George Dixon, out upon the Road so much that he has left back at the Stables any need in his Conversation to dismount, canters ahead. "Last night I took the Liberty of moving them back from the fire. I trust they're no worse for it."
"Thou must ask them." He is on one knee in a flash, a hand in each Shoe pois'd either side of his Face. Glancing up at her, "Well. How are thee," he addresses one Shoe, "not too wet, not too dry?" Causing it to reply, "Quite well, thanks," in a high-pitch'd voice that draws the atten?tion of a number of small children nearby, "unless I am to be wet with tears of boredom, or dry from too little time walking out.— Why aye," in his ev'ry-day Voice, "and how's thy Sister?" "Eeh!" screeching back at himself in an ill-humor'd Ogress voice, "and have I started talking to gowks, then?" Shaking his own head, "I can't believe you're sisters, the one so sweet, the other— "Watch yourself, Geordie," warns the screechy one.
Some Children have come tottering over to look at the source of these Voices. George Dixon, maybe too young to know trouble when he sees it, can't stop talking to himself. Some crazy Enterprizer, helpful Relations murmur, with a wild-cat coal operation out upon the Fell, whilst others wag their heads in dazed tho' not altogether comfortless unison,— and before any of them know it, the couple are, as they say around Staindrop, "gannin straights."
They are already connected in the Durham Quaker Web,— Mary's mother having died, her father, Thomas Hunter, took a second wife, who also died, and then a third. Eight years after his own death (Mary pass?ing under the protection of her Uncle Jeremiah), the third wife and now widow, Elizabeth, got married again,— this time to Ralph Dixon, George's father.
"So...," taking off his hat and shaking out his hair, "we've each had her for a step-mother. What's that make us, then,— step-brother and step-sister-in-law... ?"
"Yet that is not the Tale the Neighbors have preferr'd to tell. They have it, that Mamma, no sooner than my Father died, married his Father- "
"So...she married thy grandfather...making thy mother also thy grandmother."
"Not too much of that over in Weardale, I imagine. Step-Grandmother, in fact...?”
"What would they do without Hunter women?"
He is tying his Hair back again with a brown grosgrain Ribbon,— she surprizes herself by staring at his hands and their patient way with what has prov'd to be a notable cascade of Hair,— as it comes less and less to frame his face, she understands that he's doing this on purpose, for her, offering, risking, his unprotected Face.
Mary Hunter was nearly eighteen when her father died and she became the ward of her Uncle, Jeremiah Hunter. He was fifty-four at the time. "Think of it as a Picturesque Affliction, my Dear." "Oh, Uncle..." Did she remain his Ward until she married George, twelve years later? It must have been with Uncle Jeremiah in mind that she nam'd her sec?ond son. George Sr., not altogether happy with the name,— too Scrip?tural,— would clutch his head whenever the baby let out a Peep, however good-naturedly, and exclaim, "Alas! The Lamentations of Jere?miah!" Whenever he heard these words, the baby would begin to give Beef in earnest, and his mother grimly to smile. As George Jr. learn'd to talk, he added the phrase to a Repertoire of Teasing Arts he was happy to share with his sisters. The difficulty was that little Jeremiah assum'd nearly all of this was being done to amuse him,— for he lov'd the older children with an unqualified and undaunted certainty, despite the energy bordering upon vehemence with which they lifted, swung, or pass'd him whilst inverted one to the other, and their tales of ghosts and creatures of the Fell, and the nick-naming, exclusions, and words kept secret from him,— 'twas all, to the unreflective Jelly-Belly, as he was known, huge Fun.
Neighbors came to think of his Mother as the cleverest woman ever to marry a Dixon. She pretended, however, that George was the clever one. "He usually reads my Mind," she told Elizabeth, "and if tha find an Hus?band who's fool'd as seldom, the happier thou'll be...? It saves thee all the day-in-and-day-out effort of trying to fool him,— fetch me that would you, beloved,— and upon the few occasions when thou may fool him,— why, it does wonders for thy Confidence."
"Tha've fooled him? Really, Mamma?"
