By beach and bog-land

Grace M‘Evoy heard the boys talking about it after supper as they sat on the rocks before their doorway, in which she stood knitting; and the conversation very much grieved and vexed her for several reasons. She was the only daughter of old Isaac M‘Evoy, and sister of “the boys,” so called merely because they were still unmarried. They were all three her elders, and she herself was “well on to thirty.” Theirs was a fishing family, and the chief event of her days had always been the going and coming of the boat. Not the same boat, for their old Granuaile, condemned as unseaworthy, had lain discarded by the tiny rough pier for the last half-dozen years or so. Her successor and namesake, however, sadly dissatisfied old M‘Evoy, who seldom failed to draw invidious comparisons between the two craft when embarking or disembarking. He had done so this evening as the Granuaile junior was being fastened to a staple wedged in among the boulders.

“Sure, if we’d been in her, the crathur,” he had said, looking regretfully at the black, slug-like shape, “we’d ha’ got home in one-half the time. She knew how to be takin’ advantage of every breath of win’ she met wid. But this lump of a baste ’ill go sulkin’ along wid herself before the handiest breeze ever blew in the bay, as sodden as a gob of mud.”

“At all events,” Thady had replied, handing out an oar to Grace, “she isn’t apt to be springin’ a leak on us any minyit, might land us to the bottom like a handful of cockles droppin’ out of your pocket.”

But his father had stumped unheeding across the shingle-strip that led indoors. He was smoking a last pipe now by the hearth, safely beyond hearing of his sons’ discourse, although to Grace in the doorway the voices came so clearly that she sometimes glanced to and fro nervously, apprehensive lest they should penetrate too far.

“The long and the short of it is, it’s too ould he’s gettin’,” summed up Thady, the middle brother; “we’d do a dale better wid him out of the boat.”

“Ay would we so,” said Tim, the youngest, “and himself would as well.”

“If he’d contint himself at all,” Joe said more doubtfully. “Goodness knows he’s been at it long enough. But he’s as headstrong as a two-year-ould; and, sure, how can we go agin the man, if he’s got a mind to be comin’ along?”

“What I was thinkin’ is this,” said Thady; “we might slip out early to-morra very quiet, before he’s awake, and pick up young Farrelly goin’ by the point. He’s smart enough. And then, wid nothin’ on board delayin’ us, we’d have a good chance of a bit of luck.”

“Bedad, now, ’twould be the best way,” Tim said with decision.

“Me father’d be ragin’ and annoyed, belike, over it,” Joe said with doubt.

“Sure, man, it’s one of them things that can’t be helped if he is, like the rain fallin’ straight and the water flowin’ crooked,” said Thady. “He might better be ragin’ than drowndin’ himself and the whole of us, as he might very aisy one of these rough days, let alone losin’ the mackerel on us. It stands to raison we’ll have to take and lave him behind sooner or later if he won’t lave himself. We can bid Grace tell him we didn’t like to be disturbin’ him that early, and she’ll conthrive to pacify him. If he wants to be doin’ somethin’ there’s plinty of nets to mend.”

After a little further discussion this plan was adopted, and as a preliminary step the boys presently went indoors to bed, for they agreed that they must start with the soon-returning summer sun. But their sister lingered for a while in the doorway, looking out into the waning twilight with a pucker of anxiety between her eyes and an angry grief at her heart.

“Cruel annoyed himself ’ill be,” was the burden of her meditations, “cruel annoyed. And he as gay and plisant in his mind this evenin’ as anythin’, and sayin’ it looked to be grand fishin’ weather the morra—and so it will, worse luck; but they’ll all be after slippin’ off wid themselves on him, and nobody only me about the place to thry put a good face on it, and I might as well spare meself the trouble, for he’ll see the raison they done it as plain as I see the moon risin’ up behind Slieve Sterran. Sure now, if I was them, I’d liefer every mackerel ever swum in the green say went to loss than to be vexin’ him that way, the crathur, troth I would so.... And Thady agin him, that he thought a dale on ever,” she continued bitterly. “I wouldn’t scarce have believed it of him. But ah, sure, after all ’tisn’t Thady’s fau’t entirely if Himself’s gettin’ ould—a thrifle ouldish—on us. Goin’ on for eighty he is—and then suppose he went, and by chance anythin’ happint him?” Grace had lived too long by the sea to underrate the risk of such chances. “I daren’t say a word,” she said to herself, “only it’s sorry I am in me heart wid thinkin’ of one thing and the other.”

