University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.
A WRITTEN ROCK, AND SOMETHING MORE.

MR. SMALLGROVE, not jealous, had invited
Skipper George's daughter to come in, as often
as she pleased, to the school; and generally contrived
to make this something more than a compliment,
by getting her occupied, when she came, with teaching the
more advanced scholars, while Mrs. Smallgrove taught
the younger, and he, with calm authority, presided.

This day Lucy Barbury had sought the scholastic hall,
and there Miss Dare called for her, just as school hours
were over.

The haunts of childhood have an attractiveness of their
own about them, for those that were children once, and Miss
Dare, as Lucy came bashfully out, pointed, with a silent
smile, to the stain made upon the door-post by little hands
holding against it while little feet were lifted to the height
of the threshold; and read, with a smile, a legend traced
with tar upon a bit of board which leaned against the
school-house. It was a timely moral for the young votaries
of science, indicted by one of themselves, inspired:—

“I'm going down to make some drawings,” she said,
“would you like to go, Miss Lucy Barbury?”

“Yes, if you please, Miss Dare; if you'd like me to.
Are you going to Mad Cove?”

“No; I wasn't going to Mad Cove, but I will go, if
you'd like it.”

“I think that writing must be so strange, that they
say the Northmen left on the Head ages ago.”

“But why, out of all the ages, is it so interesting to-day?”

“I only heard to-day where it was. Do you think it
is their writing, Miss Dare?”

“So it's thought; but it isn't always easy to make sure
of such things. I saw an account of a stone dug up, the
other day, in the United States somewhere; and an Indian
scholar said that the letters were hieroglyphics, and
meant that `seven sons of the Black Cloud made three
hundred of the Wolf's cubs to fall like leaves of the
forest;' and a great Oriental scholar read it, `Here the
Brothers of the Pilgrim rested by the graves of the
dead;' and he said it was a trace of the lost tribes of
Israel; but a scholar in the Scandinavian languages, of
Sweden and Denmark, said it was a relic of the Northmen,
who went from those countries and discovered
North America; and that it meant, `In the rolling
fields we make our home that used to have a home
on the rolling waves.' And there it is, you see. This
writing on our rock is also said to be by those Northmen.”

“And it may be by Captain Cook, who set up the
stones at Sandy-Harbor,” said Lucy, smiling.

“Yes; it may be,” said Miss Dare, assenting to the
possibility suggested.

“But it may be by those men,” said Lucy again, returning
to the other possibility.

“Certainly,” answered Miss Dare, assenting again;
“and it may be by the Lost Tribes.”

Lucky kindled as if a spirit of the old time came over
her. Her eyes swelled and brightened, and she grew
pale.

“If it were, they ought not to leave it hanging out
there over the sea; but I suppose they'd be afraid to
move it,” said she. “And if it were those Northern men
had written there, I should almost be afraid to look at it
so long after they were gone; it would be almost as if
they had come back again to do it; but they did sometimes
write simple little things like a man's name, didn't
they, Miss Dare?”

“That's been a trick of the whole race of men in all
ages; writing their own names and other people's,” said
Miss Dare, “on walls, and trees, and rocks.”

It took them a good half-hour—though they walked
well—to get to the mysterious rock, over Whitmonday
Hill and by Frank's Cove and lesser neighborhoods; but
pleasant talking about many a pleasant thing, and frequent
greetings to the neighbors, as they passed, perhaps made
the time short.

By and by they stood on Mad-Head; the fresh wind
blowing in from the bay; the great waves rushing up
and falling back far down below them; the boundless
ocean opening forth, beyond Bacaloue Island; this cruel
sea close at hand being of the same nature as that without,
only a little tamed. They both stood, at first, without
speaking. At length Miss Dare recalled the object of
their visit, and said,—

“Now, Lucy, use your eyes, please; and see which is
this famous stone. I am rather impatient now we're so
near it.”

Lucy, too, was quite excited.

“This is the very rock, I think,” said she; and she
threw herself upon the ground, and holding by an upstanding
point of the rock, and by its edge, leaned over,
bodily, and looked down the hollowing face of the huge
cliff. Steady as a girl of her life was, in eye and hand,
she did this with the same composure with which she
would have leaned over her father's fence. Miss Dare
threw back her bonnet and let the wind do what it would
with her hair, while she got down upon her knees and
looked over also.

These two pairs of bright eyes had looked some time
before they could make out any thing like letters on the
great grained and wrinkled, and riven surface.

“There! there!” suddenly cried Lucy; “there is
something like an H. I see it! That long streak down
and the other, this side, and the cross-mark between
them.” She pointed with her finger to the spot, and
presently her companion saw it.

