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148
The Country of the Pointed Firs
·
Sarah Orne Jewett
129
I
often
wondered
a
great
deal
about
the
inner
life
and
thought
of
these
self-contained
old
fishermen;
their
minds
seemed
to
be
fixed
upon
nature
and
the
elements
rather
than
upon
any
contrivances
of
man,
like
politics
or
theology.
My
friend,
Captain
Bowden,
who
was
the
nephew
of
the
eldest
of
this
group,
regarded
them
with
deference;
but
he
did
not
belong
to
their
secret
companionship,
though
he
was
neither
young
nor
talkative.
“They've
gone
together
ever
since
they
were
boys,
they
know
most
everything
about
the
sea
amon'st
them,”
he
told
me
once.
“They
was
always
just
as
you
see
'em
now
since
the
memory
of
man.”
These
ancient
seafarers
had
houses
and
lands
not
outwardly
different
from
other
Dunnet
Landing
dwellings,
and
two
of
them
were
fathers
of
families,
but
their
true
dwelling
places
were
the
sea,
and
the
stony
beach
that
edged
its
familiar
shore,
and
the
fish-houses,
where
much
salt
brine
from
the
mackerel
kits
had
soaked
the
very
timbers
into
a
state
of
brown
permanence
and
petrifaction.
It
had
also
affected
the
old
fishermen's
hard
complexions,
until
one
fancied
that
when
Death
claimed
them
it
could
only
be
with
the
aid,
not
of
any
slender
modern
dart,
but
the
good
serviceable
harpoon
of
a
seventeenth
century
woodcut.
Elijah
Tilley
was
such
an
evasive,
discouraged-looking
person,
heavy-headed,
and
stooping
so
that
one
could
never
look
him
in
the
face,
that
even
after
his
friendly
exclamation
about
Monroe
Pennell,
the
lobster
smack's
skipper,
and
the
sleepy
boy,
I
did
not
venture
at
once
to
speak
again.
Mr.
Tilley
was
carrying
a
small
haddock
in
one
hand,
and
presently
shifted
it
to
the
other
hand
lest
it
might
touch
my
skirt.
I
knew
that
my
company
was
accepted,
and
we
walked
together
a
little
way.
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