The Island of Gold Part 14

Well, right happy years these had been for Ransey Tansey, and little Babs as well, to say nothing of gentle Eedie. As the world began to smile upon Tandy himself, he tried to do all he could for his children's comfort. Even the little cottage at the foot of the hill was made more ship-shape, and furnished with many a comfort it had previously lacked.

Tandy was a man of a speculative turn of mind, and moreover inventive.

His speculations, however, did not succeed so well as he could have wished. I am never sorry for the downfall of speculators; for, after all, what is speculation but a species of gambling--gambling for high stakes? And supposing that a man wins, which once in a way he may; supposing even that he is strong enough in pocket to establish a "corner," as it is called in Yankee-land, to buy up the whole of some great commodity, and shut it up until the people are starving for it and glad to pay for it at three times the original value, well, the corner knight becomes a millionaire. Yes; and very often a miser, and miserable at that. Can a millionaire enjoy sport or play any better than you or I, reader? No, nor so much.

Has he a better appet.i.te from the fact that he can afford to coax it with every costly dainty that cash can purchase? More likely a worse.

Is he more healthy? That were impossible.

Is he more happy? Ah, here we come to the test question. Well, he can have a larger and a finer house than most people, and it may be furnished like a palace. Pictures of the old masters may adorn its walls; musical instruments of rare value, works of art and vertu, may meet the eye at every turn; the gardens, and rose lawns, and conservatories may be more gorgeous than the dream of an Eastern prince.

But can he live in more than one room at a time, or enjoy anything around him a bit better than the friends do whom he invites to his home that they may admire everything and envy _him_?

But even the millionaire tires of home. He is satiated with the good things his gold has brought him; and if he travels abroad he will not find half the enjoyment in those beauties of nature--which even the millionaire's gold cannot deprive the poorest man of--that the poet or the naturalist does.

I think there is one thing that most of us have to be thankful for-- namely, that we are not over-ambitious, and have no desire to become millionaires.

Yes, but Tandy's ambition was not a morbid one; it was not selfish. He felt that he could die contentedly enough, could he make as sure as any one can be sure that his boy and girl would not become waifs and strays on the great highway of life.

How to make sure? That had been the question he had tried to answer many and many a time as he lay on the p.o.o.p of his little craft and sailed slowly through the meadows and moors.

I have said he was inventive. His inventive faculties, however, took him far too high at first, like a badly ballasted balloon. He thought of ministering to governments of nations--of putting into their hands instruments for the destruction of his fellow mortals that should render war impossible, and many other equally airy speculations.

He failed, and had to come down a piece. There is no use in soaring too high above the clouds if one would be a useful inventor and a benefactor to mankind. Darning-needles are of more service to the general public than dynamite guns, and they are more easily manufactured. So Tandy failed in all his big things. That balloon of his was still soaring too high.

"I guess," he said to himself, "I'll have to come a little lower still before I find out just what the world wants, and what _all_ the world wants."

Food? Physic? Fire?

Ha! he had it. Fire, of course. How many a poor wretch starves to death in a garret just because coals are too dear to purchase. "And why?" he asked himself; and the answer came fast enough, "Because coals are wasted by the rich."

Then Tandy set his brains on to simmer, and invented one of the simplest contrivances in the world for saving waste.

Yes, he had it at last, and in two years' time he began to gain a competence, which was gradually increasing.

This little cottage down by the sad, sad sea, as sentimental old maids call it, was his own. He and Babs--or little Nelda, as we may now call her--had only been here for six months. The place was by no means a fashionable one, although many people came here in summer to seek for health on the glorious sands and rocks, and among the fields and woods that stretched northwards into the interior.

As for Ransey Tansey, Captain Weathereye had really done his best to secure the welfare of this half-wild lad, just as Miss Scragley tried to a.s.sist his wee sister.

Impressionable children learn very quickly, and in a year's time Ransey was so much improved in manners that Miss Scragley rather encouraged his visits to the Hall than otherwise, especially when the Admiral and Bob came along with him.

