore- boding, "as though I had come near t' my death." "We've both come near t' death." "Ay — ^maybe. Well — no matter." " 'Tis a despairful thing to say " "I'm not carin' very much what happens t' my life," young Tommy declared. "You'll mind that said so. An' I'm glad that I isn't carin' very Madman's Luck 47 much any more. Mark that, Sandy — an' re- member." Between the edge of Tommy Lark's commodious pan and the promising block in the middle of the lane lay five cakes of ice. They varied in size and weight; and they were swinging in the swell — climbing the steep sides of the big waves, p'ding the crests, slipping downhill, tipped to an angle, and lying flat in the trough of the seas. In respect to their distribution they were like stones in a brook: it was a zigzag course— the intervals varied. Leaping from stone to stone to cross a brook, using his arms to maintain a balance, a man can not pause; and his difficulty increases as he leaps — he grows more and more confused, and finds it all the while harder to keep upright. What he fears is a mossy stone and a rolling stone. The small cakes of ice were as slippery as a mossy stone in a brook, and as treacherously unstable as a rolling stone; and in two particulars they were vastly more dif- ficult to deal with; they were all in motion, a'd not one of them would bear the weight of a man. There was more ice in the lane. It was a mere scattering of fragments and a gathered patch or two of slush. Tommy Lark's path to the pan in the middle of the lane was definite: the five small cakes of ice — he must cover the distance in six leaps without pause ; and, having come to the middle of the lane, he could rest and catch his breath while he chose 48 Harbor Tales Down North out the course bejond. If there chanced to be no path beyond, discretion would compel an immediate return. "Well," said he, crouching for the first leap, "I'm oflF, whatever comes of it!" "Mind the slant o' the ice!" ■ "I'll take it in the trough." "Not yet!" Tommy Lark waited for the sea to roll on. "You bother me," he complained. "I might have been half way across by this time." "You'd have been cotched on the side of a swell. If you're cotched like that you'll slip off the ice. There isn't a man livin' can cross that ice on the slant of a sea." "Be still 1" The pan was subsiding from the incline of a sea to the level of the trou^ "Now!" Sandy Rowl snapped. When the ice floated in the trough. Tommy Lark leaped, designing to attain his objective as nearly as possible before the following wave lifted his path to an incline. He landed fairly in the middle o^ the first cake, and had left it for the second before it sank. The second leap was short. It was difficult, nevertheless, for two reasons. He had no time to gather himself for the impulse, and his flight was taken from sinking ground. Almost he fell short. Six inches less, and he would have landed' on the edge of the cake and toppled back into the sea Madman's Luck 49 when it tipped to the sudden weight. But he struck near enough to the center to restrain the ice, in a few active steps, from sinking by the edge; and as the second cake was more substantial than the first, he was able to leap with confidence for the third, whence he danced lightly toward the fourth. The fourth cake, however, lay abruptly to the right. A sudden violent turn was required to reach it. It was comparatively substantial; but it was rugged rather than flat — there was a niggardly, treacherous surface for landing, and as ground for a flight the cake furnished a doubtful opportunity. There was no time for recovery. When Tommy Lark landed, the ice began to waver and sink. He had landed awkwardly, his feet in a tangle; and, as there was no time for placing his feet in a better way, he must leap awkwardly — ^leap instantly, leav- ing the event to chance. And leap he did. It was a supreme effort toward the fifth cake. By this time the ice was fast climbing the side of a swelling wave. The crest of the sea was higher than Tommy Lark's head. Had the sea broken it would have fallen on him — it would have sub- merged and overwhelmed him. It did not break. The wind snatched a thin spindrift from the crest and flung it past like a squall of rain. That was all. Tommy Lark was midway of the sea, as a man might be on the side of a steep hill: there was the crest above and the trough below; and the fifth cake of ice was tipped to an increasingly perilous M Harbor Tales Down North angle. Moreover, it was small; it was the least of all — a momentary foothold, to be touched lightly in passing on to the slant of the wide pan in the middle of the lane. All this was dear to Tommy Lark when he took his awkward leap from the fourth cake. What he feared was less the meager proportions of the fifth cake — which would be suiKcient, he fancied, to give him an imptilse for the last leap— than the slant of the big pan to which he was bound, which was pre- cisely as steep as the wave it was climbing. And this fear was justified by the event. Tommy Lark touched the little cake with the toe of his seal- hide boot, with the sea then nearing its climax, and alighted prostrate on the smooth slant of the big pan. He grasped for handhold : there was none ; and, had not the surface of the pan been approach- ing a horizontal on the crest of the sea, he would have shot over the edge. Nothing else saved him. Tommy Lark rose and established his balance with widespread feet and waving arms. " 'Tis not too bad," he called. "Whafs beyond?" "No trouble beyond." There was more ice beyond. It was small. Tommy Lark danced across to the other side of the lane, however, without great difficulty. He could not have paused on the •■ y. The ice, thick though it was, was too light. "Safe over!" he shouted. Madman's Luck 51 "I'm comin'." "Mind the leap for the big pan. landin'. That's all you've t' fear." Tis a tiddiih Sandy Rowl was as agile as Tonuny Lark. He was as competent — ^he was as practiced. Following the same course as Tommy Lark, he encountered the same difficulties and met them in the same way; and thus h: proceeded from the first sinking cake through the short leap to the second more sub- stantial one, whence he leaped with confidence to the third, landed on the rugged fourth, his feet ill placed for the next leap, and sprang awkwardly for the small fifth cake, meaning to touch it lightly on his course to the big pan. But he had started an instant too soon. When, therefore, he came to the last leap, with the crest of the wave above him and the trough below, the pan was midway of the side of the sea, its inclina- tion at the widest. He slipped — fell; and he rolled off into the water and sank. When he came to the surface, the ice was on the crest of the sea, be- ginning its descent. He grs.jped the edge of it and tried to draw himself aboard. In this he failed. The pan was too thick — ^too high in the water; and the weight of his boots and clothes was too great to overcome. In the trough of the sea, where his opportunity was best, he almost succeeded. He established one knee on the pan aiid strove desper- ately and with all his strength to lift himself over Harbor Tales Down North f , i i .;:f the edge. But the pan began to climb be/ore he succeeded, leaving him helpless on the lower edge of the incline; and the best he could do to save himself was to cling to it with bare, striving fingers, waiting for his opportunity to renew itself. To Tommy Lark it was plain that Sandy Rowl could not lift himself out of the water. "Hang fasti" he shouted. "I'll help you I" Timing his start, as best he was able, to land him on the pan in the middle of the lane when it lay in the trough. Tommy Lark set out to the rescue. It will be recalled that the pan would not support two men. Two men could not accurately adjust their weight Both would strive for the center. They would grapple there; and, in the end, when the pan jumped on edge both would be thrown off. Tommy Lark was aware of the capacity of the pan. Had that capacity been equal to the weight of two men, it would have been a simple matter for him to run out, grasp Sandy Rowl by the collar, and drag him from the water. In the circumstances, however, what help he could give Sandy Rowl must be applied in the moment through which he would remain on the ice before it sank ; and enough of the brief interval must be saved wherein to escape either onward or back. Rowl did not need much help. With one knee on the ice, lifting himself with all his might, a strong, quick pull would assist him over the edge. Madman's Luck AS But Rowl was not ready. When Tommy Lark landed on the pan, Sandy was deep in the water, his hands gripping the ice, his face upturned, his shoulders submerged. Tommy did not even pause. He ran on to the other side of the lane. When he turned, Rowl had an elbow and foot on the pan and was waiting for help; but Tommy Lark hesi- tated, disheartened — the pan would support less weight than he had thought. The second trial failed. Rowl was ready. It was not that Tommy Lark landed awkwardly on the pan from the fifth cake of ice. He consumed the interval of his stay in regaining his feet. He did not dare remain. Before he could stretch a hand toward Rowl, the pan was submerged, and he must leap on in haste to the opposite shore of the lane ; and the escape had been narrow — almost he had been caught. Returning, then, to try for the third time, he caught Rowl by the collar, jerked him, felt him rise, dropped him, sure that he had contributed the needed impulse, and ran on. But when he turned, confident that he would find Rowl sprawling on the pan, Rowl had failed and dropped back in the water. For the fourth time Tommy essayed the crossing, with Rowl waiting, as before, foot and elbow on the ice; and he was determined to leap more cau- tiously from the fifth cake of ice and to risk more on the pan that he might gain more — ^to land more 54 Harbor Tales Down North J '' ! drcKmspectly, opposing his weight to Rowl's weight, and to pause until the pan was flooded deep. The plan served his turn. He landed fairly, bent deliberately, caught Rowl's coat with both hands, dragged him on the pan, leaped away, springing out of six inches of water; and when, having crossed to the Scalawag shore of the lane, he turned, Rowl was still on the ice, flat on his back, resting. It was a rescue. Presently Sandy Rowl joined Tommy Lark. "All right?" Tommy inquired. "I'm cold an' I'm drippin'," Sandy replied; "but otherwise I'm fair enough an' glad t' be breathin' the breath o' life. I wont thank you. Tommy." "I don't want no thanks." "I won't thank you. No, Tommy. I'll do bet- ter. I'll leave Elizabeth t' thank you. You've won a full measure o' thanks. Tommy, from Elizabeth." "You thinks well o' yourself," Tommy declared. "I'm danged if you don't!" An hour later Tommy Lark and the dripping Sandy Rowl entered the kitchen of Elizabeth Luke's home at Scalawag Harbor. Skipper James was off to prayer meeting. Elizabeth Ltike's mother sat knitting alone by the kitchen fire. To her, then. Tommy Lark presented the telegram, having first warned her, to ease the shock, that a message had arrived, contents unknown, from the region of Grace Harbor. Having commanded her self-pos- Madman's Luck 55 session, Elizabeth Luke's mother received and read the telegram, Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl stand- ing by, eyes wide to catch the first indication of the contents in the expression of the slow old woman's comitenance. There was no indication, however — ^not that Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl could read. Eliza- beth Luke's mother stared at the telegram ; that was all. She was neither downcast nor rejoiced. Her face was blank. Having read the brief message once, she read it again ; and having reflected, and having read it for the third time, and having reflected once more, without achieving any enlightenment whatsoever, she looked up, her wrinkled face screwed in an effort to solve the mystery. She pursed her lips, she tapped the floor with her toe, she tapped her nose with her forefinger, she pushed up her spectacles, she scratched her chin, even she scratched her head; and then she declared to Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl that she could make nothing of it at all. "Is the maid sick?" Tommy inquired. "She is." "I knowed it!" Tommy declared. "She says she's homesick." Elizabeth's mother pulled down her spectacles and referred to the tele- gram. " 'Homesick,' says she," she added. "What else?" "I can't fathom it. I knows what she means M Harbor Tales Down North I when she says she's homesick; I've been that my- self. But what's this about Squid Cove? 'Tis Ae queerest thing ever I knowedl" Tommy Lark flushed. "Woman," he demanded, eager and tense, "what does the maid say about Squid Cove?" "She says she's homesick for the cottage in Squid Cove. An' that's every last word that she says." "There's no cottage in Squid Cove," said Sandy. "No cottage there," Elizabeth's mother agreed, "f be homesick for. 'Tis a very queer thing." "There's no cottage in Squid Cove," said Tommy Lark; "but there's lumber for a cottage lyin' there on the rocks." "What about that?" "'lis my lumber!" Tommy roared. "An' the maid knows it I" II THE SIREN OF SCALAWAG RUN n THE SIREN OF SCALAWAG RUN SCALAWAG RUN suspected the sentimental entanglement into which Fate had mischie- vously cast Dickie Blue and pretty Peggie Lacey and there abandoned them; and Scalawag Run was inclined to be more scornful than sym- pathetic. What Dickie Blue should have done in the circumstances was transparent to every young blade in the harbor — an instant, bold behavior, issuing immediately in the festive popping of guns at a wedding and a hearty charivari thereafter; and those soft devices to which pretty Peggy Lacey should have resorted without scruple in her own relief, were not unknown, you may be sure, to the wise, whispering maids of the place. It was too complacently agreed that the situation, being left to the direction and mastery of Time, would pro- ceed to a happy conclusion as a matter of course. There would be a conjunction of the light of the moon, for example, with the soft, love-lorn weather of June— the shadows of the alders on the wind- ing road to Squid Cove and the sleepy tinkle of the goats' bells dropping down from the slopes of The Topmast into the murmur of the sea. There w 60 Harbor Tales Down North had been just such favorable auspices of late, how- ever — June moonlight and the music of a languor- ous night, with Dickie Blue and pretty Peggy Lacey meandering the shadowy Squid Cove road together ; and the experience of Scalawag Run was still de- fied — ^no blushes and laughter and shining news of a wedding at Scalawag Run. Dickie Blue, returning from the Squid Cove road, found his father, Skipper John, waiting at the gate. "Well?" Skipper John demanded. " 'Tis I, sir." "I knows that. I been waitin' for you. How'd ye get along the night?" "I got along well enough." "How far did yer get along?" "I— I proceeded." "What did ye do?" "Who, sir?" Dickie repKed. "Me?" "Ay, you! Who else?" "I didn't do nothin' much," said Dickie. "Ha!" Skipper John snorted. "Nothin' nmch, eh I Was you with the maid at all on the roads 7" "Well, yes, sir," Dickie replied. "I was with her." Skipper John spoke in scorn. "You was with her!" said he. "An' you didn't do nothin' much! Well, well!" And then, explosively: "Did you do nothin' at all?" "I didn't go t' no great lengths with her." "What lengths?" The Siren of Scalawag Run 01 "Well." Dickie drawled. "I " Skipper John broke in impatiently. "What I wants f know." said he, "is a very simple thing Did you pop?" "Me?" Skipper John was disgusted. "Ecod !" he ejaculated. "Then you didn't!" "I didn't pop." said Dickie. "That is— not quite." "Did you come into peril o' poppin'?" "Well," Dickie admitted. "I brooded on it" "Whew!" Skipper John ejaculated. "You brooded on it, did you ? An' what happened then ?" "I — I hesitated." "Well, well! Now that was cautious, wasn't it? An' why did you— hesitate ?" "Dang it!" Dickie complained, "t" hear you talk, a man might think that Peggy Lacey was the only maid m Scalawag Run. I'm willin' an' eager t' be wed. I jus' don't want f make no mistake. That s aU. Dang it, there's shoals o' maids here- abouts! An' I isn't goin' t' swallow the first hook that's cast my way. I'U take my time, sir. an' that's an end o' the matter." I'You're nigh twenty-one." Skipper John warned. "I've time enough yet I'm in no hurry." "Pah !" Skipper John sncrted. " 'Tis a poor stirJc of a man that's as slow as you at courtir/! No hurry, eh? What ye made of. anyhow? When I was your age " 62 Harbor Tales Down North H "Have done with boastin', sir. I'll not be drivetL I'll pick and choose an' satisfy my taste." "Is Peggy Lacey a wasteful maid?" Skipper John inquired. "No ; she's not a wasteful maid." "Is she good?" "She's pious enough for me." "Is she healthy?" "Nothin' wrong with her health that anybody ever fetched t' my notice. She seems sound." "Is she fair?" "She'll pass." "I'm not askin' if she pass. I'm askin' you if she isn't the fairest maid in Scalawag Run." " 'Tis a matter o' taste, father." "An' what's your taste — if you have any?" "If I was pickin' a fault," Dickie rephed, "I'd say that she might have a touch more o' color in her cheeks t' match my notion o' beauty." "A bit too pallid t' suit your delicate notion o' beauty !" Skipper John scoffed. "Well, well I" "I knows rosier maids than she." "I've no doubt of it 'Tis a pity the good Lord's handiwork can't be remedied t' suit you. Mm-mm I Well, well! An' is there anything else out o' the way with God Almighty's idea o' what a fair maid looks like?" "Dang me!" Dickie protested again. "I isn't denyin' that she's fair!" "No; but " The Siren of Scalawag Run 63 "Ah, well, isn't 1 got a right t* my notions? What's the harm in admirin' rosy cheeks? Isn't nothin' the matter with rosy cheeks, is there?" "They fade, my son." "I knows that well enough, sir," Dickie declared; "but they're pretty while they last. An' I'd never be the man t' complain, sir, when they faded. You'd not think so ill o' me as all that, would you?" "You'd not— complain when they faded?" "I'd not shame my honor so I" "Ah, well, Dick," said Skipper John, having re- flected a moment upon this fine, honest sentiment, " 'tis not the pallid cheeks o' the maid Aat trouble you. I knows you well, an' I knows what the trouble is. The maid has been frank