Читать книгу Rockbound - Frank Parker Day - Страница 4

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Allas! the shorte throte, the tendre mouth,

Maketh that est and west, and north and south,

In erthe, in eir, in water, man to swynke

To gete a glotoun deyntee mete and drynke!

CANTERBURY TALES.

When David woke with a start it was still dark, but he threw off his rough covering and went quickly to the door. Away to the eastward dark mountains of morning clouds lowered, but the offshore breeze had pushed out the fog bank, and the stars twinkled through. As he had never owned watch or clock, he had learned to use the great bowl of the universe as an approximate timepiece. He looked up into the northern sky and saw the dipper, in relation to the pole star, hanging in the position of V on a clock dial, and knew from memories of previous nights that it was between two and three o'clock. There was no time to lose if he meant to show Uriah and the Jung boys his worth. He threw a bag about his shoulders, tied it at his neck with a bit of marline, tore off a thick heel from Anapest's loaf, thrust one half in his pocket for lunch, and gnawing the other half, ran for the launch, his bare feet scattering the dew from heavily bent grasses across the path.

Early as he was, he was none too early! A squat dark object moving swiftly from boats to fish house he knew was Uriah. Casper and Martin were not about yet--Casper, the farmer by instinct, was always last to get his boat off in the morning--but Joseph had shoved the Lettie over on her bilge and was greasing her keel. Neither spoke to him. David went over to the Phœbe, pushed her over on her side, fumbled in the dark for a stick, which he too dipped in the tub of stinking gurry, and greased her keel so that she would slip easily down the ways. As the seas often run fiercely even on the northern and sheltered side of the island, Rockbound boats never lie at a mooring but are hauled out high and dry as soon as they touch the launch.

Uriah waddled out of the gloom of the fish house with a basket full of herrings.

"Dere's yur bait, an' dere's an extry line, a box o' hooks, an' two odd sinkers."

David righted the Phœbe, lifted the basket into her, and set it down by the centreboard without a word.

"Got nair a pair o' nippers?" queried the old man.

"I don't need no nippers. I'se fished on de Gran' Banks, an' me hands is tough."

"You best foller Joe; he knows w'ere de big schools o' fish lays dis season ob de year."

David grunted something in reply, but he had no mind to follow Joe or any of them; he would lead or nuttin'; he hadn't fished out o' de Outposts for naught; he knowed where de fish layed well as Joe. He set his shoulder to the stem of the Phœbe and started her down the ways. First she moved slowly, then gathered speed, and as his foot felt the chill of the salt water on the last log, she seemed to be flying. With his left hand grasping the jib stay, he gave a mighty spring and rolled in over the port washboard. Joseph, whose boat was already afloat, listened with the malicious hope that he would hear a great splash, betokening that, in the darkness, David had missed the logs set at unaccustomed spaces and been dragged off waist deep by the flying Phœbe, as he had seen many a green sharesman dragged before. But David, safely aboard, grasped a sweep and rushed quickly astern to fend her off the ledge and turn her head to the westward; then, darting swiftly forward, he made halliards and creaking blocks sing, and the big brown mainsail rose and bellied to the puff of the shore wind. Astern he rushed to shove his tiller hard aport and rattle in the main sheet till his sail was flat. Up came the Phœbe's bow into the wind. Now, setting the tiller in a middle notch, he darted forward again to hoist his jib and belay the halliard, back astern again to haul in and make fast his jib sheet. All his motions were swift and catlike; his bare feet gripped the wet surface of thwart and washboard.

When he had time to look about him, he noted that the breeze was from the northwest and that he could just clear the dull black mass of West Head by jogging the Phœbe. Joseph's boat was a hundred yards ahead of him. He tugged at the rusty pin of his centreboard and let the chain go clanking down; it would slow the Phœbe up a little, but keep her from drifting to leeward in this light breeze. Joseph made a short tack to the northward to weather the head, but David held straight on.

"Don't go in dere, de water's shoal," bawled Joseph.

