Sylvias Lovers | Page 9

the Good Fortune.
She's off St Abb's Head, with something like fifteen whales to her
share.'
'We shall see how much is true, when she comes in.'
'That'll be by the afternoon tide to-morrow.'
'That's my cousin's ship,' said Molly to Sylvia. 'He's specksioneer on
board the Good Fortune.'
An old man touched her as she spoke--
'I humbly make my manners, missus, but I'm stone blind; my lad's
aboard yon vessel outside t' bar; and my old woman is bed-fast. Will
she be long, think ye, in making t' harbour? Because, if so be as she
were, I'd just make my way back, and speak a word or two to my

missus, who'll be boiling o'er into some mak o' mischief now she
knows he's so near. May I be so bold as to ax if t' Crooked Negro is
covered yet?'
Molly stood on tip-toe to try and see the black stone thus named; but
Sylvia, stooping and peeping through the glimpses afforded between
the arms of the moving people, saw it first, and told the blind old man it
was still above water.
'A watched pot,' said he, 'ne'er boils, I reckon. It's ta'en a vast o' watter t'
cover that stone to-day. Anyhow, I'll have time to go home and rate my
missus for worritin' hersen, as I'll be bound she's done, for all as I bade
her not, but to keep easy and content.'
'We'd better be off too,' said Molly, as an opening was made through
the press to let out the groping old man. 'Eggs and butter is yet to sell,
and tha' cloak to be bought.'
'Well, I suppose we had!' said Sylvia, rather regretfully; for, though all
the way into Monkshaven her head had been full of the purchase of this
cloak, yet she was of that impressible nature that takes the tone of
feeling from those surrounding; and though she knew no one on board
the Resolution, she was just as anxious for the moment to see her come
into harbour as any one in the crowd who had a dear relation on board.
So she turned reluctantly to follow the more prudent Molly along the
quay back to the Butter Cross.
It was a pretty scene, though it was too familiar to the eyes of all who
then saw it for them to notice its beauty. The sun was low enough in the
west to turn the mist that filled the distant valley of the river into
golden haze. Above, on either bank of the Dee, there lay the moorland
heights swelling one behind the other; the nearer, russet brown with the
tints of the fading bracken; the more distant, gray and dim against the
rich autumnal sky. The red and fluted tiles of the gabled houses rose in
crowded irregularity on one side of the river, while the newer suburb
was built in more orderly and less picturesque fashion on the opposite
cliff. The river itself was swelling and chafing with the incoming tide
till its vexed waters rushed over the very feet of the watching crowd on

the staithes, as the great sea waves encroached more and more every
minute. The quay-side was unsavourily ornamented with glittering
fish-scales, for the hauls of fish were cleansed in the open air, and no
sanitary arrangements existed for sweeping away any of the relics of
this operation.
The fresh salt breeze was bringing up the lashing, leaping tide from the
blue sea beyond the bar. Behind the returning girls there rocked the
white-sailed ship, as if she were all alive with eagerness for her anchors
to be heaved.
How impatient her crew of beating hearts were for that moment, how
those on land sickened at the suspense, may be imagined, when you
remember that for six long summer months those sailors had been as if
dead from all news of those they loved; shut up in terrible, dreary
Arctic seas from the hungry sight of sweethearts and friends, wives and
mothers. No one knew what might have happened. The crowd on shore
grew silent and solemn before the dread of the possible news of death
that might toll in upon their hearts with this uprushing tide. The
whalers went out into the Greenland seas full of strong, hopeful men;
but the whalers never returned as they sailed forth. On land there are
deaths among two or three hundred men to be mourned over in every
half-year's space of time. Whose bones had been left to blacken on the
gray and terrible icebergs? Who lay still until the sea should give up its
dead? Who were those who should come back to Monkshaven never,
no, never more?
Many a heart swelled with passionate, unspoken fear, as the first whaler
lay off the bar