The Merry Men, and Other Tales and Fables Read online

  CHAPTER II. WHAT THE WRECK HAD BROUGHT TO AROS.

  It was half-flood when I got the length of Aros; and there was nothingfor it but to stand on the far shore and whistle for Rorie with the boat.I had no need to repeat the signal. At the first sound, Mary was at thedoor flying a handkerchief by way of answer, and the old long-leggedserving-man was shambling down the gravel to the pier. For all hishurry, it took him a long while to pull across the bay; and I observedhim several times to pause, go into the stern, and look over curiouslyinto the wake. As he came nearer, he seemed to me aged and haggard, andI thought he avoided my eye. The coble had been repaired, with two newthwarts and several patches of some rare and beautiful foreign wood, thename of it unknown to me.

  'Why, Rorie,' said I, as we began the return voyage, 'this is fine wood.How came you by that?'

  'It will be hard to cheesel,' Rorie opined reluctantly; and just then,dropping the oars, he made another of those dives into the stern which Ihad remarked as he came across to fetch me, and, leaning his hand on myshoulder, stared with an awful look into the waters of the bay.

  'What is wrong?' I asked, a good deal startled.

  'It will be a great feesh,' said the old man, returning to his oars; andnothing more could I get out of him, but strange glances and an ominousnodding of the head. In spite of myself, I was infected with a measureof uneasiness; I turned also, and studied the wake. The water was stilland transparent, but, out here in the middle of the bay, exceeding deep.For some time I could see naught; but at last it did seem to me as ifsomething dark--a great fish, or perhaps only a shadow--followedstudiously in the track of the moving coble. And then I remembered oneof Rorie's superstitions: how in a ferry in Morven, in some great,exterminating feud among the clans; a fish, the like of it unknown in allour waters, followed for some years the passage of the ferry-boat, untilno man dared to make the crossing.

  'He will be waiting for the right man,' said Rorie.

  Mary met me on the beach, and led me up the brae and into the house ofAros. Outside and inside there were many changes. The garden was fencedwith the same wood that I had noted in the boat; there were chairs in thekitchen covered with strange brocade; curtains of brocade hung from thewindow; a clock stood silent on the dresser; a lamp of brass was swingingfrom the roof; the table was set for dinner with the finest of linen andsilver; and all these new riches were displayed in the plain old kitchenthat I knew so well, with the high-backed settle, and the stools, and thecloset bed for Rorie; with the wide chimney the sun shone into, and theclear-smouldering peats; with the pipes on the mantelshelf and the three-cornered spittoons, filled with sea-shells instead of sand, on the floor;with the bare stone walls and the bare wooden floor, and the threepatchwork rugs that were of yore its sole adornment--poor man'spatchwork, the like of it unknown in cities, woven with homespun, andSunday black, and sea-cloth polished on the bench of rowing. The room,like the house, had been a sort of wonder in that country-side, it was soneat and habitable; and to see it now, shamed by these incongruousadditions, filled me with indignation and a kind of anger. In view ofthe errand I had come upon to Aros, the feeling was baseless and unjust;but it burned high, at the first moment, in my heart.

  'Mary, girl,' said I, 'this is the place I had learned to call my home,and I do not know it.'

  'It is my home by nature, not by the learning,' she replied; 'the place Iwas born and the place I'm like to die in; and I neither like thesechanges, nor the way they came, nor that which came with them. I wouldhave liked better, under God's pleasure, they had gone down into the sea,and the Merry Men were dancing on them now.'

  Mary was always serious; it was perhaps the only trait that she sharedwith her father; but the tone with which she uttered these words was evengraver than of custom.

  'Ay,' said I, 'I feared it came by wreck, and that's by death; yet whenmy father died, I took his goods without remorse.'

  'Your father died a clean strae death, as the folk say,' said Mary.

  'True,' I returned; 'and a wreck is like a judgment. What was shecalled?'

  'They ca'd her the _Christ-Anna_,' said a voice behind me; and, turninground, I saw my uncle standing in the doorway.

  He was a sour, small, bilious man, with a long face and very dark eyes;fifty-six years old, sound and active in body, and with an air somewhatbetween that of a shepherd and that of a man following the sea. He neverlaughed, that I heard; read long at the Bible; prayed much, like theCameronians he had been brought up among; and indeed, in many ways, usedto remind me of one of the hill-preachers in the killing times before theRevolution. But he never got much comfort, nor even, as I used to think,much guidance, by his piety. He had his black fits when he was afraid ofhell; but he had led a rough life, to which he would look back with envy,and was still a rough, cold, gloomy man.

