The Chase of the Tide

THE enviable achievement in his sight was a gunwale load snatched from a loppy sea; he had never heard of a pirate or a clown or a motorman. From the beginning, he was committed to the toil of the sea; for he was a Newfoundlander of the upper shore—the child of a grey, solemn waste-place: a land of artificial graveyards. The lean rocks to which the cottages of Ragged Harbour cling like barnacles lie, a thin, jagged strip, between a wilderness of scrawny shrubs and the sea’s fretful expanse. They deny, even, place for the dead to rot in decency: hence, inevitably, from generation to generation, the people of that barren match their strength against the might of tempestuous waters, fighting with their bare hands—great, knotty, sore, grimy hands; match, also, their spirit against the invisible terrors which the sea’s space harbours, in sunshine and mist, by all the superstition of her children. In that isolation, virtue is not a voluminous mantle, cut à la mode, capriciously varying from period to period; but is, in truth, the grace of the strong. It chanced that Jo was the issue of a springtime arrangement—such as the gulls make—which, happily, had endured to the coming of a parson of passage four years later. He had been brought forth like the young of the seal and the white bear, and he was nurtured into hardy childhood—into brown, lithe, quick strength—no more for love than for the labour of his hands. Obviously, then, he was committed to the toil of the sea.

This was disclosed to him—this and the sea’s enmity—while he was yet in a pinafore of hard-tack sacking, months distant from his heritage of old homespun clothes.

“I ‘low I cotches moare fish ‘n Job Luff when I grows up,” he boasted to Sammy Arnold, who had fished out of Ragged Harbour for sixty years, and was then past his labour. “I ‘low I salts un better, too.”

Sammy chuckled.

“I ‘low,” the child pursued, steadily, “I cotches moare’n you done, Uncle Sammy.”

“Hut, b’y!” the old man cried in a rage. “They be moare quintals t’ my name on Manuel’s books ‘n they be—’n they be—folk in the—the warld!”

They were on Lookout Head, waiting for the fleet to beat in from a thickening night; from this vantage Uncle Sammy swept his staff over the land, north to south, to comprehend the whole world.

“Iss?” said Jo, doubtfully. It was past his understanding; so he crept to the edge of the cliff to watch the black waves roll ponderously out of the mist, and shatter and froth over the lower rocks.

“The say do be hungry for lives this even,” Uncle Sammy sighed.

“For me?” the boy screamed. “Is un?” He shrank from the abyss, quivering.

“He do be hungry this day.”

Jo strode forward, as in wrath; then boldly he faced the sea, bearding it, with clinched hands and dilated nostrils.

” ‘Tis good for un,” Uncle Sammy laughed.

“They say woan’t cotch me!” the boy cried. “I woan’t let un cotch me!”

“He’ve not cotched me,” Sammy said, serenely. He peered seaward; and for him it was as though the mist were the dust of past years.

“I woan’t let un cotch me!” the boy cried again. He stumbled, in blind fright, to Uncle Sammy, and took his hand. “I woan’t ! ” he sobbed. “I woan’t … I woan’t!”

It was the Mystery! “Skipper Jo, b’y,” the “old man whispered, “you be one o’ they poor folk that can’t ‘bide the say. Little Skipper,” he said, crooking his arm about the lad’s waist, “never care. Iss, sure—you be one o’ they the say cotches—like your fawther—iss, sure.”

Thereafter Jo knew the sea for his enemy. But the perception was not always present with him; it was, indeed, to his spirit, like the eternal sound of the breakers to his senses—overshadowing, obscured, lost. For, as of course, in the years of idleness—numbering, from the suckling months, five—he had all the wisdom of children to glean and winnow and store; and that, in but small part, concerns many things—the ways of lobsters and tom cod, the subtle craft of dories, the topography of the wildernesses under broad flakes, the abiding places of star-fish and prickly sea-eggs, the significance of squidsqualls, and the virulence of squids. In the years that browned his face and yellowed his hair and brought him boots of goatskin, a jew’s harp, and a slicker, he had to learn of the activities of life much of a kind with this: In the morning—soon as the light spreads from the inland hills—men go out to fish, and, when they have fished many days, their wrists are swollen and festered, and the cracks in the palms of their hands are filled with hard, black blood; women never go out to fish, but, rather, stay ashore to milk goats, make boots, spin the sheep’s wool, split wood, tend babies, spread the fish on the flakes, gather soil for the gardens, keep the stages clean, and cook potatoes and broose; children stand on tubs at the splitting table, to cut the throats of cod, and when, in the depths of night, they nod, through weariness, a man with a bushy white beard cries, “Hi, b’y! I’ll heave a head at ye if ye fall asleep “—a cold, slimy, bloody cod head.

