Rockbound

Definition of 'rockbound'

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Kennebec River estuary, Maine. Hydrodynamic controls of morpho-sedimentary evolution in a rock-bounded mesotidal estuary. Tina Menor N Spain. As a panelist, she championed Rockbound a then little-read novel by Frank Parker Day You get great views from here of the city's scattered rockbound "suburbs" and of the languid twisting Yantra way below. Ben is walking by as I say something about a rockbound lake in Maine and how the water laps up against the stone formations and how they resemble fjords. Waterman, rather than making rock come alive theoretically in the way Russell does, chooses to reanimate it by reviving the few remnant rockbound organisms--endolithic lichens and siderophile bacteria.

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Get Word of the Day daily email! Ionian mode rococo balladry a cappella. Need even more definitions? Ask the Editors Ghost Word The story of an imaginary word that managed to sneak past our editors and enter the dictionary. Behind the Scenes How we chose 'feminism' Literally How to use a word that literally drives some people nuts. How could that be? He must ask old Gershom Born. Were the islands made, he wondered, when the sea washed away soft parts of the main, or had they popped up suddenly from the sea floor expelled by some earth force?

Certainly all the twisted cliffs around him that now stood slanting and on end looked as if they had been once laid down in flat layers. If the rocks had popped up from the sea floor, how had trees and flowers and grass got on the islands? Perhaps the sea wind had blown some fine sand dust into a rock crevice, and into this a sea bird had by accident dropped a seed, or perhaps a high wind had blown seeds from the main.

He had often seen thistledown twirling its light parachute far out at sea.

Rockbound by Frank Parker Day

Then a plant had grown and spread its seeds and rooted, and more plants had grown, and fine sand had tangled in their roots. But what a long time it must have taken to make even as much soil as there was on Rockbound! Jennie Run-over, when maudlin with drink, had sometimes talked to him of God, the great lover of men.

Why, he wondered, if men were His children and He truly loved them, had He made things so rough and hard? Why had He made sharks, dogfish and albacore, which played havoc with the nets, and in one night sometimes destroyed more than a man could earn in a month? Why didn't he stop that treacherous devil in the sea that sent stout boats to the bottom and forever ate up the land He had made? On the Outposts were many widows whose little children ran wild, ill-clad, and half fed.

Why was the God-fearing Uriah so grasping, and why did the Rockbound Jungs kill themselves with labour to get money when they had plenty already? He knew why he wanted money: For he realized that he had always been a slave, and that he was still a slave, driven to and fro at every man's beck and call. Wait till he got some money! Perhaps he could some day build his own launch and fish from his own fish house.

Rockbound | Definition of Rockbound by Merriam-Webster

So he lay on the matting of soft crowberry and dreamed and rested, thanking the good God for the Sabbath, till the sun's disk touched the rim of the Ragged Island cliffs and twilight came softly, and the light on Barren Island began to wink. Old Gershom Born had trimmed and lighted his lamp, and it repeated over and over: I warn you from the Rock, the Grampus, and the Bull. Keep well to the eastward of me if you want to make Minden by the inside passage, or well to the westward of me if you want the ship's channel between the Outposts to Duren Bay.

After you leave me, you will pick up the fixed lights on Rockbound and Friendly that will guide you to safety. It seemed to David that the light was marking off time; a complete revolution meant a minute. I am one minute nearer to being dead, and I am still Uriah's sharesman.

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Only the tide ebbed and flowed, while time had always flowed from somewhere in one direction, and its flood made into a limitless future. It was like space, bigger than the sea, stretching out in all directions without limits. Could the world be round? The coloured man on the banker, who taught him to steer, had told him so. But how could water stick to a round ball, and why didn't it drop off the under side? Certainly it looked flat enough, though when he thought a while he remembered that on clear days he had seen the upper spars of vessels that were still hull down.

