Free Storm Tide by Elisabeth Ogilvie Page B

wharf, and met Nils coming up. Without a word he took the box under his arm.
    â€œIt’s not very heavy,” she said. “He didn’t have half the things I wanted. Or else he’d mislaid them. Either he’s running on a shoe string or it’s time for him to reorder. How’s the herring, Nils? Big enough for us to have some fried for dinner?”
    â€œSee for yourself,” said Nils. It was then that she noticed the immobility of his face was tighter, harder than usual. It started a little pulse of warning in her brain. The brilliant day was suddenly shadowed, though the sun burned as bright. There was no warmth in it.
    They came to the end of the wharf and looked down at the boat. Caleb sat on a firkin, smoking his pipe. In the bait and lobster boxes near his feet, there was herring. Possibly two bushels. There was no brimming cockpit-load of blue and silver fish.
    â€œIs that all you could get?” she asked. “Is that all there was left?”
    â€œThere was plenty left,” said Caleb, looking up from under his shaggy brows. Joanna turned to Nils.
    â€œBut it wasn’t Tom who turned you down, was it? It couldn’t have been. Tom was up in the store just now. . . . There he goes along the beach. He’d let you have all you wanted. He gives the orders, doesn’t he?”
    â€œHe gives the orders, yes,” said Nils. “And he gave them, before he went ashore. I don’t know why, or how, or anything about it. . . . Let’s get started back.”
    His lips came together hard on the last word, and he said nothing more. But that he was furious Joanna knew from the faint whitening around his mouth.

6
    T HAT NIGHT THEY TORCHED HERRING in Goose Cove, where the fish were schooling. By dusk you could hear the tiny, fast, whispering sound they made in the water; you could smell them, Joanna insisted.
    With three men there could only be one team, and they took the biggest dory; Caleb and Jud rowing and Nils dipping. Joanna collected the rags for the torches while Nils made the torch basket and fastened it to the side of the dory. Then, as darkness shut down, they began to work. Marion Gray and Vinnie Caldwell came up to watch with Joanna from behind the house. Out of the wind there, they could see the whole cove. The torch made a mockery of the darkness, it threw its great ruddy flickering light far and wide.
    Joanna loved to watch torching. The men’s yellow oilclothes glistened like some burnished stuff in the firelight, and the oars gleamed strangely; the light shot its radiance down through the water so that the dory flew forward over a sea of translucent jade green. The movements of the men who rowed and the man who stood in the bow and swung the big net down, and brought it up full of living, squirming silver, held for her the charm of accomplished dancers, or the effortless flight of gulls.
    But tonight the scene was robbed of some of its poetry by the knowledge that they shouldn’t be out there working like this for a handful of bait. They had no big boats to fill with their catch, so even if the sea were alive with herring, at best they could only get enough for the next few days; none to salt down for the winter. Tom Robey should have supplied them, and he didn’t. This sudden inexplicable refusal was like a stone wall forever hemming her in, whichever way she turned. Why, why, why , her mind kept saying, even while she laughed and talked with the women.
    The herring were thick in the cove that night, and they worked until their shoulders ached from rowing and dipping. Then they came ashore, hauled the full dory up and covered it with a tarpaulin to keep the early-rising gulls away. Nils’ peapod was full too. They had plenty for a few days.
    Joanna had coffee ready, but Caleb and Jud said they preferred to wash the soot off their faces in their own kitchens, and then have their mug-up. Joanna was not sorry to be alone with Nils. He had