Chapter FOURTEEN: The Everlasting Song of the Sea

"Ah, here you are at last! Just in time! A breeze sprang up an hour ago, and the Captain would have gone without you but for me. The herring fleet have gone already. Look, there they are, sailing into the sunset."

Fenella was in high spirits. Having prevailed upon the Governor to let them have a real night with the herrings (turning the yacht into a fishing boat) she had borrowed a net and hired fishermen's clothes--oilskins and a sou'-wester for herself and a "ganzy" and big boots for Stowell.

It was impossible to resist the contagion of Fenella's gaiety. "Why try?" thought Stowell. It would be his last night of happiness. To-morrow he would have to bury it for ever.

In a few minutes, having cleared the harbour, they had opened the land on either side and were standing out for the fishing ground. Within two hours, in the midst of the fleet, they were sailing over the Carlingford sands, midway between the island and Ireland, and the sea-birds skimming above the water were showing them the shoal.

Dinner was over, and Stowell, in jersey and big boots up to his thighs, saw Fenella come on deck in her oilskin coat and sou'-wester--with the new and surprising beauty which fresh garments, whatever they are, give to every woman in the eyes of the man who loves her.

What shouts! What laughter! Stowell kept saying to himself:

"Why not? It will soon be over."

They slackened sail and waited for the sun to go down before shooting their nets. Presently the great ball of flame descended into the sea, the admiral of the fleet ran his flag to his masthead, and the Captain cried, "Shoot!"

Then the brown net, with its floats, was dropped over the stern (Fenella taking a hand and shouting with the men), the foresail was hauled down, and the mizzen set to keep the ship head to the wind. And then, all being snug for the night, came the fisherman's prayer:

"_Dy hannie Patrick Noo shin as nyn maaty_" (May St. Patrick bless us and our boat) with something about the living and the dead--the crew and the fish.

After that came the throwing of the salt, a more robustious and less religious ceremony, which threw Fenella into fits of laughter.

"What does it mean?" she asked.

"Goodness knows!"

"How delightful!"

The grey twilight came down from the northern heavens, and then night fell--a dark night without moon but with a world of stars. Stowell and Fenella were leaning over the side to watch the phosphorescent gleams which, like flashes of light under the surface, came from the fish that were darting away from the prow.

"Isn't it wonderful--the fish going on and on to the goal of their perpetual travels?" said Fenella.

"They always come back to the place they were spawned, though," said Stowell.

"Like humans, are they? You remember--'Back to the heart's place here I keep for thee.'"

Stowell felt as if a hand were at his throat again. "Bye and bye," he thought. Before they turned in for the night he would tell her everything.

Suddenly there was a crash at the stern--the anchor had been lifted up and then banged down on the deck.

"What's that?" cried Fenella.

"They're proving the nets to see if the fish are coming," said Stowell, and hurrying aft together they found the water milky white and full of irridescent rays.

A couple of warps of the net were hauled aboard, and twelve or fifteen herring fell on to the deck. Fenella picked them up, wriggling, cheeping and twisting in her hands and threw them into a basket--she was in a fever of excitement.

After that several of the boats that were fishing alongside called across to know the result of the proving, and the Captain answered them in Manx, with the crude symbolism of the sea.

"Let me do it next time," said Fenella.

"Do you think you can, miss?" asked the Captain.

"She can do anything," said Stowell, and when the next boat called, Fenella (with Stowell to prompt her) stood ready to reply.

"_R'ou promal, bhoy?_" cried the voice out of the darkness.

"What's he saying? Quick!"

"He's asking were you proving, boy. Say '_Va_--I was.'"

Fenella put her open palms at each side of her mouth, under her sou'-wester, and cried, "_Va!_"

"_Quoid oo er y piyr?_"

"He asks what you found in your net. Say '_Pohnnar_--a child.'"

"Oh my goodness! _Pohnnar_," cried Fenella.

"_Cre'n eash dy pohnnar?_"

"He asks what is the age of your child. Say '_Dussan ny quieg-yeig_--twelve to fifteen.'"

"My goodness gracious! _Dussan ny quieg-yeig_," cried Fenella.

By this time everybody was in convulsions of laughter, and Stowell could scarcely resist the impulse to throw his arms about Fenella and kiss her. "Soon! Soon! I must tell her soon!" he thought.

