Tom's daughter was called Onnie Dever Tom, and the other girl was Onnie Dever John. It was thus that their names were entered in the register of the school they attended. And the school register is a solemn book inspected from time to time by a Government official—a book in which no one would venture to perpetrate a slang phrase or indulge in a joke. It is with Onnie Dever Tom that I am how concerned.
The children of the two families, some eight or ten of them at a time, went to school on the mainland. John and Tom took turns in ferrying them across the channel. When the time came for their return they stood in a group on the opposite shore and shouted until either John or Tom put out in a boat and ferried them home.
At very high tides the boat ran aground close up to Tom Dever's house, and an active child standing in the bow could jump right into the kitchen through the doorway—could almost have jumped into bed; but tides are as high as that only in March and September. During the rest of the year there is a small patch of beach to cross, even at full tide.
When I first met Onnie she must have been fourteen or fifteen years of age. She had stopped going to school. Her education was then complete; for she had reached what is called the sixth standard, and that is as far as the Irish educational authorities think a normal child ought to go.
At that time she possessed shoes and stockings, but wore them only on Sundays when she crossed to the mainland to go to church. The rest of the week she went barefooted, which was an economy for her parents and a convenience to herself. If you live on an island that, as well as being surrounded by, is also saturated with, water, it is much better to do without shoes and stockings.
I was sailing in a small boat, and the passage between the Devers' island and the mainland offered me a short cut home. The tide was ebbing, and the wind was very light. I knew I ought not to try the passage—that there probably would not be water enough for my boat; but I allowed myself to be tempted, hoping I might creep through.
The luck was all against me. The tide swept me down to a submerged rock. I heard the ominous banging of my centreboard. I hauled it up hurriedly. My boat, deprived of her power of going to windward, drifted sideways to the shore. I made desperate efforts to push her off and failed. The tide, ebbing swiftly, left my boat high and dry. I looked up and saw Onnie standing on the shore grinning.
I had to wait until the tide rose again. I am bound to say the time passed very pleasantly. Onnie was alone on the island, except for the youngest of John's children, who was a baby and lay placidly in a cradle near the fire. Onnie's father and mother, and John and his wife, had gone to our town to attend a fair. All the other children were at school. Onnie—that is, of course, Onnie Tom—had been left to take care of the island and the baby. I imagine she must have found her work dull, for she seemed really pleased to see me. She immediately offered to make tea for me.
I got the sails off my boat and followed her into the cottage. I realised almost at once that Onnie was a young woman with a future before her. She displayed a surprising efficiency in making tea. The fire was almost out when we entered the cottage. Onnie had it blazing round the kettle in a couple of minutes. She got out her mother's best cups and saucers. She cut slices of bread from a home-baked loaf, laid them flat along the palm of her hand and buttered them lavishly.
All the time she was at work she talked to me without shyness or embarrassment. Her subject was, of course, ready to hand and a tempting one—my stupidity in not getting my boat through the passage. In Onnie's opinion the thing could have been done. She explained to me with force exactly where my seamanship had been at fault.
From that we passed to the subject of boats in general, and the shortcomings of my particular boat. She happened to be a vessel of which I was both proud and fond. Onnie found out what my feelings were, and took the greatest pleasure in hurting them. This lasted until we had both finished tea. Then Onnie asked me whether I would like a lobster to take home with me. She said she knew of a hole in which there was generally a lobster lying.
We went out together to look for the lobster. No man of proper feelings would allow a young lady—it was as a young lady and not as a child that I had come to think of Onnie—to wade knee-deep after a fierce shellfish while he sat dry-footed on the shore. I took off my shoes and socks and followed Onnie into the middle of the channel. I hurt my feet a good deal and got very wet. Onnie gathered her single petticoat out of reach of the water, rolled up her sleeves and plunged her arms elbow-deep among the seaweed.
She brought out a lobster that had been lying—secure, it thought—under a ledge of rock. It flapped its tail furiously and made grabs in the air with its claws. Onnie held it by the middle of its back and laughed at its struggles.
I carried that lobster home with me and ate it. If I had known how great a lady Onnie was going to become afterwards I should have had the lobster stuffed and put in a glass case, so as to be able to offer it as evidence of the fact that I had been on intimate terms with Miss Dever in her early youth.
The next time I saw Onnie was two years later, and she was again in pursuit of shellfish. It was a very calm summer day and I was far out in the bay in my boat. The tide was a spring tide one of those that come in a long way and go out until one thinks the sea will disappear altogether. It was at its ebb at noon.
There is in our bay, beyond the farthest of the islands, a long reef of rocks which is well covered at half tide. It is just awash at the ebb of an ordinary tide, but emerges long and brown for a couple of hours when the spring tides have gone out their farthest. I slipped down towards this reef about noon, sailing free, with a gentle breeze on my quarter. A boat—a large, heavy black boat—lay with her bows out of the water at the end of the reef.
Among the rocks, scattered here and there, were eight or ten girls, barefooted, bareheaded, and bare-armed. Each of them had a tin can. They were gathering periwinkles among the pools. I could hear their voices as they shouted to each other. I bore slowly down on them and then, hauling my wind, circled round the outer side of the reef. I recognised Onnie Dever, most eager picker of all of them—busiest gathering the periwinkles; busiest at shouting jests; readiest with her laughter.
I drew past the reef and sailed away reflecting on the fate of the periwinkles. Dragged from their cool and pleasant homes they would be measured out in pints and quarts, paid for by the man who bought them with sixpences and shillings, which would go to buy ribbons for Onnie and her friends. Then, boiled and packed in huge cases, they would go to Manchester and to Warrington—to any of the group of smoke-grimed Lancashire towns where cotton is spun. There they would be piled in street barrows, with green labels stuck on them, and sold to pallid women to be eaten as a relish—picked from their shells with a pin and poised on slices of bread and margarine.
It seemed a far cry from our sunny bay to the flare-lit market-place of Bolton on a Saturday night—a great change from the sound of the laughter of merry girls to the raucous cries of the vendors. Such, I reflected, are the tricks that fate plays with us in life. As is the periwinkle so is the man—a card in a pack shuffled by a sportive destiny.
Sailing on summer seas leads naturally to facile philosophy; but, lest I should sentimentalise helplessly and lose my self-respect, I put my boat about and stood back towards the reef.
The girls were crowding into their boat when I reached them. Already the rising tide had covered most of the rocks, and left only the higher ones standing up like islands in a kind of Saragasso Sea of swaying brown weed. Onnie was the last to embark; giving one final shove-off with her foot she slid across the bow of the boat, climbed sternward and took the stroke oar.
Six of the girls rowed, keeping time and stroke with Onnie. When she started a song for them their bodies swung with her music. The breeze had nearly died away. The row-boat, with its sturdy pullers, soon distanced me; but for a long time I heard the girls' songs and fancied that I could distinguish Onnie's voice clear above the