Silver Shoal Light/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
STORM-BOUND
"WE'RE in for it!" Jim cried, as he dashed through the living-room in dripping oilskins. He shed slicker and sou'wester in the passage, and returned to sit down at the breakfast-table.
"I hope you don't mind the rubber-boots," he said to Joan, who passed him the toast; "I shall have to go out again immediately after breakfast, and it's such a bore to climb in and out of the things."
"Are we going to have bad weather?" she asked.
"Fairly stiff for a summer storm, I imagine," he answered. "I'll haul the little boats out, Elspeth, and I think I'll moor the Ailouros closer in, so that she'll get the lee of the rock. It's a good thing you went to town when you did, Miss Kirkland, before this came up. Hi! Hear it rain!"
A sudden torrent drove across the windowpanes and lashed the face of the rising sea. The wind boomed suddenly into the corner where the tower joined the house; a door rattled sharply. Jim sprang to close a window.
"What about the informal garden?" Elspeth demanded.
"I don't think anything will come over,—not yet, certainly," Jim replied, "but Caleb and I will put the boxes in the boat-house, if you'd rather."
"Do you mean to say that the water dashes up as far as the garden?" Joan exclaimed.
"Goodness!" Garth said. "You ought to see it in winter. Why, the seas come sloshing right up over the whole rock sometimes. Don't they, Fogger?"
"I should think so!" Jim assented. "Enough to be quite exciting at times. It gives you a tiny taste of what it would be like to live in a real lighthouse, like Eddystone or Minot's Ledge. Well, you'll have to fetch out your knitting to-day and rejoice in having a roof over your heads."
Jim went out to his boats, and came back with a wet face and glistening oilskins to report the wind rising and the seas gaining in size and force. He departed to his work, and while Elspeth finished odds and ends of housekeeping, Joan and Garth played the Miraculous Memory Stretcher. They had just finished a most hilarious bout, when Elspeth came downstairs with a large book in her hands.
"I'm going to inflict this upon you," she said, as she sat down beside Joan on the settle, "just like an old country wife with her 'fambly photygraph album.' But they're not 'cabinet portraits'; they're principally snapshots of Garth, so I thought you wouldn't mind."
"Why didn't you show it to me long ago?" Joan chided. "You knew I should love it."
"These at first are just of Jim and me, ages ago," Elspeth said, flapping over the pages; "not so interesting. Here's Garth—the first picture of him—aged three weeks."
"Did I really look so queer?" Garth demanded, leaning over his mother's shoulder. "I don't see why you liked me, I must say!"
"I did," Elspeth said. "You were ever so nice. He was older here, Joan; these are up to the time he was a year old. Don't you think he had an engaging smile?"
Joan did think so; she was very much interested.
"It's so hard to think of you as living anywhere but at the Light," she exclaimed, "and of his being so little! Where were these taken?"
"In Boston, all of them," Elspeth replied. "See the Washington statue in the Public Gardens looming up behind those of Garth in the pram? How silly I look! That was when people wore those idiotic skirts."
There was a picture of Jim,—younger, and rather too thin,—holding Garth on his knees, the baby waving a toy duck joyously in his father's face. And one of Elspeth sitting on the floor constructing a block-house for the entertainment of her son, who, from his attitude, seemed about to demolish the whole thing.
"He did," Elspeth affirmed. "In fact, that appeared to be his idea of the whole purpose of a block-house—to be pushed down. It always went with a crash, and he said 'Gang!' and shouted with glee. Here's where he was just beginning to walk. He really was nice, wasn't he! His hair was pale gold, Joan. Would you ever guess it?" She rumpled up her son's bronze curls, and he ducked, laughing, out of her reach.
So many happy pictures, page after page! Elspeth, turning a leaf eagerly, said:
"Oh, this is very nice! It's enlarged from a tiny one that I took on Mount Vernon Street one windy spring morning."
He was galloping sturdily toward the camera, a joyous baby, with flying hair and outflung arms, his hat perilously far on the back of his head and his little white smock fluttering out behind him.
"He was two and a half," Elspeth said, "It was just before he was sick."
"If you've a duplicate of that, by any chance," said Joan, after a time of gazing at the picture, "I want it, please."
"Then there's a break," Elspeth explained, "when we weren't taking pictures; then there are a few the winter before we came out here. This is one that was taken in Jim's study. Garth was lying on the couch, looking at picture-books. You see, he couldn't hold the book himself, so Jim's holding it with one hand and correcting proof with the other. Hello! Here we are on the steamer—the same dear old Pettasantuck—going down to Quimpaug. Garth's lying on a seat with some pillows, and Jim's pointing out a boat, probably."
"And here's home!" Garth cried.
"Yes," Elspeth said; "the first picture of it. That was the old landing that went out in a big storm; and you see there was no informal garden then, and no Ailouros. Here are Jim and Garth lying on the landing, as I told you they did."
"Those were nice stories," Garth reflected. "I can remember little bits of some of them. And the boards on the pier were all white and hot."
"And both of you began to get tanned," Elspeth broke in; "you looked rather queer with a tan then, because you were so thin and all. These are the next spring, Joan, when he was four and a half. He was beginning to walk again; he had a way of falling down at the wrong time in those days." She turned to Garth suddenly. "What made me think of it? That picture of you taking your nap, I suppose. Do you remember 'The Lullaby of the Little Ship'?"
"Of course I do!" Garth cried. "Why, you haven't sung that for years and years and years! Oh, sing it now, Mudder; I'd forgotten all about it."
