Amelia Barr - Christine - A Fife Fisher Girl

“God help my men!” prayed Margot. She was weeping like a child, but yet in her anguish full of faith in God’s mercy, and looking trustfully to Him to send her men home again. “I’ll ne’er fret for the nets,” she said, “they’ll hav’ to go, nae doubt o’ that. Let them go! But oh, Feyther i’ heaven, send hame my men folk!”

Ah! Women who spend such nights may well call caller herrin’ “the lives o’ men”!

In the misty daylight, the men and the boats came into harbor, but the nets in every boat – each net about eight hundred and fifty yards long – were totally lost. However, the herring season was practically over. Indeed, the men were at the point of exhaustion, for the total take had been very large, and there is scarcely any human labor more severe on the physical endurance, than the fishing for caller herrin’.

It was just at this time that Neil Ruleson had to leave Culraine for Aberdeen. He was to finish his course at the Maraschal College this year, and never before had he gone there so well provided, and never before had he felt so poor. For though he had received the unlooked-for sum of two hundred pounds for his services, he felt it to be unequal to his ambitious requirements, six weeks at Ballister House having taught him to regard many little comforts as absolute necessities.

“I am very nearly a lawyer now,” he reflected, “a professional man, and I must try and look like it, and live like it. The bare room and unfashionable clothing of the past must be changed to more respectable quarters, and more appropriate garments.” Of course he knew that Christine would not permit him to injure his future fine prospects, but he had promised to repay the ninety pounds he had borrowed from her out of his first earnings, and he felt that the money was now due, and that he ought to pay it. But if he did so, he must simplify all his plans, and he had taken so much pleasure and pains in arranging the surroundings of his last session, that he was exceedingly loth to surrender even the least important of them.

While he was packing his trunk, and deliberating on this subject, the great storm came, and his father barely saved the boat and the lives of the men in her. The nets were gone, and his mother asked him plainly if he could not help his father to replace them.

“I will do so gladly, Mother,” he answered, “when I have paid my college fees, and the like, I will see what I can spare – there is Christine’s money!” he continued, in a troubled, thoughtful manner – and Margot answered,

“Ay, to be sure. If Christine hadna loaned you her money, it would hae been at her feyther’s will and want, this moment, but if you are going to keep your word, and pay Christine out o’ your first earnings, there’s nae need to talk wi’ you. Christine will help your feyther and proud and glad to do the same.”

“You see, Mother, it is nearly the end of things with me at Aberdeen, and it would be hard if my future was scrimped at its beginning. That is what Ballister thinks. ‘Neil,’ he said to me, ‘you will have to speak before the public – lawyers and people of full standing – and you must have the dress that is proper and fitting.’”

“Weel, your feyther will hae to get new nets – if he is to mak’ bread for the lave o’ us.”

“The herring season is over now, and there is no immediate expense regarding it.”

“You are much mista’en, and ye ken it fine! The barrels in which the fish are packed are to pay for, and the women who packed them are not fully paid. The coopers who closed the barrels, and the Fishery Office, hae yet to send in their bills.”

“The Fishery Office! What have we to do with the Fishery Office? It is a government affair.”

“Mebbe sae. But the barrels canna be shipped until an officer frae the Fishery Office puts the crown brand on every barrel. Do you think the man does that for naething?”

“I never heard of such a thing.”

“Weel, it has to be done, whether Neil Ruleson has heard o’ the thing or not.”

“What for?”

“The crown isna branded on any barrel unless the fish in it are fine, fresh, and unbroken. But as soon as the barrels get the crown, they can be shipped to foreign ports, mostly to Stettin.”

“Why Stettin?”

“I don’t know. Ask your feyther. You are just making a put-aff wi’ your questions. Answer me the one question I asked yoursel’ – What can ye do to help your feyther? Answer me that.”

“Father will not use nets until the next herring season – a whole year away – in the winter, he always does line fishing. With your help, Christine can weave new nets before they are needed.”

“I see weel that you dinna intend to pay your debt to Christine, nor yet to help your feyther.”

“Father has not asked me for help. Everyone knows that father is well fore-handed.”

“O lad, the dear auld man barely saved the boat and the lives she carried! He has been roughly handled by winds and waves, and may hae to keep his bed awhile, and your brither Eneas is that hurt and bruised, he will ne’er go fishing again, while your brither Norman has a broken arm, an’ a wife that has gane into hystericals about the lost nets. You’d think it was her man she was screaming for. And Fae and Tamsen waited too lang, and went o’er the boat wi’ their nets, an’ there’s ithers that hae broken limbs, or joints out o’ place, or trouble o’ some sort.”

“I’m very sorry, Mother. If I could do any good to the general ill, I would do it, but if I ruined all my future life I do not see that I could help anyone. I must be just, before I am generous.”

“To be sure. I hope you’ll try to be just, for I am vera certain you’ll ne’er be generous; and if you are just, you’ll pay your sister back her ninety pounds.”

“I will have a conversation with Christine, at once. Where is she?”

“The Domine sent for her early, she has been helping him wi’ the hurt folk, all day long. What hae you been doing?”

“I went down to the pier, to look after the boat. I knew father would be anxious about it. Then I had to go into the town. I was expecting an important letter, and the doctor was needing some medicines, and I brought them home with me. In one way, or another, the miserable day has gone. I hope Father is not much hurt.”

“It’s hard to hurt your feyther. His head keeps steady, and a steady head keeps the body as it should be – but he’s strained, and kind o’ shocked. The Domine gied him a powder, and he’s sleeping like a baby. He’ll be a’ right in a day or twa.”

“I would like to sit by him tonight, and do all I can, Mother.”

“You may well do that, Neil; but first go and bring your sister hame. I wouldn’t wonder if you might find her in Fae’s cottage. His puir, silly wife let the baby fa’, when she heard that her man and his boat was lost; and I heard tell Christine had ta’en the bairn in charge. It would be just like her. Weel, it’s growing to candle lighting, and I’ll put a crusie fu’ o’ oil in feyther’s room, and that will light you through the night.”

Neil found his sister sitting with Judith Macpherson and her grandson, Cluny. Cluny was not seriously hurt, but no man comes out of a life-and-death fight with the sea, and feels physically the better for it. Such tragic encounters do finally lift the soul into the region of Fearlessness, or into the still higher condition of Trustfulness, but such an education – like that of Godliness – requires line upon line, precept upon precept.

James Ruleson had been perfectly calm, even when for a few minutes it seemed as if men, as well as nets, must go to death and destruction; but James had been meeting the God “whose path is on the Great Waters,” for more than forty years, and had seen there, not only His wonders, but His mercies, and he had learned to say with David, “Though He slay me, yet will I put my trust in Him.”