At five o’clock that July morning the sea, sky, and beach of Skidegate were rosily smoothed into one. There was neither horizon, cloud, nor sound; of that pink, spread silence even I had become part, belonging as much to sky as to earth, as much to sleeping as waking as I went stumbling over the Skidegate sands.
At the edge of the shrunken sea some Indians were waiting for me, a man and his young nephew and niece. They stood beside the little go-between canoe which was to carry us to a phantom gas boat floating far out in the Bay.
We were going to three old forsaken villages of the British Columbia Indians, going that I might sketch. We were to be away five days.
“The morning is good,” I said to the Indian.
“Uh huh,” he nodded.
The boy and the girl shrank back shyly, grinning, whispering guttural comments upon my Ginger Pop, the little griffon dog who trotted by my side.
In obedience to a grunt and a pointing finger, I took my place in the canoe and was rowed out to the gas boat. She tipped peevishly as I boarded, circling a great round “O” upon the glassy water; I watched the “O” flatten back into smoothness. The man went to fetch the girl and boy, the food and blankets.
I had once before visited these three villages, Skedans, Tanoo and Cumshewa. The bitter-sweet of their overwhelming loneliness created a longing to return to them. The Indian had never thwarted the growth-force springing up so terrifically in them. He had but homed himself there awhile, making use of what he needed, leaving the rest as it always was. Civilization crept nearer and the Indian went to meet it, abandoning his old haunts. Then the rush of wild growth swooped and gobbled up all that was foreign to it. Rapidly it was obliterating every trace of man. Now only a few hand-hewn cedar planks and roof beams remained, moss-grown and sagging–a few totem poles, greyed and split.
We had been scarcely an hour on the sea when the rosiness turned to lead, grey mist wrapped us about and the sea puckered into sullen, green bulges.
The Indians went into the boat’s cabin. I preferred the open. Sitting upon a box, braced against the cabin wall, I felt very ill indeed. There was no deck rail, the waves grew bigger and bigger licking hungrily towards me. I put the dog in his travelling box and sent him below.
Soon we began dipping into green valleys, and tearing up erupting hills. I could scarcely retain my grip on the box. It seemed as if my veins were filled with sea water rather than blood, and that my head was full of emptiness.
After seven hours of this misery our engine shut off outside Skedans Bay. The Indian tossed the anchor overboard. My heart seemed to go with it in its gurgling plop to find bottom, for mist had turned to rain and Skedans skulked dim and uninviting.
“Can the boat not go nearer?”
The Indian shook his head. “No can, water floor welly wicked, make boat bloke.” I knew that there were kelp beds and reefs which could rip the bottoms from boats down in Skedans Bay.
“Eat now?” asked the man.
“No, I want to land.”
The canoe sighed across our deck. The waves met her with an angry spank. The Indian juggled her through the kelp. Kelpie heads bobbed around us like drowning Aunt Sallies, flat brown streamers growing from their crowns and floating out on the waves like long tresses. The sea battered our canoe roughly. Again and again we experienced nightmare drownings, which worked up and up to a point but never reached there. When we finally beached, the land was scarcely less wet than the sea. The rain water lacked the sting of salt but it soaked deeper.
The Indian lit a great fire for me on the beach; then he went back to his gas boat, and a wall of mist and rain cut me off from all human beings.
Skedans on a stormy day looked menacing. To the right of the Bay immediately behind the reef, rose a pair of uncouth cone-like hills, their heads bonneted in lowering clouds. The clumsy hills were heavily treed save where deep bare scars ran down their sides, as if some monster cruelty had ripped them from crown to base. Behind these two hills the sea bit into the shoreline so deeply as to leave only a narrow neck of land, and the bedlam of waves pounding on the shores back and front of the village site pinched the silence out of forsaken old Skedans.
Wind raced across the breast-high growth around the meagre ruins more poignantly desolate for having once known man.
A row of crazily tipped totem poles straggled along the low bank skirting Skedans Bay. The poles were deep planted to defy storms. In their bleached and hollow upper ends stood coffin-boxes, boarded endwise into the pole by heavy cedar planks boldly carved with the crest of the little huddle of bones inside the box, bones which had once been a chief of Eagle, Bear or Whale Clan.
Out in the anchored gas boat the Indian girl became seasick, so they brought her ashore. Leaving her by the fire I wandered to the far end of the Bay. Ginger Pop was still on the gas boat and I missed him at my heels for the place was very desolate, awash with rain, and the sea pounding and snatching all it could reach, hurling great waves only to snatch them back to increase the volume of its next blow.
