O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas Part 11

Then we entered Portsmouth harbour, and cast anchor among the wooden walls of England. Finally I landed. Landed, much to my disgust, upon stones instead of soft sand. Landed, still more to my disgust, among crowds of people who stared at me as if I had a plurality of heads, or only one eye right in the middle of my brow. I glanced around me with all the proud dignity of a savage prince. The crowd laughed, and Roberts hurried me on.

I daresay a visit to a fashionable tailor and its subsequent results made me a little more presentable, but I disliked this town of Portsmouth with a healthy dislike, and was glad when my friend took me away.

I had to go to London. The railway amused me, and made me wonder, but used as I was to the quiet of the desert and forest, it deafened me, and the shaking tired me beyond conception.

My solicitor, a prim white-haired man, said he was _so_ glad to see me, though I do believe he was a little afraid of me. Probably not without cause, for at the very moment he was entering into business as he called it, and arranging preliminaries, I was thinking how quickly Otakooma's savages would rub all the starch out of this respectable citizen.

_They_ would not take long to arrange preliminaries with the little man, and as to entering into business, they would do so in a way that would considerably astonish his nerves.

"Bother business!" I exclaimed at last, in a voice that made the prim solicitor almost spring off his chair.

"Oh! my dear sir," he pleaded, mildly. "We _must_ go into these little matters."

He ventured to give me two fingers to shake as I left the office with Roberts. I feel sure he was afraid to entrust me with all his hand.

"And as soon as you get home you will telegraph to me; won't you, Mr Radnor?"

"Telegraph!" I said in astonishment. "Telegraph! and you tell me it is five hundred miles from here to Dunryan. Do you think you can see a fire at that distance? It must be a precious big one I'll have to light, and the mountains around Dunryan must be amazingly high."

Both Roberts and the solicitor laughed; they could see that the only idea I had of telegraphing was the building of fires on hill-tops.

I arrived at Dunryan at last--my small patrimony. If I was pleased with it at all, it was simply because it was my own; but everything was so new and so strange and so tame, that as soon as my friend saw me what he called "settled," and went away to sea and left me, I began, in the most methodical manner possible, to dislike everything round me.

People called on me, but I'm sure they were merely curious to hear my history from my own lips, and partly afraid of me at the same time.

They invited me out to tea! Ha! ha! ha! I really cannot help laughing about it now as I write; but fancy a savage sitting down to tea, of all treats in the world, with a company of gossiping ladies of both s.e.xes.

Now my neighbours made me out to be a bigger savage than I really was, because, to do myself justice, I did know a little of the courtesies of civilised life. There was one lady who expressed a wish to have the "dreadful creature" to tea with her. I found out before I went that she had styled me so, though her note of invitation was most politely worded.

The "dreadful creature" did go to tea, intent on a kind of quiet revenge. They could not get a word out of me--neither my hostess nor the three old ladies she had asked to meet me by way of protection. I did nothing but drink cup after cup of tea, handing in my cup to be replenished, and drinking it at once. The bread and b.u.t.ter disappeared in a way that seemed to them little short of miraculous. I saw that they were getting frightened, so I thought I would make them a little soothing speech.

"Ahem!" I began, standing up. I never got any further.

One old lady fainted; another "missed stays," as a sailor would say, when making for the doorway, and tumbled on the floor; a third fell over the piano-stool. All screamed--all thought I was about to do something very dreadful.

All I did do was to step gingerly out into the hall, pick up my hat, and go off.

I lived in Dunryan for a year. The scenery all around was charming in the extreme. The very name will tell you that Dunryan is in Scotland; the very word Scotland conjures up before the eye visions both of beauty and romance.

But one year even of Scotland, the "land of green heath and s.h.a.ggy wood," was enough for me then.

There was no sport, no wild adventure; all was tame, tame, tame, compared to what I had been used to.

But if following game in Scotland seemed tame to me, what could I say of sport in English fashion? I tried both; grew sick of both. Hunting the wild gorilla in the jungles of Africa was more in my line.

One night, soon after the first snow had fallen, a carriage drove up to my door. It was to bear me away to the distant railway-station. The moon was shining brightly down upon our little village as we drove through; here and there in the windows shone a yellow light; but all was silent, and neither the horses' hoofs nor the carriage wheels could be heard on the snow-m.u.f.fled street.

It was a peaceful scene, and I heaved one sigh--well, it might have been of regret. For many and many a long year to come I never saw Dunryan again.

CHAPTER NINE.