But David pretended not to hear and held to his course; there would be plenty of time to come about when the iron centreboard bumped and bobbed up. The Phœbe was handy, he knew, for from the Outpost boats he had seen her luff up and come about a hundred times before she turned over with Mark, and he knew her points as a jockey knows the strengths and weaknesses of his rival's horses. He cleared West Head just outside the breakers and passed inside the Grampus with Joseph's boat, in spite of her tack, still fifty yards ahead. He let main and jib sheet run now and stood away to the southeast. With a long-handled gaff he winged out his jib, pulled up his centreboard, and watched to see if he was creeping up on the Lettie. Joseph's boat held her lead. The Phœbe was fast but crank, and Uriah had loaded her with ballast since she drowned Mark: four hundred pounds of beach rocks lay along her keelson.

"To hell wid ballast, dat makes a boat hard to get up an' off de launch; I'll ballast my boat wid fish," thought David, and stooping he tossed two hundred pounds of beach rocks into the sea. Then the lightened Phœbe began to draw up on the Lettie, and as David sailed his boat close to the Lettie's quarter, to take the quick puffs from her sails, he was soon abreast of Joseph's boat and little by little drew ahead. Now he was leading the Jung boys, first of the Rockbound fleet; Martin's boat showed dimly outside the Grampus, and Casper's trailed far behind. Daylight was coming gradually.

When he was well ahead and well to the southward of Barren Island, he hauled in his sails flat and stood away again to the westward toward his favourite bank. A landsman who looks at the even surface of the sea and whose acquaintance with the bottom is limited to slightly pitched bathing beaches thinks of the seafloor as flat and level. Not so it appeared to the mind of David, who from frequent soundings with a cod line visualized it truly as composed of hills, mountain ranges, deep valleys, sharp cañons, buttes, and wide plateaus. It was futile, he knew, to drop his baited hooks in a valley, for on the tops of the ridges and shallow plateaus lay the cod, waiting for schools of herring and squid to drift over. The finding and exact location of these shallow plateaus called banks by the fishermen seems to the uninitiated, who sees only miles upon miles of waves that look everywhere the same, nothing short of marvellous. They are marked by alignments of distant islands, by cross bearings, and time courses run by the compass.

To his favourite bank in the open sea, southwest from Barren Island and south-southeast from Lubeck Island light, David steered the Phœbe, that, lightened of her ballast, heeled over and put her lee washboard under in the freshening breeze. Presently he rounded his boat up, let the jib run, dropped the peak of his mainsail, but held fast the throat, so that the Phœbe would ride to the wind, and tossed over his grapnel. Over went his double-baited line, with his sinker he sounded bottom, twelve fathom, and he drew up a fathom to keep his hooks clear of the weeds on the sea floor. He began to saw patiently, but nothing happened; in half an hour he caught only two small rock cod. His heart sank; he could scarcely face Uriah on his first day with an empty boat. He would be cursed for not following Joseph as instructed. What was the matter? He had always caught fish on this bank before. Presently he ran forward, hove up his grapnel, hoisted jib and peak again, and stood farther to the westward toward Matt's Bank.

Again he anchored and tried. This time he was on the fish; ten seconds after his baited hooks reached bottom, a pair of big cod flashed over his gunwale and were snapped into the fish pen. The fish bit fiercely; as soon as the hooks were down came a tug on the line; then, after a few seconds of swift hand-over-hand pulling, gray forms with twirling white bellies showed dimly in the green depths. He gave himself no rest, but pulled and hauled, baited and rebaited for three hours. Once a strange boat drew up to him, and David, with two great cod hooked that twisted and tangled his snoods, let his line rest on the bottom.

"Air a fish?" hailed the stranger.

"A scatterin' rock cod," called back David lying stoutly. When the boat was well away, he pulled up his fish and repaired his snarled snoods. By nine, when the fish stopped biting his fish pens were two thirds full and the Phœbe had but a streak and a half clear.

The breeze dropped, and the sun shone warm to dry his shirt and trousers, soaked from the spray of the hand line. He squatted tailor-wise on his bit of deck by the jib stay, and though both hands were bleeding from the run of the burning hand line, he felt happier than he had for many a day. On the sea he was a free man and his own master. The corners of his mouth drooped in his quizzical smile as he thought how Joe, Martin, and Casper would curse when he came in high-line on his first day. And high-line he certainly would be. He drew out his heel of dampened bread and devoured it ravenously, washing it down with deep draughts from the Phœbe's water jug that Uriah had stuck in the bows. Uriah was mean and greedy, but he knew how to fit out a sharesman, thought David, and he kept his boats tight.

