A Great Emergency and Other Tales Part 5

When we were fairly off we ventured to peep out a little, and stretch our cramped limbs. There was no one on board but the barge-master, and he was at the other end of the vessel, smoking and minding his rudder. The driver was walking on the towing-path by the old grey horse. The motion of the boat was so smooth that we seemed to be lying still whilst villages and orchards and green banks and osier-beds went slowly by, as though the world were coming to show itself to us, instead of our going out to see the world.

When we pa.s.sed the town we felt some anxiety for fear we should be stopped; but there was no one on the bank, and though the towers of S.

Philip and S. James appeared again and again in lessening size as we looked back, there came at last a bend in the ca.n.a.l, when a high bank of gorse shut out the distance, and we saw them no more.

In about an hour, having had no breakfast, we began to speak seriously of the pie. (I had observed Fred breaking little corners from the crust with an absent air more than once.) Thinking of the first subdivision under the word Hards.h.i.+ps in my handbook, I said, "I'm afraid we ought to wait till we are _worse hungry_."

But Fred said, "Oh no!" And that out adventure-seeking it was quite impossible to save and plan and divide your meals exactly, as you could never tell what might turn up. The captain always said, "Take good luck and bad luck and pot-luck as they come!" So Fred a.s.sured me, and we resolved to abide by the captain's rule.

"We may have to weigh out our food with a bullet, like Admiral Bligh, next week," said Fred.

"So we may," said I. And the thought must have given an extra relish to the beefsteak and hard-boiled eggs, for I never tasted anything so good.

Whether the smell of the pie went aft, or whether something else made the barge-master turn round and come forward, I do not know; but when we were enc.u.mbered with open clasp-knives, and full mouths, we saw him bearing down upon us, and in a hasty movement of retreat I lost my balance, and went backward with a crash upon a tub of potatoes.

The noise this made was not the worst part of the business. I was tightly wedged amongst the odds and ends, and the money-bag being sharply crushed against the match-box, which was by this time well warmed, the matches exploded in a body, and whilst I was putting as heroic a face as I could on the pain I was enduring in my right funny-bone, Fred cried, "Your jacket's smoking. You're on fire!"

Whether Mr. Rowe, the barge-master, had learnt presence of mind out of a book, I do not know; but before Fred and I could even think of what to do in the emergency, my jacket was off, the matches were overboard, and Mr. Rowe was squeezing the smouldering fire out of my pocket, rather more deliberately than most men brush their hats. Then, after civilly holding the jacket for me to put it on again, he took off his hat, took his handkerchief out of it, and wiped his head, and replacing both, with his eyes upon us, said, more deliberately still, "Well, young gentlemen, this is a nice start!"

It was impossible to resist the feeling of confidence inspired by Mr.

Rowe's manner, his shrewd and stolid appearance, and his promptness in an emergency. Besides, we were completely at his mercy. We appealed to it, and told him our plans. We offered him a share of the pie too, which he accepted with conscious condescension. When the dish was empty he brought his handkerchief into use once more, and then said, in a peculiarly oracular manner, "You just look to me, young gentlemen, and I'll put you in the way of every think."

The immediate advantage we took of this offer was to ask about whatever interested us in the landscape constantly pa.s.sing before our eyes, or the barge-furniture at our feet. The cord-compressed b.a.l.l.s were sh.o.r.e-fenders, said Mr. Rowe, and were popped over the side when the barge was likely to grate against the sh.o.r.e, or against another vessel.

"Them's osier-beds. They cuts 'em every year or so for basket-work.

Wot's that little bird a-hanging head downwards? It's a t.i.tmouse looking for insects, that is. There's scores on 'em in the osier-beds.

Aye, aye, the yellow lilies is pretty enough, but there's a lake the other way--a mile or two beyond your father's, Master Fred--where there's white water-lilies. They're pretty, if you like! It's a rum thing in spring," continued Mr. Rowe, between puffs of his pipe, "to see them lilies come up from the bottom of the ca.n.a.l; the leaves packed as neat as any parcel, and when they git to the top, they turns down and spreads out on the water as flat as you could spread a cloth upon a table."

As a rule, Mr. Rowe could give us no names for the aquatic plants at which we clutched as we went by, nor for the sh.e.l.ls we got out of the mud; but his eye for a water-rat was like a terrier's. It was the only thing which seemed to excite him.

About mid-day we stopped by a village, where Mr. Rowe had business.