  As he came in at the door out of the sunlight, with his bonnet on hishead and a pipe hanging in his button-hole, he seemed, like Rorie, tohave grown older and paler, the lines were deeplier ploughed upon hisface, and the whites of his eyes were yellow, like old stained ivory, orthe bones of the dead.

  'Ay' he repeated, dwelling upon the first part of the word, 'the _Christ-Anna_. It's an awfu' name.'

  I made him my salutations, and complimented him upon his look of health;for I feared he had perhaps been ill.

  'I'm in the body,' he replied, ungraciously enough; 'aye in the body andthe sins of the body, like yoursel'. Denner,' he said abruptly to Mary,and then ran on to me: 'They're grand braws, thir that we hae gotten, arethey no? Yon's a bonny knock {15}, but it'll no gang; and the napery'sby ordnar. Bonny, bairnly braws; it's for the like o' them folk sellsthe peace of God that passeth understanding; it's for the like o' them,an' maybe no even sae muckle worth, folk daunton God to His face and burnin muckle hell; and it's for that reason the Scripture ca's them, as Iread the passage, the accursed thing. Mary, ye girzie,' he interruptedhimself to cry with some asperity, 'what for hae ye no put out the twacandlesticks?'

  'Why should we need them at high noon?' she asked.

  But my uncle was not to be turned from his idea. 'We'll bruik {16} themwhile we may,' he said; and so two massive candlesticks of wrought silverwere added to the table equipage, already so unsuited to that rough sea-side farm.

  'She cam' ashore Februar' 10, about ten at nicht,' he went on to me.'There was nae wind, and a sair run o' sea; and she was in the sook o'the Roost, as I jaloose. We had seen her a' day, Rorie and me, beatingto the wind. She wasnae a handy craft, I'm thinking, that _Christ-Anna_;for she would neither steer nor stey wi' them. A sair day they had ofit; their hands was never aff the sheets, and it perishin' cauld--owercauld to snaw; and aye they would get a bit nip o' wind, and awa' again,to pit the emp'y hope into them. Eh, man! but they had a sair day forthe last o't! He would have had a prood, prood heart that won ashoreupon the back o' that.'

  'And were all lost?' I cried. 'God held them!'

  'Wheesht!' he said sternly. 'Nane shall pray for the deid on my hearth-stane.'

  I disclaimed a Popish sense for my ejaculation; and he seemed to acceptmy disclaimer with unusual facility, and ran on once more upon what hadevidently become a favourite subject.

  'We fand her in Sandag Bay, Rorie an' me, and a' thae braws in the insideof her. There's a kittle bit, ye see, about Sandag; whiles the sook rinsstrong for the Merry Men; an' whiles again, when the tide's makin' hardan' ye can hear the Roost blawin' at the far-end of Aros, there comes aback-spang of current straucht into Sandag Bay. Weel, there's the thingthat got the grip on the _Christ-Anna_. She but to have come in ram-staman' stern forrit; for the bows of her are aften under, and the back-sideof her is clear at hie-water o' neaps. But, man! the dunt that she camdoon wi' when she struck! Lord save us a'! but it's an unco life to be asailor--a cauld, wanchancy life. Mony's the gliff I got mysel' in thegreat deep; and why the Lord should hae made yon unco water is mair thanever I could win to understand. He made the vales and the pastures, thebonny green yaird,
the halesome, canty land--

  And now they shout and sing to Thee, For Thou hast made them glad,

  as the Psalms say in the metrical version. No that I would preen myfaith to that clink neither; but it's bonny, and easier to mind. "Who goto sea in ships," they hae't again--

  And in Great waters trading be, Within the deep these men God's works And His great wonders see.

  Weel, it's easy sayin' sae. Maybe Dauvit wasnae very weel acquant wi'the sea. But, troth, if it wasnae prentit in the Bible, I wad whiles betemp'it to think it wasnae the Lord, but the muckle, black deil that madethe sea. There's naething good comes oot o't but the fish; an' thespentacle o' God riding on the tempest, to be shure, whilk would be whatDauvit was likely ettling at. But, man, they were sair wonders that Godshowed to the _Christ-Anna_--wonders, do I ca' them? Judgments, rather:judgments in the mirk nicht among the draygons o' the deep. And theirsouls--to think o' that--their souls, man, maybe no prepared! The sea--amuckle yett to hell!'

