the island tull a christenun’ when Albert Mahan arrives home onexpected, hus shup just docked
ot Dublin. Ut’s nine o’clock ot night when the munuster, un hus sluppers an’ dressun’-gown, gets
the news. Up he jumps an’ calls for horse an’ saddle, an’ awa’ he goes like the wund for Albert
Mahan’s. Albert uz just goun’ tull bed an’ hoz one shoe off when the munuster arrives.
“’Come wuth me, the pair o’ ye,’ says he, breathless-like. ’What for, an’ me dead weary an’
goun’ tull bed?’ says Albert. ’Yull be lawful married,’ says the munuster. Albert looks black an’
says, ’Now, munuster, ye wull be jokun’,’ but tull humself, oz I’ve heard hum tell mony a time,
he uz wonderun’ thot the munuster should a-took tull whusky ot hus time o’ life.
“’We be no married?’ says Minnie. He shook his head. ’An’ I om no Mussus Mahan?’ ’No,’ says
he, ’ye are no Mussus Mahan. Ye are plain Muss Duncan.’ ’But ye married ’us yoursel’,’ says
she. ’I dud an’ I dudna,’ says he. An’ wuth thot he tells them the whole upshot, an’ Albert puts
on hus shoe, an’ they go wuth the munuster an’ are married proper an’ lawful, an’ oz Albert
Mahan says afterward mony’s the time, ’’Tus no every mon thot hoz two weddun’ nights on
Island McGill.’”
Six months later Eddie Troy came home and was promptly remarried. But Samuel Dundee was
away on a three-years’ voyage and his ship fell overdue. Further to complicate the situation, a
baby boy, past two years old, was waiting for him in the arms of his wife. The months passed,
and the wife grew thin with worrying. “Ut’s no meself I’m thunkun’ on,” she is reported to have
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said many times, “but ut’s the puir fatherless bairn. Uf aught happened tull Samuel where wull
the bairn stond?”
Lloyd’s posted the Loughbank as missing, and the owners ceased the monthly remittance of
Samuel’s half-pay to his wife. It was the question of the child’s legitimacy that preyed on her
mind, and, when all hope of Samuel’s return was abandoned, she drowned herself and the child
in the loch. And here enters the greater tragedy. The Loughbank was not lost. By a series of sea
disasters and delays too interminable to relate, she had made one of those long, unsighted
passages such as occur once or twice in half a century. How the Imp must have held both his
sides! Back from the sea came Samuel, and when they broke the news to him something else
broke somewhere in his heart or head. Next morning they found him where he had tried to kill
himself across the grave of his wife and child. Never in the history of Island McGill was there so
fearful a death-bed. He spat in the minister’s face and reviled him, and died blaspheming so
terribly that those that tended on him did so with averted gaze and trembling hands.
And, in the face of all this, Margaret Henan named her first child Samuel.
How account for the woman’s stubbornness? Or was it a morbid obsession that demanded a child
of hers should be named Samuel? Her third child was a girl, named after herself, and the fourth
was a boy again. Despite the strokes of fate that had already bereft her, and despite the loss of
friends and relatives, she persisted in her resolve to name the child after her brother. She was
shunned at church by those who had grown up with her. Her mother, after a final appeal, left her
house with the warning that if the child were so named she would never speak to her again. And
though the old lady lived thirty-odd years longer she kept her word. The minister agreed to
christen the child any name but Samuel, and every other minister on Island McGill refused to
christen it by the name she had chosen. There was talk on the part of Margaret Henan of going to
law at the time, but in the end she carried the child to Belfast and there had it christened Samuel.
And then nothing happened. The whole island was confuted. The boy grew and prospered. The
schoolmaster never ceased averring that it was the brightest lad he had ever seen. Samuel had a
splendid constitution, a tremendous grip on life. To everybody’s amazement he escaped the usual
run of childish afflictions. Measles, whooping-cough and mumps knew him not. He was armourclad
against germs, immune to all disease. Headaches and earaches were things unknown.
“Never so much oz a boil or a pumple,” as one of the old bodies told me, ever marred his healthy
skin. He broke school records in scholarship and athletics, and whipped every boy of his size or
years on Island McGill.
It was a triumph for Margaret Henan. This paragon was hers, and it bore the cherished name.
With the one exception of her mother, friends and relatives drifted back and acknowledged that
they had been mistaken; though there were old crones who still abided by their opinion and who
shook their heads ominously over their cups of tea. The boy was too wonderful to last. There was
no escaping the curse of the name his mother had wickedly laid upon him. The young generation
joined Margaret Henan in laughing at them, but the old crones continued to shake their heads.
Other children followed. Margaret Henan’s fifth was a boy, whom she called Jamie, and in rapid
succession followed three girls, Alice, Sara, and Nora, the boy Timothy, and two more girls,
SAMUEL
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Florence and Katie. Katie was the last and eleventh, and Margaret Henan, at thirty-five, ceased
from her exertions. She had done well by Island McGill and the Queen. Nine healthy children
were hers. All prospered. It seemed her ill-luck had shot its bolt with the deaths of her first two.
Nine lived, and one of them was named Samuel.
Jamie elected to follow the sea, though it was not so much a matter of election as compulsion, for
the eldest sons on Island McGill remained on the land, while all other sons went to the saltploughing.
Timothy followed Jamie, and by the time the latter had got his first command, a
steamer in the Bay trade out of Cardiff, Timothy was mate of a big sailing ship. Samuel,
however, did not take kindly to the soil. The farmer’s life had no attraction for him. His brothers
went to sea, not out of desire, but because it was the only way for them to gain their bread; and
he, who had no need to go, envied them when, returned from far voyages, they sat by the kitchen
fire, and told their bold tales of the wonderlands beyond the sea-rim.
Samuel became a teacher, much to his father’s disgust, and even took extra certificates, going to
Belfast for his examinations. When the old master retired, Samuel took over his school. Secretly,
however, he studied navigation, and it was Margaret’s delight when he sat by the kitchen fire,
and, despite their master’s tickets, tangled up his brothers in the theoretics of their profession.
Tom Henan alone was outraged when Samuel, school teacher, gentleman, and heir to the Henan
farm, shipped to sea before the mast. Margaret had an abiding faith in her son’s star, and
whatever he did she was sure was for the best. Like everything else connected with his glorious
personality, there had never been known so swift a rise as in the case of Samuel. Barely with two
years’ sea experience before the mast, he was taken from the forecastle and made a provisional
second mate. This occurred in a fever port on the West Coast, and the committee of skippers that
examined him agreed that he knew more of the science of navigation than they had remembered
or forgotten. Two years later he sailed from Liverpool, mate of the Starry Grace, with both
master’s and extra-master’s tickets in his possession. And then it happened – the thing the old
crones had been shaking their heads over for years.
It was told me by Gavin McNab, bos’n of the Starry Grace at the time, himself an Island McGill
man.
“Wull do I remember ut,” he said. “We was runnin’ our Eastun’ down, an’ makun’ heavy
weather of ut. Oz fine a sailor-mon oz ever walked was Samuel Henan. I remember the look of
hum wull thot last marnun’, a-watch-un’ them bug seas curlun’ up astern, an’ a-watchun’ the old
girl an’ seeun’ how she took them – the skupper down below an’ drunkun’ for days. Ut was ot
seven thot Henan brought her up on tull the wund, not darun’ tull run longer on thot fearful sea.
Ot eight, after havun’ breakfast, he turns un, an’ a half hour after up comes the skupper, blearyeyed
an’ shaky an’ holdun’ on tull the companion. Ut was fair smokun’, I om tellun’ ye, an’