# Grim Grand Manan

Published in Harper's Monthly Magazine, August 1912, Volume 125
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​Page:Grim Grand Manan.pdf/1 ​Page:Grim Grand Manan.pdf/2 ​Page:Grim Grand Manan.pdf/3 ​men who toil on the sea bring back from the vast stretches of water under the vaulted sky.
We surged in from the sea, past Swallow-tail Light. The British Jack on the headland was smeared against the clouds by the wind, as hard and stiff as the tin flag of a toy-soldier encampment. The wind does blow at Grand Manan!
“It’s a venturesome trip at any time,” said the skipper of the motor-packet. “If it doesn’t blow when you’re coming out here, it’s sure to blow when you’re going back, and that’s why the resorters haven’t spoiled Grand Manan with their flounces and airs and notions.”
The winds of Grand Manan refuse to he cajoled by any promoters of summer colonies. There is, first of all, the joyous wind from the northwest, tingling even when the sunshine of August is melted into it. That wind beats frothy ara- besques against the looming brown cliffs and sends a tide-rip streaming from North Head five miles across to The Wolves—-a rip that is operated by a twenty-eight-foot tide sweeping through the jaws of the Bay of Fundy. It is a rip where the waves chase and dodge and double back on themselves with most fantastic contra-dance—building sudden pinnacles, scooping unexpected valleys in the green water—and many a little boat has been tripped by a high-sided comber or engulfed by a leaping crest. Though the sky be glorious, its arch of pale velvet swept clean by that joyous gale from the north; though the sun may shine and the ocean may flash its glories of silver light, yet there is ever that bar- rier of the Nerth Head rip to cross if one wishes to enter into the placid life of isolated Grand Manan.
The east wind sweeps in vast seas that climb the cliffs, and the south wind rolls up the sea with arms heaped high with fog. One may not determine when he can land on Grand Manan; one ean- not say to himself, “ Lo, I will arise and go!” The winds may be pushing the scenery of sea by him too rapidly for a summer-resorter’s nerves and courage.
The tides race, the winds gallop, the lofty schooners and steamers of the Province traffic hurry past Grand Manan. All that haste seems to make the island especially inert, stolid, archaic, and non- progressive.
But Grand Manan may deceive by that aspect. Its first automobile is now frisking along its twelve miles of road!
“Tve got one horse wonted to the thing already,” says the livery-stable man. “I ean let you that horse and voull be middling safe, though you’ll have to push on the webbin’s pretty hard to get there quick. If you want to go faster, Ill have to take another horse and drive him myself to be on the safe side.” ’
This was not on a Sunday. No; one eannot hire a horse on Grand Manan for Sunday use. One cannot lark or play or buy any goods or drinks or papers on Sunday on Grand Manan. The rules and customs were not imported from Blue Law Connecticut. They eame from the Province with the Seoteh disposition which has flavored the stock of men on Manan.
Though the island braces itself against the racing tides, the inhabitants do not resist progress of any sort which seems vroper to them. <A cable brings a tele- phone from the main. There is an ama- teur wireless outfit. ‘There are two banks for the savings of the thrifty—and all the islanders are thrifty. Everybody knows the latest news of the world. And when we asked for dinners for four at the tavern the buxom landlady replied: “Sure! I got you, Steve!”
