Jim Davis Part 4

"Oh!" we exclaimed. "Oh! Is she really for us, for our very own?"

"Why, yes," he said. "At least she's for you, Mr What's-your-name. Jim, I think you call yourself. Yes, Jim. Well, she's for you, Jim. I got something else the Queen sent for Mr Preacher-feller." He bent in one corner of the ruin, and pulled out what seemed to be a stout but broken box. "This is for you, Mr Preacher-feller," he said to Hugh.

We saw that it was a model of a port of a ship's deck and side. The side was cut for a gun-port, which opened and shut by means of laniards; and, pointing through the opened port was a model bra.s.s nine-pounder on its carriage, with all its roping correctly rigged, and its sponges and rammers hooked up above it ready for use. It was a beautiful piece of work (indeed, both models were), for the gun was quite eighteen inches long. "There you are," said Marah Gorsuch. "That lot's for you, Mr Preacher-feller. Them things is what the Queen sent."

We were so much delighted by these beautiful presents that it was some minutes before we could find words with which to thank him. We could not believe that such things were really for us. He was much pleased to find that his gifts gave so much pleasure; he kept up a continual grin while we examined the toys inch by inch.

"Like 'em, hey?" he said.

"Yes; I should just think we do," we answered. We shook him by the hand, almost unable to speak from pleasure.

"And now let's come down and sail her," I said.

"Hold on there," said Marah Gorsuch. "Don't be too quick. You ain't going to sail that cutter till you know how. You've got a lot to learn first, so that must wait. It's to be Master Preacher-feller's turn this morning. Yours'll come by-and-by. What you got to do, first go off, is to sink that old hulk you were playing with. We'll sink her at anchor with Preacher-feller's cannon."

He told Hugh to pick up his toy, and to come along down to the water's edge. When he came near to the water, Marah took the old _Snail_ and tied a piece of string to her bows by way of a cable. Then he thrust her well out into the flood, tied a piece of shale (as an anchor) to the other end of the string, and flung it out ahead of her, so that she rode at anchor trimly a few yards from the bank. "Now," he said, "we'll exercise great guns. Here (he produced a powder-horn) is the magazine; here (he produced a bag of bullets) is the shot-locker. Here's a bag of wads. Now, my sons, down to business.

Cast loose your housings, take out tompions. Now bear a hand, my lads; we'll give your old galleon a broadside."

We watched him as he prepared the gun for firing, eagerly lending a hand whenever we saw what he wanted. "First of all," he said, "you must sponge your gun. There's the sponge. Shove it down the muzzle and give it a screw round. There! Now tap your sponge against the muzzle to knock the dust off. There! Now the powder." He took his powder-horn and filled a little funnel (like the funnels once used by chemists for filling bottles of cough-mixture) with the powder. This he poured down the muzzle of the gun. "Now a wad," he said, taking up a screw of twisted paper. "Ram it home on to the powder with the rammer. That's the way. Now for the shot. We'll put in a dozen bullets, and then top with a couple more wads. There! Now she's loaded. Those bullets will go for fifty yards with that much powder ahind 'em. Now, all we have to do is to prime her." He filled the touch-hole with powder, and poured a few grains along the base or breech of the gun. "There!" he said. "Only one thing more. That is aim. Here, Mr Preacher-feller, Hugh, whatever your name is. You're captain of the gun; you must aim her. Take a squint along the gun till you get the notch on the muzzle against the target; then raise your gun's breech till the notch is a little below your target. Those wooden quoins under the gun will keep it raised if you pull them out a little."

Hugh lay down flat on the gra.s.s and moved the gun carefully till he was sure the aim was correct. "Let's have a match," he said, "to see which is the best shot."

"All right," said Marah. "We will. You have first shot. Are you ready?

All ready? Very well then. Here's the linstock that you're to fire with." He took up a long stick which had a slow match twisted round it. He lit the slow match by a pocket flint and steel after moving his powder away from him. "Now then," he cried, "are you ready? Stand clear of the breech. Starboard battery. Fire!"

Hugh dropped the lighted match on to the priming. The gun banged loudly, leaped back and up, and fell over on one side in spite of its roping as the smoke spurted. At the same instant there was a lashing noise, like rain, upon the water as the bullets skimmed along upon the surface. One white splinter flew from the _Snail's_ stern where a single bullet struck; the rest flew wide astern of her.

"Let your piece cool a moment," said Marah, "then we will sponge and load again, and then Jim'll try. You were too much to the right, Mr Hugh. Your shots fell astern."

After a minute or two we cleaned the gun thoroughly and reloaded.

"Now," said Marah, "remember one thing. If you was in a ship, fighting that other ship, you wouldn't want just to blaze away at her broadside. No. You'd want to hit her so as your shot would rake all along her decks from the bow aft, or from the stern forrard. You wait a second, Master Jim, till the wind gives her bows a skew towards you, or till her stern swings round more. There she goes. Are you ready?

