The Cruise of the Shining Light by Norman Duncan (best free e reader .txt) 📖

not able t' say. But bein' on'y a lost soul I'm 'lowed t' think; an' I've thunk a idea."

I wondered concerning it.

"Which is, speakin' free an' easy," said he, "that they lie!"

"'Twill be hard," I argued, "'t save un all."

"'Twould be a mean poor God," he replied, "that couldn't manage a little thing like that."

My uncle's soul, as I had been taught (and but a moment gone informed), was damned.

"Uncle Nick," I inquired, "will the Shepherd find you?"

"Me?" cries he.

"Ay," I persisted; "will he not seek till he finds you, too?"

"Hist!" he whispered. "I'm damned, Dannie, for good an' all."

"You?"

"Good Lord, yes!" said he, under his breath. "Hist! Certain sure, I is--damned t' hell for what I'm doin'."

At this distant day I know that what he did was all for me, but not on that moonlit night of my childhood.

"What's that?" said I.

"I'm damned for it, anyhow," he answered. "Say no more, Dannie."

I marvelled, but could make nothing of it at all. 'Tis strange (I have since thought) that we damn ourselves without hesitation: not one worthy man in all the world counting himself deserving of escape from those dreadful tortures preached for us by such apostles of injustice as find themselves, by the laws they have framed, interpreting without reverence or fear of blunder, free from the common judgment. Ay, we damn ourselves; but no man among us damns his friend, who is as evil as himself. And who damns his own child? 'Tis no doubt foolish to be vexed by any philosophy comprehending what is vulgarly called hell; but still (as I have thought) this is a reasonable view: there is no hell in the philosophy of a mother for her own child; and as by beneficent decree every man is the son of his mother, consequently there is no hell; else 'twould make such unhappiness in heaven. Ah, well! I looked out of the window where were the great works of the Lord: His rock and sea and sky. The moon was there to surprise me--half risen: the sea shot with a glistening pathway to the glory of the night. And in that vast uncertain and inimical place, far out from shore, there rode a schooner of twenty tons, dawdling unafraid, her small sails spread for a breeze, in hope. Whither bound? Northward: an evil coast for sailing-craft--cruel waters: rock and fog and ice and tempestuous winds. Thither bound, undaunted, with wings wide, abroad in the teeth of many perils, come wreck or not. At least (I thought) she had ventured from snug harbor.

"Dannie," said my uncle, "you're all alone in the world."

Alone? Not I! "Why, sir," said I, "I've _you!_"

He looked away.

"Isn't I?" I demanded.

"No, lad," he answered; "you isn't."

'Twas the first step he had led me from dependence upon him. 'Twas as though he had loosened my hand a little from its confident clasp of his own. I was alarmed.

"Many's the lad," said he, "that thinks he've his mother; an' many's the mother that thinks she've her lad. But yet they is both alone--all alone. 'Tis the queerest thing in the world."

"But, Uncle Nick, I _haves_ you!"

"No," he persisted; "you is all alone. Why, Lord! Dannie, you is 'leven. What does I know about _you_?"

Not enough.

"An' what does _you_ know about _me_?"

I wondered.

"All children is alone," said he. "Their mothers doesn't think so; but they is. They're alone--all alone. They got t' walk alone. How am I t' help you, Dannie? What can I _do_ for you? Of all the wisdom I've gathered I'd give you all an' go beggared, but you cannot take one jot. You must walk alone; 'tis the way o' the world. An', Dannie, could I say t' the evil that is abroad, 'Stand back! Make way! Leave this child o' mine t' walk in holiness!' I would not speak the word. 'Twould be hard t' stand helpless while you was sore beset. I'm not knowin' how I'd bear it. 'Twould hurt me, Dannie, God knows! But still I'd have you walk where sin walks. 'Tis a man's path, an' I'd have you take it, lad, like a man. I'd not have you come a milk-sop t' the Gate. I'd have you come scathless, an that might be with honor; but I'd have you come a man, scarred with a man's scars, an need be. You walk alone, Dannie, God help you! in the world God made: I've no knowledge o' your goings. You'll wander far on they small feet. God grant you may walk manfully wherever they stray. I've no more t' hope for than just only that."

"I'll try, sir," said I.

My uncle touched me again--moving nearer, now, that his hand might lie upon me. "Dannie," he whispered, "if you must sin the sins of us--"

"Ay, sir?"

"They'll be some poor folk t' suffer. An' Dannie--"

I was very grave in the pause.

"You'll not forget t' be kind, will you," he pleaded, "t' them that suffer for your sins?"

"I will not sin," I protested, "t' the hurt of any others."

He seemed not to hear. "An' you'll bear your own pain," he continued, "like a man, will you not?"

I would bear it like a man.

