IKE'S SIN: A STORY OF THE SEA.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1944, 20 December 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

IKE'S SIN: A STORY OF THE SEA.

By WAIF WANDER.

Tee steamer ha ; d just moved away from the end of the, long pier, and was noisily splashing her way across the gleaming, wavy .water, and the two gentlemen she ,had;landed were standing alone in the middle of the broad bay,' as it v ' were, ,and,lpoking t/jilantly,, aoroaauthej.wayea, , ,«nd frpm ypfetj ~fcspispmbeLya&?!Bt&tohuoig,

subject is, I dare say, naturally a painful one to him." "Why?" "Why he was suspected at the time, I have heard, though he was acquitted of all blame at the inquiry, but he took it to heart and went away from the place. He was away for several years, and then came back and settled to the fishing and boating again."' " Where does this man live ? " Meredith asked, eagerly. "About two miles down the beaoh, an easy and a pleasant walk if you should wish to see him." "He may be hired with his boat, I suppose?" " Yes, if he is in the humor ; but Ike the fisherman, as he is called, is of a peculiar temper, and is often suspected of being a little astray." " Let us go and see this man," said Mr. Meredith, as he rose and threw away his cigar, and Mr. Gideon followed his example, while the landlord directed them in what direction to go, and where they might best avoid the tide and the scrub. With the long sweeping stretch of gleaming sand before them the two gentlemen started in search of Fisherman Ike, and talked of him as they went. "He must be somewhat of our own age, Meredith," Mr. Gideon said, " for I remember that in the notices of his examination at the inquest " " There was no inquest," Mr. Meredith interrupted. "True; I had forgotten. It was at the inquiry then, for there was an inquiry, though the body was never found. Well, I was going to observe that when the boatman or fisherman who was in charge of the boat from which poor Emma Wortham met her death was examined it was stated that he was quite young and very good-looking." " And much affected in giving his evidence — I remember." " Yts ; so he cannot be more than forty-five or so, yet the landlord speaks of him as if he was an old man." " It is a hard life that of a fisherman — a hard and comfortless life that must tell upon any man, be he of the strongest." " Yes, I suppose so. I say, Meredith, that must be the place where the boat is lying above high water mark with the nets hanging around it to dry." " Yes, I should say it was the place." And it was the place where, in the shelter of the scrub and with a sandy inlet up which the tide crept, when it was in, just before the low door, an unpretentious hut was erected oi drittwood and spars, and with a rough Btone chimney Betting its broad shoulders sullenly toward the sea, as (hough to defy its storms. It had seen many of them you could tell by the weather ben ten, smoke-stained timbers and the damp looking stones, on which the sea-moss still. grew and flourished. , > At the opening of the inlet, with bis back to the, hut and his face seaward, a man sat upon a log s of driftwood ,-that/ was almost, l eiabed > de,d in ,the whi^e sand,ja>ai|ap-in coarse,; ,ftf an-pldman.p^e was;me

drowned from your boat this day twenty years? " " Forgotten it 1 Ha ! ha 1 ha ! I am likely to forget it ! Did you know her — her, the girl who was accidentally drowned, as you say?" " Yes, she was especially a near and dear friend of this gentleman." " Of this gentleman," Ike repeated, as his eager eyes devoured, as it were, every feature of Meredith's handsome face. " Yes," said that gentleman, " she was near and dear to me, and I want you, if you will, to tell me every circumstance you know connected with the death of Emma Wortham." "Aye, that was the name ! " Ike returned, as he bowed his head over the knotted hands he had placed upon his knees, " Emma Wortham, aye, that was it." Thinking it better not to interfere, but to I let him have his own way in telling what he chose to tell, neither Meredith or Gideon spoke. All at once he looked up and his eyes turned into the face of Meredith. As he gazed, an unholy fierce fire grew hotter and hotter in his hollow orbs, and an awful oath was hurled from his lips as he grasped Meredith by the shoulders and shook him as though he had been a reed. " By the lord above me you are he," is what he shouted. " You are Charles Meredith, and she died with your name on her lips." Mr. Meredith shook himself free from the grasp of the apparent madman, but as he did he grew pale to the lips. Though twenty years had passed away since a girl he had loved had lost her life in the great water stretching at his side, her name had yet power to shake him as no other name could have done. " Are you mad ? " he cried, holding the fisherman back with a strong arm. " What de you mean ? How do you come to know my name?" " I have cause to know it 1 It has been the curse of twenty years. I have heard it in the whispers of the rustling ti-tree and in the roar of the storms. When the waves are breaking gently on that sand as I sleep they are whispering it in my dreams, and I have wakened a thousand times to wish that I might curse it and you and die, and at last you have come I Oh you need not draw back from me, I am not mad, and my hand shall not hurt a hair of your head; it is enough to know that you are here, and that I can tell you how and for what she died." " I came to hear what you say you wish to tell, but how can I trust a man who has so little control over himself as you appear to have ? My friend here thinks you are a lunatic. I can read it in his face. If you are not calm we shall not stay and listen to you, anxious as we are to hear what you can tell us." " I am calm— oalm as that sunlit sea, under which bo, many, of the dead lie., It was on just such a ; day as this, that;, we went ,out, she arid I, in the old bpat that did not, bring her,,back , again, at\d it;wasith§nshe told rn^of you and -the; story J^Ao^eaijiJiSj^i^die^io^

