A Dream of the North Sea

by James Runciman

"We never talks about durst here, sir. Not many on us doesn't. We'll go, when you goes."

So Lewis cheerily ended his task, and when his man was laid out, with a dry bundle of netting under his head, the doctor bent over him only to smile in his face quietly. He never looked at himself in a glass excepting to part his hair; but he had learned that something in his look tended to hearten his patients, so he gazed merrily at the cripple and said, "Now, when you're better, tell your friends Professor Ferrier said you were the pluckiest fellow he ever saw. I couldn't have borne what you did. You are a real good, game bit of stuff! and don't let any one tell me otherwise."

This unconscionable young doctor was picking up the proper tone for the North Sea; he had no airs, and, when his boat was reeling away to his own vessel again over the powdery crests of the sea, an Aldeburgh fisherman said, "Well, Joe, be sewer, he's a wunnerful fine gent, that is! He's the wunnerfullest, finest gent ever I fared for to see. And that he is—solid."

"Yes, Jimmy," said the skipper. "It's my belief, in a way o' speakin', that if that theer mizen-boom catched you and knocked your head off, that theer wunnerful young gent 'ud come, and he'd have his laugh, and he'd up and he'd mend you, same as if you'd never come adrift, not one little bit. What a thing is larnin', to be sewer. Yes, sir, he'd mend you. Nobody knows what he can dew, and nobody knows what he can't dew. If we puts to this night—and I don't know why not, for we're sailin'—if we gets a turbot I'll pay for it, and he'll have that theer fish if I swims for it."

"You've always got a good way o' puttin' things, skipper, and I says I holds 'long o' you."

The patient slumbered blissfully in the dreary cabin, which could only be likened to a bewitched laundry in which things were always being washed and never cleaned; the men awaited the Admiral's signal; the snow thickened into ponderous falling masses;—and the professor jumped on deck, to be met with a loud boom of gratification by Tom, who had begun to dread the snow.

I like to think of that young gentleman faring over the treacherous lulls of sad water amid the sinister eddies of the snowstorm. I wonder if any other country could produce a gently-nurtured young scholar who would make a similar journey. It seems doubtful, and more than doubtful.

Tom had been reading to the paralyzed fisherman, and, although his ordinary tones had too much of the minute-gun about them to suit small apartments, he could lower his voice to a quiet deep bass which was anything but unpleasant, and he had completely charmed the poor helpless one by reading—or rather intoning—"Evangeline." Seafaring folk will have sentiment in their literature and music; humour must be of the most obvious sort to suit them—in fact they usually care only for the horseplay of literature—but pathos of any sort they accept at once, and Tom had tears of pride in his eyes when he told Lewis how the man had understood the first part of the poem, and how he had talked for a good half-hour about the eviction of the Acadians, and its resemblance to the fate of various fishermen's wives who had got behind with their rents. The evening closed in a troublous horror of great darkness, and the anxious night began. Ferrier always made up his mind to stay below at night, and he amused himself either by snatching a chat with the skipper, or by reading one or two good novels which he had brought. But imagine the desolation, the sombre surroundings, the risks to be run every hour—every second—and you will understand that those two English gentlemen had something in them passing self-interest, passing all that the world has to offer. Ferrier never dreamed of becoming a nautical recluse; he was too full of the joy of life for that: but he had a purpose, and he went right at his mark like a bullet from a rifle. Once that evening he went on deck and tried to peer through the wall of trembling darkness that surrounded him; the view made him feel like the victim in Poe's awful Inquisition story—the walls seemed to be closing in. Faintly the starboard light shone, so that the snowflakes crossed its path like dropping emeralds that shone a little in glory and then fell dark; on the other side a fitful stream of rubies seemed to be pouring; the lurid gleam from the cabin shone up the hatchway;—and, for the rest, there was cold, darkness, the shadow of dread, and yet the lookout-men were singing a duet as if death were not. The freezing drift was enough to stop one's breath, but the lads were quite at ease, and, to the air of a wicked old shanty, they sang about weathering the storm and anchoring by and by. Ferrier was not a conscious poet;—alas! had he the fearful facility which this sinful writer once possessed, I shudder to think of the sufferings of his friends when he described the brooding weariness of this night in verse. He bottled up his verses and turned them all into central fire; but he had poetry in every fibre all the same.

Tom remarked, "This is very much like being iced for market. I wonder what we could possibly do, if anything came into us as that barque did? Let's talk about home."

"Pleasant indoors now; I can see the fire on the edges of the furniture. The very thought of a hearthrug seems like a heathen luxury. What will you do first when you get home, Tom?"