The Ship of Stars Part 11

"Hand it to me."

The child did not understand. "Give me something--" she began again in her dull, level voice.

Honoria stamped her foot. "Give it to me!" She s.n.a.t.c.hed up the doll and thrust it into the fishing creel, tossed the coin into Lizzie's basket, and taking Comedy by the bridle, moved up the path.

"She've adopted en!" They laughed and called out to Lizzie that she was in luck's way. But Taffy saw the child's face as she stared into the empty basket, and that it was perplexed and forlorn.

"Why did you do that?" he asked, as he caught up with Honoria.

She did not answer.

And now they turned away from the sea, and struck a high road which took them between upland farms and across the ridge of cultivated land to a valley full of trees. A narrow path led inland up this valley. They had followed it under pale green shadows, in Indian file, the pony at Honoria's heels and Taffy behind, and stepped out into sunlight again upon a heathery moor where a trout stream chattered and sparkled. And there by a granite bridge they found George fishing, with three small trout shining on the turf beside him.

This was a day which Taffy remembered all his life, and yet most confusedly. Indeed there was little to remember it by--little to be told except that all the while the stream talked, the larks sang, and in the hollow of the hills three children were happy. George landed half a dozen trout before lunch-time; but Taffy caught none, partly because he knew nothing about fishing, partly because the chatter of the stream set him telling tales to himself and he forgot the rod in his hand. And Honoria, after hooking a tiny fish and throwing it back into the water, wandered off in search of larks' nests.

She came slowly back when George blew a whistle announcing lunch.

"Hullo! What's this?" he asked, as he dived a hand into her creel.

"Ugh! a doll! I say, Taffy, let's float her down the river.

What humbug, Honoria!"

But she had s.n.a.t.c.hed the doll and crammed it back roughly into the creel. A minute later, when they were not looking, she lifted the lid again and disposed the poor thing more gently.

"Why don't you talk, one of you?" George demanded, with his mouth full.

Taffy shook himself out of his waking dream--"I was wondering where it goes to," he said, and nodded toward the running water.

"It goes down to Langona," said George, "and that's just a creek full of sand, with a church right above it in a big gra.s.s meadow--the queerest small church you ever saw. But I've heard my father tell that hundreds of years back a big city stood there, with seven fine churches and quays, and deep water alongside and above, so that ships could sail right up to the ford. They came from all parts of the world for tin and lead, and the people down in the city had nothing to do but sit still and grow rich."

"Somebody must have worked," interrupted Honoria; "on the buildings and all that."

"The building was done by convicts. The story is that convicts were transported here from all over the kingdom."

"Did they live in the city?"

"No; they had a kind of camp across the creek. They dug out the harbour too, and kept it clear of sand. You can still see the marks of their pickaxes along the cliffs; I'll show them to you some day.

My father knows all about it, because his great-great-great-great-- grandfather (and a heap more 'greats,' I don't know how many) was the only one saved when the city was buried."

"Was he from the city, or one of the convicts?" asked Honoria, who had not forgiven George's a.s.sault upon her doll.

"He was a baby at the time, and couldn't remember," George answered, with fine composure. "They say he was found high up the creek, just where you cross it by the foot-bridge. The bridge is covered at high water; and if you try to cross below, especially when the tide is flowing, just you look out! Twice a day the sands become quick there. They've swallowed scores. I'll tell you another thing: there's a bird builds somewhere in the cliffs there--a crake, the people call it--and they say that whenever he goes crying about the sands, it means that a man will be drowned there."

"Rubbish! I don't believe in your city."

"Very well, then, I'll tell you something else. The fishermen have seen it--five or six of them. You know the kind of haze that gets up sometimes on hot days, when the sun's drawing water? They say that if you're a mile or two out and this happens between you and Langona Creek, you can see the city quite plain above the sh.o.r.e, with the seven churches and all."

"_I_ can see it!" Taffy blurted this out almost without knowing that he spoke; and blushed furiously when George laughed. "I mean--I'm sure--" he began to explain.

"If you can see it," said Honoria, "you had better describe George's property for him." She yawned. "He can't tell the story himself-- not one little bit."

"Right you are, miss," George agreed. "Fire away, Taffy."

Taffy thought for a minute, then, still with a red face, began.

"It is all true, as George says. A fine city lies there, covered with the sands; and this was what happened. The King of Langona had a son, a handsome young Prince, who lived at home until he was eighteen, and then went on his travels. That was the custom, you know. The Prince took only his foster-brother, whose name was John, and they travelled for three years. On their way back, as they came to Langona Creek, they saw the convicts at work, and in one of the fields was a girl digging alone. She had a ring round her ankle, like the rest, with a chain and iron weight, but she was the most beautiful girl the Prince had ever seen. So he pulled up his horse and asked her who she was, and how she came to be wearing the chain.

She told him she was no convict, but the daughter of a convict, and it was the law for the convict's children to wear these things.

'To-night,' said the Prince, 'you shall wear a ring of gold and be a Princess,' and he commanded John to file away the ring and take her upon his horse. They rode across the creak and came to the palace; and the Prince, after kissing his father and mother, said, 'I have brought you all kinds of presents from abroad; but best of all I have brought home a bride.' His parents, who wondered at her beauty, and never doubted but that she must be a king's daughter, were full of joy, and set the bells ringing in all the seven churches. So for a year everybody was happy, and at the end of that time a son was born."

