Chapter VI: Part 6

As usual, we turned in early. That night I was so unfortunate as to sleep soundly through a happening which I was very sorry to miss. Perhaps it was owing to the fact that Mate Bill had been having a long conference with the two of us that night. We had been sitting on the after hatchway, all in a row, and Mate Bill was showing us how to tie different knots. I really believe there isn’t a knot in the world that he couldn’t tie. He went on and on, showing us more and more complicated ones, even splicing. Every now and then he would say assuringly: “There! now you’ll know how to tie that when you go home.” But I confess that I was so dazzled with the multitude of twists and turns that I couldn’t remember any of them until, later, I looked them all up in my dictionary. Perhaps it was with all these knots dancing in my head that I went to sleep so early and slept so soundly. Or perhaps it was because my hard, uncomfortable bunk was very snug and warm compared with the sea and the fog.

♦ _Professors of Knots_ ♦

Or perhaps it was the delight of a certain thing which happened just before we turned in. It was this way: At first, during this knot-tying lesson, Mate Bill and I had been sitting there alone, but presently my shipmate emerged from the cabin doorway and joined us. Then the bo’s’n, too, came strolling along from the direction of the fo’c’sle and began to contend against Mate Bill, wagering that Bill couldn’t tie this knot or that, and Bill wagering that he could. Bob was very clever, too. Bill’s challenging assertion that he couldn’t braid nine strands he answered by promptly selecting the nine from a pile of old frayed rope, tying them to a backstay, and braiding them up. We had quite a little joke about the common square knot. After Bill had asked me many times if I could tie this, or if I could tie that, I replied by saying that the only good knot I could tie was the square knot. But Bob spoke up sneeringly and said that I couldn’t tie a square knot. I said that I could, and was just about to select a strand and tie it, when Bill interposed and said: “Oh! I know what you mean, Bob. Your square knot ain’t no good. ’Tain’t a reg’lar square knot.”

“Bet you can’t tie it,” said Bob.

“Well, what good is it when you have it tied?”

Bob now went to work and invented a very pretty, but useless, knot which, as Bill said, was the start for a square braid. But, after all, I was really right, and I had Bill to back me, and I selected my strand and tied my square knot. Bill took it and examined it very carefully; then he said that it was all right, and passed it on to Bob. Bob, too, looked at it, said in his turn that it was all right, and tossed it back to me. I doubt if there was ever such a fuss over a simple square knot.

As I said before, my shipmate had now come out from the warm depths of the cabin; and he was watching all this, standing over us on the poop deck. Now he called me, saying: “Come up here a minute, and see what you see!” And he went down and took my place beside Mate Bill. I looked down at the two of them; and truly it was a marvellous sight. It had now grown almost pitch dark, and I could just see the silhouettes of two forms, sitting there, their heads together, very still--still except for Mate Bill’s fingers, which were busily at work in the tangles of some new knot. Behind them was the pile of old rope, like sacks of spoil in a heap--and they looked, those hunched figures, like two whispering spooks, sitting out there in the rain, “plannin’ deviltry,” as the cook would have said, and counting over their coins.

♦ _Squalls at Sea_ ♦

And I mustn’t forget a rather piratical incident which happened just before we turned in. We had gone below, and were sitting together, talking about June mulls, when suddenly Mate Bill came down and went in to his bunk. It had started raining, and it was very dark. He had come down, in his wet-weather costume, to get a lantern. I didn’t see him when he came down, but as soon as he had gone in to his bunk my shipmate nudged my arm and said in a whisper: “Watch the mate, now, when he comes out with the lantern. See if he doesn’t look piratical!” I kept an eye on the small room of the mate, and presently we saw him come out, in his oilskins, sou’wester, and sea boots, all dripping wet, and lighted uncannily by the light of the lantern. Piratical! Never, in all the time before, had I seen him look so much so. He nodded good-night and clomped up the steps again, in his heavy boots.

Perhaps, as I said, all this had made my mind swirl with tangles of ropes and imaginings of pirates. Whatever the cause, I slept through the worst racket of the whole trip. The rest is hearsay--what I was told the next morning by the crew and my shipmate, who were amazed that I hadn’t waked up.

The mate had told me on several occasions that in the month of June we were likely to have “squalls.” At first I had got the idea that squalls were simply the cat’s-paws which we see on inland lakes, only more violent. Later I decided, from what Bill said, that it only meant wind coming in spurts and then dying down. But at last I understood that squalls were raging thunderstorms which pass over the sea quickly, quickly, and are gone. Bill told me of several times, during his sailor career, when they had seen squalls coming from far off, sweeping wildly across the sea, blackening the sky, and had barely time to take the sails down before they were swamped in it. Squalls were very dangerous, the mate said, and whenever they were at all violent the sails would have to come down.

Well, we had one in the middle of that night. There were thunder, lightning, rain by the bucketful, and much stronger wind than any we had had. They described how the whole crew--even the cook, roused up out of his bunk--had scurried back and forth right over my head, to get down the sails at full speed. They wondered how on earth I could possibly have slept through that, let alone the howling of the wind, the rolling of the thunder, the brilliance of the lightning, and the tossing and plunging of the schooner. They crowned it by describing how the spanker gaff had been let down, one man at the peak halyards, the other at the throat halyards, and how the gaff had been let go in the tumult and come rattling down with a terrific crash on the deck house right over me. The old man, at this little mishap, had jumped with terror, and shrieked out a curse in so loud a voice that they wondered why that alone hadn’t waked me.

