I am glad to recall that this boyish love took a turn so chivalrous....
When ’twas noised abroad that my uncle was to refit the Shining Light, Twist Tickle grew hilarious. “Laugh an you will, lads,” says my uncle, then about the business of distributing genial invitations to the hauling-down. “’Tis a gift o’ the good Lord t’ be able t’ do it. The ol’ girl out there haven’t a wonderful lot 177 to admire, an’ she’s nowhere near t’ windward o’ forty; but I’ll show ye, afore I’m through, that she’ll stand by in a dirty blow, an I jus’ asks she t’ try. Ye’ll find, lads,” says he, “when ye’re so old as me, an’ sailed t’ foreign parts, that they’s more to a old maid or a water-side widow than t’ many a lass o’ eighteen. The ol’ girl out there haves a mean allowance o’ beauty, but she’ve a character that isn’t talked about after dark; an’ when I buys her a pair o’ shoes an’ a new gown, why, ecod! lads, ye’ll think she’s a lady. ’Tis one way,” says he, “that ladies is made.”
This occurred at Eli Flack’s stage of an evening when a mean, small catch was split and the men-folk were gathered for gossip. ’Twas after sunset, with fog drifting in on a lazy wind: a glow of red in the west. Our folk were waiting for the bait-skiff, which had long been gone for caplin, skippered, this time, by the fool of Twist Tickle.
“Whatever,” says my uncle, “they’ll be a darn o’ rum for ye, saved and unsaved, when she’ve been hauled down an’ scraped. An’ will ye come t’ the haulin’-down?”
That they would!
“I knowed ye would,” says my uncle, as he stumped away, “saved an’ unsaved.”
The bait-skiff conch-horn sounded. The boat had entered the narrows. ’Twas coming slowly through the quiet evening––laden with bait for the fishing of to-morrow. Again the horn––echoing sweetly, faintly, among the hills of Twin Islands. ’Twas Moses Shoos 178 that blew; there was no mistaking the long-drawn blast.
Ah, well! she needed the grooming, this Shining Light, whatever the occasion. ’Twas scandalous to observe her decay in idleness. She needed the grooming––this neglected, listless, slatternly old maid of a craft. A craft of parts, to be sure, as I had been told; but a craft left to slow wreck, at anchor in quiet water. Year by year, since I could remember the days of my life, in summer and winter weather she had swung with the tides or rested silent in the arms of the ice. I had come to Twist Tickle aboard, as the tale of my infancy ran, on the wings of a nor’east gale of some pretensions; and she had with heroic courage weathered a dirty blow to land me upon the eternal rocks of Twin Islands. For this––though but an ancient story, told by old folk to engage my presence in the punts and stages of our harbor––I loved her, as a man, Newfoundland born and bred, may with propriety love a ship.