The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1886-07-10
Select STORY.
+" THE RIBS OF DEATH. Z"

TtOm I)ctyIUCtU.
Three months before | was born my
fathers boat went down in heavy squall
within sight of home and Of my mother,
who. with the rest of the fishermen's
wives, awaited the landing of the little
feet.
Perhaps this was the reason had such
an instructive horror and dread of the sea,
even while it fascinated and drew me to it
in its stormiest moods. 1t was a queer
feeling that possessed me. When away
from the sight and sound of the breakers
| was restless and unquiet near them |
was awed and melancholy, but some crav-
ing of my nature was satisfied, and | was
comparatively calm. | believe many of
our people, who are intensely superstitious,
looked upon me as doomed in consequence
of this. ''The sea always swallows what
it gets hold Of" they said among them
selves with sorrowful fatalism. We can
scarcely help being superstitious and
gloomy-we who are born and reared in
Callermouth. Nature is so stern in her
moods and so cruel in her way of express
ing them.
Miss Ashford, our Wears daughter, is
very cross with me for saying things like
this, but I cannot help thinking that even
she feels them to be true sometimes dur
ing the long and stormy winters on this
northeast coast of ours. She is very kind
and good, and as she is always busy work
ing among us perhaps that helps her
through. 1t was she who taught me how
to write and put sentences together so as
to make this story Ineligible, and it was
she who wished me to write it. Why, l
do not know. When l told it to her first
1 hardly expected her to believe it, but she
did, and helped me through the bad time
which 1 had after-but that must hide
until | come to it.
Callermouth is only a cluster of cottages
around little harbor, with pier and life
boat house below. About mile to the
north is the ugly sharp ridge of rocks
which bears the significant name of the
cribs O. Death" Many fine vessel has
struck and ground her timbers to match
wood, many poor clinging life has been
washed off those fatal ribs. They do say
that in the old times many ship was
lured there to its destruction, too; but
can scarce believe the grandfathers of our
brave fellows, who lived by and on the
waters just as now, could be inhuman
enough to trade upon the danger and
deaths of mariners Only must
say that even yet, while any one of ouI
men would risk his life without thinking
twice about it to save another, he wouldn' I
have any very definite ideas on the laws OF
salvage.
Twas not comely lass in the estimation
of the village critics. In fact, when saw
nv little white face, with its big dark
eyes, in the dim old looking-glass which
hung over the mantelpieee in OFF tfont
room, and compared it with that of Bel
Carr, our biggest and best-looking girl,
used to feel very small and insignificant
She was true fisher lass, tall and strong
" made, with swinging walk and saucy
smile, and ready word for every one
gentle or simple. The artists who came
here sometimes to paint us in our charac
tteristic blue hannels always selected her
and passed me over 1 was not type
and She was, they said.
Well, l was glad of it, for Willie
wouldn't have liked me TO act as model
Spite of my want of beauty, l had two
lads came courting me, and Willie Lislt
was the one I favored. Edam Adam,
Carr was too much of my own temper fol
me, too gloomy was afraid of him, had
the same sort of mistrust of him that
had of the sea, and perhaps little of the
same idea of his possible power over me.
But Willie, with his bonnie yellow curli
and his blue eyes, and his sunny smile
what girl could have resisted him? HI
brought his brightness into my life, and il
seemed to go out like the sun beneath {
cloud on the day he sailed in the Rowena
bound for China and the East Indies, from
the Tyne,
All our most energetic and enterprisine
young men become sailors, if they do mo-
feel satisfied to be fishermen as their ia
theirs before them. 1t seems never to en-
ter into any of their heads that there are
other means of livelihood than these two
callings. They cannot tear themselves
away from the sea altogether, however
they may abuse it. They inhale its sal
breeze with their earliest breaths, its foam
and spray beat on them until it becomes
part of them, as it were, and they are al
much creatures of the waves as the fshei
that swim beneath or the gulls that foa
above So it was that when Willie grew
discontented with his earnings as fisher
man he went to sea to make more money
in the hope of wedding me the sooner.
was not strong enough for a fisher
mans wife, he said, and he hoped to b
able to keep me like lady. just as if
cared.
Thnnnh I ,uas small / was nnt delicate