Chapter Four.Dick to the Rescue.“Gracious heavens! The boy will be drowned!” exclaimed Mrs Gilmour, wringing her hands frantically and rushing forward at once; while Nellie, equally excited, burst into tears, clinging to her aunt’s side. “Oh, what shall I say to his mother? He’s lost; he’s lost!”“No, he isn’t—not a bit of it; no more drowned than I am,” cried the Captain, laying his hand on Mrs Gilmour’s arm, and putting both her and Nellie back, to prevent any rash impulse on their part. “You just keep as cool as the young rascal must be now! I’ll fish him out in another minute, if you’ll leave me alone; and, he’ll be none the worse, barring a wetting.”With these words, the spry old gentleman, who was more active than many a younger man, began making his way cautiously down the treacherous slope of the rampart, aided by his trusty malacca cane, poking his stick between the niches of the stonework to act as a stay, and so prevent his slipping on too fast.But, quick as he was in his movements, hardly had he made a dozen sliding steps down the decline, the action of the whole scene being almost instantaneous, when he felt, rather than saw, some one else glide swiftly past him still more expeditiously; and then, there was another heavy plunge in thewater below, where Bob and Rover were struggling for dear life.“Bless my soul!” ejaculated the Captain, halting abruptly with the assistance of his sheet anchor, the malacca cane, as he half turned round. “The woman’s never such a fool!”He thought it was Mrs Gilmour.But, he was mistaken.Dick had anticipated them both.Bob’s unlucky slip and cry of alarm as he fell into the sea, his aunt’s exclamation of terror, the Captain’s movement to the rescue, and the grateful Dick’s perilous jump, for it was almost a leap from the top of the castle wall, were all, as has been already pointed out, the work of a moment; the chain of incidents taking much longer to describe than to happen.So, there, before you could cry ‘Jack Robinson,’ as the Captain afterwards said, two boys, instead of one, were struggling with the dog in the water; and of all these three, to heighten the excitement of the scene, Rover alone was able to swim!Bob, of course, had plunged in unwittingly, while Dick’s only thought was to help one from whom he had received such unexpected kindness; the lad not having reflected for an instant on the danger of the task he was undertaking.Now, therefore, although on reaching the water the grateful boy succeeded in carrying out his object of catching hold of Bob, both immediately sank under the surface.They came up the next moment locked together, spluttering and splattering for breath and holding up their hands for aid, an action which naturally sent them down again; the tide meanwhile sweeping them away from the shore.Rover was master of the situation—that is, he and the Captain, who by this time had scrambled down to the last ledge of the rampart, and took in the position of affairs at a glance.“Hi, Rover, good dog, fetch them out!” cried the old sailor, at the same moment throwing off his coat and preparing to go into the sea, too, if need be. “Fetch ’em out!”But, there was no necessity for this appeal to Rover, who did not require any orders or directions as to his duty.The dog, like the Captain, was quite aware of the perilous position of his young master, and had already determined in his own mind what was best to be done under such circumstances.Master Bob having come down flop on top of him as he was trying to clamber out, had in the first instance somewhat obscured his faculties; and the subsequent appearance of Dick on the scene, as he was just recovering from this douche, did not tend to make matters clearer to the retriever, whose eyes and ears were full of water, besides being moreover tired out by his previous exertions.Any hesitation poor Rover might have felt, though, barely lasted an instant; for, the sight of two figures battling for life in the sea there under his very nose, and the knowledge that one of these was his young master, brought in an instant all his sagacious instincts into play.He did not need the Captain or anybody else to tell him what to do. Not he!Giving his head a quick shake to clear his eyes and uttering a short, sharp bark, as if to say, ‘Hold on, my boys, I’m coming to help you!’ the dog appeared to scramble through the water by a series of leaps, rather than to swim, towards the spot where the two unfortunates were struggling.Reaching the pair, he at once gripped Bob’s collar in his powerful teeth and proceeded to tow him to land, Dick hanging on behind; and Rover’s muzzle was already turned shorewards, dragging his double burthen astern ere the Captain’s cry of encouragement came to his ears, although on hearing it the noble animal redoubled his efforts.It was, however, a terrible ordeal; nay, almost a hopeless one!Had the boys been conscious, Rover would have had comparatively easy work of it, as then one of them might have held on to his collar and the other to his tail, and he could have pulled them both out without much trouble; as it was, now, they clung so frantically to each other and to him that they retarded in lieu of assisting his gallant attempt to save them.But, help was at hand.Just as the Captain called out, a couple of coastguardsmen were coming round the corner of the castle on their beat towards the east pier; and, hearing his shout to Rover, they stopped.