“The other hotel has closed,” she said. “Tt was a larger house than this one, but the folks got old and didn’t want to bother with strangers any more. No, I don’t think the house will be opened again—not right away. We don’t cater to boarders for the summer much out here. They are too fussy and too much trouble. There was a man out here yesterday who said he was an artist from New York or somewhere. But I had to send him along. I eater to traveling salesmen who stay the night and go on about their business, and are not around underfoot.” The traveling salesmen are mostly from St. John and St. Andrews. The folk of Grand Manan do not care to do much trading with the Yankees, except when the girls take Saturday afternoon and run across to Eastport for millinery and ribbons. ​Page:Grim Grand Manan.pdf/6 ​Page:Grim Grand Manan.pdf/7 ​Page:Grim Grand Manan.pdf/8 ​Page:Grim Grand Manan.pdf/9 ​Page:Grim Grand Manan.pdf/10 ​Page:Grim Grand Manan.pdf/11 ​“nurse” gave the owner his first lesson in steering, told him to head so and so, to keep the sails drawing, and then went below to play “pitch pede” with the foremast hand—for the wind was steady and all was taut. The new owner obeyed instructions as he remembered them. He kept the sails drawing, and had no eyes for anything else. After a time he noticed that the schooner seemed to be making better time of it than she had when he had been slicing the breeze on a port tack. The wind boomed in her sails and spilled with little whistles; she rode on an even. keel, and the waters roared under her counter.
The game of cards was close and interesting, and therefore the “nurse” was as intent on his own affairs below as the trader was above. When at last the real skipper abandoned cards and came on deck he yelped his astonishment:
“We've been making great time, Cap,” stated the proud owner at the wheel. “TI have kept still so as to surprise you. Tm making the best of this fair wind.”
“Fair wind!” squealed the “nurse.” “You have let her ease off! And you have been to work and sailed clear around Grand Manan back to where you started from this morning!”
And that was a sail of forty miles and more, up one side and down the other.
The owner peered under the bellying sail and saw his store and his house. The rays of the setting sun illumined them, as the rays of the rising sun had lighted the scene when he departed that day.
“Anchor her,’ he said, giving over the wheel. And he hired the “nurse” for a captain and took his canvas valise and was rowed to shore in the dingy. He earned the reputation of being the only man who ever lived-on Grand Manan and lacked congenital instinct in the sailing of a boat.
There are only two other men on the island who have been compelled to en- dure any greater raillery. Off to the southward one day they picked up a huge lump of something which was oily to the touch, which had queer mottlings in tt, and greenish streaks. They had read some- thing somewhere about ambergris, and
HARPER'S MONTHLY MAGAZINE
decided that they would never be obliged to pull trawls any more. The stuff was soap-grease which had escaped from a Lubee factory. And the men who found it are known as “Ambergris One” and “ Ambergris Two.”
The story of Club-foot John is one to be told when the winter fires are aglow and the .snow is tossed in giant handfuls against the pane. Then, above the clang of the bell at the harbor entrance, there is a note which does not seem to be from the throat of the raucous wind. There is imagination among the silent folk of Grand Manan.
“Grands’r mumbies: ‘Miles of chain
Are out to-night from the Stormy Jane.
Brig she was, and as able a thing
As e’er tuned shrouds for the winds to sing.
But the ablest is under the Devil’s thumb
When the skipper takes sights through a kag of rum.
With a sou’east wind she thrashed her way
Up seas hot foot for Fundy Bay.
And the mate he knowed, and the crew they knowed,
She was lugging too much of a canvas load.
But still he told ‘em to crack her on—
Her drunken skipper, old Club-feot John.
They smelt the land and they begged, did they,
He’d anchor in soundings till break of day.
But a kag of rum walked that quarter- deck,
And a kag of rum don’t fear no wreck.
So down she went with every man,
Battered to slivers on Grand Manan.
A dozen lives on his black old soul,
And widders and orphans and bells to toll.
Yow ll hear him plain when a storm is on,
Roaring and working, old Club-foot John,
Stumping around his windlass there
Where the snow whirls thick in the off- shore air,
Clanking an endless anchor chain
Into the peak of the Stormy Jane.
That’s a duty left to Club-foot John,
Though he is long since dead and gone:
He is sent to tell us as best he can
There’s a duty due to our fellow-man.
Better be kind and better be square
And remember that rum is the Devil’s snare
Set for the man who forgets that he
Needs all his wits when he fights the sea,.’”
This work was published before January 1, 1930, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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