Beached Keels

Front matter

BEACHED KEELS

BEACHED KEELS

BY

Blue Peter

I BLUE PETER

Blue Peter. Chapter 1

BLUE PETER

I

"Yes, it's been swum," puffed the boatman, tugging till the ashen thole-pins creaked. "On'y onct, though, an'—the feller was a buster—that done it—back in '56."

He spat over the gunwale, so that a brown stain of tobacco swept astern on the heaving slant of the green wave. Archer, on the stern thwart, turned his head and looked back over the dazzling water at the mainland, a dark bank of rocks and low hills, with a few roofs and a spire against the late afternoon sun.

"He must have been," he answered. The distance to the American shore was not three miles, but the water was an arm of the icy North Atlantic, and the tide went racing out to sea through the passage.

"Trim the bo't, sir," rejoined the man at the oars, in a tone of cheerful Yankee independence. "It's mortal hard pullin' in this sea, an' if you don't keep 'er headed pooty sharp, we may run afoul o' the South Rocks, after all."

Archer faced the bow again. "All right," he said easily. the last two years had taught him to value an honest rebuke.

The boatman screwed his lean brown face like a monkey, as he blinked at the sunlight following them, and caught the high waves deftly with his short, tough oars. Beyond him and the pitching bow. Archer saw the tremendous cliffs of the island, a gunshot ahead, towering all pink and ruddy in the sunlight. A few gulls wheeled with forlorn cries along the face of the crags. Above, on the verge against the sky, a clump of tiny trees leaned inland as if tossed by a gale. Years of ocean storms must have blown them thus, for now so deep an autumnal calm lay over sea and island that they were startling in their suggestion of wild motion. It was like a freak in the landscape of some forgetful and bungling painter.

For an instant Archer thought he saw the figure of a man, crouched and furtive, slink among the trees; but it might have been the gnarled trunks shifting and interweaving with the patches of sky that showed through. And the next instant he was busy with the tiller-ropes. The boat tossed laboriously, dragging as if uphill, round the foot of the lofty broken columns of basalt, where the waves tumbled with a heavy and hollow noise as of caves.

"They's no landin' that side now, ye see," grunted the Yankee. And even as he spoke, they rounded a point of lifting seaweed, and ran into the cool shadows of the eastward cliffs. Here, though the tide was still against them, they rowed more easily, in almost a calm. Under the astounding lee of the cliffs there fell a kind of instant twilight, a melancholy evening stillness and dusk, so that Archer, turning his eyes from this dark precipice that overawed their cockleshell boat, was surprised to find the wide ocean still aglow, and the tiny sail that nicked the horizon still white in the sun. This island was a sombre place, thought Archer, for an adventure planned so boyishly.

Northward the boat labored, sometimes making a long circuit where a weir straggled into the sea, sometimes tossing an oar's length from the giant columns and boulders, and always without a sign of human beings, and always preceded by the ominous, echoing cries of startled sea gulls.

"Black Harbor's round this p'int," said the boatman at last.

At the point the cliffs were split asunder into a mighty cove, across the mouth of which ran a bleak sea wall higher than a man's head,—all of gray stones as round as cannon-balls,—wave-built, impregnable, Cyclopean masonry. Through a gap midway in this wall the boat entered Black Harbor.

Letting her run in the still water, the Yankee mopped his bald forehead and grinned.

"Cheerful sort o' place, ain't it?" he asked. "Real homelike and neighborly."

It was a place where Old-World smugglers might land their brandy kegs, or where pirates might put in and share alike. Instead of these, two or three dismantled sloops and pinkies lay moored in a half- circle of dark water still as a mill pond. Archer could barely descry, landward, a steep black gulch of fir-tops that ran widening down in the darkness, a glacier in evergreen. On either side jutted a headland, both wooded, one scarred with landslides. On the bar, close astern, a solitary figure in yellow oilskins moved along, stooping to gather up wine-colored rags of dulse that had lain drying in the brief sunlight.

To him, the first man they had found on this sombre island,—unless the furtive shadow on the cliff had been a man,—Archer raised his hand in salute. The dulse-gatherer made no response, but stood sullen or apathetic, watching them pull shoreward.