“Hullo!” cried one of the men, observing that Mrs Gilmour was in a state of great agitation, with Nellie sobbing beside her and the Captain at the bottom of the sloping rampart in the act of taking off his coat—“Anything wrong, mum?”Mrs Gilmour’s heart was so full that she could not speak at once, and the man who addressed her jumped to a wrong conclusion from the absence of any explanation at the moment.“Oh, I see, mum, he’s a-going to commit sooacide? We’ll soon spoil his little game, mum. Bear a hand, Bill, will ye?”So saying, the speaker and his comrade, with a catlike ease that came naturally to them from their practice at sea, where they had a rolling deck beneath their feet much more difficult to traverse than the slippery slope they were now on, had reached the spot where the coatless old sailor stood almost as these words were uttered, leaping down the steep descent in a sort of ‘hop-skip-and-jump’ fashion.“None o’ that!” exclaimed the elder of the two men who had previously spoken, grasping hold of one of the Captain’s arms while his mate, or ‘Bill,’ caught hold of the other. “A-going to make away with yourself, eh? Not if we knows it, sir!”At the same instant, however, Captain Dresser turned round with a face on which the animated expression produced by his determination to try and rescue the boys was mingled with a puzzled look of astonishment at being tackled in this unceremonious manner when on the very point of action.His black eyes twinkled and his bushy eyebrows moved up and down at a fine rate as he looked up indignantly to see who had dared to lay hand on him.“My stars!” ejaculated the coastguardsman Bill, dropping hold of the Captain’s arm as if it had been a hot poker, “I’m blest if it ain’t the old cap’en!”The other man also recognised him at the same time, releasing the old man equally hurriedly.“Beg pardon, sir,” he said. “Didn’t know it wer’ you, sir!”But the Captain made no reply to this apology.He only pointed to the water just below where they were standing, and where the head of Rover could be dimly seen in the gathering dusk of the evening, now rapidly closing in, splashing his way to the shore.“Boys—save—quick—drown!” he stammered out brokenly. “Quick, quick!”The men did not require any further explanation or incentive.Without stopping to doff a garment, in they both plunged, boots and all; and, before the Captain knew that they were gone from his side, they had reached poor Rover, now quite exhausted, gallant dog though he was!Then, one of the men grasping hold of Bob and the other catching hold of Dick, they swam with the two boys between them, still locked together, to the end of the rampart wall that jutted out over the water.Here the Captain was ready and waiting to lean over and lend them a hand, keeping the while a steady purchase to his feet by the aid of his malacca stick, which possibly had never been of such service before; and, presently, the coastguardsmen, the boys, and Rover, who would not let go his young master’s collar and was lifted out along with him, were all once more again on firm ground.By this time, a small crowd of spectators had collected on the spot, composed principally of persons who had come out for a walk round the castle and had their attention arrested by the scene passing in the water below.The majority of these now, in company with Mrs Gilmour and Nellie, hurried to the lower part of the rampart, which, on the side nearer the harbour, did not shelve down there so abruptly, broadening out by degrees to a wide flat surface where it joined the esplanade bordering the beach.At this spot, the coastguardsmen laid down the rescued boys, who were quite insensible from their long immersion; when Rover, at length satisfied that his young master was ashore and in safe hands, was persuaded to loose his grip of Bob’s collar, contenting himself by venting his joy in a series of bounds and barks around his inanimate form and licking his apparently lifeless face.Both Mrs Gilmour and the weeping Nellie thought they were dead.“Poor boys!” sobbed the former, her tears falling in sympathy with those of the little girl, who was too stunned to speak. “But, what shall I say to Bob’s mother? How can I tell her he is drowned?”“Drowned? Not a bit of it—no more drowned than you are!” repeated the Captain, somewhat snappishly, his anxiety and excitement preventing him from speaking calmly, as he turned and bent over the inanimate bodies. “Help me, men, to rouse them back to life.”The coastguardsmen bent down, too, and lifting the boys up were proceeding to lay them down again on their faces, when the Captain stopped them.“You idiots!” he exclaimed. “What are you going to do, eh?”“Why, to let the water run out of ’em, sir,” replied the elder of the two, looking up in his face and touching his forelock with his finger in proper nautical salute. “Ain’t that right, sir?”“Hullo! that you, Hellyer?” cried the old gentleman, recollecting him as a former coxswain. “Glad to see you again. By Jove, you came just now in the very nick of time to save these youngsters! Excuse me though; but, you’ve got hold of the same foolish idea a lot of other people have, that turning a poor half-drowned body upside down to empty him, as if he were a rum-cask, is the best way to recover him!”