Jethou Part 12

We found our cart wheels were not high enough to clear the big stones on the beach, so we took them off and replaced them by two runners so as to form a kind of sledge, which answered much better, although many pieces were jerked off _en route_, by reason of the rugged path and primitive construction of the sledge. As Alec remarked, they served as guide posts, so that there was no losing the way. This idea I got by reading Catlin's "North American Indians." By lashing two long tent poles at a horse's sides, with the ends trailing on the ground, they form a kind of sledge, upon which they can carry considerable loads upon transverse sticks.

From the battered hulk we also brought a great number of bolts and other iron-work, a companion ladder, windla.s.s, pump, bowsprit bits, bell, a torn jib, a quant.i.ty of cordage, and whatever else we could lay our hands upon, that might have the most remote chance of being of future use to us.

In story books it is usual to have a ship come ash.o.r.e just in a convenient spot, and with a full cargo; but ours, unfortunately, was only half a battered hulk, perfectly empty, and in a most awkward position to get at, as we had to cross the Crevichon Channel at every trip, so that we could only bring the wreckage over at low tide. We could, however, continue our work of dismantling right through the day, except for two hours, when the high tide flowed in and out through poor "Jeanette's" ribs. These two hours we took for rest, food, and the soothing pipe. Bless Raleigh!

When we had collected all our material, both iron and wood, we commenced building the "Anglo-Franc," and in three weeks had her finished and afloat. She was sixteen feet over all, by five feet beam, and was rigged in the style peculiar to the Guernsey boats; that is to say she had two small masts. The foremast was stepped exactly amidships, while the mizen was placed close to the stern. This arrangement strikes an Englishman as very strange, as they are in the habit of seeing the foremast very nearly in the bows; but Ducas was a sailor, and knew the rig adapted to these waters, and I must say that under most circ.u.mstances the "Anglo-Franc" behaved herself admirably. She was a success in every way.

One special feature was, that we built a kind of half-deck forward, which formed a small cuddy or cabin quite large enough for one of us to have "a watch below" in, or for a regular sleep at night, or we could both squeeze inside during a pelting rain. We spent several single nights at sea in the "Anglo-Franc" during the summer, and by putting a sail-cloth awning from the aft edge of the cuddy deck we lengthened our cabin by four feet, and could thus both obtain a good night's rest, or cook in any wind or weather.

When we had finished the boat we were rather at a loss to know how to find accommodation for her when we did not actually require to use her.

In fine weather she could lie moored just off the house, and to enable us always to keep her afloat, we rigged up an out-haul, so that standing on the sh.o.r.e we could haul the boat out or in to its moorings whenever we chose. This was all very well in fine weather, but when a fresh south-west wind was blowing, and a heavy sea on, she would pitch and roll to such an extent that we were afraid she would break loose and drift away. We had therefore to cast about for some safer place for her, and with this in view inspected the whole island round. When we came to Lobster Bay, at the north-east corner, we agreed that that was the most sheltered position we could find, and most suitable in every way for a haven.

Quite at the angle of the island a promontory runs straight out to the eastward for a distance of about forty yards, thus forming a shelter from the rush of the rising tide through the Perchee Channel, while the island of Herm kept the wind from the north-east in check.

"Now," said Alec, "if we could build a little stone breakwater from the end of Cape Homard (Cape Lobster, as Alec called the point, because we kept the lobster and crab pots there), we could make as safe a little harbour as one could wish for."

This proposition seemed all very well, but the quant.i.ty of stone I knew it would take rather staggered me, and I was a long time before I could be brought to give my consent to help in the matter. But when Alec had laid out his plans to me, I found them so consistent that I readily agreed to help in the work.

Without wearying the reader by describing in too great detail the building of our breakwater, I will just give an outline of how it was built, and another great success achieved, although to ensure that success we had to work like a couple of galley slaves. Still, with all our hard work, we were as happy as a couple of schoolboys. We toiled, sang, and ate with such appet.i.tes as only those who are used to hard work in the sea air can know.

Our plan was to work on Monday; enjoy fishing, etc., on Tuesday; work on Wednesday at the breakwater, at the garden on Thursday; on Friday at the breakwater again; and on Sat.u.r.day till noon also, after which we devoted the rest of the day to baking, clothes washing and mending, and other domestic duties. How my mother and 'Cilla would have laughed to see me at the wash-tub, or hanging out the linen to dry on the furze bushes; or to have seen Alec using a flat iron which, with great labour, we had forged, and which was of a peculiar construction, but still very efficacious in its work. Men are notoriously awkward in their manner of wringing and other laundry work, and I expect we were no exception to the general rule. We made our clothes _clean_, and that was all we required.

Alec was a capital baker, so we had some excellent bread, while my pastry was not to be sneezed at; in fact, at a rabbit pie I was quite a _grand chef_. I also introduced several new culinary matters to Alec, some of which he had never seen before; among them being the all-filling Norfolk dumpling, which at first he did not seem to care for, but in time he became inordinately fond of them, and would often ask me to make him a _pouding de rien_ (a pudding of nothing), which was his idea of these articles of everyday diet in East Anglia.