enough t' leave you see that she cares for you. She've no wiles to entangle you with; an' I 'low that she'd despise the use o' them anyhow. Did she cast her line with cunnin', she'd hook you soon enough ; but that she'll never do, my son— she's too proud an' honest for that. Ay; that's it— too innocent t' conceal her feelin's an' too proud to ensnare you. You was always the lad, Dick, t' scorn what you could have an' crave that which was beyond your reach. Do you mind the time when you took over the little Robitis Wing from Trader Tom Jenkins for the Labrador fishin'? She was offered you on fair credit, an' you found fault with the craft an' the terms, an' dawdled an' complained, until Trader Tom offered her t' Long George Long o' Hide- 64 Harbor Tales Down North an'-Seek Harbor; an' then you went flyin' t' Trader Tom's office, with your heart in your mouth, 1-st you lose the chance afore you got there. Had Trader Tom withheld the Robin's Wing, you would have clamored your voice hoarse t' get her. Speak me fair, now — is you sorry you took the Robin's Wing?" "\ isn't." "Is you ever repented a minute?" "No, sir. Why should I?" "Then there's a hint for your stupidity in that matter. Take the maid an' be done with it. God be thanked I isn't a widower-man. If I was, I'd bring your chance into peri! soon enough," said his father. " 'Tis f be a fair day for fishin' the Skiff- an'-Punt grounds the morrow. Go t' bed. I'll pray that wisdom may overcome your caution afore you're decrepit" Skipper John thought his son a great dunder- head. And Dickie Blue was a dunderhead. No doubt about it Yet the failing was largely the fault of his years. A strapping fellow, this young Dickie Blue, blue-eyed in. the Newfoundland way, and merry and modest enough in the main, who had recently discovered a critical interest in the com- parative charms of the maids of the harbor. There were so many maids in the world ! Dang it, it was confusing! There was Peggy Lacey. She was adorable. Nobody could deny it. Had she worn roses in her cheeks she would have been irresistible j ' The Siren of Scalawag Run 63 altogether. And there was the new schoolmistress fro- 1 Grace Harbor. That superior maid had her points, too. She did not lack attractions. They were more intellectual than anything else. Still, they had a positive appeal. There were snares for the heart in brilliant conversation and a traveled knowledge of the world. Dang it, anyhow, a man might number all the maids in the harbor and find charms enough in each! Only a fool would choose from such an abundance ve road, the dis- loyalty implied, mixed with fear of the conse- quences, made her too wretched to repeat that lapse from a faithful and consistent conduct. She was quite sure that Dickie Blue would be angered again if she did (he was savagely angry) — that he would be driven away for good and all. "You must not do it again, Peggy," Dickie Blue had admonished. "Now, mind what I'm tellin' you!" "I won't," the soft little Peggy promised in haste. "Now, that's sensible," said Dickie Blue. He was in earnest. And his purpose was high. "Still an' all," Peggy began, "there's no harm " "What does a maid know about that?" Dickie interrupted. "It takes a man t' know a man. The lad's not fit company for the likes o' you." It was true. "You must look upon me, Peggy, as an elder brother, an' be guided by my advice. I'll watch over you, Peggy, jus' as well as an elder brother can." "I'm grateful," Peggy murmured, flushed with pleasure in this interest. "I thanks you." "There's no call t' thank me," Dickie protested. " 'Tis a pleasure t' serve you." The Siren of Scalawag Run 87 "Thank you," said Peggy. Skipper John Blue was a hearty old codger. Pretty Peggy Lacey, whose father had been cast away in the Sink or Swim, long ago, on the reefs off Thumb-an'-Finger of the Labrador, loved and used him like a father and found him sufficient to her need. To pretty Peggy Lacey, then Skipper John cautiously repeated the substance < . his con- versation with Dickie Blue, adding a wlir ^er oi artful advice and a chuckle of deligh ; - it J gg) Lacey was appalled by the deceitful pr;ittice d .;- closed by Skipper John, whose siphisti.at'rti .h'; suspected and deplored. She had no notim at all, said she, that such evil as he described could wall; abroad and unshamed in the good world, lu.d she wondered what old mischief of his youth had in- formed him; and she would die a maid, loveless and childless, she declared, rather than have the guilt of a deception of such magnitude on her soul. Moreover, where were the means to be procured for executing the enormity? There was nothing of the sort, she was sure, in Trader Tom Jenkins's shop at Scalawag Run. There was nothing of the sort to be had anywhere short of St. John's; and as for sanctioning a plan so bold as sending a letter and a post-office order to Skipper John's old friend in St. John's, the lively widow o' the late Cap'n Saul Nash, o' the Royal Bloodhound, pretty Peggy Lacey jus' pos'tively would not do no such thing. 68 Harbor Tales Down North Skipper John found his head convenient to assist the expression of his emotion. He scratched it. ^ "Well, I'm bewildered," said he, "an" I'm not able t' help you at all no more." "I'll have nobody's help," Peggy Lacey retorted. "Why not, Peggy?" "I've my pride t' serve." "My dear," said Skipper John gravely, "you've also your happiness t' gain." "I'll gain it alone." "Aw, now, Peggy," Skipper John coaxed, with a forefinger under Peggy's little chin, "you'd take my help in this an' in all things, wouldn't ye? You is jus' so used t' my help, maid," he added, "that you'd be wonderful lonesome without it." That was true. "In most things. Father John," Peggy replied, "I'd take your help an' be glad. Whatever im' all about that, I'll have nobody's help in the world t' wrin the mastery o' Dickie Blue. Mark that, now! I means it." "I've showed you the way t' win it." " Tis dishonest." "Ay, but " " 'Tis shameful." "Still an' all " "I'll not do it." Again Skipper John scratched his head. " 'Tis an old sayin'," he protested, "that all's fair in love an' war." The Siren of Scalawag Run 69 " 'Tis a false sayin'," Peggy declared. "More- over," she argued, "an I took your advice, an' done the schemin' wickedness that you said, 'twould never win Dickie Blue." "Jus' you try it, maid!" "I scorn f try it! I'll practice no wiles whatso- ever t' win the likes o* Dickie Blue. An' what would I say when he discovered the deception thereafter?" "He'd never find out at all." "Sure, he've eyes t' see with, haven't he?" "Ay, but he's too stupid t' notice. An' once you're wed " "No, no! 'Tis a thing too awful t' plot." "An you cared enough for the lad," said Skipper John, "you'd stop at nothin' at all." Peggy's great eyes clouded with tears. "I cares more for he," said she, "than he cares for me. My heart's jus' sore with grief." "Ah, no, now!" "Ay, 'tis !" Peggy sobbed. She put her dark hair against Skipper John's shoulder then. "I'm jus' sick with the need of un!" she said. Summer went her indifferent way, and Winter blustered into the past, too, without serving the emotions of Scalawag Run; and a new Spring was imminent — warm winds blowing out of the south, the ice breaking from the cliffs and drifting out to' sea and back again. Still pretty Peggy Lacey was obdurately fixed in her attitude toward the sly sug- 70 Harbor Tales Down North I'i l!li [( ill gestion of Skipper John Blue. Suffer she did — that deeply ; but she sighed in secret and husbanded her patience with what stoicism she could command. There were times, twilight falling on the world of sea and rock beyond the kitchen window, with the last fire of the sun failing in the west like a bright hope — there were hours when her fear of the issue was so poignant that her decision trembled. The weather mellowed ; the temptation gathered strength and renewed itself persistently — the temptation dis- creetly to accept the aid of artifice. After all, what matter? 'Twas surely a thing o' small consequence. An' who would ever hear the least whisper about it ? For a long time Peggy Lacey rejected the eager promptings of her love— clenched her little red fists and called ber pride to the rescue; and then, all at once, of a yellow day, having chanced to glance out of the window and down the harbor in the direction of Cottage Point, and having dapped eyes on a sight that pinched and shook the very heart of her, she was changed in a twinkling into the Siren of Scala- wag Rim. Peggy Lacey sped forthwith to Skipper John, whom she found alone in his kitchen, oiling his seal- ing-gun. "Father John," she demanded, "what's all this I sees goin' on on the tip o' Cottage Point?" Skipper John glanced out of the wide kitchen window. "Ah," said he, "that's on'y young Dickie at labor. mms-'om^! The Siren of ScaUwag Run 71 He've selected that pretty spot an' is haulin' his lumber afore the snow's gone." "Haulin' his lumber?" Peggy gasped. "Mm-m." "Haulin' 1-1-lumberI" "Mm-m. I sees he've ol' Tog in harness writh the rest o' the dogs. WeU, wdl! Tog's too old for that labor." "Who's the maid?" "Maid!" "What's he haulin' lumber for?" "I 'low he's haulin' lumber jus' for the same rea- son that any young fellow would haul lumber for in the Spring o' the year." " 'Tis a new house, isn't it?" "Ay; 'tis a new house. He've been plannin' t* build his house this long time, as you knows very well, an' now he've gone at it in a forehanded way." "Well, then," Peggy insisted, finding it hard to command breath for the question, "who's the maid ?" "No maid in particular that I knows of." "Well, I knows!" Peggy flashed. " 'Tis the new schoolmistress from Grace Harbor. That's who 'tis!" "Ah-ha!" said Skipper John. "Yes, 'tis! She've cotched his fancy with her eyeglasses an' grammar. The false, simperin', tit- terin'cat! Oh, poor Dickie Blue!" "Whew!" mmm. 72 I* i Harbor Tales Down North II "She'd never do for un, Skipper John." "No?" "Never. They're not suited to each other at all. He'd be mis'able with her." Skipper John grinned. "Poor Dickie!" he sighed. Peggy Lacey was in tears at last "Father John," she sobbed, "I'm jus' desperate with fear an' grief. I can't bear it no longer." She began to pace the floor in a tamult of emotion. "I can't breathe," said she. "I'm stifled. My heart's like t' burst with pain." She paused — she turned to Skipper John, swaying where she stood, her hands pitifully reaching toward the old man, her face gray and dull with the agony she could no longer endure; and her eyes closed, and her head dropped, and her voice fell to a broken whisper. "Oh, hold me!" die entreated. "I'm sick. I'll fall." Skipper John took her in his arms. "Ah, hush!" he crooned. "Tis not so bad as all that An' he's not worth it, the great dum'er- head!" Peggy Lacey pushed Skipper John away. "I'll not yield t' nobody!" she stormed, her soft little face gone hard with a savage determination. Her red httle lips curled and the nostrils of her saucy little nose contemptuoudy expanded. "I've neither eye-glasses nor grammar," said she, "but I'll ensnare Dickie Blue for all that." "I would," said Skipper John. liiP The Siren of Scalawag Run 78 "I will!" "An' without scruple!" "Not a twinge !" "I'd have no mercy." "Not I!" "An' I'd encourage no delay." 'Skipper John, do you write that letter t' St. John's this very day," said Peggy, her soft, slender little body magnificently drawn up to the best of its alluring inches. She snapped, "We'U see what conies o' that!" "Hoosh !" Skipper John gloated. "Waste no time, sir. 'Tis a ticklish matter." "The answer will be shipped straight t' you, Peggy. 'Twill be here in less 'n a fortnight." Skip- per John broke into a wild guffaw of laughter. "An' Dickie himself will fetch the trap for his own feet, ecod!" Peggy remained giive. "I'm determined," she declared. "There's noth- in' will stop me now. I'll do it, no matter what." "Well, then," said Skipper John. "I 'low 'tis all over but the weddin'." Skipper John privately thought, after aU, that a good deal of fuss was being made over the likes o' Dickie Blue. And I think so too. However, the affair was Peggy Lacey's. And doubtless she knew her own business well enough to manage it without ignorant criticism. u Harbor Tales Down North In the Winter weather, when the coast was locked in with ice, and continuing until the first cruise of the mail-boat in May, to be precise, Dickie Blue carried his Majesty's mail, once a fortnight, by government contract, from the railroad at Bot- tom Harbor to Scalawag Run and all the harbors of Whale Bay. It was inevitable, therefore, that he should be aware of the c.^nununication addressed to Miss Peggy Lacey of Scalawag Rua; and acutely aware of it he was — the coRimunication and the little box that seemed to accompany it From Bottom Harbor to All-in-the-Way Island, he reflected occasionally upon the singular circum- stance. Who had sent a gift to Peggy Lacey from St. John's? Could it have been Charlie Rush? Charlie Rush was in St John's to ship for the ice with the sealing fleet Pausing on the crest of Black Cliff to survey the crossing to Scalawag Run, he came to a conclusion in relation to Peggy Lacey's letter that was not at all flattering to his self- esteem. The letter mystified Dickie Blue — ^the audior of the communication; but he had no difKculty in sur- mising the contents of the box to his own satisfac- tion. " 'Tis a ring," he determined. By that time the day was near spent Dusk would fall within die hour. Already the wide flare of light above the wilderness had failed to the dying ashes of its fire. Prudence urged a return to the The Siren of Scalawag Run 75 cottage at Point-o'-Bay Cove for the night. True, it was not far from Black Qiff across the run to the first rocks of Scalawag. It was short of a mile, at any rate. Dickie could glimpse the lights of the Scalawag hiUs— the folk were lighting the lamps in the kitchens ; and he fixed his eyes on Peggy Lacey's light, in the yellow glow of which, no doubt, pretty Peggy was daintily busied with making a supper of no dainty proportions; and he cocked his head and scowled in deliberation, and he stood irresolute on the brink of the cliff, playing with the temptation to descend and cross, as thouj^ a whiff from Peggy Lacey's kitchen stove had invited and challenged htm over. It was not so much the visionary whiff of Peggy Lacey's supper, however, that challenged his courage: it was Peggy Lacey's letter in the pack on his back, and Peggy Lacey's suggestive packet, that tantalized him to reckless behavior. Ah-ha, he'd show Peggy Lacey what it was to carry die mail in a way that a man should carry it ! He'd put the love-letter an' tiie ring in her hand forth- with. His Majesty's mail would go through that night. "Ha!" he gloated. "Ill further her courtship. An' that'll settle her, ecod! I'll show her once an' for all that 'tis no matter t' me whom she weds." There were rtout reasons, however, against at- tempting to cross the run that night. The lane was filled from shore to shore with fragments of ice. Moreover, fog was blowing in from the east in the 76 Harbor Tales Down North wake of the departing day, and rain threatened — a cold drizzle. All this being patent, the rain and peril of the passage in contrast with the dry, lighted kitchens of Point-o'-Bay Cove, Dickie Blue crossed Scalawag Run that night notwithstanding; and the mere circumstance of the crossing, where was no haste that he knew of, indicated at least the per- turbation of his emoH- ?s. Well, Peggy Lacey might wed whom she , :jased, an' he'd further her schemes, too, at the i-sk of his life. She should have her letter at once — her ring without delay; an' as for Dickie Blue, 'twas a closed book of ro- mance — there were other maids at Scalawag Run, fairer maids, more intellectual maids, an' he'd love (Me o' them soon enough. When Dickie Blue entered, Skipper John looked up, amazed. "Did ye cross the run this night ?" said he. "I'll leave you, sir," Dickie answered curtly, "t' solve that deep riddle for yourself. You'll not be needing my help." Skipper John reflected. "Was there a letter for Peggy Lacey?" said he. "She've been eager for a message from St. John's." "There was." "Nothin' else, I 'low?" "There was. There was a packet." "Whew!" Skipper John ejaculated. "That's a pity. I been fearin' an outcome o' that sort. An The Siren of Scalawag Run 77 1 was you, Dick," he advised, "I'd lose no time in that direction." " 'Tis not my purpose to." "Ye'U wed the maid?" "I wiU not." "Ye obstinate dunderhead!" Skipper Jdin scolded. "I believes ye I Dang if 1 don't! Go to! Shift them wet clothes, sir, an' come f supper. I hopes a shrew hooks ye. Dang if I don't !" In gloomy pen , bation, in ill humor with the daft dealings of the world he hved in, Dickie Blue left the soggy road and sad drizzle of the night for the warm, yellow light of Peggy Lacey's kitchen, where pretty Peggy, alone in the housewifely oper- ation, was stowing the clean dishes away. Yet his course was shaped — his reflections were deter- mined; and whatever Peggy Lacey might think to the contrary, as he was no better, after all, than a great, blundering, obstinate young male creature, swayed by vanity and pique, and captive of both in that crisis, Peggy Lacey's happiness was in a desperate situation. It was farther away at the moment of Dickie Blue's sullen entrance than ever it had been since first she flushed and shone with the vision of its glorious approach. Ay— thought the perverse Dickie Blue when he clapped eyes on the fresh gingham in which Peggy Lacey was fluttering over the kitchen floor (he would not deign to look in her gray eyes), the maid 78 Harbor Tales Down North might have her letter an' her ring an' wed whom she pleased ; an' as for tears at the weddin', they'd not fall from the eyes o' Dickie Blue, who would by that time, ecod, perhaps have consummated an affair with a maid of consequence from Grace Harbor! Hal There were indeed others I The charms of the intellect were not negligible. They were to be taken into account in the estimate. And Dickie Blue would consider the maid from Grace Harbor. "She've dignity," thought he, "an' she've learn- in'. Moreover, she've high connections in St. John's an' a wonderful complexion." Dickie meant it. Ay. And many a man, and many a poor maid, too, as everybody knows, has cast happiness to waste in a mood of that mad description. And so a tragedy impended. "Is it you, Dick?" says Peggy Lacey. Dickie nodded and scowled. " 'Tis I. Was you lookin' for somebody else t' call?" "No, Dickie." It was almost an interrogation. Peggy Lacey was puzzled. Dickie Blue's gloomy concern was out of the way. "Well." said Dicky, "I'm sorry." "An' why?" "Well," Dickie declared, "if you was expectin' anybody else t' come t' see you, I'd be glad f have The Siren of Scalawag Ruo 79 un do «o. Til a dismal evenin' for you f nod alone." Almost, then, Peggy Lacey's resolution failed her. Almost she protested that she would hKve a welcome for no other man in die world. Instead she turned arch. "Did you bring the mail?" she inquired. "I did." "Was there nothin" for me?" "There was." "A letter!" "Ay." Peggy Lacey trembled. Confronting, thus inti- mately, the enormity she proposed, she was shocked. She concealed her agitation, however, and laid St ong hands upon her wicked resolution to restrain its flight. "Nothin' else?" said she. "Ay; there was more." "Not a small packet!" "Ay; there was a small packet. I low you been expectin* some such gift as that, isn't you?" "A gift ! Is it from St John's?" "Ay." "Then I been expectin' it," Peggy eagerly ad- mitted. "Where is it, Dickie? I'm in haste to pry into that packet." The letter and the package were handed over. " 'Tis not hard," said Dickie, "f guess the con- MICROCOfY USOIUTION TBI CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) ^ APPLIED INA/IGE In SS". <^^-! Eait Moin Street _^B Rochester, Neo York 1*609 USA ^= (716) 482 - 0300 - Phone S^ (''6) 388 - 5989 - fax 80 Harbor Tales Down North In ^ I could surmise tfaem tents of a wee box like that myself." Peggy started. "Wh-wh-what I" she ejaculated. "You know the contents! Oh, dear me I" "No, I don't know the contents. I could guess them, though, an I had a mind to." "You never could guess. 