Yes, there must be some curve even to the surface of the sea. When the stars peeped out, David lay on his back and looked on them. He had lived so much alone that he had learned to look and wonder. He marvelled at their multitude as the night grew darker, and saw that some twinkled and some shone copper red. Stars were useful things to steer a vessel by: God must have stuck them in the sky, but surely there wasn't any need for so many stars to light the earth, especially those sprinkled like sifted flour across the middle belt of the heavens. Day birds that had wheeled round his height--he knew them all from the great gannet to the flitting checkerback--now settled on rock or wave and their places were taken by carey and nighthawk, island birds of the darkness.

After a while he stirred, stretched himself, and started homeward, rested, refreshed, and braced for the morrow's work.

The herring stayed on the shore for three weeks. Never had the Rockbounders made such a catch; every puncheon in the fish house was heaped up, and Uriah insisted on filling as well two old whalers and a dory that, when soaked up for a day in the sea, were still tight enough to hold pickle. In the last ten days of the herrings' stay, the old king ruled that the hay must be got. Uriah cut fifty tons in the rich valley and upland fields, which he loaded down in October with fish heads, entrails, and rotted kelp.

Every morning of those last ten days Joseph, Martin, young Gershom, and David shot the seine and encircled a school of herring, while Casper and Noble Morash drove ringing scythes into the tall, overripe timothy, already becoming a little woody in the stem. By noon, when the fishermen were in with deep-laden boats, the farmers had made work enough for them. The women turned the hay and raked it up in windrows; the men gibbed fish till four in the afternoon and then rushed to the fields to haul in five or six great oxloads of hay, cut the day before.

Time was precious, for the fog bank usually rolled in before seven. Everyone drove and hustled everyone else; everything was done in a rush. In a rush the hay was pitched on the carts, in a rush it was pitched off and stowed in the mows. Uriah, the general, was everywhere. Hay must go in, come sunshine or fog, though it steamed and heated in the mows, for it was within the range of possibility that a summer month might go by on Rockbound without a drying sun.

Old Gershom Born used to say that he had seen Uriah and his sons making hay in their oilskins. One terrible afternoon, after a heavy catch of herring, they hauled in seven loads on the creaking wains and stowed them in the old man's barn. After a hasty snack of supper that night, men and women were back in the fish house, gibbing furiously in the swaying light of the dim lanterns.

When the hay was almost garnered, his prayer was answered: Even the giant sons of Uriah heaved sighs of relief, but Uriah, who could not bear the thought of letting anything escape him, grumbled at their lack of industry, though every puncheon, dory, and spare boat was piled high with salted fish.

Had all the fish in the sea been laid on the floor of his fish house, he would have been still unsatisfied, but would have set about praying the Lord to create more so that his sons might catch them. When David was twenty-four and had been six years on Rockbound, he was still Uriah's sharesman. Things had changed but little.

Age had not withered Uriah, who was as active and driving as ever. True, his legs had weakened a little each year, and bowed a little further outward at the knees, but when he sat on his box to slit open herring or mackerel, his hands flew as fast as ever. Every night, as the sun touched the western horizon, he trudged, come sunshine, fog, or snow, to light the fixed light on the cliffs of Rockbound, and he was never happier than when he sat down to mend net or seine, torn and tangled by dogfish or albacore.

He kept all the gear in repair for the boys. He was too old to go fishing. Every year his bank account had grown, and as he moved the livelong day from one labour to another he derived enormous pleasure from meditating upon his wealth. The tenant in Liscomb had given him endless trouble, but at last, to quiet her clacking tongue and stop her letters, he had allowed her a toilet off the kitchen.

rock-bound

Joseph still ran from barrow to barrow and aided and abetted his father in hustling the sharesmen, and Casper still grumbled and grunted anticlerical argument at the salting table. Fanny, the potato girl, as pretty as ever, still whistled blithely over her cabbages and potatoes, still raised the hymns in the fish house of a heavy evening, and still served the needs of the great sharesmen in the loft.

Even David had plucked up courage to invite her to walk with him on the back of the island, where they reclined on the crowberry vines and in the shelter of a thick screen of spruces watched old Gershom Born's light blink out the hours. Old Simeon was dead at last, but he had nodded his foolish head and gibbed in the fish house on the very day of his death. Noble Morash, too, the gaunt black sharesman, David's enemy, was gone.

