(Complete Story.) Sea Wrack, THE STORY OF A STRANGE WOOING.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIII, Issue VIII, 20 August 1904, Page 54

(Complete Story.) Sea Wrack, THE STORY OF A STRANGE WOOING.

By

HELEN STERLING THOMAS.

The August sun rose above the roofs and towers of the town and shone on the Clara M. at anchor in the harbour. Jim Blake was stretched full length and fast asleep in the bottom of the l>oat. • All around the water was bright and glistening like burnished metal; a schooner with all sail set drifted with the tide iu the still summer dawn. The night mists were rolling back to the shadowy places underneath the wharves, for the sun was hot and red. Jim Blake's freckled face began to burn uncomfortably; he stirred uneasily, opened his eyes, stretched himself deliberately, then crawled out on the small deck in the bow of the boat. In the darkness some hours lie fore two fishermen in their seine-boat rowed past the Clara M„ and seeing Jim Blake they had joked over his shiftlessness that let a man sleep at three o’clock in the morning. Lester Wanson had picked up a broken glass floater from the bottom of the seine-boat and thrown it at Jim. But it fell short of the mark. “Lord knows if we could ever get a catch if he wa’n’t so all-fired lazy,” Lester had remarked. William, his brother, answered: “Nets safe anyhow' this mornin’, guess he ain't been devilin’ round yet.” Jim bad listened and heard. He rolled one eye half open, looked out from beneath his straggling hair, and recognised the two men. He made no response to the insult of the floater, but he added this injury to his long account against the,Wanson brothers. This was.* Uktfe way Jim had. Now as he stood on the small deck of the Clara M. the incident recurred to him like a half-forgotten nightmare. An ugly look came into hfs small, squint eyes, “Seems most like a dream, but wasn't no dream neither,” he reflected.

Then he stripped himself and plunged head foremost over the boat’s side. He disappeared with a splash and came up the next instant. “I’ll smash every lobster-pot Lester Wanson sets, and slit his seine from one end to t'other;” thought Jim, as he swam about in the cool, sparkling sea. He was untiring and happy in the water. more at home there than on land. Things seldom went Jim Blake’s way on shore,, but out in the harbour Ire was master mariner. He could land as many mackerel as he chose from someone else’s net. The fish told no tales, so no one had laid hands on him yet. Again and again the fishermen hauled up their lobster pots, found them empty, and cursed Jim Blake. They set traps in new places, and went out earlier and still earlier, yet the pots wer<; always empty. The nights they anchored their dory and watched, Jim Blake did not go out. Wherever he was expected lie never came, and where least looked for he appeared with unfanny persistency. Whenever a good mackerel catch was unloading. Jim was on hand; no one could dig clams or conches in the cove at low water without being shadowed by Jim. Without, ever doing any work himself lie continually carried off the best of everything. Stealing was to him the most natural thing in the world, he could no more have refrained from it than from swimming or cursing. Jim bad never made a voyage, Jim had never done a bit of work. Why labour for what he could filch so easily? Why go to the Banks and brave cold and fog when ships brought home fish aplenty? When his hunger was satisfied he cared for nothing more. Tn the halfrotten hulk of the Clara M., with the rests less water swashing against the boat’s side, ho was quite content. On winter nights he crawled into the little cubby hole and kept warm somehow with his oil stove. Why he did not freeze or burn up alive no one could tell. No one could ever explain Jim’s existence. In all his vagrant, ill-spent life some power seemed to have protected him. Living in the old boat and seldom showing himself, he was encircled with a mystery which served him well at times. The fishermen were superstitious in regard to Jim Blake;

some did not care to interfere with him, and even believed he cast a sort of evil eye upon certain nets and lobster pots. When the small boys of the harbour dived off the wharves they dared one another to swim out anil around the Clara M. to throw water-soaked apples or potatoes at Jim. Yet after dark and. alone not one of them would have cared to meet him. At night, when the old starboard lantern on the Clara M. shed its green reflections across the waves, it seemed to these small boys like Jim Blake’s eye, phosphorescent and brilliant as a cat’s. Could he see everywhere, even at night, this strange person who lived all alone out there on the water? The green light on the Clara M. was a familiar landmark to Jess Wanson. She used to stand in the yard at dusk and watch for it as she did for the flash from the lighthouse on the point. She had never met Jim Blake face to face, but sometimes she thought about him; he had for her the same fascination as for the children. However, her sensation was not mingled with fear, for Jess was never afraid, even when her father and William Wanson were drunk. She knew that -Jim Blake was her father’s enemy, but this did not necessarily make him hers, for Jess was not fond of her father. The neighbours sympathised entirely with Lester Wanson. They considered Jess “ queer.” To be sure she fried fish and cooked porridge quite like any other girl, but there was something in the way she did these things which alienated her from other

