The Country of the Pointed Firs

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Captain Littlepage moved his chair out of the wake of the
sunshine, and still sat looking at me. I began to be very eager to
know upon what errand he had come.

"It may be found out some o' these days," he said earnestly.
"We may know it all, the next step; where Mrs. Begg is now, for
instance. Certainty, not conjecture, is what we all desire."

"I suppose we shall know it all some day," said I.

"We shall know it while yet below," insisted the captain, with
a flush of impatience on his thin cheeks. "We have not looked for
truth in the right direction. I know what I speak of; those who
have laughed at me little know how much reason my ideas are based
upon." He waved his hand toward the village below. "In that
handful of houses they fancy that they comprehend the universe."

I smiled, and waited for him to go on.

"I am an old man, as you can see," he continued, "and I have
been a shipmaster the greater part of my life,--forty-three years
in all. You may not think it, but I am above eighty years of age."

He did not look so old, and I hastened to say so.

"You must have left the sea a good many years ago, then,
Captain Littlepage?" I said.

"I should have been serviceable at least five or six years
more," he answered. "My acquaintance with certain--my experience
upon a certain occasion, I might say, gave rise to prejudice. I do
not mind telling you that I chanced to learn of one of the greatest
discoveries that man has ever made."

Now we were approaching dangerous ground, but a sudden sense
of his sufferings at the hands of the ignorant came to my help, and
I asked to hear more with all the deference I really felt. A
swallow flew into the schoolhouse at this moment as if a kingbird
were after it, and beat itself against the walls for a minute, and
escaped again to the open air; but Captain Littlepage took no
notice whatever of the flurry.

"I had a valuable cargo of general merchandise from the London
docks to Fort Churchill, a station of the old company on Hudson's
Bay," said the captain earnestly. "We were delayed in lading, and
baffled by head winds and a heavy tumbling sea all the way north-
about and across. Then the fog kept us off the coast; and when I
made port at last, it was too late to delay in those northern
waters with such a vessel and such a crew as I had. They cared for
nothing, and idled me into a fit of sickness; but my first mate was
a good, excellent man, with no more idea of being frozen in there
until spring than I had, so we made what speed we could to get
clear of Hudson's Bay and off the coast. I owned an eighth of the
vessel, and he owned a sixteenth of her. She was a full-rigged
ship, called the Minerva, but she was getting old and leaky. I
meant it should be my last v'y'ge in her, and so it proved. She
had been an excellent vessel in her day. Of the cowards aboard her
I can't say so much."

"Then you were wrecked?" I asked, as he made a long pause.

"I wa'n't caught astern o' the lighter by any fault of mine,"
said the captain gloomily. "We left Fort Churchill and run out
into the Bay with a light pair o' heels; but I had been vexed to
death with their red-tape rigging at the company's office, and
chilled with stayin' on deck an' tryin' to hurry up things, and
when we were well out o' sight o' land, headin' for Hudson's
Straits, I had a bad turn o' some sort o' fever, and had to stay
below. The days were getting short, and we made good runs, all
well on board but me, and the crew done their work by dint of hard
driving."

I began to find this unexpected narrative a little dull.
Captain Littlepage spoke with a kind of slow correctness that
lacked the longshore high flavor to which I had grown used; but I
listened respectfully while he explained the winds having become
contrary, and talked on in a dreary sort of way about his voyage,
the bad weather, and the disadvantages he was under in the
lightness of his ship, which bounced about like a chip in a
bucket, and would not answer the rudder or properly respond to the
most careful setting of sails.

"So there we were blowin' along anyways," he complained; but
looking at me at this moment, and seeing that my thoughts were
unkindly wandering, he ceased to speak.

"It was a hard life at sea in those days, I am sure," said I,
with redoubled interest.

"It was a dog's life," said the poor old gentleman, quite
reassured, "but it made men of those who followed it. I see a
change for the worse even in our own town here; full of loafers
now, small and poor as 'tis, who once would have followed the sea,
every lazy soul of 'em. There is no occupation so fit for just
that class o' men who never get beyond the fo'cas'le. I view it,
in addition, that a community narrows down and grows dreadful
ignorant when it is shut up to its own affairs, and gets no
knowledge of the outside world except from a cheap, unprincipled
newspaper. In the old days, a good part o' the best men here knew
a hundred ports and something of the way folks lived in them. They
saw the world for themselves, and like's not their wives and
children saw it with them. They may not have had the best of
knowledge to carry with 'em sight-seein', but they were some
acquainted with foreign lands an' their laws, an' could see outside
the battle for town clerk here in Dunnet; they got some sense o'
proportion. Yes, they lived more dignified, and their houses were
better within an' without. Shipping's a terrible loss to this part
o' New England from a social point o' view, ma'am."

