Part 17 (1/2)
”'Now this beats a',' muttered his wife to herself; 'however, I shall be obedient for a time; but if I dinna ken what all this is for before the morn by sunket-time, my tongue is nae langer a tongue, nor my hands worth wearing.'
”The voice of her husband in prayer interrupted this mental soliloquy; and ardently did he beseech to be preserved from the wiles of the fiends, and the snares of Satan; 'from witches, ghosts, goblins, elves, fairies, s.p.u.n.kies, and water-kelpies; from the spectre shallop of Solway; from spirits visible and invisible; from the Haunted s.h.i.+ps and their unearthly tenants; from maritime spirits that plotted against G.o.dly men, and fell in love with their wives--'
”'Nay, but His presence be near us!' said his wife in a low tone of dismay. 'G.o.d guide my gudeman's wits: I never heard such a prayer from human lips before. But, Sandie, my man, Lord's sake, rise: what fearful light is this?--barn and byre and stable maun be in a blaze; and Hawkie and Hurley,--Doddie, and Cherrie, and Damson-plum, will be smoored with reek and scorched with flame.'
”And a flood of light, but not so gross as a common fire, which ascended to heaven and filled all the court before the house, amply justified the good wife's suspicions. But to the terrors of fire, Sandie was as immovable as he was to the imaginary groans of the barren wife of Laird Laurie; and he held his wife, and threatened the weight of his right hand--and it was a heavy one--to all who ventured abroad, or even unbolted the door. The neighing and prancing of horses, and the bellowing of cows, augmented the horrors of the night; and to any one who only heard the din, it seemed that the whole onstead was in a blaze, and horses and cattle peris.h.i.+ng in the flame. All wiles, common or extraordinary, were put in practice to entice or force the honest farmer and his wife to open the door; and when the like success attended every new stratagem, silence for a little while ensued, and a long, loud, and shrilling laugh wound up the dramatic efforts of the night. In the morning, when Laird Macharg went to the door, he found standing against one of the pilasters a piece of black s.h.i.+p oak, rudely fas.h.i.+oned into something like human form, and which skilful people declared would have been clothed with seeming flesh and blood, and palmed upon him by elfin adroitness for his wife, had he admitted his visitants.
A synod of wise men and women sat upon the woman of timber, and she was finally ordered to be devoured by fire, and that in the open air. A fire was soon made, and into it the elfin sculpture was tossed from the p.r.o.ngs of two pairs of pitchforks. The blaze that arose was awful to behold; and hissings, and burstings, and loud cracklings, and strange noises, were heard in the midst of the flame; and when the whole sank into ashes, a drinking-cup of some precious metal was found; and this cup, fas.h.i.+oned no doubt by elfin skill, but rendered harmless by the purification with fire, the sons and daughters of Sandie Macharg and his wife drink out of to this very day. Bless all bold men, say I, and obedient wives!”
A RAFT THAT NO MAN MADE.
BY ROBERT T. S. LOWELL.
I am a soldier: but my tale, this time, is not of war.
The man of whom the Muse talked to the blind bard of old had grown wise in wayfaring. He had seen such men and cities as the sun s.h.i.+nes on, and the great wonders of land and sea; and he had visited the farther countries, whose indwellers, having been once at home in the green fields and under the sky and roofs of the cheery earth, were now gone forth and forward into a dim and shadowed land, from which they found no backward path to these old haunts, and their old loves:--
Eeri kai nephele kekalummenoi oude pot autous Eelios phaethon kataderketai aktinessin.
_Od_. XI.
At the Charter-House I learned the story of the King of Ithaca, and read it for something better than a task; and since, though I have never seen so many cities as the much-wandering man, nor grown so wise, yet have heard and seen and remembered, for myself, words and things from crowded streets and fairs and shows and wave-washed quays and murmurous market-places, in many lands; and for his Kimmerion andron demos,--his people wrapt in cloud and vapor, whom ”no glad sun finds with his beams,”--have been borne along a perilous path through thick mists, among the cras.h.i.+ng ice of the Upper Atlantic, as well as sweltered upon a Southern sea, and have learned something of men and something of G.o.d.