“They be a time comin’,” was the burden of his thought in those days, “when I can’t bide awake.” So thinking, he would shudder.

Thence, to his tenth year, when all things were suddenly revealed, he wondered concerning many things; and chief among his perplexities was this: Where did the tide go? Where did the waters bide until they ran back through the tickle to cover again the slimy harbour bottom? It was a mocking mystery; ultimately, as shall be set down, it was like a lure to adventure cast by the sea. He wondered, also, what lay beyond the hills that rose, softly blue, far, far beyond the rocks where the bake-apples and juniper berries grew. The land was undiscovered; the wilderness between impenetrable. Who made God? God was uncreated, said the parson. That was incomprehensible. Did they use squid or caplin for bait in the storied harbour called New York? Heigh, oh! The stranger had gone. Where did the tide go? Day after day it slipped out and crept back: and as, returning, it gurgled over the bottom, it mocked him again; and, as it turned and stole away, it enticed him to follow—far as need be. Oh, well! How could flour grow on blades of grass, as the stranger had said? Again, the stranger had gone. Was a horse as big as two dogs put together—big as Bob and Bippo? Tom Pearce, who had seen a horse in Green Bay, was with Manuel’s schooner on the Labrador. Nobody else knew. But where did the tide go? Where did the waters bide? That was the nearest mystery. Truth, it was like a scream in the night.

“Hut, b’y!” said Uncle Sammy. “They be a hape o’ curious things about the say. Sheer off from they. Iss, sure. The tide do goa in a hoale in the bottom.”

Jo had abandoned that theory months ago; and so he puzzled, until, one day, when he and Ezekiel idled together, the punt slipped, at the turn of the tide, from under the laden flake, where the shadows are deep and cold, into the fading sunshine of the open harbour. Her shadow wriggled to the dull, green depths where the star-fish and sea-eggs lay; and the wary dories darted, flashing, into the security of the black waters beyond. She tugged at her painter like a dog at the leash—swinging fretfully, reaching, slacking with a petulant ripple; it was as though she panted to join the waters in the race through the tickle to the wide, free open. Now, the sea was here restrained from treacherous violence by encircling rocks; so, with rocking and ripple and amorous glitter, Jo was lured from the absent observation of a lost kid—which, bleating, picked its way up the cliff to a ragged patch of snow—to a deeper contemplation of the mystery that lay beyond the placid harbour. The sea’s ripple and glitter and slow, mighty swell; her misty distances, expanse, and hidden places; the gulls, winging, free and swift, in her blue heights; the fresh, strong wind blowing—these are an enticement to the thoughts of men. They soothe all fear of the sea’s changeful moods, excite strange dreams, wake soaring, fantastic longings; and to those who look and hearken comes the impulse, and hot on the heels of the impulse the deep resolve, and after the deep resolve the perilous venture. It was so with the boy in the shute of the punt, lying with his head on a slicker and his eyes staring vacantly through the tickle rocks to the glistening distance.

“Now, b’y,” Jo said, abruptly, “I knows!”

“Iss, b’y?” little Ezekiel answered from the bow. “I ‘low he heaps hisself up; an’ ’twill be like climbin’ a hill t’ paddle t’ the top.”

“Iss, b’y?” Ezekiel was patiently sure of Jo’s wisdom.

“The tide—he do.”

“They be nar a hill t’ the say,” Ezekiel cried with scorn.