"Once or twice. Beware a man who admires thy shoes. Thou may love him to distraction, but at the same time thou'll wish strongly to play tricks upon him, which though of an innocent nature, carry with them
chances for misunderstanding. Tis not a pastime for the young,— I would urge thee for example to ease off upon the Raylton lad for the time being, and to concentrate upon thy Sums. Remember, she who keepeth the Books runneth the Business."
"He's so— "
"Yes."
"Oh, tha don't know."
"I know thee." A quick sweep of her palm down the Girl's Hair. "I see that gaupy Look."
His father died when Jeremiah was twenty-two, a fairly miserable stretch beginning for him then, tho' he never drank enough to interfere with field-work,— something he needed as much as ready access to Ale,— still young enough to arise little inconvenienced after a night's strenuous drinking, having led till now the merry Life of a Journeyman Surveyor, errant all through the North country, one Great Land-Holding to another, three-legged Staff cock'd over his shoulder, Circumferentor slung in a Pitman's bag along with dry Stockings and a small wheaten Loaf, spare Needles and Pins, Plummets, Pencils, scrap-paper, and jeweler's Putty for the Compass,— tho' Spaces not yet enclos'd would ever make him uneasy, not a promising mental condition for an outdoor job,— oblig'd to cross the Fell now and again, a dangerous and frightening place,— not only murderers abroad, but Spirits as well,— and Spirits not necessarily in human form, no,— the worst being, almost in human form, but not quite.. .now he long'd only, late at night, whispering to the familiar Floor?boards, either to be kill'd and devour'd out there, or to become one of them, predatory and forever unshelter'd,— either way, transform'd.
He broke faith with ev'ry one he knew,— loans unhonor'd, errands unrun, silences unkept. His older sister Hannah married a Yorkshireman but three months after their Father's passing, and Jere show'd up at the Wedding and made a Spectacle of himself. "I'm best getting on with it, Jeremiah,— and so ought thee, and who are thee, to call me such things?" He was turning into a Country Lout, soon to be beyond reclamation.
Elizabeth, tearful and broken, had headed directly for the comfort of her Mother, both assum'd into a silent unapproachable cloud of mourn-
ing,— the boys being left each to his own way of soldiering on, the
Enemy who'd so unanswerably insulted them at their Backs now some?
where, and in and out of their sleep George got busier than he had to
be with one Scheme and another,— pulling Greenstone out of the Dyke under Cockfield Fell, carving and fitting together stalks of Humlock for another of his Gas-pipe Schemes, re-designing the Spur-gearing or the Pump-seals out at the Workings. Jeremiah found himself indoors, per?fecting his Draftsmanship, bending all day over the work-table, grinding and mixing his own Inks,— sittings and splashes ev'rywhere of King's Yellow, Azure, red Orpiment, Indian lake, Verdigris, Indigo, and Umber. Levigating, elutriating, mixing the gum-water, pouncing and rosining the Paper to prevent soak-through,— preparation he would once rashly have hurried 'round or in great part omitted, was now necessary, absolutely necessary, to do right. He must, if one day call'd upon, produce an over?head view of a World that never was, in truth-like detail, one he'd begun in silence to contrive,— a Map entirely within his mind, of a World he could escape to, if he had to. If he had to, he would enter it entirely but never get lost, for he would have this Map, and in it, spread below, would lie ev'rything,— Mountain of Glass, Sea of Sand, miraculous Springs, Volcanoes, Sacred Cities, mile-deep Chasm, Serpent's Cave, endless Prairie....another Chapbook-Fancy with each Deviation and Dip of the Needle,
When night fell he would put his drafting things away, back into their Velvet Nests in Pear-Wood cases, and go out to The Tiger or The Grey Hound, seeking men who'd been friends of his father's, seeking somehow to nod and smile them into remembering. Much of the Ale-borne Mati-ness others were to see in him was learn'd during this time, at great effort, a word, a Gesture at a Time.