Grand old lawns and shrubberies surrounded the Hall, and these ended in woods. There were artificial lakes and islands in them too. These islands were the especial property of many beautiful ducks; but one was so large, and surrounded by such a big stretch of water, that the only thing to make it perfect--so Ransey thought--was a boat or skiff. Eedie was of the same opinion; so was Babs and Bob.

"Isn't it possible to build one?" thought Ransey. He felt sure it was; so did Eedie.

Before two months had pa.s.sed, that skiff, with the a.s.sistance of Weathereye, was a _fait accompli_; and the old captain was just as proud of it as the children themselves.

The ducks didn't have it all their own way now on the island. For here a wigwam was built, and almost every fine day--that is, when Ransey was not at his lessons--the children played at Crusoes and wild Indians, and I don't know what all.

There was no end to Tansey's imagination, no end to his daring, no end to his tricks, and in these last, I fear, Eedie encouraged him.

She was but two years younger than Ransey, but she was four years older as far as worldly wisdom was concerned; and with her a.s.sistance the dramas, or theatrical performances, carried out on the island were at times startling in the extreme.

When Eedie brought children friends of hers to see these plays, Ransey would have felt very shy indeed had he not had, figuratively speaking, Eedie's wing to shelter under. Encouraged by her, he soon found out that real talent can make its own way, and be appreciated, however humble its possessor may be.

When Tandy first met Captain Weathereye, he wanted to be profuse in his thanks to this kindly staff-commander. But the latter would have none of this.

"Tandy," he said, "I know by your every action that you are a true sailor, like--ahem!--myself. Perhaps what you call kindness to your boy is only a fad of mine, and therefore selfishness after all."

"No, no."

"But I can say 'Yo, yo,' to your 'No, no.' Besides, we are all of us sailing over the sea of life for goodness knows where, and we are in duty bound to help even little boats we may sight, if we see they're in distress."

Tandy and Weathereye had soon became good friends, and smoked many a pipe together; nor did Tandy hesitate to tell the navy sailor about all his inventions and little speculations, to which account the latter listened delightedly enough.

"I say," he said to Tandy one day, "your lad is now over ten, and we should send him right away to sea. I tell you straight, Tandy, I'd get him into the Royal Navy if it were worth while. But he'd never be a sailor, never learn seamanship."

"Confound their old tin-kettles," he added, bringing his fist down on the table with a force that made the gla.s.ses jingle, "there isn't a sailor on board one of them; only gunners and greasers. [Greaser, a disparaging name for an engineer in the Royal Navy.] Let Ransey rough it, Mr Tandy, and you'll make a man of him."

An apprenticeship in a Dundee trader, owned in Belfast, and sailing from Cardiff, this was secured; though what use a lad not yet eleven might be put to on board such a craft, I confess I hardly know. But this I _do_ know, that the sooner a boy who is to be a British sailor goes to sea the better.

Babs ventured back to the window at last, and glanced once more out into the now gathering gloom. Far away beyond Selsea Bill the sun had set behind lurid coppery clouds, that boded little good for ships that were toiling up the Channel.

"O daddy, here is postie at long, long last, and he's all, all dressed in oilskins! He is coming to the door! Oh!"

She could not say another word for a few moments, but flew toward her father.

"It is--it is--O daddy! _it's Ransey_!"

Book 2--CHAPTER TWO.

"SHIP-SHAPE AND SEAMAN-FASHION."

There wasn't a doubt about that, and no lad surely ever got a happier welcome home.

Bob and Murrams knew him, and the Admiral too, who danced for joy in the back-garden when Ransey Tansey went to see him.

Everybody, with the exception of the father, seemed to walk on air that night. Mr Tandy was simply quietly happy.

Ransey was quite a man, Babs told him, and she felt sure he would soon have a moustache. Indeed, she brought a small magnifying-gla.s.s to strengthen her convictions on this point.

What a lot lads have to tell when they return from sea for the first time! and their friends cannot give them greater pleasure than by listening to all their adventures and "hairbreadth scapes;" sympathising with them in sorrows past and gone, and dangers encountered, and thanking Providence that they have been spared to come safely home from off the stormy ocean.

Ransey had gone to the old cottage first, not knowing anything about the change. He had found strangers there, and his heart had sunk to zero.

"Perhaps," he thought, "they are dead and gone."