"It was a little one that Jim made," Elspeth explained, "and Garth never went to sleep without it. He used to take such a long time to go to sleep; so I sang to him, I wonder if I can remember the queer little tune." She thought for a moment, and then sang:
(Lull la lo!)
I have lit a lamp for thee,
(Lull la Io!)
A starry, silver, twilight spark,
A patient night-light in the dark,
For little ships that frighted be.
(Lull la lo!)
(Lull la lo!)
Thou shalt never fear the gale.
(Lull la lo!)
The old sea croons a cradle-song,
And Silver Shoal, the whole night long,
Watches till the dawn is pale.
(Lull la lo!)
"I loved it," said Garth; "I do love it now. Why did we forget about it?"
"And why don't you sing always?" Joan demanded. "I never knew you did."
"I don't," Elspeth protested. "That's the one song I know, and I used to sing that only because my baby wanted me to." She rose and went to the window. "We've been so far in the past," she said, "that I'd forgotten about the storm. I see it is still with us."
Rain dimmed the glass, but through it could be seen dull water buffeted by the wind. Gusts shrieked around the staunch walls, and now and then a swirl of salt spray dashed against the seaward windows.
"I'm very glad," Joan remarked, "that I'm not sitting on a rock where there is no house!"
All afternoon the wind howled and boomed around the lighthouse. Though the rain had stopped, the seas grew larger and ran half over the rock. The landing was drenched, its sun-bleached timber now dark and glistening. The Ailouros still rode secure at her moorings, though she leaped and pulled at her cables, twisting into the wind, her mast swinging in erratic circles against the gray sky.
"What sort of eerie kinship have you with the elements, Jim?" Elspeth inquired as her husband entered, dripping, for the third time since luncheon. "Can't you keep out of the weather? I'm sure you don't need to splash around out there all the time."
Jim slipped off his oilskins once more.
"I've finished—really," he said; "but I do like to mess about in it."
He lit his pipe and seated himself on the edge of the table, which was strewn with papers and presided over by Garth, pencil in hand.
"At it again?" Jim inquired. "Sail or steam? I suppose that's an unnecessary question, however."
He dragged a chair suddenly across the room and sat down beside his son.
"Now they'll be perfectly happy for the rest of the day," Elspeth confided to Joan, who had put down her book to watch the pair.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Designing boats," Elspeth said. "It's apt to languish a bit during open weather, when they can sail and be out, but in winter they do nothing else."
Joan looked on with a keener interest. This phase of Garth's enthusiasm for the sea had not yet been shown her.
"Perhaps," she mused softly, "later on he'll find his work in building ships for others to command."
"That," said Elspeth, "is what I hope."
They were silent, for the conversation at the table had become earnest and interesting. Jim was inspecting a paper contemplatively.
"What's this?" he demanded. "This wouldn't float, man! What is it?"
"A thirty-five foot sloop," Garth explained modestly.
"A thirty-five foot wash-tub!" Jim corrected mildly. "Look here, old man, if that's your base-line, will you kindly tell me what the draft of the beast is?"
"Five feet," Garth proposed.
"Not to the base-line, surely!" Jim objected in horror. "Oh, well, I see; that's better. But in that case there seems to be something very strange about the proportion. Here, let's have the pencil a second."
It changed hands, and the two heads bent over the paper very close together. The pencil stayed in Jim's possession for much longer than a second, and the only remarks which reached Joan and Elspeth were of a very technical nature. Jim's pipe, which he had laid down upon the table, went out peacefully.
"There!" said Jim presently. "We've saved all her good points and added a few. She'll sail now and hold her own. Did you try her sail-plan?"
"I got mixed up," the designer confessed, "but I made her cabin-plan."
Jim relighted his pipe and contemplated the cabin-plan.
"Very tidy," he commented; "but how does the owner get into his stateroom? Through the galley? Oh, come; that won't do! This little shelf is exceedingly nifty," he added, after further inspection, "but, Pem, have you figured the head-room in that particular spot?" Jim did a little quick calculation on the edge of the paper. "I'm afraid he'd get a most horrible whack on the head from it every time he came in at the door, unless"—Jim shot a twinkling glance at his son—"the owner happened to be you. In which case there'd be head-room and to spare. But I'd not dare to come aboard!"
He stopped suddenly and, taking his pipe from between his lips, stared at a sheet which the cabin-plan had uncovered.
"What do I see?" he murmured in a mystified voice.
Garth grew suddenly rather red.
"You weren't meant to look at that," he said hastily. "I expect it's awful. But—could you guess what it is?"
He looked up at his father with a great longing, and Joan, watching his face, hoped that Jim would guess right.
"A square-rigged ship," Jim said presently; "a four-masted barque?" Garth nodded vigorously.
"Is it dreadfully bad?" he asked.
Jim encircled him, dreamer and designer, with a kind arm.
"I'm afraid she couldn't be built from this, exactly," he said, "but you've the idea. Good lines. Did you do it according to rule?" Garth shook his head.
"No; I sort of thought her," he said.
"That's naughty," Jim said. "You ought to stick to thirty-footers." He smoked thoughtfully for a moment; then said:
"No; I'm wrong. 'Thinking' ships is something which I can't teach you and which is much better than rule."
"I gave up some of the sails," Garth said. "I got lost when I came to the jibs and stays'ls and the jigger."
"Let's put 'em in now," Jim suggested. "No; you do it," as Garth offered him the pencil, "and I'll tell you which and where."
They bent again over the table, until the early, storm-burdened dusk fell about them so thickly that Elspeth's warnings about eye-strain were at last heeded and they straightened the papers and leaned back. Jim gathered his son into his arm once more, and there fell about them, it seemed to Joan, the perfect, silent understanding which always existed between the two.