James Norman Hall - The High Barbaree

“ ‘Alec,’ said Uncle Thad, ‘you’ll have to excuse me for bein’ a bit late. Couldn’t be helped, but it looks like I’ve come at the right time after all. Come aboard, you and Nancy, and we’ll make a day of it. I’ve got sea stores laid in for a long voyage.’

“The day was perfection itself, the Mount Everest of my boyhood peaks of happy days. I can still see the changing lights and colors of the sky reflected from the glassy water, and the canoe, with the three of us, mirrored against it. There was a little wicker seat for Nancy amidships, and Uncle Thad and I paddled from the bow and stern. He did the steering to begin with, but later we changed places, and I soon got the hang of it.

“We explored the flooded lands for miles; the water lay over them to a depth of three or four feet in the level tracts, with bits of higher ground making widely scattered islands and peninsulas to be coasted around and visited. Uncle Thad entered into the spirit of the day as though he himself were twelve years old. He had made such voyages many a time when he was a kid.

“ ‘But never in a canoe, Alec,’ he said; ‘and that’s what I always wanted: a real Indian canoe, made out of birch bark. I couldn’t get you one of those, but this Old Town, Maine, canoe comes pretty close to it.’

“We had our lunch on an island miles down the river, and the sea stores my mother provided were just what they should have been. Then, about midafternoon, we started back.

“Uncle Thad had a fine bass voice and he loved to sing. He knew any number of sea songs. As we were paddling along in the mellow misty light he started singing one that made an impression on me I’ll never forget. The air is a haunting one, in a minor key, and the way he sang it gave it the kind of magic to stir a boy’s blood and make a few miles of flooded bottom lands seem as wide as the sea. He didn’t sing the whole of the song; only the first two stanzas. I’ll try to sing them for you, Gene, but you’ll have to imagine my uncle’s really fine voice and the expression he put into it. This is how it goes:—

There were two lofty merchantmen

From Plymouth town set sail.

Blow high! Blow low!

And so sailed we.

One was called Prince Rupert

And the other Laird of Dee . . .

Rolling down the coast of the High Barbaree.

‘Aloft, there! Aloft, there!’

Our jolly bosun cried.

Blow high! Blow low!

And so sailed we.

‘Look ahead, look astern,

Look aweather, look alee!’

Rolling down the coast of the High Barbaree.”

The sound of Brooke’s voice seemed to linger in the wide air of mid-ocean, as though it were reverberating more and more faintly against the vault of the sky itself. Presently Mauriac said:—

“You’re right, Alec. It’s got something—that song. I don’t wonder you remembered it.”

“You’ll understand the impression it made upon a twelve-year-old with an inherited love and longing for the sea. It sank right down into my subconscious mind to remain there, for good and all.

“My uncle broke off at the end of the second stanza. We’d tangled with some snags and half-drowned trees. ‘Keep a sharp lookout forward,’ he said. ‘Mustn’t let her scrape on any of these snags.’

“ ‘Sing some more of it,’ Nancy said.

“ ‘Some more of what?’ said Uncle Thad, for, sometimes, he didn’t know that he’d been singing.

“ ‘About the High Barbaree.’

“ ‘Nancy, don’t get me started on that song! There’s a lot of verses to it.’

“ ‘Well, sing some of them,’ said Nancy. ‘What is the High Barbaree? Is it an island?’

“ ‘Might be.’

“ ‘Have you been there?’

“My uncle shook his head.

“ ‘You can’t go every place, Nancy. Too many of ’em.’

“ ‘Well, I want to,’ said Nancy. ‘I want to see every country in the whole world, and Alec does, too. And we’re going to, aren’t we, Alec?’

“I was responsible for Nancy’s attack of world-wandering fever, but Uncle Thad was the indirect cause. I’d been showing her his charts and the illustrations in some of his books of travel.

“ ‘Tell you what, Nancy,’ said my uncle. ‘When you and Alec grow up we’ll go, the three of us, to visit the High Barbaree. That is, if I’m not too old then.’

“ ‘Sing some more of the song about it,’ Nancy said, and I was as eager to hear it as she was.

“ ‘Wait till we get home,’ said Uncle Thad. ‘I’ll ask Alec’s mother to play the accompaniment for me on the piano.’

“ ‘Will you sing it tonight?’

“ ‘Sure I will, right after supper, if you want me to.’

“Dad was waiting for us at the cove. I couldn’t leave the canoe there, of course, so we hoisted it on top of the car and took it home. There was no room in our garage, so we left it on the Frasers’ back porch. I still couldn’t leave it and had my supper with the Frasers. I bolted my food and hurried out to give the canoe a polishing with a flannel cloth. While I was at this I noticed a little scratch on the paint near the bow, and that simply had to be fixed. Nancy was impatient. She reminded me that Uncle Thad had promised to sing all of ‘The High Barbaree’ and that he’d be waiting for us. But the canoe came first, so Nancy ran out to their garage to bring me a little can of green paint and a brush. I painted over the scratch with the greatest care, and Nancy was saying: ‘Hurry up, Alec! I’m getting sleepy, and I want to hear the song. Why are you so fussy about a tiny little scratch?’ At last I was ready and we hurried along the street in the spring twilight, so magical to me on that particular evening. The breath of lilacs was in the air, and lights were just beginning to appear in the windows.

“Our living room opens right off the front porch. When we got there Mother was already trying over the accompaniment to ‘The High Barbaree,’ and Uncle Thad was standing beside her, ready to sing. Dad was seated in his easy chair near by, holding the bowl of wild flowers we’d picked and breathing in their fragrance. There was a contented expression on his face—that of a country doctor who is able to hope for an evening at home. As we came in Mother glanced over her shoulder and smiled. Uncle Thad gave us a wink, but said nothing; his mind was on the song. Then he began.

“Nancy and I were good and tired, for we’d been up since daybreak, and the excitement of the day and the long canoe voyage had made us so drowsy that we could hardly keep our eyes open. Nancy’s head began to nod before he was halfway through, and about a minute later she was asleep, snuggled against my shoulder. I tried hard to keep awake till the end, but I heard the words dying away until I was dead to the world, too. But it was a wonderful song for two tired kids to go to sleep on. I don’t remember how I got into bed that night. I must have walked upstairs still sleeping.”

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