Anne of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery [62]
Jem was sometimes allowed now to go down to the Harbour Mouth of an evening to buy fish. It was an errand he delighted in, for it meant that he could sit in Captain Malachi Russell’s cabin at the foot of a bent-covered field close to the harbour, and listen to Captain Malachi and his cronies, who had once been daredevil young sea captains, spinning yarns. Every one of them had something to tell when tales were going round. Old Oliver Reese… who was actually suspected of being a pirate in his youth… had been taken captive by a cannibal king… Sam Elliott had been through the San Francisco earthquake… ‘Bold William’ MacDougall had had a lurid fight with a shark… Andy Baker had been caught in a waterspout. Moreover, Andy could spit straighter, as he averred, than any man in Four Winds. Hook-nosed, lean-jawed Captain Malachi, with his bristly grey moustache, was Jem’s favourite. He had been captain of a brigantine when he was only seventeen, sailing to Buenos Aires with cargoes of lumber. He had an anchor tattooed on each cheek and he had a wonderful old watch you wound with a key. When he was in good humour he let Jem wind it, and when he was in very good humour he would take Jem out cod-fishing or digging clams at low tide, and when he was in his best humour he would show Jem the many ship models he had carved. Jem thought they were romance itself. Among them was a Viking boat, with a striped square sail and a fearsome dragon in front… a caravel of Columbus… the Mayflower… a rakish craft called The Flying Dutchman… and no end of beautiful brigantines and schooners and barques and clipper ships and timber droghers.
‘Will you teach me how to carve ships like that, Captain Malachi?’ pleaded Jem.
Captain Malachi shook his head and spat reflectively into the gulf.
‘It doesn’t come by teaching, son. Ye’d have to sail the seas for thirty or forty years and then maybe ye’d have enough understanding of ships to do it… understanding and love. Ships are like weemen, son… they’ve got to be understood and loved or they’ll never give up their secrets. And even at that ye may think ye know a ship from stem to stern, inside and out, and ye’ll find she’s still hanging out on ye and keeping her soul shut on you. She’d fly from you like a bird if ye let go your grip on her. There’s one ship I sailed on that I’ve never been able to whittle a model of, times out of mind as I’ve tried. A dour, stubborn vessel she was! And there was one woman… but it’s time I took in the slack of my jaw. I’ve got a ship all ready to go into a bottle and I’ll let ye into the secret of that, son.’
So Jem never heard anything more of the ‘woman’ and didn’t care, for he was not interested in the sex, apart from Mother and Susan. They were not ‘weemen’. They were just Mother and Susan.
When Gyp had died Jem had felt he never wanted another dog; but time heals amazingly, and Jem was beginning to feel doggish again. The puppy wasn’t really a dog… he was only an accident.
Jem had a procession of dogs marching around the walls of his attic den where he kept Captain Jim’s collection of curios… dogs clipped from magazines… a lordly mastiff, a nice jowly bulldog… a dachshund that looked as if somebody had taken a dog by his head and heels and pulled him out like elastic… a shaven poodle with a tassel on the end of his tail… a fox terrier… a Russian wolfhound… Jem wondered if Russian wolfhounds ever got anything to eat… a saucy Pom… a spotted Dalmatian… a spaniel with appealing eyes. All dogs of high degree but all lacking something in Jem’s eyes… he didn’t just know what.
Then the advertisement came