Polsinney Harbour: A heartwarming family saga set in Victorian era Cornwall by Mary E. Pearce

Author:Mary E. Pearce [Pearce, Mary E.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: historical romance, rural saga, 1800s fiction, small town romance, country living, Cornish romance, country life, Cornish fiction, family sagas, victorian romance, rural romance
Publisher: Wyndham Books (Family Saga)
Published: 2019-01-21T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Jim, when he was not with Gus, was sure to be in the sail-loft, watching Isaac and Percy at work. He loved the big spacious room with its many windows and fanlights and he loved to see the way the sun, coming in at all angles, slanted in so many criss-cross shafts and made little pools of light and warmth here and there on the bare-boarded floor. The sail-loft floor seemed to stretch for miles; it was twenty paces from end to end and eighteen from side to side; and those were a man’s paces, not a boy’s.

Isaac, with a piece of chalk, drew his sail-plans on this floor. He was always full of importance whenever he came from the boat-yard, after measuring-up a new boat, and Jim, sitting crouched on his haunches nearby, would have to keep very quiet and still while Isaac, after consulting his notes, drew the appropriate mast-length on the bare boards of the floor. Isaac used a measure for this but when it came to drawing the sails he did it all by eye alone. He would stand deep in thought for a while, squinting this way and that, and then, bent two-double as he himself said, he would lick his piece of chalk and, moving backwards with short, shuffling steps, would draw the clean, faultless lines of the sail. Jim never ceased to marvel at this. The miracle of it was fresh every time.

‘How do you know exactly what size the sails’ve got to be?’ he asked.

‘I’ve seen the boat, of course,’ Isaac said. ‘I’ve measured her and I’ve measured her masts and I’d be a poor sort of sail-maker if I couldn’t schemey the shape and size of the sails that John Ellis d’want on her.’

At the end of the sail-loft, on deep wooden shelves, the bolts of new canvas were stored, and when the sail-plan had been drawn out, Percy would fetch one of these bolts and lay it down at Isaac’s feet and Isaac, with a little kick, would send it unrolling across the floor. Jim liked to see the canvas brought out, so clean and new, a bluish-white, and to see it go rolling out like this, rippling across the sail-loft floor. He liked the peculiar smell of it and the feel of it, so thick and strong, and best of all he liked to watch as Isaac, with his big sharp scissors, went snip-snip-snip so courageously, cutting out the first ‘cloth’ of the sail.

‘Supposing you was to cut it wrong?’

‘Ess, you’d like to see that, I believe.’

‘No, I wouldn’t.’

‘Aw, ess, you would. That’s why you’re geeking at me so close.’

‘Did you ever cut it wrong?’

‘No, I never did, not wunst. I’m a sail-maker, not a fool, and I don’t belong to cut it wrong. But if I was to cut it wrong, that’d be your fault for prattling at me.’

Isaac at first did not approve of the little boy’s presence in the loft and he grumbled about it to Percy Tremearne.

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