“What should we do, sir?” asked the man with a grin. “I allers thought it were the right thing, sir?”“Why, turn the poor fellows slightly a one side and then rub them smartly to restore the circulation,” said the Captain promptly, suiting the action to the word; and, the next instant, he and the men were busily shampooing the boys till their arms ached. “Rub away, Hellyer; rub away!”Rover growled at first on their touching Bob, apparently thinking the operation to mean an attack on his young master—he didn’t mind what they did to Dick. But, presently he altered his opinion on the subject, helping so far as he could by means of barking and licking Bob’s face and feet alternately to bring him back to consciousness.In a short space, although to the anxious onlookers it seemed hours, the efforts of the Captain and coastguardsmen were rewarded by Bob drawing a deep breath, which, it must be confessed, was sadly impregnated with the odour of tobacco from the air which Hellyer had puffed into his lungs to induce respiration!This tobacco made poor Bob cough, but it likewise caused him to get rid of the greater portion of the sea-water he had swallowed; and after that, he opened first one eye and then the other and, finally, his mouth, exclaiming, much to the delight of Rover, who was just then in the act of licking his face, “Good dog!”“Bravo!” cried the Captain, stopping his shampooing process on Bob’s body and rubbing his own hands instead, in great glee. “Now we’ll do!”As for Mrs Gilmour and Nellie, they expressed their delight by almost hugging the little newly-recovered life out of Bob and giving way to fresh tears, only this time they cried for joy and not from grief; while Rover could not contain himself, whining in a sort of hysterical fashion between his loud yelps, and jumping up on every one around as if to say, “Oh, I am so glad, my young master’s all right again!”Aye, Bob was soon all right, getting on his feet and being able to stand without assistance, the only effect of his ducking being that he looked pale, as far as could be seen in the twilight.He was, besides, most unmistakably, as wet as a drowned rat!Dick took a little longer time to recover; but, shortly afterwards, he, too, was himself once more.When things had arrived at this happy stage, the Captain, who had been put in a fidget by the crowd clustering round—‘a pack of star-gazing fools’ as he whispered pretty audibly to Mrs Gilmour—thought it was time to make a move.“Hellyer, you and your shipmate had better call round at my house in the morning,” he said to his old coxswain, the elder of the two coastguardsmen. “You know my house, eh, the same old place?”“Aye, aye, sir,” replied the man, saluting as before. “We knows it well enough!”“Then, good-night to you, and thank you both for your timely assistance,” said the Captain, turning away with a touch to the brim of his hat in acknowledgment of their salute. “Come on, boys, you’ll have to hurry home fast to prevent catching cold after your swim.”So saying and offering his arm to Mrs Gilmour, who was feeling faint after all the anxiety she had gone through, the brisk old gentleman led the way round the castle.He insisted that Bob and Dick should run races across the common on their way towards the south parade, in which gymnastic display Miss Nellie and Rover both joined, for company sake as well as to set a good example; the big black retriever going over more ground than either of the competitors ere they reached ‘The Moorings,’ as Mrs Gilmour’s house was christened.“Won’t you come in?” said Mrs Gilmour on their getting to the door, when the Captain raised his hat in token of adieu. “Do come in and have a rest, me dear Captain?”“No, thanks, not up to cribbage to-night,” he replied, shaking his head and chuckling. “Feel my old bones too sore from sliding down that confounded rampart. I mustn’t keep you chattering here, however, for you’ve got to see about those youngsters. You are sure you don’t mind the trouble of putting up my foundling Dick for the night, eh?”“I should think not, especially after his jumping into the sea so nobly after Bob; and the poor boy, sure, not able to swim either!” said she warmly. “Dick shall not only stop in my house to-night, but as long as you please to let him, I tell you; and sure it’s always grateful I’ll be to him.”“Well, then,” cried the Captain, “there’s no use my stopping yarning here like an old woman now that point is settled. You’d better go and see after the boys at once.”“Oh, I’ll say after them,” she answered, laughing at his impatience, as he almost pushed her within the doorway and rushed down the steps towards the gate—“I’ll say after them, never fear!”“Mind you put them between the blankets, and give them each something hot to drink when they turn in,” he shouted back over the railings. “I’ll come round in the morning and give them a lecture to wake ’em up!”With these last words, off he went; his malacca cane coming down with a thump on the pavement at every third step he took, until the sound died away in the distance—“Stump, Stump, Thump!—Stump, stump, Thump!—Stump, stump, Thump!”
