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 Grief. 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
red-hot 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 still 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 of
mist that rode the waters, robed in films of tattered shadows. Gigantic
forms towered to dizzy heights above him, shaking out shredded shrouds
of cloud. The vast draperies of the fog swayed and hung and trembled as
he brushed them; the white twilight deepened to a sombre gloom. And now
it grew thinner; the fog became a mist, and 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 a
silver shoal. So he came to the Island of Grief. III. On the silver shoal the waves washed and washed, breaking like crushed
opals where the sands sang with the humming froth. Troops of little shore birds, wading on the shoal, tossed their
sun-tipped wings and scuttled inland, where, dappled with shadow from
the fringing forest, the white beach of the island stretched. The water all around was shallow, limpid as crystal, and he saw the
ribbed sand shining on the bottom, where purple seaweed floated, and
delicate sea creatures darted and swarmed and scattered again at the
dip of his paddle. Like velvet rubbed on velvet the canoe brushed across the sand. He
staggered to his feet, stumbled out, dragged the canoe high up under
the trees, turned it bottom upward, and sank beside it, face downward
in the sand. Sleep came to drive away the fear of fear, but hunger,
thirst, and fever fought with sleep, and he dreamed--dreamed of a
rope that sawed his neck, of the fight in the woods, and the shots. He
dreamed, too, of the camp, of his forty pounds of spruce gum, of Tully,
and of Bates. He dreamed of the fire and the smoke-scorched kettle, of
the foul odour of musty bedding, of the greasy cards, and of his own
new pack, hoarded for weeks to please the others. All this he dreamed,
lying there face downward in the sand; but he did not dream of the face
of the dead. The shadows of the leaves moved on his blonde head, crisp with clipped
curls. A butterfly flitted around him, alighting now on his legs,
now on the back of his bronzed hands. All the afternoon the bees hung
droning among the wildwood blossoms; the leaves above scarcely rustled;
the shore birds brooded along the water's edge; the thin tide, sleeping
on the sand, mirrored the sky. Twilight paled the zenith; a breeze moved in the deeper woods; a star
glimmered, went out, glimmered again, faded, and glimmered. Night came. A moth darted to and fro under the trees; a beetle hummed
around a heap of seaweed and fell scrambling in the sand. Somewhere
among the trees a sound had become distinct, the song of a little
brook, melodious, interminable. He heard it in his dream; it threaded
all his dreams like a needle of silver, and like a needle it pricked
him--pricked his dry throat and cracked lips. It could not awake him;
the cool night swathed him head and foot. Toward dawn a bird woke up and piped. Other birds stirred, restless,
half awakened; a gull spread a cramped wing on the shore, preened its
feathers, scratched its tufted neck, and took two drowsy steps toward
the sea. The sea breeze stirred out behind the mist bank; it raised the feathers
on the sleeping gulls; it set the leaves whispering. A twig snapped,
broke off, and fell. Kent stirred, sighed, trembled, and awoke. The first thing he heard was the song of the brook, and he stumbled
straight into the woods. There it lay, a thin, deep stream in the gray
morning light, and he stretched himself beside it and laid his cheek
in it. A bird drank in the pool, too--a little fluffy bird, bright-eyed
and fearless. His knees were firmer when at last he rose, heedless of the drops that
beaded lips and chin.