♦ _Blue and Gold_ ♦

The cook, of course, had his little word on this episode. He took me aside to the galley and told me in scornful terms how the old man had got excited and hectic, after his custom, and what a ridiculous crew we had, who didn’t know how to do anything right, and did nothing but rush frantically around from here to there and back again, and how such foolishness wouldn’t have been allowed in _his_ day, when sailors were sailors, not landlubbers! Also, I was told how Bob, who, during all this, had been at the foghorn, had seen a good-sized steamer near by, and, very much afraid of running into her, had blown the foghorn so long, loud, and furiously that at length Mate Bill had to go forward and stop him. We had evidently been on the starboard tack, because Bob had intended to blow the horn once; but he had made it one such prodigiously long blast (the Mate said he must have blown it for a full ten minutes) that Bill was afraid the steamer wouldn’t understand what on earth we _were_ trying to do.

* * * * *

When I first went on deck the next morning, I had a suspicion that all this might be a joke, or, at least, greatly exaggerated. But when I saw how every last wisp of the fog had blown away, leaving the air crystal clear, though still almost calm, I knew that it must have taken some violence to banish it all so quickly and completely. What a heavenly blue the sky was! It was one of those deep, quivering blues which I have so often seen at Sunapee. The sails shone sparklingly white, instead of their usual gray; the trucks of the masts were shining and clear-cut against that sky. We were quite near the shore, sailing before a steady breeze--just enough to keep the sails rounded, and to make the schooner yield and cant a little, yet not enough to make more than a delicate dash of foam along our sides.

During the whole trip I had not seen a lovelier shore. Even the shore of New Haven as we had left it on that memorable first day, with West Rock jutting up strangely; and the long green line of Martha’s Vineyard as we had passed it; and the coast line of Rhode Island, on the afternoon of the first day--none of these was nearly so lovely as what now confronted us. It was a shore of low green hills, brighter than emerald in the sunlight and against the sky. They were high hills, yet with so gradual a slope that they presented an aspect of luxuriance and verdure, like a very mossy forest. Somber shadows were constantly passing over them like dark ghosts, reminding me of how the valleys had looked down at the foot of Moosilauke, with the shadows of slowly moving clouds on the radiance of the autumn trees. My first real glimpse of Nova Scotia! A beautiful land.

♦ _Gibes at the Lubber_ ♦

But the captain was no better off as to his bearings. He was sailing on with a rather doubtful air, looking again and again at his charts. It was the cook’s opinion that he had passed Lahave River and was now on his way up to Lunenberg; but he added: “’Tain’t up t’ me t’ say anything.” All of us were much relieved to find the fog cleared away, and everyone was much happier. Richardson, however, incurred two gibes that day from the mate. He had been set to work scrubbing off the deckhouse, while Mate Bill and I sat together discussing knots and watching him. Richardson, as was his custom, was doing the job very feebly and slowly, as though bored to death with it. At last the mate raised his head and said, with that wicked twinkle in his black eyes that I have described so many times: “Oh, hurry up, Dick, do! You’re slower ’n an old woman with her washin’.” Later in the day almost the same thing happened, when Richardson was scrubbing the highest part of the starboard fo’c’sle wall. “Don’t be all day over it, Dick,” said the mate. “Put some elbow-grease into it!” Whereat Richardson smiled feebly and tried to scrub a trifle harder.

As for me, the forbidden rigging looked more and more enticing now that the sails gleamed so white, and I was determined to have a climb. I had, to be sure, climbed about a little on one of the foggy days, when it had broken for a moment on our port bow, revealing a dark mass of land. The mate had gone up into the rigging to see if he could identify anything, and I had gone with him. But, though it was impressive to have seen the land lying over there like a mass of black fog, it wasn’t really fun, and I had longed for a good day. Now, accordingly, I went aft and asked Captain Avery if I might run up to the crosstrees. “Oh, sure,” he replied, “go ahead up, ’n’ hold hard.” So I started for the port mizzen rigging. But that was our leeward side, and the captain called me: “Don’t go up on that side, Barbara. Allus go on the wind’ard.”

“Why, Captain?”

“Well, y’ see, when the schooner” (he always pronounced this _skewner_) “is heelin’ over to loo’ard, the loo’ard riggin’ gets slack, ’n’ the wind’ard riggin’ is taut all the while. ’N’ then, too, the loo’ard riggin’ ’s much straighter, ’n’ harder t’ climb. That don’t make no partic’lar difference to a sailor, ’coz ’f anything lets go, he kin always stop hisself, but with a greenhorn ’t’s different.”