  I observed, as my uncle spoke, that his voice was unnaturally moved andhis manner unwontedly demonstrative. He leaned forward at these lastwords, for example, and touched me on the knee with his spread fingers,looking up into my face with a certain pallor, and I could see that hiseyes shone with a deep-seated fire, and that the lines about his mouthwere drawn and tremulous.

  Even the entrance of Rorie, and the beginning of our meal, did not detachhim from his train of thought beyond a moment. He condescended, indeed,to ask me some questions as to my success at college, but I thought itwas with half his mind; and even in his extempore grace, which was, asusual, long and wandering, I could find the trace of his preoccupation,praying, as he did, that God would 'remember in mercy fower puir,feckless, fiddling, sinful creatures here by their lee-lane beside thegreat and dowie waters.'

  Soon there came an interchange of speeches between him and Rorie.

  'Was it there?' asked my uncle.

  'Ou, ay!' said Rorie.

  I observed that they both spoke in a manner of aside, and with some showof embarrassment, and that Mary herself appeared to colour, and lookeddown on her plate. Partly to show my knowledge, and so relieve the partyfrom an awkward strain, partly because I was curious, I pursued thesubject.

  'You mean the fish?' I asked.

  'Whatten fish?' cried my uncle. 'Fish, quo' he! Fish! Your een are fu'o' fatness, man; your heid dozened wi' carnal leir. Fish! it's a bogle!'

  He spoke with great vehemence, as though angry; and perhaps I was notvery willing to be put down so shortly, for young men are disputatious.At least I remember I retorted hotly, crying out upon childishsuperstitions.

  'And ye come frae the College!' sneered Uncle Gordon. 'Gude kens whatthey learn folk there; it's no muckle service onyway. Do ye think, man,that there's naething in a' yon saut wilderness o' a world oot wastthere, wi' the sea grasses growin', an' the sea beasts fechtin', an' thesun glintin' down into it, day by day? Na; the sea's like the land, butfearsomer. If there's folk ashore, there's folk in the sea--deid theymay be, but they're folk whatever; and as for deils, there's nane that'slike the sea deils. There's no sae muckle harm in the land deils, whena's said and done. Lang syne, when I was a callant in the south country,I mind there was an auld, bald bogle in the Peewie Moss. I got a glisko' him mysel', sittin' on his hunkers in a hag, as gray's a tombstane.An', troth, he was a fearsome-like taed. But he steered naebody. Naedoobt, if ane that was a reprobate, ane the Lord hated, had gane by therewi' his sin still upon his stamach, nae doobt the creature would haelowped upo' the likes o' him. But there's deils in the deep sea wouldyoke on a communicant! Eh, sirs, if ye had gane doon wi' the puir ladsin the _Christ-Anna_, ye would ken by now the mercy o' the seas. If yehad sailed it for as lang as me, ye would hate the thocht of it as I do.If ye had but used the een God gave ye, ye would hae learned thewickedness o' that fause, saut, cauld, bullering creature, and of a'that's in it by the Lord's permission: labsters an' partans, an' siclike, howking in the deid; muckle, gutsy, blawing whales; an' fish--thehale clan o' them--cauld-wamed, blind-eed uncanny ferlies. O, sirs,' hecried, 'the horror--the horror o' the sea!'

  We were all somewhat staggered by this outburst; and the speaker himself,after that last hoarse apostrophe, appeared to sink gloomily into his ownthoughts. But Rorie, who was greedy of superstitious lore, recalled himto the subject by a question.

  'You will not ever have seen a teevil of the sea?' he asked.

