Читать книгу Children of Tempest - Munro Neil - Страница 9

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A sloop had come in on the day before to Uskavagh on the east side of Benbecula, and her seamen walked across the island to the inn of Creggans on this afternoon. The five of them were rogues: a Maclean of Corbolst; two brothers—Macleods, incomers from Loch Vaternish in Skye; a Lowlander with a name and language beyond the knowledge of his comrades, who, when they wanted his attention, had to jog his elbow or thump him on the back; and the skipper, a man of Barra answering to the by-name of Flying Jib-boom, who had, by all accounts, the mark of the lash on his back, and wore earrings like a woman, could sing a song in a way to make folk weep for pleasure, and between the stanzas—if the need arose for it—was capable of cutting a throat. They came over the island in the spirit of boys, capering upon the way, chasing each other in childish gambols, laughing, swearing, singing choruses to the lead of Flying Jib-boom, playing tricks upon bairns in the bye-going, or jocular with women working in the mosses which they passed. They were in the very height of merriment until they reached the inn.

Was ever an inn that was not welcome to a mariner? And yet this inn of Creggans might have been a church, so sudden their aspect changed.

They went forward to the grey gable-end of it with steps that grew slower and slower, till at last they stood together a little bit from the corner they must round to reach the entrance; and there they clustered to debate who should be the first to venture in.

“I’ll take a little of the air, lads,” said the skipper, beating upon his breast, “and will be after you in a moment.” But the others closed about him, and refused to let him go.

“What’s this of it?” said one of the Macleods. “Who should go first but the skipper himself, that has the command, and the two languages, and can take—if need be for a quirk—to the fine and convenient English?”

Flying Jib-boom was pleased at the compliment, but still reluctant. “It’s not that I’m feared for the brute nor for any of his name,” said he; “but here’s the whole of you shivering in your shoes because a man has a rough tongue in him, and such cowardice puts me in the nerves.”

“Well, just go on, skipper; let us go round the house three times sun-wise for luck, and pop in and clap down,” said the man Maclean from Corbolst, drawing his hand across his mouth. “I’m dry. He can but talk; and at that same, skipper, lad, there’s few your equal on a deck.”

“On a deck maybe, but this is different. Give me the soles of my feet on timber and I am the boy that can roar; but there’s something weakening about the land, and I was aye too jolly when it came to inns. I cannot talk here unless I lose my temper; and how can I do that just now, I’m asking you, and me in such a jovial key?”

“O king! I’ll warrant he’ll give you the excuse for temper,” said Maclean.

They all crowded, and pushed, and nudged, and shuffled; but still no one would lead the way, till a man in rags came running across a small field to them and cried, “Brave lads! are you looking for some one to have your morning bitters with?”

The question was so bold and strange they had to laugh.

“The very man we’re seeking for,” said the skipper, putting two fingers through one of the holes in the fellow’s coat, as if it were the gill of a fish. “It is not till this time of the day we would be putting off our morning bitters in the month of November and in bleak Benbecula of the agues, but here’s a gallant youth will lead the way into the Sergeant’s inn. Put your bare feet to it, lad, and I will pay your morning tankard.”

But the native drew back. “Not a bit of me!” said he. “It’s too much honour to be marching before my betters. I thought perhaps I might slip in at the hinder-end. Besides, the Sergeant——”

What more he might have said remained unspoken, for the innkeeper himself at that instant came round the gable of the house and threw them all in a confusion. He stared at them with a contempt he took no trouble to conceal—surely the most unusual attitude for a man who kept a tavern!

“God’s splendour!” said he, putting his hands upon his hips, “have I not here Jib-boom the brave and his lice? Here’s a corps of stout fellows fit for the gallows; there’s not one I could not send there if it was in my mind to do it, and yet they’ll stand shuffling at my honest door debating about who’ll come in first. Gentlemen, gentlemen, don’t be feared; it is not the jail of Inverness nor the confessional.”

“I am in the hope that you are very well,” was all that Flying Jib-boom could say, for he was not yet in a temper, and, following the innkeeper, he went within, followed in his turn by his crew, who clung together like school-children again, nudging and winking to each other,—the Lowlander, who knew no word of Gaelic and could only guess the situation, making a gesture of contempt with his palm upon his breeches.

“My trouble! there’s the gallant lads now!” said the ragged man to himself, thinking on the thunder of the Sergeant’s visage, and then went lothfully and took a drink of water at a neighbouring well.