people. She had always lived in the ihree-roomed house which faced the cove, nevertheless she seemed, scarcely, more indigenous than the curious flow* era which sprang up in the dooryard. People said that Lester Wanson’v’wife had brought the seeds in that carved chest which came with her from France. Jess was very like her mother and Jess, too, sang at times in incomprehensible, foreign words, so that the neighbours stopped to listen and shake their heads in disapproval. She sang lustily in the cottage kit* ehen this morning while she fried hake. Its pleasant odour greeted Jim Blake as he swam near shore. The exercise, had made him hungry, and he knew that the tin box on board the Clara M. held nothing but a few bits of pilot bread and the rind of an old cheese. As he drew on his clothes a few minutes later his appetite was so keen that the smell of food was a positive paint. He glanced across the cove. Lester, ■Wanson lived over there. That must be his breakfast cooking. There was no reason why Jim should not have that fried hake as well as anyone else. He hauled in his dory swiftly, from the stern of the Clara M., and in a moment he was fastening it at the slippery, steps that led down to the water from Lester Wanson’s garden. Jim wenfcautiously around the side of the house, treading ruthlessly over Jess' flowers. His mouth watered as htf edged near the low window and looked inside. Jess stood over near the stove, her back toward Jim. A table was beside the window and on it a magnificent,pie, large and delectable, with littleft streams of blueberry juice oozing through the crust. It caught Jim’s eye; he hod nevei’ wanted anything ijt his life so passionately as he wanted that pie. He pulled himself across the; sill, his feet dangled outside, his hand grasped the pie. As he took a hugd bite a smile of contentment spread oveg his freckled face. Jim lived almost entirely on fish, aud he vastly appreciated a delicacy like this. Jess Wanson’s whole attention wasf still given to the frying pan. . Something in her lithe, slender back in its clinging blue frock, caught

tffrn’s attention. Suddenly «he began to sing: - ■ •• La barque es petite, et la roer Immense /jti vague nous Jette an elel eu corroqx, La elei nous renvole ou Hot •» demenee; 9*res du mat rompu prions a genoux! ” These words, which lie could not understand, fascinated Jim. Music had lor him the same attraction as for certain wild animals. When the schooners came into port with the sailors whistling or singing merrily because they Were safe at home again, or when the Salvation Army shrieked untuneful hymns, Jim was in ecstasy. Now when he heard this Breton fisherman’s prayer, he forgot his hunger, he forgot the blueberry pie, and hung half in, half put of the window, spellbound. Suddenly Jess turned, and Jim, unable Id collect himself, overbalanced, dropped the pie, fell sprawling on the floor with a jar that shook the house. Jess started, then looked regretfully from the broken pie to Jim,- who lay foolishly where he had fallen. • “It would have been more handy like, you know, if you’d a-eonie round by the door to get that,” Jess said. ■ She picked up the fragments, put them on a plate and handed it to him. He held it without eating, looking at her wonderingly like a child. Her face was flushed, her bright hair matted round her forehead. “Why don't you eat?—good, if ’tis broken. 1 made it,” said Jess confidently. Jim put his teeth into the crust, and As he did so his appetite and assurance returned. Jess turned away, Jim shuffled to his feet, and put the empty plate <m the table.- Jess held out a steaming cup toward him, he took it, swallowed the contents in one gulp. - “Sit down; I want to talk to you,” 'Jess commanded. lie did so. She put food before him, Jind he ate ravenously while she stood •taring at him. “You be Jim Blake, ain’t you?” “S'pose so,” muttered Jim, his mouth full. “Heard about you lots of times, wanted to see you. What makes you Jive out there all alone?” “Dunno, ain’t got no other place.” Jim longed to escape. There was nothing in his experience which told him how to answer this girl who asked questions with eyes that looked straight into his own, and made him shift uneasily in his chair. “More coffee?” Jim nodded. "Now, just you look here. I know about you, folks don’t like you—they don’t like me neither, so I feel same as you do—but don’t you care; and when you get hungry, just you came rouhd, only don’t reach in over the window edge like a starvin’ cat.”

