Part 1

Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF

BY NORMAN DUNCAN

AUTHOR OF "THE CRUISE OF THE _SHINING LIGHT_" "DOCTOR LUKE OF THE _LABRADOR_" ETC. ETC

NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS MCMVIII

Copyright, 1906,1907,1908, by Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1906, by Houghton, Mifflin, and Company. Copyright, 1905, by The Outlook Company. Copyright, 1907, by The Century Co.

_All rights reserved_ Published September, 1908.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE I. The Wayfarer 1 II. A Matter of Expediency 40 III. The Minstrel 66 IV. The Squall 98 V. The Fool of Skeleton Tickle 132 VI. A Comedy of Candlestick Cove 149 VII. "By-an'-by" Brown of Blunder Cove 182 VIII. They Who Lose at Love 208 IX. The Revolution at Satan's Trap 231 X. The Surplus 273

ILLUSTRATIONS

SHE WAS PROMISED TO SLOW JIM TOOL. Frontispiece "I SEED THE SHAPE OF A MAN LEAP FOR MY PLACE" 62 THE DARK, SMILING SALIM, WITH HIS MAGIC PACK, WAS WELCOME 88 "YOU KEEP YOUR TONGUE OFF POOR LIZABETH" 112 "YOU WAS FIXED ALL RIGHT?" PARSON JAUNT ASKED 178 "OL' BILL HULK CRAWLIN' DOWN THE HILL T' MEETIN'" 276

EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF

I--THE WAYFARER

The harbor lights were out; all the world of sea and sky and barren rock was black. It was Saturday--long after night, the first snow flying in the dark. Half a gale from the north ran whimpering through the rigging, by turns wrathful and plaintive--a restless wind: it would not leave the night at ease. The trader _Good Samaritan_ lay at anchor in Poor Man's Harbor on the Newfoundland coast: this on her last voyage of that season for the shore fish. We had given the schooner her Saturday night bath; she was white and trim in every part: the fish stowed, the decks swabbed, the litter of goods in the cabin restored to the hooks and shelves. The crew was in the forecastle--a lolling, snoozy lot, now desperately yawning for lack of diversion. Tumm, the clerk, had survived the moods of brooding and light irony, and was still wide awake, musing quietly in the seclusion of a cloud of tobacco smoke. By all the signs, the inevitable was at hand; and presently, as we had foreseen, the pregnant silence fell.

* * * * *

With one blast--a swishing exhalation breaking from the depths of his gigantic chest, in its passage fluttering his unkempt mustache--Tumm dissipated the enveloping cloud; and having thus emerged from seclusion he moved his glance from eye to eye until the crew sat in uneasy expectancy.

"If a lad's mother tells un he've got a soul," he began, "it don't do no wonderful harm; but if a man finds it out for hisself--"

The pause was for effect; so, too, the pointed finger, the lifted nostrils, the deep, inclusive glance.

"--it plays the devil!"

The ship's boy, a cadaverous, pasty, red-eyed, drooping-jawed youngster from the Cove o' First Cousins, gasped in a painful way. He came closer to the forecastle table--a fascinated rabbit.

"Billy Ill," said Tumm, "you better turn in."

"I isn't sleepy, sir."

"I 'low you better _had_," Tumm warned. "It ain't fit for such as you t' hear."

The boy's voice dropped to an awed whisper. "I wants t' hear," he said.

"Hear?"

"Ay, sir. I wants t' hear about souls--an' the devil."

Tumm sighed. "Ah, well, lad," said he, "I 'low you was born t' be troubled by fears. God help us all!"

We waited.