  'No clearly,' replied the other. 'I misdoobt if a mere man could see aneclearly and conteenue in the body. I hae sailed wi' a lad--they ca'd himSandy Gabart; he saw ane, shure eneueh, an' shure eneueh it was the endof him. We were seeven days oot frae the Clyde--a sair wark we hadhad--gaun north wi' seeds an' braws an' things for the Macleod. We hadgot in ower near under the Cutchull'ns, an' had just gane about by soa,an' were off on a lang tack, we thocht would maybe hauld as far'sCopnahow. I mind the nicht weel; a mune smoored wi' mist; a fine gaunbreeze upon the water, but no steedy; an'--what nane o' us likit tohear--anither wund gurlin' owerheid, amang thae fearsome, auld stanecraigs o' the Cutchull'ns. Weel, Sandy was forrit wi' the jib sheet; wecouldnae see him for the mains'l, that had just begude to draw, when a'at ance he gied a skirl. I luffed for my life, for I thocht we were owernear Soa; but na, it wasnae that, it was puir Sandy Gabart's deidskreigh, or near hand, for he was deid in half an hour. A't he couldtell was that a sea deil, or sea bogle, or sea spenster, or sic-like, hadclum up by the bowsprit, an' gi'en him ae cauld, uncanny look. An', orthe life was oot o' Sandy's body, we kent weel what the thing betokened,and why the wund gurled in the taps o' the Cutchull'ns; for doon itcam'--a wund do I ca' it! it was the wund o' the Lord's anger--an' a'that nicht we foucht like men dementit, and the niest that we kenned wewere ashore in Loch Uskevagh, an' the cocks were crawin' in Benbecula.'

  'It will have been a merman,' Rorie said.

  'A merman!' screamed my uncle with immeasurable scorn. 'Auld wives'clavers! There's nae sic things as mermen.'

  'But what was the creature like?' I asked.

  'What like was it? Gude forbid that we suld ken what like it was! Ithad a kind of a heid upon it--man could say nae mair.'

  Then Rorie, smarting under the affront, told several tales of mermen,mermaids, and sea-horses that had come ashore upon the islands andattacked the crews of boats upon the sea; and my uncle, in spite of hisincredulity, listened with uneasy interest.

  'Aweel, aweel,' he said, 'it may be sae; I may be wrang; but I find naeword o' mermen in the Scriptures.'

  'And you will find nae word of Aros Roost, maybe,' objected Rorie, andhis argument appeared to carry weight.

  When dinner was over, my uncle carried me forth with him to a bank behindthe house. It was a very hot and quiet afternoon; scarce a rippleanywhere upon the sea, nor any voice but the familiar voice of sheep andgulls; and perhaps in consequence of this repose in nature, my kinsmanshowed himself more rational and tranquil than before. He spoke evenlyand almost cheerfully of my career, with every now and then a referenceto the lost ship or the treasures it had brought to Aros. For my part, Ilistened to him in a sort of trance, gazing with all my heart on thatremembered scene, and drinking gladly the sea-air and the smoke of peatsthat had been lit by Mary.

  Perhaps an hour had passed when my uncle, who had all the while beencovertly gazing on the surface of the little bay, rose to his feet andbade me follow his example. Now I should say that the great run of tideat the south-west end of Aros exercises a perturbing influence round allthe coast. In Sandag Bay, to the south, a strong current runs at certainperiods of the flood and ebb respectively; but in this northern bay--ArosBay, as it is called--where the house stands and on which my uncle wasnow gazing, the only sign of disturbance is towards the end of the ebb,and even then it is too slight to be remarkable. When there is anyswell, nothing can be seen at all; but when it is calm, as it often is,there appear certain strange, undecipherable marks--sea-runes, as we maynam
e them--on the glassy surface of the bay. The like is common in athousand places on the coast; and many a boy must have amused himself asI did, seeking to read in them some reference to himself or those heloved. It was to these marks that my uncle now directed my attention,struggling, as he did so, with an evident reluctance.

  'Do ye see yon scart upo' the water?' he inquired; 'yon ane wast the graystane? Ay? Weel, it'll no be like a letter, wull it?'

  'Certainly it is,' I replied. 'I have often remarked it. It is like aC.'

  He heaved a sigh as if heavily disappointed with my answer, and thenadded below his breath: 'Ay, for the _Christ-Anna_.'

  'I used to suppose, sir, it was for myself,' said I; 'for my name isCharles.'

  'And so ye saw't afore?', he ran on, not heeding my remark. 'Weel, weel,but that's unco strange. Maybe, it's been there waitin', as a man wadsay, through a' the weary ages. Man, but that's awfu'.' And then,breaking off: 'Ye'll no see anither, will ye?' he asked.

  'Yes,' said I. 'I see another very plainly, near the Ross side, wherethe road comes down--an M.'

  'An M,' he repeated very low; and then, again after another pause: 'An'what wad ye make o' that?' he inquired.

  'I had always thought it to mean Mary, sir,' I answered, growing somewhatred, convinced as I was in my own mind that I was on the threshold of adecisive explanation.