They told him often of things he didn't know, or thought he didn't, of the Coal Business. Iliads of never-quite-straightforward dealings among Owners, Staithemen, Collier-Masters, and Fitters,— who might have own'd a particular Keel and who hadn't but said he did...'twas ever something, for whilst business Tyneside might be done by one-year Con?tracts and fix'd Fees, here upon the Wear, all was negotiable.
Just before leaving for America, he spends as much Time as he may at The Jolly Pitman, tho' now he is more likely to be the Story-teller.
Some are gone, yet are there some who say, "George would be proud of thee now."
"Will ye come with wee Dodd and me on my Keel, as ye did last time, Jere?"
"Why aye, Mr. Snow, and I thank thee...?"
So it is he now approaches the Harbor, down the River widening out of darkness, into a dawn singing of Staithemen and Keel-Bullies— "How theer!" "Eeh, watcheer!"— the Fleets of Keels carried down and sailing up-stream, the Beam-Work of the first Staithes, penn'd upon the sunrise, both sides of the river a-rumble with, the coal in the shoots and the coal-filled waggons upon the wood rails, the Dyer's Bath of Morning, no redder than Twopenny Beer, spilling 'cross the World east of Chester-le-Street, punctuated by the Geometry of Tunnels, Bridges and earthwork Embankments sizable as Pyramids, the great inclin'd Waggon-Ways, whose Tracks run from the Mine-Heads inland for miles down to the Spouts upon Wear—
America, waiting, someplace. Going out to the collier Mary and Meg, bound again for London River, riding atop the Huddock, Dixon sees Fog, pale and shifting, approach like a great predatory Worm. He has snick-er'd at Gin-shop tales of Keelmen lost in the fog, never expecting any such mishap in his own life, having ever plann'd to spend as much of it as he may upon dry land. But here it comes, the flanks of the aqueous Creature seething ever closer, as young Dodd the Peedee gives a shout of alarm, and Mr. Snow, in his Post of Keel-Bully, begins to swear vigor?ously. Already half the Shoreline is obscur'd. Far away upon the Shields a bell-buoy rings in the dank morning, and somewhere closer, upon now-invisible Rounds, yet goes the Bell of the Tagareen Man, ship to ship, Iron seeking Iron,— and then, like that, wrapped in the sulfurous Signa?tures of fresh Coal, have a Score of Savages appear'd out of the Sea-Fret, paddling Pirogues, shouting strange jibber-jabber, the words incompre?hensible, yet the vowels unmistakably North British. How to explain this?
"That wild Indian sounds a bit like poor old Cookie, don't it?"
"They've painted themselves—
"Aye, black as Coal-dust."
"How-ye,- " calls Mr. Snow, "What place is this?”
"Why, ye've floated to America, ye buggers!"
"Heer, we'll foy yese in...?"
"America... Eehh...?"
"Eeeh, y' Gowks!" A grappling hook, blackened and lethal, comes flying out of the Fret, just missing young Dodd and catching the Hud-dock. "They're attacking!" screams the Peedee, scrabbling in the coal. And just then, out there, like Hounds let loose, the church bells of America all begin to toll, peculiarly lucid in the fog, a dense Carillon, tun'd so exotically, they might be playing anything,— Methodist hymns, Opera-hall Airs, jigs and gigues, work songs of sailors, Italian serenades, British Ballads, American Marches.
"Now listen heer ye's," the Keel-Bully to Forces invisible, "there's nought to fear from huz, being but poor peaceable Folk lost in this uncommon Fret, who'll be only too pleased to gan wi' ye's, wheerever ye say." In a lower voice, to his own, "They want the Coal. Let them find us." Carefully, sensing the Tides thro' his Soles, he steers them further into the Obscurity. The others, keeping silent, may be anywhere. Snow reacts to ev'ry Splash, ev'ry shift of whatever is flowing past. Soon the Fog begins to clear.