After this Jim retreated swiftly. As lie stumbled down the steps into the dory and pulled towards the open harbor, he could still feel Jess Wanson’s clear blue eyes fixed upon him. He had a sense of discomfort, perhaps from having over-eaten, fc-, perhaps from the consciousness that he had tried to do a mean thing, and that, for the first time in his life, it had been met with kindness. A little way from shore he passed Lester and William Wanson, and gave them a grin of wicked delight. Lester, scowling, wondered what mischief Jim Blake had been up to in his yard. When they had gone Jim pulled in the oars and let the dory drift. The tide was running out, a light wind was blowing with it now, and the boat slipped quickly along. Jim took out liis pipe, lit it, and stuck it between his teeth. But he did not draw it, and it went out, while the dory floated away and away on the tide—past Round Island, past Light House Point, and the town behind sank into misty distance. Still Jim Blake sat with his pipe between his teeth, his oars on his knees, his mind filled with the remembrance of Jess Wasson’s kindness. He thought slowly, it was an exercise he was accustomed to, and found rather painful. Jess Wanson had given him things to eat, told him to come again, even after she knew who he was. She had handed him the pie quite readily. It was a good pie, too. He had tried to steal it, and she had not screamed nor called the neighbours. She might have, too; easily. She must be a strange eraft, unlike any he had met before. He wished now he had said something to thank her—the sort of thing people generally said on such occasions—he was not altogether sure what that was. This unexpected meeting had its effect upon Jess Wanson .also. Jim possessed her imagination and appealed to her like a lonely, forsaken child. Her interest in him was stimulated by her father’s anger that morning on finding his breakfast gone and on learning that Jess had given it to Jim Blake. After this there was a subtle sense of friendship between Jess and Jim. Sometimes when Lester and William were fishing, Jess discovered a lobster or fresh mackerel on the window sill. The mystery which surrounded these gifts lent an enchantment, to them; and Jess understood that this was Jim’s peculiar method of giving thanks. The incongruity of robbing Lester Wanson’s pots and giving the lobsters to Jess did not occur to Jim. lie did not go as deep as that. He did not see Jess after this for some time. He sat one morning despondently on a codfish . box in the cubby of the Clara M. He had poked about among the old -fish-hooks and rusty nails and clam shells, but there was nothing to eat, and so he sat thinking lovingly of

>»te, purify t and fortify th® er Tranqk, hiU simvarityk-

that blueberry pie Jess had given him. Then all at once he heard the splash and drip of oars alongside the Clara M. and Jess Wanson’s voice:

“Hi, Jim Blake!” He started, but could not stir. “Hi, Jim Blake! Hi, in there!” Jim put his head outside, the odour of fresh coffee was somewhere in the salt air. He sniffed suspiciously, then crawled through the cubby door and stood with his hands deep in his pockets. “What’s that?” jerking his thumb toward a pot which stood on the deck of the Clara M. “Coffee, better drink it while it’s hot.” With one stroke of the oars Jess turned her dory about and rowed away. Jim stood staring after her, then he glanced at the steaming coffee pot. When Jess was about half way across the cove a sudden thought struck him • —the inspiration of a lifetime. He shouted after her: "Say—, much obliged.” This was the first of many little kindnesses. Jess had to win him gently ; but she gained his friendship, which was a thing no one had had before, therefore its value was unknown. He gave her an untiring, doglike devotion, Which he could neither express nor comprehend. After a while it came to be Jim’s habit, on the evenings when Lester and William Wanson went torching for herring, to sit in the little kitchen with Jess. He was happier there, sunk stolidly into a rush-bottom chair beside her, an old ship’s lantern swinging above their heads and the rote of the sea outside than he bad ever been in all his lonely life. He was so little used to companionship that at first he could give only sullen, halting answers to the girl’s questions. She would look at him intently, her elbows on the table, her face in her hands; and somehow she never saw his homely squint eyes, his stained, freckled hands. To her he was someone neglected and disliked unjustly, an unfailing and faithful comrade when he chose; and the individual of her imagination was perhaps nearer the real Jim Blake than any one had ever approached. Once he surprised her as they sat together by saying suddenly, half shamefacedly t“Tunc up, ■ Jess, will you?—one of them queer songs.” - • ■ She had complied readily and burst into forecastle ballads, fishing songs, plaintive minor airs for the most part—-

for in Jess Wanson, as in all those born bes’de the sea and who have known its pleasures and its tradgedies, there ran a strain of melancholy. Again and again she came back to : “Pres du mat xonipu prions a geiioux.” She sang on until the lights around the cove burned out and Jim had had his fill of pleasure. He longed to express himself, to tell Jess some of the bewildering sensations which came to him amid the soothing influence of music. He leaned forward in his ehair and tried to unburden his mind. “1 suppose you don’t want me here?” "What makes you think so?” said Jess. "1 wouldn’t have you around long if I didn’t like you.” But Jim did not notice the compliment, his thoughts weighed too heavily upon him: “I ain’t the right sort nohow, never was—, folks don’t like me ’cause I steal, 1 ain’t never stole nothin’ from you though, since 1 first come here.” “I gave you that pie.” interrupted Jess, “that wan’t stealin’.” “But somethin’s wrong,” continued Jim, “I can’t work, never could, they set me haulin’ lumber in the dry dock when I was a little shaver. Lord! how 1 sweat! I wan’t built for it, 1 just got to come and go as 1 feels to—guess 1 luffed up into the wind once and stayed there, and other crafts caught the breeze.