Uriah had sent him to the Sand Cove to fetch dory loads of rockweed and kelp, which the islanders call sea dung. Having met with reproof from the old king for the smallness of a previous load, he had forked on to this last load he was to carry three forkfuls too much. A breaking wave swamped him as he rounded West Head; his dory turned over and threw him into the sea. He could not swim, as is the case with most of the islanders, and had clawed with numbed fingers at the smooth bottom of the upturned dory, till the icy water chilled him to the bone.

He was lying stretched out on the sea floor, and curious fish were sniffing at him and peering into his staring eyes long before the boats that set out from the launch could reach him. Young Gershom was as jocose, as noisy, and as full of talk as ever. He had become David's inseparable friend and had taught the boy all the wickedness he knew. Gershom, an epicurean by nature, believed in wine and love as a relief from labour; his wine being the black rum smuggled in by St. Pierre runners, his love, affairs with any stout fisher lasses he could pick up on the islands.

Though it was true that David was still a sharesman, he had advanced, for all that. Joseph had paid him a monthly share, though it was not his true monthly share, as David right well knew. He owned a boat, a stout fast clipper equipped with a gasoline engine. Uriah had at first derided the engine, things that he and his brother Simeon had never had, but gradually all the Jung boys had come to them; now even at the head of the launch was a stationary engine, with drum and wire cable for hauling out the boats.

The slow-footed oxen had been superseded for that function, though they still dragged the plough, sagged in the great loads of hay, hauled the tubs of gurry to the autumn fields, and twitched logs in winter. David had a Sunday suit, four changes of woollen underwear, overalls, rubber boots, oilskins, sou'westers, cotton gloves, and nippers. His house he had painted, reshingled, and repaired throughout; even the upstairs rooms were finished and plastered. He owned four fleets of herring nets now, and a half-dozen tubs of trawl, a long-barrelled duck gun--he was the best shot on the island, with Gershom a close second--and last of all he had paid Selmar Strum, the cunning workman of Hermann's Island, twenty-five dollars to make him a fiddle.

The bottom of maple was made of a piece of hand-hewn beam that Great-grandfather Strum had put into his barn somewhere about , soon after the old folks had come across the seas from Oldenburg; the top was of old, well-seasoned, wide-grained spruce, the tailpiece and string-board a cunningly inlaid strip of swordfish spike, while the scroll was carved in the shape of a leaping pollock.

David loved to handle it and to stroke the curves of the smooth, satiny wood; already he had learned to play a few tunes on it. In his six years on the island his friendship for Gershom had steadily grown. Now he went everywhere with the blue-eyed giant, who, though ten years older than he, was a dashing and lively companion. They pushed their boats off the launch at the same moment and fished on the same bank; sometimes Gershom was late of a morning, and if David, urged on by Uriah's taunts and jibes, was obliged to push off first, he jogged his boat and waited for Gershom to the southward of the Grampus.

At lunch time on the bank, they lashed their boats together and laughed and talked as they ate their bread and cakes. In this piece of comradeship, however, they were often interrupted, for David was such a lucky fisherman and had established such a reputation for uncanny knowledge of the whereabouts of cod that he had become the fish pilot for the fleet, and when the flash of fish over his gunwale was seen in far-off boats, Jungs and Krauses, aye, and fishermen from the other islands, circled his selected bank.

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In late October of each year, after the last school of mackerel had gone south, the cod dried and the herring barrelled and sold, Uriah, in accordance with the fisherman's custom, had perforce to grant David and Gershom a fortnight's holiday. This they always spent with the Boutiliers, distant cousins of Gershom's, at Miscou, on St. Boutilier, himself a huge man, was a great lover of dancing, fighting, and drinking, and a fit companion for the sanguine Gershom and his disciple. Nearly every night they drove long distances to some country hall where a dance was in progress, kissed the pretty girls in dark corners, got very drunk, and fought with the local bucks.

At one such dance, where red-faced fishermen twirled their broad-hipped partners, David, flushed and arrogant with rum, insisted on taking the violin from the local fiddler and playing Outpost jigs and some strange airs he had learned from the sea. He swayed the dancers first to one mood and then to another, and won such applause that the established fiddler, Pierre Comeau, a strong man who could do more than fiddle, for he was a blacksmith by trade, challenged him to fight on the grass outside.