“Gracious heavens! The boy will be drowned!” exclaimed Mrs Gilmour, wringing her hands frantically and rushing forward at once; while Nellie, equally excited, burst into tears, clinging to her aunt’s side. “Oh, what shall I say to his mother? He’s lost; he’s lost!”
“No, he isn’t—not a bit of it; no more drowned than I am,” cried the Captain, laying his hand on Mrs Gilmour’s arm, and putting both her and Nellie back, to prevent any rash impulse on their part. “You just keep as cool as the young rascal must be now! I’ll fish him out in another minute, if you’ll leave me alone; and, he’ll be none the worse, barring a wetting.”
With these words, the spry old gentleman, who was more active than many a younger man, began making his way cautiously down the treacherous slope of the rampart, aided by his trusty malacca cane, poking his stick between the niches of the stonework to act as a stay, and so prevent his slipping on too fast.
But, quick as he was in his movements, hardly had he made a dozen sliding steps down the decline, the action of the whole scene being almost instantaneous, when he felt, rather than saw, some one else glide swiftly past him still more expeditiously; and then, there was another heavy plunge in thewater below, where Bob and Rover were struggling for dear life.
“Bless my soul!” ejaculated the Captain, halting abruptly with the assistance of his sheet anchor, the malacca cane, as he half turned round. “The woman’s never such a fool!”
He thought it was Mrs Gilmour.
But, he was mistaken.
Dick had anticipated them both.
Bob’s unlucky slip and cry of alarm as he fell into the sea, his aunt’s exclamation of terror, the Captain’s movement to the rescue, and the grateful Dick’s perilous jump, for it was almost a leap from the top of the castle wall, were all, as has been already pointed out, the work of a moment; the chain of incidents taking much longer to describe than to happen.
So, there, before you could cry ‘Jack Robinson,’ as the Captain afterwards said, two boys, instead of one, were struggling with the dog in the water; and of all these three, to heighten the excitement of the scene, Rover alone was able to swim!
Bob, of course, had plunged in unwittingly, while Dick’s only thought was to help one from whom he had received such unexpected kindness; the lad not having reflected for an instant on the danger of the task he was undertaking.
Now, therefore, although on reaching the water the grateful boy succeeded in carrying out his object of catching hold of Bob, both immediately sank under the surface.
They came up the next moment locked together, spluttering and splattering for breath and holding up their hands for aid, an action which naturally sent them down again; the tide meanwhile sweeping them away from the shore.
Rover was master of the situation—that is, he and the Captain, who by this time had scrambled down to the last ledge of the rampart, and took in the position of affairs at a glance.
“Hi, Rover, good dog, fetch them out!” cried the old sailor, at the same moment throwing off his coat and preparing to go into the sea, too, if need be. “Fetch ’em out!”
But, there was no necessity for this appeal to Rover, who did not require any orders or directions as to his duty.
The dog, like the Captain, was quite aware of the perilous position of his young master, and had already determined in his own mind what was best to be done under such circumstances.
Master Bob having come down flop on top of him as he was trying to clamber out, had in the first instance somewhat obscured his faculties; and the subsequent appearance of Dick on the scene, as he was just recovering from this douche, did not tend to make matters clearer to the retriever, whose eyes and ears were full of water, besides being moreover tired out by his previous exertions.
Any hesitation poor Rover might have felt, though, barely lasted an instant; for, the sight of two figures battling for life in the sea there under his very nose, and the knowledge that one of these was his young master, brought in an instant all his sagacious instincts into play.
He did not need the Captain or anybody else to tell him what to do. Not he!
Giving his head a quick shake to clear his eyes and uttering a short, sharp bark, as if to say, ‘Hold on, my boys, I’m coming to help you!’ the dog appeared to scramble through the water by a series of leaps, rather than to swim, towards the spot where the two unfortunates were struggling.