“You be oan’y a lad,” Jo persisted. “I ‘low he heaps hisself up.”

“Where do he?”

“T’other side o’ the Grapplin’ Hook grounds, where he’ve no bottom.”

” ‘Tis barbarous far.” Ezekiel regretfully glanced at the little schooner he had made. He had just rigged the jib with pains; he wanted to try the craft out in the light wind.

” ‘Tis not so far as the sun’s hoale.”

“Huh! ‘Tis not so handy as Tailor’s Nose.”

Jo stirred himself. “Be your caplin spread, b’y?”

“Iss.”

“Be un all spread, b’y?”

“Iss,” plaintively.

“Us’ll goa. Cast off!”

Ezekiel hesitated. “Be your caplin spread?” he demanded. Then, stern as a prophet, “God’ll damn you t’ everlastin’ fire ‘n you lie.”

“You be cursin’ God, Ezekiel Sevior !” Jo exclaimed. “God’ll damn you. ‘Tis marked down this minute—iss, sure.” With impatience, “Us’ll goa. Cast off!”

Ezekiel loosed the painter and sprang to the rowing seat; and Jo bent his strength to the scull-oar, and sent the punt clear of a jutting rock. Now, in these parts the tide has a clutch; the water gripped the boat and drew her out—swift and sly as a thief’s hand. Soon the grip was fast; had the young strength—that now spent itself in guiding, to escape wreck on the Pancake—been turned to flat resistance, it would have wasted itself in vain. The waters hurried, leaping, eddying, hissing; they tightened their grip as they ran past Aunt Phoebe’s flake, where Aunt Phoebe herself was piling her fish, against the threat of rain overnight—past the skipper’s stage and net-horse, where the cod-trap was spread to dry in the sun, with a new and unaccountable rent exposed—past Jake Sevior’s whitewashed cottage, set on a great rock at Broad Cove, where the pigs and chickens were amicably rioting with the babies in the kitchen. And the tide as it ran may here be likened to the hand of a woman on a victim’s arm: to her winks and empty chatter as she leads him from a broad thoroughfare to an alley that is dark, whence a darker stair leads to a place where thieves and murderers wait; for the north wind was heaping up a bank of fog behind Mad Mull, which stretched far out into the sea, and would soon spread it the length of the coast below. But to the children’s sight the sea was fair; so they were swept on, singing:

 

The fire bust out in Bonavist’ Bay.
Fol de rol, fol de rol !

Where was the fish and the flake nex’ day?
Fol de riddle rol, de-e-e-e !An’ ’tis

 

Nick, bully Nick, Mister Nicholas;
An’ ’tis Nick, Mister Nicholas, 0 !

An’ ’tis Nick, Mister Nick, Skipper Nicholas;
An’ ’tis Cap-lain Penny, heigh oh !

 

Who made the fish for the fire to eat ?
Fol de rol, fol de rol !

Whose was the room what the fire swep’ neat?
Fol de riddle rol, de-e-e-e !

 

An’ ’tis Nick, bully Nick, Mister Nicholas;
An’ ’tis Nick, Mister Nicholas, 0 !

An’ ’tis Nick, Mister Nick, Skipper Nicholas;
An’ ’tis Cap-

“Loo kit!” Ezekiel exclaimed, pointing to the shore. He was scared to a whisper.

“‘Tis Bob,” Jo said. “Hark!”

Bob, a frowsy old dog with the name of a fish-thief, was in the shadow of a flake, howling and madly pawing the shingle.

“‘Tis the sign o’ death!” Jo gripped the gunwale. The dog howled for the third time; then he slunk off down the road with his clog between his legs.

“Josiah Butts—’tis he, sure!” Ezekiel exclaimed.

“Noa; ’tis—”

“Iss; ’tis Josiah. He’ve handy t’ five years too much t’ the spread o’ his mains’!.”

” ‘Tis Uncle Job Luff, b’y,” Jo said, knowingly.

“I heered un curse God last even.”

Ezekiel started. “What did un say, b’y?” he insinuated.