'Tis not in the mind of a man t' fathom such a thing as that. There's a woman's secret in this wee box." " 'Tis a ring." "A ring!" Peggy challenged. "You'd not care, Dickie Blue, an 'twas a ring t' betroth me!" Dickie Blue was sure that his surmise had gone cunningly to its mark. Pride flashed to the rescue of his self.r-bc)x and brushes. "AH, no, sir," said he, blushing. "I used f, though when I were a child." Cobden blinked. "Eh?" he ejaculated. "I isn't done nothin' at it since." " 'I put away childish things,' " flashed inevitably into Cobden's mind. He was somewhat alarmed. "Why not since then?" he asked. " 'Tis not a man's work, sir." "Again, why not?" " 'Tis a sort o'— silly thing— t' do." "Good God!" Cobden thought, appalled. "The lad has strangled his gift!" Terry Lute laughed then. "I'm sorry, sir," he said quickly, with a wistful smile, seeking forgiveness; "but I been watchin' you workin' away there like mad with all them little brushes. An' you looked so sort o' funny, sir, that I jus' couldn't help— laughin'." Again he threw back his head, and once more, beyond his will, and innocent of offense and blame, he laughed a great, free laugh. It almost killed James Cobden. IV THE DOCTOR OF AFTERNOON ARM IV THE DOCTOR OF AFTERNOON ARM IT was March weather. There was sunshine and thaw. Anxious Bight was caught over with rotten ice from Ragged Run Harbor to the heads of Afternoon Arm. A rumor of seals on the Arctic drift ice oflf shore had come in from the Spotted Horses. It inspired instant haste in all the cottages of Ragged Run— an eager, stumbling haste. In Bad-Weather Tom West's kitchen, some- what after ten o'clock in the morning, in the midst of this hilarious scramble to be ofJ to the floe, there was a flash and spit of fire, and the clap of an e.\- plosion, and the clatter of a sealing-gun on the bare floor; and in the breathless, dead little interval be- tween the appalling detonation and a man's groan of dismay followed by a woman's choke and scream of terror, Dolly West, Bad-Weather Tom's small maid, stood swaying, wreathed in gray smoke, her little hands pressed tight to her eyes. She was — or rather had been — a pretty little creature. There had been yellow curls— in the New- foundland way— and rosy cheeks and grave blue eyes; but now of all this shy, fair loveliness 115 116 Harbor Tales Down North "You've kiUed her!" "No— no I" Dolly dropped her hands. She reached out, then, for something to grasp. And she plainted : "I idin't dead, mother. I juth — I juth can't thee." She ex- tended her hands. They were discolored, and there was a slow, rod drip. "They're all wet!" she com- plained. By this time the mother had the little girl gathered close in her arms. She moaned: "The doctor!" Terry West caught up his cap and mittens and sprang to the door. "Not by the Bight !" Bad- Weather shouted. "No, sir." Dolly West whimpered: "It thmart-th, mother'" "By Mad Harry an' Thank-the-Lord !" "Ay. sir." Dolly screamed— now: "It hurt-th! Oh, oh, it hurt-th!" "An' haste, lad!" "Ay, sir." There was no doctor in Ragged Run Harbor; there was a doctor at Afternoon Arm, however— across Anxious Bight. Terry West avoided the rotten ice of the Bight and took the 'longshore trail by way of Mad Harry and Thank-the-Lord. At noon he was past Mad Harry, his little legs wearing well and his breath coming easily through his ex- panded nostrils. He had not paused ; and at four o'clock— still on a dogtrot— he had hauled down the The Doctor of Afternoon Ann 117 chimney smoke of Thank-the-Lord and was bearinc up for Afternoon Ann. Early dusk caught him shortcutting the doubtful ice of Thank-the-Lord Cove; and half an hour later midway of the passage to Afternoon Arm, with two miles left to accomplish— dusk falling thick and cold, then, a frosty wind blowing— Creep Head of the Arm looming black and solid— he dropped through the ice and vanished. Returning from a professional call at Tumble Tickle in dean, sunlit weather, with nothing more tedious than eighteen miles of wilderness trail and rough floe ice behind him. Doctor Rolfe was chagrined to discover himself fagged out. He had come heartily down the trail from T ,mole Tickle but on the ice in the shank of the day-there had been eleven miles of the floe-he had lagged and complained under what was indubitably the weight of his sixty-three years. He was slightly perturbed. He had been fagged out before, to be sure. A man cannot practice medicine out of a Newfoundland outport harbor for thirty-seven years and not know what It means to stomach a physical exhaustion. It was not that. What perturbed Doctor Rolfe was the smgular coincidence of a touch of melancholy with the ominous complaint of his lean old legs. And presently there was a more disquieting revela- tion. In the drear, frosty dusk, when he rounded Creep Head, opened the lights of Afternoon Arm 118 Harbor Tales Down North and caught the warm, yellow gleam of the lamp in the surgery window, his expectation ran all at once to his supper and his bed. He -was hungry— that was true. Sleepy? No; he was not sleepy. Yet he wanted to go to bed. Why? He wanted to go to bed in the way that old men want to go to bed- less to sleep than just to sigh and stretch out and rest. And this anxious wish for bed— just to stretch out and rest— held its definite impUcation. It was more than symptomatic— it was shocking. "That's age!" It was. "Hereafter, as an old man should," Doctor Rolfe resolved, "I go with caution and I take my er.se." And it was in this determination that Doctor Rolfe opened the surgery door and came gratefully into the warmth and light and familiar odors of the little room. Caution was the wisdom and privi- lege of age, wasn't it? he reflected after supper in the glow of the surgery fire. There was no shame in it, was there? Did duty require of a man that he should practice medicine out of Afternoon Arm for thirty-seven years— in all sorts of weather and along a hundred and thirty miles of the worst coast in the world— and go recklessly into a future Ox increasing inadequacy? It did not! He had stood his watch. What did he owe life? Nothir-— nothing! He had paid in full. Well, then, what did Ufe owe him? It owed him something, didn't The Doctor of Afternoon Ann 119 it? Didn't life owe h -n at least an old age of rea- sonable ease and self especting iiidependence? It did! By this time the more he retiected, warming his lean, aching shanks the while, the more he dwelt upon the bitter incidents of that one hundred and thirty miles of harsh coast, through the thirty-seven years he had managed to survive the winds and seas and frosts of it; and the more he dwelt upon his straitened circumstances and increasing age the more petulant he grew. It was in such moods as this that Doctor Rolfe was accustomed to recall the professional services he had rendered and to dispatch bills therefor ; and now he fumbled through the litter of his old desk for pen and ink, drew a dusty, yellowing sheaf of statements of accounts from a dusty pigeonhole, and set himself to work, fuming and grumbling all the while. "I'll tilt the fee !" he determined. This was to be the new policy — to "tilt the fee," to demand payment, to go with caution ; in this way to provide for an old age of reasonable ease and self-respecting independence. And Doctor Rolfe began to make out statements of accounts due for services rendered. From this labor and petulant reflection Doctor Rolfe was withdrawn by a tap on the surgery door. He called "Come in !" with no heart for the event. It was no night to be abroad on the ice. Yet the tap could mean but one thing — somebody was in 120 Harbor Tales Down North I' trouble; and as he caUed "Come in!" and looked up from the statement of account, and while he waited for the door to open, his pen poised and his face in a pucker of trouble, he considered the night and wondered what strength was left in his lean old legs. A youngster— he had been dripping wet and w?s now sparkling all over with frost and ice— intruded. "Thank-the-Lord Cove?" "No, sir." "Mad Harry?" "Ragged Run, sir." "Bad- Weather West's lad?" "Yes, sir." "Been in the water?" The boy grinned. He was ashamed of himself. "Yes, sir. I failed through the ice, sir." "Come across the Bight?" The boy stared. "No, sir. A cat couldn't cross the Bight the night, sir. 'Tis all rotten. I come alongshore by Mad Harry an' Thank-the-Lord. I dropped through all of a sudden, sir, in Thank-the- Lord Cove." "Who's sick?" "Pop's gun went off, sir." Doctor Rolfe rose. " 'Pop's gun went off 1' Who was in the way?" "Dolly, sir." "And Dolly in the way! And Dolly " "She've gone blind, sir. An' her cheek, sir— an' one ear, sir " The Doctor of Afternoon Arm 121 There's a scud. Am' the "What's the night?" "Blowin' up, sir. moon " "You didn't cross the Bight? Why not?" " 'Tis rotten from shore t' shore. I'd not try, the Bight, sir, the night." "No?" "No, sir." The boy was very grave. "Mm-m." All this while Doctor Rolfe had been moving about the surgery in sure haste — packing a water- proof case with little instruments and vials and what not. And now he got quickly into his boots and jacket, pulled down his coonskin cap, pulled up his sealskin gloves, handed Bad-Weather West's boy over to his housekeeper for supper and bed (he was a bachelor man), and closed the surgery door upon himself. Doctor Rolfe took to the harbor ice and drove head down into the gale. There were ten miles to go. It was to be a night's work. He settled himself doggedly. It was heroic. In the circum- stances, however, this aspect of the night's work was not stimulating to a tired old man. It was a mile and a half to Creek Head, where Afternoon Tickle led a narrow way from the shelter of After- noon Arm to Anxious Bight and the open sea ; and from the lee of Creep Head — a straightaway across Anxious Bight — it was nine miles to Blow-me- 122 Harbor Tales Down North Down Dick of Ragged Run Harbor. And Doctor Rolfe had rested but three hours. And he was old. Impatient to revive the accustomed comfort and glow of strength he began to run. When he came to Creep Head and there paused to survey Anxious Bight in a flash of tlie moon, he was tingling and war.T! and limber and eager. Yet he was dismayed by the prospect. No man could cross from Creep Head to Blow-me-Down Dick of Ragged Run Harbor in the dark. Doctor Rolfe considered the Ufeht. Communicating masses of ragged cloud were driving low across Anxious Bight. Offshpre there was a sluggish bank of black cloud. The moon was risen and full. It was obscured. The intervals of light were less than the intervals of shadow. Sometimes a wide, impenetrable cloud, its edges alight, darkened the moon altogether. Still, there was light enough. All that was definitely ominous was the bank of black cloud lying slug- gishly offshore. The longer Doctor Rolfe con- templated its potentiahty for catastrophe the more he feared it. "If I were to be overtaken by snow I" It was blowing high. There was the bite and shiver of frost in the wind. Half a gale ran in from the open sea. Midway of Anxious Bight it would be a saucy, hampering, stinging head ".'ind. And be- yond Creep Head the ice was in doubtful condition. A man might conjecture; that was all. It was The Doctor of Afternoon Arm 133 mid-spring. Freezing weather had of late alternated with periods of thaw and rain. There had been windy days. Anxious Bight had even once been clear of ice. A westerly wind had broken the ice and swept it out beyond the heads. In a gale from the northeast, however, these fragments had re- turned with accumulations '^f Arctic pans and hum- mocks from the Labrador current; and a frostj night had caught them together and sealed them to the clifiFs of the coast. It was a most delicate attachment— one pan to the other and the whole to the rocks. It had yielded somewhat — it must have gone rotten — in the weather of that day. What the frost had accomplished since dusk could be deter- mined only upon trial. "Soft as cheese !" Doctor Rolfe concluded. "Rub- ber ice and air holes !" There was another way to Ragged Run — the way by which Terry West had come. It skirted the shore of Anxious Bight — Mad Harry and Thank- the-Lord and Little Harbor Deep — and something more than multiplied the distance by one and a half. Doctor Rolfe was completely aware of the diffi- culties of Anxious Bight — the wa; fro-n Afternoon Arm to Ragged Run; the treacherous reaches of young ice, bending under the weight of a man ; the veiled black water; the labor, the crevices, the snow crust of the Arctic pans and hummocks; and the broken field and wash of the sea beyond the ksser island of the Spotted Horses. And he '.mew, too. 184 Harbor Tales Down North the issue of the disappearance of the moon, the desperate plight into which the sluggish bank of black cloud might plunge a man. As a matter of unromantic fact he desired greatiy to dechnc a pas- sage of Anxious Bight that night. Instead he moved out and shaped a course for the black bulk of the Spotted Horses. This was in the direction of Blow-me-Down Dick of Ragged Run, and the open sea. He sighed. "If I had a son he reflected. Well, now. Doctor Rolfe was a Newfoundlander. He was used to traveling all sorts of ice in aU sorts of weather. The returning fragments of the >ce of Anxious Bight had been close packed for two miles beyond the narrows of Afternoon Arm by the northeast gale which had driven them back from the open. This was rough ice. In the press of the wind the drifting floe had buckled. It had been a bie gale. Under the whip of it the ice had come down with a rush. And when it encountered the coast the first great pans had been thrust out of the sea by the weight of the floe behmd. A slow pressure had even driven them up the cliffs of Creep Head and heaped them in a tumble below. It was thus a folded, crumpled floe, a vast field of broken bergs and pans at angles. No Newfoundlander would adventure on the ice without a gaff. A gaff is a lithe, ironshod pole, eight or ten feet in length. Doctor Rolfe was as The Doctor of Afternoon Ann 125 ctinning and sure with a gaff as any old hand of the sealing fleet. He employed it now to advantage. It was a vaulting pole. He walked less than he leaped. This was no work for the half light of an obscured moon. Sometimes he halted for light; but delay annoyed him. A pause of ten minutes- he squatted for rest meantime— threw him into a state of incautious irritability. At this rate it would be past dawn before he made the cottages of Ragged Run Harbor. Impatient of precaution, he presently chanced a leap. It was error. As the meager light disclosed the path a chasm of fifteen feet intervened between the edge of the upturned pan upon which he stood and a flat-topped hummock of Arctic ice to which he was bound. There was footing for the tip of his gaff midway below. He felt for this foot- ing to entertain himself while the moon delayed. It was there. He was tempted. The chasm was critically deep for the length of the gaff. Worse than that, the hummock was higher than the pan. Doctor Rolfe peered across. It was not much higher. It would merely be necessary to lift stoutly at the climax of the leap. And there was need of haste — a little maid in hard case at Ragged Run and a rising cloud threatening black weather. A slow cloud covered the moon. It was aggravat- ing. There would be no light for a long time. A man must take a chance . And all at once the old man gave way to impatience; he gripped his 126 Harbor Tales Down North gaff with angry determination and projected him- self toward the hummock of Arctic ice. A flash later he had regretted the hazard. He perceived that he had misjudged the height of the hummock. Had the gaff been a foot longer he would have cleared the chasm. It occurred to him that he would break his back and merit the fate of his callow mistake. Then his toes caught the edge of the flat-topped hummock. His boots were of soft seal leather. He gripped the ice. And now he hung suspended and inert. The slender gaff bent under the prolonged strain of his weight and shook in response to a shiver of his arms. Courage failed a little. Doctor Rolfe was an old man. And he was tired. And he felt unequal Dolly West's mother— with Dolly in her arms, resting against her soft, ample bosom-sat by the kitchen fire. It was long after dark. The wmd was up; the cottage shook in the squalls. She had long ago washed Dolly's eyes and temporarily stanched the terrifying flow of blood; and now she waited, rocking gently and sometimes crooning a plaintive song of the coast to the restless child. Tom West came in. "Hush!" "Is she sleepin' still?" "Off an' on. She's in a deal o' pain. She cnes out, poor lamb!" Dolly stirred and whimpered. "Any sign of un, Tom?" if The Doctor of Afternoon Arm 127 " 'Tis not time." "He might " " 'Twill be hours afore he comes. I'm jus' won- derin' " "Hush!" Dolly moaned "Ay, Tom?" "Terry's but a wee feller. I'm wonderin' if he " The woman was confident "He'll make it," she whispered. "Ay; but if he's delayed " "He was there afore dusk. An' the doctor got underway across the Bight " "He'll not come by the Bight!" "He'll come by the Bight I knows that man. He'U come by the Bight— an* he'll " "If he comes by the Bight he'll never get here at all. Th.' Bight's breakin' up. There's rotten ice beyond the Spotted Horses. An' Tickle-my-Ribs "He'll come. He'll be here afore " "There's a gale o' snow comin' down. 