Reaching the pair, he at once gripped Bob’s collar in his powerful teeth and proceeded to tow him to land, Dick hanging on behind; and Rover’s muzzle was already turned shorewards, dragging his double burthen astern ere the Captain’s cry of encouragement came to his ears, although on hearing it the noble animal redoubled his efforts.
It was, however, a terrible ordeal; nay, almost a hopeless one!
Had the boys been conscious, Rover would have had comparatively easy work of it, as then one of them might have held on to his collar and the other to his tail, and he could have pulled them both out without much trouble; as it was, now, they clung so frantically to each other and to him that they retarded in lieu of assisting his gallant attempt to save them.
But, help was at hand.
Just as the Captain called out, a couple of coastguardsmen were coming round the corner of the castle on their beat towards the east pier; and, hearing his shout to Rover, they stopped.
“Hullo!” cried one of the men, observing that Mrs Gilmour was in a state of great agitation, with Nellie sobbing beside her and the Captain at the bottom of the sloping rampart in the act of taking off his coat—“Anything wrong, mum?”
Mrs Gilmour’s heart was so full that she could not speak at once, and the man who addressed her jumped to a wrong conclusion from the absence of any explanation at the moment.
“Oh, I see, mum, he’s a-going to commit sooacide? We’ll soon spoil his little game, mum. Bear a hand, Bill, will ye?”
So saying, the speaker and his comrade, with a catlike ease that came naturally to them from their practice at sea, where they had a rolling deck beneath their feet much more difficult to traverse than the slippery slope they were now on, had reached the spot where the coatless old sailor stood almost as these words were uttered, leaping down the steep descent in a sort of ‘hop-skip-and-jump’ fashion.
“None o’ that!” exclaimed the elder of the two men who had previously spoken, grasping hold of one of the Captain’s arms while his mate, or ‘Bill,’ caught hold of the other. “A-going to make away with yourself, eh? Not if we knows it, sir!”
At the same instant, however, Captain Dresser turned round with a face on which the animated expression produced by his determination to try and rescue the boys was mingled with a puzzled look of astonishment at being tackled in this unceremonious manner when on the very point of action.
His black eyes twinkled and his bushy eyebrows moved up and down at a fine rate as he looked up indignantly to see who had dared to lay hand on him.
“My stars!” ejaculated the coastguardsman Bill, dropping hold of the Captain’s arm as if it had been a hot poker, “I’m blest if it ain’t the old cap’en!”
The other man also recognised him at the same time, releasing the old man equally hurriedly.
“Beg pardon, sir,” he said. “Didn’t know it wer’ you, sir!”
But the Captain made no reply to this apology.
He only pointed to the water just below where they were standing, and where the head of Rover could be dimly seen in the gathering dusk of the evening, now rapidly closing in, splashing his way to the shore.
“Boys—save—quick—drown!” he stammered out brokenly. “Quick, quick!”
The men did not require any further explanation or incentive.
Without stopping to doff a garment, in they both plunged, boots and all; and, before the Captain knew that they were gone from his side, they had reached poor Rover, now quite exhausted, gallant dog though he was!
Then, one of the men grasping hold of Bob and the other catching hold of Dick, they swam with the two boys between them, still locked together, to the end of the rampart wall that jutted out over the water.
Here the Captain was ready and waiting to lean over and lend them a hand, keeping the while a steady purchase to his feet by the aid of his malacca stick, which possibly had never been of such service before; and, presently, the coastguardsmen, the boys, and Rover, who would not let go his young master’s collar and was lifted out along with him, were all once more again on firm ground.
By this time, a small crowd of spectators had collected on the spot, composed principally of persons who had come out for a walk round the castle and had their attention arrested by the scene passing in the water below.
The majority of these now, in company with Mrs Gilmour and Nellie, hurried to the lower part of the rampart, which, on the side nearer the harbour, did not shelve down there so abruptly, broadening out by degrees to a wide flat surface where it joined the esplanade bordering the beach.
At this spot, the coastguardsmen laid down the rescued boys, who were quite insensible from their long immersion; when Rover, at length satisfied that his young master was ashore and in safe hands, was persuaded to loose his grip of Bob’s collar, contenting himself by venting his joy in a series of bounds and barks around his inanimate form and licking his apparently lifeless face.
Both Mrs Gilmour and the weeping Nellie thought they were dead.
“Poor boys!” sobbed the former, her tears falling in sympathy with those of the little girl, who was too stunned to speak. “But, what shall I say to Bob’s mother? How can I tell her he is drowned?”
