Silver Shoal Light/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
THE BLACKFISH INTERRUPTS
WHEN the blue-and-white plates were dried and the tumblers ranged in a twinkling row upon the dresser, Joan put on her broad hat and chose a book from the well-stocked little shelves in the living-room. She wandered out upon the rock and sat down in the sunshine, intending to read. But before long she found herself watching the gulls flapping and wrangling on a ledge which the tide had uncovered; then her eyes wandered to the mainland, where she could see the surf leaping and lunging upon the Reef. She leaned back and gazed idly, the book neglected. There was a sudden sound on the rock behind her, and the next instant a violent arm was flung about her neck as Garth fell precipitately against her shoulder. He disentangled himself in another instant and sat up, rubbing his elbow.
"I'm awfully sorry!" he gasped. "I slid. I hope I didn't hurt you much."
"You startled me," said Joan.
"I'm glad I didn't hurt you. I came to ask you if you'd like to fish."
"I'm reading," Joan said.
"You weren't when I saw you," said Garth, "but perhaps you meant to go on."
Joan took up the book again and opened it in the middle. There was no sound but the screaming of the herring-gulls and the slosh of the tide as it left the rock-pools. Garth took a blackfish line from the pocket of his faded blue jumper and began rewinding it very carefully.
"Sometimes there are flounders," he murmured.
The wind fluttered and rattled the pages of Joan's book so that she found reading difficult. Her broad hat flapped, also, in a most disagreeable manner, now plastering itself against her forehead, now threatening to tear itself altogether from her head. Finally a sudden gust whisked it off and sent it out to sea in a graceful arc.
"Oh, what a shame!" cried Garth. "We might go after it in the skiff. No, it's sank already! We mostly don't wear hats here. They're too much bother. I hope it wasn't a very good one."
"It was not very good, but it was all I brought, except my town hat," said Joan rather dismally.
"You don't have to wear any," said Garth; "but if you really need one, Fogger can give you lots of old duck ones. They stick better."
"I don't think that I can read here; it's too windy," said Joan, as she shut the book and stood up. Garth scrambled up, too.
"Then you can come fishing!" he said. "I've another line in my trousers' pocket for you. The bait's down there. Please come, Joan!"
He slid his hand into hers. He had to abandon it the next moment to manage a crutch, but she followed him idly.
"I'm not allowed out here alone," he remarked, looking back at her over his shoulder and stumbling on a crack in the rock; "but I thought it was all right as long as you were here."
"Please be careful!" cried Joan, feeling suddenly a great responsibility. If the child fell and hurt himself, or tumbled into the sea, it would certainly be the fault of the grown-up person in charge.
"I fell in once," said Garth, "when I was awfully little. Fogger jumped right from the door to the landing in one 'normous jump and fished me out. I couldn't walk very well then," he added.
"Please don't fall in now!" Joan said. "Don't you think we'd better go into the house?"
"Oh, no!" said Garth, who had reached the landing and was leaning over the edge of it. "It's perfickly all right, if a grown-up's with me. I hope all the crabs haven't 'scaped out of here; we put 'em in yesterday." He was pulling vigorously at a wet rope as he spoke. This was fastened to a wire cage which, on being pulled from the water, revealed a horde of tiny crabs, scuttling madly. "Put in your hand," said Garth, "and pick out a nice one; or I will, if you'd rather not. You'd better sit down; you'll get awfully tired standing up that way."
He thrust a baited hook into her hand and flung his own line into the water, nearly following it himself. Joan sat down on the pier. She dared not leave the child alone, and, as she was forced to stay there, fishing seemed to be as good a way of passing the time as any other. She dropped her line into an oncoming wavelet and leaned back against a post. The Ailouros, very white and trim, bobbed at her moorings near by, her gaff squeaking at intervals. The gray dory, closer in, nosed her buoy impatiently.
"This afternoon," said Garth, "we can look at the sea-caverns. Do you love ships, Joan?"
"Not particularly. Why?"
"I do," said Garth. "I'd rather be aboard of a ship than anything in the world. And I want most of all to be a sea-captain. But I couldn't be even a seaman, not possibly. Oh, bother! A disgusting chogset has got the crab ate off my hook without my knowing it!" He reached for the bait cage. "Because," he went on, "I'm not an A. B."