So, still disconsolately thinking, she shut herself into the dark little house, with a mind full of evil auguries for the morrow.

And next morning everything began to happen very much in accordance with her forecasts. It was serene blue and white weather when she awoke somewhat later than usual, because her unquiet thoughts had delayed her falling asleep. There was not a sound to be heard, and for a while she cherished a hope that her father had been roused after all, and that the plans of the boys for leaving him behind had thus come harmlessly to naught. But presently her heart, hopes and all, sank plump down, like a full jug when you let go its handle in the well, for a call came from without: “Grace! Grace!” in tones of peremptory excitement.

Old Isaac was tramping about on the boulders when she obeyed his summons. He was a tall, long-bearded old man, gaunt and stooped, and Grace fancied that he looked more gaunt and more stooped than usual this morning. The many lines on his face were complicated by fresh creases of anxiety, and the gaze he bent upon his daughter was as intent as if he had been landing a twelve-pound salmon in a doubtful net.

“What the mischief and all’s took the boys and the boat?” was the question he had been waiting there to ask her. The hope he was cherishing was that he might hear they were only gone a little way to get bait, or on some such errand, and would be calling back for him. But Grace replied, in as innocent and matter-of-course a manner as she could: “Is it the boys? Sure they went off wid themselves this good while ago. Startin’ early they had to be for fear of missin’ the tide in the Headstones. Away beyond that they said they would be goin’ after the mackerel, and they thought bad of wakenin’ you out of your sleep.”

Down sank her father’s hope, and up swelled his wrath. “So that’s what they done on me,” he said. “That’s the thrick they’re after playin’ on me—the young thieves of the world!”

“Just for ’fraid of wakenin’ you,” Grace interposed, clinging desperately to her one flimsy excuse. “For ’fraid of wakenin’ you out of your sleep, daddy darlint.”

“Ay, begor, afraid of that they’d be, sure enough,” said he.

“’Deed were they,” Grace said, eagerly receiving his assent as a sign that he accepted her explanation. “Rael quiet and cautious they must ha’ went, the way you wouldn’t be woke.”

“The divil doubt it. Arrah then, git along wid yourself out of that, standin’ there tellin’ lies,” he said, turning upon her with a sudden savageness. “Is it dotin’ and demented you consait I am, forby an ould creepin’ cripple? The schemers, the villins—well enough they seen ’twould be a grand day for the fishin’, so they thought they’d slink off and do whatever plased themselves widout me obsthructin’ of them—that taught every one of them to handle an oar. I’m no better in a boat these times—and it me own boat—than a lump of ballast; that’s the opinion they have of me. And wishin’ the whole pack of them is—Thady and all the rest of yous—wishin’ I was in me clay, instead of to be wastin’ their time, if you plase, and hinderin’ them of their chances because I’m grown a bit stiff and clumsy. Git along wid yourself, and hould your fool’s tongue.”

Grace retreated indoors, where she stood aimlessly by the grey hearth, too much dejected to set about stirring up the smouldering peat-sod. “They’d a right to be ashamed of themselves to go do such a thing on him,” she was thinking, “but I wouldn’t be sayin’ aught agin them anyway behind their backs. ’Twould only annoy Himself there the worse, and indeed now they have him greatly annoyed—a good-for-nothin’ pack they are. And I dunno is there a hand’s turn I could be doin’ for him, unless I baked him a bit of griddle-cake for the breakfast. But as like as not he wouldn’t look at it.”