As he ate and looked about him at the sunlit water and enjoyed the sway of the boat that rocked him as if he were cradled--little cradling had he had as a child--he saw a great swirl and a dozen splashes dead astern to the southward. Then black backs flashed on the surface.

"Playin' pollock," said David to himself. He knew what to do for them. He stuffed the last crust into his mouth, seized his line, cut off the heavy leaden sinker, and, wrapping both hooks with guts torn from a fat herring, let his line trail astern near the surface. Snap, and he was fast to two pollock! Over and over again he repeated the operation, till he dared not lay another fish aboard the Phœbe, clear only by half a streak from the gunwale. He tried his pump till she sucked clear. It was a pity to leave those tens of thousands of playing pollock; if an Outposter came near he would hail him. However, no boat neared him.

In the offing far to the eastward, he could see the black specks of Joseph's, Casper's, and Martin's boats bunched near the Rock. It would be a long, hard beat home; the little breeze that remained, puffy and variable, still hung in the nor'west. Far out on the sea rested a thick stratum of fog bank, through which a three-master loomed, with spars unearthly high. He rested patiently, awaiting a breeze, knowing that the wind often hauled at noontime. Before twelve came a draught from the sou'west; luck favoured him that day. He let out his mainsail to catch the quartering breeze and rested happy at the tiller. Then the other Rockbound boats made sail and stood in. By their speed he judged them light; they would be home long before him.

The southwest breeze had caught the fog bank half an hour before it touched the sails of the Phœbe, and the fog travelled faster than the boats. Presently the sun sickened, the islands dimmed to a dull gray, and black specks that meant boats were blotted out. David took a course on Rockbound before the fog shut out the island, and kept his ears alert for the sound of breakers. The deep-laden Phœbe moved sullenly, her jib flirting from side to side of the stay with a vixenish snap. Now, had David had a draught of rum, or even pipe and tobacco, he would have been comforted, for the stoutest heart is lonely on a fog-shrouded sea.

In two hours time he heard the smash of surf and, standing close in and staring eagerly, made out the black form of sou'west gutter rock. He steered west now, hugging the dim black of the cliff, and dared again to round West Head inside the Grampus, lest he should lose touch with the shore. Then he jibbed, hauled flat, and stood for the launch, letting out a great "Hallo." Uriah was at the launch with the oxen, and, as his prow took the logs, hooked the wire cable into his stem ring.

"Go easy," yelled David, "she's deep."

"I'se hauled out boats while you was yet suckin'," retorted Uriah, starting his oxen with a mighty "Gee Bright."

"How much do ye hail?" queried Uriah as the boat reached the top of the launch.

"Six quintal," answered David proudly. Casper came out and stared in his fish pens.

"Scale fish," said he contemptuously, handling the pollock.

"No dey's not scale fish," said David. "Dere's a few scatterin' pollocks on top, underneat's all big cod."

Uriah said naught to David; silence and absence of complaint were ever his loudest praise, but he had a word to say to Joseph, Martin, and Casper in a corner of the fish house. David hailed more that day than the three brothers put together. In all his years on Rockbound, he never had a better day's fishing nor a greater triumph.

When David had been fishing a fortnight off Rockbound, the dogfish came and drove in the boats from the Rock and adjacent banks. It was no good trying for cod when dogfish were about--even Uriah admitted that--they chased the cod and did nothing but tangle and destroy the fisherman's gear. Still, the boats went out each morning in the hope that the fisherman's pest had vanished; a few unavailing trials, and they returned early. David had hoped for some afternoons of rest and leisure, but that was not part of Uriah's plan, who put him to work tanning nets.

About noon on one such day, Joseph, the sly one, went to Cow Pasture Hill on the west end to stake out his young bull. When he came to the cliff's edge and looked down from the height into the green water, he saw that Sheer Net Cove was alive with herring. They darted to and fro or lay by millions on the yellow sand of the cove's bottom. That could not long be kept a secret, and he knew that the Krauses had their nets and seine laid in their seine boat, whereas the seine of the Jungs was in the upper loft. If the Jungs started to get out their herring seine, the Krauses would see them, launch first, and get round the fish. He thought for a moment, ruffling up his black hair, then ran through the thick spruces on the back of the island, and, bending low to escape observation, dashed across bar and sand beach and made his way into the thick woods on the eastern end. After a moment's pause to catch his breath he came running down the road from the eastern end bellowing: "De herrin', de herrin' is in on de shore in millions."