"Go to thunder, then," growled the Yankee under his breath. After a few strokes he added, "Won't git much out o' these fellers. Ye better not try a night's lodgin' among them, specially if you've got money on ye. Ol' man Powell might put ye up. He's queer, they say, but he might. I would n't ast them. I'm a-goin' to sleep in this bo't, an' go back in the mornin'. But by God- frey!" he broke out with fervor, "’fore bunkin' in with that crowd, I'd ruther resk the whirlpools a-goin' back in the dark."

"Listen, though," said Archer.

The boat was surrounded by the darkness of the looming headlands. A single light from the shore pierced the pool deeply before them, a long, wavering blade of brightness in the still water. The silence had been suddenly broken by a small, sharp, metallic voice singing,—a phonograph squealing out the "Handicap March." "We 've got money to booyin!" it cried nasally. In this dark, forlorn harbor it seemed incredible. Strange echo of cheap New York, thought Archer, it told that rusticity and simple merriment were no more.

"They seem gay enough," he said aloud. The boatman, however, only gave a skeptical grunt.

On the beach, where the good salt air was lost in a stink of fish, the two men parted,—the Yankee, with his fee in his pocket, to pull stolidly out of this harbor which he hated; Archer, to go scrambling up a footpath which, littered with broken fish-flakes, wound upward among a few unlighted, silent, and malodorous huts. In one of these, through the open door, he saw men and boys plying bloody knives by lantern light; but to his "Good-evening " the fishermen replied only with churlish stares. Plainly, it was an inhospitable shore. Even the phonograph had ceased. The place lay stifled in such a profound silence that he felt the oppression of the headlands towering in the dark. Also he felt himself an ass to have left his decent quarters aboard ship in the mainland town, for the childish whim of visiting an island that had loomed offshore so high and so romantic.

Suddenly, turning the corner of a hut, he halted in a stream of lamplight from another open door. It was very smoky lamplight, and there was a powerful smell of tobacco and stale beer. On the doorstep he nearly fell over a man who lay sprawled and speechless,—a white face with eyes staring upward, apparently in drunken communion with the stars.

"Well," thought Archer, looking into this hillside barroom, where through the gray smoke-layers the figures of men moved tipsily, "I've found plenty of it."

His entrance no one noticed. A snarled group swayed in midfloor, three men pawing one another's shoulders, in an effort to light their pipes from a single match. There was no talk, no sound but the shifting of feet. Other men, ill-favored, sprawled in a half-stupor on a bench that edged the room. On the bar, in the light of the tin reflector behind the lamp, stood the phonograph, silent, its conical throat yawning. A mean little man in a dirty shirt—evidently bartender—had stooped to pitch something out of a window into the yellow grass that waved flush with the window sill and rose on the abrupt slope of the hillside: an easy exit in the event of a raid.

"Where 'd the city guy blow in frum?" mumbled a voice. "Look at ut, would ye? Say, this ain't Camperbeller ner Baw Hawber." Mischief was in the voice and the thick laughter.

The attention of the drunken roomful focused itself in silence on Archer, who turned sharply toward the speaker, a red-faced young fellow in hip-boots, leaning unsteadily against the bar. He had evil little eyes, bad teeth widely spaced, and a squash nose that showed the nostrils in front.

Archer was a young man of sudden likes and dislikes, who did not calculate his retorts. The "city guy" could not have appeared in his six feet of solid build, or in the heavy sea clothes, which failed to obscure the convex lines of strength. It must have been suggested in his face, which was of the dark, clear brown that only a very blond man takes from long weathering, and which, though at once impetuous and resolute, showed a fineness of line. He lowered his rough, shining head as he answered:—

"You would n't look half so much like a kid's jack-o'-lantern if you'd keep your mouth shut."

Two years of seafaring had taught him the advantages of bluntness. They had also taught him to stand by the swiftest disadvan- tage. He warded off the heavy tumbler with his elbow, leaped forward at him who had thrown it, and pinioned him against the bar. Next instant an ill-smelling half-ton scrimmage of drunken men had surged upon them both.