I was in Newfoundland, a lieutenant of Royal Engineers, in Major Gore's time, and went about a good deal among the people, in surveying for Government. One of my old friends there was Skipper Benjie Westham, of Brigus, a shortish, stout, bald man, with a cheerful, honest face and a kind voice; and he, mending a caplin-seine one day, told me this story, which I will try to tell after him.
We were upon the high ground, beyond where the church stands now, and Prudence, the fisherman's daughter, and Ralph Barrows, her husband, were with Skipper Benjie when he began; and I had an hour by the watch to spend. The neighborhood, all about, was still; the only men who were in sight were so far off that we heard nothing from them; no wind was stirring near us, and a slow sail could be seen outside. Everything was right for listening and telling.
”I can tell 'ee what I sid[1] myself, Sir,” said Skipper Benjie.
”It is n' like a story that's put down in books: it's on'y like what we planters[2] tells of a winter's night or sech: but it's _feelun_, mubbe, an' 'ee won't expect much off a man as could n'
never read,--not so much as Bible or Prayer-Book, even.”
[Footnote 1: Saw.]
[Footnote 2: Fishermen.]
Skipper Benjie looked just like what he was thought: a true-hearted, healthy man, a good fisherman and a good seaman. There was no need of any one's saying it. So I only waited till he went on speaking.
”'T was one time I goed to th' Ice, Sir. I never goed but once, an'
't was a'most the first v'yage ever was, ef 't was n' the _very_ first; an' 't was the last for me, an' worse agen for the rest-part o' that crew, that never goed no more! 'T was tarrible sad douns wi' they!”
This preface was accompanied by some preliminary handling of the caplin-seine, also, to find out the broken places and get them about him. Ralph and Prudence deftly helped him. Then, making his story wait, after this opening, he took one hole to begin at in mending, chose his seat, and drew the seine up to his knee. At the same time I got nearer to the fellows.h.i.+p of the family by persuading the planter (who yielded with a pleasant smile) to let me try my hand at the netting. Prudence quietly took to herself a share of the work, and Ralph alone was unbusied.
”They calls th' Ice a wicked place,--Sundays an' weekin days all alike; an' to my seemun it's a cruel, b.l.o.o.d.y place, jes' so well,--but not all thinks alike, surely.--Rafe, lad, mubbe 'ee 'd ruther go down coveways, an' overhaul the punt a bit.”
Ralph, who perhaps had stood waiting for the very dismissal that he now got, a.s.sented and left us three. Prudence, to be sure, looked after him as if she would a good deal rather go with him than stay; but she stayed, nevertheless, and worked at the seine. I interpreted to myself Skipper Benjie's sending away of one of his hearers by supposing that his son-in-law had often heard his tales; but the planter explained himself:--
”'Ee sees, Sir, I knocked off goun to th' Ice becase 't was sech a tarrible cruel place, to my seemun. They swiles[3] be so knowun like,--as knowun as a dog, in a manner, an' lovun to their own, like Christens, a'most, more than bastes; an' they'm got red blood, for all they lives most-partly in water; an' then I found 'em so friendly, when I was wantun friends badly. But I s'pose the swile-fishery's needful; an' I knows, in course, that even Christens'
blood's got to be taken sometimes, when it's bad blood, an' I would n' be childish about they things: on'y--ef it's me--when I can live by fishun, I don' want to go an' club an' shoot an' cut an'
slash among poor harmless things that 'ould never harm man or 'oman, an' 'ould cry great tears down for pity-sake, an' got a sound like a Christen: I 'ould n' like to go a-swilun for gain,--not after beun among 'em, way I was, anyways.”
[Footnote 3: Seals.]