But I am not building my breakwater of dumplings, so will get back to stone; not that I wish the reader to infer that my dumplings were ever approaching that substance in their degree of firmness.

First we collected all the very large stones we could find in the bay, and placed them as a foundation for our breakwater; but these only formed a layer about a foot deep. All these were large stones (some of them weighed nearly three hundredweight), so to cope with them we made a kind of four-handled hand barrow, upon which we rolled our rock, and then taking two handles each, staggered off with it. These large pieces we placed near the end of the breakwater, and when we had denuded the bay, we obtained, with "Eddy's" help, some large piece of ma.s.sed rock and mortar from the ruined boathouse. These pieces we took in the sledge, and built into a kind of wall to form the outer sh.e.l.l of the breakwater, while the interior we filled with any odds and ends of rocks (none of them less than a man's head in size) which we could find on the sh.o.r.e. The interstices we filled with shingle, and the detritus of granite, but when we had raised our structure to the level of high water our available stone gave out. This rather nonplussed us, but at last we decided to open a small quarry and see what granite we could obtain to raise our undertaking another four feet in height.

I had still several pounds of gunpowder left, and with part of this we constructed some long thin cartridges for blasting. With these, a pick-axe, and some long iron stanchions, which we used as levers, we obtained a good supply of stone. The little quarry may still be seen, so I am informed, although it is greatly covered with furze and weeds. It is situated on the hill side, midway between the homestead and the ruins of the boathouse. We chose an elevated position for our quarry, so that we could roll the huge stones down the hill to the pathway below, where we levered them up into the sledge, and dragged them to what we were pleased to term "the works." Let it suffice to say that about the middle of May our task was completed, and to commemorate the event we gave a grand banquet on the pier head (for we called it a pier now, as it sounded more dignified) to commemorate the event. Four of us sat down to the banquet, or rather two stood and two sat. As architect I took the head of the table (a wine cask), and Alec, as engineer, the foot; while "Eddy," the donkey, as contractor, supported me on the right (dining luxuriously on a bunch of carrots and some hay), and on my left was dear old "Begum" as clerk of the works, enjoying two whole rabbits as his share of the entertainment.

We drank "Success to Jethou Pier," and trusted it would take every care of the "Anglo-Franc," which we now placed within its encircling arm for the first time.

At low water we removed all the big stones from the little haven in which our boat was now moored. This was for fear she might hurt her bottom (as the tide left her careened half an hour before dead low water), and thus made everything snug for her. At half-tide she floated, so that for six hours out of every twelve we could go off just when we liked, without any pushing or hard work of any kind; while to a.s.sist her to her moorings, if we wished to bring her in at low tide, we rigged up the windla.s.s which we brought from the wreck, and thus we could at any time haul her bodily out of the sea.

Now, having given up a whole chapter to hard work, we will proceed to something a little more interesting and exciting.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Decorative scroll]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Decorative chapter heading]

CHAPTER XV.

TRAWLING FOR FISH AND DREDGING FOR CURIOS--SOME REMARKABLE FINDS--A GHASTLY RESURRECTION--THE MYSTERIOUS PAPER--THE HIEROGLYPHIC--A DANGEROUS FALL--HORS DE COMBAT--ATTEMPTS TO UNRAVEL THE PAPER.

As there were now two of us we occasionally had a turn at trawling, and usually caught some fine flat fish, turbot, soles, and plaice. Our net was a very primitive one of our own manufacture, and had to be handled very gingerly, as the netting was old and the ironwork very fragile, but knowing this we did not put undue strain upon it.

The curious fish, marine plants, and odds and ends of all kinds that we brought to the surface would have done a naturalist's heart good, for there were frequently objects brought to light that were quite out of the common.

It seemed to me that the set of the Gulf Stream had something to do with this, as we found some rare sh.e.l.ls that did not appear indigenous to these waters; we also found two old swords and the steel portion of a flint lock pistol, beside some curious old pottery, all of which finds I have preserved, and with other curios have formed quite a museum.

Our plan of "Marine Exploration," as we called it, was this: We would have a couple of hours trawling for fish in the usual manner, and then if wind and tide were favourable, would run in and land our trawl, and fish at the pier head, and bring out with us another implement, which was a cross between a dredge and a trawl. It had an iron beam about six feet wide, which kept the net on the bottom by reason of its weight; from this rose an iron bow, forming a flattened half circle, and to this was attached a piece of heavy double netting, the bottom of which was protected from the rocks by a piece of old sail cloth a little larger than the plan of the net. The poke of the net was only about seven feet from beam to tail, so that we had no difficulty in raising it, especially as we had a line fastened to the tail, which one of us could haul upon, while the other (with a curious hand windla.s.s, which looked like some diabolical instrument of torture) raised the beam.

