Twenty-Four Unusual Stories for Boys and Girls Part 23

And round and round the common he went, but find his gate he could not.

Every time he pa.s.sed the ruins of the church a laugh came up from the pool below the ruins, and once he thought he saw a dancing light on the edge of the pool, where a lot of reeds and rushes were growing.

"The Little Man in the Lantern is about to-night,"[22] he said to himself, as he glanced at the pool. "But I never knew he was given to laughing before."

Once more he went round the common, and when he had pa.s.sed the ruins he heard giggling and laughing, this time quite close to him; and looking down on the gra.s.s, he saw to his astonishment hundreds of Little Men and Little Women with tiny lights in their hands, which they were _flinking_[23] about as they laughed and giggled.

The Little Men wore stocking-caps, the color of ripe briar berries, and gra.s.s-green coats, and the Little Women had on old grandmother cloaks of the same vivid hue as the Wee Men's coats, and they also wore little scarlet hoods.

"I believe the great big chap sees us," said one of the Little Men, catching sight of Jan's astonished face. "He must be Piskey-eyed, and we did not know it."

"Is he really?" cried one of the _d.i.n.ky_[24] Women. "'Tis a pity, but we'll have our game over him just the same."

"That we will," cried all the Little Men and Little Women in one voice; and, forming a ring round the great tall fellow, they began to dance round him, laughing, giggling and flas.h.i.+ng up their lights as they danced.

They went round him so fast that poor Jan was quite bewildered, and whichever way he looked there were these Little Men and Little Women giggling up into his bearded face. And when he tried to break through their ring they went before him and behind him, making a game over him.

He was at their mercy and they knew it; and when they saw the great fellow's misery, they only laughed and giggled the more.

"We've got him!" they cried to each other, and they said it with such gusto and with such a comical expression on their tiny brown faces, that Jan, bewildered as he was, and tired with going round the common so many times, could not help laughing, they looked so very funny, particularly when the Little Women winked up at him from under their little scarlet hoods.

The Piskeys--for they were Piskeys[25]--hurried him down the common, dancing round him all the time; and when he got there he felt so mizzy-mazey with those tiny whirling figures going round and round him like a whirligig, that he did not know whether he was standing on his head or his heels. He was also in a bath of perspiration--"sweating leaking," he said--and, putting his hand in his pocket to take out a handkerchief to mop his face, he remembered having been told that, if he ever got Piskey-laden, he must turn his coat pockets inside out, then he would be free at once from his Piskey tormentors. And in a minute or less his coat-pockets were hanging out, and all the Little Men and the Little Women had vanished, and there, right in front of him, he saw his own gate! He lost no time in opening it, and in a very short time was in his thatched cottage on the cliff.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MY GRANDFATHER, HENDRY WATTY]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 20: From _Legends and Tales of North Cornwall_, by Enys Tregarthen. Wells Gardner, Darton & Co.]

[Footnote 21: Mad.]

[Footnote 22: Jack-o'-Lantern. Will-o'-the-Wisp. The Piskey Puck. Some say he walks about carrying a lantern, others, that he goes over the moors _in_ his lantern.]

[Footnote 23: Waving.]

[Footnote 24: Little.]

[Footnote 25: In Cornwall, these "little Ancient People" are called _Piskeys_. In England and Ireland, _Pixies_.]

MY GRANDFATHER, HENDRY WATTY[26]

A DROLL

'TIS the nicest miss in the world that I was born grandson of my own father's father, and not of another man altogether.

Hendry Watty was the name of my grandfather that might have been; and he always maintained that to all intents and purposes he _was_ my grandfather, and made me call him so--'twas such a narrow shave. I don't mind telling you about it. 'Tis a curious tale, too.

My grandfather, Hendry Watty, bet four gallons of eggy-hot that he would row out to the s.h.i.+vering Grounds, all in the dead waste of the night, and haul a trammel there. To find the s.h.i.+vering Grounds by night, you get the Gull Rock in a line with Tregamenna and pull out till you open the light on St. Anthony's Point; but everybody gives the place a wide berth because Archelaus Rowett's lugger foundered there one time, with six hands on board; and they say that at night you can hear the drowned men hailing their names. But my grandfather was the boldest man in Port Loe, and said he didn't care. So one Christmas Eve by daylight he and his mates went out and tilled the trammel; and then they came back and spent the forepart of the evening over the eggy-hot, down to Oliver's tiddly-wink,[27] to keep my grandfather's spirits up and also to show that the bet was made in earnest.

'Twas past eleven o'clock when they left Oliver's and walked down to the cove to see my grandfather off. He has told me since that he didn't feel afraid at all, but very friendly in mind, especially toward William John Dunn, who was walking on his right hand. This puzzled him at the first, for as a rule he didn't think much of William John Dunn. But now he shook hands with him several times, and just as he was stepping into the boat he says, "You'll take care of Mary Polly while I'm away." Mary Polly Polsue was my grandfather's sweetheart at that time. But why my grandfather should have spoken as if he was bound on a long voyage he never could tell; he used to set it down to fate.

