Silver Shoal Light/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
HY BRASAIL
JOAN opened her eyes, closed them again drowsily, and opened them once more. On the end of her bed sat a small figure in pajamas, with its hands clasped over its knees. The crutches leaned against the side of the bed. They did not seem to go at all well with the pajamas, somehow.
"I hope I didn't disturve you," said Garth. "I thought of course you must be awake; that tug's been making such a fuss."
"What tug?"
"She came in with three barges, and she's been whistling for a clear fairway for ages. She blew and she blew! I thought you must be waked up. But you weren't, so I sat here. Do you mind my coming in?"
"Not at all," said Joan.
"It's rather cold," Garth observed, hugging his knees tighter.
"You'd better get under the covers, then," Joan advised.
"I was waiting till you asked me to," said Garth calmly, as he dove under the quilt and cuddled down. "We're going on a picnic today, out on Hy Brasail," he confided.
"Where's that, and what?" Joan asked.
"It's the rock beyond the Breakneck. It hasn't any name, really, but Fogger calls it Hy Brasail. He says that means 'Isle of the Blest'; it's Gaelic, or something. He just calls it that because we always have such a good time there. It's not really a rock; there's a lot of grass and queer little flowers sometimes. It takes quite a while to sail there; it's far, far away." The expansive sweep of Garth's arm suggested infinite remoteness. "We build a fire and everything," he said; "it's great fun. I do wish we could sometimes have a supper-picnic, though. But Fogger can't ever be away at light-up time."
"You and I might go some day," Joan proposed. Garth hugged her abruptly.
"You are nice," he whispered ecstatically.
There was a rap at the door, and Elspeth's voice said:
"I discover that I've lost a child somewhere. Answers to the name of Garth—sometimes. Information regarding whereabouts of same gratefully received!"
"What's the reward?" called Joan.
"A picnic on Hy Brasail," Elspeth replied.
"I have inside information about that picnic already," said Joan, "but I'll let you in."
Elspeth entered, smiling, as Garth pulled the blanket up over his curly head. But he laughed at the wrong moment, and his mother pounced on him and bore him off, in spite of protest.
"If we want to have any sort of day," she said as she vanished, "We ought to get an early start."
Joan, carrying a picnic-basket down to the landing, found Caleb bailing out the dory.
"Good-morning!" she cried blithely.
Caleb lifted his eyes, momentarily ducked his head, and continued to wield the bailer.
"It's a very fine day, isn't it!" Joan remarked, determined to break his Sphinx-like silence. Another duck of the head answered her.
"Do you think the good weather will last?" she demanded, trying a direct question.
Caleb looked slowly around the entire horizon, up at the sky, down at the water,—and spoke.
"Might," he said. He went at the bailing again, with an air of finality; and Joan was about to leave the pier, when he remarked suddenly: "Then agin—might not."
The day held just enough faint heat-haze to temper the sunshine with a tender translucence. The sea, of an exquisite turquoise blue, faded to clear emerald green inshore; the sail of the Ailouros gleamed incredibly white as Jim hoisted it. He brought the catboat up beside the landing, towing the dinghy astern.
"All right!" he said. "In with the basket and the jug! Clear that center-board rope, please, Elspeth! Look out there, Garth; wait until I give you a hand. Right-o! We're off!"
The Ailouros slid away from the pier, swung around, and headed up past Bird Rock, sailing closehauled.
"This is easy going," said Jim, when they were in open water. "Here you are, Skipper!" He handed over the tiller to Garth, who clasped it joyously and fixed his eyes on the luff of the sail.
"Now he's utterly happy," said Jim. "And so am I," he added, as he stretched himself out luxuriously and lit his pipe.
The water clucked softly at the bow of the Ailouros and slid flashing along her sides. There was no other sound, except the occasional creaking of a block and the tapping of a slack halyard.
"Luff her up a little, Garth," said Jim; "you won't have to tack quite yet. Hello, there! Look at the big steamer!"
Under a thin line of smoke a large vessel was slipping along the horizon.
"Do you suppose that she could be a transport?" asked Joan.
"She might be," said Jim; "they're sending men to embarkation points in Canada now. They keep the news so close that you never can tell when a transport might slip out. But I don't think she's quite big enough. She's probably just a coaster."
"It's too bad that we forgot the glasses," said Elspeth. "I meant to bring—" She stopped, because the Ailouros had done so suddenly. The boat had come practically to standstill, trembling a little, with flapping sail.
"What on earth—" Joan began.
"On water, you mean," said Jim. "The man at the helm was looking at another boat, instead of sailing his own, that's all; we're dead in the wind's eye. Ease her off now, Garth. Help him, Elspeth! That's it! Now get some way on her, and begin to think about tacking pretty soon. Do you think you can?"
"I'm going to try," said Garth.
"All right; now for it! Ready about! Hard over, man, hard a-lee! Look out for the boom for'ard there!"
Garth eased the tiller down and slid after it, as the boat shot up into the wind. Joan ducked as the boom came over, and the Ailouros filled away on the new tack without losing headway.