What a hurry and scramble was there then! Uriah puffed to the loft and tore down the herring seine; down the stairs stamped Casper with an armful of ropes, grapnels, and net buoys; Joseph followed with two baskets of sinker rocks; young Gershom Born ran to and fro, shouting and waving his arms as he gathered up equipment, with Noble Morash following sullenly in his wake; David greased bottoms of seine boats and dories. Do what they could, the Kraus boats were off first, but the Krauses, deceived by Joseph's ruse, pulled madly for the eastern end. Only when they were well out of hearing Joseph said:

"Quick now, de herrin's in de Sheer Net Cove an' we kin git dere first."

Casper, who excelled in net fishing, led the fleet of Jung boats around the western end of the island. One man tugged viciously at the oars, and another sat straddling the bows, peering down into the green water, not more than three fathom deep, for the edge of the herring school. Young Gershom Born, the most powerful oarsman, pulled the boat in which Casper was the watcher; David pulled the second boat with Noble Morash in the bows, and Martin, the weakest oarsman, trailed behind with Joseph straddling his bows.

"Here are herrin'! Here are herrin'!" Joseph and Noble began to shout from the rear boats.

"Not enough yet," bawled Casper from the leading boat. Over the yellow sands the green-backed herring raced in schools so thick and opaque that the sea floor was hidden.

"Shoot here, shoot here," yelled Joseph in his anxiety to beat the Krauses. "Lot's o' herrin' here, ain't it!"

"Not yet, not yet!" shouted Casper. When the boats came to the mouth of the rocky Sheer Net Cove, Casper raised his hand as a signal to shoot. He took his boat close to the breakers, cast over the end of the seine, tying on rock sinkers with a swift and adroit hand as he paid it out, while Gershom Born, the great blond sharesman, strained at the oars and tugged the heavy seine boat, heavier now with the drag of the seine, westward to sea. Then, at a signal from Casper's hand, he made a sharp turn northward to the right, again a signal, another sharp turn to the eastward, and millions of herring were penned in the cove. The ends of the seine were brought together and tied; now it floated in a great corked circle, the vibrant water within crowded with herrings, a tumult of blues and greens. At the first rush of the imprisoned fish against the outer twine, the seaward corks went under.

"Quick, Dave, quick man, git on de buoys," bawled Casper, "or de fish will git ober de top."

The seaward head ropes were dragged up on the prows of boats to hold up the seine till the white fir-wood buoys could be tied on, and Joseph and Martin ran out moorings and grapnels to north, west, and south, to hold the seine against the rush of the tide.

Still, in spite of the light fir-wood net buoys, the seaward head ropes dipped under, for the seine twine was now white with meshed herring; the smaller fry darted through the meshes and to sea again.

"Quick, now, Dave, wid de nets," bawled Casper. David was everyone's slave; everyone called orders to the newest and lowest sharesman. He did not care for this herring fishing, where there was little chance for individual action: his great moments were when, on the open sea, he was alone in the Phœbe. As long as the herring were in, he knew that the boat he already loved because it gave him freedom would lie dry on the launch.

Over the head ropes went dories and seine boats, and the inside of the seine was circled with a fleet of nets that were drawn into a smaller circle. Gershom Born, blue-eyed Viking, hurled in the jiggler, a stone tied with a rope to pieces of white wood. This he flounced up and down, to scare more fish into meshes of net or seine. Noble Morash, the gaunt, black-bearded, silent sharesman, and David darted their spruce oars to the bottom, and when they bobbed from the surface like the sword Excalibur, caught them neatly by the handles, to drive them down again among the frightened fish. Once Noble Morash drove his into deep water, and when the oar handle did not reappear in the usual rhythmic time, he peeped over the gunwale to see if his oar blade had caught in a cleft of the rock bottom. Whereupon the oar handle shot out, caught him between the eyes, and knocked him flat and half stunned into the bottom of the boat. There was a yell of laughter in which David joined. That was a first-rate Rockbound joke to be recounted for many a day. Noble Morash rose, mopping the blood from his nose, and glared savagely at David with his narrow, sinister eyes. He would show the new sharesman if he could laugh at him, even if he were Uriah's kinsman.