They seem to rock beneath the Belfries of a great Estuarial Town. It smells like Coal. Ordinary Water-Birds coast above, quite at home. "Why I believe they're Geordies, as much as huz!" the Keel-Bully exclaims. Nor do they appear the faces of strangers. Yet where are Keelmen ever as silent as these have now fallen,— and why are the Faces beneath these Basin-crops so unmovingly resentful? Snow and even little Dodd know them. Some stood before the Assizes after the strikes of '43 and '50, and were sentenced to the Gallows, though 'twas later said they were transported to America. Why aye, if this be America, then here they are, in company with Alehouse champions of Legend carrying their Black-jacks big as Washing-tubs, celebrated Free-for-all Heroes, Keel racers from the coaly Tyne, worshiped even Wearside,— "Dobby, is it you, whatcheer!"— as if for Dixon ev'ry Phiz a-reel, ev'ry Can bought and taken, and nocturnal Voice lifted in harmony, down his Time, sooner or later would come to be reprised in this late-Day Invisibility,— and the Fret, for a moment, has made possible some America no traveler's account has yet describ'd,
because as yet none has return'd, tho' many be the mates and dear ones who bide.
And when he sees the little Collier-Brig at last, her Sails not merely be-grim'd, but silken black, with Coal-Dust,— the Mary and Meg,— Dixon suffers a moment and a half of Dread, for her stillness in the Water, her evenness of Trim in a Light never seen upon the Shields.... Was it so, the first time,— did he simply miss it, with his Mind then pitch'd so immoderately further East? Or is this a particular and strong Message concerning America, meant not for him but for someone else, that he may only have got in the way of?
It is dangerous Passage, along the Coast down to the Thames and into the Pool, turning ever to Windward, often into the Teeth of Gales, among treacherous Sands, and the Channels ever re-curving, like great Ser?pents a-stir. Catching a windward Tide at the King's Channel, beating up toward the Swin, keeping out of the Swatchways and attending ever her Soundings, the Mary and Meg, threading nicely among Rocks, Shallows, a thousand other Vessels each bound its own way, desiring despite her ghostly look to live briskly whilst she may, brings Dixon at last to Long Reach, above Gravesend, guided to her Moorage in the Tier by the slowly rising Dome of St. Paul's, to Westward.
Tomorrow, he and Mason are to sign the Contract.
"Thou must ask them." He is on one knee in a flash, a hand in each Shoe pois'd either side of his Face. Glancing up at her, "Well. How are thee," he addresses one Shoe, "not too wet, not too dry?" Causing it to reply, "Quite well, thanks," in a high-pitch'd voice that draws the atten?tion of a number of small children nearby, "unless I am to be wet with tears of boredom, or dry from too little time walking out.— Why aye," in his ev'ry-day Voice, "and how's thy Sister?" "Eeh!" screeching back at himself in an ill-humor'd Ogress voice, "and have I started talking to gowks, then?" Shaking his own head, "I can't believe you're sisters, the one so sweet, the other— "Watch yourself, Geordie," warns the screechy one.
Some Children have come tottering over to look at the source of these Voices. George Dixon, maybe too young to know trouble when he sees it, can't stop talking to himself. Some crazy Enterprizer, helpful Relations murmur, with a wild-cat coal operation out upon the Fell, whilst others wag their heads in dazed tho' not altogether comfortless unison,— and before any of them know it, the couple are, as they say around Staindrop, "gannin straights."
They are already connected in the Durham Quaker Web,— Mary's mother having died, her father, Thomas Hunter, took a second wife, who also died, and then a third. Eight years after his own death (Mary pass?ing under the protection of her Uncle Jeremiah), the third wife and now widow, Elizabeth, got married again,— this time to Ralph Dixon, George's father.
"So...," taking off his hat and shaking out his hair, "we've each had her for a step-mother. What's that make us, then,— step-brother and step-sister-in-law... ?"
"Yet that is not the Tale the Neighbors have preferr'd to tell. They have it, that Mamma, no sooner than my Father died, married his Father- "
"So...she married thy grandfather...making thy mother also thy grandmother."
"Not too much of that over in Weardale, I imagine. Step-Grandmother, in fact...?”
"What would they do without Hunter women?"