♦ _’Twixt Sea and Sky_ ♦

It was quite insulting to the pride of my sailor career to be called a greenhorn, but then, it was all right with me whatever they called me. I went to the starboard mizzen rigging, and up I climbed, with the same delightful sensations which I always had. But today there were other sensations, too. The schooner was rolling quite a little, and I had now, in the rigging, the same curious feelings that I had had running about the deck in our big gale. First the rigging seemed to slide away beneath my feet, and then it would be there before me. All the time I held very “hard” with my hands and went up steadily, though somewhat more slowly than usual. The mate called out to me to hold the shrouds, not the ratlines: because then, if a ratline happened to let go, I should still have something to hold to. I followed this advice, and very carefully kept one hand upon the rigging while I was low down, and both when I was high enough so that the ratlines were comfortably short and the shrouds near enough together. Still, the sway was very puzzling, and it increased as I mounted. I stuck to it, and when finally I sat down, rather breathless, on the crosstrees, I felt more as if I were on a seesaw than I have ever felt, even on a real seesaw. The crosstrees made graceful swoops and slow half circles through the air, and I saw the sea beneath me, first on one side, then on the other. It was very beautiful, but very alarming, too; and I felt more than ever like a sailor. That breath-taking instant when one gets from the crosstrees on to the ratlines and hangs for a moment over the sea was more breath-taking than ever. I thought of this, one of the sailor chanteys in _Iron Men and Wooden Ships_:

“When the foaming waves run mountains high, And the landsmen cry, ‘All’s gone,’ sir, The sailor hangs ’twixt sea and sky, And he jokes with Davy Jones, sir!”

For that instant I certainly felt the danger of joking with Davy. But the moment of peril was passed without mishap, and, after looking again at those beautiful hills, of which from up here I could see much more, I came down.

* * * * *

♦ _Phantasmal_ ♦

Now a speck was descried by the hawk’s eyes of the old man, on the starboard horizon (or, as he always pronounced it, _orison_ with an _h_ in front). Nearer and nearer it came, and finally it turned out to be just what I had hoped: a sail. Eagerly we watched, and as it skimmed slowly down along the skyline toward us we saw that it was another lofty four-masted schooner. But how insignificant it was away off there, how like a child’s toy ship! We could see her masts, like matches, and her tiny gaffs and booms. The jibs were no more than slivers of silver thread, pointing away into the sky like fingers of moonlight; the topsails were four little snow-capped peaks along the edge of the sky. But as she drew nearer, she looked more and more like a crowned princess of the seas. No ship could have seemed more proud, except one of those square-riggers which used to go flying like white clouds across the ocean. She passed us so near on our starboard beam that she loomed almost over us, and we gazed silently up into her sails. At almost the same time we tacked, swung across the wind, and fell away to port. And now she showed us her stern, and we could see how her sails were set. They were “wing and wing” or, as the mate used to say, “wung out”: that is, with the spanker to starboard, mainsail to port, and foresail and jibs hardly drawing, because of being cut off from the wind by the other sails. Even our own sails, when we had had them set that way, had not seemed so much like wings. She reminded me of a gull spreading out its wings to fly up from the water. The very lines and curves of the sails interlaced with each other, and the farther away she sailed, the more like some huge sea bird she became.

The sun made a vast stretch of gold. Soon after she had passed us, she dipped into that burning sea. First her sails grew bright with the sunlight, and then, as she sailed farther and farther into the heart of the blaze, they melted away into the sun. When we looked, there seemed to be not a vestige of sail upon her. Her handsome hull we could see perfectly, black in the mirror of gold. Even her masts were clearly outlined, her very crosstrees. But she was stripped of canvas; the sun had stolen it. She was no more than a skeleton, a weird phantom ship.

As we watched, we saw her draw out of that enchanted part of the sea. Slowly she became real again; slowly her sails appeared. First they were bright gold with reflected light, then only flushed with it; and then they were snowy once more. By this time she was tiny in the distance. At last she disappeared--into Lunenberg, the skipper thought.

This was the most perfect weather of the whole trip. The alluring hills grew brighter as the sun mounted, until they were like precious jewels in a setting of incredibly blue sky. The sea sparkled with the sun, and it, too, was bluer than on any day before. Again I was dazzled by the hugeness and the wideness of the sun-path here on the sea. The brilliant splotch of gold seems to spread out boundlessly. It is much brighter, too, than I have ever seen it on an inland lake, as though each tiny salt-crystal were reflecting the rays a thousand times. Millions, millions of sparks, leaping up from that blueness, breaking into showers of fire!

♦ _Nearing the Lahave_ ♦

Where the sky was clear, it was a very deep blue. There were banks of massive white clouds on the horizon, although the zenith was entirely free of them. These cast down deep shadows which cooled the green fire of the hills here and there, gliding over them slowly. We were running nearer and nearer now. The skipper had located us and determined where Lahave was. We had passed it, as the cook had said, and were wheeling about to find it; running back the way we had come, but much nearer to the coast than before, so that it seemed different, and much more beautiful. All the time, though we were running down the coast, we were drawing closer and closer to it, and the hills looked more and more verdurous. What a contrast to the vacancy of boundless ocean which we had had before us a few days back!

There seemed to be a great many small fishermen hereabout. We didn’t actually pass any close, but we counted seven or eight off on the horizon. We would be looking at one sail, a tiny peak fretting the skyline, when someone would catch sight of another. But they were all so far away and so hard to see that our eyes went crazy after a while, so that all we could see was miniature sails.

