...
II.
ON the Key to Grief the green
waves rub all day. White at the summit, black at the base, the shafted
rocks rear splintered pinnacles, slanting like channel buoys. On the polished
pillars sea birds brood -white-winged, bright-eyed sea birds, that nestle
and preen and flap and clatter their orange-coloured beaks when the sifted
spray drives and drifts across the reef.
As the sun rose, painting crimson
streaks criss-cross over the waters, the sea birds sidled together, huddling
row on row, steeped in downy drowse.
Where the sun of noon burnished
the sea, an opal wave washed, listless, noiseless; a sea bird stretched
one listless wing.
And into the silence of the waters
a canoe glided, bronzed by the sunlight, jewelled by the salt drops stringing
from prow to thwart, seaweed a-trail in the diamond-flashing wake, and
in the bow a man dripping with sweat.
Up rose the gulls, sweeping in
circles, turning, turning over rock and sea, and their clamour filled the
sky, starting little rippling echoes among the rocks.
The canoe grated on a shelf of
ebony; the seaweed rocked and washed; the little sea crabs sheered sideways,
down, down into limpid depths of greenest shadows. Such was the coming
of Bud Kent to the Key to Grie£
He drew the canoe halfway up
the shelf of rock and sat down, breathing heavily, one brown arm across
the bow. For an hour he sat there. The sweat dried under his eyes. The
sea birds came back, filling the air with soft querulous notes.
There was a livid mark around
his neck, a red, raw circle. The salt wind stung it; the sun burned it
into his flesh like a collar of redhot steel. He touched it at times; once
he washed it with cold salt water.
Far in the north a curtain of
mist hung on the sea, dense, motionless as the fog on the Grand Banks.
He never moved his eyes from it; he knew what it was. Behind it lay the
Island of Grief.
All the year round the Island
of Grief is hidden by the banks of mist, ramparts of dead white fog encircling
it on every side. Ships give it wide berth. Some speak of warm springs
on the island whose waters flow far out to sea, rising in steam eternally.
The pelt hunter had come back
with tales of forests and deer and flowers everywhere; but he had been
drinking much, and much was forgiven him.
The body of the college youth
tossed up in the cove on the mainland was battered out of recognition,
but some said, when found, one hand clutched a crimson blossom half wilted,
but broad as a sap pan.
So Kent lay motionless beside
his canoe, burned with thirst, every nerve vibrating, thinking of all these
things. It was not fear that whitened the firm flesh under the tan; it
was the fear of fear. He must not think-he must throttle dread; his eyes
must never falter, his head never turn from that wall of mist across the
sea. With set teeth he crushed back terror; with glittering eyes he looked
into the hollow eyes of fright. And so he conquered fear.
He rose. The sea birds whirled
up into the sky, pitching, tossing, screaming, till the sharp flapping
of their pinions set the snapping echoes flying among the rocks.
Under the canoe's sharp prow
the kelp bobbed and dipped and parted; the sunlit waves ran out ahead,
glittering, dancing. Splash! splash! bow and stern! And now he knelt again,
and the polished paddle swung and dipped, and swept and swung and dipped
again.
Far behind, the clamour of the
sea birds lingered in his ears, till the mellow dip of the paddle drowned
all sound and the sea was a sea of silence.
No wind came to cool the hot
sweat on cheek and breast. The sun blazed a path of flame before him, and
he followed out into the waste of waters. The stid
BREAKPOINT ocean divided under
the bows and rippled innocently away on either side, tinkling, foaming,
sparkling like the current in a woodland brook. He looked around at the
world of flattened water, and the fear of fear rose up and gripped his
throat again. Then he lowered his head, like a tortured bull, and shook
the fear of fear from his throat, and drove the paddle into the sea as
a butcher stabs, to the hilt.
So at last he came to the wall
of mist. It was thin at first, thin and cool, but it thickened and grew
warmer, and the fear of fear dragged at his head, but he would not look
behind.
Into the fog the canoe shot;
the gray water ran by, high as the gunwales, oily, silent. Shapes
flickered across the bows, pillars mist that rode the waters, robed in
films of tattered shadows. Gigant forms towered to dizzy heights above
him, shaking out shredd shrouds of cloud. The vast draperies of the fog
swayed and hung at trembled as he brushed them; the white twilight deepened
to sombre gloom. And now it grew thinner; the fog became a mist, at the
mist a haze, and the haze floated away and vanished into the blue of the
heavens.
All around lay a sea of pearl
and sapphire, lapping, lapping on silver shoal.
So he came to the Island of Grief.
End of PART TWO..... GO TO PART
THREE.....
