Читать книгу Rockbound - Frank Parker Day - Страница 3

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With many a tempest hadde his berd been shake.

CANTERBURY TALES.

When David was eighteen he heard from some of the Outpost fishermen that his great-uncle Uriah, the rich king of Rockbound, wanted a fisherman. Here was his opportunity; for weeks, in fact, ever since old Gershom Born had talked with him, he had wondered how he would get up courage to face the old man and tell him what he knew. In his yellow dory he set out from Big Outpost one morning of early summer. The sea was apparently oil-smooth, but a ground swell always runs among these outer islands, and the flood tide was against him. He tugged hard at the splintered spruce oars, which had seen two years service on the Grand Banks, lifting his elbows at the finish of his stroke in a manner peculiar to the Outposters. With slack water he gave himself a spell and drifted idly for a little, a yellow speck on an immense floor of blue.

He looked up at the sky half-conscious of his insignificance in the universe above him; then, feeling cold water about his feet, reflected that only a half inch of leaky spruce marked him off from the watery world below, where shadowy albercore dodged in and out between streamers of waving kelp. The Outposts and Rockbound, now almost equidistant, were dimmed and softened by summer mists. As he sat there resting, his oars half drawn in through the thole pins, he looked at first glance like a hundred other young fishermen along the coast. He was barefoot and clad only in a pair of ragged brown trousers and a faded blue buttonless shirt that fell open at the neck to reveal a bronzed and hairy chest. His hands that clutched the oars were calloused and split, and scarred with marks of salt-water boils and burns from running hand line or halliard. Sly but kind gray eyes shone out through narrow slits overhung with thick eyebrows; a hawk's nose gave his face a touch of fierceness; his head was crowned with a thick brown mop of uncombed hair. He was not unhandsome, and when he smiled the corners of his mouth twitched and drooped.

Though he looked it not, he was a man of destiny--in small things, it is true, yet in relation to the universe all things upon this earth are small--and this voyage in his yellow dory, a voyage of destiny, less spectacular than Jason's but requiring none the less courage and resolution. For Jason had with him forty heroes and had but to meet a dragon, while David was alone and had to meet Uriah. As he floated idly there and looked up at the pale smoky sky and across the shining turquoise floor, he was conscious of the throb of the great deep below him and felt himself in the grip of Destiny of "some strange consequence yet hanging in the stars" that he could not understand. Why not let Fate decide for him whether he should row on to Rockbound or return to the Outposts? he thought. He was a Jung himself, but a poor Jung, a gearless, homeless Jung; how dare he face and make demands of Uriah, the rich king of Rockbound, who had wealth in boats and land, and lofts piled high with herring nets and tubs of trawl? He was on a line between a clump of lofty spruces on the Metatogan Main and Lubeck Island Light. Let Fate decide! He pulled in his oars, let them rest from gunwale to gunwale, and for fifteen minutes watched his landmarks. The beginning of the ebb and a faint draught of offshore wind were setting him toward Rockbound. Fate had decided! Out went his oars, and he gave way.

When his stem bumped against the logs of Uriah's launch he sprang out and drew his dory up a little--he dared not draw her too far without invitation--and made fast the painter to a spike. The ebb was running fast now, and she would be high and dry in half an hour. Heart in his throat, his bare feet took the long strides from log to log, and he reached the door of the great fish house just as Uriah, a terrifying figure, waddled out, his yellow oilskins spotted with blood and glistening with sequins of herring scales.

"An' what might ye be wantin'?" said the old man, the king of Rockbound.

"I wants fur to be yur sharesman," answered David.

"Us works here on Rockbound."

"I knows how to work."

"Knows how to work an' brung up on de Outposts!" jeered Uriah. "Us has half a day's work done 'fore de Outposters rub de sleep out o' dere eyes, ain't it!"

"I knows how to work," repeated the boy stubbornly.

"Where's yur gear an' clothes at?"

"I'se got all my gear an' clothes on me," said David, grinning down at his buttonless shirt, ragged trousers, and bare, horny feet, "but I owns yon dory: I salvaged her from de sea an' beat de man what tried to steal her from me."

Uriah's eyes showed a glint of interest.

"You ain't got no place for to live on dis island; no one won't take in a tramp like you."

"Yes I is."

"How's dat?"

"I owns one tent' o' dis island t'rough my grandfader old Edward Jung, same as you owns yur shares."

