The foaming fore shore/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
THE TOAST
THE dark was down on shore as Taylor's dory touched old Peter's wharf, the soaring crests of the wooded hills lost in the black murk of a stormy sky, the cheery lights of Château pricking like golden stars through the scudding fog. About Peter's room burned evil-smelling kerosene flares, one on the stagehead, one at the cutthroat's stall and one at the splitter's table. In the faint glow of the farther flare worked the Montagnais squaw splitting the last of the day's catch, her fourteen-year-old boy coming and going beside her as he had done since dawn, his dredge barrow bumping and squeaking dolefully in the night.
At the splitter's table old Anne was cleaning her knives on a wad of tow, whetting them keen and sticking them in the slabs, ready for the morrow. While on the stagehead, the final fish shot away, Hughie Hay leaned on his fork beside old Peter and stared in a vain attempt to make out the strange rigs of the schooners that had just cast anchor.
"Mon Dieu, it is you two, then," cried old Peter as Taylor and Marie climbed out on the stage. "What have you done to your Graywing, Capitaine? We couldn't see well for the fog, but I know it is not the rig you sailed out under this morning."
"No, I had a brush with Pellier's Esperance and we both lost some sticks," laughed Taylor.
"Diable! You tell me so? Come into the lean-to and let us hear about it."
With a word to Hughie Hay to take charge of the dory and wait for him, Taylor followed old Peter and Marie over the wooden jetty. The slipperiness of the cod was underfoot, the reek of the cod in their nostrils, and involuntarily Marie shuddered. This was what she had left for a golden day. This was what she had come back to. The thought of taking fork in hand at dawn once more and standing there on the stagehead nauseated her and a wild desire to flee the whole thing filled her impulsive being.
The lean-to backed the fish-sheds, and through a doorway all sagged askew they entered Peter's Château home. Of a truth it was but a Summer home, occupied during the fishing-season and deserted while he spent the Winter at Bay of Islands on the Newfoundland shore, but nevertheless its starkness and squalidity struck Taylor like the blow of a dirty hand.
A tin lantern hung from the low roof casting a feeble light as if ashamed to glaringly illuminate the rude habitation and display its shortcomings to visitors. Through holes in the roof the fog was dripping, hitting the hot top of the lantern with a sputter or streaking down the un-rinded timbers that held together the aperture-filled walls. Underfoot a slab floor bowed and sprung to the tread, a bare floor, knotted, uneven, yawning with two-inch cracks, littered with its own bark that the foot skinned off at every step.
As rough as the floor were the fixings that stood upon it, a rusty, battered stove, a spruce table adzed out in a solid slab with trenailed legs and three stools to match. A three-foot cut of a log, up-ended, served as a washstand, supporting a granite basin and a pot of soft yellowish soap under an endless towel revolving on a roller.
At the farther end Taylor espied the sleeping-quarters, walled off from the main room by unplaned boards. These were simply built-in bunks, and Taylor noted with a thrill of pleasure the cleanly appearance of Marie's, its opening hung with new curtains, her sea-chest within set out for a dresser, her bed well-ordered.
Old Peter's was primitive enough, having neither curtains nor covering, his mattress a layer of moss, but Taylor knew that the hard-fisted old roomer was abroad night and day, never removing his clothes and sleeping with sea boots and oilskins on. From old Anne's he turned his eyes away, for he espied a comforter that had not been washed since her youth and deeper than that he did not care to pry.
Yet old Peter might have been a sovereign in a palace so merrily he laughed at Taylor's account of Beauport's trickery. The predicament of the sly Jacques filled the hardy old mariner with delight.
"Ciel!" he chortled. "That Jacques Beauport! He is the wily rascal. No fool, Jacques, when it comes to anything he wants. But he is caught this time. But wait—you will see. Admiral Pellier is a man of honor and fairness. Oui, and a man of discipline. He will draw the truth from Jacques as a man corkscrews a bottle of brandy. Voilà, and that makes me remember I am dry! Will you have something before you go, Capitaine?"
Old Peter stepped over to his bunk and from a secret receptacle under the moss produced a bottle of brandy.
"Fresh from Miquelon?" inquired Taylor with a laugh.
"Non, St. Pierre!" chortled old Peter. "It is one of a case and there are many cases—buried, you understand, where the customs officer will never grub. Votre health, Capitaine! Oui, and a full voyage even if your trap is gone and your schooner dismasted!"
"Your own health, Peter; aye, and a full voyage!" returned Taylor, his eyes meeting Marie's. "Here's hoping!"