Laura Richards - Jim of Hellas, or In Durance Vile; The Troubling of Bethesda Pool

Everyone knows the Island; it is not necessary to name it. With its rolling downs, its points, its ponds, its light-houses, and above all, its town, – who does not know the Island? Some day I shall write a story about the downs, the billowy acres of gold on russet, russet on gold, wonderful to see, – but this story is about the town.

The town has its nominal government, like other towns; its selectmen, and its town-meeting, and other like machinery; but everybody knows that the real seat of government lies in the Upper House. The meetings of this republican House of Lords are held in the best room of "Bannister's," the one inn of the town. It is a pleasant, roomy old structure, built in the Island fashion, with wide windows and plenty of them, and with a railed platform on its flat-topped roof, from which, in former days, the women of the house used to watch for the coming of the whaling-fleet.

There is little watching now on the Island. No ships come into that wonderful harbour, once thronged with sails. The great wharves rot silently and fall apart; a few old hulks rot quietly beside them. Two or three fishing-smacks, a coal-schooner or two, – these are all one sees now from the roof or the windows of Bannister's.

But the men who sit together in the upper room still look out of the windows a great deal, because from them they can see the harbour, and beyond it the sea; and the sea is what they love best to look at, for the greater part of their lives has been spent on it. Old sea-captains, – it needs but one glance to tell of what the Upper House is composed: Men with faces that might have been carved out of mahogany, wrinkled and seamed and beaten into strange lines by wind and weather; with gray or white hair, for the most part, and shaggy beards, yet with keen, bright eyes which are used to looking, and, what is not always the same thing, to seeing what they look at.

Though most of them go to sea no more, they keep with care their sea-going aspect; they wear pea-jackets with huge horn buttons, heavy sea-boots, and never fail to don their sou'westers in bad weather. The room in which they sit is well suited to them. On the broad window-seats lie spy-glasses and telescopes of all kinds. The walls are hung with sea-trophies.

Here is a piece of plank transfixed by the sharp blade of a sword-fish; there, a pair of walrus-tusks; there, again, the beautiful horn of the narwhal, like a wonderful lance of ivory, fit weapon for King Olaf or Eric the Red. In the doorway stands a whale's jaw, a great arch ten feet high, under which all must pass with thoughts of Jonah. As for corals and shells, there is no end to them, for the upper room is a museum as well as a place of convention, and here the captains love to bring their choicest treasures, keeping only the second-best to adorn the chimney-piece of the home-parlour.

In a great arm-chair, facing a seaward window, sits the patriarch of the Upper House, old Abram Bannister. His grandfather had built the inn itself, his grandsons now keep it. Every morning, winter and summer, Jake and Bill "hist" the old captain out of bed, put him in his chair, and wheel him into the great room; then they give him a spy-glass to hold in his hand, and leave him till dinner-time. The captains begin to straggle in about eight o'clock, when their morning chores are done. They greet the white old man with never-failing cordiality; he is the pride of the Upper House. They are never tired of asking him how old he is, nor of hearing him reply in his feeble, cheery pipe, —

"Ninety-nine year, and risin' a hundred."

He sleeps a good deal of the day, and, on waking, never fails to cry out, "Thar' she blows!"

Whereupon, one of the captains promptly replies, "Where away?" and the patriarch says, —

"Weather bow!" and straightway forgets all about it, and plays with his spy-glass.

When the captains are assembled in sufficient number, they discuss the affairs of the town, talk over this or that question, and decide what the " se -leckmen" ought to do about it.

Woe to the selectmen who should dare to oppose the decision of the Upper House! Something dreadful would happen to them; but, as they never have opposed it, one cannot tell what form the punishment would take.

Now it fell, on a day, that the captains were sitting together spinning yarns, as was their custom when business was over. The present and the immediate future provided for, it was their delight to plunge into the past, and bring up the marvellous treasures hidden in that great sea. Captain Zeno Pye was telling about the loss of the "Sabra" in the year 1807. His father had been on the vessel, and Captain Zeno sometimes forgot that it was not himself, so often had he told the story. The other captains, sitting like so many veiled prophets, each shrouded in his cloud of smoke, listened with the placid enjoyment of connoisseurs, making a mental note of any slightest variation of word or inflection in the familiar narrative. Any one of them could have told it in his sleep, but it was Captain Zeno's story, and it was one of the unwritten laws of the Upper House that no captain should tell another's story.

"So," said Captain Zeno, – he was a little walnut-faced man, with sharp black eyes, and a dry and rasping utterance, – "so they was makin' good sailin' with a fair wind, on the 18th day of October, when all of a suddent the lookout sung out – "

"Thar she blows!" broke in Captain Abram, in his piping treble.

"Where away?" responded Captain Silas Riggs, promptly.

"Weather bow!" said the old man, and fell silent again. All looked at Captain Zeno, who smiled appreciatively.

"Won'erful, aint it?" he said, meditatively. "He knows that pint, Cap'n Abram does, as well as I do. Wal, as I was sayin', they struck a school o' whales, on the weather bow, sure enough; sperms they was, and likely-lookin' fur as they could see. Three boats put off, and my father, bein' mate at that time, had one of 'em. He sighted a sixty-barrel bull, and was pullin' for him for dear life, when an old cow come by with her calf, and when she saw the boat she dove, and one eend o' the fluke struck 'em amidships, and stove a hole in 'em. Wal! that kerwumpussed 'em, ye see! Nothin' for it but to pull back to the ship, and set to work on repairs. My father called the carpenters, and give 'em their job, an' then he looked after the school, and cussed a little, mebbe, for all he was a perfessor, to think he was losin' all the fun. All of a suddent he seed a whale leave the school, turn round, and make straight for the ship. He didn't think nothin' of it, 'cept he see 'twas the biggest bull his eyes had ever come across. Big? Wal!' Twas like a island, Father used to say. He'd heerd tell of two-hundred-and-thirty-barrel whales along back in the seventeens, and he calc'lated this might be one of 'em left over. He see the critter was comin' pooty nigh, and he sung out for a harpoon, thinkin' he might git a shy, after all; when, lo ye! that whale took a start an' come through the water like a shot out of a gun, and struck the ship just forrard of the forechains.

"Wal, sir, they was knocked consid'able eendways, I tell ye! Father was dumfoundered for a minute, and the ship's crew with him, what with the surprise on't, and the everlastin' shakin' it giv 'em, too. But Father never let his wits go without a string tied to 'em, and in a minute he ordered all hands to the pumps, to see if she had sprung a-leak. She hed, sir; she was sinkin'; and Father run up the sign for the boats to come back. He turned round from runnin' up that signal, and you may call me a Jerseyman if the whale wasn't comin' for 'em agin, head on and all sails drawin'! Before Father could sing out, he struck 'em again, pooty nigh the same place, with a crash that sent every man-jack sprawlin' on his face. Wal, sir, 'twas boats then, I can tell ye, and no time to lose, neither! Th' other boats kem back and took 'em aboard, and in five minutes' time the 'Sabry' down with her nose and up with her heels, and down she went to Davy. Yes, sir! That's what you might call – "