She's All the World to Me. Hall Sir Caine
was at hand, the fishermen, to the number of several hundred men and boys, trooped off to the shore of the bay. There they were joined by a great multitude of women and children. Presently the vicar appeared, and, standing in an open boat, he offered the customary prayer for the blessing of God on the fishing expedition which was now setting out.
"Restore and continue to us the harvest of the sea!"
And the men, on their knees in the sand, with uncovered heads, and faces in their hats, murmured "Yn Meailley."
Then they separated, the fishermen returning to their boats.
Bill Kisseck leaped aboard the lugger that lay at the mouth of the harbor. His six men followed him. "See all clear," he shouted to Danny, who sailed with him as boy. Danny stood on the quay with the duty of clearing ropes from blocks, and then following in the dingey that was moored to the steps.
Among the women who had come down to the harbor to see the departure of the fleet were two who bore no very close resemblance to the great body of the townswomen. One was an elderly woman, with a thin sad face. The other was a young women, of perhaps two or three and twenty, tall and muscular, with a pale cast of countenance, large brown eyes, and rich auburn hair. The face, though strong and beautiful, was not radiant with happiness, and yet it recalled very vividly a glint of human sunshine that we have known before.
In another moment little Ruby, red with running, pranced up to their side, crying, "Mona, come and see Danny Fayle's boat. Here, look, there; that one with the color on the deck."
The admiral's boat was to carry a flag.
The two women were pulled along by the little sprite and stopped just where Danny himself was untying a knot in a rope. Danny recognized them, lifted his hat, blushed, looked confused, and seemed for the moment to forget the cable.
"Tail on there!" shouted Bill Kisseck from the lugger. "Show a leg there, if you don't want the rat's tail. D'ye hear?"
Danny was fumbling with his cap. That poor lagging lower lip was giving a yearning look to the lad's simple face. He muttered some commonplace to Mona, and then dropped his head. At that instant his eyes fell on the lower part of her dress. The blue serge of her gown was bleached near her feet. Danny, who could think of nothing else to say, mumbled something about the salt water having taken the color out of Mona's dress. The girl looked down, and then said quietly:
"Yes, I was caught by the tide last night – I mean to say, I was – "
She was clearly trying to recall her words, but poor Danny had hardly heard them.
"You cursed booby!" cried Bill Kisseck, leaping ashore, "prating with a pack of women when I'm a-waiting for you. I'll make you walk handsome over the bricks, my man."
With that he struck Danny a terrible blow and felled him.
The lad got up abashed, and without a word turned to his work. Kisseck, still in a tempest of wrath, was leaping back to the lugger, when the young woman stepped up to him, looked fearlessly in his face, seemed about to speak, checked herself, and turned away.
Kisseck stood measuring her from head to foot with his eyes, broke into a little bitter laugh, and said:
"I'm right up and down like a yard of pumpwater; that's what I am."
He jumped aboard again. Danny ran the rope from the blocks, the admiral's boat cleared away, and the flag shot up to the mast-head. The other boats followed one after one to the number of nearly one hundred. The bay was full of them.
When Kisseck's boat had cleared the harbor, Danny ran down the steps of the pier with eyes still averted from the two women and the child, got into the dingey, took an oar and began to scull after it.
"Sissy, Sissy," cried Ruby, tugging at Mona's dress, "look at Danny's little boat. What's the name that is on it in red letters?"
"'Ben-my-Chree,'" the young woman answered.
Then the herring fleet sailed away under the glow of the setting sun.
CHAPTER V
CHRISTIAN MYLREA
It was late when young Christian Mylrea got back to Balladhoo that night of Kerruish Kinvig's visit. "I've been up for a walk to the Monument on Horse Hill," he remarked, carelessly, as he sat down at the piano and touched it lightly to the tune of "Drink to me only with thine eyes." "Poor old Corrin," he said, pausing with two fingers on the keyboard, "what a crazy old heretic he must have been to elect to bury himself up yonder." Then, in a rich full tenor, Christian sang a bar or two of "Sally in our Alley."
The two older men were still seated at opposite sides of the table smoking leisurely. Mylrea Balladhoo told Christian of the errand on which he had wished to send him.
"The light? Ah, yes," said Christian, turning his head between the rests in his song, "curious, that, wasn't it? Do you know that coming round by the pier I noticed that the light had gone out; so" – (a run up the piano) – "so, after ineffectual attempts to rouse that sad dog of a harbor-master of yours, dad, I went up into the box and lit it myself. You see it's burning now."
"Humph! so it is," grunted Kerruish Kinvig, who had got up in the hope of discrediting the statement.
"Only the wick run down, that was all," said Christian, who had turned to the piano again, and was rattling off a lively French catch.
Christian Mylrea was a handsome young fellow of five or six and twenty, with a refined expression and easy manner, educated, genial, somewhat irresolute one might say, with a weak corner to his mouth; naturally of a sportive disposition, but having an occasional cast of thoughtfulness; loving a laugh, but finding it rather apt of late to die away abruptly on his lips.
Getting up to go, Kinvig said, "Christian, my man, you've not seen my new net-looms since you came home. Wonderful inventions! Wonderful! Extraordinary! Talk of your locomotive – pshaw! Come down, man, and see them at work in the morning."
Christian reflected for a moment. "I will," he said, in a more serious tone than the occasion seemed to require. "Yes, I'll do that," he said.
"In the morning!" said Mylrea Balladhoo. "To-morrow is the first day of the herrings – no time for new net-looms to-morrow at all."
"The herrings!" shouted Kinvig from the door in an accent of high disdain.
"Nothing like leather," said Christian laughing. "Let it be the morning after," he added; and so it was agreed.
Next day Christian busied himself a little among the fishing-smacks that were the property of his father, or were, at least, known by his father's name. He went in and sat among the fisher-fellows with a cheery voice and pleasant face. Everywhere he was a favorite. When his back was turned it was: "None o' yer ransy-tansy-tisimitee about Misther Christian; none o' yer 'Well, my good man,' and the like o' that; awful big and could, sem as if they'd jist riz from the dead." Or perhaps, "No criss-crossing about the young masther; allis preachin'; and 'I'll kermoonicate yer bad behavior' and all that jaw." Or again, more plaintively, "I wish he were a bit more studdy-like, and savin'. Of coorse, of coorse, me and him's allis been middlin' well acquent."
CHAPTER VI
THE NET FACTORY
The morning after the fleet left the harbor, Christian walked down to Kerruish Kinvig's house, and together they went over the net factory. In a large room facing the sea a dozen hand-looms for the manufacture of drift-nets had been set up. Each loom was worked by a young woman, and she had three levers to keep in action – one with the hand and the others with the feet.
Kinvig explained, with all the ardor of an enthusiast, the manifold advantage of the new loom over the old one with which Christian was familiar; dwelt on the knots, the ties and the speed; exhibited a new reel for the unwinding of the cotton thread from the skein, and described a new method of barking when the nets come off the looms. Pausing now and then with the light of triumph in his eyes, he shouted, "Where's your Geordie Stephenson now? Eh?"
Christian listened with every appearance of rapt attention, and from time to time put questions which were at least respectably relevant. A quicker eye than Kerruish Kinvig's might perhaps have seen that