The cloud comes down on the great sinking deep,
And on the shore, the watchers stand and weep.
So the busy fishing season passed away, and was a very fortunate one, until it was nearly over. Then there were several days of foggy, dismal weather, and one night when the nets were down a sudden violent storm drove from the north, and the boats, being at that time mostly open boats, shipped water at every sea. The greatest hurry and confusion followed, and they were finally compelled to cut the nets adrift, glad indeed to lose all, if they could only make the first shelter. And mothers and wives, standing helpless at the little windows of their cottages, watched the storm, while the men they loved were fighting the furious tempest in the black night.
“God help my men!” prayed Margot. She was weeping like a child, but yet in her anguish full of faith in God’s mercy, and looking trustfully to Him 62 to send her men home again. “I’ll ne’er fret for the nets,” she said, “they’ll hav’ to go, nae doubt o’ that. Let them go! But oh, Feyther i’ heaven, send hame my men folk!”
Ah! Women who spend such nights may well call caller herrin’ “the lives o’ men”!
In the misty daylight, the men and the boats came into harbor, but the nets in every boat—each net about eight hundred and fifty yards long—were totally lost. However, the herring season was practically over. Indeed, the men were at the point of exhaustion, for the total take had been very large, and there is scarcely any human labor more severe on the physical endurance, than the fishing for caller herrin’.
It was just at this time that Neil Ruleson had to leave Culraine for Aberdeen. He was to finish his course at the Maraschal College this year, and never before had he gone there so well provided, and never before had he felt so poor. For though he had received the unlooked-for sum of two hundred pounds for his services, he felt it to be unequal to his ambitious requirements, six weeks at Ballister House having taught him to regard many little comforts as absolute necessities.
“I am very nearly a lawyer now,” he reflected, “a professional man, and I must try and look like it, and live like it. The bare room and unfashionable clothing of the past must be changed to more respectable quarters, and more appropriate garments.” 63 Of course he knew that Christine would not permit him to injure his future fine prospects, but he had promised to repay the ninety pounds he had borrowed from her out of his first earnings, and he felt that the money was now due, and that he ought to pay it. But if he did so, he must simplify all his plans, and he had taken so much pleasure and pains in arranging the surroundings of his last session, that he was exceedingly loth to surrender even the least important of them.
While he was packing his trunk, and deliberating on this subject, the great storm came, and his father barely saved the boat and the lives of the men in her. The nets were gone, and his mother asked him plainly if he could not help his father to replace them.
“I will do so gladly, Mother,” he answered, “when I have paid my college fees, and the like, I will see what I can spare—there is Christine’s money!” he continued, in a troubled, thoughtful manner—and Margot answered,