Once in the house it was plain how seriously the seamen had to fear an entrance. For the Sergeant was their master and their bully. He threw some liquor on the table before them at the skipper’s order as if they had been dogs, and, “What’s this I’m to credit for the honour of your call to-day?” said he. “I thought I ordered you to take the sloop direct to Barra, and here you have her, I suppose, at Uskavagh.”

“Well, Sergeant, I would not say but she might happen to be in Uskavagh indeed,” confessed the skipper, hurriedly gulping his drink, as if it were the last he was to have on earth. “My God!” he thought, “I must make haste and get wild. I must get the red fury on me at once, or he will have the whole advantage. That’s the worst of singing and of songs, that they put a man out of the right key for business with a person like this.”

“You’re not denying it?” said the innkeeper, folding his arms. “There was little need for you, because I knew it. Just let me look at you.” He bent with a hand on the table and looked from one to the other of the five men sitting round it. “Between here and the other end of the kingdom,” said he in English, “I would be beat to find a blacker lot of ruffians. I would say nothing about that if they could be trusted the length of a cable-tow with any business that demanded common-sense. I’m not paying high wages for handsome looks or for even-down honesty, but, God! that I cannot get my plain orders carried out the way I put them!”

“I will have no parley in English,—there you have the whole advantage,” said the skipper; and to himself, “The devil’s in it that I cannot get an anger! It’s the worst of a good humour that there’s no getting over it.”

“What’s all this gang wanting here?” asked the innkeeper, back to his Gaelic.

“The skipper said we were to come,” said a Macleod, “or on my soul you may be sure I would never have put a foot in Creggans Inn this day. There’s plenty of good company about the world elsewhere.”

The innkeeper paid no heed to the Skyeman; but, to the skipper, “I suppose,” said he, “you could not trust them alone on the vessel? They might sell her keel for sinkers to the fishermen.”

“Well, it’s just this of it,” said the skipper, “you would not be expecting any man to come from Uskavagh and go back in the dark again without some company.”

“It’s at Uskavagh you had no right to be. I said Barra, did I not? I said Barra. You know the place? You’ve been in it often, drunk and sober. You have ears in your head by all appearance, and I said Barra. Take the cargo into Barra, I said, and——”

“Yes, yes, the cargo!” said the skipper, and slapped his drinking-horn upon the table. “Was I not sure there was something of small importance I forgot? We did not go to Barra, Sergeant, because—well, because there is no cargo. Is my face red, Macleod?” he asked, turning to one of the men of Skye, who said it was. “Then,” went on the skipper, “there’s an end to peace! I am telling you there is no cargo, Sergeant, and make the worst of it! We lost the stuff at Arisaig; but there’s plenty of cheap drink among the Macdonnels of Morar, I’ll warrant, since last Thursday, for the gaugers never got it any more than we did. There’s news for you! You are very fine with your tongue. Sergeant, very fine, if one will listen to you in the English; but give me the Gaelic and fair play, and timber to my feet, and I could burst your ears with conversation. The cargo’s lost, man. There’s news for you!”

“Do you think it is, sea-pig?” said the innkeeper. “I knew very well what brought you here to-day, for I had the news from Corodale in the morning. It’s the third cargo; another loss of the kind and I am a ruined man.”

“And when you’re ruined, Col of Corodale will not be very wealthy too, whatever,” said the skipper, sitting back in his chair with a great indifference. “So you’ll have good company.”

“Col has nothing to do with her.”

“It’s a lie, Sergeant, a red lie,” said the skipper; “and who would it be but Col that sent you the word from Corodale?”

The Sergeant grew grey with rage. “The first man that credits Corodale with it I will give him my knife in his neck,” said he, and drew a sgean from his armpit with a flourish.

“Knives!” cried the Skyemen, starting up with much enjoyment, and kicking the stools away from their feet, but the skipper stopped them. “Put back that!” said he. “If I had my full fury on me I would slash his lordship here in ribbons for a pipe drone, but I am not more than just a small bit vexed.”

The knives were all returned; no one more readily put back his weapon than the innkeeper, who was a good judge always of the lengths it was safe to go in quarrelling with islanders. “I have told you before, skipper,” he said in English, “that Col has no more to do with our business now than his brother, and the brother’s not to be vexed by hearing any such rumours as that. You hear? This loss is mine—and that’s the worst of it; I would not mind having any one to share it with, but we all know the close fist of Col. Your last misfortune put an end to his patience and shut his pocket. He has had his last day at the free trade.”