There was hardly time for staring at them, for we were now nearing Lahave. We could see a deep, narrow indentation in the shore line, bounded on each side by hills sloping down into the sea--no more than two arms of green land, clasping the bay within. It looked like a very narrow opening for a schooner of our size to sail through, and I wondered what could be done, supposing there were an adverse wind. I climbed up in the rigging two or three times more before we reached the opening, feeling extremely glad, deep down, to have retrieved that privilege. The hills and the stretch of blue harbor within looked, of course, lovelier than ever from so high, and I stayed up at the crosstrees, watching our progress toward it, for quite a long time. Although we seemed to be so near, we were as yet easily two miles away, the mate said. Suddenly we heard the booming of surf on a small rock-bound islet to the starboard of the entrance. We could see the great white crests rise up and up, toweringly, like foam-castles, then dash furiously up the bar a way, then subside into themselves with a crash and a dull roar. And all this two miles away!

The mate and I fell to talking. We leaned over the starboard bulwarks watching the surf, and talked mainly about swimming. The mate said: “Well, kin you swim, Barbara?”

“Oh yes, mate,” said I, “I swim a lot. I believe I could swim from here over to that island.”

“Two miles?” He looked at me incredulously.

“Well, perhaps not quite,” I yielded. “But almost. How are you on swimming?”

“I can’t swim a stroke,” said Bill. “Y’ see, I hain’t never had no chance.”

“But it strikes me,” said I, “that anyone who’s a sailor _ought_ to be able to.”

♦ _Another Professor of Knots_ ♦

“Well, ye’re right, I reckon,” said he. “But I never been shipwrecked yit. ’N’ I’m goin’ t’ resign afore long, too!” And his eyes sparkled, as usual, at his joke.

He began telling about his working abilities. “You know, I do twice as much work ’s any other man aboard here. They all act ’s though they was skeered to death t’ get their hands dirty. Why, ’f I didn’t work with ’em--’f I didn’t sooge the deck ’n’ paint the bulwarks--there’d not be a stroke o’ work done here. There’s a thousand little jobs that no one’ll ever do ’ceptin’ myself. Remember that day when you come down t’ the schooner ’n’ I was sewin’ that outer jib? Well, the boys got the afternoon off, and I could ’ave, too, if I’d ast; but w’at did I do? I stayed aboard, like a blinkin’ fool, and worked all afternoon on that jib. Well, ’t would have never got done ’f I hadn’t done it.”

Evidently the mate’s head was still running strong on knots, for, after a little, he got himself a strand of rope, and fell to tying it up in all the ways he could think of. I asked him how Richardson was at tying knots. Bill replied about as I expected: “Oh, Dick! he can’t tie two half-hitches and git ’em right.”

I was eager to show him _something_ about string that he didn’t know, but I felt that this was impossible. At last I had an idea: “Do you know cat’s-cradle, mate?” “Cat’s-cradle? No.” I ran down into the cabin and hunted up a bit of string. For as much as a half-hour we were taking it off each other’s hands. I succeeded in amusing the mate by it; and to me it seemed a more interesting game than ever before. It is perfect to play on shipboard, between watches.

Then we fell to talking about boats--small ones, such as canoes and rowboats. Said he: “Well, I tell you, I niver was very strong on canoes. I’m skeered of ’em. Too tipsy for me! I tell you, I wouldn’t go out in one in rough weather ’f you paid me.” And I told him what fun Daddy and I used to have on Sunapee and Ossipee, battling in the white canoe the strongest gales that came.

“But, of course,” said I, “there you never have any weather that’s dangerous. You never have weather anything like what we had a few days ago.”

♦ _A Jewelled Seascape_ ♦

The talk somewhat broke up as we neared the harbor. Mate Bill had never been to Bridgewater, and it struck him, no less than me, as very lovely country. The bright green of the hills rose up, dominating everything, and reaching down those two almost human arms to clasp the blue waters of the bay. I shall never, never forget the loveliness of the entrance to that river as we came directly outside it and began to swing in. The breeze seemed to reach quite a distance up into the bay, and we sailed easily before it, the sails full and steady. At every inch of our progress the landscape changed. Now we would look up the river, where it disappeared around a bend; then back out at the sea, where there seemed to be two horizons--first the edge of our own bay, clasped with those hill-arms, then the horizon of the sea itself, stretching away outside, blue and boundless.

Perhaps you have seen pictures of the Mediterranean Sea, or of harbors in Italy, and wondered at the incredible greenness of the hills, the blueness of the water. Here it was the same: the hills were so gorgeously bright, and shone in such crystal contrast to the brilliant sea and bay, that you just couldn’t believe it was real. Such color could not exist! Green and blue flames, mingling together, yet sharply outlined and distinguished. Those hills were like an emerald crown for the sea. At one place where we looked back at the sea which we were leaving so fast, that boundless mass of color shone bravely between two islands--small islands, just out at the edge of the bay. Being shadowed by higher hills, they looked dark, almost as though spruce-forested. In contrast, that glowing stretch of sea looked brighter, bluer, than ever.

