Beached Keels/Blue Peter/Chapter 1
BLUE PETER
I
"Yes, it's been swum," puffed the boatman, tugging till the ashen thole-pins creaked. "On'y onct, though, an'—the feller was a buster—that done it—back in '56."
He spat over the gunwale, so that a brown stain of tobacco swept astern on the heaving slant of the green wave. Archer, on the stern thwart, turned his head and looked back over the dazzling water at the mainland, a dark bank of rocks and low hills, with a few roofs and a spire against the late afternoon sun.
"He must have been," he answered. The distance to the American shore was not three miles, but the water was an arm of the icy North Atlantic, and the tide went racing out to sea through the passage.
"Trim the bo't, sir," rejoined the man at the oars, in a tone of cheerful Yankee independence. "It's mortal hard pullin' in this sea, an' if you don't keep 'er headed pooty sharp, we may run afoul o' the South Rocks, after all."
Archer faced the bow again. "All right," he said easily. the last two years had taught him to value an honest rebuke.
The boatman screwed his lean brown face like a monkey, as he blinked at the sunlight following them, and caught the high waves deftly with his short, tough oars. Beyond him and the pitching bow. Archer saw the tremendous cliffs of the island, a gunshot ahead, towering all pink and ruddy in the sunlight. A few gulls wheeled with forlorn cries along the face of the crags. Above, on the verge against the sky, a clump of tiny trees leaned inland as if tossed by a gale. Years of ocean storms must have blown them thus, for now so deep an autumnal calm lay over sea and island that they were startling in their suggestion of wild motion. It was like a freak in the landscape of some forgetful and bungling painter.
For an instant Archer thought he saw the figure of a man, crouched and furtive, slinking among the trees; but it might have been the gnarled trunks shifting and interweaving with the patches of sky that showed through. And the next instant he was busy with the tiller-ropes. The boat tossed laboriously, dragging as if uphill, round the foot of the lofty broken columns of basalt, where the waves tumbled with a heavy and hollow noise as of caves.
"They's no landin' that side now, ye see," grunted the Yankee. And even as he spoke, they rounded a point of lifting seaweed, and ran into the cool shadows of the eastward cliffs. Here, though the tide was still against them, they rowed more easily, in almost a calm. Under the astounding lee of the cliffs there fell a kind of instant twilight, a melancholy evening stillness and dusk, so that Archer, turning his eyes from this dark precipice that overawed their cockleshell boat, was surprised to find the wide ocean still aglow, and the tiny sail that nicked the horizon still white in the sun. This island was a sombre place, thought Archer, for an adventure planned so boyishly.
Northward the boat labored, sometimes making a long circuit where a weir straggled into the sea, sometimes tossing an oar's length from the giant columns and boulders, and always without a sign of human beings, and always preceded by the ominous, echoing cries of startled sea gulls.
"Black Harbor's round this p'int," said the boatman at last.
At the point the cliffs were split asunder into a mighty cove, across the mouth of which ran a bleak sea wall higher than a man's head,—all of gray stones as round as cannon-balls,—wave-built, impregnable, Cyclopean masonry. Through a gap midway in this wall the boat entered Black Harbor.
Letting her run in the still water, the Yankee mopped his bald forehead and grinned.
"Cheerful sort o' place, ain't it?" he asked. "Real homelike and neighborly."
It was a place where Old-World smugglers might land their brandy kegs, or where pirates might put in and share alike. Instead of these, two or three dismantled sloops and pinkies lay moored in a half- circle of dark water still as a mill pond. Archer could barely descry, landward, a steep black gulch of fir-tops that ran widening down in the darkness, a glacier in evergreen. On either side jutted a headland, both wooded, one scarred with landslides. On the bar, close astern, a solitary figure in yellow oilskins moved along, stooping to gather up wine-colored rags of dulse that had lain drying in the brief sunlight.
To him, the first man they had found on this sombre island,—unless the furtive shadow on the cliff had been a man,—Archer raised his hand in salute. The dulse-gatherer made no response, but stood sullen or apathetic, watching them pull shoreward.
"Go to thunder, then," growled the Yankee under his breath. After a few strokes he added, "Won't git much out o' these fellers. Ye better not try a night's lodgin' among them, specially if you've got money on ye. Ol' man Powell might put ye up. He's queer, they say, but he might. I would n't ast them. I'm a-goin' to sleep in this bo't, an' go back in the mornin'. But by Godfrey!" he broke out with fervor, "’fore bunkin' in with that crowd, I'd ruther resk the whirlpools a-goin' back in the dark."
"Listen, though," said Archer.
The boat was surrounded by the darkness of the looming headlands. A single light from the shore pierced the pool deeply before them, a long, wavering blade of brightness in the still water. The silence had been suddenly broken by a small, sharp, metallic voice singing,—a phonograph squealing out the "Handicap March." "We 've got money to booyin!" it cried nasally. In this dark, forlorn harbor it seemed incredible. Strange echo of cheap New York, thought Archer, it told that rusticity and simple merriment were no more.