"I will," said William John Dunn; and then they gave a cheer and pushed my grandfather off, and he lit his pipe and away he rowed all into the dead waste of the night. He rowed and rowed, all in the dead waste the night; and he got the Gull Rock in a line with Tregamenna windows; and still he was rowing, when to his great surprise he heard a voice calling:

_"Hendry Watty! Hendry Watty!"_

I told you my grandfather was the boldest man in Port Loe. But he dropped his two oars now, and made the five signs of Penitence. For who could it be calling him out here in the dead waste and middle of the night?

"HENDRY WATTY! HENDRY WATTY! _drop me a line_."

My grandfather kept his fis.h.i.+ng-lines in a little skivet under the stern-sheets. But not a trace of bait had he on board. If he had, he was too much a-tremble to bait a hook.

"HENDRY WATTY! HENDRY WATTY! _drop me a line, or I'll know why_."

My poor grandfather had by this picked up his oars again, and was rowing like mad to get quit of the neighborhood, when something or somebody gave three knocks--_thump, thump, thump!_--on the bottom of the boat, just as you would knock on a door.

The third thump fetched Hendry Watty upright on his legs. He had no more heart for disobeying, but having bitten his pipe-stem in half by this time--his teeth chattered so--he baited his hook with the broken bit and flung it overboard, letting the line run out in the stern-notch.

Not half-way had it run before he felt a long pull on it, like the sucking of a dog-fish.

_"Hendry Watty! Hendry Watty! pull me in."_

Hendry Watty pulled in hand over fist, and in came the lead sinker over the notch, and still the line was heavy; he pulled and he pulled, and next, all out of the dead waste of the night, came two white hands, like a washerwoman's, and gripped hold of the stern-board; and on the left of these two hands, was a silver ring, sunk very deep in the flesh. If this was bad, worse was the face that followed--and if this was bad for anybody, it was worse for my grandfather who had known Archelaus Rowett before he was drowned out on the s.h.i.+vering Grounds, six years before.

Archelaus Rowett climbed in over the stern, pulled the hook with the bit of pipe-stem out of his cheek, sat down in the stern-sheets, shook a small crayfish out of his whiskers, and said very coolly: "If you should come across my wife--"

That was all that my grandfather stayed to hear. At the sound of Archelaus's voice he fetched a yell, jumped clean over the side of the boat and swam for dear life. He swam and swam, till by the bit of the moon he saw the Gull Rock close ahead. There were las.h.i.+n's of rats on the Gull Rock, as he knew; but he was a good deal surprised at the way they were behaving, for they sat in a row at the water's edge and fished, with their tails let down into the sea for fis.h.i.+ng-lines; and their eyes were like garnets burning as they looked at my grandfather over their shoulders.

"Hendry Watty! Hendry Watty! you can't land here--you're disturbing the pollack."

"Bejimbers! I wouldn' do that for the world," says my grandfather; so off he pushes and swims for the mainland. This was a long job, and it was as much as he could do to reach Kibberick beach, where he fell on his face and hands among the stones, and there lay, taking breath.

The breath was hardly back in his body before he heard footsteps, and along the beach came a woman, and pa.s.sed close by to him. He lay very quiet, and as she came near he saw 'twas Sarah Rowett, that used to be Archelaus's wife, but had married another man since. She was knitting as she went by, and did not seem to notice my grandfather; but he heard her say to herself, "The hour is come, and the man is come."

He had scarcely begun to wonder over this when he spied a ball of worsted yarn beside him that Sarah had dropped. 'Twas the ball she was knitting from, and a line of worsted stretched after her along the beach. Hendry Watty picked up the ball and followed the thread on tiptoe. In less than a minute he came near enough to watch what she was doing; and what she did was worth watching. First she gathered wreckwood and straw, and struck flint over touchwood and teened a fire. Then she unraveled her knitting; twisted her end of the yarn between finger and thumb--like a cobbler twisting a wax-end--and cast the end up towards the sky. It made Hendry Watty stare when the thread, instead of falling back to the ground, remained hanging, just as if 'twas fastened to something up above; but it made him stare still more when Sarah Rowett began to climb up it, and away up till nothing could be seen of her but her ankles dangling out of the dead waste and middle of the night.

"HENDRY WATTY! HENDRY WATTY!"

It wasn't Sarah calling, but a voice far away out to sea.

"HENDRY WATTY! HENDRY WATTY! _send me a line!"_

My grandfather was wondering what to do, when Sarah speaks down very sharp to him, out of the dark:

"Hendry Watty! where's the rocket apparatus? Can't you hear the poor fellow asking for a line?"