The foaming fore shore/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
OLD PETER'S ROOM
LAVAL'S establishment lay in the curve J of the cove below the village graveyard sleeping under the slant of Beacon Hill. It consisted of a long wooden jetty, a barn-like supply store generally known as the barter-house, miserable, tumble-down fish-sheds and a disgraceful room, sod-thatched and rough-boarded on unbarked studs.
Up and down the jetty stalked old Peter, his keen, colorless, icicle-like eyes overseeing everything that went on and at the same time watching the crowded shipping of the harbor.
"What have you there, Capitaine Taylor?" he cried as the Graywing swung to anchor off his wharf. "A trap haul for me, perhaps?"
"Aye, Peter, a record haul of one hundred and twenty-five quintals for a trap of that size, all alive and kicking, yours at the current figure," proffered Taylor. "And no damp or Madeira about them—no, nor any Miquelon brandy either!"
Peter grinned a deep grin that wrinkled his sanctimonious face.
"Voilà, I was drunk last night, but I am sober and penitent today," he declared piously. "Oui, and the Auk is many souls lighter and gone on her way to Camp Islands. It would have been a pity to drag a hole through a bag like that. My room is ready, Capitaine, and I'll send the carteel boat out for your fish. No, you can't moor alongside till I get the harbor-end of my jetty in place. Comment? You know how much there was to do."
Peter stumped down the wharf to give his orders, and immediately the carteel boat, a long fish-barge used to freight the catches from the fishing-grounds to the rooms, put out in charge of homespun-jacketed livyeres. The morning haul of the Graywing was dumped in and conveyed across the harbor, Taylor himself riding his own dory, trailed by the carteel boat with the livyeres and the Graywing's men aboard, in to old Peter's stage.
As he approached the straddling skeleton of the stage which was built of longers he scanned it for the first glimpse of the roomies Laval was working. Surely, Taylor thought, with all his riches, hard-fisted though he was, old Peter would hardly work his own womenkind in a room like this. Surely he would not—by Jove, yes, he would, too! Yonder was the slim swaying of a figure he had seen before!
Three laden dories ahead of the carteel boat were pewing the last of their loads to the stage, and there in the stagehead position stood Marie passing the gleaming cod along a chute to the cutthroat old Anne. Her double-bladed knife flashing in the sunlight, old Anne in two strokes nicked each fish on either side of the neck, with a third slash ripped each belly open and slung the mangled carcass along to the header.
The header was a quarter-breed Eskimo woman, leathered, wrinkled, impressive as a Buddha, who pulled heads off and entrails out, separated the livers with wonderful dexterity, dropped each liver into the liver puncheon and slid the disemboweled fish on for the final operation of splitting.
The splitter, a full-blooded Montagnais squaw with one hand mittened, boned the cod with three lightning slashes and slapped them into a large vat whence her fourteen-year-old boy wheeled them in a dredge barrow away to the fish-sheds to lie a month under salt in layers three deep before being dried.
IT WAS an efficient crew of roomies old Peter worked. From stage to salt bulk there was no pause in the glittering stream of cod—not till the carteel boat with the trailing dory swung up to the wharf and Marie raised her eyes to look fairly into Taylor's.
"Mon Dieu!" she gasped.
Taylor shuddered inwardly at sight of her slim loveliness in the ugly mess, but he carried himself boldly in the awkward moment.
"Good morning, Mademoiselle Marie," he greeted, seeming not to see the smatter and slime, "I have brought your father a trap haul to handle for me."
"Bon matin, Capitaine Taylor," she returned, swiftly recovering herself. "You must be a mighty fisher."
But her involuntary halt in her work had balked the rapid machine. The pitch-forked fish piled up on her, the cutthroat old Anne and the rest waved idle knives in the air, and old Peter let out a roar like a bull.
"Name of a name, Marie!" he bellowed. "Do not stand there like a rock pillar with a dozen quintal of fish at your feet. Diable, move them along!"
Marie flushed scarlet, her face like some rare, delicate crimson flower among the silver gleam of the cod, and Taylor saw the fire leap to her eyes as she shot a wicked side-glance at her father. Taylor himself had only one thought—to get her out of that mess, but he was too shrewd to try to bully old Peter or to appeal to his better nature. Laval was not a man to be bullied or influenced by appeals. To move him one had to speak in terms of his pocket-book.
"But look, Peter," he argued, "your Marie is too slight for such rush work. I have a big trap haul here and very likely another coming by evening. Let me put one of my own men in her place. Let me put Hughie Hay here, as good a stagehead as ever kept the dories forking. It is in my own interest and with Hughie on the stage it will be better for you as well."
"But the pay," demurred old Peter. "Marie gets nothing, for voilà, it is the return she gives me for her St. John's schooling."
"Hughie gets his wage and share as one of the Graywing's crew whether afloat or ashore," Taylor hastened to assure him. "He will cost you nothing."
"Très bien, then, let him take Marie's place," accepted old Peter with alacrity.
Hughie sprang out and took the girl's position as stagehead, while Marie turned to Taylor, a wonderful light of gratitude in her eyes. He had extricated her quickly and neatly from her demeaning bondage without touching her pride, and she was not loath to let him see that she admired his delicacy.
"Ah, mon Viking of the Auk, how can I thank you?" she breathed gratefully, yet with something of coquettishness.
"Why, by taking Hughie's place aboard the Graywing," laughed Taylor.
With a touch of gallantry he handed her down into his dory under old Peter's icicle-like but unprotesting eyes.
"The schooner has nothing to do till the trap haul this evening, so till then I'll just take you for a holiday cruise 'round Château Bay!"