CHAPTER XI.
TORBAY.—FLAKES AND FISH-HOUSES.—THE FISHING BARGE.—THE CLIFFS.—THE RETREAT TO FLAT ROCK HARBOR.—WILLIAM WATERMAN, THE FISHERMAN.
Torbay, finely described in a recent novel by the Rev. R. T. S. Lowell, is an arm of the sea, a short, strong arm with a slim hand and finger, reaching into the rocky land, and touching the waterfalls and rapids of a pretty brook. Here is a little village, with Romish and Protestant steeples, and the dwellings of fishermen, with the universal appendages of fishing-houses, boats and flakes. One seldom looks upon a hamlet so picturesque and wild. The rocks slope steeply down to the wonderfully clear water. Thousands of poles support half-acres of the spruce-bough shelf, beneath which is a dark, cool region, crossed with footpaths, and not unfrequently sprinkled and washed by the surf,—a most kindly office on the part of the sea, you will allow, when once you have scented the fish-offal perpetually dropping from the evergreen fish-house above. These little buildings on the flakes are conspicuous features, and look as fresh and wild as if they had just wandered away from the woodlands.
There they stand, on the edge of the lofty pole-shelf, or upon the extreme end of that part of it which runs off frequently over the water like a wharf, an assemblage of huts and halls, bowers and arbors, a curious huddle made of poles and sweet-smelling branches and sheets of birch-bark. A kind of evening haunts these rooms of spruce, at noonday, while at night a hanging lamp, like those we see in old pictures of crypts and dungeons, is to the stranger only a kind of buoy by which he is to steer his way through the darkness. To come off then without pitching headlong, and soiling your hands and coat, is the merest chance. Strange! one is continually allured into these piscatory bowers whenever he comes near them. In spite of the chilly, salt air, and the repulsive smells about the tables where they dress the fish, I have a fancy for these queer structures. Their front door opens upon the sea, and their steps are a mammoth ladder, leading down to the swells and the boats. There is a charm also about fine fishes, fresh from the net and the hook,—the salmon, for example, whose pink and yellow flesh has given a name to one of the most delicate hues of Art or Nature.
But where was the iceberg? We were not a little disappointed when all Torbay was before us, and nothing but dark water to be seen. To our surprise, no one had ever seen or heard of it. It must lie off Flat Bock Harbor, a little bay below, to the north. We agreed with the supposition that the berg must lie below, and made speedy preparations to pursue, by securing the only boat to be had in the village,—a substantial fishing-barge, laden rather heavily in the stern with at least a cord of cod-seine, but manned by six stalwart men, a motive power, as it turned out, none too large for the occasion. We embarked at the foot of a fish-house ladder, being carefully handed down by the kind-hearted men, and took our seats forward on the little bow-deck. All ready, they pulled away at their long, ponderous oars, with the skill and deliberation of life-long practice, and we moved out upon the broad, glassy swells of the bay towards the open sea, not indeed with the rapidity of a Yankee club-boat, but with a most agreeable steadiness, and a speed happily fitted for a review of the shores, which, under the afternoon sun, were made brilliant with lights and shadows.
We were presently met by a breeze, which increased the swell, and made it easier to fall in close under the northern shore, a line of stupendous precipices, to which the ocean goes deep home. The ride beneath these mighty cliffs was by far the finest boat-ride of my life. While they do not equal the rocks of the Saguenay, yet, with all their appendages of extent, structure, complexion and adjacent sea, they are sufficiently lofty to produce an almost appalling sense of sublimity. The surges lave them at a great height, sliding from angle to angle, and fretting into foam as they slip obliquely along the face of the vast walls. They descend as deeply as two hundred feet, and rise perpendicularly two, three, and four hundred feet from the water. Their stratifications are up and down, and of different shades of light and dark, a ribbed and striped appearance that increases the effect of height, and gives variety and spirit to the surface.
At one point, where the rocks advance from the main front, and form a kind of headland, the strata, six and eight feet thick, assume the form of a pyramid, from a broad base of a hundred yards or more running up to meet in a point. The heart of this vast cone has partly fallen out, and left the resemblance of an enormous tent with cavernous recesses and halls, in which the shades of evening were already lurking, and the surf was sounding mournfully. Occasionally it was musical, pealing forth like the low tones of a great organ with awful solemnity. Now and then, the gloomy silence of a minute was broken by the crash of a billow far within, when the reverberations were like the slamming of great doors.
After passing this grand specimen of the architecture of the sea, there appeared long rocky reaches, like Egyptian temples, old dead cliffs of yellowish gray, checked off by lines and seams into squares, and having the resemblance, where they have fallen out into the ocean, of doors and windows opening in upon the fresher stone. Presently we came to a break, where there were grassy slopes and crags intermingled, and a flock of goats skipping about, or ruminating in the warm sunshine. A knot of kids—the reckless little creatures!—were sporting along the edge of the precipice in a manner almost painful to witness. The pleasure of leaping from point to point, where a single mis-step would have dropped them hundreds of feet, seemed to be in proportion to the danger. The sight of some women, who were after the goats, reminded the boatmen of an accident which occurred here only a few days before: a lad playing about the steep, fell into the sea, and was drowned.
We were now close upon the point just behind which we expected to behold the iceberg. The surf was sweeping the black reef, that flanked the small cape, in the finest style,—a beautiful dance of breakers of dazzling white and green. As every stroke of the oars shot us forward, and enlarged our view of the field in which the ice was reposing, our hearts fairly throbbed with an excitement of expectation. “There it is!” one exclaimed. An instant revealed the mistake. It was only the next headland in a fog, which unwelcome mist was now coming down upon us from the broad waters, and covering the very tract where the berg was expected to be seen. Further and further out the long, strong sweep of the great oars carried us, until the depth of the bay between us and the next headland was in full view. It may appear almost too trifling a matter over which to have had any feeling worth mentioning or remembering, but I shall not soon forget the disappointment, when from the deck of our barge, as it rose and sank on the large swells, we stood up and looked around, and saw that if the iceberg, over which our very hearts had been beating with delight for twenty-four hours, was anywhere, it was somewhere in the depths of that untoward fog. It might as well have been in the depths of the ocean.
