“There’s heaps of other coves, Barty,” said Mally to Barty Gunliffe, the farmer’s son.
“But none so nigh, Mally, nor yet none that fills ‘emselves as this place.”
Then he explained to her that he would not take the weed that came up close to hand. He was bigger than she was, and stronger, and would get it from the outer rocks, with which she never meddled. Then, with scorn in her eye, she swore that she could get it where he durst not venture, and repeated her threat of hamstringing the pony. Barty laughed at her wrath, jeered her because of her wild hair, and called her a mermaid.
“I’ll mermaid you!” she cried. “Mermaid, indeed! I wouldn’t be a man to come and rob a poor girl and an old cripple. But you’re no man, Barty Gunliffe! You’re not half a man.”
Nevertheless, Bartholomew Gunliffe was a very fine young fellow, as far as the eye went. He was about five feet eight inches high, with strong arms and legs, with light curly brown hair and blue eyes. His father was but in a small way as a farmer, but, nevertheless, Barty Gunliffe was well thought of among the girls around. Everybody liked Barty, excepting only Mally Trenglos, and she hated him like poison.
Barty, when he was asked why so goodnatured a lad as he persecuted a poor girl and an old man, threw himself upon the justice of the thing. It wouldn’t do at all, according to his view, that any single person should take upon himself to own that which God Almighty sent as the common property of all. He would do Mally no harm, and so he had told her. But Mally was a vixen, a wicked little vixen; and she must be taught to have a civil tongue in her head. When once Mally would speak him civil as he went for weed, he would get his father to pay the old man some sort of toll for the use of the path.
“Speak him civil!” said Mally. “Never; not while I have a tongue in my mouth!” And I fear old Glos encouraged her rather than otherwise in her view of the matter.
But her grandfather did not encourage her to hamstring the pony. Hamstringing a pony would be a serious thing, and old Glos thought it might be very awkward for both of them if Mally were put into prison. He suggested, therefore, that all manner of impediments should be put in the way of the pony’s feet, surmising that the well-trained donkey might be able to work in spite of them. And Barty Gunliffe, on his next descent, did find the passage very awkward when he came near to Malachi’s but, but he made his way down, and poor Mally saw the lumps of rock at which she had laboured so hard pushed on one side or rolled out of the way with a steady persistency of injury towards herself that almost drove her frantic.
“Well, Barty, you’re a nice boy,” said old Glos, sitting in the doorway of the hut, as he watched the intruder.
“I ain’t a doing no harm to none as doesn’t harm me,” said Barty. “The sea’s free to all, Malachi.”
“And the sky’s free to all, but I mustn’t get up on the top of your big barn to look at it,” said Mally, who was standing among the rocks with a long hook in her hand. The long hook was the tool with which she worked in dragging the weed from the waves. “But you ain’t got no justice nor yet no sperrit, or you wouldn’t come here to vex an old man like he.”
“I didn’t want to vex him, nor yet to vex you, Mally. You let me be for a while, and we’ll be friends yet.”
“Friends!” exclaimed Mally. “Who’d have the likes of you for a friend? What are you moving them stones for? Them stones belongs to grandfather.” And in her wrath she made a movement as though she were going to fly at him.
“Let him be, Mally,” said the old man; “let him be. He’ll get his punishment. He’ll come to be drowned some day if he comes down here when the wind is in shore.”
“That he may be drowned then!” said Mally, in her anger. “If he was in the big hole there among the rocks, and the sea running in at half tide, I wouldn’t lift a hand to help him out.”
“Yes, you would, Mally; you’d fish me up with your hook like a big stick of seaweed.”
She turned from him with scorn as he said this, and went into the hut. It was time for her to get ready for her work, and one of the great injuries done her lay in this, that such a one as Barty Gunliffe should come and look at her during her toil among the breakers.
It was an afternoon in April, and the hour was something after four o’clock. There had been a heavy wind from the northwest all the morning, with gusts of rain, and the seagulls had been in and out of the cove all the day, which was a sure sign to Mally that the incoming tide would cover the rocks with weed. The quick waves were now returning with wonderful celerity over the low reefs, and the time had come at which the treasure must be seized if it was to be garnered on that day. By seven o’clock it would be growing dark, at nine it would be high water, and before daylight the crop would be carried out again if not collected. All this Mally understood very well, and some of this Barty was beginning to understand also.
As Mally came down with her bare feet, bearing her long hook in her hand, she saw Barty’s pony standing patiently on the sand, and in her heart she longed to attack the brute. Barty at this moment, with a common three-pronged fork in his hand, was standing down on a large rock, gazing forth towards the waters. He had declared that he would gather the weed only at places which were inaccessible to Mally, and he was looking out that he might settle where he would begin.
“Let ‘un be, let ‘un be,” shouted the old man to Mally, as he saw her take a step towards the beast, which she hated almost as much as she hated the man.
Hearing her grandfather’s voice through the wind, she desisted from her purpose, if any purpose she had had, and went forth to her work. As she passed down the cover, and scrambled in among the rocks, she saw Barty still standing on his perch; out beyond, the white-curling waves were cresting and breaking themselves with violence, and the wind was howling among the caverns and abutments of the cliff.
Every now and then there came a squall of rain, and though there was sufficient light, the heavens were black with clouds. A scene more beautiful might hardly be found by those who love the glories of the coast. The light for such objects was perfect. Nothing could exceed the grandeur of the colours, the blue of the open sea, the white of the breaking waves, the yellow sands, or the streaks of red and brown which gave such richness to the cliff.
But neither Mally nor Barty were thinking of such things as these. Indeed, they were hardly thinking of their trade after its ordinary forms. Barty was meditating how he might best accomplish his purpose of working beyond the reach of Mally’s feminine powers, and Mally was resolving that wherever Barty went she would go father.
And, in many respects, Mally had the advantage. She knew every rock in the spot, and was sure of those which gave a good foothold, and sure also of those which did not. And then her activity had been made perfect by practice for the purpose to which it was to be devoted. Barty, no doubt, was stronger than she, and quite as active. But Barty could not jump among the waves from one stone to another as she could do, nor was he as yet able to get aid in his work from the very force of the water as she could get it. She had been hunting seaweed in that cove since she had been an urchin of six years old, and she knew every hole and corner and every spot of vantage. The waves were her friends, and she could use them. She could measure their strength, and knew when and where it would cease.
Mally was great down in the salt pools of her own cove, great, and very fearless. As she watched Barty make his way forward from rock to rock, she told herself, gleefully, that he was going astray. The curl of the wind as it blew into the cove would not carry the weed up to the northern buttresses of the cove; and then there was the great hole just there, the great hole of which she had spoken when she wished him evil.
And now she went to work, hooking up the dishevelled hairs of the ocean, and landing many a cargo on the extreme margin of the sand, from whence she would be able in the evening to drag it back before the invading waters