* * * * *

"He come," Tumm began, "from Jug Cove--bein'," he added, indulgently, after a significant pause, "born there--an' that by sheer ill luck of a windy night in the fall o' the year, when the ol' woman o' Tart Harbor, which used t' be handy thereabouts, was workin' double watches at Whale Run t' save the life of a trader's wife o' the name o' Tiddle. I 'low," he continued, "that 'tis the only excuse a man _could_ have for hailin' from Jug Cove; for," he elucidated, "'tis a mean place t' the westward o' Fog Island, a bit below the Black Gravestones, where the _Soldier o' the Cross_ was picked up by Satan's Tail in the nor'easter o' last fall. You opens the Cove when you rounds Greedy Head o' the Henan'-Chickens an' lays a course for Gentleman Tickle t' other side o' the Bay. 'Tis there that Jug Cove lies; an' whatever," he proceeded, being now well under way, with all sail drawing in a snoring breeze, "'tis where the poor devil had the ill luck t' hail from. We was drove there in the _Quick as Wink_ in the southerly gale o' the Year o' the Big Shore Catch; an' we lied three dirty days in the lee o' the Pillar o' Cloud, waitin' for civil weather; for we was fished t' the scrupper-holes, an' had no heart t' shake hands with the sea that was runnin'. 'Tis a mean place t' be wind-bound--this Jug Cove: tight an' dismal as chokee, with walls o' black rock, an' as nasty a front yard o' sea as ever I knowed.

"'Ecod!' thinks I, 'I'll just take a run ashore t' see how bad a mess really _was_ made o' Jug Cove.'

"Which bein' done, I crossed courses for the first time with Abraham Botch--Botch by name, an' botch, accordin' t' my poor lights, by nature: Abraham Botch, God help un! o' Jug Cove. 'Twas a foggy day--a cold, wet time: ecod! the day felt like the corpse of a drowned cook. The moss was soggy; the cliffs an' rocks was all a-drip; the spruce was soaked t' the skin--the earth all wettish an' sticky an' cold. The southerly gale ramped over the sea; an' the sea got so mad at the wind that it fair frothed at the mouth. I 'low the sea was tired o' foolin', an' wanted t' go t' sleep; but the wind kep' teasin' it--kep' slappin' an' pokin' an' pushin'--till the sea couldn't stand it no more, an' just got mad. Off shore, in the front yard o' Jug Cove, 'twas all white with breakin' rocks--as dirty a sea for fishin' punts as a man could sail in nightmares. From the Pillar o' Cloud I could see, down below, the seventeen houses o' Jug Cove, an' the sweet little _Quick as Wink_; the water was black, an' the hills was black, but the ship an' the mean little houses was gray in the mist. T' sea they was nothin'--just fog an' breakers an' black waves. T' land-ward, likewise--black hills in the mist. A dirty sea an' a lean shore!

"'Tumm,' thinks I, ''tis more by luck than good conduct that you wasn't born here. You'd thank God, Tumm,' thinks I, 'if you didn't feel so dismal scurvy about bein' the Teacher's pet.'

"An' then--

"'Good-even,' says Abraham Botch.

"There he lied--on the blue, spongy caribou-moss, at the edge o' the cliff, with the black-an'--white sea below, an' the mist in the sky an' on the hills t' leeward. Ecod! but he was lean an' ragged: this fellow sprawlin' there, with his face t' the sky an' his legs an' leaky boots scattered over the moss. Skinny legs he had, an' a chest as thin as paper; but aloft he carried more sail 'n the law allows--sky-scraper, star-gazer, an', ay! even the curse-o'-God-over-all. That was Botch--mostly head, an' a sight more forehead than face, God help un! He'd a long, girlish face, a bit thin at the cheeks an' skimped at the chin; an' they wasn't beard enough anywheres t' start a bird's nest. Ah, but the eyes o' that botch! Them round, deep eyes, with the still waters an' clean shores! I 'low I can't tell you no more--but only this: that they was somehow like the sea, blue an' deep an' full o' change an' sadness. Ay, there lied Botch in the fog-drip--poor Botch o' Jug Cove: eyes in his head; his dirty, lean body clothed in patched moleskin an' rotten leather.

"An'--

"'Good-even, yourself,' says I.

"'My name's Botch,' says he. 'Isn't you from the _Quick as Wink_?'