“Doesn't it seem terrible,” said Lucy Barbury, again,
“that that should stay, and the rock never change; and
yet the living hand that could cut that into the rock is
gone, and nothing left of it!”

“Ay, indeed!” said Miss Dare, “there's something
put into us, and while it's there we're greater than any
thing; and when it's taken away, —: but Lucy there's
nothing more there that I can see.”

“And that long mark,” said Lucy, “looks like a crack
in the rock; but then a man might save himself trouble
if he found one already made.”

Miss Dare helped the criticism by saying,—

“But the other one is only a great wrinkle. We
didn't think enough of one thing; we thought it might be

cut by Northmen, or Jews, or Englishmen, but we didn't
think enough, that there might be no writing at all.”

Lucy drew herself up from the great empty air, as
she felt the force of this chilling suggestion, and looked
disappointed. Her companion still stretched over and
searched.

“Ah! but I see it, after all! I'm the discoverer!”

“Where, please, Miss Dare?” said Lucy, easily recovering
her animation.

“Beyond you, there; just beginning at that turn in the
rock. I suppose it goes on, on the other face of it.
That's part of a letter that I see.” Here they began
again their search; and here it seemed rewarded.

There were, plainly, letters traced in the stone, about
an arm's length down, and yet so hidden by the over-browing
of the rock, as not to be seen without stretching
far over. Fearlessly, and full of interest, they leaned
over in turn; each, also, in turn, holding the other.

“If it should be Greek or Hebrew, it will be too much
for me: Roman, or old English, or German Text, I fancy
we may make out.—It's wonderfully fresh! Two words!
Some sayings of two words, have lasted thousands of
years without being cut in rock. These are not deep, and
there's black in them.”

“They might have been a good deal deeper and full of
that black, and worn down to this,” answered Lucy Barbury:
“I've heard of windows in England where the
glass was worn down by the weather, till it was so thin
you could put a pin through it anywhere.”

“Those are not Roman letters,” said Miss Dare, who
was intent upon them; “but they do look wonderfully
like German Text or Black Letter, and the old Northmen
were of the same stock that we are, and the Germans,

you know. It may be Hebrew.—I'll draw them at any
rate;” and she took out paper and pencil.

“Both words seem to begin with the same letter,” continued
she, “and there other letters alike. I can carry
one in my head, pretty well, till I can copy it—if my head
will stand this looking over.”

“They couldn't have reached over that outstanding
part to cut it,” said Lucy, who, having abandoned the deciphering
to Miss Dare, with her paper and pencil, had
her thoughts free for speculation.

“That's true; and it never could have been any easier,
for that part hasn't grown on,” said Miss Dare; “but,
then, no man could stand on that ledge and use both
hands to cut with, unless it was a good deal broader once
than it is now, and so it may have been.”

“But, at any rate,” said the fisherman's daughter, “if
they were used to the sea, they wouldn't mind swinging
over with a rope, if they had nothing but air to put their
feet on.”

“That's true again; and most likely they would stand
their writing upright, with the rock;—I was reading it upside
down, like those inscriptions in the Desert.—I'll
begin at my end;”—and she began drawing. “That looks
as if it would come out like the old Black Letter, or
German Text.”

“James Urston might have read it if he'd only looked;
he writes German Text beautifully, and knows all kinds
of writing I suppose,” said Lucy.

“Perhaps James Urston never heard of it,” suggested
Miss Dare.

“Oh! I forgot! he told me where they said it was, but
I don't think he had seen it,” said Lucy.

“Ah?—Well,” Miss Dare continued, keeping to her

work, “if we turn that upside down it looks like `L,'
certainly; doesn't it? We must allow a little for the
difficulty of cutting, and a little for difference of writing,
and a little for age. Why, if it all goes as well as this,
we shall make a noise with it in the world. Now you get
the next, please;—very likely a date!” added Miss Dare,
in fine spirits. “There must have been a letter before it,
but there's no trace of one now.”

“Here are two out here by themselves, Miss Dare!”
said Lucy, who had been looking over at another place,
while the drawing was made, and who was excited with
her discovery. “They're very plain: `I-V.'”

“What can that be?” said Miss Dare. “Four? Four
what? `I-V.' it certainly is,” she said, after taking her
turn in looking over. “Well, we can't make any thing
more of it just now. There are no other letters anywhere
along. Let us go back to our first work.”

The next letter they pronounced “n,” after getting its
likeness on the paper.

“That's no date,” said Miss Dare again: “`n?'”—

“`o,'” suggested Lucy Barbury; “it may be a prayer.”

