A Republic Without a President and Other Stories Part 16

The answer came back in a deep, orotund, sing-song voice. It was the natural intoning of the man of the sea. Two boats shot from under a rocky headland a few hundred yards before me to the left. One of the boats made fast to some black corks that formed a huge rectangle in the water, and two men began pulling in a net. The one in the other boat, who answered to the name of Scud, stopped rowing for a moment, exchanged a word or two, and laughed aloud, then cast a critical look at the sun's alt.i.tude, and pulled lazily away. When he was at some distance, he rested on his oars, and hilloaed with that penetrating sea cry:

"I hope you'll get two barr'l. I guess thar's 'nough to go all round."

That undulatory cadence is entirely lacking in landsmen's tones. Still this was an extraordinarily joyous voice, as if the life of a fisherman were a dream without a care or a struggle. But Scud and his queer, green boat disappeared behind the jagged outline of the rocks, and I turned at the sound of the first bell to dress for breakfast.

"Well, how do you like your room? I hope that the fishermen didn't wake you up too early."

My cousin offered me some smoking flakes of fish, new to my limited experience. This, he said, was inland hake, and was caught that morning in Scud's trap. Now, although I was. .h.i.therto ignorant of this delicious fish with its paradoxical cognomen, I felt that Scud and I were already friends; and gravely informed my host that Scud had caught twenty-six little ones that morning. This piece of information was immediately greeted with impertinent hilarity.

"So Scud woke you up?" said my cousin. "He's always doing that. There was one nervous boarder here. She threatened to have him arrested for breaking the peace. But you might as well arrest a fog-whistle."

"Does he always get up as early in the morning?" I asked, apprehensively. "He must be a very energetic person. Do tell me about it. What are 'little 'uns'?"

I must confess to a degree of perplexity when the the whole family burst into further roars of laughter at my simple question.

"Scud energetic? Why, he is the easiest, the slowest, the sleepiest, the most lovable, good-natured fellow on the whole coast. He makes the surest and perhaps the best living of any of the fishermen around here.

If he didn't get up early he wouldn't do even that. As it is, Salt does most of the work. Salt is his oldest boy," explained my cousin.

"I am sure Scud needs all he can make," interrupted Mabel (she is my cousin's wife), "with his dozen children and a wife to support, and only one trap to do it on."

"For my part," interposed the oldest daughter, with a pert motion of her head, "I am tired to death having to save clothes for that--You needn't look so shocked, mamma. Yes, I am. It's always 'Take care of that petticoat; Betty can use it;' or, 'That dress can be turned and made over nicely for the twins.' I declare I don't get a new dress but the whole Scud family troop over and inspect it, and criticise it, and quarrel over it, and gloat over it the first day I wear it. I caught two of their boys fighting over which of them should have Reginald's summer ulster when he was done with it."

"I shall give it to Tommy," observed her mother, in an absent, comfortable tone.

After breakfast my cousin rowed over to the station; the eldest two children took their guest, a boy of about sixteen, out fis.h.i.+ng; while I eagerly accompanied Mabel across the rocks and fields to Scud's house--a little rented hut, hidden and sheltered from the east winds behind a huge barrack of a boarding-house.

How clear the day! How warm the sun! How hospitable this forbidding, granite-clad North Sh.o.r.e! As I look back upon that memorable morning it seemed as if the bay could never be ruffled by any but the tenderest breezes, or its bright water reflect any but the dazzling glare of the hottest sun. Clouds hovered over us, delicate and fleecy as the feathers of the marabou, and white and curly as the feathers of the ostrich. They radiated from a centre in translucent films, and shot out monstrous ciliated fingers like a fan. Such a sky was never seen in my part of the country, and I attributed this ravis.h.i.+ng cloud phenomenon to the peculiar influence of the sea, being too ignorant to notice that these streamers shot out from the west. The stillness was intoxicating after the scurry of the school-room. And now even the water made no ripples on the beach. The sea was motionless, like a distilled elixir in a serrated alembic.

We stopped before a low, pitch-roofed house that looked as if it contained three rooms at most. The yard was piled up with wreckage and drift-wood. Who ever heard of a fisherman buying kindling? Within the gate four children were playing with twice as many cats and kittens.

They were all fighting like animals between themselves for a plateful of sc.r.a.ps of fried fish. A baby would grab a piece from the plate, and offer the remainder to a grave tabby, which in turn distributed it to her offspring. Then the kittens and "humans" rolled and scratched, and shrieked and scratched again.