A couple of lanterns were fetched, and out flocked men and women to see the contest. David fared none too well and carried home two blackened eyes, for Pierre Comeau was nearly sober and he half drunk; the fishermen stopped the fight after a few rounds, lest the artists should hurt their hands and thus make an end of the dancing. To eat heartily at leisure, to be drunk and go to a dance every night, to have numerous fist fights, to lie in bed late of a morning, seemed to Gershom and David the substance of an ideal holiday after the fever of work on Rockbound.

Here, on the main with the Boutiliers, there was no hypocrisy of virtuous pretence, no one thought much about money or strove for stars in some far-off crown. When they laboured on the island, Gershom and David always spent Sundays together. Sometimes they explored the Raggeds to pick up some lobsters or scallops out of season, sometimes they took boat, visited the Outposts and hung about Jennie Run-over's place. Jennie, the buxom one, was just as hearty as when she had picked up the gaffer David staring with homesick eyes toward Rockbound. There they learned all the local news and gossip of the islands, for Jennie's place was a kind of clearing house for such stuff, and met the Outpost girls, who liked to slake their thirst on Jennie's foaming black beer.

David had become Gershom's apt pupil; already Molly Biddle of Big Outpost attributed a love child to him, and though David was none too sure of the parentage, he ungrudgingly paid her a monthly dole. Gershom, in a playful mood, used to gird at him with, "Dat kid's de livin' image o' you, Dave, but how come de red hair? Nathan Levy was reputed to have eight thousand dollars in the bank, and owned two hundred acres of good land on Little Outpost. Most of his money would go to Leah, as his boys were all married and established.

With the reputation of being the best fisherman in the bay, David was an acceptable suitor for any man's daughter. His peccadilloes in Miscou and the Outposts counted as naught against him with the islanders. Leah was comely, with her black hair, oval face, and olive complexion, and while David was not deeply in love with her, he figured that she would make a good wife and a means of pulling himself up in the world.

She attracted him more than other island girls, for while she repulsed his advances she looked on him with favour and would not apparently disapprove an offer of marriage. However, something unexpected happened, which upset all of David's calculations. Tamar Jung, Uriah's daughter, a young woman in her twenties, began to cast eyes upon David and to follow him about. For years he had seen her in field and fish house, but she had never attracted him, because she had Joseph's big nose and aggressive jaw. She was red-faced, strong, and healthy, and could take one end of a loaded fish barrow from boat to fish house when a man was missing, or pitch on hay over the high racks as fast as anyone on the island.

Wherever he went in the fish house or loft she was at his heels, once she followed him into the salt bin and rubbed against him like a playful kitten. The wily Gershom, skilled in the ways of women, observed all this and one day said to David: So David walked with Tamar in the woods of summer nights.

She wanted him badly for a husband, but, in lieu of that, she would take him for a lover. David was not in the least in love with her; he preferred Leah Levy's dark face and soft voice. Still, Tamar was affectionate in a rough way and a great worker; she would inherit some of Uriah's money and make a useful partner for a fisherman. In fact, David was rather sick of the sharesman's loft where he had slept for the last two years, first because of his desire to be always near young Gershom, and second because there he was sure to be called by Uriah and get his boat off among the first.

Once he had overslept in his own house. Lately there had been bedbugs in the loft, though to the credit of Uriah's wife and the girls they did not last long after their discovery, and Frank Richardson, the new sharesman, befouled the air with his obscene noises. Yes, David was pretty sick of the sharesman's loft and half wanted a wife, to complete the house he had painted and repaired. Still, he had no intent of marrying Tamar or even Leah Levy just now; he meant to keep himself free for a few more years, save some money, and indulge in his annual riot with Gershom and Jean Boutilier in Miscou.