“Drowned? Not a bit of it—no more drowned than you are!” repeated the Captain, somewhat snappishly, his anxiety and excitement preventing him from speaking calmly, as he turned and bent over the inanimate bodies. “Help me, men, to rouse them back to life.”
The coastguardsmen bent down, too, and lifting the boys up were proceeding to lay them down again on their faces, when the Captain stopped them.
“You idiots!” he exclaimed. “What are you going to do, eh?”
“Why, to let the water run out of ’em, sir,” replied the elder of the two, looking up in his face and touching his forelock with his finger in proper nautical salute. “Ain’t that right, sir?”
“Hullo! that you, Hellyer?” cried the old gentleman, recollecting him as a former coxswain. “Glad to see you again. By Jove, you came just now in the very nick of time to save these youngsters! Excuse me though; but, you’ve got hold of the same foolish idea a lot of other people have, that turning a poor half-drowned body upside down to empty him, as if he were a rum-cask, is the best way to recover him!”
“What should we do, sir?” asked the man with a grin. “I allers thought it were the right thing, sir?”
“Why, turn the poor fellows slightly a one side and then rub them smartly to restore the circulation,” said the Captain promptly, suiting the action to the word; and, the next instant, he and the men were busily shampooing the boys till their arms ached. “Rub away, Hellyer; rub away!”
Rover growled at first on their touching Bob, apparently thinking the operation to mean an attack on his young master—he didn’t mind what they did to Dick. But, presently he altered his opinion on the subject, helping so far as he could by means of barking and licking Bob’s face and feet alternately to bring him back to consciousness.
In a short space, although to the anxious onlookers it seemed hours, the efforts of the Captain and coastguardsmen were rewarded by Bob drawing a deep breath, which, it must be confessed, was sadly impregnated with the odour of tobacco from the air which Hellyer had puffed into his lungs to induce respiration!
This tobacco made poor Bob cough, but it likewise caused him to get rid of the greater portion of the sea-water he had swallowed; and after that, he opened first one eye and then the other and, finally, his mouth, exclaiming, much to the delight of Rover, who was just then in the act of licking his face, “Good dog!”
“Bravo!” cried the Captain, stopping his shampooing process on Bob’s body and rubbing his own hands instead, in great glee. “Now we’ll do!”
As for Mrs Gilmour and Nellie, they expressed their delight by almost hugging the little newly-recovered life out of Bob and giving way to fresh tears, only this time they cried for joy and not from grief; while Rover could not contain himself, whining in a sort of hysterical fashion between his loud yelps, and jumping up on every one around as if to say, “Oh, I am so glad, my young master’s all right again!”
Aye, Bob was soon all right, getting on his feet and being able to stand without assistance, the only effect of his ducking being that he looked pale, as far as could be seen in the twilight.
He was, besides, most unmistakably, as wet as a drowned rat!
Dick took a little longer time to recover; but, shortly afterwards, he, too, was himself once more.
When things had arrived at this happy stage, the Captain, who had been put in a fidget by the crowd clustering round—‘a pack of star-gazing fools’ as he whispered pretty audibly to Mrs Gilmour—thought it was time to make a move.
“Hellyer, you and your shipmate had better call round at my house in the morning,” he said to his old coxswain, the elder of the two coastguardsmen. “You know my house, eh, the same old place?”
“Aye, aye, sir,” replied the man, saluting as before. “We knows it well enough!”
“Then, good-night to you, and thank you both for your timely assistance,” said the Captain, turning away with a touch to the brim of his hat in acknowledgment of their salute. “Come on, boys, you’ll have to hurry home fast to prevent catching cold after your swim.”
So saying and offering his arm to Mrs Gilmour, who was feeling faint after all the anxiety she had gone through, the brisk old gentleman led the way round the castle.
He insisted that Bob and Dick should run races across the common on their way towards the south parade, in which gymnastic display Miss Nellie and Rover both joined, for company sake as well as to set a good example; the big black retriever going over more ground than either of the competitors ere they reached ‘The Moorings,’ as Mrs Gilmour’s house was christened.
“Won’t you come in?” said Mrs Gilmour on their getting to the door, when the Captain raised his hat in token of adieu. “Do come in and have a rest, me dear Captain?”
“No, thanks, not up to cribbage to-night,” he replied, shaking his head and chuckling. “Feel my old bones too sore from sliding down that confounded rampart. I mustn’t keep you chattering here, however, for you’ve got to see about those youngsters. You are sure you don’t mind the trouble of putting up my foundling Dick for the night, eh?”
