CHAPTER XVI.
Next day a man was fishing near the extreme point of a lofty headland, not far from the Black-man’s Path. The cliffs here were perpendicular precipices of dark stone, built up to the height of more than a hundred feet, in what seemed Cyclopean courses of rough mansonry, and rising out of very deep water. What a carpet was the swelling grassy expanse at top! The pink and lavender sea-thrift grew in its usual tufts, staining whole acres with bright colour’ the straggling purple mallow affected little bare recesses and the edges of paths. The wild thyme had passed into the stage of downy capsules, but was replaced by the coral tips of the bird’s-foot litus; white starry stone-crop clustered over every corner of exposed surface rock; and its neighbour was the scarlet pimpernel, gazing up at the sun with unwinking eye, because of a conviction of settled weather.
The green which formed the grounding of all this floral embossing was not properly grass, but a short, succulent herbage, which tastes salt to the lip, and feels springy under foot. It does not make the slope of any cliff easier of passage, for it has a certain slipperiness of nature, and the soles of shoes gain a polish by treading it down. Colman left his “brogues” in a recess of the tussocks of thrift, (some of these were dense cushions, a couple of feet high, and round, formed by the accumulated soil and matted roots of former plants,) and cautiously crept down a green slope to a rocky ledge at one side of the promontory, just within the dip of its curve. For at the outer precipice a dark polished surge rolled in, and was always hurled back and broken, to rush away on either side in a swirling current. The fisherman knew how many of the smaller fish rejoice in such commotion: here he unwound his lines from the crossed square of wood on which they they were neatly rolled, affixed his bait of sand-worms and flung them out as far as he could. Each was weighted with stones, tied in a knot.
This simple apparatus acted as well as the most scientific. The lines gradually drifted with the current, and he drew them up occasionally, sometimes with a silvery whitefish quivering on the hook, or a black-backed pollock; sometimes with bait gone, through means of some finny creature who had not maganimity enough to take what should have been the consequences.
Colman had been awhile at this work, when he heard his name called from the cliff above.
“Musha then, cead mille failthe ghud!” was his emphatic exclamation on perceiving the face of a friend. “Come down here, Manuscript Man: I’ll give you a hand.”
A slip on that slippery herbage would have precipitated both into water that seemed fathomless. “Do you know I wasn’t very sure but may be the shout was from some kind neighbour a-going to throw me over.”
“I’m sorry to see your head bound up,” rejoined Clare, stepping carefully on the gray ledge.
“You heard what happened?” Clare nodded. “The wife insisted on havin’ a poultice to the cut over my eye, an’ this is the only work I’m fit for, or has the tools for.”
“My poor man!” After a pause he added, “I was up at yer cabin—the Major sent me. He’ll see you through this trouble, like a real kind gentleman as he is. Yer to go to the Lodge this evenin’.”
“Is it in the figure I’m in? An’ moreover, it’s no manner of good for me to thry an’ take the law. Not a man in Rienvella daur swear on my side, or woman either. Besides, Manuscript Man,”—he hesiated a moment as he began to haul up his line,”—I was lookin’ into the Testament for comfort last night, an’ quite near the beginnin’ I see a blessin’ from the Lord on thim that are persecuted because they do what’s good.”
Clare drew forth his unfailing pocket companion. “Was it these words?” And he read in the expressive Irish version:
“Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall try all manner of evil against you falsly, for my sake; rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”
The eyes of both men were glistening, “So you see it’s glad an’ pleasant we ought to be, instead of downcast,” observed the Manuscript Man.
“God knows I had no evil in wantin’ to keep an’ read the Testament,” said poor Colman, adjusting his bandage. “’Twas only that I thought it wouldn’t be like His goodness to write words in a book to lead us astray; an’ they wor such happy histories about our blessed Saviour too.”
“To lead you astray!” repeated his companion; “no, but it has the life of God in the middle of it. Look what St. Paul says,” and he turned to the celebrated passage of inspiration. The Manuscript Man was becoming quite expert in reference to all those parts which had helped to decide questions in his own mind. His Bible was a curiosity for dog’s-ears, bent down to mark verses that struck him, which seemes to occur every second or third page.