He is tying his Hair back again with a brown grosgrain Ribbon,— she surprizes herself by staring at his hands and their patient way with what has prov'd to be a notable cascade of Hair,— as it comes less and less to frame his face, she understands that he's doing this on purpose, for her, offering, risking, his unprotected Face.
Mary Hunter was nearly eighteen when her father died and she became the ward of her Uncle, Jeremiah Hunter. He was fifty-four at the time. "Think of it as a Picturesque Affliction, my Dear." "Oh, Uncle..." Did she remain his Ward until she married George, twelve years later? It must have been with Uncle Jeremiah in mind that she nam'd her sec?ond son. George Sr., not altogether happy with the name,— too Scrip?tural,— would clutch his head whenever the baby let out a Peep, however good-naturedly, and exclaim, "Alas! The Lamentations of Jere?miah!" Whenever he heard these words, the baby would begin to give Beef in earnest, and his mother grimly to smile. As George Jr. learn'd to talk, he added the phrase to a Repertoire of Teasing Arts he was happy to share with his sisters. The difficulty was that little Jeremiah assum'd nearly all of this was being done to amuse him,— for he lov'd the older children with an unqualified and undaunted certainty, despite the energy bordering upon vehemence with which they lifted, swung, or pass'd him whilst inverted one to the other, and their tales of ghosts and creatures of the Fell, and the nick-naming, exclusions, and words kept secret from him,— 'twas all, to the unreflective Jelly-Belly, as he was known, huge Fun.
Neighbors came to think of his Mother as the cleverest woman ever to marry a Dixon. She pretended, however, that George was the clever one. "He usually reads my Mind," she told Elizabeth, "and if tha find an Hus?band who's fool'd as seldom, the happier thou'll be...? It saves thee all the day-in-and-day-out effort of trying to fool him,— fetch me that would you, beloved,— and upon the few occasions when thou may fool him,— why, it does wonders for thy Confidence."
"Tha've fooled him? Really, Mamma?"
"Once or twice. Beware a man who admires thy shoes. Thou may love him to distraction, but at the same time thou'll wish strongly to play tricks upon him, which though of an innocent nature, carry with them
chances for misunderstanding. Tis not a pastime for the young,— I would urge thee for example to ease off upon the Raylton lad for the time being, and to concentrate upon thy Sums. Remember, she who keepeth the Books runneth the Business."
"He's so— "
"Yes."
"Oh, tha don't know."
"I know thee." A quick sweep of her palm down the Girl's Hair. "I see that gaupy Look."
His father died when Jeremiah was twenty-two, a fairly miserable stretch beginning for him then, tho' he never drank enough to interfere with field-work,— something he needed as much as ready access to Ale,— still young enough to arise little inconvenienced after a night's strenuous drinking, having led till now the merry Life of a Journeyman Surveyor, errant all through the North country, one Great Land-Holding to another, three-legged Staff cock'd over his shoulder, Circumferentor slung in a Pitman's bag along with dry Stockings and a small wheaten Loaf, spare Needles and Pins, Plummets, Pencils, scrap-paper, and jeweler's Putty for the Compass,— tho' Spaces not yet enclos'd would ever make him uneasy, not a promising mental condition for an outdoor job,— oblig'd to cross the Fell now and again, a dangerous and frightening place,— not only murderers abroad, but Spirits as well,— and Spirits not necessarily in human form, no,— the worst being, almost in human form, but not quite.. .now he long'd only, late at night, whispering to the familiar Floor?boards, either to be kill'd and devour'd out there, or to become one of them, predatory and forever unshelter'd,— either way, transform'd.
He broke faith with ev'ry one he knew,— loans unhonor'd, errands unrun, silences unkept. His older sister Hannah married a Yorkshireman but three months after their Father's passing, and Jere show'd up at the Wedding and made a Spectacle of himself. "I'm best getting on with it, Jeremiah,— and so ought thee, and who are thee, to call me such things?" He was turning into a Country Lout, soon to be beyond reclamation.