“I should think not, especially after his jumping into the sea so nobly after Bob; and the poor boy, sure, not able to swim either!” said she warmly. “Dick shall not only stop in my house to-night, but as long as you please to let him, I tell you; and sure it’s always grateful I’ll be to him.”
“Well, then,” cried the Captain, “there’s no use my stopping yarning here like an old woman now that point is settled. You’d better go and see after the boys at once.”
“Oh, I’ll say after them,” she answered, laughing at his impatience, as he almost pushed her within the doorway and rushed down the steps towards the gate—“I’ll say after them, never fear!”
“Mind you put them between the blankets, and give them each something hot to drink when they turn in,” he shouted back over the railings. “I’ll come round in the morning and give them a lecture to wake ’em up!”
With these last words, off he went; his malacca cane coming down with a thump on the pavement at every third step he took, until the sound died away in the distance—“Stump, Stump, Thump!—Stump, stump, Thump!—Stump, stump, Thump!”
Chapter Five.Both “suited.”Dick was now “in clover!”Running away from a poor home and the tyranny of a cruel step-father, he had, in the first instance, providentially succeeded in getting ‘a free passage,’ as the Captain expressed it, to Portsmouth, the goal of his fondest ambition.Then, after thus successfully overcoming the obstacles that lay in the way of his going to sea, so far as this initial stage to that ultimate end was concerned, the lucky fellow, in addition to gaining the Captain’s favour and making the acquaintance of Bob and Nellie, put the finishing-touch to his good fortune by winning over Mrs Gilmour to his side—a lady who, as a friend, was worth perhaps all the rest, she being true as steel and thoughtful and considerate in every way.For the Captain’s sake alone, she would willingly have given the poor homeless lad house-room; but, beyond that, she had taken a strong fancy to Dick from noticing his willing manner and anxiety to oblige those who had been kind to him at the station, an impression that was more than confirmed subsequently when she witnessed his gallant conduct in plunging into the water to try and save the impulsive Bob.So, Dick was in clover!Like Master Bob, he had his wet clothes stripped off as soon as he got within doors, and wrapped in warm blankets was put into an equally cosy little bed; a hot treacle posset being afterwards given to each boy when comfortably tucked in by Mrs Gilmour herself, which drink even Bob, accustomed as he was to good things, said was ‘not so bad, you know,’ while to poor Lazarus-like Dick it tasted as nectar!Nor was this the end of our runaway’s good fortune.In the morning, after a sound sleep which effectually banished all the ill effects of their impromptu ducking from both Bob and himself, Dick awoke, or rather was awakened by his hostess in person, to be told that the Captain was waiting and wanted to see him particularly.“I think too, my boy, it really is time for you to get up,” added the lady kindly. “Do you know it’s past ten o’clock?”“Law, mum!” exclaimed Dick, ashamed of his laziness, having been accustomed at Guildford to turn out at sunrise, that is if he went to bed at all; for his unkind step-father often locked him out of a night when in an especially angry mood. “Law, mum, whatever be I a-doing of a-lying here in broad daylight! I humbly asks yer parding, mum.”“Oh, never mind that, you’re not so very late, my poor boy, considering all you went through yesterday and last night,” said Mrs Gilmour smiling. “But, come now, you mustn’t keep the Captain waiting, or we’ll have him trotting upstairs after you himself. Dress as quickly as you can; I have had your things dried at the kitchen fire, and here they are in this chair near the door.”So saying, Mrs Gilmour left the room, and Dick hopped out of bed immediately afterwards, proceeding to put on his clothes; thinking, poor fellow, as he did so, how shabby and ragged they were, and that they and he were altogether sadly out of place in an apartment which, to his rustic eyes, used only to the surroundings of his village home, appeared a palace.As soon as he was dressed and opened the door of the room, he found, waiting on the landing, a maidservant, who, first taking him downstairs to the kitchen, where she gave him a good breakfast, afterwards showed him the way to the parlour.Here Mrs Gilmour and the Captain, with Bob and Nellie, were all assembled, apparently ready to go out, the ladies having their walking things on.“A pretty time of day for a youngster like you to be getting up,” cried the old sailor jocularly as he entered. “I wonder the bright sun hasn’t scorched your eyes out long before this, sir!”Dick was commencing an abject apology, but Mrs Gilmour stopped him.“Oh, never mind the Captain,” she said laughing at the poor lad’s look of contrition. “He’s only ‘taking a rise’ out of you, as he would call it.”