"'I is,' says I; 'an' they calls me Tumm.'

"'That's a very queer name,' says he.

"'Oh no!' says I. 'They isn't nothin' queer about the name o' Tumm.'

"He laughed a bit--an' rubbed his feet together: just like a tickled youngster. 'Ay,' says he; 'that's a wonderful queer name. Hark!' says he. 'You just listen, an' I'll _show_ you. Tumm,' says he, 'Tumm, Tumm, Tumm.... Tumm, Tumm, Tumm.... Tumm--'

"'Don't,' says I, for it give me the fidgets. 'Don't say it so often.'

"'Why not?' says he.

"'I don't like it," says I.

"'Tumm,' says he, with a little cackle, 'Tumm, Tumm, Tumm--'

"'Don't you do that no more,' says I. 'I won't have it. When you says it that way, I 'low I don't know whether my name is Tumm or Tump. 'Tis a very queer name. I wisht,' says I, 'that I'd been called Smith.'

"''Twouldn't make no difference,' says he. 'All names is queer if you stops t' think. Every word you ever spoke is queer. Everything is queer. It's _all_ queer--once you stops t' think about it.'

"'Then I don't think I'll stop,' says I, 'for I don't _like_ things t' be queer.'

"Then Botch had a little spell o' thinkin'."

Tumm leaned over the forecastle table.

"Now," said he, forefinger lifted, "accordin' t' my lights, it ain't nice t' see _any_ man thinkin': for a real man ain't got no call t' think, an' can't afford the time on the coast o' Newf'un'land, where they's too much fog an' wind an' rock t' 'low it. For me, I'd rather see a man in a 'leptic fit: for fits is more or less natural an' can't be helped. But Botch! When Botch _thunk_--when he got hard at it--'twould give you the shivers. He sort o'drawed away--got into nothin'. They wasn't no sea nor shore for Botch no more; they wasn't no earth, no heavens. He got rid o'all that, as though it hindered the work he was at, an' didn't matter anyhow. They wasn't nothin' left o'things but botch--an' the nothin' about un. Botch _in_ nothin'. Accordin' t' my lights, 'tis a sinful thing t'do; an' when I first seed Botch at it, I 'lowed he was lackin' in religious opinions. 'Twas just as if his soul had pulled down the blinds, an' locked the front door, an' gone out for a walk, without leavin' word when 'twould be home. An', accordin' t' my lights, it ain't right, nor wise, for a man's soul t' do no such thing. A man's soul 'ain't got no common-sense; it 'ain't got no caution, no manners, no nothin' that it needs in a wicked world like this. When it gets loose, 't is liable t' wander far, an' get lost, an' miss its supper. Accordin' t' my lights, it ought t' be kep' in, an' fed an' washed regular, an' put t' bed at nine o'clock. But Botch! well, there lied his body in the wet, like an unloved child, while his soul went cavortin' over the Milky Way.

"He come to all of a sudden. 'Tumm,' says he, 'you is.'

"'Ay,' says I, 'Tumm I is. 'Tis the name I was born with.'

"'You don't find me,' says he. 'I says you _is_.'

"'Is what?'

"'Just--_is_!'

"With that, I took un. 'Twas all t' oncet. He was tellin' me that I _was_. Well, I _is_. Damme! 'twasn't anything I didn't _know_ if I'd stopped t' think. But they wasn't nobody ever called my notice to it afore, an' I'd been too busy about the fish t' mind it. So I was sort o'--s'prised. It don't matter, look you! t' _be_; but 'tis mixin' t' the mind an' fearsome t' stop t' _think_ about it. An' it come t' me all t' oncet; an' I was s'prised, an' I was scared.

"'Now, Tumm,' says he, with his finger p'intin', 'where was you?'

"'Fishin' off the Shark's Fin,' says I. 'We just come up loaded, an'--'

"'You don't find me,' says he. 'I says, where was you afore you was is?'

"'Is you gone mad?' says I.