“I am very glad to hear it,” said a new voice, breaking in upon the company, sitting in a room dark under any circumstances, but now more dark than ever, for the evening was falling fast and the sky was blackening with storm. Duncan was standing at the door and looking in on the skipper and his company. “Hail to the house and the household!” said he, shaking the raindrops off his hat. “I came over for Dermosary’s burial, and am late by a night and day through no fault of my own, but because a witless messenger would have his own way.”

The smugglers stood to their feet and went out for the sake of good manners, leaving their betters together.

“You’re welcome at my door,” said the Sergeant, looking anything but truthful. “It is the first time; I hope it will not be the last, and that the next occasion will be different. Master Ludovick and his sister and their folk took the morning ford, and I half looked for them back by this one, but they have likely gone south by Gramisdale,—at any rate, they have not come this way. A dozen of them at least—a most genteel and notable funeral. The priest and his sister spent the night here.”

“My brother Col was not, by any chance, was he, of the number?” asked Duncan.

The innkeeper jumped to his answer. “No,” said he, “Col was not here, but Master Ludovick said he had looked for one or other of you.”

“Ah!” said Duncan, “that’s vexatious too, for though I was late, I thought he would be here before me and make up for my absence. He left Corodale last night before the messenger came, and I fancied he might have happened to hear of the funeral otherwise. Where he can be is beyond me, for some folk on the way tell me they saw him come in this direction.”

“Well, he has not reached this length, I’ll assure you,” said the Sergeant, taking to his English, which was the sign, as most folks knew but the man he spoke to, that he saw some need for lying. “I hope he is very well, your brother?” he went on, and moved to the door with Duncan.

“Was it ever otherwise than very well with Col?” said Duncan, answering him in English. “A stag’s frame and a hind’s heart; there is not, for many things, the equal of him in all the Isles. You have heard of him swimming at West Boisdale on Michaelmas and saving an old fellow’s life?”

“Faith! and I did that, from the very man himself that he saved. He was here at the last market, and Col of Corodale was his first word and his last. The thing was not without its hazards, for you know the saying, ‘Take its prey from the sea, and the prey will punish you.’ ”

“I have missed my purpose in coming here,” said Duncan, paying no heed to the proverb. “But I will not be counting the journey unrewarded, seeing it has given me the assurance that my brother is—is——” He hesitated, from a consideration of the innkeeper’s feelings, but he might have saved himself the trouble.

“Out of the Happy Return,” said the Sergeant, finishing his words for him. “Oh, it does not matter for me. I have a living to make some way, and folk are too particular. Your brother, Mr Duncan, was an ill man of late to get on with, and I am glad that he has taken his money elsewhere. I’m all the better pleased at it because my skipper and his men there have come to tell me they have had another misfortune and lost a cargo.”

“So we heard at Corodale last night,” said Duncan. “If there’s any consolation in the fact, I may tell you that Col was as much put about as if the vessel was his own. It is another proof of his good heart——”

“There’s one thing about it,” said the innkeeper, “your brother Col has a very good-natured brother. In some respects he’s on the narrow side is Col.”

“Narrow side?” said Duncan, drawing down his brows.

“Has he not faults?”

“We have all faults, Sergeant, so we should have little to say of the faults of others. ‘Narrowness,’ you say; what would be the wonder, seeing so much has gone wrong with him in business these few years back?”

“Oh, a gentlemanly vice I admit, sir,” soothingly acknowledged the innkeeper, “but apt to grow on one. I have always stood up for Col when people said he would sell yourself for a shilling.”

“There is too much Col in our conversation, Sergeant, and I’m the last to hear his credit cried down. I’m for off to Gramisdale; perhaps I may meet Father Ludovick and his people coming back there. Good night!”

He left hurriedly, angry at the insult to his absent brother, angry with himself that this reading of Col’s character should coincide somewhat with his own. But as he sped towards Gramisdale on the verge of the ford, he grew glad that his brother was at last clear of the Sergeant and the Happy Return and her nefarious traffic.

“Fair wind to you also,” said the innkeeper, when Duncan had gone in the darkness; “I hate priests, half-baked or wholly cooked,” and listened for a moment to the sound of surf booming in on Eachkamish. “By the seven stars! there’s a night of it coming on,” he said to himself. He looked about for sign of his ship’s company, but they were gone; with their unpleasant message delivered, they had taken the opportunity given by Duncan to disappear, and they were now as gaily as before crossing the island, schoolboys, and brave, and careless, whooping in the townships, tapping at windows, play-acting wraiths and ghosts, to the terror of mid Benbecula.