"An A. B.?" said Joan.
"Able-bodied seaman," said Garth, who was letting the crab take a little walk up his sleeve before being put on the hook. "A sea-captain wouldn't take a person on his ship that couldn't even stand up on their own feet. And sailors have to climb into the mizzen-top and everywhere else. They have to have terribly good sea-legs; and I haven't even got very good land ones."
Joan said nothing, because she did not know exactly what to say; and Garth resumed presently:
"Once a big square-rigged ship came in. Fogger woke me up at dawn to see her, because I'd never seen one. She came in close, and we saw the men leaning over the taffrail, and they hailed us, and we shouted back, and her sails went boom—boom as she came by. She was so high that we had to look up and up at her from the window. And then she was gone. I've never seen another."
He did not add that he had wept bitterly in his father's arms because he could not go with her.
"I'd like to see her again," he murmured; "she was the beautifullest of all. Joan!" he shouted suddenly. "You've got a hugeiferous bite! Pull!"
Joan, rather bewildered, began to draw in the line.
"You're not pulling nearly fast enough," said Garth, flinging himself face down across her lap and tugging at the line below her hands; "he'll get away! He must be a perfick whale! Help me, Joan. Be ready to pounce on him when we get him out!"
The line sang and spattered through the water, and Joan, really awake now, pulled with a will. There was a sudden flop; then Joan, Garth, and a four-pound blackfish were struggling together on the landing, and none of them knew exactly who was which. When they finally separated themselves, Joan and Garth were rather wet, because the blackfish had been sitting in both their laps; but Garth was laughing so hard that Joan laughed a little, too, although the blackfish had hit her in the eye with his tail.
"It's much the biggest we've ever caught from here! I shouldn't wonder if he weighed ten or twenty pounds!" said Garth. "Wait till Fogger sees what a wonderful fisherman you are. I've never caught anything but flounders here, except littler blackfish and chogsets and eels.”
"You did most of the catching, it seems to me," said Joan. "I dare say he would have got away from me."
"It was your line, though," Garth said. "I hope he didn't spoil your dress. We don't ever wear very good clothes out here. You know you're apt to get fish on them all the time, and eel-grass, and all sorts of things." As he spoke, he wiped his hands on his blue denim trousers. "You hold him down," he commanded, "while I get this string through his gills. Don't let him flop."
While Joan was trying, rather gingerly, to find the best way of seizing the fish, Jim Pemberley appeared at the lighthouse door.
"Fishermen, ahoy!" he called. "Swim, oh! Swimmo! Is there a bathing-suit in that trunk of yours, Miss Kirkland?"
"Fogger, come here, quick!" shouted Garth. "Joan's caught a perfickly monstorious big blackfish!”
Jim strolled down to the pier.
"Bravo!" he cried. "That's the biggest this season. And since when, Bo'sun, have you called grown-up young ladies by their first names?"
"I asked if I might," said Garth; "that is, I told her I was going to. She doesn't mind, do you, Joan?"
Joan shook her head feebly.
"Right-o," said Jim. "Now then, let's see who can be ready in five minutes. Up with you, Pem." He swung Garth to his shoulder, scooped up the blackfish and the crutches in the other hand with perfect ease, and stood back to let Joan off the landing.
"If you haven't a bathing-suit," he shouted after her, "Elspeth will fix you something. There are lots of mixed up ones in the lamp-room passage."
Elspeth, on seeing Joan's satin bathing-dress, declared that it was "far too grand to mess about the rocks in" and provided a more substantial outfit. Arrayed in an alpaca costume, brown with much salt water, Joan went down to the landing with her hostess. Pemberley was already there, his son upon his shoulder. Garth, who wore the brightest red bathing-suit that Joan had ever seen, waved his hand triumphantly.
"We beat you, we did!" he shouted, as his father put him down at the side of the pier.
"All in!" cried Jim.
He made a short run and dove, a beautiful swallow-dive, soaring with widespread arms for a moment before he brought his hands together and cleft the water fair and true. His tawny head reappeared a minute later, and he snorted and struck out, shaking the water from his eyes. Elspeth went in with a good clean dive, and Garth shouted:
"Now me, Fogger. Please!"
