Devon Boys Part 77

The men obeyed, and almost before I could realise it, I felt a s.n.a.t.c.h at my arms, and was dragged rapidly down.

In spite of my preparation I was so surprised that I almost lost my presence of mind; but, as luck had it, the basket settled down close to a box, and somehow or another I got one hand under it and tilted it over into the basket, to which I was holding on tightly the while.

Then in a blind confused way, with the water seeming to thunder in my ears, I loosened my hold, and almost directly my head popped out into the fresh air, and I swam to the boat amidst a furious burst of cheering.

I felt quite ashamed, and hardly knew what was said to me, for the idea was strong upon me that I had failed. But I had not, for the next minute one of the little chests was hauled up and into the boat, my father leaning over and patting my bare wet shoulder.

"Bravo, Sep!" he exclaimed; and those two words sent a glow through me, cleared away the confusion, and made me think Bigley a long while down when he took his turn, I was so impatient to begin again.

He was soon up, another hauled in, and this time I did not let the weight drag at my shoulders, but plunged with it, went down, shuffled a chest into the basket more easily, and came up.

Then Bigley obtained another, and suggested that the next dive should be from the stern of the boat.

He was quite right, and in the course of about an hour we had gone on turn for turn and obtained nineteen of the chests, so that there was only one more to recover.

The doctor had twice over suggested that we had been too long in the water, but everyone was in such a state of excitement, and there was so much cheering as box after box of silver was recovered, that his advice was unheeded, and in the midst of quite a burst of cheers I seized the basket by the handles and took my fifth plunge into what seemed to be a sea of glowing fire, so glorious was the sunshine as the sun sank lower in the west.

I knew where the last one lay, just where it had been shot when the boat overturned, and it was on its side in the midst of a number of blocks of stone tangled with weed. The boat had been shifted a little, and I came down right by it, turned it over and over into the basket; but as I did so I slipped, and something dark came over me. My legs pa.s.sed between a couple of stones, and then as I tried to recover myself and rise the darkness increased, a strange confusion came over me, and then all was blank till I heard someone say:

"Yes; he'll do now."

My head was aching frightfully, and there was a strange confused sensation in my head that puzzled me, and made me wonder why my feet were so hot, and why my father was leaning over me holding my hand.

Then he appeared to sink down out of sight as a door was shut, and I heard him muttering as I thought to himself, and he seemed to say something about being better that everything should have been lost than that have happened.

I couldn't make it out, only that he was in terrible trouble, and his face looked haggard and thin as he rose up again and bent over me to take me in his arms as he looked closely in my face.

Then, as he held me to his breast, I could feel that he was sobbing, and I heard him say distinctly in a low reverent tone:

"Thank G.o.d--thank G.o.d!"

CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN.

LAST MEMORIES.

I heard all about it afterwards; how they had hauled up quickly as I did not rise to the surface, in the belief that I might be clinging still to the basket; but though the last chest was there, that was all.

Bigley seized the handles and went down, staying so long that everybody grew cold with horror, and when they hauled up he was helpless, and with one hand holding fast to the side of the basket.

It was our foreman who went down next, and managed to get his arm round me, where I was entangled in a tremendous growth of sea-weed, and with one of my legs hooked, as it were, between and round a piece of rock.

By great good fortune he was able to drag me out, and rise with me to the surface, but so overcome that he could hardly take a stroke; and as for me, Doctor Chowne had a long battle before he could bring me back as it were to life.

I have little more to tell of my early life there on the North Devon coast, for after that time rolled on very peacefully. We had no more visits from the French, not even from Captain Gualtiere, and we saw no more of old Jonas Uggleston. He had settled in Dunquerque, he told his son in his letters, and these always contained the advice that he was on no account to leave the service of Captain Duncan, but to do his duty by him as an honest man.

And truly Bigley Uggleston did do his duty by my father and by me, for year by year we grew closer friends, the more so that Bob Chowne drifted away after his course of training in London, and finally became a ship's surgeon.

As for us, we led a very uneventful life, going steadily on with the management of the mine, which never was productive enough to make a huge fortune, but quite sufficient to keep my father fairly wealthy, and give employment and bread to quite a little village which grew up in the Gap.

For the recovery of the silver was the turning-point in my father's mining career. After that all went well.

As I said, Jonas Uggleston never came back, but one day a bronzed white-headed old sailor was seated at the door of the smuggler's cottage when I went to call on Bigley, and this old fellow rose with quite a broad grin on his face.

I stared for a moment, he was so foreign-looking with his clipped beard and quaintly cut garb. Then I realised who it was: Binnacle Bill come back to his old wife, Mother Bonnet.

"Couldn't leave the master before," he said. "But now I've come, and you'll give me a job now and then, and Master Bigley, I should like never to go away no more."

Binnacle Bill did not go away any more, for he was at once installed boatman, and bound to have boat, tackle, and baits ready every time Bigley and I felt disposed to have an hour or two's fishing in the evening.

If Bob Chowne came down his work grew harder, for Bob was as fond of fishing as ever. He used to come to see his father sometimes, for he was devotedly attached to him, and the old doctor's place was full of the presents his son sent him from abroad.

But Bob always came over to the Bay, grumbling and saying that he was sick of Ripplemouth; and then he grumbled at old Sam and Kicksey about the dinner, or the fruit, or the weather, and then he used to grumble at his two old school-fellows as we walked along the cliff path, or went out with him in the boat.

"Ah, you two always were lucky fellows," he said to us one day, when I told him that I was going to spend my winter evenings setting down my old recollections with Bigley Uggleston's help. "Nothing to do but enjoy yourselves, and idle, and write. But what's the good of doing that? n.o.body will ever care to read about what such chaps as we've been, did in such an out-of-the-way place as this."

"Never mind," I said, "I mean to set it all down just as I can recollect; and as to anybody reading it--well, we shall see."

"Ah, well," said Bob, "just as you like; but if I was a grumbling sort of fellow, and given to finding fault, I should say it's just waste of time."

This was too much for Bigley, who burst into a hearty fit of laughter, in which I joined.

Bob stared at us both rather sulkily for a moment, and then uttered his favourite e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, which was "Yah!"

THE END.