sank, and tell you on it how it was that she died?" He went toward a boat as he fipoke, and shoved it along the sand till it floated ; " I would not go, Meredith," said Mr. Gideon seriously, " the man is dangerous." 11 We are two and he is one — how can he harm us ? I must go, Gideon, for there is something to hear that has never yet been told." They both went into the boat and seated themselves in the stern, while without a word the fisherman seized the oars, and rowed them with hard, heavy strokes across the gently heaving waves. It was a scene the friends never forgot, the vast expanse of water, restless in the soft sunlight, and with the cresting foam surging over the broad blue liquid beauty of the sea. The far away outstretched points on either hand, and the low line of timbers forming the Pier, that in the distance seemed to float like a dark line on the bosom of the deep. Then the boat with the awful white face of the strange fisherman, who was rowing them to the spot where Emma Wortham died. All at once he paused and looked from his right hand to his left, turned the boat with a few more strokes to the west, and then rested on his oars. " Now we float on the very spot where she sank, there where that foam breaks I saw her face for the last time." " How can you tell so closely ? " Mr. Gideon asked. " How can I tell ? Ha, ha ! how foolish are landsmen when they speak of the sea I I know every curve on its breast, every rock on its coast. If I stretch out my right hand so, and my left hand so," and he suited the action to the words, "they are in a line with the points, and I have seen her face a thousand times floating there, but she cried no more for help, her lipa were cold and wordless." "For the love of God, if you have anything to say, say it, that we may go back and never see your face again," cried the agitated Meredith. " Yes, I will say it, but you will not believe me, and I do not care, for I know that it is true. Must I tell you how fair was her faca ? No! You have not forgotten it. Well, I must say, then, that I also was young and handsome in those days, and that it was no wonder I should fancy a woman might love me. Her father's farm was but a little way over there, and we had many a stolen hour together, though she told me she had left her lover behind her in England, and that as soon as he was ready he was to come and take her home as his wife. How I hated his name ! How I hated the very sound of it ! No wonder I felt like a tiger that smelled blood when I saw your face and knew it 1 " " How could you know it ? " asked Meredith, who was now, at least, outwardly calm. " Do you know it ? " Ike asked with a sneer, as he tossed to Meredith an old-fashioned plain locket he drew from his pocket. " You are changed, but hatred is stronger in its memory than even love." Meredith opened the locket, and met his own face, young and happy, but faded from the brightness it had known when new. "It is the one I gave Emma as a parting gift," he said, as he handed it to Gideon. " Man, if you are a man, go on with your tale of sin." " Yes, I will go on, for the end is near now. You are right, it is twenty years ago this day and hour since Emma and I were floating, as we are now, over the very waters that are heaving under us, and I had drawn in my oars, and told her of my burning love and my determination to win her, even as she held before my jealous eyes that portrait of my rival. Never shall I forget how she ridiculed my presumption, and laughed in my face at the idea of being my wife — the wife of fisherman Ike, but htde sne areamed'oi'shw devil she had aroused within me. I snatched the picture from her, and dashed it to the bottom of the boat as I rose to my feet and cursed the man she loved — cursed him and his while sun should shine and tides should flow. 'And now choose,' I shouted, 'choose between death and me, for alive you will never reach the shore till you have sworn by your God that you will be my wife ! ' " " I will die then, coward ! " she cried ; " for a thousand deaths would be better than to be your wife." " Think," I pleaded, " you are going, and it is hard for the young and loved to die. Look at that water, it is a cold bed, and it is deep and cruel. Fanoy what it would feel like to sink there and struggle vainly for breath, — think well ere it is too late." " She had not believed in her danger or in my earnest purpose until then when she looked with horror and fear into my burning eyes ; but she rose to her feet and shrieked such a cry for help, as I hear even now." " Decide ! Death or me ! " I shouted once more. "Death!" she replied, and as the words left her lips I seized and dashed her into the waves. ' Oh, Lord, I see her yet aa she struggled vainly ere she sank, with the white awful face turned toward me appealingly. I could not meet those awful eyes unmoved, and I had dashed off my boots to plunge in to rescue her from her doom, when with one wild effort to clear her lips from the gurgling water, she shrieked out — " Oh, Charles 1 Charles! saveme, save me I" and her fate was sealed. I sat down, and as her face sank, sank beneath ihe clear, sweeping water, I seized my sculls and rowed away from the spot. "Is he mad ? " cried Meredith. " Gideon, oan this horrible tale be true ? " "Do not doubt it. See, see ; she has come to tell you herself. Look at the white face there, there, where the green water is gliding back from the crest ! Don't you see it ? Hark, she is calling now, but it is not your name ; it is Ike she calls, and I will save her yet." And that was the end, for as he spoke the words the fisherman sprang into the sea and sank, never more to re-appear on the surface of the water. . With an almost misspoken horror the friends waited and watched, but in vain ; the deep waters hid its double secret on the spot where Emma and her murderer died. There are stories on the bay now among the superstitious fishers of the sea that the white face of the dead girl may often be seen in the foamy swirl of the waters where she was drowned, and that Ike's form in a phantom boat always hovers there under the moon when a storm is approaching. Meredith took home his own locket with a sadder heart than he had known when he came, for as he gazed on the well known trinket he never doubted that the story of Ike's sin was true. I