"I have thought of that myself," I returned, with my interest
quite awakened. "It accounts for the change in a great many
things,--the sad disappearance of sea-captains,--doesn't it?"

"A shipmaster was apt to get the habit of reading," said my
companion, brightening still more, and taking on a most touching
air of unreserve. "A captain is not expected to be familiar with
his crew, and for company's sake in dull days and nights he turns
to his book. Most of us old shipmasters came to know 'most
everything about something; one would take to readin' on farming
topics, and some were great on medicine,--but Lord help their poor
crews!--or some were all for history, and now and then there'd be
one like me that gave his time to the poets. I was well acquainted
with a shipmaster that was all for bees an' beekeepin'; and if you
met him in port and went aboard, he'd sit and talk a terrible while
about their havin' so much information, and the money that could be
made out of keepin' 'em. He was one of the smartest captains that
ever sailed the seas, but they used to call the Newcastle,
a great bark he commanded for many years, Tuttle's beehive. There
was old Cap'n Jameson: he had notions of Solomon's Temple, and made
a very handsome little model of the same, right from the Scripture
measurements, same's other sailors make little ships and design new
tricks of rigging and all that. No, there's nothing to take the
place of shipping in a place like ours. These bicycles offend me
dreadfully; they don't afford no real opportunities of experience
such as a man gained on a voyage. No: when folks left home in the
old days they left it to some purpose, and when they got home they
stayed there and had some pride in it. There's no large-minded way
of thinking now: the worst have got to be best and rule everything;
we're all turned upside down and going back year by year."

"Oh no, Captain Littlepage, I hope not," said I, trying to
soothe his feelings.

There was a silence in the schoolhouse, but we could hear the
noise of the water on a beach below. It sounded like the strange
warning wave that gives notice of the turn of the tide. A late
golden robin, with the most joyful and eager of voices, was singing
close by in a thicket of wild roses.

VI

The Waiting Place

"HOW DID YOU manage with the rest of that rough voyage on the
Minerva?" I asked.

"I shall be glad to explain to you," said Captain Littlepage,
forgetting his grievances for the moment. "If I had a map at hand
I could explain better. We were driven to and fro 'way up toward
what we used to call Parry's Discoveries, and lost our bearings.
It was thick and foggy, and at last I lost my ship; she drove on a
rock, and we managed to get ashore on what I took to be a barren
island, the few of us that were left alive. When she first struck,
the sea was somewhat calmer than it had been, and most of the crew,
against orders, manned the long-boat and put off in a hurry, and
were never heard of more. Our own boat upset, but the carpenter
kept himself and me above water, and we drifted in. I had no
strength to call upon after my recent fever, and laid down to die;
but he found the tracks of a man and dog the second day, and
got along the shore to one of those far missionary stations that
the Moravians support. They were very poor themselves, and in
distress; 'twas a useless place. There were but few Esquimaux left
in that region. There we remained for some time, and I became
acquainted with strange events.

The captain lifted his head and gave me a questioning glance.
I could not help noticing that the dulled look in his eyes had
gone, and there was instead a clear intentness that made them seem
dark and piercing.

