Harry Milvaine Part 54

Raggy, rejoiced beyond measure, met them at the beach. He was not content with shaking hands with his old messmates; shaking hands was slow work.

Raggy must dance. And dance he did, a regular sailor's hornpipe.

"As sure as I'm alive, by Heaven's mercy," said Nicholls, the bo's'n, "I think I could dance a bit myself."

"And so do I," cried another sailor.

And they both joined Raggy.

It was as merry a hornpipe as ever was seen.

No wonder the king cried "Lobo! Lobo!" and laughed till the tears gushed out of his eyes, or that the welkin rang with the admiring shouts of the st.u.r.dy amazons.

Then Raggy, who had reigned here so long and so well, resigned his regency, and in a day or two more all the old, quiet life had settled down upon the islands.

For a whole month longer Harry and his men lived with this innocent king; then, the strength of his men being now thoroughly recruited, they all said farewell to the good King Googagoo, with many regrets, and commenced the long and tedious march to the eastern coast, which they reached at last safe and sound, having met only the usual exciting adventures, and come through all the hardships incidental to African travel.

Dear young readers, I have little more to do now, except to say "Goodbye." I sincerely trust that, while I do my best in my tales to interest and instruct you, no one can accuse me of painting the life of the sailor wanderer in too rosy colours. I speak and write from my own experience of sea-life and of other lands. And--yes, I will confess it, I love the sea, and ever did.

Here are some lines I wrote in a journal of mine many years ago:--

"While I write all is peace within and around our barque. I am sitting in my little cabin. It is a summer's evening. Yonder is my bed; the port-hole close by my snowy pillow is open, and playfully through it steals the soft cool breeze of evening, and wantonly lifts and flutters the blue silken curtains. Not far off I can catch glimpses of the wooded hills and flowery vales of a sunny land. It is the rosy sh.o.r.es of Persia, and every night the light wind that blows over it is laden with the sweet breath of its flowers; while between there lies the ocean, asleep, and quiet, and still, and beautiful with the tints of reflected clouds. Often in the cool night that succeeds a day of heat have I lain awake for hours, fanned by the breath of the sea, gazing on the watery world beneath and beyond me, and the silvery moon and glittering stars that waft my thoughts homewards, till sleep stole gently down on a moonbeam and wafted me away to dreamland."

Thus I wrote when a young man. Thus I still do feel.

The first glimpse that one catches of the chalky sh.o.r.es of old England after a long cruise thrills every nerve in his heart with hope and joy.

To experience even this it is worth while going to sea.

Probably some such thoughts as these stole through the mind of Harry Milvaine as his homeward bound vessel came in sight of land.

His pa.s.sage had been a good one all the way from Zanzibar to the Cape, and from the Cape to Southampton.

If the thought of presenting himself at Beaufort Hall without first writing ever came into his head at all, it was speedily banished.

Pleasant surprises are very well under certain circ.u.mstances, but they may be so painfully pleasant as to be positively dangerous, for joy can kill as well as cure.

So Harry telegraphed and wrote, and waited anxiously for the return letter.

It came in good time.

With a beating heart he tore it open.

All were well. Even his old dog Eily was mentioned by his mother--for of course the letter was from her--in terms of affection.

"She knows you are coming," she wrote, "and whenever I mention your name rushes to the gate to look, and barks in a kind of half-joyful, half-hysterical way that is most peculiar."

Harry is back in the Highlands at last. He has come a good two hours earlier than he expected. But he does not mind that He likes to walk slowly on towards the home of his boyhood. Every little cottage, every hill--the hills are all heather-clad, for the summer's bloom bedecks them--every wood, ay, every tree recalls some sweet memory of the bygone.

He is still within half a mile of Beaufort when he sees a dog.

It is his own.

It is Eily.

She has been out hunting for stoats at the hedge-foot.

He calls her by name. She stops and stares, bewildered for a moment, then with a few joyful bounds she is at him. She is _at_ him, and _on_ him, and _round_ him, and _round_ him all at once apparently.

Her dear old master risen from the dead!! She can hardly believe her eyes, and is fain to stand a little way off and bark at him for very joy. Then off she flies homewards, to tell that she has found her master.

So that Harry's father, bareheaded and with his newspaper in his hand, but hale and hearty as of yore, and Harry's mother, more fragile and older-looking, are both at the gate to welcome him.

And behind them comes old Yonitch to shake her dear boy by the hand.

Harry has a companion, whom he now introduces, and he is no less a personage than Raggy himself.

I think everybody is half afraid of Raggy at first, but Raggy smiles so pleasantly, and laughs with such ringing joy, that he is soon at home, and even Yonitch and Eily forgive him for being so dreadfully black.

That last line is meant to be left to the reader's own translation. It represents exclamations of wonder and joy at Harry's long story, and questions asked and answered, and a deal more I have no s.p.a.ce to mention.

Eily and Harry went that same evening for a ramble in the forest. They found it just the same. The birds were there, and the bees were there, and the rabbits and weasels and squirrels were there--but poor Towsie the bull was gone.

They walked home round by Andrew's cottage.

Andrew came rushing to his little gate and held Harry's hand as if in a vice, while he pulled him in and seated him in a chair.

Then Harry had all his story to tell over again.

And honest Andrew listened and listened; frequently his eyes would become moist with tears, when he immediately took a large pinch of snuff, for shy, sly Andrew wanted to make believe that it was the snuff that made his eyes swim, and not downright emotion.

"Man! man!" was Andrew's frequent exclamation, "only to think o' seein'

you back again among us!"

"Look!" he said, when Harry finished speaking for the time being.

"Look!"

Harry looked. Andrew had a tall hat in his hand. It was gloomily bedecked with weepers of c.r.a.pe, as big almost as those worn by hea.r.s.e-drivers.

"That's my Sunday's hat," said Andrew; "and I've worn it, as you see it, every sabbath since the terrible day when Captain Wayland came here and told us we would never see you more."

"But I'll take them off now," he added, joyfully.

Honest Andrew did so, folded them up, and put them carefully away in a drawer. Then he heaved a big sigh and took another pinch of snuff.

It was very gratifying to Harry's feelings to find that his little garden and boy's bungalow, where the swallow that Eily brought him told the story of Africa, had been carefully tended and kept up inside and out.