"'Not at all, Tumm,' says he. 'Not at all! 'Tis a plain question. You _is_, isn't you? Well, then, you must have been _was_. Now, then, Tumm, where _was_ you?'

"'Afore I was born?'

"'Ay--afore you was is.'

"'God knows!' says I. 'I 'low _I_ don't. An' look you, Botch,' says I, 'this talk ain't right. You isn't a infidel, is you?'

"'Oh no!' says he.

"'Then,' says I, for I was mad, 'where in hell did you think up all this ghostly tomfoolery?'

"'On the grounds,' says he.

"'On the grounds?' Lads," said Tumm to the crew, his voice falling, "_you_ knows what that means, doesn't you?"

* * * * *

The Jug Cove fishing-grounds lie off Breakheart Head. They are beset with peril and all the mysteries of the earth. They are fished from little punts, which the men of Jug Cove cleverly make with their own hands, every man his own punt, having been taught to this by their fathers, who learned of the fathers before them, out of the knowledge which ancient contention with the wiles of the wind and of the sea had disclosed. The timber is from the wilderness, taken at leisure; the iron and hemp are from the far-off southern world, which is to the men of the place like a grandmother's tale, loved and incredible. Off the Head the sea is spread with rock and shallow. It is a sea of wondrously changing colors--blue, red as blood, gray, black with the night. It is a sea of changing moods: of swift, unprovoked wrath; of unsought and surprising gentlenesses. It is not to be understood. There is no mastery of it to be won. It gives no accounting to men. It has no feeling. The shore is bare and stolid. Black cliffs rise from the water; they are forever white at the base with the fret of the sea. Inland, the blue-black hills lift their heads; they are unknown to the folk--hills of fear, remote and cruel. Seaward, fogs and winds are bred; the misty distances are vast and mysterious, wherein are the great cliffs of the world's edge. Winds and fogs and ice are loose and passionate upon the waters. Overhead is the high, wide sky, its appalling immensity revealed from the rim to the rim. Clouds, white and black, crimson and gold, fluffy, torn to shreds, wing restlessly from nowhere to nowhere. It is a vast, silent, restless place. At night its infinite spaces are alight with the dread marvel of stars. The universe is voiceless and indifferent. It has no purpose--save to follow its inscrutable will. Sea and wind are aimless. The land is dumb, self-centred; it has neither message nor care for its children. And from dawn to dark the punts of Jug Cove float in the midst of these terrors.

* * * * *

"Eh?" Tumm resumed. "_You_ knows what it is, lads. 'Tis bad enough t' think in company, when a man can peep into a human eye an' steady his old hulk; but t' think alone--an' at the fishin'! I 'low Botch ought to have knowed better; for they's too many men gone t' the mad-house t' St. John's already from this here coast along o' thinkin'. But Botch thinked at will. 'Tumm,' says he, 'I done a power o' thinkin' in my life--out there on the grounds, between Breakheart Head an' the Tombstone, that breakin' rock t' the east'ard. I've thunk o' wind an' sea, o' sky an' soil, o' tears an' laughter an' crooked backs, o' love an' death, rags an' robbery, of all the things of earth an' in the hearts o' men; an' I don't know nothin'! My God! after all, I don't know nothin'! The more I've thunk, the less I've knowed. 'Tis all come down t' this, now, Tumm: that I _is_. An' if I _is_, I _was_ an' _will be_. But sometimes I misdoubt the _was_; an' if I loses my grip on the _was_, Tumm, my God! what'll become o' the _will be_? Can you tell me that, Tumm? Is I got t' come down t' the _is_? Can't I build nothin' on that? Can't I go no further than the _is_? An' will I lose even that? Is I got t' come down t' knowin' nothin' at all?'

"'Look you! Botch,' says I, 'don't you know the price o' fish?'

"'No,' says he. 'But it ain't nothin' t' know. It ain't worth knowin'. It--it--it don't matter!'

"'I 'low,' says I, 'your wife don't think likewise. You got a wife, isn't you?'

