Bevis Part 17

Bevis and Mark went eagerly to bathe by themselves, but immediately left the direct path. Human beings must be kept taut, or, like a rope, they will slacken. The very first morning they took a leaping-pole with them, a slender ash sapling, rather more than twice their own height, which they picked out from a number in the rick-yard, intending to jump to and fro the brook on the way. But before they had got half way to the brook they altered their minds, becoming eager for the water, and raced to the bathing-place. The pole was now to be an oar, and they were to swim, supported by an oar, like shipwrecked people.

So soon as he had had a plunge or two, Bevis put one arm over the pole and struck out with the other, thinking that he should be able in that way to have a long swim. Directly his weight pressed on the pole it went under, and did not support him in the least. He put it next beneath his chest, with both arms over it, but immediately he pushed off down it went again. Mark took it and got astride, when the pole let his feet touch the bottom.

"It's no use," he said. "What's the good of people falling overboard with spars and oars? What stories they must tell."

"I can't make it out," said Bevis; and he tried again, but it was no good, the pole was an enc.u.mbrance instead of a support, for it insisted upon slipping through the water lengthways, and would not move just as he wished. In a rage he gave it a push, and sent it ash.o.r.e, and turned to swimming to the rail. They did not know it, but the governor, still anxious about them, had gone round a long distance, so as to have a peep at them from the hedge on the other side of Fir-Tree Gulf by the Nile.

He could tell by the post and rails that they did not go out of their depth, and went away without letting them suspect his presence.

When they got out, they had a run in the sunshine, which dried them much better than towels. The field sloped gently to the right, and their usual run was on the slope beside a nut-tree hedge towards a group of elms. All the way there and back the sward was short and soft, almost like that of the Downs which they could see, and dotted with bird's-foot lotus, over whose yellow flowers they raced. But this morning, being no longer kept taut, after they had returned from the elms with an enormous mushroom they had found there, they ran to the old quarry, and along the edge above. The perpendicular sand-cliff fell to an enclosed pool beneath, in which, on going to the very edge, they could see themselves reflected. Some hurdles and flakes--a stronger kind of hurdle--had been placed here that cattle might not wander over, but the cart-horses, who rub against everything, had rubbed against them and dislodged two or three. These had rolled down, and the rest hung half over.

While they stood still looking down over the broad waters of their New Sea, the sun burned their shoulders, making the skin red. Away they ran back to dress, and taking a short path across a place where the turf had partly grown over a shallow excavation p.r.i.c.ked their feet with thistles, and had to limp the rest of the way to their clothes. Now, there were no thistles on their proper racecourse down to the elms and back.

As they returned home they remembered the brook, and went down to it to jump with the leaping-pole. But the soft ooze at the bottom let the pole sink in, and Bevis, who of course must take the first leap, was very near being hung up in the middle of the brook. Under his weight, as he sprang off, the pole sank deep into the ooze, and had it been a stiffer mud the pole would have stopped upright, when he must have stayed on it over the water, or have been jerked off among the flags.

As it was it did let him get over, but he did not land on the firm bank, only reaching the mud at the side, where he scrambled up by grasping the stout stalk of a willow-herb. In future he felt with the b.u.t.t of the pole till he found a firm spot, where it was sandy, or where the matted roots of gra.s.ses and flags had bound the mud hard. Then he flew over well up on the gra.s.s.

Mark took his turn, and as he put the b.u.t.t in the water a streak of mud came up where a small jack fish had shot away. So they went on down the bank leaping alternately, one carrying the towels while the other flew over and back.

Sometimes they could not leap because the tripping was bad, undermined where cowslips in the spring hung over the stream, bored with the holes of water-rats, which when disused become covered with gra.s.s, but give way beneath the foot or the hoof that presses on them pitching leaper or rider into the current, or it was rotten from long-decaying roots, or about to slip. Sometimes the landing was bad, undermined in the same way, or higher than the tripping, when you have not only to get over, but to deliver yourself on a higher level; or swampy, where a wet furrow came to the brook; or too far, where there was nothing but mud to come on. They had to select their jumping-places, and feel the ground to the edge first.

"Here's the raft!" shouted Mark, who was ahead, looking out for a good place.

"Is it?" said Bevis, running along on the other side. They had so completely forgotten it, that it came upon them like something new.

Bevis took a leap and came over, and they set to work at once to launch it. The raft slipped gradually down the shelving sh.o.r.e of the drinking-place, and they thrust it into the stream. Bevis put his foot on board, but immediately withdrew it, for the water rushed through twenty leaks, spurting up along the joins. Left on the sand in the sun's rays the wood of the raft shrank a little, opening the planking, while the clay they had daubed on to caulk the crevices had cracked, and the moss had dried up and was ready to crumble. The water came through every where, and the raft was half-full even when left to itself without any pressure.