'Twill cloud the moon. A man would lose hisself " "He'll come." Bad-Weather Tom West went out againr— to plod once more down the narrows to the base of Blow- me-Down Dick and search the vague light of the coast for the first sight of Doctor Rolfe. It was not time; he knew that. There would be hours of waiting. It would be dawn before a man could come by Thank-the-Lord and Mad Harry, if he left 188 Harbor Tales Down North Afternoon Arm even so early as dusk. And as for crossing the Bight — no man could cross the Bight. It was blowing up too— clouds rising and a threat of snow abroad. Bad-weather Tom glanced apprehensively toward the northeast. It would snow before dawn. The moon was doomed. A dark night would fall. And the Bight — Doctor Rolfe would never attempt to cross the Bight Hanging between the hummock and the pan, the gaf{ shivering tmder his weight. Doctor Rolfe slowly subsided toward the hummock. A toe slipped. He paused. It was a grim business. The other foot held. The leg, too, was equal to the strain. He wriggled his toe back to its grip on the edge of the ice. It was an improved foothold. He turned then and began to lift and thrust himself backward. A last thrust on the gaff set him on his haunches on the Arctic hummock, and he thanked Providence and went on. And on — and on ! There was a deal of slippery crawling to do, of slow, ticklish climbing. Doctor Rolfe rounded bergs, scaled perilous inclines, leaped crevices. It was cold as death now. Was it ten below? The gale bit like twenty below. When the big northeast wind drove the ice back into Anxious Bight and heaped it inshore, the pres- sure had decreased as the mass of the floe dimin- ished in the direction of the sea. The outermost areas had not felt the impact. They had not folded — The Doctor of Afternoon Arm 129 had not "raftered." When the wind failed they had subsided toward the open. As they say on the coast, the ice had "gone abroad." It was distributed. And after that the sea had fallen flat ; and a vicious frost had caught the floe — widespread now — and frozen it fast. It was six miles from the edge of the raftered ice to the first island of the Spotted Horses. The flat pans were solid enough, safe and easy going ; but this new, connecting ice — the lanes and reaches of it Doctor Rolfe's succinct characterization of the condition of Anxious Bight was also keen: "Soft as cheese!" All that day the sun had fallen hot on the young ice in which the scattered pans of the floe were frozen. Some of the wider patches of green ice had been weakened to the breaking point. Here and there they must have been eaten clear through. Doctor Rolfe contemplated an advance with dis- taste. And by and by the first brief barrier of new ice confronted him. He must cross it. A black film — the color of water in that light — ^bridged the way from one pan to another. He would not touch it. He leaped it easily. A few fathoms forward a second space halted him. Must he put foot on it? With a running start he could Well, he chose not to touch the second space, but to leap it. Soon a third interval stopped him. No man could leap it. He cast about for another way. There was none. He must run across. He scowled. 180 Harbor Tales Down North Disinclination increased. He snarled: "Green ice!" He crossed then like a cat— on tiptoe and swiftly; and he came to the other side with his heart in a flutter. "Whew!" The ice had yielded without breaking. It had creaked, perhaps; nothing worse. It was what is called "rubber ice." There was more of it; there were miles of it The nearer the open sea the more widespread was the floe. Beyond — hauling down the Spotted Horses, which lay in the open — ^the proportion of new ice would be vastly greater. At a trot for the time over the pans, which were flat, and in delicate, mincing little spurts across the bend- ing ice, Doctor Rolfe proceeded. In a confidence that was somewhat flushed — ^he had rested — he went forward And presently, midway of a lane of green ice, he heard a gurgle as the ice bent under his weight. .Water washed his boots. He had be-.i on the look- out for holes. This hole he heard — ^the spurt and gurgle of it He had not seen it Safe across. Doctor Rolfe grinned. It was a reaction of relief. "Whew! Whew!" he whisUed. By and by he caught ear of the sea breaking under the wind Iieyond the Little Spotted Horse. He was Hearing the limits of the ice. In full moonlight the whitecaps flashed news of a tumultuous opea A nimble and splash of breakers came down with the gale from the point of the island. It indicated The Doctor of Afternoon Arm 131 that the sea was working in the passage between the Spotted Horses and Blow-me-down Dick of the Ragged Run coast The waves would run under the ice, would lift it and break it In this way the sea would eat its way through the passage. It would destroy the young ice. It would break the pans to pieces and rub them to slush. Doctor Rolfe must make the Little Spotted Horse and cross the passage between the island and the Ragged Run coast Whatever the issue of haste, he must carry on and make the best of a bad job. Otherwise he would come to Tickle-my-Ribs, be- tween the Little Spotted Horse and Blow-me-Down Dick of Ragged Run, and be marooned from the main shore. And there was another reason: it was immediate and desperately urgent. As the sea was biting off the ice in Tickle-my-Ribs, so, too, it was encroaching upon the body of the ice in Anxious Bight Anxious Bight was breaking up. Acres of ice were wrenched from the field at a time and then broken up by the sea. What was the direction of this swift melting? It might take any direction. And a survey of the sky troubled Doctor Rolfe. All this while the light had diminished. It was failing still. It was failing faster. There was less of the moon. By and by it would be wholly ob- scured. A man would surely lose his life on the ice in thick weather — on one or other of the reaches of new ice. And thereabouts the areas of young ice 132 Harbor Tales Down North 1 1 >i, were wider. To tiptoe across the yielding film of these dimly visible stretches was instantly and dread- fully dangerous. It was horrifying. A man took his life in his hand every time he left a pan. Doctor Rolfe was not insensitive. He began to sweat — not with labor but with fear. When the ice bent under him he gasped and held his breath ; and he came each time to the solid refuge of a pan with his teeth set, his face contorted, his hands clenched — Sl shiver in the small of his back. To achieve safety once, however, was not to win a final relief ; it was merely to confront, in the same circumstances, a precisely similar peril. Doctor Rolfe was not physically exhausted; every muscle that he had was warm and alert. Yet he was weak ; a repetition of suspense had unnerved him. A full hour of this, and sometimes he chattered and shook in a nervous chill. In the meantime he had ap- proached the rocks of the Little Spotted Horse. In the lee of the Little Spotted Horse the ice had gathered as in a back current It was close packed alongshore to the point of the island. Between this solidly frozen press of pans and the dissolving field in Anxious Bight there had been a lane of ruffled open water before the frost fell. It measured per- haps fifty yards. It was now black and still, sheeted with new ice which had been delayed in forming by the ripple of that exposed situation. Doctor Rolfe had encountered nothing as doubtful. Fs paused on the brink. A long, thin line of solid The Doctor of Afternoon Ann 138 pan ice, ghosUy white in the dusk beyond, was attached to the rocks of the Little Spotted Horse. It led all the way to Tickle-my-Ribs. Doctor Rolfe must make that line of solid ice. He must cross the wide lane of black, delicately frozen new ice that lay between and barred his way. He waited for the moon. When the light broke —a thin, transient gleam— he started. A few fathoms forth the ice began to yield. A moment later he stopped short and recoiled. There was a hole— gaping wide and almost under his feet. He stopped. The water overflowed and the ice era '!■ y '^'1 .*^i- VI A MADONNA OF TINKLE TICKLE i VI A MADONNA OF TINKLE TICKLE i ;i •i IT was at Soap-an'-Water Harbor, with the trader Quick as Wink in from the sudsy seas of those parts, that Tumm, the old clerk, told the singular tale of the Madonna of Tinkle Tickle. "I'm no hand for sixpenny novels," says he, with a wry glance at the skipper's dog-eared romance. "Nursemaids an' noblemen? I'm char>-. I've no love, anyhow, for the things o' mere fancy. But I'm a great reader," he protested, with quick warmth, "o' the tales that are lived under the two eyes in my head. I'm forever in my lib'ry, too. Jus' now," he added, his eye on a dismayed little man from Chain Harbor, "I'm readin' the book o' the cook. An' I'm lookin' for a sad endin', ecod, if he keeps on scorchin' the water !" The squat little Newfoundland schooner was snu^ in the lee of False Frenchman and down for the night. A wet time abroad: a black wind in the rigging, and the swish and patter of rain on the deck. But the forecastle bogey was roaring, and the forecastle lamp was bright; and the crew — at 165 if 166 Harbor Tales Down North ease and dry— sprawled content in the forecastle glow. "Lyin' here at Soap-an'-Water Harbor, with Tinkle Tickle hard-by," the clerk drawled on, "I been thumbin' over the queer yam o' Mary Mull. An' I been enjoyin' it, too. An old tale— lived long ago. 'Tis a tale t' my i •te. It touches the heart of a woman. An' so i^ds— 'tis a mystery." Then the tale that * as lived page by page under the two eyes in Tumni's head: "Tim Mull was fair dogged by the children o' Tinkle Tickle in his badielor days," the tale ran on. "There was that about un, somehow, in eyes or voice, t' win the love o' kids, dogs, an' grand- mothers. 'Leave the kids have their way,' says he. 'I likes t' have un t' come t' me. They're no bother at .all. Why, damme,' says he, 'they uplift the soul of a bachelor manlike me! I loves un.' " 'You'n be havin' a crew o' your own, some day,' says Tom Blot, 'an' you'll not be so fond o' the company.' " 'I'll ship all the Lord sends.' '"Ah-ha, b'yl' chuckles Tom, 'HeVe a wonder- ful store o' little souls up aloft.' " 'Then,' says Tim, 'I'll thank Un t' be lavish." "Tom Blot was an old, old man, long past his labor, creakin' over the roads o' Harbor with a stafi t' help his dry legs, an' much give t' broodin' cm the things he'd found out in this life. ' 'Tis rare that He's mean with such gifts,' says he. 'But 'tis A Madonna of Tinkle Tickle 167 queer the way He bestows un. Ecod!' says he, in a temper, 'I've never been able t' fathom his ways, old as I isl' " 'I wants a big crew o' lads an' little maids, Tom,' says Tim MuU. 'Can't be too many tor me if I'm to enjoy my cruise in this world.' " 'They've wide mouths, lad.' "'Hut!' says Tim. 'What's a man for? I'll stuff their little crops. You mark mt, b'y I' "So it went with Tim Mull in his bachelor days: he'd forever a maid on his shoulder or a lad by the hand. He loved un. 'Twas knowed that he loved un. There wasn't a man or maid at Tinkle Tickle that didn't know. 'Twas a thing that was called t' mind whenever the name o' Tim Mull come up. 'Can't be too many kids about for Tim Mull !' An' they loved him. They'd wait for un t' cone in from the sea at dusk o' fine days; an" on fine Sunday afternoons — sun out an' a blue wind blowin' — they'd troop at his heels over the roads an' hills o' the Tickle. They'd have no festival without un. On the eve o' Guy Fawkes, in the fall o' the year, with the Gunpowder Pk)t t' cdebrate, when 't was Remember, remember. The Fifth o' November! 't was Tim Mull that must wind the fire-balls, an' sot the bonfires, an' put saleratus on the blisters. An' 168 Harbor Tales Down North at Christmastide, when the kids o' Harbor come carolin' up the hiU, aU in mumniers' dress, pipm'r- God reit you, meriy gentlemen; Let nothin' you dtunayl 't was Tim Mtill, in his cottage by Fo'c's'le Head, that had a big blaze, an' a cake, an' a tele, an a tune on the concertina, for the rowdy crew. " 'I love un!' says he. 'Can't be too many for "An' everybody knowed it; an' everybody won- dered, too, how Tim MuU would skipper his own little crew when he'd shipped un. "Tim Mull feU in love, by-an'-by, with a dark maid o' the Tickle. By this time his mother was dead, an' he lived all alone in the cottage by Fo'c's'le Head. He had full measure o' the looks an' ways that win women. 'Twas the fashion t' fish for un. An' 'twas a thing that was shameless as fashion. Most o' the maids o' Harbor had cast hooks. Polly Twitter, for one, an' in desperation: a pink an' blue wee parcel o' fluff— an' a trim little craft, withal. But Tim Mull knowed nothin' o this, at all; he was too stupid, maybe,— an' too decent,— t' read the gUices an' blushes an' laughter they flung out for bait. " 'Twas Mary Low— who'd cast no eyes his way —that overcome un. She loved Tim Mull. No doubt, in the way o' maids, she had cherished her A Madonna of Tinkle Tickle 169 hope ; an' it may be she had grieved t' see big Tim Mull, entangled in ribbons an' curls an' the sparkle o' blue eyes, indulge the flirtatious ways o' pretty little Polly Twitter. A tall maid, this Mary— soft an' brown. She'd brown eyes, with black lashes to hide un, an' brown hair, growin' low an' curly; an' her round cheeks was brown, too, flushed with red. She was a maid with sweet ways an' a tender pride; she was slow t' speak an' not much give t' laughter; an' she had the sad habit o' broodin' overmuch in the dusk. But sh '-i eyes ff^' love, never fear, an' her lips was warm; an' there come a night in spring weather— broad moonlight an' a still world— when Tim Mull give way to his courage. " 'Tumm,' says he, when he come in from his courtin', that night, 'there'll be guns poppin' at Tinkle Tickle come Friday.' '"A weddin'?' says I. " 'Me an' Mary Low, Tumm. I been overcome at last. 'Twas the moon." " 'She's ever the friend o' maids,' says I. " 'An' the tinkle of a goat's bell on Lookout. It fell down from the slope t' the shadows where the alders arch over the road by Needle Rock. Jus' when me an' Mary was passin' through, Tumm! You'd never believe such an accident. There's no resistin* brown eyes in spring weather. She's a wonderful woman, lad.' " 'That's queer!' says 1. MICtOCOPY RESOiUTKm TEST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) ^ APPLIED IfVMGE In ^S-^ 1653 Eosi Main Slroel B*^ RochMter, New York M609 US* ^^ (716) «82 - 0300 - Phone ^^ (716) 268 - 5989 - Fax 170 Harbor Tales Down North " 'A wonderf ttl woman,' says he. 'No shallow water there. She's deep. I can't tell you how won- derful she is. Sure, I'd have t' play it on the con- certina.' " 'I'll lead the chivari,' says I, 'an' you grant me a favor.' " 'Done !' says he. " 'Well, Tim,' says I, 'I'm a bom godfather.' " 'Ecod !' says he. An' he slapped his knee an' chuckled. 'Does you mean it? Tobias Tumm Mull! 'Twill be a very good name for the first o' my little crew. Haw, haw ! The thing's as good as managed.' "So they was wed, hard an' fast ; an' the women o' Tinkle Tickle laughed on the sly at pretty Polly Twitter an' condemned her shameless ways." "In the fall o' that year I went down Barbadoes way in a fish-craft from St John's. An' from Bar- badoes, with youth upon me t' urge adventure, I shipped of a sudden for Spanish ports. 'Twas a matter o' four years afore I clapped eyes on the hills o' Tinkle Tickle again. An' I mind well that when the schooner hauled down ol' Fo'c's'le Head, that day, I was in a fret t' see the godson that Tim Mull had promised me. But there wasn't no god- son t' see. There wasn't no child at all. " 'Well, no, Tumm,' says Tim Mull, 'we hasn't been favored in that particular line. But I'm con- tent. All the children o' Harbor is mine,' says he. A Madonna of Tinkle Tickle 171 'jus' as they used t* be, an' there's no sign o' the supply givin' out Sure, I've no complaint o' my fortune in life.' "Nor did Mary Mull complain. She thrived, as ever: she was soft an' brown an' flushed with the color o' flowers, as when she was a maid; an' she rippled with smiles, as then, in the best of her moods, like the sea on a simlit afternoon. " 'I've Tim,' says she, 'an' with Tim I'm content Your godson, Tumm, had he deigned to sail in, would have been no match for my Tim in good- ness.' "An" still the children o' Tinkle Tickle trooped after Tim Mull ; an' still he'd forever a maid on his shoulder or a wee lad by the hand. " 'Fair winds, Tumm !' says Tim Mull. 'Me an' Mary is wonderful happy t'gether.' " 'Isn't a thing we could ask for,' says she. "'Well, well!' says I. 'Now, that's good, Mary I' "There come that summer t' Tinkle Tickle she that was once Polly Twitter. An' trouble clung to her skirts. Little vixen, she was! No tellin' how deep a wee woman can bite when she've the mind t' put her teeth in. Nobody at Tinkle Tickle but knowed that the maid had loved Tim Mull too well for her peace o' mind. Mary Mull knowed it well enough. Not Tim, maybe. But none better than Mary. 'Twas no secret, at all: for Polly Twitter had carried on like the bereft when Tim Mull was ,1 17« Harbor Tales Down North wed— had cried an* drooped an' gone white an' thin, boastin', all the while, t' draw friendly notice, that her heart was broke for good an' all. 