The Bay of Seven Islands

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 Provençal 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 the 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!