* * * * *

There was quite a breeze in here; there were even whitecaps glistening now and then. The skipper was in high hopes that the breeze would reach clear up the river to the anchoring ground, so that we shouldn’t have to be towed. He wanted to progress as far up the river that night as possible. But when we hailed some men who were working on an anchored three-master, they said that the wind didn’t reach up far, and that the tide was running out “agin” us. The skipper decided to stick to it as long as he could. I went up in the rigging again. I looked down upon a sea of billowing green hills, inset with the sapphires of the various pools which formed parts of the great bay; also, upon more wind and waves than I had realized there were. Then I saw a little power boat, looking like no more than a very large canoe with an engine and a great dark red sail, scudding rapidly out toward us. The man who was running it hailed the skipper, who had been looking down over the starboard bulwarks, ever and again taking the wheel himself. “Want a pilot up the river?” “No, I guess not,” shouted our skipper in return. As for me, I felt more than ever elated in my high station on the crosstrees, especially since I was looking down over nothing but beautiful country. The little power boat with its dark red sail looked so much like a child’s toy from up there that I couldn’t resist waving to the man in its stern. But either he didn’t see me or else he had his hands full running the boat, for I got no return.

♦ _Cap’n and Cap_ ♦

A little farther on a small launch sped up to our side and asked the same question, promptly receiving the same answer from the captain. But still farther on, when the hills and small emerald islands began to cut off the wind, and the sails began to flap, and we found that the tide was sweeping us down, the captain replied differently to the skipper of a tug who shouted over “Want a tug up?” “Yes, sure!”

The tug came close to the side of the _Norman D._ The skipper, a very curious-looking Dutchman, leaped aboard and shook Captain Avery warmly by the hand, after first looking him over incredulously from head to heel. “Why! If this ain’t Cap’n Avery!” said he.

“True for you,” said our skipper. “Glad I am t’ see you, Joe.”

“’T’s a bully long time since you’ve been up Bridgewater way--eh, Cap?”

“Hey-y-y-y-y?”

“You hain’t been up this way fer a long time, Cap!”

“No, I haven’t.”

And the like friendly remarks went on monotonously, with extreme cheerfulness, for a long time. Nothing I could ever say would adequately describe the Dutchman. He was a huge, broad-shouldered man with a huge face and small, glistening blue eyes. He looked wild, but nevertheless kindly. He had a crazy manner of friendliness and nonchalance, and he swanked about the schooner as if he were her captain. I felt that he was extremely amiable at heart, and I was very much interested and amused by him. Incidentally, he was a lively and vigorous tobacco-chewer.

♦ _Excitement for Dick_ ♦

And now Richardson was to have his moment of excitement. It was this way: The towrope was attached to the tug, and Richardson was called aft by “Here, boys! Here, boys! Here, boys!” to make it fast around our two starboard mooring-posts. If he had been wise, he would have let someone else answer that call. He did it, as I thought, quite briskly and cleverly, winding the rope in a figure-of-eight formation around the two posts. But the Dutchman, who had leaped briskly back into the tug to superintend things in his swaggering way there, decided that it wasn’t short enough, and he bellowed back his opinion to Captain Avery. “Take up the slack!” whooped Captain Avery. But this was not such an easy matter for Richardson. To begin with, all those fancy figure-of-eight loops which he had cast around the mooring-posts had to be untangled. He didn’t seem to have a very successful time of it getting them off. I must here remark that, whenever anything was found carelessly done, it was always Richardson who was to blame. For instance, one morning when we had tacked, the bo’s’n had sprung to the main sheet where it was belayed. If there had been any wind, Richardson’s belaying (for, presumably, it _was_ Richardson’s) wouldn’t have lasted long. It was very loosely tangled around the pin. In a flash the bo’s’n had exclaimed: “That looks like Richardson’s work! He must ’a’ done that.” Yes, Richardson did betray a kind of mixed-up sloppiness in his work. He had just got the figures-of-eight off the mooring-posts and begun to haul up the slack in the towrope, when Captain Avery, irritated beyond endurance by his slowness, thundered out: “Hurry up there, Richardson! Hurry up! Hurry! Quick! Quick! Blast you, Richardson! Quick!” in such an appalling voice that Richardson worked desperately, getting in the slack. I never saw a man cast figures-of-eight with such rapidity, and he did not stop until there was enough rope on the posts to have held the entire Presidential Range a mile above ground. Then he went forward, the skipper glowering at him.

* * * * *

Now the captain of the tug had come aboard again, along with one of the tug’s crew--a wild, glaring-eyed youth, slender as a nail and very dark. The two skippers began talking in a very friendly way, calling each other--apparently after the Dutch or Nova Scotian fashion--“Cap.” The glaring youth hung around for a while, but, finding that the two had nothing in particular to communicate to him, he returned, after one inquisitive glance, to his work aboard the tug.