While the pale cloud slept there, there was nothing left for us but to wait patiently where we were, or retreat. We chose the latter. C—— gave the word to pull for the settlement, at the head of the little bay just mentioned, and so they rounded the breakers on the reef, and we turned away for the second time, when the game, as we had thought, was fairly ours. Even the hardy fishermen, no lovers of “islands-of-ice,” as they call the bergs, felt for us, as they read in our looks the disappointment, not to say a little vexation. While on our passage in, we filled a half-hour with questions and discussions about that iceberg.
“We certainly saw it yesterday evening; and a soldier of Signal Hill told us that it had been close in at Torbay for several days. And you, my man there, say that you had a glimpse of it last evening. How happens it to be away just now? Where do you think it is?”
“Indeed, sir, he must be out in the fog, a mile or over. De’il a bit can a man look after a thing in a fog more nor into a snow-bank. Maybe, sir, he’s foundered; or he might be gone off to sea altogether, as they sometimes does.”
“Well, this is rather remarkable. Huge as these bergs are, they escape very easily under their old cover. No sooner do we think we have them, than they are gone. No jackal was ever more faithful to his lion, no pilot-fish to his shark, than the fog to its berg. We will run in yonder and inquire about it. We may get the exact bearing, and reach it yet, even in the fog.”
The wind and sea being in our favor, we soon reached a fishery-ladder, which we now knew very well how to climb, and wound our “dim and perilous way” through the evergreen labyrinth of fish-bowers, emerging on the solid rock, and taking the path to the fisherman’s house. Here lives and works and wears himself out, William Waterman, a deep-voiced, broad-chested, round-shouldered wight, dressed, not in cloth of gold, but of oil, with the foxy remnant of a last winter’s fur cap clinging to his large, bony head, a little in the style of a piece of turf to a stone. You seldom look into a more kindly, patient face, or into an eye that more directly lets up the light out of a large, warm heart. His countenance is one sober shadow of honest brown, occasionally lighted by a true and guileless smile. William Waterman has seen the “island-of-ice.” “It lies off there, two miles or more, grounded on a bank, in forty fathoms water.”
It was nearly six o’clock; and yet, as there were signs of the fog clearing away, we thought it prudent to wait. A dull, long hour passed by, and still the sun was high in the north-west. That heavy cod-seine, a hundred fathoms long, sank the stern of our barge rather deeply, and made it row heavily. For all that, there was time enough yet, if we could only use it. The fog still came in masses from the sea, sweeping across the promontory between us and Torbay, and fading into air nearly as soon as it was over the land. In the mean time, we sat upon the rocks—upon the wood-pile—stood around and talked—looked out into the endless mist—looked at the fishermen’s houses—their children—their fowls and dogs. A couple of young women, that might have been teachers of the village school, had there been a school, belles of the place, rather neatly dressed, and with hair nicely combed, tripped shyly by, each with an arm about the other’s waist, and very merry until abreast of us, when they were as silent and downcast as if they had been passing by their sovereign queen, or the Great Mogul. Their curiosity and timidity combined were quite amusing. We speculated upon the astonishment that would have seized upon their simple, innocent hearts, had they beheld, instead of us, a bevy of our city fashionables in full bloom.
At length we accepted an invitation to walk into the house, and sat, not under the good-man’s roof, but under his chimney, a species of large funnel, into which nearly one end of the house resolved itself. Here we sat upon some box-like benches before a wood fire, and warmed ourselves, chatting with the family. While we were making ourselves comfortable and agreeable, we made the novel, and rather funny discovery of a hen sitting on her nest just under the bench, with her red comb at our fingers’ ends. A large griddle hung suspended in the more smoky regions of the chimney, ready to be lowered for the baking of cakes or frying fish. Having tarred my hand, the fisherman’s wife, kind woman, insisted upon washing it herself. After rubbing it with a little grease, she first scratched it with her finger-nail, and then finished with soap and water and a good wiping with a coarse towel. I begged that she would spare herself the trouble, and allow me to help myself. But it was no trouble at all for her, and the greatest pleasure. And what should I know about washing off tar?
They were members of the Church of England, and seemed pleased when they found that I was a clergyman of the Episcopal Church. They had a pastor, who visited them and others in the village occasionally, and held divine service on Sunday at Torbay, where they attended, going in boats in summer, and over the hills on snow-shoes in the winter. The woman told me, in an undertone, that the family relations were not all agreed in their religious faith, and that they could not stop there any longer, but had gone to “America,” which they liked much better. It was a hard country, any way, no matter whether one were Protestant or Papist. Three months were all their summer, and nearly all their time for getting ready for the long, cold winter. To be sure, they had codfish and potatoes, flour and butter, tea and sugar; but then it took a deal of hard work to make ends meet. The winter was not as cold as we thought, perhaps; but then it was so long and snowy! The snow lay five, six, and seven feet deep. Wood was a great trouble. There was a plenty of it, but they could not keep cattle or horses to draw it home. Dogs were their only teams, and they could fetch but small loads at a time. In the mean while, a chubby little boy, with cheeks like a red apple, had ventured from behind his young mother, where he had kept dodging as she moved about the house, and edged himself up near enough to be patted on the head, and rewarded for his little liberties with a half-dime.