"Not so bad, old fellow," said Jim.
Garth was breathing rather hard, and his cheeks glowed under their tan. He pushed the hair back from his forehead and fixed his eyes again on the head of the sail.
As they neared Hy Brasail, Jim took the tiller from him, brought the Ailouros to the wind, and let go the anchor. When he had stowed the sail and made all shipshape, he got the Cymba alongside and set his crew ashore upon the little beach.
Garth was everywhere at once, trying to help his mother to collect the picnic baskets and his father to make the skiff fast. He ended by tangling himself in the Cymba's painter and falling flat. Jim snatched him up by the back of his jumper, just as a wave slid up the beach.
"You haven't a bathing-suit on, you know," Jim remarked, as he brushed the sand out of Garth's hair. "Suppose that I hadn't picked you up with such truly lightning-like rapidity? We'd have had to hang you out on the gaff to dry! What are you laughing at?" He retrieved Garth's hat from the edge of another wave, restored it to its proper position, and gazed after his son with a whimsical tenderness.
Behind the white beach of the tiny island that Jim called Hy Brasail, a low, sloping bluff rose from the sand. It was crowned with short grass, gray-green in the salt air, and dotted with beach-peas in purple bloom. There was sea-stock, too, lifting sturdy flowers, and a low scrub of sunburned huckleberry bushes. Here and there, cropping from the shallow soil, slabs of the worn gray rock lay bare. On the shore that fronted the open sea the surf leaped and thundered against sheer rocks; but on the landward side little waves tiptoed smoothly up the sand, curling gently around the skiff.
"We usually build a fire on the beach and have lunch there," Jim said; "then we go up on the rock afterward. Pipe all hands to gather driftwood, Bo'sun."
Jim constructed a fire on the sand, with a shield of piled stones to windward, and presently the flames were licking gaily.
"Here are heaps of sandwiches," said Elspeth, exploring the basket. “Where's the bacon?"
"They will in truth be sandwiches," Jim observed, "if Garth doesn't sit down and put his feet to leeward of the lunch. Throw me that knife, please, somebody."
He sharpened four long toasting-sticks, and very soon every one was frizzling a slice of bacon over the blaze.
"Yours is getting doner than mine, Joan," said Garth. "Oh, goodness, mine's fallen off into the fire! Help! Quick, Fogger!" he cried, prodding at it frantically with his stick. It was recovered, somewhat charred, and Garth blew the ashes from it.
"It's not bad at all," he commented, after a cautious bite; "only a little burnty at one end. Yours is beautiferous, Joan."
"Let's have some bread to eat with this," said Jim. "No, that's cake, Pem. Over there in the bag. What a young sandstorm you are, to be sure!"
They ate everything except a sandwich apiece and some cookies, which were saved because, as Elspeth said, "it's perfectly amazing the amount of appetite one has about half past four." They left the fire smouldering and climbed to the top of the bluff, where Jim lay down to make up for several hours of sleep which he had lost during a foggy night. Elspeth produced a gray sock and began to knit; while Joan lay staring up at the sky between the nodding beach-peas.
"It's rather nice to see grass sometimes, isn't it, Mudder?" said Garth, letting the smooth, wind-washed blades run through his brown fingers. "It's quite different."
"Would you rather live where there is real grass," asked Elspeth, "and fields and trees?"
"No!" said Garth decidedly. "I don't want ever to live anywhere except at the Light."
"But I've just been wondering," said Joan, "what it's like out there in winter."
"Nice!" said Garth. "We have a tremenjus big fire on the hearth, and the wind goes Br-r-r-r-r around the tower."
"I should think it did!" Elspeth agreed. "But we do keep very warm and cosy. Remember when we roasted the chestnuts, Garth and Fogger sang?"
"Yes! And the time the Shoal froze, and Fogger walked a little way on it?"
"Indeed I do! We couldn't get in with the boats and didn't have any mail or anything for a week!"
"Yes. And, Mudder, remember the time the birds came? One night, Joan, ever so many millions of birds that were going south came and fluttered and fluttered up against the lantern in the mist. The poor birds!"
"And do you remember the time that I didn't know it was so cold, and let you row in with Fogger, and you almost frosted your fingers?"
Garth shivered.
"That was cold!" he said. "But I liked it best when we had to light lamps so early and Fogger read aloud."
"Dear me!" cried Joan; "it all sounds nearly as nice as the Light in summertime! What a lucky family you are!"
"Wouldn't it be awful, Mudder," said Garth, "if we ever had to live in a town!"
The afternoon grew mellow and golden, and far off, faint rosy sails gleamed just over the edge of the world. The kittiwakes wheeled and cried above Hy Brasail, and the rising tide skirted its beach with an ever-advancing line of foam. Garth had been exploring every corner of the island, and the tired leg was dragging more and more wearily. Jim stretched himself and, leaning on his elbow, looked across the huckleberry scrub at his son. Presently he said:
"Come hither, and I will a tale unfold."
Garth scrambled to him eagerly and cuddled happily into the hollow of his father's bare brown arm.
"Begin, please," he said.