Now, as she comes round; allow for it. Fire!"

Very hurriedly I made my aim, and still more hurriedly did I give fire. Again came the bang and flash; again the gun clattered over; but, to my joy, a smacking crack showed that the shot went home. The shock made the old _Snail_ roll. A piece of her bow was knocked off. Two or three bullets ripped through her sail. One bored a groove along her, and the rest went over her.

"Good," said. Marah. "A few more like that and she's all our own. Now it's my shot. I'll try to knock her rudder away. Wait till she swings. There she comes! There she comes! Over a little. Up a little. Now. Fire." He darted his linstock down upon the priming. The gun roared and upset; the bullets banged out the _Snail's_ stern, and she filled slowly, and sank to the level of the water, her mast standing erect out of the flood, and her whole fabric swaying a little as the water moved her up and down.

After that we fired at the mast till we had knocked it away, and then we placed our toys in the sheltered fireplace of the ruin and came away, happy to the bone, talking nineteen to the dozen.

CHAPTER VI

THE OWL'S CRY

For the next month we pa.s.sed all our afternoons with Marah. In the mornings the Rector gave us our lessons at Strete; then we walked home to dinner; then we played with our gun and cutter, or at the sailing of our home-made boats, till about six, when we went home for tea. After tea we prepared our lessons for the next day and went upstairs to bed, where we talked of smugglers and pirates till we fell asleep. Marah soon taught us how to sail the cutter; and, what was more, he taught us how to rig her. For an hour of each fine afternoon he would give us a lesson in the quarry office, showing us how to rig model boats, which we made out of old boxes and packing-cases. In the sunny evenings of April we used to sail our fleets, ship against ship, upon the great freshwater lake into which the trout-brook pa.s.ses on its way to the sea. Sometimes we would have a fleet of ships of the line anch.o.r.ed close to the sh.o.r.e, and then we would fire at them with the gun and with one of Marah's pistols till we had shattered them to bits and sunk them. Sometimes Marah would tell us tales of the smugglers and pirates of long ago, especially about a pirate named Van Horn, who was burned in his ship off Mugeres Island, near Campeachy, more than a hundred years back.

"His ship was full of gold and silver," said Marah. "You can see her at a very low tide even now. I've seen her myself. She is all burnt to a black coal, a great Spanish galleon, with all her guns in her. I was out fishing in the boat, and a mate said, 'Look there. There she is!'

and I saw her as plain as plain among all the weeds in the sea. The water's very clear there, and there she was, with the fishes dubbing their noses on her. And she's as full of gold as the Bank of England. The seas'll have washed Van Horn's bones white, and the bones of his crew too; eaten white by the fish and washed white, lying there in all that gold under the sea, with the weeds growing over them. It gives you a turn to think of it, don't it?"

"Why don't they send down divers to get the gold?" asked Hugh.

"Why!" said Marah. "There's many has tried after all that gold. But some the shacks took and some the Spaniards took, and then there was storms and fighting. None ever got a doubloon from her. But somebody'll have a go for it again. I tried once, long ago. That was an unlucky try, though. Many poor men died along of that one. They died on the decks," he added. "It was like old Van Horn cursing us. They died in my arms, some of 'em. Seven and twenty seamen, and one of them was my mate, Charlie!"

I have wandered away from my story, I'm afraid, remembering these sc.r.a.ps of the past; but it all comes back to me now, so clearly that it seems to be happening again. There are Marah and Hugh, with the sun going down behind the gorse-bank, across the Lea; and there are the broken ships floating slowly past, with the perch rising at them; and there is myself, a very young cub, ignorant of what was about to come upon me. Perhaps, had I known what was to happen before the leaves of that spring had fallen, I should have played less light-heartedly, and given more heed to Mr Evans, the Rector.

Now, on one day in each week, generally on Thursdays, we had rather longer school hours than on the other days. On these days of extra work Hugh and I had dinner at the Rectory with Ned Evans, our schoolmate. After dinner we three boys would wander off together, generally down to Black Pool, where old Spanish coins (from some forgotten wreck) were sometimes found in the sand after heavy weather had altered the lie of the beach. We never found any Spanish coins, but we always enjoyed our afternoons there. The brook which runs into the sea there was very good for trout, in the way that Marah showed us; but we never caught any, for all our pains. In the summer we meant to bathe from the sands, and all through that beautiful spring we talked of the dives we would take from the spring-board running out into the sea. Then we would have great games of ducks and drakes, with flat pebbles; or games of pebble-dropping, in which our aim was to drop a stone so that it should make no splash as it entered the water.

But the best game of all was our game of cliff-exploring among the cliffs on each side of the bay, and this same game gave me the adventure of my life.