"Keep yer mouths shet out there, or I'll be after ye with a stick!" This maternal sentiment, spoken in a loud shrill voice, greeted us as we stepped within the gate.

"It's I, Betty. I have brought you a little something, and a friend who wants to see the children."

"Dear sakes! 'tain't you, is it?" The shrill voice was now modulated in an entirely different tone. "Ain't I glad you've come! Step right in and set down. No? Then I'll be out and see ye ez soon ez I've tended the baby."

"Baby!" I gasped, looking at the four fighting infants at my feet, none of whom looked over thirteen months. "Are these hers too?"

"These are the twins," answered Mabel, quite seriously. "They call them 'the twin.' These are the two sets, just a year apart. The baby was born a month ago. The baby isn't named. Let me see: these are Bessie and Maurie and Robbie and Susie."

"Why, I thought you knew better," protested the mother, in a grieved voice. "Susie is in the house there. That's Bessie." She wiped her hands on her ap.r.o.n, and thrust one of them out through a rent in the mosquito-netted door. "I'm glad to see any of _her_ friends. Yes. Good mor'n'. The children? Laws sakes, they're round the house like pups!"

The face was remarkable for a pair of brilliant black eyes, an inheritance of Italian ancestry. She was not yet middle-aged, and her hair had turned prematurely gray. Her hands were bony, nervous hands, indicative of great executive capacity, but the incessant work had left them trembling.

"Are all your children here?" I asked, not knowing what else to say.

"Here's four of 'em. Come out here, you in there, an' I'll count ye." It was a pitiful sight to see these five plump, rosy youngsters pa.s.s in review before the frail, emaciated mother.

"But here are only nine," I ventured.

"Salt's missing, mother," said the eldest girl; "he's with father to the trap."

"So he is, Kittie. They've rowed round the cove with what they ketched.

They'll be back d'rectly."

"But how do you manage, Mrs.--ah--Scud?" I asked. I am afraid there was a slight choke in my throat as I spoke. The mother cast a quick look at my face, and shoving her children into the house, one by one, said:

"Now go, Kittie; finish the dishes. You, Mamie, put the baby kearfully in the box. What did you hit Jim for, Sammy? Let me ketch you a-hitten your little brother agin an' I'll spank you. Now get in the house, all of ye. You see, miss," turning to me, "we manage somehow. If it wa'n't fur _her_, we'd give up. There's that boy Jim, he took to swearing this spring. I declare it was jess awful to hear him go on. I spanked him, and Scud he switched him, but it wa'n't to no use. That boy talked jess scand'lous, till your cousin here, miss, she heerd him one mornin', an'

took a white powder an' put a little on his tongue. It made Jim powerful sick. And, says she, 'If I hear you swearin' agin I'll pizen ye; an'

you'll die in a minute an' never see G.o.d,' and I declare to goodness he was so skeared that I hain't heerd him swear since. There's Scud.

Where's Salt, pa? Come here an' speak to the ladies. She's brought ye some ties."

"Salt's makin' the boat fast," began Scud, nodding with inimitable ease to his visitors. "I'm afraid ther's goin' to be--"

Scud stopped short in open-mouthed pleasure when he saw a couple of brilliant red and blue ties dangling from Betty's hand. He had come up the rocky path, whistling like a boy, with every line and pucker in his face on a broad smile. If Lavater had seen this fisherman's physiognomy he would have p.r.o.nounced it indicative of incomparable good nature.

Indeed, Scud's good nature went so far at times as to be incomparably inadequate to the demands of existence. If he happened to go for weeks without catching so much as a sculpin in his net, and the starvation of his youngsters stared him in the face, he showed none of the common symptoms of discouragement, such as swearing, drinking, beating his wife, or cursing his luck. He only whistled the blither, ran up bills at the butcher's and grocer's with irresistible faith, borrowed his "chaws"

of his luckier mates, and laughed as if poverty were an excellent joke that Providence was cracking at him. Why shouldn't he appreciate it, even if it were at his own expense.