“Well thought again! So it may be! Let's see,—
what's the next?—`r!' Good! But stay: this'll take
down the age of our inscription, mightily, if we make that
English. That other letter 's `u,' depend upon it. `L-u-r-'—some
sort of Scandinavian name—and—`y!'
`Lury.' That looks pretty well and sounds pretty well.
Why, that's a grand old Norse name! `Lury!' It sounds
like Rurie, the Russian conqueror, and `FURY,' and
`LURID.' That's an old Viking.”

“How strange!” said the pretty fisher's daughter,
thoughtfully, “that one name, of all, should be there; and
just the name makes us think of a particular man, and

how he looked, and care something about him—doesn't it?
He was the commander, I suppose.”

Miss Dare, full of eager discovery, was bending over,
in her turn. It was slow work, stretching over, looking
carefully, and copying a little at a time.

“We shall have more trouble about the next word,”
said she, “for that won't be a name; they only had one
name in those days. It may be `somebody's son,' though;
yes, it may be a name.”

“And, perhaps,” said Lucy, smiling, (for they really
had but a mere thread of conjecture to walk upon, across
a boundless depth,) “perhaps this is no man's name. It
may mean something.”

“We haven't got that third letter exactly, after all,”
said Miss Dare, comparing and correcting. “It's `c,' not
`r.' It doesn't make a man's name now, certainly.”

“There's a Saint Lucy, among the Roman Catholics,”
said her namesake. “I suppose they landed on her day,
just as they did at St. John's, and St. George's, and St.
Mary's, and the rest.”

“This is a Lucy that hasn't been canonized yet, for
there's nothing before her name; and I've got a key to
the other, so that it doesn't give me as much trouble as I
expected. I believe it does `mean something.'”

Lucy Barbury leaned over the rock again in silence,
but presently drew herself up as silently; and as Miss
Dare looked at her with a smile, she said, (and no pencil
could have given the prettiness of the blushing cheek, and
drooping lid, and head half held up,)—

“I'm sure I don't know what it is.”

“But I do,” said Miss Dare: “`B-a-r-b-u-r-y.'
That's more familiar than one of those hard old Norse
names, isn't it? It seems to be a woman's name; but it

makes you `think of a particular man,' perhaps, as you
said, `and how he looked, and care something about
him?'”

“Oh! Miss Dare,” said Lucy, quite overcome with
confusion, “I didn't know it was there.”

“Nor I; but since it's there, somebody put it there;
and somebody that understands German Text. But I
was only in fun, Lucy. Don't mind it. You didn't cut
it.”

Lucy would not have minded it, perhaps, if she had cut
it herself.

“I'm afraid somebody 'll see it,” she said.

There was, indeed, more than one body (female—and,
indeed, an old man too,—) hastily getting up along the
cliff's edge, looking over, all the way along. Few people
were in the Cove at the time, and the greater part of
the few had been busy; but still the long sitting, and
above all, the strange doings up at Mad-Head, had not
been unobserved, and at length it was impossible for the
beholders to keep away.

“I don't believe they'll see it,” said Miss Dare, as they
came near, “and if they were to they wouldn't make much
out of it; not many of the women understand German
Text. There are those Roman letters, beyond, that could
be made out more easily; but there again, unless they
were pretty familiar with such things, they wouldn't be
the wiser.”

“I wonder what they mean,” said Lucy, who, after the
revelation of the Black Letter, might be glad of a safe
subject for speculation.

“I fancy that they might be interpreted by one who
`understands all kinds of writing,'” said Miss Dare, with
a smile,—but speaking so that the approaching neighbors

should not hear,—but I and J used to be the same letter,
and so did V and U.”

Lucy blushed more deeply than ever at the intelligence
that lurked in this sentence.

“Oh! don't tell them, Miss Dare, please,” said she.

“Did 'ee loss any thing, Miss?” said the foremost of the
advancing inquirers.

“Yes; I'm afraid we've lost our time; haven't we,
Lucy?'”

“I thought, mubb'e 'ee may have alossed something
down the rocks.”

“No; we were looking for the old writing, you know,
that they say is cut in. Lucy here, had read about such
things and she was very anxious to see one.”

As Miss Dare said this, she looked gravely at her companion,
but that pretty maiden was, or seemed, altogether
taken up, with the tie of one of her shoes.

“Did 'ee find 'un,” inquired another of the curious, as
all their eyes wandered from one explorer to the other.

“No; we found some marks, but they don't look like
old letters.—How do the fish go to-day?”

“They'm ruther sca'ce Miss, but the bait's plenty.”

As Miss Dare and her scholar went home, they said
nothing more to each other of their discovery. The
neighbors, dispersing slowly, wondered “what made young
Lucy Barbury look so frustrated like,” and concluded
that it was because of her not being “so sharp about
they things as Miss Dare, and how could she?”