“I heered un say—” Jo came to a full stop. “Huh!” he went on, cunningly. “Think o’ all the cursin’ you ever heered.”

“Noa!” Ezekiel said, quickly. “Sure ’tis a sin t’ think o’ curs in’.”

Jo grinned. Then, sadly, he said:” ‘Tis Uncle Job—iss, sure. Poor Aunt ‘Melia Ann!”

Ezekiel mused. “I ‘low ’tis Uncle Job,” he agreed at last. “He’ve a rotten paddle to his punt.”

Jo spread the sail, stretched himself in the stern, with his feet on the gunwales and a lazy hand on the scull-oar, and took up the song again:

 

An’ ’tis Nick, bully Nick, Mister Nicholas;
An’ ’tis Nick, Mister Nicholas, 0 !

An’ ’tis Nick, Mister Nick, Skipper Nicholas ;
An’ ’tis Cap-tain Penny, heigh oh !

The sun was dropping swiftly, puffing himself up in his precipitate descent to the ragged black clouds that were mounting the sky, taking on a deepening, glowing crimson, the colour of flame in dense smoke. The woolly clouds in the east were flushed pink, mottled like a salmon’s belly—a borrowed glory that, anon, fled, leaving a melancholy tint behind. Soon the whole heaven, from the crest of the black hills, far in the unknown inland, to the black horizon in the mysterious expanse beyond the Grappling Hook fishing-grounds, was aglow: splashes of pink and gray and blue, thin streaks of pale green, heaps of smoky black and of gold, glowing, and of purple and violet and fiery red. The coast, high and rugged, with a low line of frothy white, and a crest of stunted spruce sloping to the edge of the precipice, was changed from dull green and duller grey to blood-red and purple and black; but this glorious mantle was soon lifted. In the white line there was one black space, the harbour mouth, whence the tickle led to the basin; and that space was like a rat-hole. On either side, from the tip of Mad Mull to the limit of vision in the south, the coast rocks were like a wall, sheer, massive, scowling, with here and there, at the base, great shattered masses, over which the sea frothed. The boat was headed for the sun; it was slipping over a gentle lop in a light wind. The weird, flaring sky—its darkening colours—the expanse of dull, red water, upon which the little boat bobbed as upon an ocean of thick cod blood—the isolation and impending night: all awed the boys. Their singing gave way to heavy silence, long continued, and silence to the talk of twilight hours.

“Rede me a riddle,” said Ezekiel.

The demand startled Jo. The great descending night oppressed him; and he had been thinking of the tide, now a cold, frowning mystery. He eased the sheet and scanned the sea ahead. The sea was flat; there was no hill to be seen. He sighed, and said in a distracted way:

As I went up t’ London Bridge,
I met me brother Jan;

I cut off his head an’ sucked his blood,
An’ let his body stan’.

“Jewberry,” said Ezekiel with lack of interest.

“Uh-huh!” said Jo. Then, bethinking himself: “Oh!”

As I went up t’ London Bridge,
I saw a mighty wonder;

Twenty pots a-bilin’,
An’ no fire under.

It was a new riddle in Ragged Harbour! “Who give it you, b’y?” Ezekiel cried.

“Granny Sevior,” said Jo. “lss, sure; when I took her some trouts. She do say she heered un when she were a maid. ‘Tis a brook bubblin’.”

Ezekiel marvelled.

From the body of fog that lurked behind Mad Mull, there dammed in its course from the north, a thick, grey mass overflowed and settled to the surface of the sea. A cloud, high lying, attenuated, impenetrable, rounded the point and crept seaward with the deviated current of the wind, its outmost parts swerving to the south, advancing slowly, implacably. Along shore, hugging the surface, a second silent cloud, impenetrable also, and immense, swept over the face of the waters to the Rocks of the Three Poor Sisters. The light scud, detached from the main body and driven before it, obscured the breakers, which, hitherto, had been in sharp contrast with rock and sea; the body that dragged itself after absorbed the distinguishing colour altogether, and thereafter nothing remained to mark the place. I may write: It was as though the sea’s ally were relentlessly about its business—the one division stealthfully intent on interposing its opacity between the punt and the lurid sky, which was now glowing like the embers of a conflagration; the other swiftly proceeding to give ambush to the breakers, and to hide the entrance to the harbour. Or, if you will, the fog was in the form of a gigantic hand, shaped like a claw, being passed cautiously over a table, to close on a careless fly.