On these sad reflections broke a sound which sent her darting out of doors again. It was the rattle of a chain, and a grating on the shingle, such as betoken arrivals and departures by water. And there, indeed, was her father, fumbling about the fastenings of the old Granuaile. In a moment the rusty bolt slipped, falling with a clank, and he began to shove her down seaward.

“Och, saints above! What are you at, father, at all?” Grace called to him aghast.

But he only continued to push the boat. The light canvas frame slid along expeditiously, and close to the water’s edge he righted it with a sudden twist.

“You aren’t ever thinkin’ to go out in that ould crathur?” Grace protested, pursuing him in extreme consternation. “And she lyin’ there this half-dozen year and more, and leakin’ like twenty sieves.”

“Bedad then, it’s fine and dhry she ought to be by this time,” old Isaac replied grimly.

“To be sure, in coorse you wouldn’t be that cracked and crazy,” Grace asserted with a confidence she was far from feeling.

“Never you mind troublin’ yourself to considher how cracked and how crazy I’ve a fancy to be,” said her father. “Quare enough in his head you might say anybody was that ’ud sit at home the best fishin’ day of the saison; and it’s not what I’m goin’ to do, not for to plase all the impident young rapscallions in Ireland. Run along and be fetchin’ me the coil of line there’s lyin’ on the ledge of the back windy.”

But instead of running Grace sat down on the rugged little pier-end and began to cry miserably in the golden early sunshine. “It’s dhrowndin’ yourself on us you’ll be, I well know,” she said. “And ne’er a bit of breakfast you’ve had, and the fire not made up to be gettin’ you anythin’ quick—och, what ’ill become of me at all at all? For it’s sinkin’ under your feet she’ll be.”

Her father answered nothing, but stumped off into the house, whence he soon re-appeared laden with a coil of line, a small bundle, and a flappy brownish roll—the boat-sail, in fact, which he had reached down from among the rafters. The sight of these final preparations seemed to freeze Grace into composure. She watched him silently for a while as he fitted the little mast into its socket and shifted boards and benches. Then she said, in the tone of one stating some incontrovertible proposition: “Well, you’ll have me along wid you, anyhow, daddy. Joe always says it’s meself’s the great one for pullin’ and balin’ out; and mindin’ the boat I’ll be while yourself’s fishin’.”

At this her father chuckled cheerfully as he spliced a rope. “Why to be sure,” he said, “unless it’s one of the ould hins I’ll be bringin’ along to take care of me, or maybe ould Tib, the cat, ’ud suit me better. In coorse I’ll be takin’ the aither or the other of yous. Just you wait there aisy till I do, me dear.”

“May goodness forgive me, but it’s yourself’s the ungovernable man,” Grace said, and then stood watching him in dumb despair. He had apparently recovered his spirits, and laughed to himself occasionally; but Grace saw his hands shaking as he tied the knots, and she felt bitterly that her own hands were bound into helplessness by some invincible, invisible power.

The fair morning seemed to her like a dismal parody of other fair mornings very long ago, when she, a small child, used to be watching him get ready to go out fishing alone, for the boys were not yet big enough to give any substantial assistance. Hale and hearty he was in those days, and the thought of his ever being otherwise occurred to her no more than did doubts about the sun’s duly rising. And when he had rowed or sailed away she could run indoors to her mother with her razor-shells and wonderfully curious pebbles. Now, with Herself dead on them this ten year, and Himself, old and feeble, setting off to get drowned, for all she could do or say, she seemed to have strayed a terribly long way from that care-free paradise.

Suddenly a change in the light made her look round, and as suddenly she plucked her father by the sleeve. “It isn’t goin’ to be anyways such fine weather, then, at all,” she announced triumphantly. “Look at the fog where it’s blowin’ in like a stone wall. Sorra the boat i’ll be after mackerel in the bay this day whatever.”

