Jim of Hellas, or In Durance Vile; The Troubling of Bethesda Pool

Laura Richards

Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

Jim of Hellas, or In Durance Vile; The Troubling of Bethesda Pool

JIM OF HELLAS

Part I

Everyone knows the Island; it is not necessary to name it. With its rolling downs, its points, its ponds, its light-houses, and above all, its town, – who does not know the Island? Some day I shall write a story about the downs, the billowy acres of gold on russet, russet on gold, wonderful to see, – but this story is about the town.

The town has its nominal government, like other towns; its selectmen, and its town-meeting, and other like machinery; but everybody knows that the real seat of government lies in the Upper House. The meetings of this republican House of Lords are held in the best room of "Bannister's," the one inn of the town. It is a pleasant, roomy old structure, built in the Island fashion, with wide windows and plenty of them, and with a railed platform on its flat-topped roof, from which, in former days, the women of the house used to watch for the coming of the whaling-fleet.

There is little watching now on the Island. No ships come into that wonderful harbour, once thronged with sails. The great wharves rot silently and fall apart; a few old hulks rot quietly beside them. Two or three fishing-smacks, a coal-schooner or two, – these are all one sees now from the roof or the windows of Bannister's.

But the men who sit together in the upper room still look out of the windows a great deal, because from them they can see the harbour, and beyond it the sea; and the sea is what they love best to look at, for the greater part of their lives has been spent on it. Old sea-captains, – it needs but one glance to tell of what the Upper House is composed: Men with faces that might have been carved out of mahogany, wrinkled and seamed and beaten into strange lines by wind and weather; with gray or white hair, for the most part, and shaggy beards, yet with keen, bright eyes which are used to looking, and, what is not always the same thing, to seeing what they look at.

Though most of them go to sea no more, they keep with care their sea-going aspect; they wear pea-jackets with huge horn buttons, heavy sea-boots, and never fail to don their sou'westers in bad weather. The room in which they sit is well suited to them. On the broad window-seats lie spy-glasses and telescopes of all kinds. The walls are hung with sea-trophies.

Here is a piece of plank transfixed by the sharp blade of a sword-fish; there, a pair of walrus-tusks; there, again, the beautiful horn of the narwhal, like a wonderful lance of ivory, fit weapon for King Olaf or Eric the Red. In the doorway stands a whale's jaw, a great arch ten feet high, under which all must pass with thoughts of Jonah. As for corals and shells, there is no end to them, for the upper room is a museum as well as a place of convention, and here the captains love to bring their choicest treasures, keeping only the second-best to adorn the chimney-piece of the home-parlour.

In a great arm-chair, facing a seaward window, sits the patriarch of the Upper House, old Abram Bannister. His grandfather had built the inn itself, his grandsons now keep it. Every morning, winter and summer, Jake and Bill "hist" the old captain out of bed, put him in his chair, and wheel him into the great room; then they give him a spy-glass to hold in his hand, and leave him till dinner-time. The captains begin to straggle in about eight o'clock, when their morning chores are done. They greet the white old man with never-failing cordiality; he is the pride of the Upper House. They are never tired of asking him how old he is, nor of hearing him reply in his feeble, cheery pipe, —

"Ninety-nine year, and risin' a hundred."

He sleeps a good deal of the day, and, on waking, never fails to cry out, "Thar' she blows!"

Whereupon, one of the captains promptly replies, "Where away?" and the patriarch says, —

"Weather bow!" and straightway forgets all about it, and plays with his spy-glass.

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