“They be nar a hill t’ the say, b’y,” Ezekiel said, impatiently. He glanced apprehensively shoreward.

It had come to Jo that the abode of the tide was hidden of design—an infinite, terrible mystery. In the consciousness of presumption he quaked; but he grippe’d the scull-oar tighter and held the boat on her course for the sun.

“They be nar a hill ‘tween here an’ the sun,” Ezekiel plainted.

They were sailing over the Grappling Hook grounds; and, as far as sight carried, the greying sea was flat.

“Us’ll goa hoame, now, Jo,” Ezekiel pleaded. “‘Twill be barbarous hard t’ find the goaats in the dark.”

“They do be a hill further out,” said Jo. “Keep a lookout, b’y.”

A rift in the clouds disclosed the sun as it sank—as it went out like a candle in a sudden draft. The arm of fog closed in on the boat; the shoreward cloud crept past the harbour and reached for Gull’s Nest Point, a mile to the south, the last distinguishable landmark. The boys were silent for a long time. Ezekiel watched a whale at play to leeward; he wondered concerning his fate if it should mistake the punt for its young, as had happened to Uncle Sammy Arnold long ago, when there were more whales, and they were much, much bigger, as Uncle Sammy had said. Jo was sunk in the bitterness of realizing failure; he saw nothing but a surface of water that was flat—flat as the splitting table.

” ‘Tis past the turn o’ the tide,” said Jo at last, like a man giving up hope.

“Iss, sure!” said Ezekiel, blithely. “Us’ll come about.”

“Us’ll come about.” said Jo.

The theory had failed. Jo headed the boat for shore. He shaped the course by Gull’s Nest Point, measuring the shore from its fading outline to the probable location of the harbour; then he noted the direction of the wind, feeling it with his ear, his cheek, and the tip of his nose: fixing it, thus, in his mind. When he looked to Gull Nest Point again, the black mass had vanished.

“Job Luff do say,” said Ezekiel, “that the tide bides in a hoale in the say.”

“Noa!” said Jo, sharply.

“I ‘low,” Ezekiel said with some deference, “he’ve a hoale t’ goa to.”

“Noa, b’y!” Jo exclaimed, fretfully.

“I ‘low he do,” Ezekiel persisted with deepening politeness.

“Huh!” said Jo. “What ‘ud come o’ the fires o’ hell?”

“Iss, sure, b’y,” Ezekiel said in awe. “The tide ‘ud put un out.”

“Put un out,” Jo echoed, sagely.

Ezekiel accounted for the heresy of Job Luff’s theory thus: “Huh! Job Luff do be Seven Days ‘Ventis’. Hell be for un—iss, sure.”

The fog thickened. Night came on, an untimely dusk. Fog and night, coalescing, reduced the circumference of things material to a yet narrowing circle of black water. The feel of the fog was like the touch of a cold, wet hand in the dark. The night was heavy; it was, to the confusion of sense, falling; it seemed to have been strangely vested with the properties of density and weight; it was, in truth, like a great pall descending, oppressing, stifling. Here is an awesome mystery; for the night has no substance; the mist, also, is impalpable! The fog, like the dark, is a hiding-place for shadowy terrors; it covers up familiar places—headlands and hills and coves and starry heavens—and secludes, in known vacancy, all the fantastic monsters that enter into and possess the imaginings of children in lonely times. Ezekiel, cowering in the bow, searched the mist for ghostly dangers—for one, a gigantic lobster, with claws long as a schooner’s spars and eyes like the Shag Rock light. But Jo had no time for terror; he was fighting a fight that was already old, of which the history was written on the hand on the steering oar—a hand too small to span the butt, but misshapen, black at the knuckles, calloused in the palms, with the blood of cod congealed under the nails, and festering salt-water sores on the wrist. Time for visions of frothing lobsters? Jo had none. He was true son of that shore, and he had the oar and the sheet in his hands.