Pemberley swam up to the end of the pier and trode water.
"All right," he said, holding out his arms. "Jump!"
Garth pulled himself up by a post and stood erect, with his arm around it. Suddenly letting go, he collapsed neatly into the water with a royal splash, and came up in a moment, his father's arms around him and his curly hair dripping.
"Now, then," said Jim. "Hang on tight, and don't breathe in my ear, you old porpoise, you."
So they set out, Garth's arms about his father's neck and his small body stretched along his father's back.
"Come on!" he called to Joan, who still stood on the pier. "We're going out to the Ailouros."
Joan was no diver and a little apprehensive in water above her head, but there was nothing for it but to follow. She splashed in somehow and set off for the sail-boat, which looked very far away.
"If that child has confidence enough to let himself fall in that way, I certainly should be able to swim out to a boat," she reflected.
Once in, it was very pleasant after all—to be sometimes confronted by nothing but the dark green face of the next wavelet, sometimes lifted by the delicious swell to a swinging view of the widespread mainland. She reached the Ailouros finally, and Elspeth helped her to scramble into the cockpit where Garth was curled up in the sunshine. Jim did all sorts of exhibition dives, from double jackknives to back somersaults, while Joan, watching from a pleasantly hot seat, dripped and basked and began to feel gloriously refreshed. Jim presently took her diving in hand, and Joan almost regretted the end of the half-hour, when they all swam in together.
Jim, galloping up the pier with Garth, cried out:
"I wager we'll be ready before you are! And we'll want our lunch!"
A Letter from Elspeth Pemberly to Her Brother
Silver Shoal,
June 17th.
Dearest Brob:
I hate to think of you in town, working so hard. It is growing lovelier now every minute, and you ought to be here. Except that we shouldn't have room for you, unless you slept in the service-room! Cap'n 'Bijah brought us out last night one Joan Kirkland, from town, who had been turned away from the overflowing Harbor View House. She had gone all over Quimpaug with 'Bijah, looking for quarters, and was in despair. But we soothed her with food and a good fire on the hearth; now she is quite calm and is spending a week with us, instead of at the hotel. It did seem a shame to let her go straight back to town, and there was really nowhere in Quimpang for her to stay.
She is a truly beautiful person, a delight to look upon, gracious and stately as a medieval ladye. She likes it here, I think, though I imagine that our casual way of living is something of a trial to her. I can't quite make her out yet. Garth stumbled into her room this morning, not knowing that she was there. She was doing her hair, and he thought she was a mermaid. I can't quite tell whether or not she was annoyed. It seems hard to imagine any one's being annoyed with Garth, but she was rather stiff about it. He took her fishing this morning, and she caught a good blackfish—somewhat against her will, apparently—and I must say that she was quite decent about the slime all over her nice white blouse. She lost her hat, too, but people shouldn't wear garden-hats out here. When we went sailing this afternoon, Garth dug out a dilapidated duck one from the lamp-room passage, and she wore it without a murmur.
To our great surprise, we found that she can sail exceedingly well, though she dived wretchedly this morning. Apparently she learned it once as a sort of science, and knows all the theories without much practice. But Jim let her take the Ailouros out to the Rip and back, and she did it extremely neatly. Garth was much amazed, because apparently she'd told him that she didn't care much about ships; and he can't understand how any one who can sail so well doesn't adore them. I wish that you could see Garth now, he's so much taller and a good deal stronger. But he's just as wild about the sea as ever, and just as queer and dreamy about ships, and as anxious to be a sea captain, poor little person!
When we were going out to the Rip, Garth called out to J. Kirkland: "That's Bird Rock, where I told you we almost saw the mermaid," and she peered out under the boom, and said: "Nonsense! There couldn't have been a mermaid." That's the sort of person she is. And yet I feel as though there were something in her that might wake up. I really believe that she'd rejoice in having an imagination, if she could. At any rate, if she sees very much of Garth, her imagination ought to grow nicely. That is, of course, if she doesn't nip the little sprouts of it before they get well started.
I must help Garth to bed now, and probably sha'n't have another chance to write more for the next mail, so I'll stop abruptly and write soon again.
With ever so much love, your old sister,