Princess Mary's Gift Book Part 2

While we were discussing the matter Hankly came up to us and said he heard that Mrs. Mimms was to be arrested at once as a German spy.

"Tompkins," he said, "is going about the village saying that she ought to be shot."

Tompkins always blamed Mrs. Mimms for the sealing up of the village pump, and had never spoken a good word about her since. The vicar was greatly put out.

"Tut--tut!" he said; "arrested! shot! Nonsense. Mrs. Mimms is a most estimable lady."

"I'm not so sure about that," said Hankly. "Those boys have been watching her lately, and there are several things which look suspicious."

I suppose the vicar and I showed our surprise. Hankly went on to explain.

"She gives the boys peaches and grapes," he said, "and cakes and meringues. Now I put it to you--the apples of course I understand. I might give a boy an apple myself, but I put it to you, vicar, would anybody give boys like that hothouse grapes and peaches unless--well, unless there was something to conceal. It's not a natural thing to do."

"Now I come to think of it," said the vicar, "I did meet one of them yesterday with a peach in his fist."

"There you are," said Hankly triumphantly, "and, anyhow, the police inspector is coming over to-day to look into the matter."

Mrs. Mimms was not actually arrested. The police inspector--acting on information received from the Boy Scouts, Tompkins, and indeed almost every one in the village--made a lot of inquiries about her. He did not succeed in finding out why she called herself "the Honourable," but the questions he asked her made her so angry that she packed up her trunks and left the village at once.

I met the Colonel the day after she left, and told him I was afraid we should all miss her. The Colonel chuckled in a self-satisfied way.

"I told you we ought to get rid of her," he said, "and we have."

"You don't mean to say you think she was really a spy?" I said.

"She was a good deal worse," said the Colonel; "she was a public nuisance."

Later on the Colonel took a kindlier view of Mrs. Mimms.

"Only for her," he said to me a week ago, "we shouldn't have had Boy Scouts here. We have quite a good company now. She did us that much good, anyhow."

The Colonel did her no more than bare justice. Our Scouts, though they have caught no more spies, have improved the general tone of the village. The Colonel is their commanding officer, and, though I do not say so in public, they have done him a lot of good.

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CHARLIE THE c.o.x

_A LIFE POEM_

BY HALL CAINE

_Painting by_ CHARLES NAPIER HEMY, R.A.

_Drawings by_ ARCH. WEBB

CHARLIE was the c.o.x of our Peel lifeboat. A braver spirit never sailed the sea.

Years ago, in a terrific gale, a s.h.i.+p from Norway, the _St. George_, came dead on for the wildest part of our coast, the fierce headland that lies back of the old Castle rock. The sound signal was fired, and Charlie and his brave comrades went out to her. She was reeling on the top of a tremendous sea, and there was no coming near to her side.

It was an awful task to get the crew aboard the lifeboat, but Charlie saved every soul, and lost not a hand of his own. When the "traveller"

was rigged and the "breeches" were ready, and the crew of the doomed s.h.i.+p were at the bulwarks waiting to leave her, Charlie sang out over the clamour of the sea:

"How many are you?"

"Twenty-four," came back as answer.

Then Charlie cried, "I can see only twenty-three."

"The other man is hurt. He's dying. No use saving him," the Norseman shouted.

"You'll bring the dying man on deck before a soul of you leaves the s.h.i.+p," cried Charlie.

There was a woman among them, and when the carpenter came scudding down the rope he had a canvas bag on his back.

"No tools here," shouted Charlie.

"It's the child," said the man.

The captain came next. He had left everything else behind him--his money, his instruments, his clothes, his s.h.i.+p--but out of his pocket there peeped the head of a baby's doll.

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It was a thrilling rescue, but to see it in all its splendour you must have a drop of our Manx blood in you. Our forefathers were from Norway, our first Norse king was named Gorry. He landed on this island, not far from this spot. And on that day of the wreck of the _St. George_ his children's children rescued from the sea the children's children of the kinsmen he had left at home.

Most of our men had Norse names. One of them was a Gorry, lineal descendant beyond doubt of the old sea king. The Norwegian Government felt the touch of great things in this incident. It was not merely that the bravery of the rescue fired their grat.i.tude. Something called to them from that deep place where blood answers to the cry of blood. They sent medals for Charlie and his crew, and the Governor of the island distributed them inside the roofless walls of the old castle of the "Black Dog." It was like grasping hands with the past across the s.p.a.ce of a thousand years.

The other day we had another great wind and another brave rescue. The sun had gone down overnight in a sullen red, very fierce and angry in his setting, and out of the black north-east the storm had come up while we slept. In the heavy grey of the dawn the sound-signal fired its double shot over our little town. A Welsh schooner, which had run in for shelter during the dark hours, was riding to an anchor in the bay and flying her ensign for help.

The sea was terrific--a slaty grey, streaked with white foam, like quartz veins. It was coming over the breakwater in sheets that hid it.

Sometimes it was flying in clouds to the top of the round tower of the castle. The white sea-fowl were like dark specks darting through it, but no human ear could hear the cry of their thousand throats in the thunderous quake of the breakers on the cavernous rocks.

A crowd of men answered the call, and there was no shortness of hands to man the lifeboat. The big, slow-legged fellows who had been idling on the quay the day before when the sea was calm were struggling, chafing, and quarrelling to go out on it now that it was in storm, for the blood of the old Vikings is in our Manxmen still.

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It was a splendid rescue. The crew of the Welshman were brought ash.o.r.e.

Then the abandoned schooner rode three hours longer in the gale, and a hundred men stood and watched her, talking of other winds and other wrecks, and of Peel boys who were out on the sea. At last the s.h.i.+p parted her cables and went rolling like a blinded porpoise dead on for the jagged coast.

Seven men took an open fis.h.i.+ng-boat and went after her, and we climbed the Head to look at them. The wind smote us there like an invisible wing, sometimes swirling us out of our course, often bringing us to our knees, and whipping our ears with our hair like rods. Sheets of spray were coming up to us from below and running along the cliffs like driven rain. The sun, which had broken in fierce brilliance from a green rent in the sky, made rainbows in the flying foam.