"They seem gay enough," he said aloud. The boatman, however, only gave a skeptical grunt.
On the beach, where the good salt air was lost in a stink of fish, the two men parted,—the Yankee, with his fee in his pocket, to pull stolidly out of this harbor which he hated; Archer, to go scrambling up a footpath which, littered with broken fish-flakes, wound upward among a few unlighted, silent, and malodorous huts. In one of these, through the open door, he saw men and boys plying bloody knives by lantern light; but to his "Good-evening " the fishermen replied only with churlish stares. Plainly, it was an inhospitable shore. Even the phonograph had ceased. The place lay stifled in such a profound silence that he felt the oppression of the headlands towering in the dark. Also he felt himself an ass to have left his decent quarters aboard ship in the mainland town, for the childish whim of visiting an island that had loomed offshore so high and so romantic.
Suddenly, turning the corner of a hut, he halted in a stream of lamplight from another open door. It was very smoky lamplight, and there was a powerful smell of tobacco and stale beer. On the doorstep he nearly fell over a man who lay sprawled and speechless,—a white face with eyes staring upward, apparently in drunken communion with the stars.
"Well," thought Archer, looking into this hillside barroom, where through the gray smoke-layers the figures of men moved tipsily, "I've found plenty of it."
His entrance no one noticed. A snarled group swayed in midfloor, three men pawing one another's shoulders, in an effort to light their pipes from a single match. There was no talk, no sound but the shifting of feet. Other men, ill-favored, sprawled in a half-stupor on a bench that edged the room. On the bar, in the light of the tin reflector behind the lamp, stood the phonograph, silent, its conical throat yawning. A mean little man in a dirty shirt—evidently bartender—had stooped to pitch something out of a window into the yellow grass that waved flush with the window sill and rose on the abrupt slope of the hillside: an easy exit in the event of a raid.
"Where 'd the city guy blow in frum?" mumbled a voice. "Look at ut, would ye? Say, this ain't Camperbeller ner Baw Hawber." Mischief was in the voice and the thick laughter.
The attention of the drunken roomful focused itself in silence on Archer, who turned sharply toward the speaker, a red-faced young fellow in hip-boots, leaning unsteadily against the bar. He had evil little eyes, bad teeth widely spaced, and a squash nose that showed the nostrils in front.
Archer was a young man of sudden likes and dislikes, who did not calculate his retorts. The "city guy" could not have appeared in his six feet of solid build, or in the heavy sea clothes, which failed to obscure the convex lines of strength. It must have been suggested in his face, which was of the dark, clear brown that only a very blond man takes from long weathering, and which, though at once impetuous and resolute, showed a fineness of line. He lowered his rough, shining head as he answered:—
"You would n't look half so much like a kid's jack-o'-lantern if you'd keep your mouth shut."
Two years of seafaring had taught him the advantages of bluntness. They had also taught him to stand by the swiftest disadvantage. He warded off the heavy tumbler with his elbow, leaped forward at him who had thrown it, and pinioned him against the bar. Next instant an ill-smelling half-ton scrimmage of drunken men had surged upon them both.
"Leggo—hell—soak 'im, Beaky—stop that, ye damn fool!" came in smothered fierceness from the swaying, punching, tugging knot of men. Archer, braced mightily, and straining all his muscles, had just cracked two heads together, and was being pulled down, when he was aware that his assailants had slowly fallen apart and stood about, flushed, breathless, and speechless. Some one was knocking at the door masterfully.
Archer followed their drunken eyes. A door at the end of the counter silently came ajar, and a hand was thrust in,—a great, red, freckled hand, fat, but powerful in every joint. Steady as a rock, it held itself there, waiting. The bartender swiftly poured out and passed to it a tumbler brimful of gin. It withdrew with this monstrous drink, while the whole company stood as if bulldozed into silence. Almost instantly the glass was tossed in empty, the door closed, and heavy footsteps departed.
So strange was the episode that Archer had almost forgotten his own predicament. He turned to find his enemies dispersed,—part of them, led by the young man of the jack-o'-lantern mouth, already slinking into corners.
Tardy and timid, the bartender piped up:—
"No more o' this, boys. The Old Man's round. He don't stand fer no rows, some nights."
Needless enough the warning seemed, for the men sat cowed. Silence fell again, except for a hiccough or two from the bench. Archer found himself once more the centre of hostile eyes, glowering through the smoke.
"There's no need of any rows," he spoke out. "I didn't come in here to start one. This man here," he said, nodding toward his broad-faced antagonist, "this man here got no worse than he gave me. If he wants it to go farther, all right; if he does n't, all right. I don't bear any grudge. And all I came in for was to ask if any of you would put me up for the night."
No one volunteered.
"If any one will,"—the boatman's warning about money checked and changed his speech,—"why, it 'll be better than sleeping out these cold nights."
The silence remained discouraging.
"I was told that Mr. Powell might," he persevered. "Can you tell me where he lives?"
The young man in hip-boots broke out angrily.