The horse was to rest and bait here; and the barge-master told us that if we had "a s.h.i.+lling or so about" us, we might dine on excellent bread and cheese at the _White Lion_, or even go so far as poached eggs and yet more excellent bacon, if our resources allowed of it. We were not sorry to go ash.o.r.e. There was absolutely no shelter on the deck of the barge from the suns.h.i.+ne, which was glaringly reflected by the water. The inn parlour was low, but it was dark and cool. I felt doubtful about the luxury even of cheese after that beefsteak-pie but Fred smacked his lips and ordered eggs and bacon, and I paid for them out of the canvas-bag.

As we sat together I said, "I wrote a letter to my mother, Fred. Did you write to Mrs. Johnson?"

Fred nodded, and pulled a sc.r.a.p of dirty paper from his pocket, saying, "That's the letter; but I made a tidy copy of it afterwards."

I have said that Fred was below me in cla.s.s, though he is older; and he was very bad at spelling. Otherwise the letter did very well, except for smudges.

"DEAR MOTHER,

"Charlie and I are going to run away at least by the time you get this we have run away but never mind for wen weve seen the wurld were c.u.mming back we took the pi wich I hope you wont mind as we had no brekfust and I'll bring back the dish we send our best love and I've no more to tell you to-day from your affectionate son FRED."

I saw Mr. Rowe myself very busy in the bar of the _White Lion_, with a sheet of paper and an old steel pen, which looked as if the point had been attenuated to that hair-like fineness by sheer age. He started at the sight of me, which caused him to drop a very large blot of ink from the very sharp point of the pen on to his paper. I left him wiping it up with his handkerchief. But it never struck me that he was writing a letter on the same subject as Fred and I had been writing about. He was, however: and Mr. Johnson keeps it tied up with Fred's to this day. The spelling was of about the same order.

"MR. JOHNSON. HONERD SIR.

"i rites in duty bound to acqaint you that the young genlemen is with me, looking out for Advenchurs and asking your pardon i wish they may find them as innercent as 2 Babes in the Wood on the London and Lancingford Ca.n.a.l were they come aboard quite unknown to me and blowed theirselves up with lucifers the fust go off and you've no need to trubble yourself sir ill keep my I on them and bring em safe to hand with return cargo and hoping you'll excuse the stamp not expecting to have to rite from the fust stoppige your obedient humble servant

"SAMUEL ROWE."

As I have said, we did not suspect that Mr. Rowe had betrayed us by post; but in the course of the afternoon Fred said to me, "I'll tell you what, Charlie, I know old Rowe well, and he's up to any trick, and sure to want to keep in with my father. If we don't take care he'll take us back with him. And what fools we shall look then!"

The idea was intolerable; but I warned Fred to carefully avoid betraying that we suspected him. The captain had had worse enemies to outwit, and had kept a pirate in good humour for a much longer voyage by affability and rum. We had no means of clouding Mr. Rowe's particularly sharp wits with grog, but we resolved to be amiable and wary, and when we did get to London to look out for the first opportunity of giving the barge-master the slip.

CHAPTER IX.

A COASTING VOYAGE--MUSK ISLAND--LINNET FLASH--MR. ROWE AN OLD TAR--THE DOG-FANCIER AT HOME.

It was a delightful feature of our first voyage--and one which we could not hope to enjoy so often in voyages to come--that we were always close to land, and this on both sides. We could touch either coast without difficulty, and as the barge stopped several times during the day to rest the horse, Fred and I had more than one chance of going ash.o.r.e.

I hope to have many a voyage yet, and to see stranger people and places than I saw then, but I hardly hope ever to enjoy myself so much again. I have long ago found out that Fred's stories of the captain's adventures were not true stories, and as I have read and learned more about the world than I knew at that time, I know now that there are only certain things which one can meet with by land or by sea. But when Fred and I made our first voyage in emulation of his grandfather there was no limit to my expectations, or to what we were prepared to see or experience at every fresh bend of the London and Lancingford Ca.n.a.l.

I remember one of Fred's stories about the captain was of his spending a year and a day on an island called Musk Island, in the Pacific. He had left the s.h.i.+p, Fred said, to do a little exploring alone in his gig. Not knowing at that time that the captain's gig is a boat, I was a good deal puzzled, I remember, to think of Mrs. Johnson's red-faced father crossing the sea in a gig like the one Mr. Bustard used to go his professional "rounds" in. And when Fred spoke of his "pulling himself" I was yet more bewildered by the unavoidable conclusion that they had no horse on board, and that the gallant and ever-ready captain went himself between the shafts. The wonder of his getting to Musk Island in that fas.h.i.+on was, however, eclipsed by the wonders he found when he did get there. Musk-hedges and bowers ten feet high, with flowers as large as bindweed blossoms, and ladies with pale gold hair all dressed in straw-coloured satin, and with such lovely faces that the captain vowed that no power on earth should move him till he had learned enough of the language to propose the health of the Musk Island beauties in a suitable speech after dinner. "And there he would have lived and died, I believe," Fred would say, "if that first mate, who saved his life before, had not rescued him by main force, and taken him back to his s.h.i.+p."