The boy stood trembling inwardly and with shaking knees, yet looking the old tyrant boldly in the eyes.

"Who's bin stuffin' ye wid dat foolishness?"

"It ain't no foolishness, it's true. Old Gershom Born, de keeper o' Barren Island Light an' de wisest man in all dese islands, tole me las' time he was on de Outposts; an' says he, if yur great-uncle Ury refuse ye, go before lawyer Kingsford in Liscomb an' claim yur right. Yes, he did."

Uriah grunted and glowered. Old Gershom Born's name was one to be conjured with. He read fat law books and wrote deed, will, and mortgage for the islanders as fair as the grandest lawyer. Moreover, the king knew in his heart that the boy was right.

"What ye do wid land?" Uriah had been growing tall timothy and fat cabbages on David's piece for ten years free of charge and was loath to give it up.

"Live on it, farm it same as youse do. Dat house where Mudder died's mine too," said David, grown bolder, and he pointed to a tumbledown cottage which Uriah used as a storeroom for lobster pots.

The king looked scornfully at the landless serf; David stood in the presence of Goliath.

"I'se got de same rights as Anapest an' de Krauses." Like many kingdoms, Uriah's was not whole and perfect, but troubled by invaders.

"Maybe you is got some rights, maybe you isn't, but ye can't be no sharesman wid me."

"Den I'll squat on my land an' live in my house and fish offshore in my dory." David had gone over all the possibilities of this conversation many times before.

"You, wid nair a line or net to git bait."

"I got a line an' I kin pick up squid an' caplin on de beach."

"An' where will ye land yur boat? Ye can't use my launch."

"I'll land on de sand beach in Sou'west Cove an' haul my dory out."

"One summer storm will make kindlin' wood o' your dory."

"Den I kin land on de Krauses' launch. Anapest will let me. Anyhow, yur sharesman or no, I sticks and stays."

The old fox saw he was beaten, and he liked the fight in the boy: after all, he was a Jung, though a beggarly one.

"I wouldn't take ye for no sharesman, 'cause ye couldn't hold up yur end wid my boys."

"Give me a mont's trial," said David. "If I can't ketch fish fur fish an' haul net fur net wid Martin, Casper, Joseph, I'll go back to de Outposts an' ask fur no wages."

"Done," snapped the crafty Uriah, who saw a chance of keeping the land and of getting a month's work for nothing. "You take Phœbe tomorrow, far boat on de launch; she's stood idle since we lost Mark. Haul out yur dory on de launch."

Thus was the first battle with the old king won, and thus the disguised prince set foot upon his own dominion.

David turned from the old man and walked up the pathway to his mother's house, that was well-nigh a ruin. The doorstep gaped from the sill, the sagging back door hung by one hinge of leather, the kitchen was half full of lobster pots, and as these had been pushed rudely against the walls, plaster and lathing were broken. Big slabs had fallen from the ceiling. The kitchen stove was yellow with rust, and the pipe entered the chimney at a rakish angle. There was no furniture save a long sofa, on which, he remembered, Richard Covey had slept out many a drunken spree, and a hand-made chair the old folk had brought from Sanford. To most people this dilapidated house would have been only a source of heartbreak; to David, who had nothing, it was a potential palace. It was his own, his first possession, he should live there, and his gray eyes twinkled and the corners of his mouth drooped as familiar objects awakened some half-forgotten childish memory.

First, two rooms must be cleared for kitchen and bedroom. He worked his way around to the dining-room door and began lugging lobster pots into parlour and front hallway. A front door and reception room would be superfluous to him for many a day. When kitchen and small room opening off it were freed of pots and trawl tubs, he descended into the damp cellar, and there, groping in a jungle of broken fishing gear, found a handleless shovel and the stub of an old broom. The dark cobwebbed cellar seemed a source of wealth that he would explore at leisure. Smiling fondly at his treasure trove, he returned upstairs, and clearing up plaster and dirt with shovel and broom, threw the débris out into the yard. From the stove he dug out the matted ashes and found among them a black twisted fork. More property! His eyes gleamed again with pleasure in his possession, then darkened as the fork reminded him that he had nothing to eat and no source of supplies. He ran down to the shore and returned with an armful of gray driftwood.

