The Bay Of Seven Islands

From the green Amesbury hill which bears the name     Of that half mythic ancestor of mine     Who trod its slopes two hundred years ago,     Down the long valley of the Merrimac,     Midway between me and the river's mouth,     I see thy home, set like an eagle's nest     Among Deer Island's immemorial pines,     Crowning the crag on which the sunset breaks     Its last red arrow. Many a tale and song,     Which thou bast told or sung, I call to mind,     Softening with silvery mist the woods and hills,     The out-thrust headlands and inreaching bays     Of our northeastern coast-line, trending where     The Gulf, midsummer, feels the chill blockade     Of icebergs stranded at its northern gate.     To thee the echoes of the Island Sound     Answer not vainly, nor in vain the moan     Of the South Breaker prophesying storm.     And thou hast listened, like myself, to men     Sea-periled oft where Anticosti lies     Like a fell spider in its web of fog,     Or where the Grand Bank shallows with the wrecks     Of sunken fishers, and to whom strange isles     And frost-rimmed bays and trading stations seem     Familiar as Great Neck and Kettle Cove,     Nubble and Boon, the common names of home.     So let me offer thee this lay of mine,     Simple and homely, lacking much thy play     Of color and of fancy. If its theme     And treatment seem to thee befitting youth     Rather than age, let this be my excuse     It has beguiled some heavy hours and called     Some pleasant memories up; and, better still,     Occasion lent me for a kindly word     To one who is my neighbor and my friend.                         . . . . . . . . . .     The skipper sailed out of the harbor mouth,     Leaving the apple-bloom of the South     For the ice of the Eastern seas,     In his fishing schooner Breeze.     Handsome and brave and young was he,     And the maids of Newbury sighed to see     His lessening white sail fall     Under the sea's blue wall.     Through the Northern Gulf and the misty screen     Of the isles of Mingan and Madeleine,     St. Paul's and Blanc Sablon,     The little Breeze sailed on,     Backward and forward, along the shore     Of lorn and desolate Labrador,     And found at last her way     To the Seven Islands Bay.     The little hamlet, nestling below     Great hills white with lingering snow,     With its tin-roofed chapel stood     Half hid in the dwarf spruce wood;     Green-turfed, flower-sown, the last outpost     Of summer upon the dreary coast,     With its gardens small and spare,     Sad in the frosty air.     Hard by where the skipper's schooner lay,     A fisherman's cottage looked away     Over isle and bay, and. behind     On mountains dim-defined.     And there twin sisters, fair and young,     Laughed with their stranger guest, and sung     In their native tongue the lays     Of the old Provencal days.     Alike were they, save the faint outline     Of a scar on Suzette's forehead fine;     And both, it so befell,     Loved the heretic stranger well.     Both were pleasant to look upon,     But the heart of the skipper clave to one;     Though less by his eye than heart     He knew the twain apart.     Despite of alien race and creed,     Well did his wooing of Marguerite speed;     And the mother's wrath was vain     As the sister's jealous pain.     The shrill-tongued mistress her house forbade,     And solemn warning was sternly said     By the black-robed priest, whose word     As law the hamlet heard.     But half by voice and half by signs     The skipper said, "A warm sun shines     On the green-banked Merrimac;     Wait, watch, till I come back.     "And when you see, from my mast head,     The signal fly of a kerchief red,     My boat on the shore shall wait;     Come, when the night is late."     Ah! weighed with childhood's haunts and friends,     And all that the home sky overbends,     Did ever young love fail     To turn the trembling scale?     Under the night, on the wet sea sands,     Slowly unclasped their plighted hands     One to the cottage hearth,     And one to his sailor's berth.     What was it the parting lovers heard?     Nor leaf, nor ripple, nor wing of bird,     But a listener's stealthy tread     On the rock-moss, crisp and dead.     He weighed his anchor, and fished once more     By the black coast-line of Labrador;     And by love and the north wind driven,     Sailed back to the Islands Seven.     In the sunset's glow the sisters twain     Saw the Breeze come sailing in again;     Said Suzette, "Mother dear,     The heretic's sail is here."     "Go, Marguerite, to your room, and hide;     Your door shall be bolted!" the mother cried:     While Suzette, ill at ease,     Watched the red sign of the Breeze.     At midnight, down to the waiting skiff     She stole in the shadow of the cliff;     And out of the Bay's mouth ran     The schooner with maid and man.     And all night long, on a restless bed,     Her prayers to the Virgin Marguerite said     And thought of her lover's pain     Waiting for her in vain.     Did he pace the sands? Did he pause to hear     The sound of her light step drawing near?     And, as the slow hours passed,     Would he doubt her faith at last?     But when she saw through the misty pane,     The morning break on a sea of rain,     Could even her love avail     To follow his vanished sail?     Meantime the Breeze, with favoring wind,     Left the rugged Moisic hills behind,     And heard from an unseen shore     The falls of Manitou roar.     On the morrow's morn, in the thick, gray weather     They sat on the reeling deck together,     Lover and counterfeit,     Of hapless Marguerite.     With a lover's hand, from her forehead fair     He smoothed away her jet-black hair.     What was it his fond eyes met?     The scar of the false Suzette!     Fiercely he shouted: "Bear away     East by north for Seven Isles Bay!"     The maiden wept and prayed,     But the ship her helm obeyed.     Once more the Bay of the Isles they found     They heard the bell of the chapel sound,     And the chant of the dying sung     In the harsh, wild Indian tongue.     A feeling of mystery, change, and awe     Was in all they heard and all they saw     Spell-bound the hamlet lay     In the hush of its lonely bay.     And when they came to the cottage door,     The mother rose up from her weeping sore,     And with angry gestures met     The scared look of Suzette.     "Here is your daughter," the skipper said;     "Give me the one I love instead."     But the woman sternly spake;     "Go, see if the dead will wake!"     He looked. Her sweet face still and white     And strange in the noonday taper light,     She lay on her little bed,     With the cross at her feet and head.     In a passion of grief the strong man bent     Down to her face, and, kissing it, went     Back to the waiting Breeze,     Back to the mournful seas.     Never again to the Merrimac     And Newbury's homes that bark came back.     Whether her fate she met     On the shores of Carraquette,     Miscou, or Tracadie, who can say?     But even yet at Seven Isles Bay     Is told the ghostly tale     Of a weird, unspoken sail,     In the pale, sad light of the Northern day     Seen by the blanketed Montagnais,     Or squaw, in her small kyack,     Crossing the spectre's track.     On the deck a maiden wrings her hands;     Her likeness kneels on the gray coast sands;     One in her wild despair,     And one in the trance of prayer.     She flits before no earthly blast,     The red sign fluttering from her mast,     Over the solemn seas,     The ghost of the schooner Breeze