"Leggo—hell—soak 'im, Beaky—stop that, ye damn fool!" came in smothered fierceness from the swaying, punching, tugging knot of men. Archer, braced mightily, and straining all his muscles, had just cracked two heads together, and was being pulled down, when he was aware that his assailants had slowly fallen apart and stood about, flushed, breathless, and speechless. Some one was knocking at the door masterfully.

Archer followed their drunken eyes. A door at the end of the counter silently came ajar, and a hand was thrust in,—a great, red, freckled hand, fat, but powerful in every joint. Steady as a rock, it held itself there, waiting. The bartender swiftly poured out and passed to it a tumbler brimful of gin. It withdrew with this monstrous drink, while the whole company stood as if bulldozed into silence. Almost instantly the glass was tossed in empty, the door closed, and heavy footsteps departed.

So strange was the episode that Archer had almost forgotten his own predicament. He turned to find his enemies dispersed,—part of them, led by the young man of the jack-o'-lantern mouth, already slinking into corners.

Tardy and timid, the bartender piped up:—

"No more o' this, boys. The Old Man's round. He don't stand fer no rows, some nights."

Needless enough the warning seemed, for the men sat cowed. Silence fell again, except for a hiccough or two from the bench. Archer found himself once more the centre of hostile eyes, glowering through the smoke.

"There's no need of any rows," he spoke out. "I didn't come in here to start one. This man here," he said, nodding toward his broad-faced antagonist, "this man here got no worse than he gave me. If he wants it to go farther, all right; if he does n't, all right. I don't bear any grudge. And all I came in for was to ask if any of you would put me up for the night."

No one volunteered.

"If any one will,"—the boatman's warning about money checked and changed his speech,—"why, it 'll be better than sleeping out these cold nights."

The silence remained discouraging.

"I was told that Mr. Powell might," he persevered. "Can you tell me where he lives?"

The young man in hip-boots broke out angrily.

"Old man Powell!" he sneered, lurching in his seat. "Ho, yes, I guess he will! I see him doin' it! An' I guess"—He spat out obscenity which showed that Powell had a daughter.

"That 'll do for you, Lehane," called a clear voice from the farthest corner, behind the stove. A tall man stepped out from the shadows, and fixed on the young drunkard a pair of stern eyes. Taller than Archer, and very dark, he was lithe as a cat, with a grace that would have been courtly had it not been wholly native. "That'll do for you," he repeated, in a voice strangely clear and deep.

Young Lehane seemed to shrink before the steady brightness of his look. The speaker turned to Archer and scrutinized him as steadily. Without ceremony, yet without offense, he took Archer by the arm and wheeled him about toward the light. The two men stood looking each other in the eye. Archer saw before him a man of his own age, entirely sober, with the face of a thinker,—a face swarthy but clear. The searching eyes, that seemed almost to emit light, were wide-set and very blue. Three big veins scored the broad forehead with irregular lines as blue as the eyes, or as the jersey that clung to the sinewy frame. Intellect, and a kind of grave passion, shone in the whole countenance : the man might have been Hamlet in the rough, but Hamlet with the will of Fortinbras, sad but strong.

"My name's Peter," he declared simply. "I'd like to have yours."

It was as if he had forced a reply that he might study a face out of repose. Archer felt that this young fisherman was weighing his character. But he answered without resentment.

"Mine's Hugh Archer. I'd be obliged to you if you 'd tell me of a night's lodging somewhere. These other men won't. As for Powell's daughter"—he was going on half jocosely—

"Never mind what Beaky said," the other cut in, with severity. "He's full o' smut. It's best forgotten." Then, after a long silence, during which the sharp blue eyes studied further, and seemed to look through Archer into futurity and consequences, Peter added, "Yes, Powell may take ye in. It's just as well, after all, I should n't wonder."

The tone, unmistakably sad, was one of final decision. The eyebrows under the blue-veined forehead unbent.

"My brother 'll show ye the way."

And with this, stepping to the open door, he whistled into the darkness. Presently there came a patter of bare feet, and a small, ragged boy, bounding up the steps, stood and peered in with sharp, mischievous eyes.