"There was a supply ship expected, and the pastor, an
excellent Christian man, made no doubt that we should get passage
in her. He was hoping that orders would come to break up the
station; but everything was uncertain, and we got on the best we
could for a while. We fished, and helped the people in other ways;
there was no other way of paying our debts. I was taken to the
pastor's house until I got better; but they were crowded, and I
felt myself in the way, and made excuse to join with an old seaman,
a Scotchman, who had built him a warm cabin, and had room in it for
another. He was looked upon with regard, and had stood by the
pastor in some troubles with the people. He had been on one of
those English exploring parties that found one end of the road to
the north pole, but never could find the other. We lived like dogs
in a kennel, or so you'd thought if you had seen the hut from the
outside; but the main thing was to keep warm; there were piles of
bird-skins to lie on, and he'd made him a good bunk, and there was
another for me. 'Twas dreadful dreary waitin' there; we begun to
think the supply steamer was lost, and my poor ship broke up and
strewed herself all along the shore. We got to watching on the
headlands; my men and me knew the people were short of supplies and
had to pinch themselves. It ought to read in the Bible, 'Man
cannot live by fish alone,' if they'd told the truth of things;
'taint bread that wears the worst on you! First part of the time,
old Gaffett, that I lived with, seemed speechless, and I didn't
know what to make of him, nor he of me, I dare say; but as we got
acquainted, I found he'd been through more disasters than I had,
and had troubles that wa'n't going to let him live a great while.
It used to ease his mind to talk to an understanding person, so we
used to sit and talk together all day, if it rained or blew so that
we couldn't get out. I'd got a bad blow on the back of my head at
the time we came ashore, and it pained me at times, and my strength
was broken, anyway; I've never been so able since."

Captain Littlepage fell into a reverie.

"Then I had the good of my reading," he explained presently.
"I had no books; the pastor spoke but little English, and all his
books were foreign; but I used to say over all I could remember.
The old poets little knew what comfort they could be to a
man. I was well acquainted with the works of Milton, but up there
it did seem to me as if Shakespeare was the king; he has his sea
terms very accurate, and some beautiful passages were calming to
the mind. I could say them over until I shed tears; there was
nothing beautiful to me in that place but the stars above and those
passages of verse.

"Gaffett was always brooding and brooding, and talking to
himself; he was afraid he should never get away, and it preyed upon
his mind. He thought when I got home I could interest the
scientific men in his discovery: but they're all taken up with
their own notions; some didn't even take pains to answer the
letters I wrote. You observe that I said this crippled man Gaffett
had been shipped on a voyage of discovery. I now tell you that the
ship was lost on its return, and only Gaffett and two officers were
saved off the Greenland coast, and he had knowledge later that
those men never got back to England; the brig they shipped on was
run down in the night. So no other living soul had the facts, and
he gave them to me. There is a strange sort of a country 'way up
north beyond the ice, and strange folks living in it. Gaffett
believed it was the next world to this."

"What do you mean, Captain Littlepage?" I exclaimed. The old
man was bending forward and whispering; he looked over his shoulder
before he spoke the last sentence.

"To hear old Gaffett tell about it was something awful," he
said, going on with his story quite steadily after the moment of
excitement had passed. "'Twas first a tale of dogs and sledges,
and cold and wind and snow. Then they begun to find the ice grow
rotten; they had been frozen in, and got into a current flowing
north, far up beyond Fox Channel, and they took to their boats when
the ship got crushed, and this warm current took them out of sight
of the ice, and into a great open sea; and they still followed it
due north, just the very way they had planned to go. Then they
struck a coast that wasn't laid down or charted, but the cliffs
were such that no boat could land until they found a bay and struck
across under sail to the other side where the shore looked lower;
they were scant of provisions and out of water, but they got sight
of something that looked like a great town. 'For God's sake,
Gaffett!' said I, the first time he told me. 'You don't mean a
town two degrees farther north than ships had ever been?' for he'd
got their course marked on an old chart that he'd pieced out at the
top; but he insisted upon it, and told it over and over again, to
be sure I had it straight to carry to those who would be
interested. There was no snow and ice, he said, after they had
sailed some days with that warm current, which seemed to come right
from under the ice that they'd been pinched up in and had
been crossing on foot for weeks."

"But what about the town?" I asked. "Did they get to the
town?"