"'Ay,' says he.

"'An' a kid?'

"'I don't know,' says he.

"'You _what_!' says I.

"'I don't know,' says he. 'She was engaged at it when I come up on the Head. They was a lot o' women in the house, an' a wonderful lot o' fuss an' muss. You'd be _s'prised_, Tumm,' says he, 't' know how much fuss a thing like this can _make_. So,' says he, 'I 'lowed I'd come up on the Pillar o' Cloud an' think a spell in peace.'

"'An' what?' says I.

"'Have a little spurt at thinkin'.'

"'O' she?'

"'Oh no, Tumm,' says he; '_that_ ain't nothin' t' _think_ about. But,' says he, 'I s'pose I might as well go down now, an' see what's happened. I hopes 'tis a boy,' says he, 'for somehow girls don't seem t' have much show.'

"An' with that," drawled Tumm, "down the Pillar o' Cloud goes Abraham Botch."

He paused to laugh; and 'twas a soft, sad little laugh--dwelling upon things long past.

"An' by-and-by," he continued, "I took the goat-path t' the water-side; an' I went aboard the _Quick as Wink_ in a fog o' dreams an' questions. The crew was weighin' anchor, then; an' 'twas good for the soul t' feel the deck-planks underfoot, an' t' hear the clank o' solid iron, an' t' join the work-song o' men that had muscles an' bowels. 'Skipper Zeb,' says I, when we had the old craft coaxed out o' the Tickle, 'leave me have a spell at the wheel. For the love o' man,' says I, 'let me get a grip of it! I wants t' get hold o' something with my hands--something real an' solid; something I knows about; something that _means_ something!' For all this talk o' the _is_ an' _was_, an' all these thoughts o' the _why_, an' all the crybaby 'My Gods!' o' Abraham Botch, an' the mystery o' the wee new soul, had made me dizzy in the head an' a bit sick at the stomach. So I took the wheel, an' felt the leap an' quiver o' the ship, an' got my eye screwed on the old Giant's Thumb, loomin' out o' the east'ard fog, an' kep' her wilful head up, an' wheedled her along in the white tumble, with the spray o' the sea cool an' wet on my face; an' I was better t' oncet. The Boilin'-Pot Shallows was dead ahead; below the fog I could see the manes o' the big white horses flung t' the gale. An' I 'lowed that oncet I got the _Quick as Wink_ in them waters, deep with fish as she was, I'd have enough of a real man's troubles t' sink the woes o' the soul out o' all remembrance.

"'I won't care a squid,' thinks I, 'for the _why_ nor the _wherefore_ o' nothin'!'

"'N neither I did."

The skipper of the _Good Samaritan_ yawned. "Isn't they nothin' about fish in this here yarn?" he asked.

"Nor tradin'," snapped Tumm.

"Nothin' about love?"

"Botch never _knowed_ about love."

"If you'll 'scuse me," said the skipper, "I'll turn in. I got enough."

But the clammy, red-eyed lad from the Cove o' First Cousins hitched closer to the table, and put his chin in his hands. He was now in a shower of yellow light from the forecastle lamp. His nostrils were working; his eyes were wide and restless and hot. He had bitten at a chapped underlip until the blood came.

"About that _will be_" he whispered, timidly. "Did Botch never say--_where_?"

"You better turn in," Tumm answered.

"But I wants t' know!"

Tumm averted his face. "Ill," he commanded, quietly, "you better turn in."

The boy was obedient.