It was one night in early September, when they were beginning to lay the split cod to dry on the ledgy rocks of Sou'west Cove, that Uriah said to David, "Come wid, I wants to talk wid you. There Uriah turned on David fiercely:. What does you mean? Well, you got to marry her now, an' here's one o' Nicolaus Kaulbach's boys bin a-wantin' her dis two year, him what owns a fish stand an' forty acres o' good ground on Little Outpost.

You got dat t'rough yur t'ick head, has ye? Now, listen to me, boy, you'se got to marry her. De Krauses is full o' bastards, but dere ain't none from my gals," shouted Uriah in a voice that might be heard over half the island. I bin sharesman now fur six year, an' I'se ketched more fish than air Joe, Martin, or Casper. I'se got to git on in de worl' same as you an' yer fader did afore ye. I'se a Jung an' de same blood as you. If ye takes me into de firm on an even divvy, I'se'll marry Tamar.

You certainly got de gall. Maybe ye don't know Anapest sold me a strip o' waterfront abreast her fish house. Dere I'se'll build me my own launch an' fish house an' hire my own sharesmen in time to come. Dere's many an able lad on de Outposts ready an' willin' to fish wid me, as ye right well knows. Uriah gasped, and his empurpled face swelled as if he were about to suffer an apoplectic stroke. Why could this beggar, once a landless waif, always defy him? He had got the best of everyone else and imposed his will on them.

He hated David with a deep, bitter hatred as he stood there, and would have given half his wealth to destroy him. To dispossess him, he had tried all his wiles: All to no avail, and even a money loss, for Martin, on his last ghosting expedition, had got three buckshot in the calf of his leg that necessitated a secret visit to the doctor in Minden and an expenditure of ten dollars. How did this boy dare to defy him, king of Rockbound, and what could he do? Nicolaus Kaulbach would never let his boy marry Tamar now. He saw he could do nothing but give way and make the best of a sorry bargain.

I don't wish Tamar no harm; she's a good girl, but she ain't de woman fur me. You t'ink it ober; if ye wants Tamar married, ye takes me into de firm on an even divvy. Dere ain't no time fur delays. If you'se goin' to marry Tamar it's got to be right off. Den we kin spread de word 'twere a seben mont's' child. How about lobsters, old man? I won't go dat lay; I wants my own lobsters. What kind o' man is ye, anyhow? First ye knocks up my gal, an' den, instead o' bein' sorry an' repentant, ye drives a hard bargain over it.

Didn't ye try fur to keep me off dis island an' part o' it mine by right? Me an' my fader made dis island what it is, ain't it? The old man and the young man stood there in the twilight, looking straight into each other's eyes, each busied with his own thoughts. A bargain was a bargain, both knew, and though there was no written agreement, for neither could read or write, the contract was sure and binding. Uriah, full of wiles, cunning, and double dealing before a bargain, would stick to anything he had directly affirmed.

His life amid hardship and danger had made that part of the moral code essential. His morals were purely matters of utility, since he knew that nothing could be accomplished unless men held to their contracts. In the boy, Uriah caught a glimpse of the hard battles and conquests of his own youth, and felt with a twinge of regret that David was a better man than any of his sons.

The old man's heart was in a fury because he had been beaten, but he concealed his rage. David turned over in his mind in that short moment what he could get out of the bargain. Joseph, the keeper of the money box, would, of course, still cheat him, but, at any rate, he would get twice as much as he had received as sharesman. Tamar had some learning, she could read, write, and figure, and could make a useful check on Joseph by keeping account of the catch from day to day. Snow the Baptist minister from Sanford, and David and Tamar were married without delay in Uriah's big kitchen.

They stood in front of the cooking stove with a background of shining pots and pans. David did not feel right in his heart, and mumbled the responses, but Tamar spoke loud and clear, for she had won the man of her heart. None of the Jung brothers was present, but their wives and children, egged on by curiosity, were ranged around the walls on the kitchen chairs. It was a rather gloomy ceremony. Uriah, to uphold the honour of the Jung family, and to conceal the fact that it was a forced marriage, tried to assume a gay and playful attitude and told several stories of how he had courted his wife on Little Outpost.