"You're making it up," said Honoria. Taffy's _own_ stories always puzzled her, with hints and echoes from other stories she half-remembered, but could seldom trace home. He had too cunning a gift.

George said, "Do be quiet! Of course he's making it up, but who wants to know _that?_"

"Two days afterward," Taffy went on, "the Prince was out hunting with his foster-brother. The Princess in her bed at home complained to her mother-in-law, 'Mother, my feet are cold. Bring me another rug to wrap them in.' The Queen did so, but as she covered the Princess's feet she saw the red mark left by the ankle ring, and knew that her son's wife was no true Princess, but a convict's daughter.

And full of rage and shame she went away and mixed two cups.

The first she gave to the Princess to drink; and when it had killed her (for it was poison) she dipped a finger into the dregs and rubbed it inside the child's lips, and very soon he was dead too. Then she sent for two ankle-chains and weights--one larger and one very small--and fitted them on the two bodies and had them flung into the creek. When the Prince came home he asked after his wife. 'She is sleeping,' said the Queen, 'and you must be thirsty with hunting?'

She held out the second cup, and the Prince drank and pa.s.sed it to John, who drank also. Now in this cup was a drug which took away all memory. And at once the Prince forgot all about his wife and child; and John forgot too.

"For weeks after this the Prince complained that he felt unwell.

He told the doctors that there was an empty place in his head, and they advised him to fill it by travelling. So he set out again, and John went with him as before. On their journey they stayed for a week with the King of Spain, and there the Prince fell in love with the King of Spain's daughter, and married her, and brought her home at the end of a year, during which she, too, had brought him a son.

"The night after their return, when the Prince and his second wife slept, John kept watch outside the door. About midnight he heard the noise of a chain dragging, but very softly, and up the stairs came a lady in white with a child in her arms. John knew his former mistress at once, and all his memory came back to him, but she put a finger to her lips and went past him into the bed-chamber. She went to the bed, laid a hand on her husband's pillow, and whispered:"

'Wife and babe below the river, Twice will I come and then come never.'

"Without another word she turned and went slowly past John and down the stairs."

"I know _that_, anyhow," Honoria interrupted. "That's 'East of the Sun and West of the Moon,' or else it's the Princess whose brother was changed into a Roebuck, or else--" But George flicked a pebble at her, and Taffy went on, warming more and more to the story:--

"In the morning, when the Prince woke, his second wife saw his pillow on the side farthest from her, and it was wet. 'Husband,' she said, 'you have been weeping to-night.' 'Well,' said he, 'that is queer, though, for I haven't wept since I was a boy. It's true, though, that I had a miserable dream.' But when he tried to remember it, he could not.

"The same thing happened on the second night, only the dead wife said:"

'Wife and babe below the river, Once will I come and then come never.'

"And again in the morning there was a mark on the pillow where her wet hand had rested. But the Prince in the morning could remember nothing. On the third night she came and said:"

'Wife and babe below the river, Now I am gone and gone for ever,'

"And went down the stairs with such a reproachful look at John that his heart melted and he ran after her. But at the outer door a flash of lightning met him, and such a storm broke over the palace and city as had never been before and never will be again.

"John heard screams, and the noise of doors banging and feet running throughout the palace; he turned back and met the Prince, his master, coming downstairs with his child in his arms. The lightning stroke had killed his second wife where she lay. John followed him out into the streets, where the people were running to and fro, and through the whirling sand to the ford which crossed the creek a mile above the city. And there, as they stepped into the water, a woman rose before John, with a child in her arms, and said: 'Carry us.'

The Prince, who was leading, did not see. John took them on his back, but they were heavy because of the iron chains and weights on their ankles, and the sands sank under him. Then, by-and-by, the first wife put her child into John's arms and said, 'Save him,' and slipped off his back into the water. 'What sound was that?' asked the Prince. 'That was my heart cracking,' said John. So they went on till the sand rose half-way to their knees. Then the Prince stopped and put his child into John's arms. 'Save him,' he said, and fell forward on his face; and John's heart cracked again. But he went forward in the darkness until the water rose to his waist, and the sand to his knees. He was close to the farther sh.o.r.e now, but could not reach it unless he dropped one of the children; and this he would not do. He bent forward, holding out one in each arm, and could just manage to push them up the bank and prop them there with his open hand; and while he bent, the tide rose and his heart cracked for the third time. Though he was dead, his stiff arms kept the children propped against the bank. But just at the turning of the tide the one with the ankle-weight slipped and was drowned.

The other was found next morning by the inland people, high and dry.

And some _do_ say," Taffy wound up, "that his brother was not really drowned, but turned into a bird, and that, though no one has seen him, it is his voice that gives the '_crake_,' imitating the sound made by John's heart when it burst; but others say it comes from John himself, down there below the sands."

There was silence for a minute. Even Honoria had grown excited toward the end.

"But it was unfair!" she broke out. "It ought to have been the convict-child that was saved."

"If so, I shouldn't be here," said George; "and it's not very nice of you to say it."