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That odor of the fish-houses had always been bad enough before, but now it seemed to rise in her nostrils and sicken her. And now, Jennie, I can only repeat Puck's words, "What fools we mortals be!" That man Frenchy rushed out of the door as we were going by. His face looked as if he had been suffering tortures. "Please, please!" he cried. "Come, vite, heem Docteur hawful seek.
The summer yachtsman whiling away an idle month in cruises up and down that New England coast which, once stern and rock-bound, has come to be the smiling home of midsummer pleasures, encounters at each little port into which he may run, moldering and decrepit wharves, crowned with weatherbeaten and leaky structures, waterside streets lined with shingled fish-houses in an advanced stage of decay, and acres of those low platforms known as flakes, on which at an earlier day the product of the New England fisheries was spread out to dry in the sun, but which now are rapidly disintegrating and mingling again with the soil from which the wood of their structures sprung.
"Can you play a mandolin?" inquired "Fingerless" Fraser, observing the young fellow with grave curiosity. "Sure; I'm out of practice, but " "Take him!" said Fraser, turning upon Emerson. "He can set on the front porch of the cannery with wild flowers in his hair and play La Paloma. It will make those other fish-houses mad with jealousy.
Some of the houses might contain a half dozen families of ordinary size, and were well adapted to the climate. While we took wood at a Gilyak village I embraced the opportunity to visit the aboriginals. The village contained a dozen dwellings and several fish-houses.
If the fishing is good the men at work in the fish-houses ought to be out fishing, and the girls should be out upon the flakes. They often work at night till they are ready to drop. And then perhaps comes a spell of rain, days and weeks of it, during which the fish spoils and all their work goes for nothing. Then they have to try again and again, with hunger and debt spurring them on.
"I have little to set against this," said Eystein; "but if you fought abroad, I strove to be of use at home. In the north of Vaage I built fish-houses, so as to enable the poor people there to earn a livelihood. I built a priest's house, and endowed a Church, where before all the people were heathen; and therefore I think they will recollect that Eystein was once King of Norway.
Presently three people came down the steep path from the fish-houses. One of them, a girl, ran lightly forward and touched Benjamin Selby's arm. He lowered his glass with a start and looked around. A flash of undisguised delight transfigured his face. "Why, Mary Stella! I didn't expect you'd be down this hot day. You haven't been much at the shore lately," he added reproachfully.
Finally the crowd moved down towards the cove. The flakes that had been deserted, that morning, became tenanted again by an eager crowd, and on the sharply slanted roofs of the little fish-houses some boys secured precarious perches. The yacht had been warped to the little dock, and there was a gangplank over which our three dear friends went on board.
When we reached the moorings the clouds were black, and the thunder rattled and boomed over the sea, while heavy spatters of rain were already falling. We did not go to the wharves, but stopped down the shore at the fish-houses, the nearer place of shelter.
Cunner-Fishing One of the chief pleasures in Deephaven was our housekeeping. Going to market was apt to use up a whole morning, especially if we went to the fish-houses.
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