Part 20 (2/2)
How have he come by thee death?”
”Hanged hisself.”
”Hanged hisself! Oh, dear! Why have thee ol' Skip' Jim be so fearful wicked?”
It was an unhappy question.
”Well,” Tom Timms answered, in a colorless drawl, ”he got a trap-leader when he found out what you done. He just sort o' went an' got a trap-leader an' hanged hisself in the fish-stage-when he found out what you done.”
The Syrian glanced at me. I glanced at him. Our eyes met; his were steady, innocent, pitiful; my own s.h.i.+fted to the closing bank of gray fog.
”Business,” he sighed, ”is business.”
The words repeated themselves interminably-a monotonous dirge. Business is business.... Business is business.... Business is business....
VI-A COMEDY OF CANDLESTICK COVE
It was windy weather: and had been-for an exasperating tale of dusks and dawns. It was not the weather of variable gales, which blow here and there, forever to the advantage of some Newfoundland folk; it was the weather of ill easterly winds, in gloomy conjunction bringing fog, rain, breaking seas, drift-ice, dispiriting cold. From Nanny's Old Head the outlook was perturbing: the sky was hid, with its familiar warnings and promises; gigantic breakers fell with swish and thud upon the black rocks below, flinging l.u.s.treless white froth into the gray mist; and the grounds, where the men of Candlestick Cove must cast lines and haul traps, were in an ill-tempered, white-capped tumble-black waves rolling out of a melancholy fog, hanging low, which curtained the sea beyond.
The hands of the men of Candlestick Cove were raw with salt-water sores; all charms against the affliction of toil in easterly gales had failed-bra.s.s bracelets and incantations alike. And the eyes of the men of Candlestick Cove were alert with apprehensive caution: tense, quick to move, clear and hard under drawn brows. With a high sea perversely continuing beyond the harbor tickle, there was no place in the eyes of men for the light of humor or love, which thrive in security. Windy weather, indeed! 'Twas a time for men to _be_ men!
”I 'low I never seed nothin' _like_ it,” Jonathan Stock complained.
The sea, breaking upon the Rock o' Wishes, and the wind, roaring past, confused old Tom Lull.
”What say?” he shouted.
”Nothin' _like_ it,” said Jonathan Stock.
They had come in from the sea with empty punts, and they were now pulling up the harbor, side by side, toward the stage-heads, which were lost in the misty dusk. Old Tom had hung in the lee of the Rock o'
Wishes until Jonathan Stock came flying over the tickle breaker in a cloud of spray. The wind had been in the east beyond the experience of eighty years; it was in his aged mind to exchange opinions upon the marvel.
”Me neither,” said he.
They were drawing near Herring Point, within the harbor, where the noise of wind and sea, in an easterly gale, diminishes.
”I 'low I _never_ seed nothin' like it,” said Jonathan Stock.
”Me neither, Skipper Jonathan.”
”Never _seed_ nothin' like it.”
They pulled on in silence-until the froth of Puppy Rock was well astern.
”Me neither,” said Tom.
”_I_ never seed nothin' like it,” Jonathan grumbled.
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