According to Tumm, the clerk of the Quick as Wink, which traded our harbor, Twin Islands are t’ the west’ard o’ the Scarf o’ Fog, a bit below the Blue Gravestones, where the Soldier o’ the Cross was picked up by Satan’s Tail in the nor’easter o’ the Year o’ the Big Shore Catch. “Oh, I knows un!” says he. “You opens the Tickle when you rounds Cocked Hat o’ the Hen-an’-Chickens an’ lays a course for Gentleman Cove, t’other side o’ the bay. Good harbor in dirty weather,” says he: “an’, ecod! my lads, a hearty folk.” 71 This is forbidding enough, God knows! as to situation; but though the ancient islands, scoured by wind and rain, are set in a misty isolation and show gray, grimly wrinkled faces to the unkind sea, betraying no tenderness, they are green and genial in the places within: there are valleys; and the sun is no idler, and the lean earth of those parts is not to be discouraged.
“God-forsaken place, Nick!” quoth Tom Bull, at the Anchor and Chain.
“How was you knowin’ that, Tom?” says my uncle. “You isn’t never been there.”
“Sounds God-forsaken.”
“So does hell.”
“Well, hell is.”
“There you goes again, Tom Bull!” cries my uncle, with a sniff and wrathful twitch of the lip. “There you goes again, you dunderhead––jumpin’ t’ conclusions!”
Tom Bull was shocked.
“Hell God-forsaken!” growls my uncle. “They’s more hard labor for the good Lord t’ do in hell, Tom Bull, than any place I knows on; an’ I ’low He’s right there, kep’ double watches on the jump, a-doin’ of it!”
Twist Tickle pursues an attenuated way between the Twins, broadening into the harbor basin beyond the Pillar o’ Cloud, narrowing at the Finger and Thumb, widening, once more, into the lower harbor, and escaping to the sea, at last, between Pretty Willie and the Lost Soul, which are great bare heads. You get a glimpse of the Tickle from the deck of the mail-boat: 72 this when she rounds the Cocked Hat and wallows off towards Gentleman Cove. ’Tis but a niggardly glimpse at best, and vastly unfair to the graces of the place: a white house, wee and listlessly tilted, gripping a rock, as with expiring interest; a reach of placid water, deep and shadowy, from which rise the hills, gray, rugged, splashed with green; heights beyond, scarfed with clinging wisps of mist.