"Herrin'! Herrin'!" they screamed at one another as if they had never seen a fish before.

"We got two hundred barrels, ain't it?"

"We got five hundred barrels."

"Chuck in dat giggler."

"Souse her up an' down."

"De herrin's not bin in on de shore like dis fur twenty year."

David caught the spirit and like the rest became a wild fisherman, intoxicated with the great catch of herring, shouting, gesticulating, taking his turn with the heavy giggler, driving down the oars. Presently the Kraus boats hove up alongside; the Krauses had taken no fish and eyed the Jungs resentfully, though they had not got to the bottom of Joseph's ruse.

The inner net, heavy with fat, gleaming herring meshed from both sides, was hauled now, each end in a separate boat. David and Noble Morash in their boat dragged in head and foot rope and shook the fish into the boat's bottom a half bushel at a time, or tore out those that stuck fast in the twine with a rending of gills and sometimes the loss of a head. When they strode from bow to stern now, they waded knee deep in herring. Lower and lower sank seine boat and dories, till only single streaks were clear. When the net was picked, it was again circled within the seine. Outside giant albacore in pursuit of the herring splashed and swirled the waves into foam.

"Bring in de spare boats," bawled Casper, and in they floated over the head ropes.

David glanced up from his work once in a while to admire the little cove in which these Jungs shouted and toiled unmindful of any beauty about them. It was closed to the eastward, and partly to the northward and southward, by sheer cliffs of slaty black and iron-red rocks, seamed and fish-boned with cracks from some pre-historic fire. The slanting afternoon sun filled these rocks with light and cast deep shadows in the clefts. Above the cliffs ran in a fine curve a narrow margin of green turf crowned with masses of stunted wind-blown spruces crowding like horses in a gale, tails to the sea wind. The cliff-fallen boulders at the foot were clad with raw-sienna rockweed, and among these the green sea washed with a bang and a roar, lashing itself, even on this comparatively calm day, into a fury of foam and creamy lather. It seemed like a dream to David, and that he was dreamer and a part of the dream.

There they laboured together, great shouldered, red faced, clad in yellow oil pants, shouting, gesticulating, pulling on head ropes, hurling the giggler, darting oars, balancing on thwarts or gunwale with all the grace of athletes, tearing out shining fish tangled in brown meshes, wild with greed and excitement, though they had done this a hundred times before. Beneath the yellow dories that were down close to the gunwales the sea, patched in green and black, was vibrant with backs of frightened herring, racing madly about nets and seine in their effort to escape.

Again they hauled the fleet of nets and picked them. The sun was low over Flat Island now, and the boats could carry no more. Reluctantly Casper gave the order to set a fleet of nets about the remnant of the school and to take up the moorings of the big seine, which they dared not leave overnight so close to the shore.

Home they rowed in the twilight, deep-laden seine boat and dories dragging wearily. Uriah was waiting at the launch with his oxen to draw out the boats. From him came no word of praise.

"You got to be quick now, boys," he cried. "It's Saturday, an' I neber works on de Lord's Day, me nor my fader before me." And to David, "Git a snack an' be back quick. Dese herrin' got to be dressed by midnight. Quick, now, we don't want no loafers on Rockbound." This, after he had fished on the Rock before daybreak and tugged at the heavy seine through a long afternoon.

David, with back and shoulders aching, rushed off to his house and tore ravenously at a crust of bread and a piece of salt fish. He would show the old man if he was a loafer; in five minutes he was back at the fish house, just as Joseph was coming down the road. Uriah was waiting for him, Uriah the king, who neither ate nor slept while fish were on the floor.

"You boys is awful slow. Why, in de ole days me an' my brudder Simeon stood on yon beach an' gibbed eighty barrels of mackerel an' never stirred from dere from tree one afternoon till sundown nex' day. Men could work in dem days. Here you, David, look alive, run dat spare dory down de launch an' fill her wid water while I fetches de cattle."