"That's good," said he. "That's very good!"

The moon was now risen from the sea: the room full of white light.

"They is a Shepherd," said my uncle. "God be thanked for that. _He'll_ fetch you home."

"An' you?" said I.

"Me? Oh no!"

"He'll remember," said I, confidently, "that you was once a little lad--jus' like me."

"God knows!" said he.

I was then bade go to sleep....

* * * * *


Presently I fell asleep, but awoke, deep in the night, to find my uncle brooding in a chair by my bed. The moon was high in the unclouded heaven. There was no sound or stirring in all the world--a low, unresting, melancholy swish and sighing upon the rocks below my window, where the uneasy sea plainted of some woe long forgot by all save it, which was like a deeper stillness and silence. The Lost Soul was lifted old and solemn and gray in the cold light and shadow of the night. I was troubled: for my uncle sat in the white beam, striking in at my window, his eyes staring from cavernous shadows, his face strangely fixed and woful--drawn, tragical, set in no incertitude of sorrow and grievous pain and expectation. I was afraid--'twas his eyes: they shook me with fear of the place and distance from which it seemed he gazed at me. 'Twas as though a gulf lay between, a place of ghostly depths, of echoes and jagged rock, dark with wind-blown shadows. He had brought me far (it seemed) upon a journey, leading me; and having now set my feet in other paths and turned my face to a City of Light, lifted in glory upon a hill, was by some unworthiness turned back to his own place, but stayed a moment upon the cloudy cliff at the edge of darkness, with the night big and thick beyond, to watch me on my way.

"Uncle Nick," said I, "'tis wonderful late in the night."

"Ay, Dannie," he answered; "but I'm wantin' sore t' sit by you here a spell."

"I'll not be able," I objected, "t' go t' sleep."

"'Twill do no hurt, lad," said he "if I'm wonderful quiet. An' I'll be quiet--wonderful quiet."

"But I'm _wantin'_ t' go t' sleep!"

"Ah, well," said he, "I'll not trouble you, then. I would not have you lie awake. I'll go. Good-night. God bless you, lad!"

I wish I had not driven him away....


VII

TWIN ISLANDS

In all this time I have said little enough of Twist Tickle, never a word (I think) of Twin Islands, between whose ragged shores the sheltering tickle winds; and by your favor I come now gratefully to the task. 'Tis a fishing outport: a place of rock and sea and windy sky--no more than that--but much loved by the twelvescore simple souls of us, who asked for share of all the earth but salt-water and a harbor (with the winds blowing) to thrive sufficient to ourselves and to the world beyond. Had my uncle sought a secret place to foster the child that was I--which yet might yield fair wage for toil--his quest fortuitously ended when the _Shining Light_ ran dripping out of the gale and came to anchor in the quiet water of the tickle. But more like 'twas something finer that moved him: in that upheaval of his life, it may be, 'twas a wistful turning of the heart to the paths and familiar waters of the shore where he lived as a lad. Had the _Shining Light_ sailed near or far and passed the harbor by, the changed fortunes of--but there was no sailing by, nor could have been, for the great wind upon whose wings she came was passionate, too, and fateful.

If 'tis a delight to love, whatever may come of it (as some hold), I found delight upon the grim hills of Twin Islands....

* * * * *


They lie hard by the coast, but are yet remote: Ship's Run divides them from the long blue line of main-land which lifts its barren hills in misty distance from our kinder place. 'Tis a lusty stretch of gray water, sullen, melancholy, easily troubled by the winds, which delight, it seems, sweeping from the drear seas of the north, to stir its rage. In evil weather 'tis wide as space; when a nor'easter lifts the white dust of the sea, clouding Blow-me-down-Billy of the main-land in a swirl of mist and spume, there is no departure; nor is there any crossing (mark you) when in the spring of the year a southerly gale urges the ice to sea. We of Twin Islands were cut off by Ship's Run from all the stirring and inquisitive world.

According to Tumm, the clerk of the _Quick as Wink_, which traded our harbor, Twin Islands are t' the west'ard o' the Scarf o' Fog, a bit below the Blue Gravestones, where the _Soldier o' the Cross_ was picked up by Satan's Tail in the nor'easter o' the Year o' the Big Shore Catch. "Oh, I knows un!" says he. "You opens the Tickle when you rounds Cocked Hat o' the Hen-an'-Chickens an' lays a course for Gentleman Cove, t'other side o' the bay. Good harbor in dirty weather," says he: "an', ecod! my lads, a hearty folk." This is forbidding enough, God knows! as to situation; but though the ancient islands, scoured by wind and rain, are set in a misty isolation and show gray, grimly wrinkled faces to the unkind sea, betraying no tenderness, they are green and genial in the places within: there are valleys; and the sun is no idler, and the lean earth of