"Hippolyte," said his elder brother, "show this man over the hill."

Thanking this strange helper, who only nodded in reply, Archer went out, followed by the stares of the silent company. In the dark on the hillside he found it difficult to keep within view of the white patch that was the shirt of his little guide. The boy ducked under fir trees, scaled ledges, dove into underbrush, and clambered always upward, nimble as a goat. Once Archer, though he too was nimble, called a halt, halfway up the steep bank of the gulch. As they rested a moment under the firs, he could see a host of stars, large and bright in the chill air of early autumn, and even larger when seen thus from the depth of the black pass.

"Who is Mr. Powell.?" he suddenly asked.

The boy gave an odd chuckle.

"Powell?" he said, in a little dry voice like a satirical old man. "Oh, he owns the island."

"Really!" said Archer in astonishment. "And so," he continued, after a pause, "you 're all his tenants, I suppose."

"I s'pose so," replied the boy, breaking out into impish laughter. When they had started climbing again, he threw back, "’Specially the Old Man,—Matt Lehane,—oh, yes!" And for some distance up the rocky path under the brushing firs, the child laughed to himself in a kind of pert irony.

At last, gaining the summit, they found themselves high in the open, on a bare ledge. Over this landward side of the island there still lay a twilight in which the stars looked pale, and which showed the gleam of water far below, and the land sloping downward in long, hollow fields.

"See that light?" said the boy. "That's Powell's. Did Peter say he'd take ye in? Then p'raps he will. I never seen no one there." Instantly he had slipped out of sight among the firs, through which Archer heard him brushing his way down to Black Harbor again.

As no reply came to his shout of thanks. Archer began the long descent toward the lighted window. In the west still glimmered a strip of afterglow, brownish red, as if the evening had been hot on the mainland. Still, too, a thread of bright water outlined the shore; and farther out, in the dark, lay vaguely the deeper blackness of the whirlpools. North and south loomed the colossal cliffs of the island. But his way toward the cove led through a gentle, pastoral country,—concave slopes, with short, dry grass, still warm as in early evening. By crossing the ridge above the harbor, he had been transported into a different region, of Thessalian rocks and Arcadian fields.

When at last he rounded the corner of Powell's house, he was surprised to find it an apparently civilized dwelling. About the door the leaves of a vine stirred faintly in the air. A stone doorstep sounded grittily beneath his feet; and just as his hand was raised to knock, he saw through the open window a room lined with books, a flickering fire, and the dim figure of a little elderly man sitting by a yellow-shaded lamp. From beyond the lamp came the clear voice of a girl reading aloud; but he could see only one arm of the chair, and the white skirt flowing down over her knees.

The man raised his gray head to interrupt the reader.

"That's not so good as the original," he said, in a tone of fretful resignation.

Archer let his hand fall, and instinctively turned to go back toward Black Harbor.

Blue Peter. Chapter 2

II

The instinct was that of the social rebel. The house seemed too plainly the comfortable summer cottage of sophisticated people. He had not been in that atmosphere since the days when his uncle and aunt had dragged him to the seashore, to dress, and eat, and talk, and—among rich women growing fat and rich men growing bald—to plan trivial monotonies beside the moving eternity of the ocean. It was to escape just this that he had turned sailor, and set his own naked character to wrestle with life. So now he turned to go away.

But the girl's ears must have been sharp.

"There's some one at the door, father," he heard her say. Instantly perceiving that it would not do to disappear and leave them alarmed, he stood where he was on the door-step. But he afterward remembered that the girl's voice showed merely surprise, and no trace of fear.

The figures disappeared from the room, he heard the scratch of a match, and presently footsteps approached the door. It opened to show the light of a shaking candle, the little man's peering face, smooth-shaven but lined with years, and over his narrow shoulders the face of the girl, alert, clear, large-eyed, in a dusky radiance of brown hair that glimmered in the uncertain light. Their shadows leaped and swung on the walls behind them. Dim eyes and bright, sharpened brows and serene, both fixed their sight on the burly young sailor-man before them.

"Who is it?" said the man, in a gentle voice.

Archer, who had easily met the hostile looks of the revelers in Black Harbor, was abashed before this girl.