I am reminded of this story when I think of the island in Linnet Lake, for we were so deeply charmed by it that we very nearly broke our voyage, as the captain broke his, to settle on it.

Mr. Rowe called the lake Linnet Flash. Wherever the ca.n.a.l seemed to spread out, and then go on again narrow and like a river, the barge-master called these lakes "flashes" of the ca.n.a.l. There is no other flash on that ca.n.a.l so large or so beautiful as Linnet Lake, and in the middle of the lake lies the island.

It was about three o'clock, the hottest part of a summer's day, and Fred and I, rather faint with the heat, were sitting on a coil of rope holding a clean sheet, which Mr. Rowe had brought up from the cabin to protect our heads and backs from sunstroke. We had refused to take shelter below, and sat watching the fields and hedges, which seemed to palpitate in the heat as they went giddily by, and Mr. Rowe, who stood quite steady, conversing coolly with the driver. The driver had been on board for the last hour, the way being clear, and the old horse quite able to take care of itself and us, and he and the barge-master had pocket-handkerchiefs under their hats like the sou'-wester flaps of the captain's sea-friends. Fred had dropped his end of the sheet to fall asleep, and I was protecting us both, when the driver bawled some directions to the horse in their common language, and the barge-master said, "Here's a bit of shade for you, Master Fred;" and we roused up and found ourselves gliding under the lee of an island covered with trees.

"Oh, _do_ stop here!" we both cried.

"Well, I don't mind," said Mr. Rowe, removing his hat, and mopping himself with his very useful pocket-handkerchief. "Jem, there's a bit of gra.s.s there, let her have a mouthful."

"I thought you'd like this," he continued; "there ain't a prettier bit between here and Pyebridge."

It was so lovely, that the same idea seized both Fred and me: Why not settle here, at least for a time? It was an uninhabited island, only waiting to be claimed by some adventurous navigator, and obviously fertile. The prospect of blackberries on the mainland was particularly fine, and how they would ripen in this blazing sun! Birds sang in the trees above; fish leaping after flies broke the still surface of the water with a musical splash below; and beyond a doubt there must be the largest and the sweetest of earth-nuts on the island, easy to get out of the deep beds of untouched leaf-mould. And when Mr. Rowe cried "Look!" and we saw a water-fowl scud across the lake, leaving a sharp trail like a line of light behind her, we felt that we might spend all our savings in getting to the Pacific Ocean, and not find when we got there a place which offered more natural resources to the desert islander.

If the barge-master would have gone ash.o.r.e on the mainland out of the way, and if we could have got ash.o.r.e on the island without help, we should not have confided our plans to so doubtful a friend. As it was, we were obliged to tell Mr. Rowe that we proposed to found a settlement in Linnet Lake, and he was completely opposed to the idea.

It was only when he said (with that air of reserved and funded knowledge which gave such unfathomable depth to his irony, and made his sayings so oracular)--"There's very different places in the world to Linnet Flash"--that we began to be ashamed of our hasty enthusiasm, and to think that it would be a pity to stop so short in our adventurous career.

So we decided to go on; but the masterly way in which Mr. Rowe spoke of the world made me think he must have seen a good deal of it, and when we had looked our last upon the island, and had crept with lowered mast under an old brick bridge where young ferns hung down from the archway, and when we were once more travelling between flat banks and coppices that gave us no shelter, I said to the barge-master--"Have you ever been at sea, Mr. Rowe?"

"Seven_teen_ year in the Royal Navy," said Mr. Rowe, with a strong emphasis upon _teen_, as if he feared we might do him the injustice of thinking he had only served his Queen and country for seven.

For the next two hours Fred and I sat, indifferent alike to the suns.h.i.+ne and the sh.o.r.e, in rapt attention to Mr. Rowe's narrative of his experiences at sea under the flag that has

"Braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze."

I believe Fred enjoyed them simply as stories, but they fanned in my heart that restless fever for which sea-breezes are the only cure. I think Mr. Rowe got excited himself as he recalled old times. And when he began to bawl sea-songs with a voice like an Atlantic gale, and when he vowed in cadence

"A sailor's life is the life for me,"

I felt that it was the life for me also, and expressed myself so strongly to that effect that Mr. Rowe became alarmed for the consequences of his indiscretion, and thenceforward told us sea-stories with the obvious and quite futile intention of disgusting me with what I already looked upon as my profession.