“Dannie,” my uncle burst out, flashing upon me with a twinkle, as when I was a lad, “I ’low I’ve fetched ye up very well: for say what ye will, ’twas a wonderful little anchor I give ye t’ hold to!”
I went then to the little bed where as a child I lay waiting for sleep to come bearing fairy dreams. ’Twas still and dusky in the room: the window, looking out 327 upon the wide, untroubled waters, was a square of glory; and the sea whispered melodiously below, as it had done long, long ago, when my uncle fended my childish heart from all the fears of night and day. I looked out upon the waste of sea and sky and rock, where the sombre wonder of the dusk was working, clouds in embers, cliffs and water turning to shadows; and I was comforted by this returning beauty. I repeated the twenty-third psalm, according to my teaching, reverently kneeling, as I was bid; and my heart responded, as it has never failed to do. I remembered: I remembered the windless dusks and fresh winds and black gales through which as a child I had here serenely gone to sleep because my uncle sat awake and watchful below. I remembered his concern and diffident caresses in the night when I had called to him to come: I remembered all that he had borne and done to provide the happiness and welfare he sought in loving patience to give the child he had. Once again, as when I was a child, the sea and sunset took my soul as a harp to stir with harmonious chords of faith; and I was not disquieted any more––nor in any way troubled concerning the disclosure of that black mystery in which I had thrived to this age of understanding. And ’twas in this mood––this grateful recollection of the multitudinous kindnesses of other years––that I got up from my knees to return to my uncle.
“Dannie,” says he, having been waiting, it seemed, to tell me this, first of all, “ye’ll remember––will ye not?––for your guidance an’ comfort, that ’tis not a tie 328 o’ blood betwixt you an’ ol’ Nick Top. He’s no kin t’ shame ye: he’s on’y a chance acquaintance.”
The tale began at the waning of the evening glory....
“Your father an’ me, lad,” said my uncle, “was shipmates aboard the Will-o’-the-Wisp when she was cast away in a nor’east gale on the Devil’s Teeth, near twenty year ago: him bein’ the master an’ me but a hand aboard. How old is you now, Dannie? Nineteen? Well, well! You was but six months come from above, lad, when that big wind blowed your father’s soul t’ hell; an’ your poor mother was but six months laid away. We was bound up from the Labrador that night, with a cargo o’ dry fish, picked up ’long shore in haste, t’ fill out a foreign bark at Twillingate. ’Twas late in the fall o’ the year, snow in the wind, the sea heapin’ up in mountains, an’ the night as black as a wolf’s throat. Your father was crowdin’ on, Dannie, in the way he had, bein’ a wonderful driver, an’ I ’lowed he was fetchin’ too close t’ the Harborless Shore for safety; but I wouldn’t tell un so, lad, for I didn’t know un so well as I knows you, bein’ on’y a hand aboard, ye see, with a word or two t’ le’ward of what ye might call a speakin’ acquaintance with the skipper. I ’lowed he’d strike the Rattler; but he cleared the Rattler, by good luck, an’ fetched up at dawn on the Devil’s Teeth, a mean, low reef o’ them parts, where the poor Will-o’-the-Wisp broke her back an’ went on in splinters with the sea an’ wind. ’Twas over soon, Dannie; ’twas all over soon, by kindness o’ 329 Providence: the ol’ craft went t’ pieces an’ was swep’ on t’ le’ward by the big black waves.”
In the pause my uncle’s hand again searched the low table for the glass that was not there.
“I’m not wantin’ t’ tell ye,” he muttered.
I would not beg him to stop.