Grace was right in her facts. One of the low-lying cloud-banks that wander more perilously than the ancient Jostling Rocks upon the plains of ocean had drifted shoreward by some caprice of the wind, and was now crowding into half a hundred inlets, among them the M‘Evoys’ creek. She was wrong, however, in the conclusion to which she had so happily hurried, and she speedily learned her mistake.

“Well now,” old Isaac said deliberately, looking round the shrunken horizon, “all I can say is that if there was five fogs in it, or fifty fogs, or five hundred for the matter of that, every one of them on the top of the other, niver a bit I’d be at a loss of me day’s fishin’ for the likes of them—or anybody else,” and he stepped on board with a determined stride.

“And the boys ’ill go to loss in it too, belike,” Grace said, standing by in her woe; “ne’er a one of yous ’ill ever be comin’ home to me again, and I haven’t a sowl in the width of the world. I wisht to God I was away in the ould buryin’-ground there at Lisannagh, along wid Herself, and then me heart wouldn’t be broke among yous all.”

Her father, now in the very act of pushing off, gave no signs of hearing, and she sat down upon the pier, oppressed by utter despondency. If she had any motive at all for lingering there it must have been supplied by her last flicker of hope. The boys, she thought, might possibly soon return, to be instantly despatched in quest of the mistrusted Granuaile.

How long Grace sat, crouched on the stones with her head in her hands, she could not have guessed. All her thoughts were out at sea, whence it seemed to her that news, good or bad, must soonest come. But it was a sound of steps clattering on the loose shingle behind her that first caused her to start up expectant. And what she saw made her stand gazing in wide-eyed terror. For the newcomer was young Farrelly, the boys’ comrade, alone, bare-headed and wet-haired, with drops glistening and falling as he moved.

“Is it you then, Con Farrelly?” she said. “And what’s gone wid the rest of them?”

“Och, Grace, mavrone—the Headstones!” said Con Farrelly.

Now the Headstones is a name of fear round about Kilavawn. It has been bestowed on a small square-shaped bay which bears an evil reputation. The salt water has there flowed over the grey crested ridges of a sea-sunken hill, and these rocks emerge in such numbers that they give it somewhat the aspect of a burial-ground. Jagged reefs and sandy bars help to make the place a very difficult passage to thread safely, even in fair weather; storms, and especially fogs, convert it into a mazy labyrinth of perils. Many a luckless keel has missed the clue and come to fatal grief among them. Con’s brief answer, therefore, conjured up a clear and cruel picture in Grace’s imagination.

“Is it dhrownded all of them was, and you comin’ away?” she asked calmly.

“Look you, Grace, you crathur, this was the way of it,” Con said in a breathless hurry. “Takin’ the short cut through the Headstones we were, intendin’ to thry off Malinish, when up come the fog like a wing clappin’ down on us, and we in among the thick of them snaggy rocks—you could see as far through a feather pillow—and a win’ whistlin’ up along wid it. So the first thing we knew, on agin a one we druv, and knocked a big houle in her—she wouldn’t keep afloat while you would be shippin’ an oar, that’s sartin, and sure you know ne’er a one of them swims a stroke, only meself. So they bid me get to shore, if I could at all, and they’d make a shift to hould on to the rock—but, telling you the truth, I misdoubt could they. I heard them lettin’ a woeful shout just afore I come to land, that was the most I could do,” he confessed. “But I run round along this strand, thinkin’ I’d borry the loan of your other ould boat, and thry would there be e’er a chance of raichin’ to them in her—she’d be apt to keep afloat that far—and the fog’s liftin’ a bit. I might maybe find them right enough yet, if I had no delayin’. Where have you her lyin’ now?”

“Sure me father’s took and dhrownded himself in her this mornin’, Con,” Grace said, quietly still. “He wouldn’t take me along wid him, sorra a bit would he, or else ’twould ha’ all happint very handy like. But the ould boat’s gone.”