Evening was coming, and, after the work about his house and the long row from the Outposts, he was hungry. He looked across the fields toward Anapest's sombre house, where a lamp glowed yellow in the kitchen window. There was something friendly and inviting in that blotch of light. Dare he? He must not let Uriah beat him, and he could not live forever by hitching up his belt. There was nothing else for it; he must beg bread of someone; later he would show them he could repay and earn his keep. From the tribe of the Krauses, who like himself had established a foothold on Rockbound through Anapest's inheritance of a tenth share from old Edward, who had died intestate, he had had no sign of welcome nor even awareness of his existence, though every soul on Rockbound had known of his arrival ten minutes after he had landed. Krauses and Jungs were immemorial enemies: they grunted at one another but seldom spoke, sent their children to spy into rival fish pens, and lived in a tense atmosphere of envy and mutual ill-will. Uriah had never forgiven old Edward for dying without a will, nor Anapest for marrying Joshua Kraus, nor the Krauses generally for having invaded his kingdom, which, he felt, would have been perfect and complete without them. As Uriah was king of all the Rockbound Jungs, so Anapest was empress of the Krauses. She ruled a smaller kingdom but was none the less imperious; no fleet of nets was set, nor did any Kraus boat set off from the Rock without her sanction.

Still, David felt, as he stared at the yellow light, that there was more hope of obtaining bread from Anapest than from Uriah. He crossed the fields and knocked humbly at her kitchen door. Anapest, her thick black dress girt in at the waist with a man's belt, was bustling about the stove.

"Come in," she called harshly, and David's bare feet scraped the rough splinters of the kitchen floor.

"I'm yur nephew David Jung from de Outposts."

Anapest looked the vagrant over, her quick dark eyes taking in torn shirt, frayed trousers, and bare feet. Her heart softened toward him at once; still, she guessed he had come to be Uriah's sharesman, and his lot was thrown in with the enemy. Christian, Nicholas, and Melcher, sons and henchmen, ate greedily at the kitchen table and did not so much as throw a glance in his direction.

"How's all de folks on de Outposts?"

"All right."

"What you doin' here?"

"Uriah's sharesman."

"Ury's sharesman. Ha! a lot ye'll have fur yur summer's work when Joe an' Casper has figured expenses."

"Beginnin' I'se 'll take what dey gives me; some day I'se 'll take what I wants. I don't expect no mercy, but I'm hungry an' I come to ask some bread off ye."

"Sit ye down an' fill yur belly. Arter all, yur my brudder's son, if ye is Ury's sharesman."

David sat down meekly at the kitchen table, for he was even more fearful of Anapest than Uriah. The Kraus boys looked up and grunted at him; any stranger was to them a potential enemy, and this stranger had allied himself with a hostile clan. Anapest was a grand cook and fed her men well. There was a steaming fish chowder made from a fresh-caught haddock mixed with onions, sliced potatoes, and fried pork scraps; there were fried herring roes and new potatoes in their rosy jackets, showing mealy where the broken skin turned back; there were high piles of thick white bread and mugs of hot tea. David made hay while the sun shone.

"I'se sorry to beg," he said after the edge was taken off his hunger, "but I'se 'll have to git de scatterin' loaf o' bread off ye, Aunt Anapest. I'se 'll pay when I gits my first mont's share; I'se got naught, but ye'll lose naught t'rough me."

"Why don't ye beg yur bread off Ury?" asked Christian brutally.

"I can't. He's too hard."

"Den, if ye gets no bread ye can't stay on Rockbound," remarked Melcher hopefully.

"Yes, I kin! I stays, I sticks, if I has to dig up de roots o' de field. I kin live on fish an' mussels an' an odd checkerback. Man, you'se don't know what I bin a-used to livin' on. I stays an' lives in my mudder's house."

"Dey's haunts dere," said Christian, "what'll twitch de clothes off ye nights."

"Haunts or no haunts, I stays. I ain't skeered o' no haunts. Why, on de Outposts I lived next house to de ghost catcher."

"What, Johnny Publicover?"

"Ay, Johnny Publicover, de same what ketched de fierce Sanford ghost," said David between mouthfuls. He had caught the Krauses' interest for a moment and must make the most of his chance and eat enough to keep him alive for the next two or three days. Then fortune would throw something in his way, he would have fish, at any rate.

"Ye'll have a hard go wid no bread," said Nicholas.

