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Updated: June 14, 2025
By this time they had received news from half a dozen neighbors that Bill Boughton's general store had been only half destroyed and that the contents had all been saved. The wharfs and fish-houses were at last burning and property on the leeward side of the flames was declared to be safe. A general exodus began along the King's Road.
The hill descended sharply, past the "Shore Road," over the barren fields and knolls covered with bayberry bushes and "poverty grass," to the yellow sand of the beach and the gray, weather-beaten fish-houses scattered along it. Beyond was the bay, a glimmer in the sunset light. Mrs. Phinney, in the kitchen, was busy with the supper dishes.
I car'd 'em up some new fish that night; they seemed short of provisions. We hadn't been out fishing as much as common, and they hadn't dared to be round the fish-houses much, for a fellow who came in on a coaster had a dog, and he used to chase 'em. Hard chance they had, and lots of 'em died, I guess; but there seem to be some survivin' relatives, an' al'ays just so hungry!
"Here as elsewhere, of course, the rain falls on the just and the unjust, and usually spoils their fish." When we landed some men came out of the fish-houses, for the time of the midday meal was at hand. I called for volunteers to bring a hand barrow. "Who's got a bed in his house that I can put Dick Will in for a few days, till he gets better?" I asked.
From our eastern windows we could see the moorings, and we always liked to watch the boats go out or come straying in, one after the other, ripping and skimming under the square little sails; and we often went down to the fish-houses to see what kind of a catch there had been.
The chaloupe ran swiftly along the coast past the broad mouth of the River Saint-Jean, with its cluster of white cottages past the hill-encircled bay of the River Magpie, with its big fish-houses past the fire-swept cliffs of Riviere-au-Tonnerre, and the turbulent, rocky shores of the Sheldrake: past the silver cascade of the Riviere-aux-Graines, and the mist of the hidden fall of the Riviere Manitou: past the long, desolate ridges of Cap Cormorant, where, at sunset, the wind began to droop away, and the tide was contrary So the chaloupe felt its way cautiously toward the corner of the coast where the little Riviere-a-la-Truite comes tumbling in among the brown rocks, and found a haven for the night in the mouth of the river.
One morning Maggie told us that there was nothing in the house for dinner, and, taking an early start, we went at once down to the store to ask if the butcher had been seen, but finding that he had gone out deep-sea fishing for two days, and that when he came back he had planned to kill a veal, we left word for a sufficient piece of the doomed animal to be set apart for our family, and strolled down to the shore to see if we could find some mackerel; but there was not a fisherman in sight, and after going to all the fish-houses we concluded that we had better provide for ourselves.
Objects were lost in it; ghostly things, shore lights, fish-houses, piers, strained seaward. I heard the packet's singing masts at the next wharf, but I saw no packet. The ponderous scow below me became a thing of life and light, an eager bird fluttering at its bonds and calling to the wide spaces.
Picks on me wuss than Hannah, he does." But even Kenelm confessed to a liking for the "pesky little nuisance." Captain Obed idolized him and took him on excursions along the beach or to his own fish-houses, where Georgie sat on a heap of nets and came home smelling strongly of cod, but filled to the brim with sea yarns.
"Do you mind our watching you?" asked Kate. "No, ma'am!" said the fisherman emphatically. So there we stood. Those fish-houses were curious places, so different from any other kind of workshop.
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