♦ _In the Harbor_ ♦

We were now gliding smoothly and rather briskly up into the harbor. The river widened out gradually, with ever and again beautiful glimpses back at the emerald islets and the sea, or up ahead into the hills, down among which the water flowed, looking bright sapphire blue. After what seemed a very short time, the tug left us in the loveliest landlocked harbor imaginable. The green hills dipped away in a wide sweep and circle to right and left, clasping the blue bay, whose waters seemed to murmur with the rush of the tide. On each side, and lying down beneath the hills, were towns, very small and elfin from this distance. The masses of close-set white and gray houses, with now and then a large red barn looming in the greenness of fields and hills, completed one’s idea of a landlocked Italian harbor. The fields were bright sunny green, by contrast with the more vivid emerald of the hills. Two small islands over on the west side of the bay looked mysterious and uninhabited, as though they sheltered pirate treasure. One of them seemed to have a fairly good landing-beach on our side of it; but this beach, though smooth and gradual, appeared to be covered with some mysterious dark substance which I could by no means understand.

We were far from being the only schooner there. Indeed, it seemed like quite a busy little country seaport. A small three-master was lying close in at one of the wharves belonging to the western town; a shapely little schooner with a black hull. Others lay scattered at anchor around the edges of the harbor--some of them being used, and others (among them a dismantled two-master, one of whose topmasts was gone) in a disused state. The _Norman D._ was, however, by far the largest and loveliest of the schooners there, and we entered that enchanted circle of water feeling as proud and lovely as a white-robed queen. The tug left us near the middle of the bay, but slightly nearer the western edge. Down went our mudhook, with a magical and melancholy splash.

Here I must confess a great weakness of mine, in a moment of which I submitted ingloriously to human nature. I felt, in the presence of the queer, domineering Dutch skipper, as if I should rather like to show that I wasn’t an “ornery street gal,” and that I had some small ability as a sailor. I began to be just as helpful as I could possibly manage. I bustled and ran around after Mate Bill, who was getting the sail-stops out. He got those coils of rope, each about ten feet long, out of one of the small after hatchways, and each of us took an armful and went forward, distributing them. He would leave a certain number by the spanker boom, ready for use, and then another bundle by the mainsail boom; the first bundle went to the foresail. The sails were still up, having been left in order to help our progress up the river; and the mate simply tossed the sail-stops over the boom so that they lay across it, each end trailing on the deck, ready to receive the sails when they should be let down. Together we fitted out the foresail and mainsail booms; then the mate, having something else to do, left me to finish the spanker. I did so, at least as far as I could reach, and then he came aft and placed the stops across the overhanging end.

* * * * *

♦ _Bill’s Morals_ ♦

All the time the mate was talking in earnest, agitated tones about the skipper of the tug. He certainly was a character worth some small consideration. The mate didn’t approve of him at all. He struck Bill as a snob, somehow, much too proud to talk to a common sailor; indeed, he hadn’t said a word to the mate in all the time he was on the schooner. And, as Richard H. Dana, Jr., says: “When the voyage is at an end, you do as you please; but so long as you belong to the same vessel, you must be a shipmate to him on shore, or he will not be a shipmate to you on board.” And Bill had a delicate streak of sensitiveness.

The mate thought that the skipper of the tug was very vulgar because he chewed tobacco so much and so heartily--he thought the same, as a matter of fact, about Captain Avery himself--and he went on somewhat in this way:

“Now, here’s how it is with me. I don’t approve o’ such things ’s chewin’ tobacker, drinkin’, ’n’ so on. I don’t approve of ’em, ’n’ I never can. I used t’ chew a little when I was a young lad and first went t’ sea, ’cause I didn’t know better. But I give it up afore long. ’N’ as fer smokin’--well, I smoke a cigarette now and then, but not as a stiddy thing. ’n’ drinkin’? Well, I’m not a boasting man, but I’ll tell you that I was never drunk once in all my life. Now, that’s a pretty good record fer a man that’s lived as rough as I have, and been t’ sea fifteen year. And I’ve never, in all my born days, bought more than one bottle o’ whisky.

“But Bob, m’ brother, him’d get drunk ivery day if he had th’ chance. As it is, he gets drunk every time he goes ashore. I talk and talk and argue ’bout it with him, but it never does no good. Y’ can’t drum any reason into that lad. He beats all!”

So we talked together--or, at least, I listened and the mate talked--until we dropped anchor in the midst of that peaceful bay. It was now getting toward sunset, and the old man wanted to go ashore to the little sleeping town in order to telephone for a tug to pull us up to Bridgewater in the morning. The mate lowered a small, light flat-bottomed skiff which had been hoisted just beneath the larger dory on the davits, and concealed by it. (In fact, I had not noticed it before.) It was lowered, brought around to the port side of the schooner, and tied just beneath the taffrail. Then a stout ladder was brought, put down the side of the ship, and made fast. I was eager to watch the skipper descend this vertical ladder, as well as to see him try to row the little skiff. The cook, probably eager to see him make a miscue and get a wetting, came sedately out of the galley and stood watching wickedly.

“Are you going alone, sir?” queried the mate.

“Yes, I gesso, Bill.”