Suddenly above the din rose a human cry. The girl was beckoning to me wildly. “Uncle’s boat,” she cried. “It is driving for the reef!”
I saw the gas boat scudding towards her doom, saw the Indian in the small canoe battling to make shore with our bedding and food.
“Listen!” screamed the girl, “it is my brother.”
Terrified shrieks from the gas boat pierced the tumult, “Uncle, Uncle!”
The man hurled the food and blankets ashore without beaching the canoe, then he stepped into the waves, holding the frantic thing like a dog straining on leash. He beckoned me as near as the waves would let me go.
“Water heap wicked maybe no come back–take care my girl,” he said, and was gone.
Rushing out to the point above the reef, we watched the conflict between canoe and sea. When the man reached the gas boat, the screams of the boy stopped. With great risk they loaded the canoe till she began to take water. The boy bailed furiously. The long dogged pull of the man’s oars challenged death inch by inch, wave by wave. There were spells like eternity, when the fury out there seemed empty when the girl hid her face on my shoulder and screeched. I stared and stared, watching to tell the Indians in the home village what the sea had done to their man and boy. How it had sucked them again and again into awful hollows, walled them about with waves, churned so madly that the boat did not budge in spite of those desperate pulling oars.
Then some sea demon tossed her upon a crest and another plunged her back again. The hugging sea wanted her, but inch by inch she won. Then a great breaker dashed her on the beach with the smashing hurl of a spoiled child returning some coveted toy.
The boy jumped out and made fast. The man struggled a few paces through the foam and fell face down. We dragged him in. His face was purple. “He is dying!”–No, life came back with tearing sobs.
Among our sodden stuff was a can of milk, another of beans; we heated them, they put new life into us. Night was coming. We made what preparation we could, spreading a tent-fly over a great log and drying out our blankets. There was no lack of driftwood for the fire.
The Indian’s heart was sore for his boat; it looked as if nothing could save her. She was drifting more slowly now, her propeller fouled in kelp.
Mine was sore for my Ginger Pop in his box on the doomed boat. We each took our trouble to an opposite end of the bay. . .brooding.
Suddenly the mournful little group on the farther point galvanized into life. I heard a chorus of yells, saw the man strip off his oilskin pants, tie them to a pole and beat the air. I hurried across but found the Indians limp and despairing again.
“Boat see we was Indian, no stop,” said the man bitterly.
Fish boats were hurrying to shelter, few came our way, sanctuary was not to be found in Skedans Bay. I could not help hoping none would see our distress signal. The thought of going out on that awful sea appalled me.
A Norwegian seine boat did see us however. She stood by and sent two small boats ashore. One went to the rescue of the drifting gas boat and the other beached for us.
“Please, please leave us here on the land,” I begged. The Indians began rushing our things into the boat and the big Norwegian sailors with long beards like brigands said, “Hurry! Hurry!” I stood where land and sea wrangled ferociously over the overlap. The tea kettle was in my hand. “Wait!” I roared above the din of the waves, seeing I was about to be seized like a bale of goods and hurled into the boat. “Wait!”–plunging a hand into my pocket I took out a box of “Mothersill’s Seasick Remedy”, unwrapped a pill, put it on my tongue and took a gulp from the kettle’s spout; then I let them put me into the maniac boat. She was wide and flat-bottomed. It was like riding through bedlam on a shovel. “Mothersill” was useless; her failure climaxed as we reached the seiner, which at that particular moment was standing on her nose. When she sat down again they tied the rescued gas boat to her tail and dragged us aboard the seiner. When they set me on the heaving deck, I flopped on top of the fish hatch and lay there sprawling like a star fish.
Rooting among my things the Indian girl got a yellow parasol and a large tin cup; but the parasol flew overboard and the cup was too late–it went clanking down the deck. Being now beyond decency I made no effort to retrieve it. The waves did better than the cup anyway, gurgling and sloshing around the hatch which was a foot higher than the deck. Spray washed over me. The taste of the sea was on my lips.
The Captain ordered “all below”; everyone rushed to obey save me. I lay among the turmoil with everything rattling and smashing around and in my head no more sense than a jelly fish.
Then the Captain strode across the deck, picked me up like a baby and dumped me into the berth in his own cabin. I am sure it must have been right on top of the boiler for I never felt so hot in my life. One by one my senses clicked off as if the cigarette ladies jazzing over every inch of the cabin walls had pressed buttons.
When I awoke it hardly seemed possible that this was the same boat or the same sea or that this was the same me lying flat and still above an engine that purred soft and contented as an old cat. Then I saw that the Indian girl was beside me.