'Twas a year an' more afore she flung up her pretty httle head an' married a good man o' Skeleton Bight. An" now here she was, come back again, plump an dimpled an' roguish as ever she'd been m her life. On a bit of a cruise, says she; but 'twas not on a cruise she'd come^'twas t' flaunt her new baby on the roads o' Tinkle Tickle. "A wonderful baby, ecod! You'd think it t hear the women cackle o' the quality o' that child. An none more than Mary Mull. She kissed Polly Twitter, an' she kissed the baby; an' she vowed— with the sparkle o' joyous truth in her wet brown eyes-that the most bewitchin' baby on the coast, the stoutest baby, the cleverest baby, the sweetest baby, had come straight f Polly Twitter, as though it wanted the very prettiest mother in all the world, an' knowed jus' what it was about. "An' Polly kissed Mary. "You is so kind. Mary r says she. "Tis jus' weef o' you ! How con you!' " 'Sweet?' says Mary, puzzled. "Why, no, Polly. I'm— glad.' " 'Is you, Mary? 'Tis so odd! Is you really— gladf " -Why not?' ^ t t t " 'I don't know, Mary,' says Polly. 'But I— 1— l 'lowed, somehow— that you wouldn't be— so very glad. An' I'm not sure that I'm grateful— enough. A Madonna of Tinkle Tickle 173 "An' the women o' Tinkle Tickle wondered, too, that Mary Mull could kiss Polly Twitter's baby. Polly Twitter with a rosy baby, — a lusty young nipper, — an' a lad, t' boot! An' poor Mary Mull with no child, at all, t' bless Tim Mull's house with I An' Tim Mull a lover o' children, as everybody knowed ! The men chuckled a Httle, an' cast winks about, when Polly Twitter appeared on the roads with the baby ; for 'twas a comical thing t' see her air an' her strut an' the flash o' pride in her eyes. But the women kep' their eyes an' ears open — an' waited for what might happen. They was all sure, ecod, that there was a gale comin' down; an' they was women, — an' they knowed the hearts o' women, — an' they was wise, if not kind, in their expecta- tion. "As for Mary MJl, she give never a sign o' trouble, but kep' right on kissin' Polly Twitter's baby, whenever she met it, which Polly contrived t' be often ; an' I doubt that she knowed — until she couldn't help knowin' — that there was pity abroad at Tinkle Tickle for Tim Mull. "'Twas at the Methodist treat on Bide-a-Bit Point that Polly Twitter managed her mischief. 'Twas a time well-chosen, too. Trust the little minx for that! She was swift t' bite — an' clever t' fix her white little fangs. There was a flock o' women, Mary Mull among un, in gossip by the baskets. An' Polly Twitter was there, too, — an' the baby. Sun 174 Harbor Tales Down Noith under a black sea ; then the cold breath o' dusk, with fog in the wind, comin' over the hills. " 'Tim Mull,' says Polly, 'hold the baby.' " 'Me?' says he. 'I'm a butterfingers, Polly.' "'Come!' says she. " 'No, no, Polly! I'm timid.' "She laughed at that. 'I'd like t' see you once! says she, 'with a wee baby in your arms, as if 'twas your ovm. You'd look well. I'm thinkin'. Come, take un, Tim !' " 'Pass un over,' says he. "She gave un the child. 'Well!' says she, throw- in' up her little hands. 'You looks perfectly natu- ral. Do he not, Mary? It might be his own for all one could tell. Why, Tim, you was made for the like o' that. Do it feel nice ?' " 'Ay,' says pocr Tin, from his heart. 'It do.' " 'Well, well!' says Polly. 'I 'low you're wishin', Tim, for one o' your own.' " 'I is.' "Polly kissed the baby, then, an' rubbed it cheek t' cheek, so that her fluffy little '..^d was close t' Tim. She looked up in his eyes. "Tis a pity I' says she. An' she sighed. " 'Pity?' says he. 'Why, no!' ' 'Poor lad!' says she. 'Poor ladl' "'What's this!' says Tim. 'I've no cause for grief.' "There was tears in little Polly's blue eyes as she took back the child. ' 'Tis a shame,' says she, 'that A Madonna of Tinkle Tickle 175 you've no child o' your own! An' you so wonder- ful fond o' children I I grieves for you, lad. It fair breaks my heart.' "Some of the women laughed. An' this — some- how—moved Mary Mull t' vanish from that place. "Well, now, Polly Twitter had worked her mis- chief. Mary Mull was never the same after that. She took t' the house. No church no more — ^no walkin' the roads. She was never seed abroad. An' she took t' tears an' broodin'. No ripple o' smiles no more— no song in the kitchen. She went down- cast about the work o' the house, an' she sot over- much alone in the twilight— an' she sighed too often — an' she looked too much at t' sea — an' she kep' silent too long — an' she cried too much in the night. She'd have nothin' t' do with children no more; nor would she let Tim Mull so much as lay a hand on the head of a youngster. Afore this, she'd never fretted for a child at all; she'd gone her way con- tent in the world. But now — with Polly Twitter's vaunt forever in her ears — an' h; jnted by Tim Mull's wish for a child of his owu — an' with the laughter o' the old women t' blister her pride — she was like t' lose her reason. An' the more it went on, the worse it got: for the folk o' the Tickle knowed very well that she'd give way t' envy an' anger, grievin' for what she couldn't have; an' she knowed that they knowed an' that they gossiped an' this was like oil on a fire. ire liirbor Tales Down North " "nm,' says she, one night, that winter, 'will you listen t' me? Thinkin' things over, dear, I've chanced on a cle\'er thing t' do. 'Tis queer, though.' " 'I'll not mind how queer, Mary.' "She snuggled close to un, then, an' smiled. 'I wants t' go 'way from Tinkle Tickle,' says she. " 'Away from Tinkle Tickle?' "'Don't say you'll not!' " 'Why, Mary, I was bom here!' " 'I got t' go 'way.' " 'Wherefore?' says he. ' 'Tis good fishin' an' a friendly harbor.' " 'Oh, oh I' says she. 'I can't stand it no more.' " 'Mary, dear,' says he, 'there's no value in grievin' so sore over what can't be helped. Give it over, dear, an' be happy again, like you used t' be, won't you? Ah, now, Mary, won't you jus' try?' "'I'm ashamed!' "'Ashamed?' says he. "Yo. , Mary? Why, what's all this ? There never was a woman so dear an' true as you.* " 'A childless woman ! They mock me.' " ' 'Tis not true,' says he. 'They ' "'Ay, 'tis true. They laugh. They whispers when I pass. I've heard un.' " ' 'Tis not true, at all,' sj -s he. 'They loves you here at Tinkle Tickle.' "'Oh, no, Tim! No, no! The women scoff. An' I'm ashamed. Oh, I'm ashamed f t)e seen! I A Madonna of Tinkle Tickle 177 can't stand it no more. I got t' go 'way. Won't you take me, Tim?' "Tim MuU looked, then, in her eyes. 'Ay,' says he, 'I'll take you, dear.' " 'Not for long,' says she. 'Jus' for a year or two. T' some place where there's nobody about. I'll not want t' stay — so very long.' " 'So long as you likes,' says he. 'I'm wantin' only t' see you well an' happy again. 'Tis a small thing t' leave Tinkle Tickle if we're t' bring about that. We'll move down the Labrador in the spring o' the year.' " "In the spring o' the year I helped Tim Mull load his goods aboard a Labradorman an' close his cottage by Fo'c's'le Head. " 'Spring weather, Tumm,' says he, 'is the time for adventure. I'm glad I'm goin'. Why,' says he, 'Mary is easin' off already.' "Foreign for me, then. Spring weather; time for adventure. Genoa, this cruise, on a Twillin- gate schooner, with the first shore-fish. A Bar- badoes cruise again. Then a v'y'ge out China way. Queer how the flea-bite o' travel will itch! An' so long as it itched I kep' on scratchin'. 'Twas over two years afore I got a good long breath o' the fogs o' these parts again. An' by this time a miracle had happened on the Labrador. The good Lord had surprised Mary Mull at Come-By-Guess Harbor. Ay, lads! At last Mary Mull had what 178 Harbor Tales Down North she wanted. An' I had a godson. Tobias Tunini Mull had sot out on his cruise o' the seas o' this life. News o' all this cotched me when I landed at St. John's. 'Twas in a letter from Mary Mull herself. "'Ecodl' thinks I, as I read; 'she'll never be content until she flaunts that child on the roads o' Tinkle Tickle.' "An' 'twas true. 'Twas said so in the letter. They was movin' back t' Tinkle Tickle, says she, in the fall o' the year, t' live for good an' all. An' as for Tim, says she, a man jus' wouldn't believe how tickled he was. "Me, too, ecodl I was tickled. Deep down in my heart I blessed the fortune that had come t' Mary Mull. An' I was fair achin' t' knock the breath out o' Tim with a clap on the back. 'Queer,' thinks I, 'how good luck may be delayed. An' the longer luck waits,' thinks I, 'the better it seems an' the more 'tis welcome.' "'Twas an old letter, this, from Mary; 'twas near a year old. They was already back at Tinkle Tickle. An' so I laid in a silver spoon an' a silver mug, marked 'Toby' in fine fashion, against the time I might land at the Tickle. But I went clerk on the Call Again out o' Chain Harbor, that spring; an' 'twas not until midsummer that I got the chance t' drop in t' see how my godson was thrivin'. Lyin' here at Soap-an'- Water Harbor, one night, in stress o' weather, as now we lies here, I made up mind. A Madonna of Tinkle Tickle 179 come what -night, that I'd run over t' Tinkle Tickle an' give tli< mug an' the spoon t' wee Toby when the gale sliuuld oblige us. 'J"'y'' thinks I. 'Well, well! An' here it is the seventeenth o' the month. ru drop in on the nineteenth an' help celebrate the first birthday o' that child. 'Twill be a joyous occasion by Fo'c's'le Head. An' I'll have the schooner decked out in her best, an' guns poppin' ; an' I'll have Tim Mull aboard, when 'tis over, for a small nip o' rum.' "But when Tim Mull come aboard at Tinkle Tickle t' greet me, I was fair aghast an' dismayed. Never afore had he looked so woebegone an' wan. Red eye& neerin' out from two black caves; face all screwed with anxious thought. He made me think of a iish-thief omehow, with a constable comin' down with the wind ; an' it seemed, too, that maybe 'twas my fish he'd stole. For he'd lost his ease; he was full o' sighs an' starts an' shifty glances. An' there was no htalth in his voice ; 'twas but a disconsolate whisper — slinkin' out into the light o' day. 'Sin on his soul,' thinks I. 'He dwells in black weather.' " 'We spied you from the head,' spys he — an' sight 'It gives me a turn, lad, t' see you so sud- den. But I'm wonderful glad /ou've come.' " 'Glad ?' says I. Tnen look glad, ye crab !' An' I fetched un a clap on the l^ck. " 'Ouch !' says he. 'Don't, Ttimm I' " 'I congratu/a/* you,' says I. 180 Harbor Tales Down North "'Mm-in?' sayi he. 'Oh, ay! Sure, lad.' No smile, mark you. An' he looked off t' sea, as he spoke, an' then down at his boots, like a man in shame. 'Ay,' st/s he, brows down, voice gone low an' timid. 'Congratu/a/« me, does you? Sure. That's proper — maybe.' " 'Nineteenth o' the month,' says I. " "That's God's truth, Tumm.' " 'An' I'm come, ecod,' says I, 't' celebrate the first birthday o' Tobias Tumm Mull !' " 'First birthday,' says he. 'That's God's truth.' " 'Isn't there goin' t' be no celebration?' '"Oh, sure!' says he. 'Oh, my, yes! Been gettin' ready for days. An' I've orders t' fetch you straightway t' the house. Supper's laid, Tumm. Four places at the board the night.' " 'I'll get my gifts,' says I; 'an' then ' "He put a hand on my arm. 'What gifts?' says he " 'Is you gone mad, Tim Mull?' "'For— the child?' says he. 'Oh, sure! Mm-m!' He looked down at the deck. 'I hopes, Tumm,' says he, 'that they wasn't so very — expensive.' " 'I'll spend what I likes,' says I, 'on my own godson.' " 'Sure, you will !' says he. 'But I wish that ' "Then no more. He stuttered— an' gulped— an' give a sigh — an' went for'ard. An' so I fetched the spoon an' the mug from below, ''n a sweat o' wonder an' fear, an' we went ashore in Tim's punt. A Madonna of Tinkle Tickle 181 with Tim at glum u a rainy day in the fall o' the year." "An' now you may think that Mary Mull was woebegone, too. But she was not. Brown, plump, an' rosy! How she bloomed! She shone wiUi health; she twinkled with good spirits. There was no sign o' shame upon her no more. Her big brown lyes was clean o' tears. Her voice was soft with content. A sweet woman, she was, ever, an' tender with happiness, now, when she met us at the thresh- old. I marveled ' < it a gift like Toby Mull could work such a chan„e in a woman. 'Tis queer how we thrives when we hrves what we wants. She thanked me for the mug an' t':e spoon in a way that made me fair pity the joy . r.t the little things give her. "'For Toby!' says she. 'For wee Toby! Ah, Tumm, Tumm, — ^how wonderful thoughtful Toby's godfather is I" "She wiped her eyes, then; an' I wondered that she should shed tears upon such an occasion — ay, wondered, an' could make nothin' of it at all. " ' 'Tis a great thing,' says she, 't' be the mother of a son. I lost my pride, Tumm, as you knows, afore we moved down the Labrador. But now, Tumm,— now, lad,— I'm jus' like other women. I'm jus' as much a woman, Tumm,' says she, 'as any woman o' Tinkle Tickle!' "With that she patted my shoulder an' smiled an' 182 Harbor Tales Down North rippled with sweet laughter an' fled t' the kitchen t' spread Toby Mull's first birthday party. "'Tim,' says I, 'she've done well since Toby come.' " 'Mm-m ?' says he. 'Ay !' — an' smoked on. " 'Ecod !' says I ; 'she's blithe as a maid o' six- teen.' " 'She's able t' hold her head up,' says he. 'Isn't afeared she'll be laughed at by the women no more. That's why. 'Tis simple.' " "You've lost heart yourself, Tim.' " 'Me? Oh, no !' says he. 'I'm a bit off my feed. Nothin' more. An' I'm steadily improvin'. Steadily, Tumm, — improvin' steadily.' " 'You've trouble, Tim?' "He gripped his pipe with his teeth an' puffed hard. 'Ay,' says he, after a bit. 'I've trouble, Tumm. You got it right, lad.' "Jus' then Mary Mull called t' supper. There was no time t' learn more o' this trouble. But I was bound an' determined, believe me, t' have Tim Mull aboard my craft, that night, an' fathom his woe. 'Twas a thousand pities that trouble should have un downcast when joy had come over the rim of his world like a new day." "Places for four, ecod! Tim Mull was right. Twas a celebration. A place for Tim — an' a place for Mary — an' a place for me. An' there, too, was a place for Tobias Tumm Mull, a high chair, A Madonna of Tinkle Tickle 183 drawed close to his mother's side, with arms waitin' t' clutch an' hold the little nipper so soon as they fetched tm in. I wished they'd not delay. 'Twas a strain on the patience. I'd long wanted — an' I'd come far — ^t' see my godson. But bein' a bachelor- man I held my tongue for a bit: for, thinks I, they're washin' an' curlin' the child, an' they'll fetch un in when they're ready t' do so, all spick-an'-span an' polished like a door-knob, an' crowin', too, the little rooster! 'Twas a fair sight to see Mary Mull smilin' beyond the tea-pot. 'Twas good t' see what she had provided. Cod's-tongues an' bacon — with new greens an' potatoes — an' capillaire-berry pie an' bake-apple jelly. 'Twas pretty, too, t' see the way she had arrayed the table. There was flowers from the hills flung about on the cloth. An' in the midst of all — fair in the middle o' the blossoms an' leaves an' toothsome plenty — was a white cake with one wee white taper bumin' as bright an' bold as ever a candle twice the size could manage. " 'Mary Mull,' says I, 'I've lost patience !' "She laughed a little. 'Poor Tumm!' sajrs she. 'I'm sorry your hunger had t' wait.' " ' 'Tis not my hunger.' "She looked at me with her brow wrinkled. "No?* says she. " 'I wants t' see what I've come t' see.' " 'That's queer !' says she. 'What you've come t' see?' " 'Woman,' cries I, "fetch in that baby !' 184 Harbor Tales Down North • i; "Never a word. Never a sound. Mary Mull drawed back a step— an' stared at me with her eyes growin' wider an' wider. An' Tim Mull was lookin' out o' the window. An' I was much amazed by all this. An' then Mary Mull turned t' Tim. 'Tim,' says she, her voice slow an' low, 'did you not write Tumm a letter?' "Tim faced about. 'No, Mary,' says he. 'I — I hadn't no time — t' waste with writin'.' " 'That's queer, Tim.' " *I— I— I forgot.' " 'I'm sorry— Tim.' "'Oh, Mary, I didn't want to I' says Tim. 'That's the truth of it, dear. I— I hated— t' do it.' " 'An' you said never a word comin' up the hill?' '"God's sake!' cries Tim, like a man beggin' mercy, 'I couldn't say a word like that!' "Mary turned then t' me. 'Tumm,* says she, 'little Toby— is dead.' '"Dead, Mary!' " 'We didn't get much more than— jus' one good look at the little fellow— afore he left us.' "When I took Tim Mull aboard the Call Again that night," the tale ran on, " 'twas all clear above. What fog had been hangin' about had gone off with a little wind from the warm inland places. The lights o' Harbor — warm lights — gleamed all round about Black hills: still water in the lee o' the rocks. The tinkle of a bell fell down from the A Madonna of Tinkle Tickle 185 slope o' Lookout; an' a maid's laugh — sweet as the bell itself— come ripplin' from the shadows o' the road. Stars out; the little beggars kep' winkin' an' winkin' away at all the mystery here below jus' as if they knowed all about it an' was sure we'd be surprised when we come t' find out. " 'Tumm, ol' shipmate,' says Tim Mull, 'I got a lie on my soul.' " ' 'Tis a poor place for a burden like that.' " 'I'm fair wore out with the weight of it.' " 'Will you never be rid of it, man?' " 'Not an I keeps on bein' a man.' "'So, Tim?' "He put his hand on my shoulder. 'Is you a friend o' Mary's?' says he. 'Tis a thing you must know without tellin'.' " 'She's a woman, Timim.' " 'An' a wife.' "'Woman an' wife,' says he, 'an' I loves her well. God knows!' The tinkle o' the bell on the black slope o' Lookout caught his ear. He listened —until the tender little sound ceased an' sleep fell again on the hill. 'Tumm,' says he, then, all at once, 'there never was no baby! She's deceivin' Tinkle Tickle t' save her pride!'" Tumm closed the book he had read page by page. f! M VII THE LITTLE NIPPER O' HIDE- AN'-SEEK HARBOR VII THE LITTLE NIPPER O' HIDE-AN'-SEEK HARBOR WE nosed into Hide-an'-Seek Harbor jus' by chance. What come o' the venture has sauce enough t' tell about in any company that ever sot down in a forecastle of a windy night t' listen to a sentimental ol' codger like me spin his yarns. In the early dusk o' that night, a spurt o' foul weather begun t' swell out o' the nor'east — a fog as thick as soup an' a wind minded for too brisk a lark at sea. Hard Harry Hull 'lowed t' at we might jus' as well rvai into Hide-an'-Seek it a night's lodgin' in the lee o' the hills, an' pick up what iish we could trade the while, there bein' nothin' t* gain by hangin' off shore an' splittin' the big seas all night long in the rough. 