"They did," said the captain, "and found inhabitants; 'twas an
awful condition of things. It appeared, as near as Gaffett could
express it, like a place where there was neither living nor dead.
They could see the place when they were approaching it by sea
pretty near like any town, and thick with habitations; but all at
once they lost sight of it altogether, and when they got close
inshore they could see the shapes of folks, but they never could
get near them,--all blowing gray figures that would pass along
alone, or sometimes gathered in companies as if they were watching.
The men were frightened at first, but the shapes never came near
them,--it was as if they blew back; and at last they all got bold
and went ashore, and found birds' eggs and sea fowl, like any wild
northern spot where creatures were tame and folks had never been,
and there was good water. Gaffett said that he and another man
came near one o' the fog-shaped men that was going along slow with
the look of a pack on his back, among the rocks, an' they chased
him; but, Lord! he flittered away out o' sight like a leaf the wind
takes with it, or a piece of cobweb. They would make as if they
talked together, but there was no sound of voices, and 'they acted
as if they didn't see us, but only felt us coming towards them,'
says Gaffett one day, trying to tell the particulars. They
couldn't see the town when they were ashore. One day the captain
and the doctor were gone till night up across the high land where
the town had seemed to be, and they came back at night beat out and
white as ashes, and wrote and wrote all next day in their
notebooks, and whispered together full of excitement, and they were
sharp-spoken with the men when they offered to ask any questions.

"Then there came a day," said Captain Littlepage, leaning
toward me with a strange look in his eyes, and whispering quickly.
"The men all swore they wouldn't stay any longer; the man on watch
early in the morning gave the alarm, and they all put off in the
boat and got a little way out to sea. Those folks, or whatever
they were, come about 'em like bats; all at once they raised
incessant armies, and come as if to drive 'em back to sea. They
stood thick at the edge o' the water like the ridges o' grim war;
no thought o' flight, none of retreat. Sometimes a standing fight,
then soaring on main wing tormented all the air. And when they'd
got the boat out o' reach o' danger, Gaffett said they looked back,
and there was the town again, standing up just as they'd seen it
first, comin' on the coast. Say what you might, they all believed
'twas a kind of waiting-place between this world an' the next."

The captain had sprung to his feet in his excitement, and made
excited gestures, but he still whispered huskily.

"Sit down, sir," I said as quietly as I could, and he sank
into his chair quite spent.

"Gaffett thought the officers were hurrying home to report and
to fit out a new expedition when they were all lost. At the time,
the men got orders not to talk over what they had seen," the old
man explained presently in a more natural tone.

"Weren't they all starving, and wasn't it a mirage or
something of that sort?" I ventured to ask. But he looked at me
blankly.

"Gaffett had got so that his mind ran on nothing else," he
went on. "The ship's surgeon let fall an opinion to the captain,
one day, that 'twas some condition o' the light and the magnetic
currents that let them see those folks. 'Twa'n't a right-feeling
part of the world, anyway; they had to battle with the compass to
make it serve, an' everything seemed to go wrong. Gaffett had
worked it out in his own mind that they was all common ghosts, but
the conditions were unusual favorable for seeing them. He was
always talking about the Ge'graphical Society, but he never took
proper steps, as I viewed it now, and stayed right there at the
mission. He was a good deal crippled, and thought they'd confine
him in some jail of a hospital. He said he was waiting to find the
right men to tell, somebody bound north. Once in a while they
stopped there to leave a mail or something. He was set in his
notions, and let two or three proper explorin' expeditions go by
him because he didn't like their looks; but when I was there he had
got restless, fearin' he might be taken away or something. He had
all his directions written out straight as a string to give the
right ones. I wanted him to trust 'em to me, so I might have
something to show, but he wouldn't. I suppose he's dead now. I
wrote to him an' I done all I could. 'Twill be a great exploit
some o' these days."

I assented absent-mindedly, thinking more just then of my
companion's alert, determined look and the seafaring, ready aspect
that had come to his face; but at this moment there fell a sudden
change, and the old, pathetic, scholarly look returned. Behind me
hung a map of North America, and I saw, as I turned a little, that
his eyes were fixed upon the northernmost regions and their careful
recent outlines with a look of bewilderment.

VII

The Outer Island

GAFFETT WITH HIS good bunk and the bird-skins, the story of
the wreck of the Minerva, the human-shaped creatures of fog and
cobweb, the great words of Milton with which he described their
onslaught upon the crew, all this moving tale had such an air of
truth that I could not argue with Captain Littlepage. The old man
looked away from the map as if it had vaguely troubled him, and
regarded me appealingly.

"We were just speaking of"--and he stopped. I saw that he had
suddenly forgotten his subject.

"There were a great many persons at the funeral," I hastened
to say.