“Thick’s bags,” Jo remarked, alluding to the fog.

Ezekiel was silent.

Jo was steering by the wind; but the wind veered, scarce perceptibly, and the boy did not perceive the change at all. A crafty enemy! Thus was his childish inexperience turned against him. He had laid his course cunningly for the harbour before Gull’s Nest Point had been wiped out; the course was now to the north by half a mile. With the deviation and drift he would meet the coast at the Rocks of the Three Poor Sisters, where his father had struck in a blizzard years ago. The boy planned to take the punt within sound of the surf, then to ship the sail and creep along shore to the harbour. That was the one way; but it was a perilous way, for the surf, being hidden, and sounding near at hand, has no location. Its noise rises and subsides through long distances; its strength is here, there, elsewhere, everywhere, nowhere; it is elusive, confusing as a great noise. The surf also has a clutch; a foot beyond its grasp and it is to be laughed at; an inch within its eager fingers and it is irresistible. The breakers of the Rocks of the Three Poor Sisters are like long arms—their reach is great; their strength and depth and leap are great. There was no peril in the choppy sea over which the boat was now pushing; the peril was in the breakers. Watchfulness could evade it; but with every boat’s length of progress Jo was plunged in deeper wonder. He was evolving a new theory of the tide, which was a subtle distraction. Was the spell of this mystery to undo him? Thus Jo; as for Ezekiel, he was afraid of the monsters he had conjured up in the mist, so—as his people invariably do in dread and danger—he turned to his religion for consolation. He thought deeply of hell.

“Is you been good the day, b’y?” Ezekiel asked, dreamily.

“Noa,” Jo answered, indifferently. “I ‘low I hasn’t spread me caplin quite—quite straight.”

The wind was stirring itself in the north. The dusk was thick and clammy. The sound of the surf had risen to a deep, harsh growl.

“Be you ‘feared o’ hell?”

“Noa,” said Jo. “Lads doan’t goa t’ hell.”

Momentarily Ezekiel thought himself in the company of the damned. He looked in new fright at the water, through which, his experience had taught him, most men found their exit from life.

” ‘Tis a sin,” he cried, “to’ say it!”

“Sure, o’ such be the kingdom o’ heaven,” said Jo, in continued serenity, maintaining his position with the word of the Book.

“Iss, sure!” Ezekiel was comforted.

The breakers seemed very near. Jo peered long into the tumultuous darkness ahead. Soon they could hear the hiss of broken waves. Jo freed the sheet and sprang for the mast. They furled the sail and stowed the mast. Jo took his place in the shute; he propelled the boat by the scull. Then Ezekiel’s sight did not reach seven oar-lengths from the bow.

“Be you sure—”

“You be not goain’ t’ hell, Ezekiel Sevior ! ” Jo exclaimed, lifting his voice above the sound of the surf. “Doan’t worry me.”

The boat was advancing slowly, for the strength in the oar was slight. They were secure for the time, and they were not unused to the predicament; but at such other times the oar had been in larger hands, the lookout kept by more discerning eyes. They thought the harbour tickle was ahead, perchance some fathoms to the south or to the north. The wind had confused them utterly; the breakers were not the breakers of the Pillar and the Staff, but of the Rocks of the Three Poor Sisters. But they were not perturbed, so they fell again into thought and long silence; and for Jo thought was the old, disquieting wonder.

“Ezekiel!” Jo’s voice was husky, solemn; it had the thrill of triumph in it.

“Iss, b’y? Does you see the shoare?”

“Ezekiel!” Jo was exultant, like an investigator who beholds in wonder the beautiful issue of his research .

“Iss?”

Jo swung from side to side on the oar with a vigour stimulated by his exultation.

“I knows—iss, sure,” said he.

“Where the tickle be? Does you?”

“Where the tide goas.”

“Where do un goa?” Ezekiel asked, m mournful disappointment.