“The Lord be good to us, Grace, is it romancin’ you are?” asked Con. “Why, what would bewitch the man to do such a thing all of a suddint? Ne’er a word the lads told me of his comin’ out this day. True for you, though—the boat’s away; and what am I to be at next?”

“Why wouldn’t you go look for another one, then, this minyit?” Grace said with a flash of vehemence. “Wasn’t you sayin’ there might be a chance yet? And is it standin’ there you are and talkin’ foolish, instead of runnin’ for your life?”

“Runnin’ I could be fast enough,” said Con, “but where to thry for a boat’s more than I can tell. Divil a one have I in me mind that I could be layin’ me hand on. Howane’er, I’ll do me endeavours, Grace M‘Evoy, troth will I so.”

Con darted off again along the beach, and was quickly out of sight. He left Grace in an infinite solitude. She had spoken truly when declaring that her father and brothers were all she possessed, for outside the little circle gathered round yonder central hearth-fire she could count no kinsfolk and few neighbours. Daddy and Joe and Thady and Tim, she felt certain that she was never to behold one of them more.

Under stress of that appalling belief she could only cower down among the boulders, closing eyes and ears to the outer world with a fold of her grey shawl, as if she might thus exclude also the inward desolation. She was holding back her thoughts much as she would have held her breath, drowning under deep water, conscious all the while that the terrible moment could not be long deferred.

“Grace, you big gawk! Is it asleep or wool-gatherin’ you are? Sittin’ crooched there like an ould wet hin. Grace, you great stronsach you—instead of catchin’ a holt of the rope, and us bawlin’ to you this last half-hour.”

Her father’s voice thus loudly accosting her broke roughly on her muffled ears. But seraphic strains could not have sounded to Grace more bewilderingly sweet. Up she started out of her black dream. The white fog had lifted and lightened wonderfully, so that there were golden gleams shining about its farthest silvery edges; but this was not what she saw. For close by bobbed up and down the old Granuaile, with her father standing in the bow, just striking the sail, and with all the three boys sitting in the stern, safe and sound, albeit rather sheepish and disconcerted of demeanour. Grace seized the tossed rope, and in another minute the whole party were tramping on the noisy stones. They had no fish to unload—not so much as a herring.

“Well, Grace, it’s the quare fine haul I’m after bringin’ home this day at all evints,” said old Isaac, “the biggest ever I took—if it was good for much, which it may be, or maybe it mayn’t. Where am I after findin’ them? Sure now, tellin’ you the truth, ’twas more be good luck than good guidance I happint on them, for the fog was that thick you couldn’t sort your fingers from your thumbs, when I come where I heard the bawls. But says I to meself: ‘That’s Thady,’ says I, ‘be the powers, it is himself.’ For he was a great hand at the roarin’ if anythin’ wint agin him, ever since he was the len’th of a sizeable mackerel. And, be the same token,” he continued, “very prisently I come widin a knife’s edge of scrapin’ desthruction into the ould boat off the lump of a rock me three hayroes there was sittin’ gathered up atop of. And bedad now, accordin’ to the look of them, for all the pleasure they were gettin’ out of it they needn’t ha’ throubled themselves to be flouncin’ off that outragious early—and bad manners to them—before other people had got rightly asleep. They might be none the worser if they waited till their hurry was over.”

“Och wirrasthrew, dad, you’ve got the laugh agin us this time, and no mistake,” Joe said with his wonted good-humoured grin, “and we’re very apt to not hear the last of it this saison anyway.”

Joe’s forebodings proved to be well founded. But the morning’s event had another result which nobody would have predicted. Old Isaac has never gone fishing again. Many a time—such is the contrariness of the human mind—have Joe and Thady and Tim come talking to him persuasively and wistfully about the grandeur of the weather, but his answer is always the same. “I’m after takin’ me’ biggest haul,” he says, “and nothin’ less ’ud satisfy me now. Stoppin’ at home I’ll be and contintin’ meself wid that.”