We used to drain the net fairly well before bringing it inboard, and then turn the contents out on the floor, then kneeling down we would search among them just like a couple of misers counting their gold; indeed, upon one occasion, we _did_ have gold to count among our other items.

It was the bowl portion of a golden goblet, from which the foot had become detached. From its encrusted appearance it must have lain for many years in the sea. On another occasion we felt something heavy in the net as we hauled, and knowing that in the spot in which we were then trawling, there were no rocks, we naturally wondered what it could be.

As we hove up the net, I remarked that I hoped it was not a dead body, which remark made Alec feel quite queer, as he thought it might be one of his comrades. He refused to help me haul for fear such should be the case. I quickly pointed out to him that it could not be the case, as apart from a corpse being devoured by the voracious fish, it would swell as it decomposed, and gas being formed in it, it would buoy the body up, and float it to the surface, when the send of the waves would waft it away, no one knew whither.

"Now," said I to Alec, "your messmates have been dead these four months, and nothing of them now remains round this island, except perchance their skeletons, and we are not likely to come upon _them_, so bear a hand and let's see what luck has sent us."

Slowly the net came up, and as the water left it there appeared among the brown seaweed two huge pieces of rock tied to something which looked very horrid. And horrid it turned out to be, for it was the remains of the man I had buried months before, that is to say, the leg bones, with some few remaining tendons and other parts, which the fish had not stripped from the bones. We were glad to find that the upper part with the skull attached had fallen off, so turning the net inside out, I for a second time buried the poor man, or rather all that was left of him.

One day in July, a very warm day, we had been fishing and caught but little, so were having an hour's chat and smoke as our boat rocked lazily on the clear blue water, when somehow the conversation turned on curious discoveries and accidental finds. Suddenly the thought of my valuable discovery of the lace entered my head. Should I tell Alec? No!

I would keep my secret; but what of the paper I had discovered in the niche in the wall? Could not Alec decipher that for me? Should I tell him of that? Why not? By keeping the paper to myself I should not know if it were of value or no, so revolving the matter in my mind as to how I should broach the subject, I at last made up my mind to consult him upon the subject, but said nothing of it just then. We set to work again, after a rest, and fished, but fortune that day was not kind to us, or the fish were as lazy as ourselves; anyhow, we caught very few; in fact, not more than we could consume in a fresh state. When we obtained plenty we gutted them, split them, took off their heads, and dried them in the sun for future use, just as the natives of the Pacific Islands do theirs.

That evening, when supper was finished, I told Alec I had something to shew him, which did not belong to me, but which might or might not be of value to me as the holder.

Somehow I had, by a.s.sociating the old leathern cup and the lace together, brought myself to believe that the paper was like the lace, of some value. Therefore it behoved me to be careful as to how I broached the subject to Alec.

I quietly took it from my trunk, and handed it to him carelessly, with the remark,

"Can you read that for me, Alec?"

He had a good look at it, holding it very close to the lamp, and read it quite through to himself, while I sat impatiently waiting for him to say something about it. Not wishing to appear anxious I pretended to read, but although I looked at the page it might just as well have been a brick I was looking at as a book for all the information I got from it.

At length he laid the paper down, and informed me that he could read it well enough, but what did it all refer to?

"It is a list of articles followed by some curious signs that I cannot make out," said he. "Then it goes on to say that anyone finding the things mentioned, may have them as a gift for his trouble in searching for them. Then follows the date, Nov. 13, 17--. So probably your musty old paper is at least one hundred years old."

Then he laid the doc.u.ment on the table, relit his pipe, and went on cutting out a netting needle for to-morrow's use. I merely remarked it was an old paper I had had by me a long time, and as I wanted to know what it was about had kept it. With that I put it away in the trunk, and changed the subject by turning my attention to snooding a score or two of fish hooks for conger fishing.

Next day when I saw an opportunity I got away to a quiet spot, and puzzled myself with the hieroglyphic-looking portion of the paper which appeared thus:--

[Ill.u.s.tration:-THE PUZZLING DOc.u.mENT-]

I puzzled over it for an hour, and then gave it up, not having obtained the slightest clue to the meaning, if any meaning it had. Then I reflected that a man was not likely to go to the trouble of writing out a long list of articles, and sketching a skull with particular lines and figures radiating from it for nought, to say nothing of hiding the paper away in such a cosy little nook as the one in which I found it. Thus reflecting I turned along the middle path homeward, wondering if some old privateer skipper, or even pirate, had long years ago hidden the articles mentioned in the list in some part of the island, or could it refer to some treasure which--_slip! b.u.mp! crash!!_

I opened my eyes and found Alec bending over me, while "Begum" sat licking my hand. I tried to speak, but did so with extreme difficulty, as if something were amiss with my chest. Whatever had happened! I tried to rise, but had not the power.

"How do you feel?" said Alec.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A TERRIBLE FALL FROM THE CLIFFS.]

To which I replied by asking him a question,