Part 81 (1/2)

Supper was served, the pump was worked, the lights were run up, the small boat was sent round with a flare to fright away the evil spirits, and then the night came down--a dark night, without moon or stars, shutting out the island, though it stood so near, and even the rocks of the Hen and Chicken. The first man for the look-out took up his one hour's watch at the helm, and the rest went below.

Pete's bunk was under the binnacle, and the light of its lamp fell on a stamped envelope which he took out of his breast-pocket from time to time that he might read the inscription. It ran--

Capn Peatr Quilliam,

Lm Cottig Ramsey I O Man.

He looked at it lovingly, fondly, yearningly, yet with a certain awe, too, as if it were the casket of some hidden treasure, and he hardly knew what it contained. The dim-lit cabin was quiet, the net boiler sparched drops of hot water at intervals, the fire of the cooking stove slid and fell, the men breathed heavily from unseen beds, and the sea washed as the boat rolled.

”What's she saying, I wonder! I wonder! G.o.d bless her!” he mumbled, and then he, too, fell asleep.

Two hours before hauling, they proved the fis.h.i.+ng by taking in a ”pair”

of the net, found good herring, and blew the horn as signal that they were doing well. Then out of the black depths around, wherein no boat could be seen, the lights of other boats came floating silently astern, until the company about them in the darkness was like a little city of the sea and the night.

At the first peep of morning over the round shoulder of the Calf, the little city awoke. There were the clicks of the capstan, and the shouts of the men as the nets came back to the boats, heavy and white with fish. All being aboard, the men went down on the deck, according to their wont, every man on his knee with his face in his cap, and then leapt up with a shout (perhaps an oath), swung to the wind, hoisted the square sails, and made for home. The dark northwest was lowering by this time, and the sea was beginning to jump.

”Breakfast, boys,” sang out Pete, with his head above the companion, and all but the helmsman went below. There was a pot full of the drop-fish, and every man ate his warp of herring. It had been a great night's fis.h.i.+ng. Some of the boats were full to the mouth, and all had plenty.

”We'll do middling if we get a market,” said Pete.

”We've got to get home first,” said the master, and at the same moment a sea struck the windward quarter with the force of a sledge-hammer, and the block at the masthead began to sing.

”We'll run for Peel this morning, boys,” said Pete, smothering his voice in a mouthful.

”Peel?” said the master, shooting out his lip. ”They've got no harbour there at all with a cat's paw of a breeze, let alone a northwester.”

”I'm for going up to the meeting,” said Pete in an incoherent way.

Then they tacked before the rising gale, and went off with the fleet as it swirled like a flight of gulls abreast of the wind. The sea came tumbling down like a shoal of seahogs, and washed the faces of the men as they sat in oilskins on the hatch-head, shaking the herring out of the nets into the hold.

But their work only began when they came into Peel. The tide was down; there was no breakwater; the neck of the harbour was narrow, and four hundred boats were coming to take shelter and to land their cargoes. It was a scene of tumult and confusion--shouting, swearing, and fighting among the men, and crus.h.i.+ng and cranching among the boats as they nosed their way to the harbour mouth, threw ropes on to the quay, where fifty ropes were round one post already, or cast anchors up the bank of the castle rock, which was steep and dangerous to lie on.

Pete got landed somehow, but his Nickey with half the fleet turned tail and went round the island. As he leapt ash.o.r.e, the helpless harbour-master, who had been bellowing over the babel through a cracked trumpet, turned to him and said, ”For the Lord's sake, Capt'n Quilliam, if you've got a friend that can lend us a hand, go off to the meeting at seven o'clock.”

”I mane to,” said Pete, but he had something else to do first. It was the task that had brought him to Peel, and no eye must see him do it.

Slowly and slyly, like one who does a doubtful thing and pretends to be doing nothing, he went stealing through the town--behind the old Court-house and up Castle Street, into the market-place, and across it to the line of shops which make the princ.i.p.al thoroughfare.

At one of these shops, a little single-roomed place, with its small shutter still up, but the door half open and a noise of stamping going on inside, he stopped in a lounging way, half twisting on his heel as if idly looking back. It was the Post-Office.

With a stealthy look around, he put a trembling hand into his breast-pocket, drew out the letter, screened it by the flat of his big palm, and posted it. Then he turned hurriedly away, and was gone in a moment, like a man who feared pursuit, down a steep and tortuous alley that led to the sh.o.r.e. The morning was early; the shops were not yet open; only the homes of the fishermen were putting out curling wreaths of smoke; the silent streets echoed to his lightest footstep.

But the sh.o.r.e road was busy enough. Fishermen in sea-boots and sou'westers, with oilskin over one arm and a string of herring in the other hand, were trooping from the harbour up to the Zigzag by the rock called the Creg Malin. It was at the end of the bay, where cliff and beach and sea together form a bag like the cod-end of the trawl net.

”It's not the fishermen at all--it's the farmers they're thinking of,”

said one.

”You're right,” said Pete, ”and it's some of ourselves that's to blame for it.”

”How's that?” said somebody.

”Aisy enough,” said Pete. ”When I came home from Kimberly I met an ould fisherman--_you_ know the man, Billy--well, _you_ do, Dan--Phil Nelly, of Ramsey. 'How's the fis.h.i.+ng, Phil?' says I. He gave me a Hm! and a heise of his neck, and 'I'm not fis.h.i.+ng no more,' says he. 'The wife's keeping a private hotel,' says he. 'And what are you doing yourself,'