♦ _The Skipper’s Misstep_ ♦

Secretly I had hopes of being allowed to accompany him, not having had my feet off the _Norman D._ for ten days; but the captain said nothing about it, and I said nothing. The moment of excitement was arriving. I imagine that the whole crew craned their necks from wherever they were, to see the old man fall into the waters of the Lahave River. The cook now had an I-wish-to-heaven-you’d-get-drowned look on his face. The captain asked the mate if the oarlocks were all right, and the mate descended himself, to see. They were, and the oars were put into place. Everything was in readiness. Then down went the captain, grasping the rungs desperately with his horny, trembling old hands. It looked as if everything were going all right. The mate held the painter of the skiff, ready to cast off as soon as the old man was ready, and he was holding the boat cleverly just beneath the ladder. But the skipper had not reckoned on the small, almost invisible heaves which are constantly taking place in the mouth of that river, where the water is influenced both by the tide and by the current of the river itself. Just as he was about to step into the boat, one of those smooth waves came along, sweeping the boat from beneath his feet. “Look out fer that swell, sir!” shouted the mate. The old man paid not the slightest heed, but went right on, stepping off into the boat just as that wave occurred. It disturbed his balance: and he staggered, then sprawled down into the boat just as one leg trailed in the water up to the knee. Then he regained himself, got at the oars, caught the painter as the mate threw it down, and pushed off.

He was used to rowing, all right, but the tide and the current bothered him considerably. He was swept downstream so fast that he had to head much farther upstream than he wanted to. At last he landed on a sort of beach. The mate made the remark, when he started, that he was “weaker ’n a cat.”

* * * * *

So odd a thing now took place among the crew that I was glad I had stayed aboard. The sails had been lowered and snugly furled, and now the crew seemed to think that there was nothing under the sun to do. They all came aft in a body, including the cook, and stood around on the poop deck, sitting on the deckhouse, chinning and making merry. The audacity of it was very amusing. When the old skipper was aboard no one ever came aft except when called, or to take his trick at the helm. But now all rules were off, and they seemed to take a defiant pleasure in being where they weren’t supposed to be. Their talk ran mainly on the skipper, and they said some tremendously insulting things. The cook, through it all, pretended great authority, standing there in a way which made me think he was trying very hard to look dignified, and nodding his head grimly every now and then.

“I wisht he had fallen in--really,” said the bo’s’n, in a mournful voice.

“We’d ’a’ been well rid o’ that rascal,” said the cook.

♦ _On Forbidden Ground_ ♦

“’N’ say, Bob, didja see that guy from the tug?” said Roy. “So that’s the kind o’ friends the old man has, is it?”

“He’d ’a’ won the champeenship of spitting,” stated Bob.

“I told you,” interposed the cook, “he’s known all over Nova Scotia fer his low-down rascality.”

“’N’ fer interferin’ in _your_ business, I suppose.”

“Interferin’ ’s no word fer it. Say, you know--” And then came, for the hundredth time, the tale of how the Chinese cook had chased Captain Avery ashore with a drawn cutlass when he had come forward to see the galley. This sort of talk went on for a long time, with the cook interposing now and then to call Captain Avery “cussed old wretch,” and “p’ison divil,” and so on, at a great rate; and with the mate standing by the taffrail, looking wicked and piratical, with that suppressed smile in his face and that black twinkle in his eyes. The bo’s’n, too, was “full of it” that evening, and every now and then one of his mocking calls would ring out over the waters of the Lahave, much louder and bolder than ever before.

Presently the mate and I drew more or less apart from the others. “Say, Barbara,” said Bill, “how’d you like a row in that little skiff when the old man comes back, if ’t ain’t too late?”

“Oh, that would be splendid.”

“Kin you row?”

“Try me and see!”

“Well, you can row, then, and, if ’t ain’t too dark, we’ll go out.”

“All right. But say, mate, are the boys going ashore tonight?”

“Yes, I reckon they are, if they can get the chance. We’ll give ’em the skiff when we get back.”

“Are you going ashore?”

“No, I reckon not.”

By this time the sun was nearing the horizon, spreading a gorgeous russet glow over there, and looking like a great ball of scarlet fire. Suddenly there was a loud hail from near where the old man had beached the skiff. All of us thought it was he; it sounded unmistakably like his harsh whoop. “Here, boys! Here, boys! Here, boys!” said the bo’s’n shrilly. “Don’t you want us to swim over and git you?”

♦ _The Skipper’s Return_ ♦

But the mate silenced him, with a mild oath, and answered the hail with one loud “Hallo-o-o-o-o!” Then there was a dead silence. The crew was staring. The cook was the first one to speak: “I would be glad if that was the old man’s death-whoop,” said he. These words fell from the mouth of the sinister little old man in an icy way, sounding like a death-knell indeed. The bo’s’n was next, and he said: “What’s that? Go buy a package o’ cigarettes!” And next the mate: “Oh, shame, to mock the poor old fellow like that! I wouldn’t talk that way about him for worlds; not me!” “Huh!” said the cook. “Cap’n Avery jaws me about smokin’ a few decent little cigarettes, ’n’ then--w’at does he do? He goes ’n’ chaws _tobacker_!”

By this time we had all decided that it wasn’t the captain at all, and we began talking again as merrily as ever. The mate was looking rather stern now, or, at least, trying to, but something in his eye and the corners of his mouth told me that he enjoyed the jokes of the crew. Then a little speck was descried off through the dark, and, behold! it was the skipper returning, rowing back in the same feeble way. He was welcomed with quite a burst of subdued mocks from the bo’s’n, and then the crew slunk away forward and disappeared in a very business-like way. Even the haughty little cook went forward to the galley pretty fast.