Even the supper and hot rum punch did not thaw the hearts of Martin's and Joseph's wives, who glowered reproachfully at bride and bridegroom. They had heard nothing but wrath and invective over this affair from their husbands, and they faithfully reflected their attitude.

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Soon after ten the wedding party broke up, and David took home to his house the woman he did not love. But David soon found that he had made no bad bargain. Rockbound women study how to be of use to their husbands. They work, for there is no one to hire to do the work that somehow is naturally expected of them and which seems right and proper to themselves.

They rear their children, tend their houses, milk cows, feed chickens, hoe the gardens, help with the hay, and when necessary give a hand in the fish house. It is no uncommon sight to see a couple of babies sleeping in an old sail on top of the fish puncheons as the mothers split fish. But in addition to this work they are always watching from the windows. As they go from duty to duty, they peer from kitchen window, from front-room window, from upstairs windows for the boats. Trust them, they know every boat, every patch upon the brown sails, the peculiar chug of every engine, the curve of each stem, the sheer, the strip of colour beneath the gunwale.

Each watches for the return of her man. Far off they see his boat coming from the Rock and know from its depth whether he has had a good catch or not. If his boat is light and fish pens empty, he may be angry and discontented. As in all conditions of life, where men daily face death and danger, the women occupy a secondary position and subordinate themselves to the men.

They watch for the boats so that the potatoes may be boiled and the stew steaming hot, the biscuits baked, dry socks and boots laid out, at the exact moment when the boat's prow takes the first log on the launch. David enjoyed life with Tamar and grew fonder of her as the days went by; for the first time he lived in comparative comfort. It was great to get in from the boats and find a steaming hot dinner, to have a clean decent lunch of bread and cakes wrapped in a white cloth and packed in a tin box to take to the banks, to have fresh, clean sheets on the bed, to find clean underclothes warming by the kitchen fire of a Sunday morning, to have socks mended, sea boots warmed and dried, and oilskins hung on their proper pegs in the kitchen.

He was proud of being in the Jung firm, and could bear with lightness of heart the ugly glances and spiteful words of Casper, Martin, and Joseph. They stuck together against him since the wedding, though each month they squabbled among themselves over the division of the money. They tried to make David feel that even as a partner he was an outsider and hence inferior. He bore with them patiently, but on one occasion, after a heavy day in the fish house, when they were all weary and irritated, he let out at them. As he was carrying a bushel of salt from bin to salting table, he bumped against Joseph and spilled a handful of salt down his rubber boot.

Joseph turned on him with a snarl: Ye don't belong here nohow. All de world knows how ye wormed yur way into de family. David and Gershom drew closer together. There was no envy in Gershom; he disliked the arrogant brothers and gloried in David's good fortune. One night some two months after the wedding, as David sat drying his stockings by the kitchen stove, he heard shouting on the pathway that led up to his house. He listened; it was Gershom's booming voice, trembling with excitement: It was true, no light twinkled against southern sky, nor cast its yellow ray over black sea.

Some disaster had befallen old Gershom; perhaps he had slipped over the cliff wall, or a sea had dashed him against the rocks and broken his legs. Both knew what must be done without delay, and David turned back to the kitchen to pull on rubber boots and oilskins. Me an' Gershom's goin' off.

Should be back by daybreak," he called to Tamar, who, after the manner of Rockbound wives, made no protest and offered no suggestion. David and young Gershom ran a boat off the launch, rounded the Grampus, and through darkness and a long-running sea drove hard to the southward. Though there was no fog, it was a murky night, and only the great stars blinked dimly in the black bowl of sky.

In an hour the draught of southeast wind brought to their ears the boom and roar of Barren Island surf, and they began to feel their way in cautiously, since nothing marked the rock-cleft landing place save a line of black in a curve of breaking white, and that, on such a night, they could only discern when close in.

They shipped a sea over their stern, but made the launch, clambered to safety, and hove out their boat. As their feet fumbled for the pathway that led across the sombre island, careys swooped and squawked about their ears. Gershom, hooking his great arm through David's, said: The lighthouse towered dark and silent, the south wind strumming an unearthly melody on its supporting wires. The two friends entered the kitchen and, with the quick spurt and flare of David's match, both started in horror.