"Never mind," he said confusedly, "that is—I was looking for a night 's lodging,—and they—over in the harbor—they told me that Mr. Powell— But of course," he floundered, "I didn't know what you were like—or your house—I beg your pardon."

The little man laughed quietly, as one not given to laughter. The girl's eyes shone with encouraging merriment.

"What am I like, then?" asked Mr. Powell, holding up the candle, so that the girl's head disappeared in his shadow. It was a sad face, long, thin, very pale, with black eyes. He was bald over the temples, and a triangle of gray hair ran to a point midway above a forehead engraved with parallel lines. "I had hoped to seem no worse than other men," he continued, with an irony not unkind. "And as for my house, if you will come in, you will find it tolerable."

"Why, sir," replied Archer, somewhat nettled, "of course I did n't mean that. The others seemed a rough lot, and I expected— Your house is too good, sir,—too good for a sailor. I would n't have disturbed you"—

"My dear young man," said the owner of the island soberly, "there's no place but this fit for you to sleep in. Besides that, I'd be heartily glad to have you here. We have no visitors year in and out." He shifted his candle, so that the girl's face reappeared, shining with undisguised interest in the situation. "But you'll be able to sleep here,—better than I, at least. A sailor—and of your age—you 're doubly welcome. Come in." With the stiffness of courtesy in disuse, he stepped back to make room. The girl retreated into the shadows.

"You 're very kind, sir," said Archer, entering. As the man set his candle down on a low table, the light revealed a little hall and staircase of brown butternut wood. The absence of ornament might have made the place severe, had it not been for candlelight and soft shadows, and the presence of the girl, a slim white figure against the dark panels.

"You called yourself a sailor," the man continued; "the navy, perhaps?"

"Tramp sailing vessels, mostly, sir," Archer replied with some stiffness.

"Ah,—English, I should say?"

"American."

His host's face fell somewhat. It brightened as he ventured:—

"Did you ever chance to be in Eastern ports with any of Her Majesty's ships?" And when Archer, wondering, gave a negative answer, there was silence for a time.

"It is a pity," the little man reflected. "It was a foolish hope, of course,—but we like to reach out after all the little fragments—glimpses"—he ended with something like a sigh. This time the silence grew embarrassing.

"Father," said the girl quietly, "don't you think"—

The large eyes of the pale little man came back sadly, as from a distance. "Your pardon, Helen," he said. "I have long since forgotten my manners. This is my daughter, Mr."—

Archer, supplying the name, spoke to the girl for the first time face to face. Her words were as conventional as his, but something in voice and manner, something frank, bright, and simple, made them her own. The girls among whom his aunt had so carefully brought him he had known at first glance for natural enemies and strategists. This one seemed as naturally a direct and wholesome character. He liked her brown face, her speech, and above all the light, free motion of her walk as she crossed the hall and led them into the lighted room where he had first seen them sitting.

Here there was comfort,—the soft radiance of the yellow-shaded lamp, the warmth of a fire that tempered the fresh evening air from the open windows. The rows of books that lined the walls from floor to ceiling gave out a faint, pleasant smell, indefinable. Over the fireplace, in the only space left vacant of books, looked forth the white cast of a head, the tragic beauty of Meleager.

After a few questions and answers as to Archer's presence on the island, "You will pardon me," said the prim little man, motioning him to an armchair by the fire, "if we continue our reading and finish the chapter. I have perhaps become too methodical in my habits. It is not a merry book, but you can warm yourself meanwhile."

