CHAPTER XIII
Among the Fisherfolk
This night was not different from other nights along the western shores and estuaries of the Sound Country. For that matter, the people of the Hunting Quarter and Cedar Island section are not very greatly changed in their manners and customs from those of their forebears of many generations ago. Grouped in small settlements of just a few houses each, they live there to-day after the fashion of those same forebears in almost every detail. The houses are the same or at least they are carefully patterned after those built by the first settlers so many generations ago.
There is no doubt concerning the ancestry of these folk. A little conversation with the natives is enough to make one realize that he is listening here to a speech redolent of the days of Chaucer, a speech richly flavored with the colloquialisms of the Elizabethan era. Some of the familiar folk-lore tales might well have emanated from the poet himself, both for their language and their spirit.
And these descendants of an early English stock have preserved not only the ancient speech, but they have maintained the generous courtesy of a former time, when Sir Walter Raleigh spread his mantle in the mire in order that his queen might pass dry shod. And real courtesy includes always an unhesitating and ungrudging hospitality. The dwellers in this isolated region are surpassed by none in their warm welcome of any wayfarer who may come to them.
They have no highway or railroad connection with the outside world. The only means is voyaging by small boats, a method necessarily slow at the best, and often quite impossible. It is claimed that good roads and the railways are essential factors in the education of any community, and the claim is, doubtless, just. But it would be well, perhaps, if some of those who boast of their education were to be cast among these illiterates, there to gain a new appreciation of their own language, shorn of its modern barbarities and the atrocities of slang. It is a curious fact that many of these persons who can neither read nor write, nevertheless, possess a vocabulary beyond that of many a grammar-school graduate. Schools have been few and far between in this lonely place. Yet the very isolation has tended to preserve the purity of the local speech.
To-night the inhabitants of the settlement are resting upon their tiny porches, for the air is over-warm and only the slightest bit of breeze is stirring. What little there is of it comes from the forest hard by, and brings with it a plague of numberless mosquitoes. Because of them a huge smudge is kept going close beside every house. But for this defense the insects' victims would be forced to take refuge within doors, with every window and door fast shut. But, after all, they are accustomed to this affliction whenever the wind blows off the land. They seem to suffer little, if at all, from the volume of smoke that would strangle the unaccustomed. It would seem indeed that they would require no masks against the poisonous gases loosed against them by a warrior foe. The most patient sufferers from the pests are those young ladies who are entertaining their lovers. Those of their age go barefooted late this season. The smoke does not lie close to the floor. So they are kept busy slapping at ankles and toes while they listen as best they can to the words of love uttered by their suitors.
But to-night most of the men are fishing. The season for the gray trout or weak fish has arrived. Of late years a new method for successfully catching them has crept in from the Beaufort section, whither it was brought by some unknown foreigner. After its first coming, it was quickly taken up by all the dwellers along the Sound. The method of it is to suspend a fire of lightwood knots, which is built within a hollow, gratelike iron frame over the water. The fire throws a strong light into the depths, which attracts the fish in swarms. As they come close to the surface, toward the fire of pine knots, the fisherman deftly slips beneath them a net shaped like those used for crabbing. By a quick upward movement, the wriggling fish are drawn safely to skiff or shore as the case may be.
Such a method of fishing will not appeal to a disciple of Izaak Walton, but one must remember that these primitive folk are not fishing for the sport that is to be found in the pursuit. It is their way of earning a livelihood. It is a matter of necessity, not of choice, with them.