The Laird's Luck and Other Fireside Tales Part 19

This was the third rash thing that John Penaluna did.

He watched Zeke up the hill, till the smoke hid him. Then he picked up his spade. "Shall I find her, when I step home this evening? Please G.o.d, yes."

And he did. She was there by the supper-table? waiting for him. Her eyes were red. John pretended to have dropped something, and went back for a moment to look for it. When he returned, neither spoke.

VI

Years pa.s.sed--many years. Their life ran on in its old groove.

John toiled from early morning to sunset, as before--and yet not quite as before. There was a difference, and Captain Tangye would, no doubt, have perceived it long before had not Death one day come on him in an east wind and closed his activities with a snap, much as he had so often closed his telescope.

For a year or two after Zeke's departure, John went on enlarging his garden-bounds, though more languidly. Then followed four or five years during which his conquests seemed to stand still. And then little by little, the brambles and wild growth rallied. Perhaps--who knows?--the a.s.saulted wilderness had found its Joan of Arc. At any rate, it stood up to him at length, and pressed in upon him and drove him back. Year by year, on one excuse or another, an outpost, a foot or two, would be abandoned and left to be reclaimed by the weeds. They were the a.s.sailants now. And there came a time when they had him at bay, a beaten man, in a patch of not more than fifty square feet, the centre of his former domain. "Time, not Corydon," had conquered him.

He was working here one afternoon when a boy came up the lower path from the ferry, and put a telegram into his hands. He read it over, thought for a while, and turned to climb the old track towards the summer-house, but brambles choked it completely, and he had to fetch a circuit and strike the gra.s.s walk at the head of the slope.

He had not entered the summer-house for years, but he found Hester knitting there as usual; and put the telegram into her hands.

"Zeke is drowned." He paused and added--he could not help it--"You'll not need to be looking out to sea any more."

Hester made as if to answer him, but rose instead and laid a hand on his breast. It was a thin hand, and roughened with housework. With the other she pointed to where the view had lain seaward. He turned. There was no longer any view. The brambles hid it, and must have hidden it for many years.

"Then what have you been thinkin' of all these days?"

Her eyes filled; but she managed to say, "Of you, John."

"It's with you as with me. The weeds have us, every side, each in our corner." He looked at his hands, and with sudden resolution turned and left her.

"Where are you going?"

"To fetch a hook. I'll have that view open again before nightfall, or my name's not John Penaluna."

CAPTAIN d.i.c.k AND CAPTAIN JACKA

A REPORTED TALE OF TWO FRIGATES AND TWO LUGGERS

I dare say you've never heard tell of my wife's grandfather, Captain John Tackabird--or Cap'n Jacka, as he was always called. He was a remarkable man altogether, and he died of a seizure in the Waterloo year; an earnest Methody all his days, and towards the end a highly respected cla.s.s-leader. To tell you the truth, he wasn't much to look at, being bald as a coot and blind of one eye, besides other defects.

His mother let him run too soon, and that made his legs bandy. And then a bee stung him, and all his hair came off. And his eye he lost in a little job with the preventive men; but his lid drooped so, you'd hardly know 'twas missing. He'd a way, too, of talking to himself as he went along, so that folks reckoned him silly. It was queer how that maggot stuck in their heads; for in handling a privateer or a Guernsey cargo--sink the or run it straight--there wasn't his master in Polperro. The very children could tell 'ee.

I'm telling of the year 'five, when the most of the business in Polperro--free-trade and privateering--was managed (as the world knows) by Mr. Zephaniah Job. This Job he came from St. Ann's--by reason of his having shied some person's child out of a window in a fit of temper--and opened school at Polperro, where he taught rule-of-three and mensuration; also navigation, though he only knew about it on paper. By-and-by he became accountant to all the free-trade companies and agent for the Guernsey merchants; and at last blossomed out and opened a bank with 1_l_. and 2_l_. notes, and bigger ones which he drew on Christopher Smith, Esquire, Alderman of London.

Well, this Job was agent for a company of adventurers called the "Pride o' the West," and had ordered a new lugger to be built for them down at Mevagissey. She was called the _Unity_, 160 tons (that would be about fifty as they measure now), mounting sixteen carriage guns and carrying sixty men, nice and comfortable. She was lying on the ways, ready to launch, and Mr. Job proposed to Cap'n Jacka to sail over to Mevagissey and have a look at her.

