The Deemster

by Sir Hall Caine

So I set to work, and roofed it with driftwood and turf and gorse; and then, with lime from a cliff at the Tubdale Creek in the Calf, I whitened it within and without, walls and roof. A door I made in somewise, and for a window I had a piece of transparent skin, having no glass. And when all was made ready I moved my goods from the boat to my house, taking all that seemed necessary—flour, and meat, and salt, and my implements, as well as my bed and the spare clothes I had, which were not many.

I had been in no haste with this work, being well content with such employment, but it came to an end at last, and the day that I finished my task was a day late in the first year after my cutting off. This I knew because the nights were long, and I had been trying with my watch to cast on the shortest day, and thereby recover my lost count of time. On the night of my first sleeping in my new home there came a fierce storm of wind and rain from the east. Four hours the gale lasted, and often the gulls were dashed screaming at the walls wherein I sat by the first fire I had yet kindled on my hearth. Toward midnight the wind fell suddenly to a dead calm, and, looking out, I saw that the moon was coming very bright in its rising from behind a heavy cloud over the sea. So, wondering what chance had befallen my boat—for though I had left it I had a tenderness for it and meant perchance to use it again—I set out for the sound. When I got to the head of the cliff I could plainly see the rocks of Kitterland, and the whole length of the Doon Creek, but where my boat had been moored no boat could I see, nor any trace of one from Fistard Head on the east to Half-Walk Rock on the west. Next morning, under a bright winter's sun, I continued the search for my boat, and with the rising tide at noon I saw her thrown up on to the beach of the Doon, dismasted, without spar or boom, bilged below her water-line, and altogether a hopeless hulk. I made some scabbling shift to pull her above high-water mark, and then went my ways.

Now this loss, for so I considered it, did at first much to depress me, thinking, with a bitter envy of my late past, that my future showed me a far more unblessed condition, seeing that I was now forever imprisoned on this island and could never leave it again whatsoever evil might befall. But when I had thought twice upon it, my mind came to that point that I was filled with gratitude; first, because the wrecking of my boat on the very day of my leaving it seemed to give assurance that, in making my home on the land, I had done that which was written for me to do; and next, because I must inevitably have been swallowed up in the storm if I had stayed on the sea a single night longer. And my terror of death was such that to have escaped the peril of it seemed a greater blessing than releasement from this island could ever be.

Every day thereafter, and oftenest at daybreak, I walked up to the crest of the rising ground at the back of my house, and stood awhile looking down on Cregneesh, and watching for the white smoke that lay like a low cloud over the hollow place wherein Port Erin lay. After that I had done this I felt strangely refreshed, as by a sense of companionship, and went about my work, such as it was, with content. But on a bitter morning, some time in December, as I thought, I came upon a sight that wellnigh froze my heart within me; for, outstretched on the bare moorland, under the bleak sky and in the lee of a thick gorse bush tipped with yellow, I found the witless man, Billy the Bees, lying cold and dead. His bare chest was blue, as with starvation, under the soot wherewith in his simpleness he had blackened it, and his pinched face told of privation and of pain. And now that he lay stretched out dead, I saw that he had been a man of my own stature. In his hut, which was farther away than my own house from the place where he lay, there was neither bite nor sup, and his dogs seemed to have deserted him in his poverty, for they were gone. The air had softened perceptibly for some minutes while I went thither, and as I returned to the poor body wondering what to do with it, the snow began to fall in big flakes. "It will cover it," I said with myself. "The snow will bury it," I thought; and casting a look back over my shoulder, I went home with a great burden of trouble upon me.

All that day, and other two days, the snow continued to fall, until the walls of my house were blocked up to the level of my window, and I had to cut a deep trench to the gable where I piled my wood. And for more than a week following, shut in from my accustomed walk I sat alone in the great silence and tried to keep my mind away from the one fearful thought that now followed it. Remembering those long hours and the sorry employments I found for them—scrabbling on all-fours in play with Millish-veg-veen, laughing loud, and barking back at the dog's shrill bark, I could almost weep while here I write to think of the tragic business that was at the same time lying heavy on my spirit. Christmas Day fell while thus I was imprisoned, for near to midnight I heard the church bells ring for Oiel Verree.

When the snow began to melt I saw that the dog put his muzzle to the bottom of the door instantly, and as often as I drove him away he returned to the same place. I will not say what awful thing came to my mind, knowing a dog's nature, and how near to my door lay the body of the witless man; only that I shuddered with a fear that was new to me when I remembered that, by the curse I lived under, the time would come when my unburied bones would lie on the bare face of the moor.

As soon as the snow had melted down to within a foot's depth of the earth I went out of my house and turned toward where my poor neighbor lay; but before I had come close to him I saw that three men were coming over the hillside by way of Port-le-Mary, and, wishing not to be seen by them, I crept back and lay by the hinder wall of my house to watch what they did. Then I saw that they came up to the body of the witless man and saw it, and stood over it some minutes talking earnestly, and then passed along on their way. And as they walked they turned aside and came close up by the front of my house, and looked in at the window, pushing the skin away. Standing by the wall, holding Veg-veen by the throat lest he should betray me, I heard some words the men said each to the other before they went on again.

"Well, man, he's dead at last, poor craythur," said one, "and good-luck too."

And the other answered, "Aw, dear, to think, to think! No man alive could stand up agen it. Aw, ter'ble, ter'ble!"

"I was at the Tynwald myself yander day," said the first, "and I'll give it a year, I was saying, to finish him, and behould ye, he's lying dead in half the time."