  But we were each following his own train of thought to the exclusion ofthe other's. My uncle once more paid no attention to my words; only hunghis head and held his peace; and I might have been led to fancy that hehad not heard me, if his next speech had not contained a kind of echofrom my own.

  'I would say naething o' thae clavers to Mary,' he observed, and began towalk forward.

  There is a belt of turf along the side of Aros Bay, where walking iseasy; and it was along this that I silently followed my silent kinsman. Iwas perhaps a little disappointed at having lost so good an opportunityto declare my love; but I was at the same time far more deeply exercisedat the change that had befallen my uncle. He was never an ordinary,never, in the strict sense, an amiable, man; but there was nothing ineven the worst that I had known of him before, to prepare me for sostrange a transformation. It was impossible to close the eyes againstone fact; that he had, as the saying goes, something on his mind; and asI mentally ran over the different words which might be represented by theletter M--misery, mercy, marriage, money, and the like--I was arrestedwith a sort of start by the word murder. I was still considering theugly sound and fatal meaning of the word, when the direction of our walkbrought us to a point from which a view was to be had to either side,back towards Aros Bay and homestead, and forward on the ocean, dotted tothe north with isles, and lying to the southward blue and open to thesky. There my guide came to a halt, and stood staring for awhile on thatexpanse. Then he turned to me and laid a hand on my arm.

  'Ye think there's naething there?' he said, pointing with his pipe; andthen cried out aloud, with a kind of exultation: 'I'll tell ye, man! Thedeid are down there--thick like rattons!'

  He turned at once, and, without another word, we retraced our steps tothe house of Aros.

  I was eager to be alone with Mary; yet it was not till after supper, andthen but for a short while, that I could have a word with her. I lost notime beating about the bush, but spoke out plainly what was on my mind.

  'Mary,' I said, 'I have not come to Aros without a hope. If that shouldprove well founded, we may all leave and go somewhere else, secure ofdaily bread and comfort; secure, perhaps, of something far beyond that,which it would seem extravagant in me to promise. But there's a hopethat lies nearer to my heart than money.' And at that I paused. 'Youcan guess fine what that is, Mary,' I said. She looked away from me insilence, and that was small encouragement, but I was not to be put off.'All my days I have thought the world of you,' I continued; 'the timegoes on and I think always the more of you; I could not think to be happyor hearty in my life without you: you are the apple of my eye.' Stillshe looked away, and said never a word; but I thought I saw that herhands shook. 'Mary,' I cried in fear, 'do ye no like me?'

  'O, Charlie man,' she said, 'is this a time to speak of it? Let me be, awhile; let me be the way I am; it'll not be you that loses by thewaiting!'

  I made out by her voice that she was nearly weeping, and this put me outof any thought but to compose her. 'Mary Ellen,' I said, 'say no more; Idid not come to trouble you: your way shall be mine, and your time too;and you have told me all I wanted. Only just this one thing more: whatails you?'

  She owned it was her father, but would enter into no particulars, onlyshook her head, and said he was not well and not like himself, and it wasa great pity. She knew nothing of the wreck. 'I havenae been near it,'said she. 'What for would I go near it, Charlie lad? The poor souls aregone to their account long syne; and I would just have wished they hadta'en their gear with them--poor souls!'

  This was scarcely any great encouragement for me to tell her of the_Espirito Santo_; yet I did so, and at the very first word she cried outin surprise. 'There was a man at Grisapol,' she said, 'in the month ofMay--a little, yellow, black-avised body, they tell me, with gold ringsupon his fingers, and a beard; and he was speiring high and low for thatsame ship.'

  It was towards the end of April that I had been given these papers tosort out by Dr. Robertson: and it came suddenly back upon my mind thatthey were thus prepared for a Spanish historian, or a man calling himselfsuch, who had come with high recommendations to the Principal, on amission of inquiry as to the dispersion of the great Armada. Putting onething with another, I fancied that the visitor 'with the gold rings uponhis fingers' might be the same with Dr. Robertson's historian fromMadrid. If that were so, he would be more likely after treasure forhimself than information for a learned society. I made up my mind, Ishould lose no time over my undertaking; and if the ship lay sunk inSandag Bay, as perhaps both he and I supposed, it should not be for theadvantage of this ringed adventurer, but for Mary and myself, and for thegood, old, honest, kindly family of the Darnaways.