"Old man Powell!" he sneered, lurching in his seat. "Ho, yes, I guess he will! I see him doin' it! An' I guess"—He spat out obscenity which showed that Powell had a daughter.
"That 'll do for you, Lehane," called a clear voice from the farthest corner, behind the stove. A tall man stepped out from the shadows, and fixed on the young drunkard a pair of stern eyes. Taller than Archer, and very dark, he was lithe as a cat, with a grace that would have been courtly had it not been wholly native. "That'll do for you," he repeated, in a voice strangely clear and deep.
Young Lehane seemed to shrink before the steady brightness of his look. The speaker turned to Archer and scrutinized him as steadily. Without ceremony, yet without offense, he took Archer by the arm and wheeled him about toward the light. The two men stood looking each other in the eye. Archer saw before him a man of his own age, entirely sober, with the face of a thinker,—a face swarthy but clear. The searching eyes, that seemed almost to emit light, were wide-set and very blue. Three big veins scored the broad forehead with irregular lines as blue as the eyes, or as the jersey that clung to the sinewy frame. Intellect, and a kind of grave passion, shone in the whole countenance : the man might have been Hamlet in the rough, but Hamlet with the will of Fortinbras, sad but strong.
"My name's Peter," he declared simply. "I'd like to have yours."
It was as if he had forced a reply that he might study a face out of repose. Archer felt that this young fisherman was weighing his character. But he answered without resentment.
"Mine's Hugh Archer. I'd be obliged to you if you 'd tell me of a night's lodging somewhere. These other men won't. As for Powell's daughter"—he was going on half jocosely—
"Never mind what Beaky said," the other cut in, with severity. "He's full o' smut. It's best forgotten." Then, after a long silence, during which the sharp blue eyes studied further, and seemed to look through Archer into futurity and consequences, Peter added, "Yes, Powell may take ye in. It's just as well, after all, I should n't wonder."
The tone, unmistakably sad, was one of final decision. The eyebrows under the blue-veined forehead unbent.
"My brother 'll show ye the way."
And with this, stepping to the open door, he whistled into the darkness. Presently there came a patter of bare feet, and a small, ragged boy, bounding up the steps, stood and peered in with sharp, mischievous eyes.
"Hippolyte," said his elder brother, "show this man over the hill."
Thanking this strange helper, who only nodded in reply, Archer went out, followed by the stares of the silent company. In the dark on the hillside he found it difficult to keep within view of the white patch that was the shirt of his little guide. The boy ducked under fir trees, scaled ledges, dove into underbrush, and clambered always upward, nimble as a goat. Once Archer, though he too was nimble, called a halt, halfway up the steep bank of the gulch. As they rested a moment under the firs, he could see a host of stars, large and bright in the chill air of early autumn, and even larger when seen thus from the depth of the black pass.
"Who is Mr. Powell.?" he suddenly asked.
The boy gave an odd chuckle.
"Powell?" he said, in a little dry voice like a satirical old man. "Oh, he owns the island."
"Really!" said Archer in astonishment. "And so," he continued, after a pause, "you 're all his tenants, I suppose."
"I s'pose so," replied the boy, breaking out into impish laughter. When they had started climbing again, he threw back, "’Specially the Old Man,—Matt Lehane,—oh, yes!" And for some distance up the rocky path under the brushing firs, the child laughed to himself in a kind of pert irony.
At last, gaining the summit, they found themselves high in the open, on a bare ledge. Over this landward side of the island there still lay a twilight in which the stars looked pale, and which showed the gleam of water far below, and the land sloping downward in long, hollow fields.
"See that light?" said the boy. "That's Powell's. Did Peter say he'd take ye in? Then p'raps he will. I never seen no one there." Instantly he had slipped out of sight among the firs, through which Archer heard him brushing his way down to Black Harbor again.
As no reply came to his shout of thanks. Archer began the long descent toward the lighted window. In the west still glimmered a strip of afterglow, brownish red, as if the evening had been hot on the mainland. Still, too, a thread of bright water outlined the shore; and farther out, in the dark, lay vaguely the deeper blackness of the whirlpools. North and south loomed the colossal cliffs of the island. But his way toward the cove led through a gentle, pastoral country,—concave slopes, with short, dry grass, still warm as in early evening. By crossing the ridge above the harbor, he had been transported into a different region, of Thessalian rocks and Arcadian fields.
When at last he rounded the corner of Powell's house, he was surprised to find it an apparently civilized dwelling. About the door the leaves of a vine stirred faintly in the air. A stone doorstep sounded grittily beneath his feet; and just as his hand was raised to knock, he saw through the open window a room lined with books, a flickering fire, and the dim figure of a little elderly man sitting by a yellow-shaded lamp. From beyond the lamp came the clear voice of a girl reading aloud; but he could see only one arm of the chair, and the white skirt flowing down over her knees.
The man raised his gray head to interrupt the reader.
"That's not so good as the original," he said, in a tone of fretful resignation.
Archer let his hand fall, and instinctively turned to go back toward Black Harbor.