Cap'n Jacka was pleased as Punch, of course. He'd quite made up his mind he was to command her, seeing that, first and last, in the old _Pride_ lugger, he had cleared over 40 per cent, for this very Company. So they sailed over and took thorough stock of the new craft, and Jacka praised this and suggested that, and carried on quite as if he'd got captain's orders inside his hat--which was where he usually carried them. Mr. Job looked sidelong down his nose--he was a leggy old galliganter, with stiverish grey hair and a jawbone long enough to make Cap'n Jacka a new pair of shins--and said he, "What do'ee think of her?"

"Well," said Jacka, "any fool can see she'll run, and any fool can see she'll reach. I reckon she'll come about as fast as th' old _Pride_, and if she don't sit nigher the wind than the new revenue cutter it'll be your sailmaker's fault."

"That's a first-cla.s.s report," said Mr. Job. "I was thinking of offering you the post of mate in her."

Cap'n Jacka felt poorly all of a sudden. "Aw," he asked, "who's to be skipper, then?"

"The Company was thinkin' of young d.i.c.k Hewitt."

"Aw," said Cap'n Jacka again, and shut his mouth tight. Young d.i.c.k Hewitt's father had shares in the Company and money to buy votes beside.

"What do'ee think?" asked Mr. Job, still slanting his eye down his nose.

"I'll go home an' take my wife's opinion," said Cap'n Jacka.

So when he got home he told it all to his funny little wife that he doted on like the apple of his one eye. She was a small, round body, with beady eyes that made her look like a doll on a pen-wiper; and she said, of course, that the Company was a parcel of rogues and fools together.

"Young d.i.c.k Hewitt is every bit so good a seaman as I be," said Cap'n Jacka.

"He's a boaster."

"So he is, but he's a smart seaman for all."

"I declare if the world was to come to an end you'd sit quiet an'

never say a word."

"I dessay I should. I'd leave you to speak up for me."

"Baint'ee goin' to say _nothin_', then?"

"Iss; I'm goin' to lay it before the Lord."

So down 'pon their knees these old souls went upon the limeash, and asked for guidance, and Cap'n Jacka, after a while, stretched out his hand to the shelf for Wesley's Hymns. They always pitched a hymn together before going to bed. When he'd got the book in his hand he saw that 'twasn't Wesley at all, but another that he never studied from the day his wife gave it to him, because it was called the "Only Hymn Book,"[A] and he said the name was as good as a lie. Hows'ever, he opened it now, and came slap on the hymn:--

[Footnote A: Probably "Olney."]

_Tho' troubles a.s.sail and dangers affright, If foes all should fail and foes all unite, Yet one thing a.s.sures us, whatever betide, I trust in all dangers the Lord will provide_.

They sang it there and then to the tune of "O all that pa.s.s by," and the very next morning Cap'n Jacka walked down and told Mr. Job he was ready to go for mate under young d.i.c.k Hewitt.

More than once, the next week or two, he came near to repenting; for Cap'n d.i.c.k was very loud about his promotion, especially at the Three Pilchards; and when the _Unity_ came round and was fitting--very slow, too, by reason of delay with her letters of marque--he ordered Cap'n Jacka back and forth like a stevedore's dog. "There was to be no 'nigh enough' on _this_ lugger"--that was the sort of talk; and oil and rotten-stone for the very gun-swivels. But Jacka knew the fellow, and even admired the great figure and its loud ways. "He's a cap'n, anyhow,"

he told his wife; "'twon't be 'all fellows to football' while he's in command. And I've seen him handle the _Good Intent_, under Hockin."

Mrs. Tackabird said nothing. She was busy making sausages and setting down a stug of b.u.t.ter for her man's use on the voyage. But he knew she would be a disappointed woman if he didn't contrive in some honest way to turn the tables on the Company and their new pet. For days together he went about whistling "Tho' troubles a.s.sail ... "; and the very night before sailing, as they sat quiet, one each side of the hearth, he made the old woman jump by saying all of a sudden, "Coals o' fire!"

"What d'ee mean by that?" she asked.

"Nothin'. I was thinkin' to myself, and out it popped."

"Well, 'tis like a Providence! For, till you said that, I'd clean forgot the sifter for your cuddy fire. Mustn't waste cinders now that you're only a mate."