"Oh yes," the captain answered, with satisfaction. "All
showed respect who could. The sad circumstances had for a moment
slipped my mind. Yes, Mrs. Begg will be very much missed. She was
a capital manager for her husband when he was at sea. Oh yes,
shipping is a very great loss." And he sighed heavily. "There was
hardly a man of any standing who didn't interest himself in some
way in navigation. It always gave credit to a town. I call it
low-water mark now here in Dunnet."

He rose with dignity to take leave, and asked me to stop at
his house some day, when he would show me some outlandish things
that he had brought home from sea. I was familiar with the subject
of the decadence of shipping interests in all its affecting
branches, having been already some time in Dunnet, and I felt sure
that Captain Littlepage's mind had now returned to a safe level.

As we came down the hill toward the village our ways divided,
and when I had seen the old captain well started on a smooth piece
of sidewalk which would lead him to his own door, we parted, the
best of friends. "Step in some afternoon," he said, as
affectionately as if I were a fellow-shipmaster wrecked on the lee
shore of age like himself. I turned toward home, and presently met
Mrs. Todd coming toward me with an anxious expression.

"I see you sleevin' the old gentleman down the hill," she
suggested.

"Yes. I've had a very interesting afternoon with him," I
answered, and her face brightened.

"Oh, then he's all right. I was afraid 'twas one o' his
flighty spells, an' Mari' Harris wouldn't"--

"Yes," I returned, smiling, "he has been telling me some old
stories, but we talked about Mrs. Begg and the funeral beside, and
Paradise Lost."

"I expect he got tellin' of you some o' his great narratives,"
she answered, looking at me shrewdly. "Funerals always sets him
goin'. Some o' them tales hangs together toler'ble well," she
added, with a sharper look than before. "An' he's been a great
reader all his seafarin' days. Some thinks he overdid, and
affected his head, but for a man o' his years he's amazin' now when
he's at his best. Oh, he used to be a beautiful man!"

We were standing where there was a fine view of the harbor and
its long stretches of shore all covered by the great army of the
pointed firs, darkly cloaked and standing as if they waited to
embark. As we looked far seaward among the outer islands, the
trees seemed to march seaward still, going steadily over the
heights and down to the water's edge.

It had been growing gray and cloudy, like the first evening of
autumn, and a shadow had fallen on the darkening shore. Suddenly,
as we looked, a gleam of golden sunshine struck the outer islands,
and one of them shone out clear in the light, and revealed itself
in a compelling way to our eyes. Mrs. Todd was looking off across
the bay with a face full of affection and interest. The sunburst
upon that outermost island made it seem like a sudden revelation of
the world beyond this which some believe to be so near.

"That's where mother lives," said Mrs. Todd. "Can't we see it
plain? I was brought up out there on Green Island. I know every
rock an' bush on it."

"Your mother!" I exclaimed, with great interest.

"Yes, dear, cert'in; I've got her yet, old's I be. She's one
of them spry, light-footed little women; always was, an' light-
hearted, too," answered Mrs. Todd, with satisfaction. "She's seen
all the trouble folks can see, without it's her last sickness; an'
she's got a word of courage for everybody. Life ain't spoilt her
a mite. She's eighty-six an' I'm sixty-seven, and I've seen the
time I've felt a good sight the oldest. 'Land sakes alive!' says
she, last time I was out to see her. 'How you do lurch about
steppin' into a bo't?' I laughed so I liked to have gone right
over into the water; an' we pushed off, an' left her laughin' there
on the shore."

The light had faded as we watched. Mrs. Todd had mounted a
gray rock, and stood there grand and architectural, like a
caryatide. Presently she stepped down, and we continued our
way homeward.

"You an' me, we'll take a bo't an' go out some day and see
mother," she promised me. "'Twould please her very much,
an' there's one or two sca'ce herbs grows better on the island than
anywhere else. I ain't seen their like nowheres here on the main."

"Now I'm goin' right down to get us each a mug o' my beer,"
she announced as we entered the house, "an' I believe I'll sneak in
a little mite o' camomile. Goin' to the funeral an' all, I feel to
have had a very wearin' afternoon."

I heard her going down into the cool little cellar, and then
there was considerable delay. When she returned, mug in hand, I
noticed the taste of camomile, in spite of my protest; but its
flavor was disguised by some other herb that I did not know, and
she stood over me until I drank it all and said that I liked it.

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