“Where are we?”
“I dunno.”
“Where are they taking us?”
“I dunno.”
“What time is it?”
“I dunno.”
“Is Ginger Pop safe?”
“I dunno.”
I turned my attention to the Captain’s cabin, lit vaguely from the deck lantern. The cigarette ladies now sat steady and demure. From the window I could see dark shore close to us. Suddenly there was no more light in the room because the Captain stood in the doorway, and said, as casually as if he picked up castaways off beaches most nights, “Wants a few minutes to midnight–then I shall put you off at the scows.”
“The scows?”
“Yep, scows tied up in Cumshewa Inlet for the fish boats to dump their catches in.”
“What shall I do there?”
“When the scows are full; packers come and tow them to the canneries.”
“And must I sit among the fish and wait for a packer?”
“That’s the idea.”
“How long before one will come?”
“Ask the fish.”
“I suppose the Indians will be there too?”
“No, we tow them on farther, their engine’s broke.”
Solitary, uncounted hours in one of those hideous square-snouted pits of fish smell! Already I could feel the cold brutes slithering around me for aeons and aeons of time before the tow ropes went taut, and we set out for the cannery. There, men with spiked poles would swarm into the scow, hook each fish under the gills. The creatures would hurtle through the air like silver streaks, landing into the cannery chutes with slithery thumps, and pass on to the ripping knives. . . . The Captain’s voice roused me from loathsome thoughts.
“Here we are!”
He looked at me–scratched his head–frowned. “We’re here,” he repeated, “and now what the dickens–? There is a small cabin on the house scow–that’s the one anchored here permanently–but the two men who live on it will have been completely out these many hours. Doubt if sirens, blows, nor nothin’ could rouse ’em. Well, see what I can do. . . .”
He disappeared as the engine bell rang. The Indian girl, without goodbye, went to join her uncle.
Captain returned jubilant.
“There is a Jap fishboat tied to the scows. Her Captain will go below with his men and let you have his berth till four A.M.; you’ll have to clear out then–that’s lookin’ far into the future tho’. Come on.”
I followed his bobbing lantern along a succession of narrow planks mounted on trestles, giddy, vague as walking a tight rope across night. We passed three cavernous squares of black. Fish smell darted at us from their depths. When the planks ended the Captain said, “Jump,” I obeyed wildly, landing on a floored pit filled with the most terrifying growls.
“Snores,” said the captain. “. . .House scow.”
We tumbled over strange objects, the door knob of the cabin looked like a pupil-less eye as the lantern light caught its dead stare.
We scrambled up the far side of the scow pit and so on to the Jap boat; three steps higher and we were in the wheel-house. There was a short narrow bench behind the wheel–this was to be my bed. On it was my roll of damp blankets, my sketch sack, and Ginger Pop’s box with a mad-for-joy Ginger inside it, who transformed me immediately back from a bale of goods to his own special divinity.
The new day beat itself into my consciousness under the knuckles of the Japanese captain. I thanked my host for the uncomfortable night which, but for his kindness, would have been far worse, and biddably leapt from the boat to the scow. It seemed that now I had no more voice in the disposal of my own person than a salmon. I was goods–I made no arrangements, possessed neither ticket, pass, nor postage stamp–a pick-up that somebody asked someone else to dump somewhere.
At the sound of my landing in the scow bottom, the door of the cabin opened, and yellow lamplight trickled over a miscellany of objects on the deck. Two men peered from the doorway; someone had warned them I was coming. Their beds were made, the cabin was tidied, and there were hot biscuits and coffee on the table.
“Good morning, I am afraid I am a nuisance. . . . I’m sorry”
“Not at all, not at all, quite a–quite er–” he gave up before he came to what I was and said, “Breakfast’s ready. . .crockery scant . . .but plenty grub, plenty grub;. . .cute nipper,” pointing to Ginger Pop. “Name?”
“Ginger Pop.”
“Ha! Ha!” He had a big round laugh. “Some name, some pup, eh?”
The little room was of rough lumber. It contained two of each bare necessity–crockery, chairs, beds, two men, a stove, a table.
“Us’ll have first go,” said the wider, the more conversational of the two. He waved me into one of the chairs and took the other.
“This here,” thumbing back at the dour man by the stove; “is Jones; he’s cook, I’m Smith.”
I told them who I was but they already knew all about us. News travels quickly over the sea top. Once submerged and it is locked in secrecy. The hot food tasted splendid. At last we yielded the crockery to Jones.
“Now,” said Smith, “you’ve et well; how’d you like a sleep?”