One lovely afternoon towards the end of the May of that year, when we were grubbing among the cliff-gorse as usual, wondering how we could get down the cliffs to rob the sea-birds' nests, we came to a bare patch among the furze; and there lay a couple of coastguards, looking intently at something a little further down the slope, and out of sight, beyond the brow of the cliff. They had ropes with them, and a few iron spikes, and one of them had his telescope on the gra.s.s beside him. They looked up at us angrily when we broke through the thicket upon them, and one of them hissed at us through his teeth: "Get out, you boys. Quick. Cut!" and waved to us to get away, which we did, a good deal puzzled and perhaps a little startled. We talked about it on our way home. Ned Evans said that the men were setting rabbit snares, and that he had seen the wires. Hugh thought that they might be after sea-birds' eggs during their hours off duty. Both excuses seemed plausible, but for my own part I thought something very different.

The men, I felt, were out on some special service, and on the brink of some discovery. It seemed to me that when we broke in upon them they were craning forward to the brow of the cliff, intently listening. I even thought that from below the brow of the cliff, only a few feet away, there had come a noise of people talking. I did not mention my suspicions to Hugh and Ned, because I was not sure, and they both seemed so sure; but all the way home I kept thinking that I was right. It flashed on me that perhaps the night-riders had a cave below the cliff-brow, and that the coast-guards had discovered the secret. It was very wrong of me, but my only thought was: "Oh, will they catch Marah? Will poor Marah be sent to prison?" and the fear that our friend would be dragged off to gaol kept me silent as We walked.

When we came to the gate which takes you by a short cut to the valley and the shale quarry, I said that I would go home that way, while the others went by the road, and that we would race each other, walking, to see who got home first. They agreed to this, and set off together at a great rate; but as soon as they were out of sight behind the hedge I buckled my satchel to my shoulders and started running to warn Marah. It was all downhill to the brook, and I knew that I should find Marah there,--for he had said that he was coming earlier than usual that afternoon to finish off a model boat which we were to sail after tea. I ran as I had never run before--I thought my heart would thump itself to pieces; but at last I got to the valley and saw Marah crossing the brook by the causeway. I shouted to him then and he heard me. I had not breath to call again, so I waved to him to come and then collapsed, panting, for I had run a good mile across country. He walked towards me slowly, almost carelessly; but I saw that he was puzzled by my distress, and wondered what the matter was.

"What is it?" he asked. "What's the rally for?"

"Oh," I cried, "the coastguards--over at Black Pool."

"Yes," he said carelessly, "what about _them?_"

"They've discovered it," I cried. "The cave under the cliff-top. They've discovered it."

His face did not change; he looked at me rather hard; and then asked me, quite carelessly, what I had seen.

"Two coastguards," I answered. "Two coastguards. In the furze. They were listening to people somewhere below them."

"Yes," he said, still carelessly, "over at Black Pool? I suppose they recognized you?"

"Yes, they must have. We three are known all over the place. And I ran to tell you."

"So I see," he said grimly. "You seem to have run like a tea-ship. Well, you needn't have. There's no cave on this side Salcombe, except the hole at Tor Cross. What made you run to tell _me?_"

"Oh," I said, "you've been so kind--so kind, and--I don't know--I thought they'd send you to prison."

"Did you?" he said gruffly. "Did you indeed? Well, they won't. There was no call for you to fret your little self. Still, you've done it; I'll remember that--I'll always remember that. Now you be off to your tea, quick. Cut!"

When he gave an order it was always well for us to obey it at once; if we did not he used to lose his temper. So when he told me to go I got up and turned away, but slowly, for I was still out of breath. I looked back before I pa.s.sed behind the hedge which marks the beginning of the combe, but Marah had disappeared--I could see no trace of him. Then suddenly, from somewhere behind me, out of sight, an owl called--and this in broad daylight. Three times the "Too-hoo, too-hoo"

rose in a long wail from the shrubs, and three times another owl answered from up the combe, and from up the valley, too, till the place seemed full of owls. "Too-hoo, too-hoo" came the cries, and very faintly came answers--some of them in strange tones, as though the criers asked for information. As they sounded, the first owl answered in sharp, broken cries. But I had had enough. Breathless as I was, I ran on up the valley to the house, only hoping that no owl would come swooping down upon me. And this is what happened. Just as I reached the gate which leads to the little bridge below the house I saw Joe Barnicoat galloping towards me on an unsaddled horse of Farmer Rowser's. He seemed shocked, or upset, at seeing me; but he kicked the horse in the ribs and galloped on, crying out that he was having a little ride. His little ride was taking him at a gallop to the owl, and I was startled to find that quiet Joe, the mildest gardener in the county, should be one of the uncanny crew whose signals still hooted along the combes.

When I reached home the others jeered at me for a sluggard. They had been at home for twenty minutes, and had begun tea. I let them talk as they pleased, and then settled down to work; but all that night I dreamed of great owls, riding in the dark with bee-skeps over them, filling the combes with their hootings.

CHAPTER VII

THE TWO COASTGUARDS