Bones and I

by G. J. Whyte-Melville

An ancient mariner who frequents the beach below the boat-house feels, I am convinced, thoroughly persuaded that his occupation is strictly professional, that he is himself a necessity, not of amusement, but business. He will tell you that when the wind veers round like that, “suddenways, off Kensington Gardens, you may look out for squalls;” that “last Toosday was an awful wild night, and some on ’em broke from their moorings afore he could turn out. The Bellerophon, bless ye, was as nigh lost as could be, and that there Water Lily, the sweetest thing as ever swam—she sprang her boom, damaged her bowsprit, and broke her nose. He was refitting all Wens’day, he was, up to two o’clock, and a precious job he had!”

Every one who constantly “takes his walks abroad” in the Great City, becomes a philosopher in spite of himself, of the Peripatetic School, no doubt, but still a philosopher; so you sympathise mildly with the mariner’s troubles; for to you no human interests are either great or small, nor does one pursuit or person bore you more than another. You hazard an opinion, therefore, that the Water Lily is somewhat too delicate and fragile a craft to encounter boisterous weather, even on such an inland sea as this, and find, to your dismay, that so innocent an observation stamps you in his opinion as not only ignorant, but presumptuous. He considers her both “wholesome,” as he calls it, and “weatherly,” urging on you many considerations of sea-worthiness, such as her false keel, her bulwarks, her breadth of beam, and general calibre. “Why, she’s seven-and-twenty,” says he, rolling a peppermint lozenge round his tongue, just as a real seaman turns a quid; “now look at the Sea-Sarpent lying away to the eastward yonder, just beyond the point where the gravel’s been washed adrift. She’s fifty-two, she is, but I wouldn’t trust her, not in lumpy water, you know, like the schooner. No. If I was a-building of one now, what I call, for all work and all weathers, thirty would be my mark, or from that to thirty-five at the outside!”

“Thirty-five what? Tons?” you ask, a little abashed, and feeling you have committed yourself.

“Tons!” he repeats, in a tone of intense disgust—“tons be blowed! h’inches! I should have thought any landsman might ha’ knowed that—h’inches!” and lurching sulkily into his cabin under the willow-tree, disappears to be seen no more.

Later, when September has begun to tinge the topmost twigs with gold, and autumn, like a beautiful woman, then indeed at her loveliest, who is just upon the wane, dresses in her deepest colours, and her richest garments, go roaming about in Kensington Gardens, and say whether you might not fancy yourself a hundred miles from any such evidences of civilisation as a pillar-post or a cab-stand.

It was but the other day I sauntered through the grove that stands nearest the Uxbridge Road, and, while an afternoon mist limited my range of vision and deadened the sounds of traffic on my ears, I could hardly persuade myself that in less than five minutes I might if I liked make the thirteenth in an omnibus.

Alone? you ask—of course I was. Yet, stay, not quite alone, for with me walked the shadow that, when we have learned to prefer solitude to society, accompanies us in all our wanderings, teaching us, I humbly hope, the inevitable lesson, permanent and precious in proportion to the pain with which the poor scholar gets his task by heart.

Well, I give you my word, the endless stems, the noiseless solitude, the circumscribed horizon, reminded me of those forest ranges in North America that stretch interminable from the waters of the St. Ann’s and the Batsicon to the wild waves breaking dark and sullen on the desert seaboard of Labrador.

I am not joking. I declare to you I was once more in moccasins, blanket-coat, and bonnet-rouge, with an axe in my belt, a pack on my shoulders, and a rifle in my hand, following the track of the treborgons[3] on snow-shoes, in company with Thomas, the French Canadian, and François, the half-breed, and the Huron chief with a name I could never pronounce, that neither I nor any man alive can spell. Ah! it was a merry life we led on those moose-hunting expeditions, in spite of hard work, hard fare, and, on occasion, more than a sufficiency of the discomfort our retainers called expressively misère. There was a strange charm in the marches through those silent forests, across those frozen lakes, all clothed alike in their winter robe of white and diamonds. There was a bold, free, joyous comfort in the hole we dug through a yard and a half of snow, wherein to build our fire, boil our kettle, fry our pork (it is no use talking of such things to you, but I was going to say, never forget a frying-pan on these expeditions; it is worth all the kitchen-ranges in Belgravia), to smoke our tobacco, ay, and to take our rest.

There was something of sweet adventurous romance in waking at midnight to see the stars flash like brilliants through the snow-encrusted branches overhead, wondering vaguely where and why and what were all those countless worlds of flame. Perhaps to turn round again and dream of starry eyes in the settlements, then closed in sleep, or winking drowsily at a night-light, while the pretty watcher pondered, not unmindful of ourselves, pitying us, it may be, couching here in the bush, and thinking in her ignorance how cold we were!