Jo pointed to the wash in the bottom of the boat as it slipped from stem to stern with the risen lop. Now the waters covered the boy’s feet and gurgled and hissed under the stern-seat; now they swirled to Ezekiel’s boots, sweeping along a chip and a spare thole-pin. Now the stern looked like the harbour basin at flood-tide; then the water receded, disclosing rusty nail-heads, which may be likened to the uncovered rocks, and a brown, slimy accumulation, which may be likened to sea-weed and ooze.

” Tis like the tide—’tis like un,” Jo whispered.

The eyes of both boys were intent on the bottom of the punt, straining through the dusk. Jo still swung from side to side on the oar, an animate machine.

“Aye, b’y, sure,” said Ezekiel.

“I found un out meself,” Jo went on, solemnly. “I c’n tell Job Luff, now. He thought un were a hoale.” Jo laughed softly. ” ‘Tis noa hoale. ‘Tis noa hill. ‘Tis like that.”

Ezekiel watched the water ebb and flow. Jo watched the water ebb and flow. Both were in the grip of the mystery—of the great solution which had been yielded to them of all the world.

“When ’tis ebb in Ragged Harbour,” said Jo, ” ’tis the flood in—in—other pairts.”

The discovery had fascinated their attention. Lookout and headway were forgotten.

“Where, b’y?” said Ezekiel.

“Pa’tridge P’int,” Jo answered, readily. “What you sees from the Lookout in a fine time.”

“It do be too handy; it——”

“Twillingate, then, I ‘low,” said Jo. “Where Manuel’s trader comes from. ‘Tis further’n any place.”

Ezekiel turned to resume the lookout. Jo gloated in a long, low chuckle.

“Port! Keep un off!” The ring of terror was in the scream. “Port! Port!”

“Aye b’y,” firmly spoken.

Ezekiel rose in the bow and raised his hands as though to push the _boat back from a danger.

“Port! Port!”

“Aye, b’y.” The Rock of the Third Poor Sister took black, towering form in the mist, before and overhead. The punt paused on the crest of a declivity of rushing water. The white depths were like an abyss; she was like a man clinging to the fringe of a precipice. It was a time for the strength of men; in that swift pause the strength of a child’s arms was as no strength.

“The sea’ve cotched us!” Jo muttered. “The sea—he’ve cotched us!”

The wave ran its course, broke with slow might, fell with a crash and a long, thick hiss.

Ezekiel sank to the seat and covered his eyes with his hands, but Jo dropped the oar, and bearded the rock and the wave as he had done in the days when he wore a pinafore of hard-tack sacking, and he clinched his hands, and his nostrils quivered.

“The sea—he’ve cotched me,” he said again; and it was like a quiet admission of defeat at the hands of a long-fought enemy.

The returning body of water slipped like oil under the boat; it fastened its grip at the turn, lifted the boat, lost it, caught it again, swept it with full force onward and downward.

“Mother!”

Ezekiel had forgotten his God. He cried for his mother, who was real and nearer. God had been to him like a frowning shape in the mist.

How shall we interpret? Where is the poet who shall now sing the Sea’s song of triumph? Who shall ascribe glory to her for this deed? Thus, in truth, she bears herself in the dark corners of the earth. These children had followed the lure of her mystery, which is, to the people of bleak coasts, like the variable light in false eyes, like a fair finger beckoning. It was as though the Sea had smiled at their coming, and had said to the mist and the wind,” Gather them in.” Neither strength nor understanding had been opposed to her treacherous might. They had been overwhelmed. Was there honour in this triumph? In the wreckage and little bodies that the waves flung against the rocks for a day and a night, lifting them, tossing them? In the choked lungs? In the bruised faces? In the broken spine? In the ripped cheek? In the torn scalp? In the glazed blue eyes? The triumph was cruel as vanity; or, if it were not of the pride of strength, such as is manifest in an infant spitted on a lifted spear, but, rather, of greed, it was wanton as gluttony. If there be glory to the Sea, it was glory of hidden mercy; indeed, isolation and toil are things to escape. But if there be no glory, whose is the reproach? Thine, 0 Sea!