“1 could do anything to please you, Jess Wanson, quit devilin’ . . Maybe I could live like folks, only I wouldn’t be handy at it at first, and ’twould come kinder hard to leave the Clara M. She’s ben a good friend to me. . . .

She be as dry as a codfish inside and safe as a schooner, and when she’s strainin' at her anchor like she’d cut away for Novie Scoeie it's as good as goin’ to sea, and all without the bother. You couldn’t live on the Clara M. now, could you? ’Taint no place for a woman.”

Jess looked at him hard without speaking. Then she reached across the table and put her hand on Jim Blake’s hard, bony fingers. There was surprise, almost fright in his eyes.

“Things don’t come round me most generally,’ he Biiid “ ’cept gulls and beach plover after somethin’ to eat. I never done no harm to none of them, they come and flop all round Clara, beat agin the cubby door, if I ain’t outside. You ben good to Jim Blake, kinder scraped the barnacles off his hulk and

Started him off on a different sort of Voyage. If you would only come along *h master, niaylte it wouldn't be so oneaided a craft to steer . . would it now? I ain't got nothin* but the old Clara M. She ain't nothin’ alarmin’, but she be yourn, Jess.’* He had rambled on, blindly, blunderingly. Jess bad not helped turn, but she had kept her hand across his, and the touch of her firm, eoft fingers gave him confidence. They had forgotten, these two in the little kitchen, the whole world, the night outside, the sound of the tide against the wall. Jim was filled with vague longings to be something other than himself. to speak freely for once in his life.

Suddenly the door swung open, the cool night air rushed in, the old ship’s lantern swayed and flickered above their heads. Lester and William Wanson burst into the room.

“Curse you, Jim Blake,” cried Lester, *what are you doing here?’’ He seized the first thing at hand, the castor Ou the table, and hurled it. Jim leaped aside, Jess sprang before him. I’he bottles flew in nil direction, glass broka •gainst the ■opposite wall; a jagged pioea hit dess in the forehead. Jim saw it, and a black look came into his face. He •truck Lester Wanson between the eyes and made him reel backward. Jim was on him the next insl'ant, forcing him down. But Williaim was there, and it was two to one against Jim Blake. Jess tried to help. She was stronger than Borne men and very quick ; it was all William coukl do to force her out of the way while Jim Blake and Lester wrestled. They went down, rose again, locked together; they boxed and tore at each other, swearing between their blows; once Jim Blake buried his teeth in Lester Wanson’s wrists. Jess wriggled herself away from William at last, Tan across the room and fastened herself on her father.

‘‘Ketch hold of his feet, William,” •creamed Lester.

William got Jim Blake’s boot in the face, and a nose bleed. “Hit him on the head, hit him hard,” gasped Lester, as Jim’s fingers gripped his throat.

William caught up a stick of wood, •nd tire next instant Jim Blake Jail in « limp mass on the kitchen floor. ■Not. one of the three standing around Jim Blake stirred, the clock ticked uneasily. Lester’s red face, paled. Jess knelt down and put her cheek against Jim’s. Lester tried to drag her away. ‘‘Get up, Jess,” he commanded.

She would not sth-. His fury rose •gain, blind and ungovernable. He gave e sort of explosion of oaths, and by sheer Strength drugged Jess across the kitehen and into the narrow stairway which led up to her room under the eaves. There was something disconcerting in her cool fearlessness, and it was not ease to throw her inside, then shut and lock the

door. But he did that at last, and Jett found herself alone on the stairs, not knowing whether Jim Blake were dead or alive. She screamed and beat upon the door, but neither her father no? William answered. Then she was quiet and listened. They were trying to speak softly, but both were, used to shouting in the face of wind and weather, and Jess could hear most of what they said. “He don’t sense nothin’ yet, Lester.” “He will if we don’t stop it though. I tell you he’s goin’ to touch bottom this trip.”

Than Jess lost their words; again she heard her father.

