Red Rowans Part 17

'"Deed an' she will be right ahead of us whatever," he replied, without a pause.

"There will be plenty of water, I suppose?"

'"Deed she will no be havin' much on her, anyhow."

"Then how shall I steer?"

"Just as she is, Miss Marjory, just as she is; she will be doing fine, I'm thinking."

"A miss is as good as a mile," murmured Paul, engaged in stretching his long length comfortably over some ballast kegs. "Can you swim?"

Marjory nodded. "Then save me, please; I really am not inclined to exert myself."

"So it appears," remarked Will Cameron, in an injured tone. He and the Reverend James were forward, busy over the tangled lengths of the long line, and the necessity for restraining his tongue before the cloth was telling even on the former's easy temper; for a long line in a tangle is quite indescribable in Parliamentary language.

"Keep her in a bit, Marjory. We must anchor over the fis.h.i.+ng-house bank for a while, and get bait for this--this _thing_."

"Then I shall have to tack."

"Tack, indeed! If you don't like it, I'll steer and you can tackle this--this _thing_. Look out, Donald!--two trees and the white stone."

Round went the tiller. "Now, John!" said the girl; the sail came down with a clatter, the way slackened, the anchor, poised in Donald's watchful hands, splashed overboard, and the "Tubhaneer" drew up to it with her mast, and the two trees, and the white stone in a line.

"Well done, Miss Marjory; that was well done, whatever," rose Donald's voice softly, between renewed crunching; and two minor splashes following close on each other told that the Parson and Will had their hand-lines down. Then came a silence, broken only by the fitful gurgle of the water against the "Tubhaneer" as she swung round to the tide, and that monotonous crunch, crunch of the mussel-knife.

"John Roy, he wa.s.s takin' five whitin's from the bank last week," rose Donald's voice once more, quite causelessly. "It wa.s.s a bit of himself he was catching them with. It iss nothin' the whitin's iss liking so much as a bit of himself."

Then silence again, his hearers being too much accustomed to the intricacies of Donald's style to be startled by this novel fact in natural history. So, amid the stillness, a sudden jerk of the Reverend James's right hand, a pause of intense expectation--to judge by the rapt look on his comely face--then disappointment from bow to stern, and a general slackness.

"It will just be ain o' they pickers," mused Donald, recovering from his momentary idleness; "or maybe a sooker. It iss the pickers and sookers in this place that just beats all. Oo-aye! If it wa.s.s not a picker, it will be a sooker."

"What is the difference between a picker and a sucker, Donald?" asked Marjory, severely practical.

"'Deed, then, Miss Marjory, and it iss not any difference there will be between them at all. It is a sooker that will not be caring a tamn for the hook, and it is the picker that will not be caring a tamn either."

"Ahem!" interrupted Mr. Gillespie, with reproachful glance at Donald's unconscious back; "I believe, Miss Marjory, that pickers or suckers is really only the local name for young codlings, lythe, or cuddies. In fact, for all young fish."

"She is not them at all," retorted Donald, scornfully. "It iss sookers and pickers, and not young fish they will be, and it iss not a local name, whatever." The last came with such a glance of sovereign contempt for the offender, that Paul, from his ballast kegs, smiled up at Marjory, who smiled back at him.

"Got him at last! and a good one too!" sang out Will, ending the discussion by a new topic of all-absorbing interest, which held the boat's crew in suspense till the rasping rub of the line over the side and the drip of water falling back on water ceased in a disgusted exclamation from the captor of a small flounder, hooked foul.

"Little deevil," murmured John Macpherson, in such a self-communing tone, that the Reverend James felt the observation must pa.s.s.

"It iss pulling like that they are," commented Donald, affably. "John Roy he was fis.h.i.+n' at the ferry-house, and thinkin' it wa.s.s a _skatach_ he got, and cryin' on me for the gaff he wa.s.s, but it was two flukies he was hookin' by their tails."

Marjory looked as if she were inclined to dispute the fact, then joined in the dreamful silence, which, with spasmodic awakenings as fish after fish came over the side, lasted until there was enough bait, and Will gave the word to move on. Then the anchor came up laden with a root of oarweed, in which strange sh.e.l.ls and starfish lay entangled; so it was handed aft for Marjory to see.

"It is squeakin' like a mice yon beast will be," said Donald, pointing to a sea-urchin. "Aye! an' bitin' most tarrible he is."

"That is quite impossible," interrupted the girl, cutting short various other facts which trembled on Donald's lips. "They couldn't bite if they tried."

"Then it is squeakin' like a mice they are, whatever," he retorted doggedly; "for John Roy wa.s.s tellin' it to me." John Roy being Donald's Mrs. Harris, the subject admitted of no further discussion, and the ensuing pause was broken by a sudden question from Paul.