'Twas a mean harbor, as it turned out — twelve score folk, ill-spoken of abroad, but with what justice none of us knowed; we had never dropped anchor there before. I was clerk o' the Robin Red Breast in them days — a fore-an'-aft schooner, tradin' trinkets an' gBub for salt fish between Mother Burke o' Cape John an' the Newf 'un'land ports o' the Straits 18» 190 Harbor Tales Down North o' Belle Isle; an' Hard Harry Hull, o' Yesterday Cove, was the skipper o' the craft. Ay, I means Hard Harry hisself — he that gained fame there- after as a sealin' captain an' takes the Queen o' the North out o' St. John's t' the ice every spring o' the year t' this present. Well, the folk come aboard in a twitter an' flutter o' curiosity, flockin' to a new trader, o' course, like young folk to a spectacle; an' they demanded my prices, an' eyed an' fingered my stock o' gee- gaws an' staples, an' they whispered an' stared an' tittered, an' they promised at last t' fetch off a quintal or two o' fish in the momin', it might be, an the fog had blowed away by that time. 'Twas after dark afore they was all ashore again — all except a sorry ol' codger o' the name o' Anthony Lot, who had anchored hisself in the cabin with Skipper Harry an' me in expectation of a cup o' tea or the like o' that. By that time I had my shelves all put t' rights an' was stretched out on my counter, with my head on a roll o' factory- cotton, dawdlin' along with my friendly ol' flute. I tooted a ballad or two — Larboard Watch an' Dublin Bay; an' my fingers bein' Umber an' able, then, I played the weird, sad songs o' little Toby Farr, o' Ha-ha Harbor, which is more t' my taste, mark you, than any o' the fashionable music that drifts our way from St. John's. Afore long I cotched ear of a foot-fall on deck — ^tip-toein' aft, soft as a cat ; an' I knowed that my music had lured The Little Nipper 1»1 somebody close t' the cabin hatch t* listen, as often it did when I was meanderin' away t' ease my melancholy in the evenin'. "On deck!" says Skipper Harry. "Hello, you I" Nobody answered the skipper's hail. I lowed then that 'twas a bashful child I had lured with my sad melody. "Come below," the skipper bawled, "whoever you is ! I say— come below I" "Isr't nobody there," says Anthony Lot. "I heared a step," says I. "Me, too," says Skipper Harry. "Nothin' o' no consequence," says Anthony. "I wouldn't pay no attention t' that" "Somebody up there in the rain," says the skipper. "Oh, I knows who 'tis," says Anthony. " 'Tisn't nobody that amotmts t' nothin' very much." "Ah, well," says I, "we'll have un down here out o' the dark jus' the same." "On deck there!" says the skipper agaia ""i'ou is welcome below, sir!" Down come a lad in response t' Hard Harry's hail — jus' a pallid, freckled little bay-noddie, with a tow head an' blue eyes, risin' ten years, or there- abouts, mostly skin, bones an' curiosity, such as you may find in shoals in every harbor o' the coast. He was blinded by the cabin lamp, an' brushed the light out of his eyes ; an' he was abashed — less shy than cautious, however, mark you; an' I mind that 10« Harbor Tales Down North i he shuffled and grinned, none too sure of his wel- come — halted, doubtful an' beseechin', like a dog on a dean kitchen floor. I marked in a sidelong glance, too, when I begun t' toot again, that his wee face was all in a pucker o' bewilderment, as he listened t' the sad strains o' Toby Farr's music, jus' as though he knowed he wasn't able t' rede the riddles of his life, jus' yet awhile, but would be able t' rede them, by an' by, when he growed up, an' expected t' find hissclf in a pother o' trouble when he mastered the answers. I didn't know his name, then, t' be sure; had I knowed it, as know it I did, afore the night was over, I might have put down my flute, in amazement, an' stared an' said, "Well, well, well!" jus' as everybody did, no doubt, when they clapped eyes on that lad for the first time an' was told whose son he was. "What's that wee thing you're blowin'?" says he. "This here small contrivance, my son," says I, "is called a flute." The lad scowled. "Is she?" says he. "Ay," says I, wondertn' wherein I had offended the wee feller; "that's the name she goes by in the parts she hails from." "Hm-m," says he. I seed that he wasn't thinkin' about the flute — that he was broodin'. All at once, then, I learned what 'twas about. "I isn't your son," says he. The Little Nipper 19S "That'» true," wyi I. "What about it?" "Well, you called me your son, didn't you?" "Oh, well," says I "I didn't mean " "Whn you do it for?" 'Twas a demand. The wee lad was stirred an' earnest. An' why? I was troubled. 'Twas a queer thing altogether. I seed that a man must walk warily in answer lest he bruise a wound. 'Twas plain that there was a deal o' deUcate mystery be- neath an' beyond. "Answer me fair," says I, in bantfr; "wouldn't a man like me make a fair-t'-middUn' pa for a lad like you?" That startled un. "I'd wager no fish on it, sir," says he, "afore I learned more o' your quality." "Well, then," says I, "you've but a dull outiit o' manners." He flashed a saucy grin at me. 'Twas agreeable enough. I deserved it. An' 'twas made mild with a twinkle o' humor. "I've pricked your pride, sir," says he. "I'm sorry." "Answer me, then, in a mannerly way," says I, "Come now I Would I pass muster as a pa for a lad like you ?" He turned solemn an' earnest. "You wish you was my pa?" says he. " 'Tis a sudden question," says I, "an' a poser." "You doesn't, then?" 194 Harbor Tales Down North I "I didn't ny that," lajn I. "What you wiihin' roundf?" "I isn't wishin' nothin' at all about it," Mys he. "All I really wants to know is why you called me your son when I isn't no such thing." "An' you wants an answer t' that?" "I'd be grateful, sir." Skipper Harry got the notion from all this talk, mixed with the eager, wistful look o' the lad, as he searched me with questions, t' ease the v/otu^rr that gripped an' hurt un, whatever it was — Skipper Harry got the notion that the lad had no father at all that he knowed of, an' that he sorrowed with shame on that account. "I wish you was my son," says he, t' hearten un. "Danged if I don't!" The lad flashed 'round on Skipper Hany an' stared at un with his eyes poppin'. "What you say jus' then?" says he. "You beared what I said." "Say it again, sir, for my pleasure." "I will," says the skipper, "an' glad to. I says I wish you belonged t' me." "Is you sure about that?" Skipper Harry couldn't very well turn back then. Nor was he the man t' withdraw. An' he didn't reef a rag o' the canvas he had spread in his kindly fervor. "I is," says he. "Why?" The little Nipper W ) "It maket me wonder. What if you wu my |»? Eh? What if you jus' happened t' be?" "I'd be glad. That's what." "That'! r!" queer! "Nothin' queer about it." "Ah-hal" says the lad; "'tis wonderful queer P' He cocked his head an' peered at the skipper like an inquisitive bird. "Nobody never said nothin' like that t' me afore," says he. "What you wish I was your son for? Eh?" "You is clever an' good enough, isn't you?" "Maybe I is clever. Maybe I'm good, too. I'll not deny that I'm both. What I wants t' know, though, is what you wants me for?" "I'd be proud o' you." "What for?" Skipper Harry lost r-tiente. "Don't pester me no more," says he. "I've no lad o' my own. That's reason enough." The wee feller looked the skipper over from his shock o* red hair to his sea-boots, at leisure, an' turned doleful with pity. "My duty, sir," says he. "I'm sore an' sorry for you." "Don't you trouble about that." "You sees, sir," says the lad, "I can't help you none. I got a pa o' my own." "That's good," says the skipper. "I'm glad o' that." "Moreover, sir," says the lad, "I'm content with 196 Harbor Tales Down North the pa I got Yes, sir— I'm wonderful proud o' my pa, an' I 'low my pa's wonderful proud o' me, if the truth was knowed. I 'low not many lads on this coast is got such a wonderful pa as I got." "No?" says I. "That's grand!" "No, sir-ee ! Is they, Anthony Lot ?" Anthony Lot begun t' titter an' chuckle. I fancied he cast a wink. 'Twas a broad joke he was playin' with, whatever an' all ; an' I wished I knowed what amused the dolt. "You got it right, Sammy," says he. The lad shpped his knee. "Yes, sir-ee!" says he. "You jus' bet I got it right!" "You got a wonderful ma, too?" says I. "All I got is a wonderful pa," says he. "My ma died long, long ago. Didn't she, Anthony Lot? An' my pa's sailin' foreign parts jus' now. Isn't he, Anthony Lot? I might get a letter from un by the next mail-boat. No tellin' when a letter will come. Anytime at all — ^maybe next boat. An' my pa might turn up here hisself. Mightn't he, Anthony Lot? Might turn up right here in Hide-an'-Seek Harbor without givin' me the least word o' wamin'. Any day at all, too. Eh, Anthony Lot?" "Skipper of a steam vessel in the South American trade," says Anthony. "Any day at all?" "Plyin' out o' Rio, I'm told." "Eh, Anthony Lot? Any day at all?" Anthony grinned at me in a way I'd no taste The Little Nipper 107 for. "Any day at all," says he t' the lad. "You got it right, Sammy." "Or Sandy Spot is fetchin' me up," says the lad, " 'til my pa comes home. It don't cost my pa a copper, neither. 01' Sandy Spot is fetchin' me up jus' for my pa's sake. That's what comes o' havin' a pa like the pa I got. Don't it, Anthony Lot?" "I 'low so, Sammy; jus' for your pa's sake — an' the Gov'ment stipend, too." What slur was hid in that sly whisper about the Gov'ment stipend escaped the lad. "Ah-ha!" he crowed. I'm accustomed t' pry into the hearts o' folks. With no conscience at all I eavesdrops on feelin's. 'Tis a passion an' fixed practice. An' now my curiosity clamored for satisfaction. I was sus- picious an' I was dumbfounded. "You might put more heart in your crowin'," says I. The lad turned on me with his breath caught an' his wee teeth as bare as a wolf's. "What you say that for?" says he. "'Tis a pleasure," says I, "t' stir your wrath in your pa's behalf. 'Tis a pretty sight t' see. I enjoys it. In these modem times," says I, " 'tis not often I finds a lad as proud of his pa as you. My duty t' you, sir," says I. "I praise yott" The lad looked t' the skipper. "My compUments," says Hard Harry, enjoyin' the play. "Me, too. I praise you highly." >!i« 198 Harbor Tales Down North "Whew !" says the lad. "Such manners abash me. There's no answer on the tip o' my tongue. I'm ashamed o' my wit." Skipper Harry chuckled. An' I laughed. An' the wee lad laughed, too. An' dull Anthony Lot, in a fuddle o' stupidity an' wonder, stared from one t' the other, not knowin' whether t' grin or com- plain of our folly. There was foul weather with- out — wind in the riggin', blowin' in from the sea an' droppin' down over the hills, an' there was the patter o' black rain on the roof o' the cabin. 'Tis a matter for large surprise, it may be, that growed men, like Hard Harry an' me, should find interest an' laughter in a gossip like that. Yet 'tis dull times on a tradin' schooner, when trade's done for the day, an' the night's dismal an' sodden with rain; an' with a fire in the bogie-stove aboard, an' no lively maids t' draw un ashore to a dance or a scoff o' tea an' cakes in a strange harbor, a man seizes the distraction that seeks un out, and makes the best of it that he can. More than that, an' deep an' beyond it, 'twas entertainment, an' a good meas- ure of it, that had come blinkin' down the deck. Afore we had time or cause for complaint o' the botheration o' childish company, we was involved in a brisk passage o' talk, which was no trouble at all, but sped on an' engaged us without pause. There was that about the wee lad o' Hide-an'-Seek Har- bor, too, as a man sometimes encounters, t' com- The Little Nipper 109 mand our interest an' t' compel our ears an' our tongues t' their labor. With that, then, the lad's tongue broke loose an' ran riot in his father's praise. I never heared such wild boastin' in all my travels afore — eyes alight with pleasure, as I thought at the time, an' tow head waggin' with wonder an' pride, an' lips curlin' in contempt for the fathers of all the wide world in comparison; an' had not the lad been too tender in years for grave blame, too lonely an' forlorn for punishment, an' of a pretty loyalty to his father's fame and quality, pretty enough to excuse the pre- posterous tales that he told, I should have spanked un warmly, then an' there, an' bade un off ashore to cleanse his wee tongue o' the false inventions. There was no great deed fiat his father hadn't accomplished, no virtue he lacked, no piety he had not practiced; an' with every reckless, livin' boast o' the man's courage an' cleverness, his strength an' vast adventures, no matter how far-fetched, went a tale to enlighten an' prove it. The sea, the ice, the timber— 'twas all the same; the father o' this lad was bolder an' wiser an' more gifted with graces than the fathers of all other lads— had endured more an' escaped more. So far past belief was the great tales the lad told that 'twas pitiable in the end; an' I wasn't quite sure — ^bein' a sentimental man — whether t' guffaw or t' blink with grief. "You is spinnin' a wonderful lot o' big yams soo Harbor Tales Down North for a wee lad like you," says Skipper Harry. "Aw, now, an I was you," says he, in kindness, "I wouldn't carry on so careless." "I knows other yams." "You s'prise me !" "I could startle you more." "Where'd you learn all them yams?" "I been told 'em." "Your pa tell you?" The lad laughed. "Dear man, no !" says he. "I never seed my pa in all my life." "Never seed your pa in all your life! Well, now!" "Why, no, sir! Didn't you know that?" "You didn't tell me." "I didn't think I had t' tell you. I thought ev'body in the world knowed that much about me." "Well, well !" says the skipper. "Never seed your pa in all your life! Who told you all them yams then?" "Ev'body." "Oh! Ev'body, eh? I sees. Jus' so. You like t' hear yams about your pa?" "Well," says the lad, "I 'low I certainly do! Wouldn't you — if you had a pa like me?" 'Twas too swift a question. "Me?" says Skipper Harry, nonplused. "Ay— tell me!" Skipper Harry was a kind man an' a foolish one. The Little Nipper 201 "I bet ye I would!" says he, "I'd fair crave 'em. I'd pester the harbor with questions about my pa." "That's jus' what I does del" says the lad. "Doesn't I, Anthony Lot?" "You got it right, Sammy," says Anthony. "You can't hear too much about your wonderful pa." "You hears a lot, Sammy," says the skipper. "Oh, ev'body knows my pa," says the lad, "an' ev'body spins me yams about un." "Jus' so," says the skipper, gone doleful. "I sees." "Talkin' about my pa," says the lad, tumin' t' me, then, "I bet ye he could blow one o' them little black things better 'n you." "He could play the flute, too !" says I. "Well, I never been tol' so," says the lad; "but 'twould not s'prise me if he could. Could he, Anthony Lot?— -could my pa play the flute?" "He could." "Better 'n this man?" "Hoosh! Ay, that he could!" "There!" says the lad. "I tol' you so!" Anthony Lot turned his br.ck on the lad an' cast a wink at me, an' grinned an' winked again, an' winked once more t' Skipper Harry; an' then he told us all as silly an' bitter cruel a whopper as ever I he' -ed in all my travels. "Once upon a time. Sir johnnie McLeod, him that was Gov'nor o* Newf'un'land in them days, sailed this coast in the Gov'ment yacht," says he; "an' when he come 202 Harbor Tales Down North ) i near by Hide-an'-Seek Harbor, he says: 'I've in- spected this coast, an' I've seed the mines at Tilt Cove, an' the whale fishery at Sop's Arm, an' the mission at Battle Harbor, ; a' my report o' the vron- ders virill mightily tickle His Gracious Majesty the King; but what I have most in mind, an' what lies nearest my heart, an' what I have looked for- ward to most of all, is t' sit down in my cabin, at ease, an' listen to a certain individual o' Hide- an'-Seek Harbor, which I beared about in England, play on the flute.' Well, the Gov'ment yacht dropped anchor in Hide-an'-Seek, Sammy, an' lied the night jus' where this here tradin' schooner lies now ; an' when Sir Johnnie McLeod had beared your father play on the flute, he says: 'The man c^n play on the flute better 'n anybody in the whole world! I'm glad I've lived t' see this day. I'll see to it that he has a gold medal from His Gracious Majesty the King for this night's work.' " "Did my pa get the gold medal from His Gracious Majesty?" "He did, in due course." "Ah-ha!" crowed the lad t' Skipper Harry. "I tol' you so!" Skipper Harry's face hail gone hard. He looked Anthony Lot in the eye until Anthony begun t' shift with uneasiness an' shame. "Anthony," says he, "does that sort o' thing give you any real pleasure?" "What sort o' thing?" The Little Nipper 80S "Tellin' a yam like that to a wee lad like he?" " 'Twasn't nothin' wrong." "Nothin' wrong! — t' bait un so?" "Jus' a bit o' sport." "Sorry sport!" "Ah, well, he've growed used to it." T' this the lad was listenin' like a caribou o' the barrens scentin' peril. " 'Twas a naughty thing t' do, ye ol' crab!" says the skipper t' Anthony Lot. The lad struck in. "Isn't it true?" says he. Skipper Harry cotched the quiver o' doubt an' fear in his voice an' was warned jus' in time. There was jus' one tiling t' say. "True?" says the skipper. "Sure, 'tis true ! Who doubts it?" "Not me," says Anthony. "Ye hadn't better !" says the skipper. "You bet ye 'tis true !" says I. "I've beared that selfsame tale many a time afore." "Sarimy, my son," says the skipper, "who is your father anyhow?" The lad fair glowed with pride, as it seemed t' me then. Up went his head — out went his wee chest; an' his eyes went wide an' shinin', an' he smiled, an' the blood o' pride flushed his cheeks red. "I'm John Scull's son!" says he. Anthony Lot throwed back his head an' shot a laugh through his musty beard. 