“We’ll just cut his dory loose, it’s likely to breeze up before morning anyhow, folks won’t look far for his old h.ilk if there be somethin’ in their traps.” Then William spoke in a seared tone, “it don’t seem nohow safe, Lester . • . . I had rather not, but . .

“There ain’t no other way out of these shoals. I tell you. It’s underneath the Rotten Wharves where he be goin’. Tide’s out now, dead <low, too; fetch that piece of new rope tind come on.” Jess heard a scuttling about the kit. ehen, then: “Ketch hold of his felt, William; ha ain’t no light weight.” The door banged, there tvas silence. A smlden agony of loneliness and fear swept over Jess. Her mind, sharpened by excitement, little by little interpreted their conversation, as a child spells out its first lesson. What wetc they going to do to Jim? “The Rotton Wharves” were » group of abandoned, lonely old fish houses across the harbour. “The tide was out, ” ‘tiie new rope"—She began to understand, and she knew for a certainly that Jim Blake’s life was at stake. She ran upstairs and leaned out of the window.

The green light over on the Clara Al. shone vividly into the black night; somehow the sight of it gave Jess confidence and hope. Then down near lha edge of the cove she saw the flash of oars in the dark water, and a dory with dimly outlined figures slipped away from her. She stretched out her arms and cried, no one answered, and her voice came back to her hollow and strange across the still water. Then the next instant she was upon the window sill, holding on by her hands. She thought; of Jim and let go her hold.

Tn the darkness 1 underneath the Rotten Wharves Jim Blake was coming back to consciousness. He did not know where he was or what had happened. Sharp pains ran through his head. He could not stir; he could not see. The only sound was that of the waves breaking gently and sucking back. As his brain grew clearer he realised that the water was up around his neck, that his feet were on the ground and that be was bound to a pile of some wharf. He struggled and called, but no one heard. Then in spite of the cold, the perspira-

lion broke out •• his forehead And trickled down his face. All the while he kuew the tide was rising. It was not It was not giving a man half a chance to tie him under water like »A»t nobody wanted. Oh, they must be coming back to let him out! He could swim to shore from any place in the harbour. There was a knife in his coat pocket; why couldn’t he reach it? Then a big wave broke over his head, he gulped and strangled, and breathed freely as it sank back. The tide was coming in steadily. Where was Jess? The thought of her gentleness to him made death seem a cruel reality at that moment. He remembered how Dave Tarr had looked, as he lay on the sand at low water, two days after his boat had capsized. Then everywhere Jim looked he saw that drawn, discoloured face before him. He was swallowing salt water now, every time he gasped for breath. He wished Jess would hurry. He began to feel very hungry and drowsy. Then he thought he woke up safe at home on board the Clara M. How she did strain at anchor. It was full moon and the tide must be high and strong. How the sea did hiss and sing, and how sleepy he was. But somebody was pounding on the cubby and calling. What business had anyone to wake him up? Why, it was Jess Wanson! He was not in the Clara M. after all. Oh, yes, he remembered; but he was all right now Jess had come. A little later Jim tried to drag himself on the deck of the Clara M., but Jess had to help him. He was too dazed and weak to try to fit together the broken parts of his night’s experience. He rubbed his damp, red head and looked at Jess. “Can’t ’member nothin’, Jess —feel like a fish left flby the tide.” “I couldn’t come any sooner, you know, Jim. I would have if I could.” “I know,” said Jim. “They locked me up and I had to get out of the window; I fell, and didn’t know nothin’ for a spell. I had to run

up the beach to get a dory. I pulled the light off the Clara and that helped to find you.” “It was blasted dark, anyhow,” said Jim. < “And oh? Jim, you wouldn’t come ttf for the longest while.” She caught het! breath with a little sob. Jim shifted uneasily. He did not know what to say, so he began wringing’ the water out of his coat. “I oughter taken oil skins along. Jess, when 1 went over to see you last evenin’.” Jess did not answer. She was bending over the stove, lighting it. JitH could only see the outline of her figurq in the darkness, but gradually her face and hands loomed white and distinct. The old green lantern stood on ths deck now, still burning, but its light paled and was lost into the dawn, while beyond, above the tangle of masts and yards in the harbour, the sky turne4 faint primrose. To Jim Blake the aspect of familial*, things growing out of the dark was very fair. He wanted to say “much obliged” to Jess Wanson, to keep on! saying it as long as he should live. But he could not frame his thoughts, and SO only blurted out at last; “Say Jess, ain’t you ever goin’ home?’* “No,” said Jess Wanson smiling, “Na, I ain’t.”