Drolls From Shadowland Part 6

"I've no faith in'ee: not a dinyun.[L] Go to Halifax to shoot gaanders: tha's all thee'rt fit for!"

"He'll suffer for it, both here and hereafter," said the parson.

"Doan't believe it!" said the man.

"Wherever he dies, whether on land or on water, he will become a creature of that element instead of going to his rest," said the parson, with an angry light in his eyes.

"Doan't believe it!" said the man: "an' thee doan't nayther."

The parson marched off, disdaining to reply.

The infant grew into a bright little lad, but there was always a certain oddity about him, and he saw and understood more than he ought.

One day he was out fis.h.i.+ng with a companion, in a tiny punt they had borrowed for the purpose, when he leaned overboard too far and fell into the sea.

His little companion was so paralysed with terror that he could do nothing but set up a shrill screaming, clinging to the boat with both his hands.

Silas rose once--and twice--with wildly-pleading eyes: his mouth full of water: his hair plastered against his head: then sank; and a third time emerged just above the surface; so close to the boat that his companion, leaning over, could see him sinking down slowly into the crystalline depths, with his hands stretched up and the hair on his head tapering to a point like the flame of a candle.

"Silas! Silas!" the little lad shrieked.

But Silas sank down; and ever down: lower and lower beneath the translucent waters, the vast flood deepening its tint above him, till at last he was hopelessly buried out of sight.

When John Penberthy heard the terrible news he took the blow as a man might take a sentence of death--in grim silence, and with a sullen despair which nothing might henceforth banish or relieve. The roof-tree of his hopes was broken irretrievably, and he gazed down blankly at the ruin around his feet.

About three days after Silas was drowned, John was one afternoon out fis.h.i.+ng for bait, and happened to be keeping rather close to the cliff-line, when he perceived a little seal emerge from a zawn[M] and come swimming, as with a settled purpose, towards the boat.

There was something so melancholy and so pathetically human in the soft, liquid eyes of the animal, that John felt his heart touched unaccountably.

Forgetting the line, which he was just about to draw in, he sat staring at the seal with a fixed intensity, as if he were looking in the familiar eyes of some one with whom he had a world of memories to interchange.

And, meanwhile, the seal swam straight up to him, till it was so close to the boat that he could touch it with his hand.

John leaned over and looked straight at the animal: fixing his eyes hungrily on the eyes of the seal.

"Why dedn'ee ha' me christened, faather?" asked the little seal, piteously.

"My G.o.d! are'ee Silas?" cried John, trembling violently.

"Iss, I'm Silas," said the little seal.

John stared aghast at the smooth brown head and the innocent eyes that watched him so pathetically.

"Why, I thought thee wert drownded, Silas!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"I caan't go to rest 'tell I'm christened," said the seal.

"How can us do it now?" asked the father, anxiously.

"Ef anywan who's christened wed change sauls weth me," said the seal, "then I cud go to rest right away."

"Thee shall ha' _my_ saul, Silas," said the father, tenderly.

"Wil'ee put thy mouth to mine an' braythe it into me, faather?"

"Iss, me dear, that I will!" said the father. "Rest thee shust have ef I can give it to'ee, Silas. Put thy haands or paws around me neck, wil'ee, soas?"

And John leaned over the side of the boat till his face touched that of the piteous little seal.

At that moment the boat--which for the last few minutes had been allowed to drift at the mercy of the tide, owing to John's pre-occupation--was caught among the irregular currents near a skerry, and John was suddenly jerked, or tilted, overboard, plunging into the waters with a sullen splash.

When he rose to the surface, with a deadly chill in him--the chill of his drear and imminent doom, even more than the grueing chill of the water--his first thought, even in that perilous moment, was of dear little Silas and the promise he had given to him, or, at least, the promise he had given to the seal.

The quaint little creature was, however, nowhere visible; and John, with a sudden influx of strength--an alarmed awakening and resurgence of his will--made up his mind to save his life if it were possible, and quietly leave the settlement of the other affair to G.o.d.

But grey old Fate was stronger than he was. And the waves were here her obedient servants; doing her will blindly, without pity or remorse.

In a little while John was tossing among the seaweed--into a bed of which his body had descended--and what further dreams (if any) he dreamed there beneath the waters, must remain untold till the Judgment Day.

FOOTNOTES:

[L] Little bit.

[M] A cave.

THE MAN WHO MET HATE.

IT was drawing on towards midnight, and the world seemed very lonely.

There was a huge, round harvest moon in the sky, and the hills were bathed in a kind of spectral splendour--a faint and filmy s.h.i.+mmer of silver that left the outlines of objects blurred and elusive, though the scene as a whole emerged clearly for the eye. The wind was sighing drowsily across the moors, while high on the rugged cairns on the hill-tops it was wuthering mournfully beneath the wan grey sky.

And 'Lijah, staring sleeplessly through his blindless bedroom-window, felt a growing unrest in the very marrow of his bones.

He could see down below, in the little lonesome cove, the cottage where Dorcas had now made her nest with that "darned gayte long-legged 'Miah"

for her husband, and in the sudden heat and bitterness of his wrath his heart became like a live coal within him. "I'll have my revenge on un, ef I haang for it!" growled he.

And then he remembered that up on yonder moors--whose ferns and granite boulders he could see plainly in the moonlight--there was a "gashly owld fogou,"[N] where, if a man went at midnight prepared to boldly summon Hate and to "turn a stone"[O] in her honour, his hatred would be accomplished for him "as sure as death."

"An' I'll go there, ef I die for it!" said he grimly to himself.

The village was asleep, and all its cottages were smokeless. There was no one stirring anywhere in the cove. But far out in the moonlit bay he could see the fis.h.i.+ng-boats dotting the vast grey plain, and he knew that in one of them 'Miah Laity was fis.h.i.+ng, and was no doubt thinking of Dorcas as he fished.

"I'll spoil 'es thinkin' for un 'fore long," said 'Lijah, "ayven ef I have to sill me saul to do the job!"

And with that he slipped on his coat and boots--for he had been standing at the window half undressed--and clapping on his cap as he pa.s.sed through the kitchen, strode heavily and gloomily out of the house.