* * * * *

“Don’t you think it’s too late for us to go out in the skiff?” I asked the mate. It was now almost dark, and the glow in the west had faded to a deep russet.

“Oh, there’s no reason why we can’t go out a little,” said Bill, who was evidently quite eager about the idea.

A few moments afterward the old man had come in close, the mate had caught the thrown painter, and the captain had scrambled out of the skiff and up the ladder. “Now, Barbara!” said the mate, with a cunning wink at me. Instantly I had started down the ladder. “Won’t you be cold with nothing but that jumper on?”

“No, I think not,” said I. I climbed down the ladder and got successfully into the boat.

“Do you want to row, Barbara?”

“Surely, mate, unless you do.”

“All right, then--you row.”

♦ _A Harbor Excursion_ ♦

He cast the painter down to me. I caught it, holding the ladder with the other hand. Down came the mate, and we pushed off. It gave me very delightful sensations to come down that ladder. It struck home upon my piratical senses that it must be very much like the sort of ladder by which buccaneers would board other ships. Even going down instead of up, I had the feeling of boarding the ship of an enemy. But my ideas changed when I felt the oars securely in my hands, and I decided to show the mate a little brisk rowing. Feeling quite in my own element, I struck out. The little skiff was so much lighter and happier than the heavy old tubs I am accustomed to rowing that, under my tremendous strokes, we shot along amazingly, in spite of the powerful river current which had seemed to trouble the old man. I can’t explain to you the delight I had in being in a small boat again and having oars grasped firmly in my hands. It seemed strange, too, to see the little waves so very near me. I leaned back with all my weight upon the oars, bringing them down together in strong, quick rhythm. How lightly the skiff danced on! I knew that progress at this rate would draw comment from Bill sooner or later, and, indeed, I didn’t have long to wait: “Say, you sure can row good, Barbara!”

“Well, yes--I’m pretty well used to it. I’ve rowed quite a lot before.”

We agreed to go over towards the place where the captain had landed, but farther upstream, so that we should have a good chance to see the small three-masted schooner which was lying close in to the wharf there. There was quite a wind added to the current; I felt a pleasant resistance, and heard the whispering chuckle of waves beneath the bow. I had been rowing some minutes very briskly, not thinking of anything in particular, and more or less watching the water. Suddenly the mate said: “The schooner looks pretty from here, don’t she, Barbara?” I raised my head and looked back. The _Norman D._ lay there, in the midst of those unstill waters, like a dream--a thought. Ten times lovelier she seemed than ever before. She raised her head quietly from that small round bay, and shone, in her whiteness, like a beautiful ghost. At one moment she dominated the entire ring of hills like a snow-capped mountain looming from a sea of dark foothills and spruce forests; at another she only blended softly and quietly with the water, like a wraith of the sea; again, she was a drifting sea gull, or a snowy albatross with dark wings. By the magical influence of the dusk, she was quivering and unsteady, like a mirage. And soon she was no more than a lovely white shadow--a flicker--a whim of the twilight. Whatever she was or might be, all images of piracy left me at the sight of her, lying calm and innocent in the dusk.

Not until all these thoughts had passed through me did I answer the mate. “Pretty? I should say she is!”

* * * * *

But now we had almost reached the other schooner. I hadn’t ceased my vigorous rowing, though, in wonder of the _Norman D._, it had considerably abated.

“Are you getting tired, Barbara?”

♦ _The Mysterious Isle_ ♦

I nearly smiled. If he had known the way I had rowed around and about Lake Sunapee, in a boat which took twice as much strength as this one merely to keep under way--! “Me? No, mate. I don’t get tired so easily as that!” And I gradually speeded up again. The other schooner, the small three-master, seemed, in the soft darkness, much more like a pirate craft than that snow-lily of a _Norman D._ She had a slender, graceful black hull with a band of yellow around it below the bulwarks, and her name in yellow letters. Alas! I have forgotten what it was. She was a dainty little vessel; the mate, too, said so.

“Well, where would you like to go now, Barbara?”

“What do you say about going over to the island on the other side of the bay?”

“Are you sure you can row that far?”

“Oh, certainly, certainly.”

“You don’t want me to take her?”

“Not unless you want to.”

Here, you see, I made use of this pleasure excursion to get a glimpse of that mysterious little island about which I had become so curious. I wanted to see what that dark beach really was. We crossed the bow of the _Norman D._ at a slashing rate. (Both of us raised our eyes and saw her huge, high jibboom looming about us, seeming to point at the sky itself.) We neared the island; closer and closer we drew in, until we could hear the breeze whispering in its trees. It loomed darksomely. It is one of my lasting regrets that I didn’t have the chance to land and do some true exploration there, in the approved piratical fashion. I am sure that considerable treasure might have been found. But by this time it was getting pretty dark, and we couldn’t see where we were going. The mate was afraid to let me land, because we didn’t know the place, and we couldn’t see where rocks were. But closer and closer I drew in, rowing very slowly now. I could see jagged rocks thrusting up from the water close to the shore. Now we could almost _feel_ that uncanny dark island, like the breath of a ghost upon our cheeks.