The Ebbing Tide Read Online Free

Then most of the young men had gone into the service, the old-timers had left because married sons and daughters had found work in war plants, and the grandchildren needed someone to watch over them. They didn’t mind leaving so much; there was no mail boat now, and often the telephone was out of order or shut off because of secret communications from the Rock. . . . One woman frankly admitted she was glad to be leaving the Island because the depth charges were too close and there were too many stories of submarines, and they didn’t like the sight of fighting planes and bombers flying high in the thin mist of clouds.
    Now Nils was going, and as she stood beside him watching the Donna ’s steady bow against the horizon, she had the feeling she had had so many times as a child, that the world consisted of a flat expanse of sea, with Bennett’s Island and Brigport in the midst of it, a line of blue unreal mountains along the northern horizon with nothing beyond them, and an immense half-sphere of sky inverted over it all. When Nils left, he would drop into nothing beyond the edge, as her younger brothers had dropped. Their letters always seemed to arrive out of blank space, and so would Nils’ letters. . . . She turned her face quickly from the horizon beyond Brigport, and waited for Nils to slow down the big marine engine and go forward to gaff the mooring buoy. But he met her eyes with a faint sparkle in his, and turned the Donna out past Eastern Harbor Point.
    â€œCome and steer,” he said. Words that had always sent her to the heights of ecstasy, from the time he used to say them to her when she was a gangling, eager twelve-year-old.
    She took the wheel and Nils sat down on the washboard, watching the Island as it slid by. There was no need to talk; there was only motion, the steady vibration of the engine, the shining sea flowing past, the little sea pigeons flying up with a flash of their small red feet. She knew now why they were doing this, and if she had known any questions in the early morning, they were being answered now. Nils was saying goodbye to the Island. Perhaps he would never tell her in words what he felt about the Island, but he was taking her with him to share this final moment.
    Long Cove was gliding by, a long stretch of beach whose rounded rocks gleamed white in the sun, white as a gull’s breast against the blue line of sea. Above Long Cove flat fields stretched across the Island to Schoolhouse Cove, on the seaward side. In the marshy places she and Nils had picked cranberries, and where the fields bordered on the beach there were blackberries in August whose purple-black sweetness was richened by spray. There was high, densely wooded ground after Long Cove, and the empty buildings that shone palely against the dark high wall of trees, overlooking the fields and the two coves, were Bennett property. In the big barn that dwarfed the other buildings Joanna and Nils, her brothers and his cousins, had played hide­and-go-seek. . . . She glanced sidewise at Nils and saw that he was not too remote from her, so she spoke.
    â€œRemember swinging out of the hayloft on a rope?”
    â€œIf I ever knew of Jamie doing that, I’d want to wring his neck,” said Nils. “And I thought your uncle was an old fussbudget for objecting.” He shook his head and laughed.
    â€œNils, d’you think we could ever get hold of that place—if Aunt Mary was willing to sell?” she asked eagerly.
    â€œMaybe she’ll be ready to talk business when I get back,” he said. When I get back . . . . It was like a little cold wind skimming across the water and turning the surface to a darker, colder blue.
    After the woods ended, the Eastern End began, a narrow neck of land whose shoreline on both sides, lee and windward, was guarded by a brutal jumble of rocks. But the tide covered them today, and the empty buildings looked serene and not too lonely in the sunshine. The