"And he won't go wid no bread," shouted Anapest, empress of all the Krauses, stamping her foot. "What ye talkin' so fur, ye great lumps, to yur own cousin? Has his house an' land done ye air a good? Isn't Ury gettin' free grass an' cabbages off dat land fur dese ten years? Bread ye'll have, boy; t'ree big loaves a week, if ye kin live on dat."

"Dat I kin," said David rising, "an' my t'anks to ye, Aunt Anapest. Ye'll find me in de years to come no grudgin' neighbour."

Then, tucking one of Anapest's great loaves under his arm, he went back to his own house, and in the darkness built up a fire of driftwood in the rusty stove and sat down before it to plan and dream. Though he had neither lantern nor candle, the fire cast a fitful glow on the rough floor and made a glimmer of light in the room. The summer fog, pushed northward by the inshore breeze, had enveloped the island and, with its damp blanket, intensified the darkness of a moonless night. The hateful, ill-smelling careys, who love such nights, squeaked and gibbered around the house, and he heard an occasional whir of nighthawks' wings. The gray driftwood cracked sharp in the stove, and there was some strange rustling among the lobster pots in the hallway. But though David knew that the footless nigger of Rockbound was abroad on such nights, he sat unmoved by the stove and stirred only to feed the fire with a fresh stick. He was used to loneliness, and fog had no terror for him. Though he knew it not, as he sat there reviewing the past, he had great capital wealth in the fact that nothing to be faced in the future could be worse than what he had endured in the past. Starting from zero, the meanest acquired possession would connote a worth out of all proportion to its intrinsic value.

He could not recall his father, lost at sea when he was but two years of age. His mother had died of consumption in the bedroom that opened off the dining room. Certainly her pale ghost would not haunt him! He remembered going often into her room, where she had raised a limp hand to stroke his head and look at him with pity. Her hand, he remembered, was so transparent that the bones shone through. His stepfather had been a bad one. After his mother had married Richard Covey, Uriah's loud-mouthed sharesman, they had had nothing but misfortune. Richard Covey was a luckless man: he had gone fishing on the wrong days; when the nets of others were white with meshed herring, his had but a scattering of fish; sportive albacores slit great rents in his fleets while the fleets of others were untouched; the seas rolled his lobster pots into the dog holes, a tangled chaos of broken lath and twisted head rope. David thought of what he had suffered under Richard Covey's rough hand: scarce a day had he been free from welts on his legs and lumps on his head as big as a sea urchin.

At seven he was taken in the boat and assigned duties beyond his strength. He was useful to the man, for his sharp young eyes could pick up net or trawl buoys, white with a stripe of scarlet, far quicker than the rum-bleared eyes of his stepfather. He had learned to endure cold, fog, and blows, and to sag on a hand line to the maximum of his little strength. It was hard work when the cod ran heavy and they fished with two snoods, for when he hooked a pair he could not draw them over the gunwale, and this brought upon him blows and curses. When they sailed, Richard Covey held the tiller and he crouched as far forward in the eyes as he could get, a bit of the spare jib drawn over his bare legs. How he had blessed the sun when it shone warm; the sun had been his best friend.

He remembered well that awful gray dawn when he crept out to light the kitchen fire, his duty since the age of five. Richard Covey lay sprawling on the sofa his legs twisted in a queer position. He had paid little attention to him at first, but put rustling paper and kindlings quietly in the stove; he had been beaten sometimes for waking the man as he laid the fire. Morning light that sifted through the eastern window fell on Richard Covey's white face and showed lips that were blue, a mouth half open, and bleared eyes that seemed to wink. He had been terrified by the winking eyes: had he made too much noise with the rustling paper? Then a deeper terror had entered his little soul: there was no sound of snoring or deep breathing that Richard Covey usually made. With a courage he himself had never understood, he had walked over and touched the man's face; it was set and cold. He had rushed into his mother's room shouting exultingly,

"He's dead, Mamma, he's dead!"

His mother had roused herself listlessly.

"Go tell Uriah and the boys to carry him away," she whispered, sinking back upon her pillows.

Three weeks later his mother had died. She was to be buried on Big Outpost, as are all the Rockbounders, and, hardly knowing what he did, he climbed over the side of the whaler on the launch as they lifted in his mother's rough board coffin, that looked like a great fish box. No one said him nay as he clambered aboard, no one spoke a word of pity. The Jungs had hated and despised Richard Covey--he was pariah, no one lent him gear or bait--Uriah had never forgiven the boy's mother for marrying the man, and as a child he had inherited a share of the hatred.