"Do you ever find n.i.g.g.e.rheads about here now? I remember when I was a boy in petticoats----"

He took the tiny cowrie of dazzling whiteness she handed him by way of answer, and said no more. How many years, he wondered, was it since he had last thought of n.i.g.g.e.rheads? Truly the world was a strange place, and a man's brain stranger still.

And now the long line, duly baited for skate and haddock, was being paid out and left drifting, moored to floats which seemed to dance away on the waves, as the "Tubhaneer" with sail full spread made for the last, low, sunlit point, and so, entering the Linnhe Loch, headed straight for the blue Kingairloch Hills. To the left lay Lismore, a glimmering strip of green and gold amid the s.h.i.+ning sea; behind was Port Appin, with its heather-crested bluff, and spidery-black pier; before them the serrated line of Ardnamurchan, and beyond, faint in the distance, the headland of Mull jutting into a glint of the Atlantic. To the right rose Shuna with its swelling gra.s.sy slopes and cross-signed pebble sh.o.r.es, like a fairy island in the summer sea. So further afield Appin House, set in fir knolls, Ardgour lighthouse glimmering to the left, and beyond, all the hills rising clear and cloudless to the peak of Ben Nevis.

On Ami's bay a cl.u.s.ter of boats in sh.o.r.e told that the herring were in.

"They never come to Loch Eira now," remarked Will, idly. "It is funny, but they don't."

"It will not be funny at all, sir," expostulated Donald. "It wa.s.s comin' they were every year, sure's I sit here, but it wa.s.s old John Mackenzie he wa.s.s going after them on the Sabbath, and it wa.s.s not coming any more after that they were."

"And that is a fact, of course?" asked Will, gravely.

"It will not be a fact at all, sir," echoed Donald, "but it was old John himself wa.s.s tellin' it to me."

"I believe it to be quite true, Mr. Cameron," put in the Reverend James; "indeed I remember the Bishop commenting upon the circ.u.mstance in a sermon. He brought it in most beautifully, and so conclusively."

"It wa.s.s a burnin' shame of the old _bodach_, whatever," grumbled John Macpherson. "Ay! Ay! a dirty trick, whatever."

Marjory, watching the sea-pyots wheel and veer against the blue of the distant hills, smiled to herself. The mere thought of the Bishop in his lawn sleeves seemed unreal out there in the suns.h.i.+ne. Everything was unreal save the boat skimming with a little hiss through the water.

"There's a steamer rounding the point below Lismore," said Will. "What will she be, I wonder?"

"She will be the salt s.h.i.+p from Glasgow for the harrin'," replied Donald, after prolonged deliberation. "That iss what she will be, an'

ferry welcome. I mind when the harrin' were in Glen Etive, and the salt s.h.i.+p she wa.s.s not comin' at all, the people wa.s.s diggin' holes in the peat, and fillin' them with the harrin'. It wa.s.s not keepin' ferry well, but it was eating them were. A terrible year for sickness it wa.s.s, though the harrin' was that plenty, they wa.s.s takin' them in buckets."

"'Deed an' it was a dirty trick of that old _bodachs_ to be driving them away," grumbled Macpherson, "a dirty trick--Gorsh me!--yon's a seal--quick, Mr. Paul!"

There was a sudden, still stir in the crew, and all eyes turned to where a smooth brown head slipped oilily through the water. Marjory held her breath half-shrinkingly, yet said no word. Not even when Paul whispered "Ready, Cameron?" and, heralded by a little flash and puff, the simultaneous report of the rifles frightened the sea-pyots into screaming flight. The head disappeared as the bullets went ricocheting over the water in soft _ping-pings_.

"Too high," said one voice, mournfully.

"Yes! but the direction was good."

These remarks, which in constant substance but varying form follow most unsuccessful shots, appeared satisfactory to the speakers; for Paul retired to the thwarts again, and Will resumed his pipe, while Macpherson looked pensively through one of the rifles to see if it had leaded, and the general excitement died down.

"It is curious," remarked Marjory, disdainfully relieved, and speaking, as it were, to the circ.u.mambient air, "how even a remote prospect of killing something will rouse a man's love of destruction."

Paul, leaning one arm on the thwart, looked up at her solemnly.

"True--too true. We are destructive, or rather, accurately speaking, we should like to be destructive--only we aren't. That was a bad miss of mine. But if we like to destroy, you women love to annex. Witness that pile of seaweed and sh.e.l.ls beside you. You don't really want it, and ten to one when it comes to the bother of carrying it home, you will leave it behind you."

"Pardon me," remarked the girl, "you shall carry it for me."