"In March, 'long about two year after," Tumm resumed, "I shipped for the ice aboard the _Neptune_. We got a scattered swile [seal] off the Horse Islands; but ol' Cap'n Lane 'lowed the killin' was so mean that he'd move t' sea an' come up with the ice on the outside, for the wind had been in the nor'west for a likely spell. We cotched the body o' ice t' the nor'east o' the Funks; an' the swiles was sure there--hoods an' harps an' whitecoats an' all. They was three St. John's steamers there, an' they'd been killin' for a day an' a half; so the ol' man turned our crew loose on the ice without waitin' t' wink, though 'twas afternoon, with a wicked gray look t' the sky in the west, which was where the wind was jumpin' from. An' we had a red time--ay, now, believe me: a soppy red time of it among the swiles that day! They was men from Green Bay, an' Bonavist', an' the Exploits, an' the South Coast, an' a swarm o' Irish from St. John's; they was so many men on the pack, ecod! that you couldn't call their names. An' we killed an' sculped till dusk. An' then the weather broke with snow; an' afore we knowed it we was lost from the ships in the cloud an' wind--three hundred men, ecod! smothered an' blinded by snow: howlin' for salvation like souls in a frozen hell.

"'Tumm,' thinks I, 'you better get aboard o' something the sea won't break over. This pack,' thinks I, 'will certain go abroad when the big wind gets at it."

"So I got aboard a bit of a berg; an' when I found the lee side I sot down in the dark an' thunk hard about different things--sunshine an' supper an' the like o' that; for they wasn't no use thinkin' about what was goin' for'ard on the pack near by. An' there, on the side o' the little berg, sits I till mornin'; an' in the mornin', out o' the blizzard t' win'ward, along comes Abraham Botch o' Jug Cove, marooned on a flat pan o' ice. 'Twas comin' down the wind--clippin' it toward my overgrown lump of a craft like a racin' yacht. When I sighted Botch, roundin' a point o' the berg, I 'lowed I'd have no more'n twenty minutes t' yarn with un afore he was out o' hail an' sight in the snow t' leeward. He was squatted on his haunches, with his chin on his knees, white with thin ice, an' fringed an' decked with icicles; an' it 'peared t' me, from the way he was took up with the nothin' about un, that he was still thinkin'. The pack was gone abroad, then--scattered t' the four winds: they wasn't another pan t' be seed on the black water. An' the sea was runnin' high--a fussy wind-lop over a swell that broke in big whitecaps, which went swishin' away with the wind. A scattered sea broke over Botch's pan; 'twould fall aboard, an' break, an' curl past un, risin' to his waist. But the poor devil didn't seem t' take much notice. He'd shake the water off, an' cough it out of his throat; an' then he'd go on takin' observations in the nothin' dead ahead.

"'Ahoy, Botch!' sings I.

"He knowed me t' oncet. 'Tumm!' he sings out. 'Well, well! That _you_?'

"'The same,' says I. 'You got a bad berth there, Botch. I wish you was aboard the berg with me.'

"'Oh,' says he, 'the pan'll _do_. I gets a bit choked with spray when I opens my mouth; but they isn't no good reason why I shouldn't keep it shut. A man ought t' breathe through his nose, anyhow. That's what it's _for_.'

"'Twas a bad day--a late dawn in a hellish temper. They wasn't much of it t' see--just a space o' troubled water, an' the big unfeelin'' cloud. An', God! how cold it was! The wind was thick with dry snow, an' it come whirlin'' out o' the west as if it wanted t' do damage, an' meant t' have its way. 'Twould grab the crests o' the seas an' fling un off like handfuls o' white dust. An' in the midst o' this was poor Botch o' Jug Cove!

"'This wind,' says I, 'will work up a wonderful big sea, Botch. You'll be swep' off afore nightfall.'

"'No,' says he; 'for by good luck, Tumm, I'm froze tight t' the pan.'

"'But the seas'll drown you.'

"'I don't know,' says he. 'I keeps breakin' the ice 'round my neck,' says he, 'an' if I can on'y keep my neck clear an' limber I'll be able t' duck most o' the big seas.'

"It wasn't nice t' see the gentle wretch squattin' there on his haunches. It made me feel bad. I wisht he was home t' Jug Cove thinkin' of his soul.

"'Botch,' says I, 'I _wisht_ you was somewheres else!'

"'Now, don't you trouble about that, Tumm,' says he. 'Please don't! The ice is all on the outside. I'm perfeckly comfortable inside.'