He could never forget that sail to the Outposts: the wind was fair, and Uriah winged out the tan-sailed whaler. The rough white coffin lay on the amidship thwarts by the centreboard; in the stern sat Uriah at the tiller with his son Mark minding the sheets, both red-faced, big-nosed--the Jew of the Levys shone out in Mark--both fierce eyed. He had sat in the bow, a pale-faced, underfed urchin of eight, staring at the coffin or looking across the sea. No word was spoken in that four miles of water journey.

When the shallow grave had been filled in and heaped up in the Outpost cemetery and the few mourners had filtered away, he had been left alone. He had sat there a long time, stunned by the fact that his last feeble friend was gone, but he was dry-eyed, he could not cry. After a while he had gone down to the Outpost launch to get in the boat. Far out on the southern waters he had seen Uriah's tan-sailed whaler beating her way back to Rockbound. They had left him without a word; he was alone on a strange island among strange people.

After that, he remembered, he had begged a crust from door to door and slept in sail lofts, a piece of an old canvas wrapped about his legs. In the first winter he would certainly have perished had it not been for the kindness of Jennie Run-over, so named by some local wit, because her fat hams oozed over the seat of any chair in which she sat, no matter how capacious, as does rising dough over the edge of a pan. She sold liquor, was an unofficial harlot, and kept in her house four stout girls, who in September were visited by lustful fishermen, home from three months' durance on the Grand Banks. Jennie Run-over had picked him up one day as he stood on the beach staring out to Rockbound. Her heart, he supposed, must have been touched by the sight of the pale-faced, forsaken, half-starved, homeless mite of a boy.

At any rate, she took him to her house and taught him to fetch and carry; he gathered driftwood, cut kindlings, brought water from the spring, weeded the garden, fed the pigs, and slept on a pile of shavings in the cellar. But he had enough to eat; for the first time in his life, all he could eat, every day. True, he was often beaten by Jennie when she was drunk, but she sometimes patted his head when she was sober. For five years he had served Jennie and learned a great deal about drunkenness and lust. As soon as he was big enough, he had shipped as "boy" on a banking schooner, and slept well up in the eyes, where every night, his ear pressed close to the planking, he had heard the lap of waves against the stem. He remembered many a night when lanterns hung from the fore boom, the schooner's waist a welter of slippery cod, and he had stood ready for anything, to sharpen a knife, fetch a basket of salt, or let go the falls for a homing dory. "Whar's dat dam' boy?" the salters used to roar from the hold. "Send him down wid water." "Whar's dat dam' boy?" a splitter bawled on deck. "I wants my second knife from B bunk in de fo'c'sle." Up he used to climb from the cool hold to dive into the smelly forecastle. He was every man's boy to fetch and carry and many a clip he got on the side of the head. Still, on the whole they had been kind to him, especially John Brooks, the coloured man, who looked like a pirate with his big gilt earrings hanging from pierced ear lobes. He was high-line and feared no man, and, sometimes, when he was steersman, John would let him do a trick at the wheel, and teach him how to hold a star on the rigging and keep the schooner on her course without staring in the binnacle.

Jennie Run-over had taken all his slender wages for his winter's board, and he wore cast-off garments that seemed always too large or too small. For three whole winters he had gone without boots. He had spoken truly to Uriah: that very day when he landed on Rockbound his complete worldly possessions were his shirt, trousers, a frayed cod line, and the dory he had salvaged and fought for. As he sat by the flickering stove, he felt very rich in his new possession of house and land. They could not scare him off by tales of haunts or threats of hard work. How lucky that old Gershom Born had come to the Outposts and told him he owned a house and one tenth of Rockbound. He had faced down the old king in the first encounter, and wondered at his own courage.

He chuckled as he sat by his rusty stove and started from his reverie. He must get some rest against to-morrow's work. He walked over to the couch on which Richard Covey had died, and throwing himself down, drew a sack over his feet, and after the manner of all fishermen, who even on the darkest night fear that the moon may peep out and shine upon them sleeping, wrapped another sack about his head. He had no fear of Richard Covey's haunt; he was used to loneliness in dark corners. In two minutes he was fast asleep.