"The dismal wreck to view Struck horror to the crew."

Old Song.

The earlier history of a human being's life is engraved upon his mind as with a pen of steel. After one comes to what are termed years of discretion, the soul is not so impressionable, and events must be of more than usual interest to be very long remembered. The story, then, of a chequered life cannot be told with even a hopeful attempt at minuteness, unless a log has been kept day after day and year after year; and my opinion is, that although diaries are often most religiously commenced, especially about New Year's time, they are seldom if ever kept up very long.

My own adventures, and the scenes I pa.s.sed through in the first stages of my existence, were not, as the reader already knows, of a kind to be very easily forgotten, even had my mind never been very impressionable.

It was easy enough, therefore, to record them in some kind of chronological form.

The few adventures I and my friend Ben Roberts tell in the pages that follow, and our sketches of life, are given as they occur to our memory; often brought back to our minds by the incidents of our present everyday life.

But I do not think that even if Ben and I live as long as Old Parr, we shall either tire of spinning our yarns, or fall short of subject matter.

Let me say a word or two about the place I live in now, and where Ben so often pays me a visit.

We call it Rowan Tree Villa.

It stands mid-way up a well-wooded hill, about two and a half miles from a dreamy, drowsy old village, in one of the dreamiest, drowsiest nooks of bonnie, tree-clad Berkshire.

The top of the hill is covered by tall-stemmed pine trees, and from this eminence you can see, stretching far away below, all the undulating country, the fertile valley of the Thames, and the river itself winding for many and many a mile through it--a silver thread amidst the green.

From the top of this hill, too, if you take the trouble to climb it, you can have a bird's-eye view of Rowan Tree Villa.

There it is, a pretty, many-gabled cottage, with a comfortable-looking kitchen garden and orchard behind it, and a long, wide lawn in front.

Now this lawn has one peculiarity. From the gate on each side up to the terrace in front of the house sweeps a broad carriage drive, bounded on both its sides, first by a belt of green gra.s.s, carefully trimmed and dotted here and there with patches of flowers, and secondly by two rows of rowan trees (the mountain ash), trained on wires, and forming the prettiest bit of hedge-work you could easily imagine.

If you were Scotch, and looked at that hedge even for a moment, the words, and maybe the air as well, of the Baroness Nairne's beautiful song would rise in your mind--

"Thy leaves were aye the first in spring, Thy flowers the summer's pride; There was nae sic a bonnie tree In a' the country side.

And fair wert thou in summer time, Wi' a' thy cl.u.s.ters white, And rich and gay thy autumn dress Of berries red and bright.

Oh, rowan tree!"

Well, it is June to-day--an afternoon in June; a day to make one feel life in every limb--a day when but to exist is a luxury. The roses are bending their heads in the sweet sunshine, for there is not a cloud in Heaven's blue. The b.u.t.terflies are chasing each other among the flowers on the lawn, where we recline among the daisies, and the big velvety bees go droning and humming from clover blossom to clover blossom.

"Strange, is it not, my dear Ben," I said, "that on such a day as this, and in the midst of sunshine, I should bethink me of some night-scenes at sea and on land?

"I remember well my first experience of a storm by night in the Northern Ocean. We were going to the Arctic regions, cruising in a st.u.r.dy and, on the whole, not badly fitted, nor badly found ship.

"The anchor was weighed, the sails were set, and spread their wings to the breeze; the crew had given their farewell cheer, and the rough old pilot, having seen us safely out of Bra.s.sy Sound, had shaken the captain roughly by the hand, and wishing us 'G.o.d-speed and safely home,' had disappeared in his boat round a point.

"We were once more on the deep and dark blue ocean. Then the night began to fall, and soon the only sound heard was the tramp, tramp on deck, or the steady wash of the water, as our vessel ever and anon dipped her bows or waist in the waves.

"The captain had given his last orders on deck, and came below to our little saloon, the only occupants of which were myself and the ship's cat.

"Poor p.u.s.s.y was endeavouring, rather ineffectually, to steady herself on the sofa, and looked very much from home, while I myself was trebly engaged: namely, in placing such articles as were constantly tumbling down into a safer and steadier position, in keeping the fire brightly burning, and in reading a nautical book.

"There was a shade of uneasiness on the captain's face as he looked at the barometer; and when he entered his state-room, and presently after emerged dressed in oilskins and a sou'-wester hat, I felt as sure we were going to have a dirty night as though he had rigged himself out in sackcloth and ashes.