Elizabeth, tearful and broken, had headed directly for the comfort of her Mother, both assum'd into a silent unapproachable cloud of mourn-
ing,— the boys being left each to his own way of soldiering on, the
Enemy who'd so unanswerably insulted them at their Backs now some?
where, and in and out of their sleep George got busier than he had to
be with one Scheme and another,— pulling Greenstone out of the Dyke under Cockfield Fell, carving and fitting together stalks of Humlock for another of his Gas-pipe Schemes, re-designing the Spur-gearing or the Pump-seals out at the Workings. Jeremiah found himself indoors, per?fecting his Draftsmanship, bending all day over the work-table, grinding and mixing his own Inks,— sittings and splashes ev'rywhere of King's Yellow, Azure, red Orpiment, Indian lake, Verdigris, Indigo, and Umber. Levigating, elutriating, mixing the gum-water, pouncing and rosining the Paper to prevent soak-through,— preparation he would once rashly have hurried 'round or in great part omitted, was now necessary, absolutely necessary, to do right. He must, if one day call'd upon, produce an over?head view of a World that never was, in truth-like detail, one he'd begun in silence to contrive,— a Map entirely within his mind, of a World he could escape to, if he had to. If he had to, he would enter it entirely but never get lost, for he would have this Map, and in it, spread below, would lie ev'rything,— Mountain of Glass, Sea of Sand, miraculous Springs, Volcanoes, Sacred Cities, mile-deep Chasm, Serpent's Cave, endless Prairie....another Chapbook-Fancy with each Deviation and Dip of the Needle,
When night fell he would put his drafting things away, back into their Velvet Nests in Pear-Wood cases, and go out to The Tiger or The Grey Hound, seeking men who'd been friends of his father's, seeking somehow to nod and smile them into remembering. Much of the Ale-borne Mati-ness others were to see in him was learn'd during this time, at great effort, a word, a Gesture at a Time.
They told him often of things he didn't know, or thought he didn't, of the Coal Business. Iliads of never-quite-straightforward dealings among Owners, Staithemen, Collier-Masters, and Fitters,— who might have own'd a particular Keel and who hadn't but said he did...'twas ever something, for whilst business Tyneside might be done by one-year Con?tracts and fix'd Fees, here upon the Wear, all was negotiable.
Just before leaving for America, he spends as much Time as he may at The Jolly Pitman, tho' now he is more likely to be the Story-teller.
Some are gone, yet are there some who say, "George would be proud of thee now."
"Will ye come with wee Dodd and me on my Keel, as ye did last time, Jere?"
"Why aye, Mr. Snow, and I thank thee...?"
So it is he now approaches the Harbor, down the River widening out of darkness, into a dawn singing of Staithemen and Keel-Bullies— "How theer!" "Eeh, watcheer!"— the Fleets of Keels carried down and sailing up-stream, the Beam-Work of the first Staithes, penn'd upon the sunrise, both sides of the river a-rumble with, the coal in the shoots and the coal-filled waggons upon the wood rails, the Dyer's Bath of Morning, no redder than Twopenny Beer, spilling 'cross the World east of Chester-le-Street, punctuated by the Geometry of Tunnels, Bridges and earthwork Embankments sizable as Pyramids, the great inclin'd Waggon-Ways, whose Tracks run from the Mine-Heads inland for miles down to the Spouts upon Wear—
America, waiting, someplace. Going out to the collier Mary and Meg, bound again for London River, riding atop the Huddock, Dixon sees Fog, pale and shifting, approach like a great predatory Worm. He has snick-er'd at Gin-shop tales of Keelmen lost in the fog, never expecting any such mishap in his own life, having ever plann'd to spend as much of it as he may upon dry land. But here it comes, the flanks of the aqueous Creature seething ever closer, as young Dodd the Peedee gives a shout of alarm, and Mr. Snow, in his Post of Keel-Bully, begins to swear vigor?ously. Already half the Shoreline is obscur'd. Far away upon the Shields a bell-buoy rings in the dank morning, and somewhere closer, upon now-invisible Rounds, yet goes the Bell of the Tagareen Man, ship to ship, Iron seeking Iron,— and then, like that, wrapped in the sulfurous Signa?tures of fresh Coal, have a Score of Savages appear'd out of the Sea-Fret, paddling Pirogues, shouting strange jibber-jabber, the words incompre?hensible, yet the vowels unmistakably North British. How to explain this?