The wind had dropped and a great stillness had fallen on the sea. The glow from the lights of the Dublin was in the western sky; the revolving light of the Chicken Rock (the most southerly point of Man) was in the east; and for two miles round lay the herring boats, with their watch-lights burning on the roofs of their net houses, and looking like stars which had fallen from the darkening sky on to the bosom of the sea.

Fenella began to sing, and before Stowell knew what he was doing he was singing with her:

She: _Oh Molla-caraine, where got you your gold?_
He: _Lone, lone, you have left me here._

It was entrancing--the hour, the surroundings, the charm and sonority of the sea! "But this is madness," thought Stowell. It would only make it the harder to do--what he had to do.

Nevertheless he went on, and when they came to the end of another Manx ballad _Kiree fo naightey_ (the sheep under the snow) he said:

"Would you like to know where that old song was written?"

"Where?"

"In Castle Rushen--by a poor wretch whose life had been sworn away by a vindictive woman."

"And what had he done to her? Betrayed her, and then deserted her for another woman, I suppose. That's the one thing a woman can never forgive--never should, perhaps."

"I must tell her soon," thought Stowell. But he could think of no way to begin--no natural way to lead up to what he had to say.

The night was now very dark and silent. The majesty and solemnity around were grand and moving. Fenella, who had been laughing all the evening, was serious enough at last.

"It's almost as if the sea, grown old, had gone to sleep with the going down of the sun, isn't it?" she said.

"The sea isn't always like this, though," said Stowell.

"No, it can be very cruel, can't it? Rolling on and on, with its incessant, monotonous roar through the ages! What heartless things it has done! Millions and millions of women have prayed and it has no heed to them."

"How can I do it? How can I do it?" Stowell was asking himself.

"Oh, what a thing it is to be a sailor's wife!" said Fenella. "Only think of her with her little brood, in her cottage at Peel, perhaps, when a sudden storm comes on! Giving the children their supper and washing them and undressing them, and hearing them say their prayers and hushing them to sleep, and then going downstairs to the kitchen, and listening to the roar of the sea on the castle rocks, and thinking of her man out here in the darkness, struggling between life and death."

Stowell knew, though he dare not look, that she was brushing her handkerchief over her eyes.

"Victor," she said, "don't you think women are rather brave creatures?"

"The bravest creatures in the world!" he answered.

"I knew you would say that," said Fenella, in a low voice. "And that's why I always think of you as their champion, fighting their battles for them when they are wronged and helpless."

Stowell felt as if he were choking. He could not go on with this hypocrisy any longer. He must tell her now. It would be like committing suicide, but what must be, must be.

"Fenella...."

But just then the loud voice of the Captain cried "Strike!" and at the next moment Fenella was flying aft, to tug at the net and shake out the herrings that came up with it.

What shouts! What screams! What peals of laughter!

It was midnight before the joy and bustle of the catch were over, and the net was shot again. The Governor was then smoking his last pipe in the Captain's cabin, and Stowell, with Fenella on his arm, was walking to and fro on the deck.

"Need I tell her at all?" he was thinking.

He felt as if he were being swept along by an irresistible flood. He could not doom himself to death. With Fenella by his side he could think of nobody and nothing but her. Sometimes, when they crossed the light from the skylight, they turned their faces towards each other and smiled.

After a while Stowell found himself bantering Fenella. Catching a flash of her ring (his mother's ring) on the hand that was on his arm, he pretended it was gone and asked if it had fallen off while she was pulling at the net.

"Gone! The ring you ga-- .... I mean the Deemster gave me! No, here it is! What a shock! I should have died if I had lost it."

She was radiant; he was reckless; the little trick had uncovered their hearts to each other.

They heard a step on the other side of the deck.

"Fenella!"

It was the Governor going down the companion. "Time to turn in, girl! We are to breakfast at Port St. Mary at nine in the morning, you know."

"I'm coming, father."

"Good-night, Stowell!"

"Good-night, Sir!"

But he could not let Fenella go. It was a sin to go to bed at all on such a heavenly night. At last, at the top of the companion, he loosed her arm, with a slow asundering, and said,

"The Governor says we are to breakfast at Port St. Mary--do you think we shall if this calm continues?"

She laughed (her laugh seemed to come up from her heart) and said, "I'm not worrying about that."

"No?"

"When a woman has all she wants in the world in one place why should she wish to go to another?"

"And have you?"