The table was overturned, and on the floor lay the old man, dead, a half-emptied rum jug beside him. His dog, cowering behind the stove, bared his teeth and growled at the intruders. They lit the lamp in the light tower, stood watches throughout the night, and with the first gray of dawn carried the old man's body to their boat, the dog snapping and snarling at their heels.

Old Gershom was buried on Big Outpost one bleak November afternoon, and young Gershom was drunk at his funeral, for, sober, he could not bear to see the old man he loved and feared laid underground. With David he stood at the grave's head, his great body shaken with sobs, the tears making clean channels down his salt-stained cheeks. There was many a wet eye, too, among fisherfolk who claimed no kinship. Old Gershom had been great hearted. To whom could they now turn for the writing of deeds, wills, and mortgages, or for advice on the cunning of fish dealers or the sharp tricks of Liscomb lawyers?

Young Gershom, who had waited many years to succeed his father as keeper of the light, was given the post. Uriah, who on the event of old Gershom's death had applied secretly for the place for one of his boys, was full of envy, for the keeper got eighty dollars a month, besides fuel and lodging, and that was great wealth in the islands. The old king also resented losing Gershom as a sharesman; it would be hard to replace the young giant in the fish house. As for Gershom, now that he was appointed, he dreaded going to Barren Island alone. He thought of marrying Fanny, the potato girl, but his pride held him back; some wit on the Outposts would surely make him the subject of jest and scorn in a ballad, and that Gershom could not endure.

Finally he besought his friend David to come with him and spend his two weeks' holiday on Barren Island. Now, David had planned an epic holiday with Jean Boutilier at Miscou, but in the face of his friend's obvious distress he agreed to go with him, if Uriah would give his consent. Gershom broached the subject to the old king, who cunningly turned the matter over in his mind. He was envious of Gershom but not without a certain pity for him. It was terrible for a man to go to Barren Island alone.

He knew more about haunts than any man in the whole bay, had he not seen the footless nigger flit a score of times, had he not thrice been pushed off his path by an unseen force! And Rockbound haunts were mild, compared with those of Barren Island! Yes, it was a fearsome place to go alone! Nuttin' to do now but peddle de cabbages along de shore from Dover to Liscomb, an' Dave's no good at sellin'.

Martin an' Joe's de boys to drive bargains an' git de last cent. Bes' keep friendly wid de keeper o' de first light. An' you, David, be back on de day set widout fail. They landed at midday and relieved the temporary keeper, who was glad to be gone. The island was an eerie place, for one heard naught by day or night but the tiresome beat of surf, the moan of the sea wind, and the shrill screams of gulls and careys. Though David was an agnostic in regard to ghosts, he could not deny that there was something queer and unearthly about Barren Island.

Even the government engineer--so ran the tale--who had built the light's foundation, had reported to the islanders that things were not as they should be. As the friends stepped out of the lighthouse one blowy night soon after their arrival, to make the round of the cliffs, Gershom gripped David's arm and said: After nightfall they kept close together, for both knew that the old man's haunt would linger about the island for a little while.

Apart from ghosts, the bareness of the island depressed David; there was neither garden plot nor mowing field nor single bush or tree. Old Gershom had tried to raise vegetables in his early days on the island, but the roaring sea had flung too much salt spray upon his land.

Even the coarse grasses were yellow and stunted. David claimed that the island had once been larger and wooded, for, on the slack of spring tides, his sharp eyes, peering through green water to the yellow sands below, had seen gnarled stumps of pine and maple, preserved through the centuries by sea water and perhaps half turned to stone. The bareness of the place was accentuated by the buildings: Now that Barren Island was to be Gershom's home, the two friends explored it thoroughly. It was only seven hundred yards long and perhaps four hundred wide; nothing but a slatty rock protruding from the sea, over which was laid a mat of soil and turf varying from one foot to five in depth.

At the light's foot, a great stone block, a natural pier, stood out boldly and defied the open sea. No ship ever warped up to that pier, for on the calmest days of summer a tireless ground swell broke there, and in winter mountainous seas lashed it without rest.

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