Bevis Part 22

"You'll be summoned," said Bevis. "There will be a muster-roll and a trumpet blown, and you'll have to march a thousand miles."

"All right."

"And the swords have to be made, and the eagles, besides the map of the roads and the grub,"--("Provisions," said Mark)--"provisions, of course, and all the rest, and how do you think a war is to be got ready in a minute, you stupes!" in a tone of great indignation.

They grumbled: they wanted a big battle on the spot.

"If you bother me much," said Bevis, "while I'm getting the fleet ready, there shan't be a war at all."

"Are you getting a fleet?"

"Here are the sails," said Mark, holding up some canvas.

"Well, you won't be long?"

"You'll let us know?"

"Shall we tell anybody else?"

"Lots," said Bevis; "tell lots. We're going to have the biggest armies ever seen."

"Thousands," said Mark. "Millions!"

"Millions!" said Bevis.

"Hurrah!" they shouted.

"Here," said Bevis, throwing the remainder of the cherries out like a shower among them.

"Are you coming to quoits?"

"O! no," said Mark, "we have so much to do; now go away." The soldiery moved off through the garden, s.n.a.t.c.hing lawlessly at any fruit they saw.

"Mark," said Bevis on his knees again, "these sails will have to be hemmed, you know."

"So they will."

"We can't do it. You must take them home to Frances, and make her st.i.tch them; roll them up and go directly."

"I don't want to go home," said Mark. "And perhaps she won't st.i.tch them."

"I'm sure she will; she will do anything for me."

"So she will," said Mark rather sullenly. "Everybody does everything for you."

Bevis had rolled up the sails, quite indifferent as to what people did for him, and put them into Mark's unwilling hands.

"Now you can have the donkey, and mind and come back before breakfast."

"I can't catch him," said Mark.

"No; no more can I--stop. John Young's sure to be in the stable, he can."

"Ah," said Mark, brightening up a little, "that moke is a beast."

John Young, having stipulated for a "pot," went to catch the donkey; they sat down in the shed to wait for him, but as he did not come for some time they went after him. They met him in the next field leading the donkey with a halter, and red as fire from running. They took the halter and sent John away for the "pot." There was a wicked thought in their hearts, and they wanted witnesses away. So soon as John had gone, Mark looked at Bevis, and Bevis looked at Mark. Mark growled, Bevis stamped his feet.

"Beast!" said Mark.

"Wretch!" said Bevis.

"You--you--you, Thing," said Mark; they ground their teeth, and glared at the animal. They led him all fearful to a tree, a little tree but stout enough; it was an ash, and it grew somewhat away from the hedge.

They tied him firmly to the tree, and then they scourged this miserable citizen.

All the times they had run in vain to catch him; all the times they had had to walk when they might have ridden one behind the other on his back; all his refusals to be tempted; all the wrongs they had endured at his heels boiled in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. They broke their sticks upon his back, they cut new ones, and smashed them too, they hurled the fragments at him, and then got some more. They thrashed, thwacked, banged, thumped, poked, prodded, kicked, belaboured, b.u.mped, and hit him, working themselves into a frenzy of rage.

Mark fetched a pole to knock him the harder as it was heavy; Bevis crushed into the hedge, and brought out a dead log to hurl at him, a log he could but just lift and swung to throw with difficulty,--the same Bevis who put an aspen leaf carefully under the fly to save it from drowning. The sky was blue, and the evening beautiful, but no one came to help the donkey.

When they were tired, they sat down and rested, and after they were cooler and had recovered from the fatigue, they loosed him--quite cowed this time and docile, and Mark, with the parcel of sails, got on his back. After all this onslaught there did not seem any difference in him except that his coat had been well dusted. This immunity aggravated them; they could not hurt him.

"Put him in the stable all night," said Bevis, "and don't give him anything to eat."

"And no water," said Mark, as he rode off. "So I will."

And so he did. But the donkey had cropped all day, and was full, and just before John Young caught him had had a draught, rather unusual for him and equal to an omen, at the drinking-place by the raft. The donkey slept, and beat them.

After Mark had gone Bevis returned to the bench-room, and fastened a bra.s.s curtain-ring to the mast, which they had carried up there. When he had finished, noticing the three phials of poison he thought he would go and see if he could find out any more fatal plants. There was an ancient encyclopaedia in the bookcase, in which he had read many curious things, such as would not be considered practical enough for modern publication, which must be dry or nothing. Among the rest was a page of chemical signs and those used by the alchemists, some of which he had copied off for magic. Pulling out the volumes, which were piled haphazard, like bricks shot out of a cart, there was one that had all the alphabets employed in the different languages, Coptic, Gothic, Ethiopic, Syriac, and so on.

The Arabic took his fancy as the most mysterious--the sweeping curves, the quivering lines, the blots where the reed pen thickened, there was no knowing what such writing might not mean. How mystic the lettering which forms the running ornament of the Alhambra! It is the writing of the Orient, of the alchemist and enchanter, the astrologer and the prophet.

Bevis copied the alphabet, and then he made a roll of a broad sheet of yellowish paper torn from the end of one of the large volumes, a fly-leaf, and wrote the letters upon it in such a manner as their shape and flowing contour arranged themselves. With these he mingled the alchemic signs for fire and air and water, and so by the time the dusk crept into the parlour and filled it with shadow he had completed a ma.n.u.script. This he rolled up and tied with string, intending to bury it in the sand of the quarry, so that when they sailed round in the s.h.i.+p they might land and discover it.

Mark returned to breakfast, and said that Frances had promised to hem the sails, and thought it would not take long. Bevis showed him the roll.

"It looks magic," said Mark. "What does it mean?"

"I don't know," said Bevis. "That is what we shall have to find out when we discover it. Besides the magic is never in the writing; it is what you see when you read it--it's like looking in a looking-gla.s.s, and seeing people moving about a thousand miles away."

"I know," said Mark. "We can put it in a sand-martin's hole, then it won't get wet if it rains."

They started for the bathing-place, and carefully deposited the roll in a sand-martin's hole some way up the face of the quarry, covering it with sand. To know the spot again, they counted and found it was the third burrow to the right, if you stood by the stone heap and looked straight towards the first sycamore-tree. Having taken the bearings, they dragged the catamaran down to the water, and had a swim. When they came out, and were running about on the high ground by the sycamores, they caught sight of a dog-cart slowly crossing the field a long way off, and immediately hid behind a tree to reconnoitre the new savage, themselves unseen.

"It's Jack," said Bevis; "I'm sure it is." It was Jack, and he was going at a walking pace, because the track across the field was rough, and he did not care to get to the gateway before the man sent to open it had arrived there. His object was to look at some gra.s.s to rent for his sheep.

"Yes, it's Jack," said Mark, very slowly and doubtfully. Bevis looked at him.

"Well, suppose it is; he won't hurt us. We can easily shoot him if he comes here."

"But the letter," said Mark.