The girl said nothing, though she looked possibly a little disappointed. As they took their places, she became once more for Archer a voice from behind the lamp, and a white skirt flowing down beyond the edge of the table. But the sound of her was, in a way, as good as the sight; and the voice was filled with reality, with the meaning of the words:—

"And finally, the first night that followed that day! …

"Lying in the 'Arabian room,' I felt constantly through my weary half sleep the haunting impression, infinitely sad, of the unaccustomed silence that had fallen on the other side of the wall—and forever—in the room of Aunt Claire. Oh! the dear voices and the dear protecting sounds that I had heard there for so many years through this wall, when the quiet of night had come in the house! Aunt Claire opening her great closet that creaked in a peculiar fashion (the closet where they had put away forever the Ours aux pralines); Aunt Claire exchanging a few words, which I could just hear, with my mother, who lay in the room beyond: 'Are you asleep, sister?' And her great clock on the wall—now stopped—that used to strike so loud; the clock which made so much noise when it was wound, and which, to our great amusement, she used sometimes to wind on the stroke of midnight,—so that it had become a traditional pleasantry in the house, whenever we heard any noise at night, to lay the blame on Aunt Claire and her clock. … Ended, all this, ended. Gone to her place of burial, Aunt Claire,—and my mother, doubtless, will prefer not to return to the room next to hers; silence, then, has fallen there forever. For so many years, it was my joy and my peace to hear them both, to recognize their dear, good old voices that came clearly through the wall in the stillness of the night. … Ended, now; never, never shall I hear them more."

Archer was happily ignorant of what the book might be. But when the girl's voice had ceased, he was aware that her father, forgetful of guest and daughter, was staring into the fire, lost in remote thoughts; that Helen herself had risen, and stood looking on them doubtfully; and that the silence in the room was insufferably mournful. At last, as he was about to make a rough attempt at breaking it, his host rose, picked up the book, and, crossing to the inmost corner of the library, copied out something upon the broad page of another book that lay open on a desk. "A bad rendering, but it will do," he said. Then, stooping, he carefully took from against the bookshelves a violoncello which had s

tood gleaming soft and brown in the lamplight.

The girl turned and smiled at Archer, as if reassured, and yet appealing.

"Now you will have better entertainment," she said, with a gayety that seemed not quite so natural as the rest of her ways. "Perhaps you would rather have something to eat," she added, as her father tuned the strings. "I'll get it for you when he has played."

Archer smiled in return, but only shook his head, for her father was already waiting, and now formally announced:—

"Bach—Suite for violoncello—præludium."

The fervent voice of the 'cello filled the room. Archer, who knew good playing, listened in delight; but presently his eyes wandered to the girl, as she now sat looking into the fire in her turn, and to the sad, pale face of her father, bending over, rapt in his music. Strange entertainers; yet stranger still was the calm, unconscious egotism of sorrow in this host who had forgotten him. Through præludium the music ran, through sarabande, and into bourrée, when of a sudden it stopped lamely.

"I 've not the heart for it to-night," said the player, as he restored the violoncello to its place. "This young man from the sea has set me thinking about Arthur."

"He must be hungry, father," the girl suggested, with something like timidity. "Shall I get"—

"No," he decided. "Tell Barbara to come here."

The girl's face darkened, and she went out with visible reluctance. Presently came a shuffle of feet, and through curtains at the back of the room there entered a tall old woman, bent but strong, who at the sight of Archer spread apart her clumsy hands in surprise.

"Barbara," said her master, "please bring us something to eat and drink."

When the old woman had disappeared, the girl looked in again at the door of the hall, mystically bright once more above the candle flame.

"Good-night to you both," she called. Once more the cheeriness of her voice was troubled. "I'll show you about the island in the morning, Mr. Archer. You will like it, I hope." She stood for a moment undecided, then slowly went up the stairs, a shining figure against the brown panels.

Archer, replying with some commonplace, was conscious that she had stolen the brightness from the room. Though hungry after his wandering, he hardly noticed what the old servant left on the table before him. While he nibbled at something, and slowly drank the whiskey-and-water that Mr. Powell had poured out, his interest, for the time, became merely polite. And his host, though helping himself rather freely from the fat-bellied bottle, was calmly distant in his own thoughts.

"Do you come here every summer, Mr. Powell?" asked Hugh, after an interval.

The sad, prophetic eyes returned to the present, and as they studied the young man anew, their melancholy look was modified by a smile that was essentially kind.

"Every summer?" the little man repeated. " My boy, we live here all the year round, and have lived here since—for the last fourteen years. You look astonished. But why is not this island as good to live and die on as the mainland? They send us over clothing, and food, and books. You see for yourself how comfortable"—and he waved his hand about.