calm in the expression of his face, and the other was fair and stout, with a sharp, incisive manner, and a matter-of-faot business air. " And this is Mordialloc," said the former in a low tone. "How often I have fancied it by day, and dreamed of it by night ! It was there, was it not ? " and he pointed toward the expanse of water on his left. " Yes, Meredith, it was." 11 But the exact spot ? " " Was never known. You know I was not in Victoria at the time, and the occurrence was not witnessed by any save the boatman." "I know, yes. What became of the man ? " "I do not know; in fact, very little was learned, save what you saw recorded in the papers, and there was no one deeply enough interested." "No, no, there was no one." "I have been thinking, Meredith, that if the subject would not be too painful, we might, by inquiring, chance to hear even yet something about that sad event." " The pain is in the past, Gideon. I have outlived it. I seem here on the spot, though to feel as if twenty years cannot have passed since then. To think that those same waves—" And he shuddered strongly. " Aye, it must be all that— twenty years." " It is twenty years this very day," returned Mr. Meredith. " What a strange coincidence." "Yes, .and I had not thought of it until we were corning down in the boat. Well, shall we move toward the township ? " " Yes," and both gentlemen lifted the light valise each had provided himself with, and walked up the long jetty silently. There was a small and quiet place of entertainment facing the pier, the appearance of which the gentlemen preferred to that of the more pretentious hotels they might have chosen, and there, having refreshed themselves, they sat and smoked cigars, exchanging with the landlord such gossip of the place as might be of interest to the stranger. "You have never been here before, gentlemen," said the landlord. "My friend has not. I have," replied Mr. Gideon, " but I have not seen you before, I think." " No, this is my first season in the business, but I have been in the neighborhood many years." Mr. Gideon glanced toward his friend as he inquired, "Do you know, or have you heard anything, of a sad accident that occurred to a young lady in this bay some twenty yearß ago? The young lady went out with a boatman and was drowned? " "Yes, I have heard of the circumstance, but I was not here," replied the landlord, " but there is a man still here, and alive, who can tell you all about it if he will." " Who is he ? " eagerly asked Mr. Meredith. " The very boatman who was rowing the girl when she was drowned." " Good heavens ! is that man here and alive 1 " "He is, and is the oldest, not to say the most disagreeable, character on the shore. I have heard him allude to the story, but it has been when he was almost driven to it, for the

shaggy grey brows that hung over them. The sea was breaking monotonously on 'the beach, and the noise drowned the approaching footsteps, so that the gentlemen stood before him ere he heard them. At the shadow that fell aoross his knees he looked suddenly up, and stared in unpleasant wonder at the visitors. When his face was lifted it showed to the light the worn, wrinkled visage of a man who seemed sixty, and in his great, faded eyes there was the wild, treacherous examination of an animal at bay. '• Are you Ike the fisherman ? " Mr. Gideon asked promptly, for he was in no way affected by the man's unpleasant looks. "If lam, what then?" " Oh, that remains to be seen ; there may be money then." " Aye ?" But that was all, as the old man's look was returned again to Mr. Meredith's calm and apparently passionless face. " You do not care for money ?" the latter gentleman said quietly. " How do you know ?" " I can read it in your face. You would risk your life for love, or hate, or revenge, but for money would not lift your little finger — am I right ?" " You are right 1 aye, you are right ! For love, or hate, or revenge 1 aye, you are right — I would, and have done it I " " You that talk about money," he added, after a little silence, unbroken by either of the gentlemen, " what is it you want of Ike the fisherman?" " Only a story, my good man ; a relation of something that occurred in your experience, here in this very Bay." "Aye ? " he said with interest, " what could have happened here in this out-of-the-way place to interest a gentleman like you ? " "Something that happened long ago, something that you only knew of and saw out there," and the speaker pointed to the waters beyond him. " Out there ! " The fisherman's face grew stony-looking as his eyes followed the pointing finger. " Happened long ago out there ! " "It was twenty years ago. Twenty years ago this very day and almost this very hour." The words were solemnly uttered, and they were spoken by Mr. Meredith. The fisherman started to his feet as they were said, dropping his net upon the ground and clenching his raised hands, as with fierce wild eyes fixed on Meredith he almost shouted : " What do you know of twenty years age ? Where have I seen your devilish face ? " " Come, come, my good friend, you are forgetting yourself ; you have neither right nor reason to speak in that manner to my friend." " True 1 " he cried, as he sat down again and gathered up his nets, " I am an old man and I forget — what story is it you want me to tell ? and after all money is a very good thing — a very good thing." " Now you are reasonable. Money is a good thing, and you can earn it by telling us all you can remember of the circumstance we are interested in ; you have not forgotten about the poor girl who was accidentally