"Good-night!" she said, holding out both hands.

He caught them, and the touch communicated fire. At the next moment he had lifted her hands to his lips.

She drew them down, and his hands with them, pressed them to her breast and then broke away, and was gone in an instant.

Stowell gasped. "She loves me! She loves me! She loves me!"

Nothing else mattered! Let the world rip!

II

Stowell did not go below that night. For two hours he tramped the deck, laughing to himself like a lunatic.

"She loves me! She loves me! She loves me!"

When the watch had to be changed at two o'clock he sent the man to his berth and took his place. And when the dawn broke and the lamps of the fishing fleet blinked out, and the boats showed grey, like ghosts, on the colourless waste around, and the monotonous chanting of the crews far and near told him the nets were being hauled in, he shouted down the fo'c'sle for the men. And when they came on deck he helped them to haul in their own net and to empty their catch (it was the Governor's order) into the first "Nickey" that came along.

The grey sky in the east had reddened to a flame by this time. Then up from the round rim of the sea rose the everlasting sun, and lo, it was day! God, what an enchanted world it was! All the glory and majesty of the sea seemed to be singing hymns to the same tune as that of his own heart:

"She loves me! She loves me! She loves me!"

A light wind sprang up, a cool blowing from the south, just enough to ripple the surface of the water. Already some of the fishing boats had swung about and were standing off for home. Stowell helped to haul the mainsail, and shouted with the men as they pulled at the ropes and the white canvas rose above them.

"She loves me! She loves me! She loves me!"

Within half an hour the wind had freshened to a summer gale and they were running before a roaring sea. The sails bellied out, the yacht listed over, the scuppers were half full of water, but Stowell would not go below. For a long hour more he held on and looked around at the fishing boats as they flew together in the brilliant sunshine between the two immensities of sky and sea.

"She loves me! She loves me! She loves me!"

Helloa! Here was his own little island with the sun riding over the mountain-tops! The plunging and rearing of the yacht gave the notion that the mountains were nodding to him. "Good morning, son." What nonsense came into a man's head when his heart was glad!

"She loves me! She loves me! She loves me!"

Ah, here were the cliffs of the Calf, with their hoary heads in the flying sky and their feet in the thunder of the sea! And here was the brown-belted lighthouse of the Chicken Rock, which Fenella and he had picked up last night! And here was the shoulder of Spanish Head, and here was the belly of the Chasms, ringing with the cry of ten thousand sea fowl!

"She loves me! She loves me! She loves me!"

Suddenly there came a shock. They were opening the bay of Port St. Mary, with the little fishing town lying asleep along its sheltered arm, when he saw across the Poolvaish (the pool of death) the grey walls of Castle Rushen, and the long reach of Langness. And then memory flowed back on him like a tidal wave.

Derby Haven! The old maids' house! The girl burning her candle in her bedroom to educate herself that she might become worthy to be his wife!

"Oh God! Oh God!"

If Fenella loved him he had stolen her love. He had no right to it, being married already, virtually married--bound by every tie that could hold an honourable man.

He felt like a traitor--a traitor to Fenella now. He recalled what he had said last night. One step more and----

Thank God, he had gone no farther! If he had allowed Fenella to engage herself to him, and then the facts about Bessie Collister had become known, as they might have done through Dan Baldromma----

He must go. He must go immediately. His miserable mistake must not bring disgrace on Fenella also.

The yacht was sliding into the slack water of the bay, and the row-boats of the fish-buyers, each flying its little flag, were coming out to meet the fishing boats, when Stowell went down to the saloon--still dark with its blue silk curtains over skylight and portholes.

He took off his fisherman's clothes, put on his own, and sat down at the table to scribble a note to the Governor:

"Excuse me! I must go up to Douglas by the first train. Have
just remembered an important engagement.

Hope to call at Government Office to-morrow."

As he was leaving the saloon he looked back towards the cabin in which Fenella lay asleep. His eyes were wet, his heart throbbed painfully, he felt as if he were being banished from her presence as by a curse. Renunciation--life-long renunciation--that was all that was left to him now.

The fleet were in harbour when he went on deck, a hundred boats huddled together. And when he stepped ashore the fish salesmen were selling the night's catch by auction, and the bronze-faced and heavy-bearded fishermen, in their big boots, were counting their herrings in mixed English and Manx:

"Nane, jeer, three, kiare, quieg .... warp, tally!"