I knew to be true, for, once, I had seen the face of a man who came crawling out.
“The sea is kinder,” I thought.
Whether so or not, I was to prove, at least, that the wilderness was cruel.
One blue day, when the furthest places on sea and land lay in a thin, still haze, my mother and I went to the Watchman to romp. There was place there for a merry gambol, place, even, led by a wiser hand, for roaming and childish adventure—and there were silence and sunlit space and sea and distant mists for the weaving of dreams—ay, and, upon rare days, the smoke of the great ships, bound down the Straits—and when dreams had worn the patience there were huge loose rocks handy for rolling over the brow of the cliff—and there was gray moss in the hollows, thick and dry and soft, to sprawl on and rest from the delights of the day. So the Watchman was a playground for my mother and me—my sister, my elder by seven years, was all the day long tunefully busy about my father’s comfort and the little duties of the house—and, on that blue day, we climbed the broken cliff behind our house and toiled up the slope beyond in high spirits, and we were very happy together; for my mother was a Boston maid, and, though she turned to right heartily when there was work to do, she was not like the Labrador born, but thought it no sin to wander and laugh in the sunlight of the heads when came the blessed opportunity.
“I’m fair done out,” said I, at last, returning, flushed, from a race to Beacon Rock.
“Lie here, Davy—ay, but closer yet—and rest,” said she.
I flung myself at full length beside her, spreading abroad my sturdy little arms and legs; and I caught her glance, glowing warm and proud, as it ran over me, from toe to crown, and, flashing prouder yet through a gathering mist of tears, returned again.
“I knows why you’re lookin’ at me that way,” said I.
“And why?” said she.
“ ’Tis for sheer love o’ me!”
She was strangely moved by this. Her hands, passionately clasped of a sudden, she laid upon her heart; and she drew a sharp, quivering breath.
“You’re getting so—so—strong and—and—so big!” she cried.
“Hut!” said I. “ ’Tis nothin’ t’ cry about!”
“Oh,” she sobbed, “I’m proud t’ be the mother of a son!”
I started up.
“I’m that proud,” she went on, hovering now between great joy and pain, “that it—it—fair hurts me!”
“I’ll not have you cry!” I protested.
She caught me in her arms and we broke into merry laughter. Then to please her I said that I would gather flowers for her hair—and she would be the stranded mermaid and I the fisherman whom she besought to put her back in the sea and rewarded with three wishes—and I sought flowers everywhere in the hollows and crevices of the bald old Watchman, where, through years, some soil had gathered, but found only whisps of wiry grass and one wretched blossom; whereupon I returned to her very wroth.
“God made a botch o’ the world!” I declared.
She looked up in dismay.
“Ay,” I repeated, with a stamp of the foot, “a wonderful botch o’ the world He’s gone an’ made. Why, they’s but one flower on the Watchman!”
She looked over the barren land—the great gray waste of naked rock—and sighed.
“But one?” she asked, softly.
“An I was God,” I said, indignantly, “I’d have made more flowers an’ made un bigger.”
She smiled in the way of one dreaming.
“Hut!” I went on, giving daring wing to my imagination. “I’d have made a hundred kinds an’ soil enough t’ grow un all—every one o’ the whole hundred! I’d have——”
She laid a soft hand on my lips. “ ’Tis a land,” she whispered, with shining eyes, “that grows rosy lads, and I’m well content!”
“ ’Tis a poor way,” I continued, disregarding her caress, “t’ gather soil in buckets. I’d have made enough t’ gather it in barrows! I’d have made lots of it—heaps of it. Why,” I boasted, growing yet more recklessly prodigal, “I’d have made a hill of it somewheres handy t’ every harbour in the world—as big as the Watchman—ay, an’ handy t’ the harbours, so the folk could take so much as they wanted—t’ make potato-gardens—an’—an’ t’ make the grave-yards deep enough. ’Tis a wonderful poor way,” I concluded with contempt, “t’ have t’ gather it in buckets from the rocks!”
My mother was laughing heartily now.
“ ’Twould not be a better world, thinks you?” said I. “Ay, but I could do better than that! Hut!” I cried, at last utterly abandoned to my imagination, “I’d have more things than potatoes grow in the ground an’ more things than berries grow on bushes. What would I have grow in the ground, says you? Is you thinkin’ I don’t know? Oh, ay, mum,” I protested, somewhat at a loss, but very knowingly, “I knows!” I was now getting rapidly beyond my depth; but I plunged bravely on, wondering like lightning, the while, what else could grow in the ground and on bushes. “I’d have flour grow in the ground, mum,” I cried, triumphantly, “an’ I’d have sea-boots an’ sou’westers grow on the bushes. An’, ecod!” I continued, inspired, “I’d have fishes grow on bushes, already split an’ cleaned!”
What other improvements I would have made on the good Lord’s handiwork I do not know. Skipper Tommy Lovejoy, being on the road to Trader’s Cove from the Rat Hole, where he lived alone with his twin lads, had spied us from Needle Rock, and now came puffing up the hill to wish my mother good-day: which, indeed, all true men of the harbour never failed to do, whenever they came near. He was a short, marvellously broad, bow-legged old man—but yet straight and full of strength and fine hope—all the while dressed in tight white moleskin (much soiled by the slime of the day’s work), long skin boots, tied below the knees, and a ragged cloth cap, which he kept pulled tight over his bushy grey hair. There was a mild twinkle forever lying in the depths of his blue eyes, and thence, at times, overflowing upon his broad brown face, which then rippled with wrinkles, from the roots of his hair to the fringe of white beard under his chin, in a way at once to make one laugh with him, though one could not quite tell why. We lads of the harbour loved him very much, for his good-humour and for his tenderness—never more so, however, than when, by night, in the glow of the fire, he told us long tales of the fairies and wicked elves he had dealt with in his time, twinkling with every word, so that we were sorely puzzled to know whether to take him in jest or earnest.
“I’ve a very bad son, the day, Skipper Tommy,” said my mother, laying a fond hand on my head.
“Have you, now, mum!” cried the skipper, with a wink. “ ’Tis hard t’ believe. He’ve been huntin’ gulls’ nests in parlous places on the cliff o’ the Watchman, I’m thinkin’.”
“ ’Tis worse than that.”
“Dear man! Worse than that, says you? Then