"We ought to have thatched it," said Mark. "We ought to have made a roof over it. Let's stop the leaks."

"O! come on," said Bevis, "don't let's bother. Rafts are no good, no more than poles or oars when you fall overboard. We shall have a ship soon."

The raft was an old story, and he did not care about it. He went on with the leaping-pole, but Mark stayed a minute and hauled the raft on sh.o.r.e as far as his strength would permit. He got about a quarter of it on the ground, so that it could not float away, and then ran after Bevis.

They went into the Peninsula, and looked at all the fir-trees, to see if any would do for a mast for the blue boat they were to have. As it had no name, they called it the blue boat to distinguish it from the punt.

Mark thought an ash-pole would do for the mast, as ash-poles were so straight and could be easily shaved to the right size; but Bevis would not hear of it, for masts were never made of ash, but always of pine, and they must have their ship proper. He selected a tree presently, a young fir, straight as an arrow, and started Mark for the axe, but before he had gone ten yards Mark came back, saying that the tree would be of no use unless they liked to wait till next year, because it would be green, and the mast ought, to be made of seasoned wood.

"So it ought," said Bevis. "What a lot of trouble it is to make a ship."

But as they sat on the railing across the isthmus swinging their legs, Mark remembered that there were some fir-poles which had been cut a long time since behind the great wood-pile, between it and the walnut-trees, out of sight. Without a word away they ran, chose one of these and carried it into the shed where Bevis usually worked. They had got the dead bark off and were shaving away when it was dinner-time, which they thought a bore, but which wise old Pan, who was never chained now, considered the main object of life.

Next morning as they went through the meadow, where the dew still lingered in the shade, on the way to the bathing-place, taking Pan with them this time, they hung about the path picking clover-heads and sucking the petals, pulling them out and putting the lesser ends in their lips, looking at the white and pink bramble flowers, noting where the young nuts began to show, pulling down the woodbine, and doing everything but hasten on to their work of swimming. They stopped at the gate by the New Sea, over whose smooth surface slight breaths of mist were curling, and stood kicking the ground and the stones as flighty horses paw.

"We ought to be something," said Mark discontentedly.

"Of course we ought," said Bevis. "Things are very stupid unless you are something."

"Lions and tigers," said Mark, growling, and showing his teeth.

"Pooh!"

"Shipwrecked people on an island."

"Fiddle! They have plenty to do and are always happy, and we are not."

"No; very unhappy. Let's try escaping--prisoners running away."

"Hum! Hateful!"

"Everything's hateful."

"So it is."

"This is a very stupid sea."

"There's nothing in it."

"Nothing anywhere."

"Let's be hermits."

"There's always only one hermit."

"Well, you live that side," (pointing across), "and I'll live this."

"Hermits eat pulse and drink water."

"What's pulse?"

"I suppose it's barley water."

"Horrid."

"Awful."

"You say what we shall be then."

"Pan, you old donk," said Bevis, rolling Pan over with his foot. Lazy Pan lay on his back, and let Bevis bend his ribs with his foot.

"Caw, caw!" a crow went over down to the sh.o.r.e, where he hoped to find a mussel surprised by the dawn in shallow water.

Bang! "Hoi! Hoo! Yah!" The discharge was half a mile away, but the crow altered his mind, and flew over the water as near the surface as he could without touching. Why do birds always cross the water in that way?

"That's Tom," said Mark. Tom was the bird-keeper. He shot first, and shouted after. He potted a hare in the corn with bits of flint, a b.u.t.ton, three tin tacks, and a horse-stub, which sc.r.a.ped the old barrel inside, but slew the game. That was for himself. Then he shouted his loudest to do his duty--for other people. The sparrows had flown out of the corn at the noise of the gun, and settled on the hedge; when Tom shouted they were frightened from the hedge, and went back into the wheat. From which learn this, shoot first and shout after.

"Shall we say that was a gun at sea?" continued Mark.

"They are always heard at night," said Bevis. "Pitch black, you know."

"Everything is somehow else," said Mark. Pan closed his idle old eyes, and grunted with delight as Bevis rubbed his ribs with his foot. Bevis put his hands in his pockets and sighed deeply. The sun looked down on these sons of care, and all the morning beamed.

"Savages!" shouted Mark kicking the gate to with a slam that startled Pan up. "Savages, of course!"