“You see, Pat Colman, if a letter came from your sister that’s married over in America, you wouldn’t be satisfied but to read it yerself, if you wor able; moreover, if there was a promise of money in it.”
“I believe you, Manuscript Man. I wouldn’t take his reverence’s word about it, sole an’ simple.”
“No; you’d want to see for yerself. An’ that’s just the way—“
Colman raised his hand suddenly, as if for silence. His eyes were fixed intently in the midst of the gulf on whose outer point he had taken his stand. The dark polished water, flecked with lace-like foam, heaved the sand slowly and heavily in response to the swell of the outside ocean; but as they gazed, the pebble-like polish of the expanse seemed to be recieve a kindling from beneath; gleams of tawny gold seemed to break up through the depths, quivering, brightening, intensifying each minute. A living radiance was it, spreading below the surface a suffusion of sparkling amber.
“It’s the bream—a shoal of the bream,” said Colman in a suppressed voice, almost as though he feared disturbing them, while the roar of the Atlantic filled the air. “O, if I had the poor little canoe an’ nets now!”
The words were scarce out of his mouth when all the floats of his line sank at once, and for the next hour he had nothing to do but to throw out his baits and haul in the prey, Clare assisting him. They were voracious—those pretty broad-backed breams, in coat of gleaming tinsel—and no amount of experience could teach them that the tempting sand-worm certainly contained a sharp hook.
Suddenly—as suddenly as they had risen from the depths—did the shoal dive again, and the water lie blank of its gleams. Colman looked about for the cause.
“Ah, there he is, that thief of a seal!”
A round, black, shining head popped up in the middle of the bay, having very evidently been also a successful fisher, for a tail appeared in his mouth. He floated hither and thither for a few minutes, and then went under water with a somersault that showed his gray spotted sides.
“They’ll be out to sea quick enough, now,” observed Colman. “Nothing frightens a shoal like the seals. Sure it’s well they can’t live far from shore.”
“You’ve caught a good pannier full, anyhow.”
“Yes—I must go tackle the ass directly, an’ take ‘em to Roonard, while they’re still fresh.”
But he was not able. The noontide sun beating on his head, and possibly the engrossing toil of the last hour, had inflamed the wound over his eye so much as to cause considerable pain and feverishness. He had to throw himself upon his bed, and let “the wife” take the fish to market.
“Manuscript Man!” said Colman, as they watched her trudge away beside the donkey which Clare had helped to pack, “never did that woman utter one word of reproach to me for bringin’ all this loss upon us.”
“It’s well for you,” the other could not help saying, the memory of various unpleasant scenes in his own cabin recurring to his mind.
“No; but when I came home last night all battered an’ torn, she says, ‘I b’lieve the Lord’ll reward them that are wrongfully punished;’ though she’s as sorry after the boat an’ nets as any body, an’ all my best suit o’ clothes too.”
“Well, you know, I can’t help thinkin’ when God says he will give a blessin’, he means it, an’ has power to do it; not like a poor creature of a man, whose words run out before his ability. An’ so—“
“Manuscript Man,” interrupted Colman, “do you think God Almighty sent them bream to the gully this mornin’?”
“I’m certain sure the littlest thing don’t happen without him,” was the reply. “Sure the book tells us the very hair of our heads is counted.”
“Find that out for me before you go.”
“I will, an’ read it for you first, the way ‘twill be asier for you to make it out by yerself.”
How both hearts were soothed by that marvelous twelfth chapter of Luke, which opens up the microscopic minuteness of our heavenly Father’s providence! It is the most intimate, all-pervading comfort, that any distressed human being can take to his soul.
Poor Colman lay afterward for hours with burning head and aching limbs, and his suffering culminated in an attack of fever. But through it all there was a strange peace of spirit, arising from his new sense of security in God’s care.