"That wild Indian sounds a bit like poor old Cookie, don't it?"
"They've painted themselves—
"Aye, black as Coal-dust."
"How-ye,- " calls Mr. Snow, "What place is this?”
"Why, ye've floated to America, ye buggers!"
"Heer, we'll foy yese in...?"
"America... Eehh...?"
"Eeeh, y' Gowks!" A grappling hook, blackened and lethal, comes flying out of the Fret, just missing young Dodd and catching the Hud-dock. "They're attacking!" screams the Peedee, scrabbling in the coal. And just then, out there, like Hounds let loose, the church bells of America all begin to toll, peculiarly lucid in the fog, a dense Carillon, tun'd so exotically, they might be playing anything,— Methodist hymns, Opera-hall Airs, jigs and gigues, work songs of sailors, Italian serenades, British Ballads, American Marches.
"Now listen heer ye's," the Keel-Bully to Forces invisible, "there's nought to fear from huz, being but poor peaceable Folk lost in this uncommon Fret, who'll be only too pleased to gan wi' ye's, wheerever ye say." In a lower voice, to his own, "They want the Coal. Let them find us." Carefully, sensing the Tides thro' his Soles, he steers them further into the Obscurity. The others, keeping silent, may be anywhere. Snow reacts to ev'ry Splash, ev'ry shift of whatever is flowing past. Soon the Fog begins to clear.
They seem to rock beneath the Belfries of a great Estuarial Town. It smells like Coal. Ordinary Water-Birds coast above, quite at home. "Why I believe they're Geordies, as much as huz!" the Keel-Bully exclaims. Nor do they appear the faces of strangers. Yet where are Keelmen ever as silent as these have now fallen,— and why are the Faces beneath these Basin-crops so unmovingly resentful? Snow and even little Dodd know them. Some stood before the Assizes after the strikes of '43 and '50, and were sentenced to the Gallows, though 'twas later said they were transported to America. Why aye, if this be America, then here they are, in company with Alehouse champions of Legend carrying their Black-jacks big as Washing-tubs, celebrated Free-for-all Heroes, Keel racers from the coaly Tyne, worshiped even Wearside,— "Dobby, is it you, whatcheer!"— as if for Dixon ev'ry Phiz a-reel, ev'ry Can bought and taken, and nocturnal Voice lifted in harmony, down his Time, sooner or later would come to be reprised in this late-Day Invisibility,— and the Fret, for a moment, has made possible some America no traveler's account has yet describ'd,
because as yet none has return'd, tho' many be the mates and dear ones who bide.
And when he sees the little Collier-Brig at last, her Sails not merely be-grim'd, but silken black, with Coal-Dust,— the Mary and Meg,— Dixon suffers a moment and a half of Dread, for her stillness in the Water, her evenness of Trim in a Light never seen upon the Shields.... Was it so, the first time,— did he simply miss it, with his Mind then pitch'd so immoderately further East? Or is this a particular and strong Message concerning America, meant not for him but for someone else, that he may only have got in the way of?
It is dangerous Passage, along the Coast down to the Thames and into the Pool, turning ever to Windward, often into the Teeth of Gales, among treacherous Sands, and the Channels ever re-curving, like great Ser?pents a-stir. Catching a windward Tide at the King's Channel, beating up toward the Swin, keeping out of the Swatchways and attending ever her Soundings, the Mary and Meg, threading nicely among Rocks, Shallows, a thousand other Vessels each bound its own way, desiring despite her ghostly look to live briskly whilst she may, brings Dixon at last to Long Reach, above Gravesend, guided to her Moorage in the Tier by the slowly rising Dome of St. Paul's, to Westward.
Tomorrow, he and Mason are to sign the Contract.