'illi i if ' ■< /; ^K^S mm IX AN IDYL OF RICKITY TICKLE NO fish at Whispering Islands: never a quintal —never so much as a fin— at Come-by- Chance; and no more than a catch of torn- cod in the hopeful places past Skeleton Point of Three Lost Souls. The schooner Quick as Wink, trading the Newfoundland outports in summer weather, fluttered from cove to bight and tickle of the coast below Mother Burke, in a great pother of anxiety, and chased the rumor of a catch around ;he Cape Norman light to Pinch-a-Penny Beach. There v/as no fish in those places; and the Quick as mnk, with Tumm, the clerk, in a temper with the vagaries of the Lord, as manifest in fish and weather, snread her wings for flight to the Labrador. From Bay o' Love to Baby Cove, the hook-and-line men, lying oflf the Harboriess Shore, had done well enough with the fish for folk of their ill condition, and were well enough disposed toward trading; whereupon Tumm resumed once more his genial patronage of the Lord God A'mighty, swearing, in vast satisfaction with the trade of those parts, that all was right with the worid, whatever might seem tss 256 Harbor Tales Down North at times. "In this here world, as Davy Junk used t' hold," he laughed, in extenuation of his improved philosophy, " 'tis mostly a matter o' fish." And it came about in this way that when we dropped anchor at Dirty-Face Bight of the Labrador, whence Davy Junk, years ago, in the days of his youth, had issued to sail the larger seas, the clerk was re- minded of much that he might otherwise have for- gotten. This was of a starlit time : it was blowing softly from southerly parts, I recall ; and the water lay flat under the stars — flat and black in the lee of those great hills — and the night was clear and warm and the lights were out ashore. "I come near not bein' very fond o' Davy Junk, o' Dirty-Face Bight," Tumm presently declared. "Good Lord !" the skipper taunted. "A rascal you couldn't excuse, Tumm?" ' I 'd no fancy for his religion," Tumm com- plained. "What religion?" "Well," the clerk re{Aed, in a scowling drawl, "Skipper Davy always lowed that in this here damned ol' world a man had t' bite or get bit. An' as for his manner o' courtin' a maid in conse- quence " "Crack on!" said the skipper. And Tumm yarned to his theme. . . . "Skipper Davy was well-favored enough, in point o' looks, for fishin' the Labrador." he began; "an' WlJ^Mi' An Idyl of Rickity Tickle 257 I low, with the favor he had, such as 'twas, he might have done as well with the maids as the fish courtin' as he cotched-«y, an' made his everlastin' fortune in love, I'll be bound, an' kep' it at com- pound interest through the eternal years— had his heart been as tender as his fear o' the world was large, or had he give way, by times, t' the kindness soul he was bom with. A scrawny, pinch-lipped, mottled httle runt of a Labrador skipper, his face all screwed up with peerin' for trouble in the mists beyond the waters o' the time: he was bom here at Dirty-Face Bight, but sailed the IVord o' the Lord out o- Rickity Tickle, in the days of his pride, when 1 was a lad o' the place; an' he cotched his load, down north, lean seasons or plenty, in a way t' make the graybeards an' boasters blink in every tickle o' the Shore. A fish-kiUer o' parts he was: no great spectacle on the roads o' harbor, though-a mild, backward, white-livered little man ashore, yieldin' the path t' every dog o' Rickity Tickle. 'I gets my fish m season,' says he. 'an' I got a right t' mind my business between whiles.' But once fair out t' sea, with fish t' be got, an' the season dirty, the devil hisself would drive a schooner no harder than Davy Junk— not even an the 01' Rascal was trappin' young souls in lean times, with revivals comin' on hke fall gales. Neither looks nor liver could keep Davy in harbor in a gale o' wind, with a trap- berth t' be snatched an' a schooner in the offing- nor did looks hamper un in courtship, an' that's mv 9S8 Harbor Tales Down North yam, however it turns out, for his woe or salvation. 'Twas sheer perversity o' religion that kep' his life anchored in Bachelors' Harbor — 'A man's got t' bite or get bit!' "Whatever an' all, by some mischance Davy Junk vas fitted out with red hair, a bony face, lean, gray lips, an' sharp an' shifty little eyes. He'd a sly way, too, o' smoothin' his restless lips, an' a mean habit o' lookin' askance an' talkin' in whispers. But 'twas his eyes that startled a stranger. Ah-ha, they was queer little eyes, sot deep in a cramped face, an' close as evil company, each peekin' out in distrust o' the world ; as though, ecod, the world was waitin' for nothin' so blithely as t' strike Davy Junk in a mean advantage I Eyes of a wolf-pup. Twas stand oflf a pace, with Davy, on first meetin', an' eye a man 'til he'd foimd what h« w<*nted t' know; an' 'twas sure with the k)ok of a No*rt»em pup o' wolf's breedin', no less, that he'd searvh out a stranger's intention — ready t' run in an' bite, or t' do<^e the toe of a boot, as might chance t' see.n best. 'Twas a thing a man marked first of all; an' he'd marvel so hard for a bit, t' make head an' tale o' the glance he got, that he'd hear never a word o' what Davy Junk said. An' without knowin' why, he'd be ashamed of hisself for a cruel man. 'God's sake. Skipper Davy !' thinks he ; 'you needn't be afeared o' me! I isn't goin' t' touch you!' An' afore he knowed it he'd have had quite a spurt o' conversa- tion with Davy, without sayin' a word, but merely An Idyl of Rickity Tickle 859 by means o' the eyes; the upshot bein' this: that he'd promise not f hurt Davy, an' Davy'd promise not t' hurt he. "Thereafter— the thing bein' settled once an* for all— 'twas plain saiKn' along o' Davy Junk. " Skipper Davy,' says I, 'what you afeared of?' "He jumped. 'Me ?' says he, after a bit. 'Why ?' " 'C*,' says I, 'I'm jus' curious t' know.' " 'I've noticed, Tumm,' says he, 'that you is a wonderful hand t' pry into the hearts o' folk. But I "low you doesn't mean no harm. That's jus' Nature havin' her way. An' though I isn't very fond o' Nature, I got t' stand by her dealin's here below. So I'll answer you fair. Why, lad,' says he, 7 isn't afeared o' nothin'i' " 'You're wary as a wolf, man I' " 'I bet you I is!' says he, in a flash, with his teeth shut. 'A man's got t' be wary.' " 'They isn't nobody wants t' liurt a mild man like you.' " 'Pack o' wolves in this here world,' says he 'No mercy nowhere. You bites or gets bit.' "Well, well ! 'Twas news t' the lad that was I. 'Who tol' you so ?* says I. " 'Damme!' says he, 'I found it out.' "'How?' " 'Jus' by livin' along t' be thirty-odd years,' " 'Why, Skipper Davy,' says I, 'it looks f me like a kind an' lovely world I' 260 Harbor Tales Down North " 'You jus' wait 'til you're thirty-two, like me.' says he, 'an' see how you likes it.' " 'You can't scare me. Skipper Davy!' '"World's fuU o' wolves, I tells you!' " 'Sure,' says I, 'you doesn't like f think that, does you?' " 'It don't matter what I likes t' think,' says he. 'I've gathered wisdom. I thinks as I must.' " 'I wouldn't believe it, ecod,' says I, 'an I knowed it t' be true!' "An" I never did." Tumm chuckled softly in the dark— glancing now at the friendly stars, for such reassurance, perhaps, as he needed, and had had all his genial life. "A coward or not, as you likes it, an' make up your own minds," Tumm went on; "but 'twas never the sea that scared un. 'They isn't no wind can scare me,' says he, 'for I isn't bad friends with death.' Nor was he ! A beat into the gray wind — hangin' on off a lee shore — a hard chance with the Labrador reefs in foggy weather— a drive through the ice after dark : Davy Junk, clever an' harsh at sea, was the skipper for that, mild as he might seem ashore. 'Latch-string out for Death, any time he chances my way, at sea,' says he; 'but I isn't goin' t' die o' want ashore.' So he'd a bad name for drivin' a craft beyond her strength ; an' 'twas none but stout hearts — blithe young devils, the most, with a wish t' try their spirit — would ship on the IVord o' the An Idyl of Rickity Tickle 261 Lord. 'Don't you blame me an we're cast away,' lays Davy, in fair wamin'. 'An you got hearts in your bellies, you keep out o' this. This here coast, says he, 'isn't got no mercy on a man that can't get his fish. An' I isn't that breed o' man!' An' so from season t' season he'd growed well-t'-do: a drive in the teeth o' hell, in season— if hell's made o' wind an' sea, as I'm inclined t' think— an' the ease of a bachelor man, between whiles, in his cottage at Rickity Tickle, where he lived all alone like a spick-an'-span spinster. 'Twas not o' the sea he was scared. 'Twas o' want in an unkind world ; an' t'was jus' that an' no more that drove un t' hard sailin' an' contempt o' death — sheer fear o' want in the wolf's world that he'd made this world out t' be in his own soul. " 'Twas not the sea: 'twas his own kind he feared an' kep' clear of— men, maids, an' children. Friends ? Nar a one— an ' 'twas wholly his choosin', too ; for the world never fails t' give friends t' the man that seeks un. 'I doesn't want no friends,' says he. 'New friends, new worries ; an' the more o' one, the more o' the other. I got troubles enough in this here damned world without takin' aboard the thousand troubles o' friends. An' I 'low they got troubles enough without sharin' the burden o' mine. Me a friend I I'd only fetch sorrow t' the folk that loved me. An' so I don't want t' have nothin' t' do with nobody. I wants t' cotch my fish in sea- son—an' t'len I wants t' be left alone. Hate or Mictocory iesowtion tisx cha«t (ANSI ami JSO TEST CHART No. 2) ^ APPLIED IIVHGE In ^^ 165 J East Main Strstl r.S Rochester. Neo York 14609 USA = (716) 48! - 0300 - Phone S (716) 2BS - 5989 - Fox 262 Harbor Tales Down North love: 'tis all the same— trouble for the hearts o' folk on both sides. An', anyhow, I isn't got nothin' t' do with this world. I'm only lookin' on. No favors took,' says he, 'an' none granted.' An', well— t' be sure— in the way the world has— the world o' Rickity Tickle an' the Labrador let un choose his own path. But it done Davy Junk no good that any man could see; for by fits he'd be bitter as salt, an' by starts he'd be full o' whinli)ers an' sighs as a gale's full o' wind, an' between his fits an' his starts 'twas small rest that he had, I'm thinkin'. He'd no part with joy, ^or he hated laughter, an' none with rest, for he couldn't abide ease o' mind; an' as for sorrow, 'twas fair more than he could bear t' look upon an' live, for his con- science was alive an' loud in his heart, an' what with his religion he lived in despite of its teachin'. "I've considered an' thought sometimes, over- come a bit by the spectacle o' grief, an' no stars showin', that had Davy Junk not been wonderful tender o' heart he'd have nursed no spite against God's world; an' whatever an' all, had he but had the power an' wisdom, t' strangle his conscience in its youth he'd have gained peace in his own path, as many a man afore un. "'Isn't my fault 1' says he, one night. 'Can't blame me!" " "What's that. Skipper Davy?' " 'They says Janet Luff's wee baby has come t' the pass o' starvation.' An Idyl of Rickity Tickle 263 " Wdl,' says I, 'what's yotir tears for?* " 'I isn't got nothin' t' do with this here damned ol' world/ says he. 'I'm only lookin' on. Isn't no good in it, anyhow.' ".. y^*^ "P'' ^y* ^ '^*"'* nobody hurtin' you.' " 'Not bein' in love witii tears an' hunger,' says he, 'I isn't able t' cheer up.' " 'There's tnore'n that in the world.' " 'Ay; death an' sin.' ''I was a lad in love. "Kisses 1' says I. " 'A pother o' blood an' trouble,' says he. 'Death in every mouthful a man takes.' " 'Skipper Davy,' says I, 'you've come to a dread- ful pass.' '"Ay, an' t' be sure f says he. 'I've gathered wisdom with my years; an' every man o' years an' wisdom has come to a dreadful pass. Wait 'til you're thirty-two, lad, an' you'U find it out, an' remember Davy Junk in kindness, once you feels the fangs o' the world at your throat Maybe you thinks, Tumm, that I likes t' live in a wolf's world But I doesn't like it I jus' knows 'tis a wolf's world and goes cautious accordin'. I didn't make it, an' don't like it, but I'm here, an' I'm a wolf like the rest A wolfs world 1 Ah-hal You bites or gets bit down here. Teeth for you an you've no teeth o your own. Janet Luflf's baby, says you? But a dollar a tooth; an'-I keeps my teeth; keeps un sharp an ready for them that might want f bite me m my old age. If I was a fish I'd be fond o' MM Harbor Tales Down North angle-worms; bein' bora in a wolf's world, with the soul of a wolf, why, damme, I files my teeth! Still an' all, lad, I'm a genial man, an' I'll not deny that I'm unhappy. You thinks I likes t' hear the lads ashore mock me for a pinch-penny an' mean man ? No, sir I It grieves me. I wants all the time t' hear the little fellers sing out: "Ahoy, there. Skipper Davy, ol' cock! What fair wind blowed you through the tickle?" An' I'm a man o' com- passion, too. Why, Tumm, you'll never believe it, I knows, but / wants t' lift the fallen, an / wants t' feed the hungry, an' / wants to clothe the naked! It fair breaks my heart t' hear a child cry. I lies awake o' nights t' brood upon the sorrows o' the world. That's my heart, Tumm, as God knows it — but 'tis not the wisdom I've gathered. An' age an' wisdom teach a man t' be wary in a wolf's world. 'Tis a shame, by Godl' poor Davy Junk broke out; 'but 'tisn't my fault!' "I was scared t' my marrow-bones. " 'An' now, Tumm,' says he, 'what '11 1 do?' " 'Skipper Davy,' says I, 'go wash the windows o' your soul!' "He jumped. 'How's that?' says he. " ' 'Twould ease your heart t' do a good deed,' says I. 'Go save that baby.' " 'Me !' says he, in a rage. 'I'll have no hand whatever in savin' that child.' '"Why not?' " ' 'Twouldn't be kind t' the child.' lilj An Idyl of Rickity Tickle S65 "'God's sake!' " 'Don't you see, Tumm?' " 'Look you, Skipper Davyl' says I, 'Janet's baby isn't goin' t' die o' starvation in this harbor. There'll be a crew o' good women an' Labrador hands at Janet's when the news get abroad. But an you're lucky an' makes haste you'U be able t' get there first' '"What's one good deedi" 'T would be a good deed, Skipper Davy,' says I. 'An' you'd know it' "Skipper Davy jumped up. An' he was fair shakin' from head t' toe— with some queer tempta- tion t' be kind, it seemed to me then. "'Make haste!' says L " 'I can't do a good deed I" he whimpered 'I— I— got the othtf habit!' " 'Twas of a June night at Rickity Tickle that Davy Junk said these words," Tumm commented, m a kindly way, "with the Labrador vessels fitted out an' waitin' for a fair wind: such a night as this— a slow, soft little wind, a still, black harbor, an' a million stars a-twinkle." He paused— and looked up from the shadowy deck of the Quick as Wmk. "What more can a man ask t' stay his soul," he demanded, "than all them little stars?" The skipper of the -^ -* as Wink said, «'Tis a night o' fair promise And Tumm, in a sigh, "Davy Jitnk would never look up at the stars." And the Harbor Tales Down North little stars themselves continued to wink away in companionable reassurance just the same. "The other habit 1" Tumm ejaculated. "Ay— the other habit! 'Twas habit: a habit o' soul. An' then I learned a truth o' life. 'Twas no new thing, t' be sure : every growed man knows it well enough. But 'twas new t' me — as truth forever comes new t' the young. Lovely or fearsome as may chance t' be its guise, 'tis yet all new to a lad— a flash o' light upon the big mystery in which a lad's soul dwells eager for light An' I was scared; an* I jumped away from Davy Junk— as once thereafter I did — an' fair shook in' the Presence o' the Truth he'd taught me. For 'twas dear as a star: that a soul fashions its own world an' lives therein. An' I'd never knowed it afoie! An' I mind well that it come like a vision: the glimpse of a path, got from a hill— a path the feet o' men may tread t' bell an men perversely choose it 'A wolf's world? A world as you likes itl 'An' in my young world was no sorrow at all — ^nor any an, nor hate, nor htmger, nor tears. But love, ecod ! — ^which, like truth, comes new t' the young, an' first glimpsed is forever glori- ous. I was sixteen then — a bit more, perhaps; an' I was fond o' laughter an' hope. An' Bessie Tot was in my woild: a black-haired, red-lipped little rogue, with gray eyes, slow glances, an' black lashes t' veil her heart from eager looks. First love for T. Tumm, I'm bold t' say; for I'm proud o' the An Idyl of Rickity Tickle 267 odd lift o' soul it give me— which I've never knowed smce. though I've sought it with diligence-«y, ahnost with prayer. I've no shame at all t' tell o' the touch of a warm, moist little hand on the road t Gull Island Cove— the whisper, the tender fear, in the shadow o' the Needle— an' the queer, quick little kiss at the gate o' dark nights— an' the sigh an the plea t' come again. An' so, t' be sure, I'd no kin with the gloom o' Davy Junk that night, but was brother t' hope an' joy an' love. An' my body was big an' warm an' wiUin'— an' my heart was tender— an' my soul was clean— an' for love o' tile maid I loved I'd turned my eyes t' the sunlit hills o' hfe. God's world o' sea an' labor an' hearts — an' therein a lad in lovel " TU take care o' my soul.' thinks the lad. that was I. 'lest it be cast away forever, God help me!' "An' that's youth— the same everywhere an' forever." Tumm sighed. . . . 'Twas high time for me now t' sail the Labra- dor,' Tumm resumed, "an* I was in a pother o' longm' t' go. Sixteen— an' never a sight o' Mug- ford ! I was fair ashamed t' look Bessie Tot in the eye. Dear heart!— she ever loved courage in - man, an' the vviU t' labor, too, an' t' be. An' so-^ Ecod!' thinks I, on the way home that night Til Mil along o' Davy Junk, an' prove my spirit, withal, for the whole world t' see. An' I 'low that now. i II 268 Harbor Tales Down North knowin' me so well as he does, Davy'll ship me.' But my mother said me nay — until I pestered her skirts an' her poor heart beyond bearin'; an' then all at once she cried, an' kissed me, an' cried a bit more, an' kissed me again, an' hugged me, an' 'lowed that a lad had t' be a man some time, what- ever happened, an' bade me sail along o' Skipper Davy an he'd take me, which he never would do, thinks she. It come about, whatever an' all, that I foimd Skipper Davy on the doorstep of his spick- an'-span cottage by Blow-Me, near the close o' that day, with night fallin' with poor promise, an' the wind adverse an' soggy with fog. An' thinks I, his humor would be bad, an' he'd be cursin' the world an' the weather an' all, in the way he'd the bad habit o' doin'. But no such thing; he was as near to a smile o' satisfaction with hisself as Davy Junk could very well come with the bad habit o' lips an' brows he'd contracted. For look you! — a scowl is a twist o' face with some men ; but with Davy his smile was a twist that had t' be kep^ twisted. " 'Evil weather. Skipper Davy,' says I. " 'Oh no,' says he. 'It all depends on how you looks at it.' " 'But you're not in the habit o' looldn' ' " 'I'm leamin' t' peep,' says he. "I'd no means of accountin' for that! 