Scud was born "easy." Who could blame him? He gave up his lobster-pots because it took too much time to dry them and keep them in repair, and it was too cold and dangerous hauling them in stormy weather off the rocks. Scud found it too troublesome to underrun his trap more than twice a-day--once at six o'clock in the morning, then at six o'clock at night. Even when the mackerel or the herring struck, and every man who had a trap hovered over it night and day to keep the catch from mysteriously immaterializing, as well as to gather it in, Scud was satisfied with his diurnal visits. He "wa'n't a-goin' to keep a-runnin'

to see the fish swim in. If they were fool 'nough to go in the trap, they could stay there till he underrun an' bailed 'em out." His methods of gaining a livelihood were unique on the coast; yet it was Scud who "stocked" eight hundred and fifty dollars that summer clean, two hundred dollars above any one else in the harbor. It was the saying among some of the jealous fishermen in the cove, who were not blessed with two pairs of twins, that "n.o.body 'arned so easy a livin' as Scud without doin' no work." But these indistinct murmurs never stimulated Scud nor impaired his good nature. Indeed, Scud was the happiest man that ever lived. What a dancing, laughing eye! What a catalogue of joys therein!

What contagious, hopeful humor! What irrepressible buoyancy of spirits!

Who could help loving Scud, as one loves a huge, long-coated St. Bernard dog? Scud was the laughing, joyous, piping Pan of the ocean. He smoked not, neither did he drink. He had no vices that debased him. Chewing is not a vice for a fisherman. But he did have a curious taste for candy.

No present pleased him so much as a half a pound of caramels or of sugar-coated nuts. It was the sweet animal nature instinctively laying hold of sweets.

Scud's "easiness" was unmitigated--at times it was exasperating; but this made him all the fatter, the jollier, the more companionable; and as it succeeded so well, why not? Summer boarders were appreciative of Scud. He lived upon them. Twins?--they did it. It was a dime show, and the money was paid.

Two sets of authentic twins! It was enough to drain a woman's heart of sympathy, a woman's pocket of money; and the summer boarders were mostly women--married women, with husbands sweating in the city to support them; single women, school-teachers and that sort.

But Scud stood looking at the ties. He seldom bought clothes, any more than he purchased firewood or paid for his fish. They came to him. Here was a pair of trousers that was once a bishop's. That coat and vest were the velveteen relics of a posing artist. The cap was a yachtsman's gift, and the neckties came as a matter of course. Yet Scud never begged. And once when he caught one of his four-year-old boys insinuating to a summer boarder, with outstretched palm, that he would like a penny, Scud thrashed him within a centimeter of his life. New England fishermen will take a gift as a sort of neighborly accommodation to you; but he'll starve before he will ask you for it.

"Are them fur me?" (Scud was always surprised at such a crisis.) "Thank ye, ma'am. Ain't them showy? I guess they'll skeer the mac'rel off the coast."

"I wanted you to take me out sailing this morning, Mr. Scud," I began, after a formal introduction. Scud looked somewhat gratified with the prefix to his name, and regarded me with interest. To take boarders out sailing at the rate of seventy-five cents an hour was the kind of work he would do.

"Yes, ma'am. But I'm 'fraid it'll be a little fresh to-day, if ye hain't used to sailin'." He jerked his head to the westward. "Salt is a makin'

the dory fast with a new haulin'-line, ma'am. I guess we'll have a squall pretty soon."

We followed Scud's gesture and looked. A squall on a day like this? The white streamers had vanished, and above us was dark, unfathomable blue.

But on the western horizon, stretching far to the south, a black bank had arisen. No cloud in the physical geography was ever sketched blacker. It had come up as stealthily as a Zulu warrior. It was the hue of unpolished iron. It had a faint reddish tint. Its outline was as clear cut as a cameo. It sent ahead here and there jagged tentacles, broad at the base and fine at the tip, that advanced, dissolved, and reappeared again with significant rapidity. The ocean had suddenly grown lethargic. It seemed unable to reflect the sun that still shone. It became like a platter of tarnished silver. As we looked, the sight rapidly grew uglier.

Now my cousin Mabel seemed hypnotized by it. She stood for a few minutes with her hands hanging at her sides; her delicate jaw dropped.

Suddenly she pulled herself together, and whispered: "It is horrible! It is awful!" Then, as if seized with the full import of the scene, she cried aloud, "My _children_! They are out fis.h.i.+ng in a sail-boat! My _children_!" She began to run towards the sh.o.r.e leaving us all staring after her.

My nautical sense was not as highly trained as Mabel's, but I thought the sight terrifying and fine. It was part of the Eastern culture towards the education of the Western girl. But seeing Scud look sober--I had the impression that it was for the first time in his life--I pleaded:

"Do come too, Scud. Is it so bad? Won't it blow over?"