Brave and True Part 1

Brave and True.

by George Manville Fenn.

CHAPTER ONE.

BRAVE AND TRUE, BY E DAWSON.

"But I say, Martin, tell us about it! My pater wrote to me that you'd done no end of heroic things, and saved Bullace senior from being killed. His pater told him, so I know it's all right. But wasn't it a joke you two should be on the same ship?"

Martin looked up at his old schoolfellow. He had suddenly become a person of importance in the well-known old haunts where he had learned and played only as one of the schoolboys.

"It wasn't much of a joke sometimes," said he. "I thought at first that I was glad to see a face I knew. But there were lots of times after that when I _didn't_ think it."

"Wasn't old Bullfrog amiable, then?"

"He was never particularly partial to me, you know," answered Martin.

"The first term I was at school--before you came--I remember I caught him out at a cricket match. He was always so sure of making top score!

He called me an impudent youngster in those days."

"He never was too good to you, I remember. I was one of the chaps he let alone."

"Well, he went on calling me an impudent youngster," continued Martin, "and all that sort of thing--and he tried to set the other fellows against me. Oh, it isn't all jam in the Royal Navy! You haven't left school when you go _there_, and the gunroom isn't always just exactly paradise, you know! And if your seniors try to make it hot for you, why--they can!"

"So you and Bullfrog didn't exactly hit it off?"

"Oh, well, he was sub-lieutenant this last voyage, and you can't stand up to your senior officer as you can to your schoolfellows, don't you see?"

There was a minute's silence, broken by an eager request. "But tell us about the battle. What did it feel like to be there? How was it old Bullfrog let you go at all?"

"He hadn't the ordering of _that_, thank goodness," said Martin fervently. "And I was jolly glad he hadn't! We had some excitement getting those big guns along, I can tell you! The roads weren't just laid out for that game."

"Well, go on," said another eager voice. "Then one day we came upon the enemy, and there was a stand-up fight, you know. How did it feel?

Well, there wasn't much thinking about it. You just knew that you were ready to blaze at them, and they were popping at you from their entrenchments; and that you jolly well meant to give them the worst of it."

"Well, about Bullfrog?"

"Oh, that was nothing," said Martin, reddening. "He must have got excited or something, for he took a step forward, putting himself in full view, and just then I saw what he didn't see--that there were some of those Boer beggars just under our kopje, and that one of them had raised his rifle to pick off Bullfrog. So I made a flying leap on to his back and knocked him flat, and the bullet that was meant for him just crossed the back of my coat and ripped it up. Didn't even scratch me!"

The little knot of listeners around Martin waited with bated breath for more.

"But he didn't escape scot-free after all," continued Martin. "Ten minutes after that he got shot in the leg. The bone was fractured, and he couldn't move. I saw him fall and I pulled him to a little hollow under a stone where he'd be safe. And it was just as well, for the cavalry came up over there when the chase began. We gave them the licking they deserved that day. But you know all about that."

"Wish I'd been you!" said Martin's old schoolfellow very enviously.

"But what about Bullfrog after that?"

"He was taken in the ambulance-cart and put in hospital. I saw him there and he was getting on all right."

"And what did he say?"

"He said I'd caught him out again and a lot more. But it was all nonsense, you know."

"I expect he was sorry he'd ever made it hot for you," said one of the listeners.

"You ought to have a VC or something for it, _I_ consider," said another.

"Rot!" answered Martin. "If a schoolfellow and a shipmate of yours wanted a push out of danger, wouldn't you give it him? And you wouldn't think yourself a hero either!"

"Other people might, though," answered Martin's old schoolfellow.

CHAPTER TWO.

TWO ROUGH STONES, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.

It does not take long to make a kite, if you know how, have the right things for the purpose, and Cook is in a good temper. But then, cooks are not always amiable, and that's a puzzle; for disagreeable people are generally yellow and stringy, while pleasant folk are pink-and-white and plump, and Mrs Lester's Cook at "Lombardy" was extremely plump, so much so that Ned Lester used to laugh at her and say she was fat, whereupon Cook retorted by saying good-humouredly: "All right, Master Ned, so I am; but you can't have too much of a good thing."

There was doubt about the matter, though. Cook had a most fiery temper when she was busy, and when that morning Ned went with Tizzy--so called because she was christened Lizzie--and found Cook in her private premises--the back kitchen--peeling onions, with a piece of bread stuck at the end of the knife to keep the onion-juice from making her cry, and asked her to make him a small basin of paste, her kitchen majesty uttered a loud snort.

"Which I just shan't," she cried; "and if your Mar was at home you wouldn't dare to ask. I never did see such a tiresome, worriting boy as you are, Master Ned. You're always wanting something when I'm busy; and what your master's a-thinking about to give you such long holidays at midsummer I don't know."

"They aren't long," said Ned, indignant at the idea of holidays being too long for a boy of eleven.

"Don't you contradict, sir, or I'll just tell your Mar; and the sooner you're out of my kitchen the better for you. Be off, both of you!"

It was on Tizzy's little red lips to say: "Oh, please do make some paste!" but she was not peeling onions, and had no knife with a piece of bread-crumb at the end to keep the tears from coming. So come they did, and sobs with them to stop the words.

"Never mind, Tiz," cried Ned, lifting her on to a chair. "Here, get on my back and I'll carry you. Cook's in a tantrum this morning."

Tizzy placed her arms round her brother's neck and clung tightly while he played the restive steed, and raised Cook's ire to red-hot point by purposely kicking one of the Windsor chairs, making it scroop on the beautifully-white floor of the front kitchen, and making the queen of the domain rush out at him, looking red-eyed and ferocious, for the onion-juice had affected her.

"Now, just you look here, Master Ned."

But Ned didn't stop to look; for, after the restive kick at the chair, he had broken into a canter, dashed down the garden and through the gate into the meadow, across which he now galloped straight for the new haystack, for only a week before that meadow had been forbidden ground and full of long, waving, flowery strands.

The gra.s.shoppers darted right and left from the brown patches where the scythes had left their marks; the b.u.t.terflies fled in their b.u.t.terfly fashion.

So did a party of newly-fledged sparrowkins, and, still playing the pony, Ned kept on, drawing his sister's attention to the various objects, as he made for the long row of Lombardy poplars which grew so tall and straight close to the deep river-side, and gave the name "Lombardy" to the charming little home.

But it was all in vain; nothing would pacify the sobbing child, not even the long red-and-yellow monkey barge gliding along the river, steered by a woman in a print hood, and drawn by a drowsy-looking grey horse at the end of a long tow-rope, bearing a whistling boy seated sidewise on his back and a dishcover-like pail hanging from his collar.

"Oh, I say, don't cry, Tizzy," protested Ned, at last, as he felt the hot tears trickling inside his white collar.

"I can't help it, Teddy," she sobbed. "I did so want to see the kite fly!"

"Never mind, p.u.s.s.y," said her brother; "I'll get the b.u.t.terfly-net."

"No, no," she sobbed; "please don't."