'Foul weather, an' no talkin', man,' says I, 'for the Labra- dor bound r An Idyl of Rickity Tickle 269 " 'What's the sense o' naggin' the weather f says he. Isn't you able t' leave her alone, Tumm ? Give her time, lad, an' she'll blow fair. She've her humors as weU as we, haven't she? An' she've her business, too. An' how can you tell whether her business is good or evil? I tells you. Tumm, you »sn t got no right t' question the weather ' " 'God's sake!' says I. 'What's happened over- night? " 'No matter,' says he. 'I 'low a man haves the nght t' try a change o' mind an he wants to.' " 'Parson Tree been overhaulin' you V "'Oh,' says he. 'a man can put his soul ship- shape without the aid of a parson.' " 'Then, Skipper Davy,' says I, with my heart in my mouth, 'I 'low I'U saU the Labrador along o you.' * " 'Not so, my son,' says he. 'By no means.' " 'I wants to, Skipper Davy I' " 'You got a mother ashore,' says he. ^ " 'Well, but,' says I, 'my mother says a lad's got t be a man some time.' 'I 'I can't afford t' take you, Tumm.' '"Look you. Skipper Davy!' says I, 'I'm able- bodied for my years. None more so. Take me along o' you— an' I'U work my hands t' bloody pulp!' ' " ' 'Tis not that, Tumm,' says he. ' 'Tis— well— because-I've growed kind o' fond o' you overnight. We got a bit— i intimate — ^together — an' you ' you — was S70 Harbor Tales Down North kind. 'Tis not my habit, lad, t' be fond o' nobody,' says he, in a flash, 'an' I'll not keep it up. I'm otherwise schooled. But, damme I' says he, 'a man's got t' go overboard once in a while, v/hatever comes t' pass.' " "Then sure you'll take me I' " 'I wouldn't get my fish,' says he. 'I'd be scared o' losin' you. I'd sail the IVord o' the Lord like a ninny. Thinks I — I got t' be careful 1 Thinks I — why, I can't have Tumm cast away, for what would his mother do? Thinks I — I'll reef, an' I'll harbor, an' I can't get along, an' I might hit ice, an' I might go ashore on Devil-May-Care. An' I wouldn't get my fishf "'StiUan'all, Ipo/t'go!' " 'You isn't driven,' says he. " 'Skipper Davy,' says I, fair desperate, 'I got a maid.' " 'A whatf says he. " 'A maid. Skipper Davy,' says I, 'an' I wants with all my heart t' prove my courage.' " 'What you goin' t' do with her?' " 'I'll wed her in due season.' "Skipper Davy jtunped — an' stared at me until I fair blushed. I'd shook un well, it seemed, with- out knowin' — fair t' the core of his heart, as it turned out — an' I'd somehow give un a glimpse of his own young days, which he'd forgot all about an' buried in the years since then, an' couldn't now believe had been true. 'A maid?' says he then. 'A — An Idyl of Rickity Tickle 271 maid I An' you'll wed her in due Mason I KoN.IadI Knee-high to a locust I An' yo" vants f go down the Labrador t' prove your co> .age for the sake of a maid? For— Love I 'Tis not a share o' the catch you wants— 'tis not altogether the sight o' strange places— 'tis not t' master the tricks o' sailin' —'tis not t' learn the reefs an' berths o' the Labra- dor. 'Tis t' prove— your— courage 1 An' for the sake of a maid I Is that the behavior o* lads in the world in these times ? Was it always the way— with lads? I wondei— I wonder an / might ever have done that — in my youth !' "I couldn't tell un. " 'Tumm,' says lie, 'I'll further your purpose, God help me!' "An' then the first adventure comin' down ' a patch o' sunshine over the seal Ah-ha, the glory o' that time I Sixteen— an' as yet no adventure beyond the waters of our parts! A nobbly time off Mad Mull in a easterly wind— a night on the ice in the spring o' the year— a wrecked punt in the tickle waters; but no big adventure— no right t' swagger- none t' cock my cap— an' no great tale o' the north coast t' tell the little lads o' Rickity Tickle on the hills of a Sunday afternoon. B^. now, at last, I'd a berth with Davy Junk, a thing beyond Ldief, an' I was bound out when the weather fell fair. An' out we put, in the Word o' the Lord, in good time; an' Skipper Davy— moved by fear of his fondness. S72 Harbor Tales Down North :\J no doubt— cuffed me from Rickity Tickle t' the Straits, an' kicked me from the Barnyards t' Thumb-an'-Finger o' Pinch-Me Head. 'I isn't able t' be partial, lad,' says he, 't' them I'm fool enough t' be fond of." Whatever had come to un over- night at Rickity Tickle— an' however he'd learned f peep in new ways — there was no sign o' conver- sion on the cruise from Rickity t' Pinch-Me. But 'twas some comfort t' be well in the lead o' the fleet in the Straits, when a westerly gale blowed the ice off-shore, an' it fair healed my bruises an' cured i.iy dumps t' i;et the traps down between the Thumb an' the Fiuger afore a sail showed up in the gray weather t' s'uth'?'d. Hard sailin', every inch o' the way down— blind an' mad. Skipper Davy at the wheel: fog alongshore, ice in the tog, reefs off the heads, an' a wind, by times, t' make the IVord o' the Lord howl with the labor o' drivin' north. "I didn't ease up on my prayers afore the anchor was down an' the Word o' the Lord got her rest in the lee o' Pinch-Me. " 'Feelin' better, Tumm?' says Skipper Davy. " *I is.' " 'Don't you mind them few little kicks an' cuffs,' says he; 'they was jus' meant t' harden you up.' " 'My duty,' says I. " 'I isn't very used t' bein' fond o' nobody,' says he, 'an' 'tis on my conscience t' make a man o' your mother's son. An', moreover,' says he, ' 'tis on my An Idyl of Rickity Tickle 873 conscience f teach you the worth of a dollar in labor.' " 'My duty, Skipper Davy.' " 'Oh,' says he, 'you don't owe me nothm', I'm deep in debt t' you.' " 'Twas a harsh season for Labrador-mea Fish ? Fish enough— but bitter t' take from the seas oflF Pinch-Me. The wind was easterly, raw, wet, an' foggy, blowin' high an' low, %n' the ice went scrapin' down the coast, an' the big black-an'-white seas come tumblin' in from Greenland. There was no lee for the Word o' the Lord in that weathf she hed off the big cliffs o' Pinch-Me, kickin' he ..eels, wriihin' about, tossin' her head ; an' many's the time, in the drivin' gales o' that season, I made sure she'd pile up on the rocks, in the frothy little cove between the Thumb an' the Finger, where the big waves went t' smash with a boom-bang-swish an' hiss o' drippin' thunder. By day 'twas haul the traps- pull an oar an' fork the catch with a back on fire, cracked hands, salt-water sores t' the elbow, soggy clothes, an' an empty belly; an' by night 'twas split the fish— slash an' gut an' stow away, in the torch- light, with sticky eyelids, hands an' feet o' lead, an' a neck as limp as death. I learned a deal about life— an' about the worth of a dollar in labor. Take that!' says Skipper Davy, with the toe of his boot, 'an' I'm sorry t' have to do it, but you can't fall asleep on a stack o' green cod at two o'clock m the momin' an' be a success in life. Try ihatf ■ im S74 Harbor Tales Down North nv li I' „'4j^Hi ,1 !|( hI'' i 'J says he, with the flat of his hand, 'though it grieves me sore t' hurt you.' But whatever an' all, us loaded the Word o' the Lord — an' stowed the gear away, an* fell down t' sleep in our tracks, an' by an' by lied in wait for a fair wind t' the Newf 'un'knd out- ports. An' there comes a night — a fine, clear, starry night like this— with good prospects o' haulin' out at break o' day. An' I could sleep no longer, an' I went en deck alone, t' look up at the sky, an' t' dream dreams, maybe, accordin' t' my youth an' hope an' the good years I'd lived at Rickity Tickle. "A lovely night: still an' starlit — with a flash o' northern lights abroad, an' the ol' IVord o' the Lord lyin' snug asleep in a slow, black sea. "Skipper Davy come up. 'Tumm,' says he, 'is you on deck?' " 'Ay, sir.' " 'Where is you, b'y?' " 'Lyin' here, sir,' says I, 'cuddled down on a cod-net.' " 'Now that the labor is over,' says he, 'I'm all tired out an' downcast.' He sot down beside me. 'You doesn't bear no malice for all them kicks an' cuffs, does you?' says he. 'You sees, lad, I— I — isn't used t' bein' fond o' nobody — ^an' I 'low I don't know how very well — ^though I done my best' " 'Sure,' says I, 'I've no malice?' , '"What you doin' here?' says he. " 'Lookin' up at the stars.' " 'Is you ?' says he. 'What for ?' An Idyl of Rickity Tickle 275 " 'They're such wonderful friendly little beggars. Skipper Davy I' " 7 never looks up at the stars.' " 'They're friends o' mine!' " 'Not bein' very much in favor o' the world !' says he, 'I doesn't countenance the stars.' "An' all at once I turned to un in a sweat an' shiver o' fear. Not countenance the stars I Here, then, another flash o' light upon the big mystery I Now first I glimpsed the end of a path of evil. Not countenance the stars! Could a man truly come t' such a sad pass in God's good world? I knowed evil : all lads knows it, t' be sure — its first gates in the world : not its last places. An' they stand with- out, in fair meadows, an' peep beyond — an' wonder, an' ponder, an' wish with all their young, eager hearts t' follow the paths an' learn. An' we that are growed forget the wonder an' the wish— an' show no scars that we can hide, an' draw the cur- tain upon our ways, an' make mockery o' truth, an' clothe our hearts in hypocrisy, an' offer false ex- ample, an' lie of our lives an' souls, lest we stand ashamed. 'Tis a cruel fate for lads, it may be, an' a deceitful prophecy. I knows little enough about life, but exhibit my ways, whatever an' all, for the worth they may have; an had I my will in the world, I'd light the country beyond the gates, ecod I an' with my own hands stir up all the beasts ! Not countenance the stars I 'Twas a vision again for the lad that was I — first glimpse o' the end of any 111 !i II!! M I l|P t76 Harbor Tales Down North path of evil. 'I must guard my soul,' thinks the lad that was I, in his heart, 'lest I come to a pass like this.' "There was light abroad by this time: a big, golden, jolly moon, peepin' over the black cliffs o' Thumb-an'-Finger, not ashamed t' grin its fellow- ship with sea an' stars an' all the handiwork o' God. An' all the world save Davy Junk — all the world from the ragged hills t' the rim o' the sea — from the southern stars fair north t' the long, white lights — ^was at peace in the night. An' then Skip- per Davy said: 'I done jus' what you tol' me, Tumm, afore us put out from Rickity Tickle. I — I— done a deal for Janet Luff's child — ^an' I've no complaint t' make. I made haste, lad, as you said, an' got there first, an' done the good deed, an' knowed 'twas a good deed; an' I been a sight hap- pier ever since — ^though I'm woebegone enough, God knows ! But the windows o' my soul is cleaner. I'm awakened. I been sort o' converted — ^t' love. An' comin' down the coast — ^an' here at the fishin', with the gales ill-minded an' steeped in hate, an' the Thumb an' the Finger jus' waitin' t' le'ward t' pinch us all t' death — I been broodin' a deal upon love. An' I'm lonely. An' now, Tumm, I wants t' get married — ^as a lonely man will. An' they's a maid bark there at Rickity Tickle that I loved in my youth. She've a kind heart and a comely face. She was ever kind — an' comely. I told her once, long An Idyl of Rickity Tickle 277 ago, at Dirty-Face Bight, that I— I— sort o' fancied I loved her; an' I 'lowed that once I found out that I did in truth— an' once I'd laid up a store against evil times— that I— I— I'd ask her t' wed me. An' I knowed that I loved her all the time. An' she said— that she'd wait. An' she've — waited. I 'low, Tumm, that you might help me in this pass — for you're young, an' in love, an' in touch with the ways o' courtship, an' I'm old, an' crabbed, an' tired, an' afraid o' the world, an' I've no admiration for the man that I is. Eh, Tumm, lad? Think you might — serve me?' " 'Skipper Davy,' says I, 'I'll do my level best' " 'A fair night,' says he. 'Breezin' up a bit from the north. I 'low we'll get underway at dawn. Is you— is you— well acquainted with Mary Land?' " 'Sure,' says I, 'she nursed me!' " 'She's the maid,' says he, 'that's waited.' " 'An' you,' says I, in a rage, 'is the man she've waited for all these years?' "'I 'low,' says he, 'you might move her t' heed me.' ^' Well,' says I, Til do what I'm able— for she.' '"I'm much obliged,' says he; 'an' I forg.es you all the grief them cuffs an' kicks has caused me.' "An' so it come t' pass that when the Word o' the Lord dropped anchor in Rickity Tickle— an' when I was foot-loose from the ol' craft an' had kissed my mother t' the dear woman's satisfaction— 278 Harbor Tales Down North an' Bessie Tot on the sly as near t' my own as I could manage — ^an' when I'd swaggered the roads a bit — ^an' had cocked my cap, as I'd planned t' do, an' made mention o' Mugford an' Pinch-Me an' easterly weather — I spread my sails on the road t' Gull Island Cove t' warn Mary Land o' the queer news I had. She'd a p'ace in my heart, an' in the hearts of us all, for her goodness an' wise ways — a large, warm place in mine, like a sister's nook in a young lad's heart. An' sure she was sister t' all the lads o' Rickity Tickle— love in her touch, wisdom on her lips, an' faith in her eyes. A Newf'un'land maid: buxom now, an' still rosy an' fair an' blue- eyed an' tender. But not merry at all : gone too far in years, I used t' think, for folly t' flush an' dimple her — she was goin' on thirty — but as it was, as then I knowed, too much grieved for waste o' merri- ment. An' when she'd hugged me, her nurseling, as she used t' say — an' when she'd noted my stride an' the spread o' my feet— an' had marked my elderly talk an' praised my growth— i told her my errand. I plumped it out, without mercy, in the way of a lad ; an' she took it ill, I thought ; for breath left her, an' she stared like death. An' then she begun t' cry— an' then she sobbed that she was wonderful happy — an' then she dried her poor eyes— a-" then she named Davy Junk an' the good God in one long breath o' love an' thanks — an' then she smiled. An' a'*er that she put her warm arms around me an' half hid her sweet motherly face ; but yet I could see An Idyl of Rickity Tickle 279 that she was flushed an' dimpled, like any young maid o' the place, an' that her eyes were both merry an' wet. An' I marveled t' learn that youth an' joy would come back in a flash o' time as soon as love beckoned a finger. "•I loves un, Tobyl' says she. 'I jus' can't help it.' " 'He've poor timber in his soul,' says I. "She'd have none o' thatl 'Oh no,' says she; 'he jus' needs — me.' " 'A poor stick for looks,' says I. " 'Ah, but,' says she, 'you didn't know un when he was young, Toby.' " 'Pst !' says I. 'An' he've kep' you waitin' a long time.' " 'It haven't been hard t' wait,' says she; for I jus' knowed he'd come — ^when ready.' " 'I'll fetch Skipper Davy this night' " 'Ay,' says she. 'I'm— wonderful happy.' " 'There'll be guns goin' at a weddin' in Rickity Tickle afore long,' says I, 'I'll be bound!' "She laughed like a maid o' sixteen. 'An', ecod !' says shp, 'I got a new muslin all ready t' wear!' "It rained on Rickity Tickle that night: no lusty downpour — a mean, sad drizzle o' cold mist. The road t' Gull Island Cove was dark as death— sodden underfoot an' clammy with wet alder-leaves. Skipper Davy come with fair courage, laggin' a bit by the way, in the way o' lovers, thinks I, at such times. ji «80 Harbor Tales Down North An' I'd my hand fair on the knob o' Mary Land's door — an' was jus' about t' push in — when Skipper Davy all at once cotched me by the elbow an' pulled me back t' the shadows. "'Hist!' says he. '"Ay?" " 'Did you— tell her outright— that I'd take her?' " 'Ay, sure 1' " 'No help for it, Tumm?' "'God's sake!' says I. "'I— I— I won't F says he. "An' he fled— ay, took t' the heels of un, an' went stumblin' over the road t' Rickity Tickle in the dark. I listened — ^helpless there at Mary Land's door — while he floundered off beyond hearin'. An' 'twas hard — a thing as bitter as perdition — ^t' tell Mary Land that he'd gone. T' break her heart again ! God's sake ! But she said : 'Hush, Toby ! Don't you mind for me. I — I'm not mindin' — much. I'm used — t' wpttin'.' An' then I made off for Davy Junk's spick-an'-span cottage by Blow-Me t' speak the words in my heart. Slippery rock an* splash o' mud underfoot — ^an' clammy alder-leaves by the wayside -.an' the world in a cold drench o' misty rain — an' the night as dark as death — an' rage an' grief beyond measure in my heart. An' at last I come t' Davy Junk's cottage by Blow-Me, an' forthwith pushed in t' the kitchen. An' there sot Davy Junk, snuggled up to his own fire, his face in his hands, woebegone an' hateful of hisself an' An Idyl of Rickity Tickle ' 281 aU the world— his soul lost, not because he'd failed m love for a maid, or worked woe in a woman's heart, but because in fear o' the world he'd lived all hii years in despite o' love, an" love had left un for good an' aU, t' make the best of his way alone through the world he feared. He'd not look at me at all, but shifted in his chair, an' rubbed his hands, an' snuggled closer to his own fire, an' whimpered what I couldn't make out. Nor would I speak t' he afore he turned t' face me— though I'd hard labor enough t' keep my words in my throat. Whatever an all, at last he turned. An' 'twas the old Davy Junk come t' Rickity Tickle again— the beast o' fear peenn' out from his soul through his little, mean eyes. An' I might have loathed un then— had I not pitied un so greatly. " 'I made a mistake, Tumm,' says he. " 'Ay, Skipper Davy.' " 'This here world's a wolf's world,' says he, with his teeth bared. 'An', damme, I got enough t' do t fend for myself !' "'Skipper Davy,' says I, 'you go t' hell!' 'Twas the first oath ever I uttered with inten- tion. An' I ran straightway t' Billy Tot's cottage— t' cure the taste o* the thing on my lips— an' t' ease the grief in my heart— an' t' find some new store o* faith for my soul. An' I kissed Bessie Tot fair on her rosy check in the middle o' the kitchen floor without carin' a jot who seed me." Harbor Tales Down North It was the end of the yam of Davy Junk, of Dirty-Face Bight; but Skipper Jim, of the Quick as Wink, being of a curious turn, presently inquired: "What become o* Davy?" "Lost with the Word o' the Lord," Tumm re- plied, "with all hands aboard." "Went down in wreck," the skipper observed, "an' left nothin' but a tale." "A tale with a moral," said I. "Ay, an' t' be sure!" Skipper Jim agreed. "Davy Junk left a tale— with a moral." "Damme I" Tumm exploded, "'tis as much as most men leaves!" And the little stars winked their own knowledge and perfect understanding of the whole affair. N Prinui i» «»• V»iui »«» •/ Am»rln mk, of wtcJk OS ired: nam re- werved, "Davy nuch as owledge air.