“I should like a sleep very much indeed,” I replied, and without more ado, hat, gum boots and all climbed up to Smith’s bed. Ginger Pop threw himself across my chest with his nose tucked under my chin. I pulled my hat far over my face. The dog instantly began to snore. Smith thought it was I. “Pore soul’s dead beat,” he whispered to Jones, and was answered by a “serves-‘er-right” grunt.
It was nearly noon when I awoke. I could not place myself underneath the hat. The cabin was bedlam. Jones stretched upon his bed was snoring, Smith on the floor with my sketch sack for a pillow “duetted”, Ginger Pop under my chin was doing it too. The walls took the snores and compounded them into a hodge-podge chorus and bounced it from wall to wall.
Slipping off the bed and stepping gingerly over Smith I went out of the cabin into the fullness of a July noon, spread munificently over the Cumshewa Inlet. The near shores were packed with trees, trees soaked in sunshine. For all their crowding, there was room between every tree, every leaf, for limitless mystery. On many of their tops sat a bald headed eagle, fish glutted, his white cap startling against the deep green of the fir trees. No cloud, no sound, save only the deep thunderous snores coming from the cabin. The sleeping men were far, far away, no more here than the trouble of last night’s storm was upon the face of the Inlet.
The door of the cabin creaked. Smith’s blinky eye peeped out to see if he had dreamed us. When he saw Ginger and me he beamed, hoped we were rested, hoped we were hungry, hoped Jones’ dinner would be ready soon; then the door banged, shutting himself and his hopes into the cabin. He was out again soon, carrying a small tin basin, a grey towel, and a lump of soap. Placing the things on a barrel-end, he was just about to dip when the long neck of Jones twisted around Smith’s body and plunged first with loud sputters. Still dripping he rushed back among the smells of his meat and dumplings. Smith refilled the basin and washed himself with amazing thoroughness considering his equipment, engaging me in conversation all the while. After he had hurled the last remaining sud into the sea he filled the basin yet again, solemnly handed me the soap and, polishing his face as if it had been a brass knob, shut Jones and himself up and left me to it.
We dined in the order we had breakfasted.
“Mr. Smith,” I said, “how am I going to get out of here?”
“That is,” said Smith with an airy wave of his knife, “in the hands of the fish.”
“They haven’t any,” I replied a little sulkily. The restriction of four walls and two teacups was beginning to tell and nobody seemed to be doing anything about releasing me.
“Pardon, Miss, I were speakin’ figurative. Meanin’ that if them fish critters is reasonable there’ll be boats; after boats there’ll be packers.”
“Easy yourself now,” he coaxed, “‘Ave another dumpling?”
Ginger and I scrambled over the various scows getting what peeps of the Inlet we could. It was very beautiful.
By and by we saw the scrawny form of Jones hugging the cabin close while he eased his way with clinging feet past the scow house to the far end. Here he leaned from the overhang and like a magician, produced a little boat from nowhere.
He saw us watching and had a happy thought. He could relieve the congestion in the scow house. He actually grinned–“Going to the spring. You and the dog care for a spell ashore?” He helped Ginger across the ledge and the awkward drop into the boat, but left me to do the best I could. I was thicker than Jones and the rim of the boat beyond the cabin was very meagre.
The narrow beach was covered with sea-drift. Silence and heat lay heavy upon it. Few breezes found their way up the Inlet. The dense shore growth was impossible to break into. Jones filled his pails at the spring and returned to the scow, leaving us stranded on the shore. When the shadows were long he returned for us. As we were eating supper, night fell.
We sat around the coal-oil lamp which stood upon the table, telling stories. At the back of each mind was a wonder as to whose lot would be cast on the floor if no packer came before night. Little fish boats began to come. We went out to watch them toss their catch hastily into the scows and rush back like retrieving pups to fetch more.
There was a great bright moon now. The fish looked alive, shooting through the air. In the scows they slithered over one another, skidding, switch-backing across the silver mound till each found a resting-place only to be bounced out by some weightier fellow.
The busy little boats broke the calm and brought a tang of freshness from the outside to remind the Inlet that she too was part of the great salt sea.
So absorbed was I in the fish that I forgot the packer till I heard the enthusiastic ring in Jones’ voice as he cried “Packer!” He ran to his cupboard and found a bone for Ginger while Smith parleyed with the packer’s Japanese captain. Yes, he was going my way. He would take me.
Smith led me along the narrow walk and gave me into the Captain’s care. Besides myself there was another passenger, a bad-tempered Englishman with a cold in his head. As there was nowhere else, we were obliged to sit side by side on the red plush cushion behind the Captain and his wheel. All were silent as we slipped through the flat shiny water bordered on either side by mountainous fir-treed shores. The tree tops looked like interminable picket fences silhouetted against the sky, with water shadows as sharp and precise as themselves.
