Mattie Mitchell Read Online Free PDF

wondered what would happen
next. The ringing bell gave the captain what he thought could be
a way out of shooting his cannon.
    â€œB’ys, can’t ya hear the bell ringing? ’Tis Sunday morning,
fer gawd’s sake. I can’t be firing guns on Sunday morning.”
    â€œDon’t let that bother you none. ’Tis only the first bell, and
besides, that’s a Catholic church. They got nothing against firing
guns on Sunday. By the time the second bell rings out we canhave it over with, an’ not only that, who knows? Poor Walt could
be brought up from the deep!”
    The thin man was waving his arms at the skipper, pointing at
the church and gesticulating out over the water at the same time.
Mattie knew he was cursing at the schooner skipper. Cursing was
something for which Mattie’s ancient Mi’kmaq language had no
words. He had asked a white man once what he meant by those
cursing words. Most of them had been drawn from the Bible, but
the man who was so vehemently uttering them could not explain
them. Mattie observed they were usually said during bouts of
anger or excitement.
    The captain mumbled something that Mattie could not hear.
Walking behind the tall mainmast of the schooner, the skipper
stopped before a small bundle covered with a tarp. Pulling the
heavy covering away from the pile, he exposed what appeared
to be a tangle of manila and hemp ropes. It took him several
minutes to reveal under the snarl of rope what indeed looked like
a small cannon.
    â€œThis is not a man-o’-war but a fishing vessel. The old whale
gun could come in handy if we are of a mind to shoot at one of
the big ones sometime.”
    The captain seemed to be a bit self-conscious due to the size
of his “ship’s cannon” now exposed for all to see. Some of the
men gathered around were taken aback by the small gun, but the
skinny one who had the most lip was not.
    â€œBy gawd, ’tis not the size of the gun that matters but the
bloody racket it can make. That’s what we’re after this marnin’.
Poor Walt loved the sound of a loud gun, he did—’twill bring
him up, fer sure.”
    Mattie looked on with interest. He knew what they were about
to do. He had seen it done once before. From the few glazed
streaks of paint left on the gun, it was obvious it had once beenblack. But now dark red blotches of rust dominated it’s surface.
Pitted metal sores ran the length of the small cannon barrel, so
that it resembled a small cylinder of discarded metal more than
it did a cannon.
    Between the shouts and all the commotion around the
schooner, Mattie learned that “poor Walt” had been missing for
four days. It was also pointed out to the reluctant captain that he
had last been seen walking along the shoreline long after dark
and had not been seen since. Stumbling along is more like it, thought Mattie, who knew the missing man very well, but not by
association. They were naming him right, he reasoned. Walt was
a poor everything: a poor hunter and poor trapper as well as poor
fisherman. The only time Walt was good at any of these things
was when the bragging accounts coming from his drunken mouth
drew a few unknowing listeners. Mattie also knew that Walt had
been on a drinking binge this time for as many days as he had
now been missing.
    Apparently a woman had looked out into the night from
behind her kitchen curtain before heading upstairs to her bed,
and she had seen him staggering along the landwash. From her
account and because he had not been seen for days, and after a
brief search around the surrounding forest had shown not a trace
of him, it was determined that Walt had fallen into the cold waters
of the bay.
    Mattie figured if he was in the water he could just as easily
have been pushed in. Walt was known for his rowdiness when
in his cups and would start fights that would seldom finish in his
favour.
    An order of “Stand clear!” was suddenly shouted from