My fellow passenger coughed, hawked, sneezed and sniffed. Often he leaned forward and whispered into the Captain’s ear. Then the Captain would turn and say to me, “You wish to sleep now? My man will show you.” I knew it was “sniffer” wanting the entire couch and I clung to the red plush like a limpet. By and by, however, we came to open water and began to toss, and then I was glad to be led away by the most curious little creature. Doubtless he had a middle because there was a shrivelled little voice pickled away somewhere in his vitals, but his sou’wester came so low and his sea-boots so high, the rest of him seemed negligible.
This kind little person navigated me successfully over the deck gear, holding a lantern and giving little inarticulate clucks continuously, but my heart struck bottom when he slid back a small hatch and sank into the pit by jerks till he was all gone but the crown of his sou’wester.
“Come you please, lady,” piped the queer little voice. There was barely room for our four feet on the floor between the two pair of short narrow bunks which tapered to a point in the stern of the boat. To get into a berth you must first horizontal yourself, then tip and roll. “Sou’wester-Boots” steadied me and held aside fishermen’s gear while I tipped, rolled, and scraped my nose on the underneath of the top bunk.
“I do wish you good sleep, lady.”
My escort and the light were gone. The blackness was intense and heavy with the smell of fish and tar.
I was under the sea, could feel it rushing by on the other side of the thin boards, kissing, kissing the boat as it passed. Surely at any moment it would gush into my ears. At the back of the narrow berth some live-seeming thing grizzled up my spine, the engine bell rang and it scuttled back again; then the rudder groaned, and I knew what the thing was. Soon the mechanics of the boat seemed to be part of myself. I waited for the sequence–bell, grizzle, groan–bell, grizzle, groan; they had become part of me.
Several times during the night the hatch slid back, a lantern swung into my den and shadow hands too enormous for this tiny place reached for some article.
“I am afraid I am holding up all the sleeping quarters,” I said.
“Please, lady, nobody do sleep when at night we go.”
I floated in and out of consciousness, and dream fish swam into my one ear and out of the other.
At three A.M. the rudder cable stopped playing scales on my vertebrae. The boat still breathed but she did not go. Sou’wester opened my lid and called, “Please, lady, the Cannery.”
I rolled, righted, climbed, followed. He carried my sketch sack and Ginger’s box. We took a few steps and then the pulse of the engine was no longer under our feet. We stood on some grounded thing that had such a tilt it pushed against our walking. We came to the base of an abnormally long perpendicular fish ladder, stretching up, up into shadow so overwhelmingly deep it seemed as if a pit had been inverted over our heads. It was the wharf and the Cannery.
A bulky object mounted the ladder, and was swallowed into the gloom. After a second a spot of dim light dangled high above. Breaths cold and deathly came from the inky velvet under the wharf. I could hear mud sucking sluggishly around the base of piles, the click of mussels and barnacles, the hiss and squirt of clams. From far above came a testy voice. . .”Come on, there.” There were four sneezes, the lantern dipping at each sneeze.
“Quick, go!” said Sou’wester, “Man do be mad.”
I could not. . .could not mount into that giddy blackness; that weazened little creature, all hat and boots, was such a tower of strength to abandon for a vague black ascent into. . .nothingness.
“Couldn’t I. . .couldn’t I crawl under the wharf round to the beach?” I begged.
“It is not possible, go!”
“The dog?”
“He. . .you see!” Even as he spoke, Ginger’s box swung over my head.
“What’s the matter down there?. . .Hurry!”
I grasped the cold slimy rung. My feet slithered and scrunched on stranded things. Next rung. . .the next and next. . .endless horrible rungs, hissing and smells belching from under the wharf. These things at least were half tangible. Empty nothingness, behind, around; hanging in the void, clinging to slipperiness, was horrible–horrible beyond words!. . .
Only one more rung, then the great timber that skirted the wharf would have to be climbed over and with no rung above to cling to. . . .
The impact of my body, flung down upon the wharf, jerked my mind back from nowhere.
“Fool! Why did you let go?” “Sneezer” retrieved the lantern he had flung down, to grip me as I reeled. . .Six sneezes. . .dying footsteps. . .dark.
I groped for the dog’s box.
Nothing amazed Ginger Pop. Not even that his mistress should be sitting T-squared against wharf and shed. . .time, three A.M. . . . place, a far north Cannery of British Columbia.
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