“Humph! is he?” growled the Captain, blinking away and pretending to be very serious. “But, come now, we must be off. I want you to go along with me into Portsmouth; so, get your cap and we’ll start at once.”“Mayn’t we come too?” shouted Bob and Nellie in one breath together. “Do say yes, Captain Dresser!”“Well, I don’t know about you, Miss Nellie, for I may have to go into places where little girls may be in the way; besides which, I don’t think you would like to leave your aunt all alone, eh?”“Of course not, dear Captain, I forgot that,” said Nellie, accepting this quiet suggestion of the old sailor as a final settlement of the question, without betraying a particle of ill-temper or dissatisfaction. “I will stop with auntie.”“Ah, you shan’t lose anything by doing it, me darlint,” smilingly said Mrs Gilmour, giving her an approving little pat on the cheek by way of caress. “You and I, Nell, may have a little expedition of our own, perhaps.”“But I may go with you and Dick,” interposed Bob, by no means content to be left behind. “Mayn’t I, Captain?”“Oh yes, you may go or come, just as you please to call it,” replied the Captain, making a move towards the door, with an energetic thump of his malacca cane on the floor. “Look sharp, though, or it will be midday before we’re out of the house!”This contingency, however, did not happen, for within a minute or so he and the two boys were out on the parade; the party being further increased by the presence of Rover, who had been lurking in the passage and followed them out unobserved. Not a bark or a gambol betrayed that he was after them, until the Captain on turning round suddenly saw him in their rear, close up to Bob’s heels.“Hullo!” he exclaimed; “I can’t have that dog with us. Rover is a very fine fellow and a brave animal too; but, he’s somewhat skittish as yesterday’s proceedings at the railway-station showed me. I don’t want to get into any more scrapes with him, such as knocking down harmless old women—she was a tartar, though, by Jove! Besides, I may have to go into the dockyard, and they do not allow dogs in there.”“Don’t they?” asked Bob, catching hold of Rover’s collar and preparing to take him back to the house. “Not even if they’re well-behaved?”“No, my boy, they draw the line at puppies! I mean those jackanapes of midshipmen and sub-lieutenants, as they call mates now, with their dandified airs. In my time, the reefers weren’t half so conceited and didn’t try to turn themselves into land swabs as they do now-a-days,” said the Captain grimly, he being, like most sailors of the old school, a thorough believer in the times gone by. “But, go back now, and take that rascal of a dog in. Dick and I will wait for you at the corner.”Rover did not like this arrangement at all, but he had to submit to the force of circumstances; so, Bob disposing of him within doors and closing the outside gate as well for additional precaution, all presently made a fresh start for their destination.While crossing Southsea Common, the boys were delighted with the sight of the soldiers of the garrison mustered for brigade drill, the troops marching and wheeling and countermarching to the music of the bands, which played such inspiriting airs that even the old Captain could not help keeping step, his trusty malacca coming down with a thump on the springy turf, in time with the rub-a-dub-dub of the drums.Bob had seen a regiment or two before in London, at parades in front of the Horse Guards, or when reviewed on a small scale in Hyde Park; but, never previously, had he witnessed so many battalions marshalled together in all the pomp of war as now—the men formed up in double columns of companies, with the sunlight glinting on the bayonets of their sloped rifles and their legs looking like those of gigantic centipedes as they stepped forward in changing ground to the left, first the red stripe showing on one trouser-leg and then only the dark cloth of the other.“How funny they look!” exclaimed Bob, lost in admiration as he took note of these little details, not a thing escaping him, the hoarse commands of the officers, the galloping to and fro of mountedaides-de-campand ‘orderlies,’ the tooting bugle-calls, each in turn attracting his attention. “All move as if they were one man!”“Aye, they march well, my boy,” replied the Captain, taking advantage of the opportunity to point a moral lesson. “But, recollect it’s all owing to discipline and obedience to orders!”Beyond the troops, the blue sea could be seen reflecting the hue of the cloudless sky overhead, its surface dotted here and there with the white sail of some yacht or other, passing between Cowes and Spithead, or beating out into the Channel in the distance; while, in the more immediate foreground, anchored abreast of one of the harbour forts, was a modern ironclad man-of-war.“What is that?” inquired Bob, pointing in the direction where the vessel lay, looking like some marine monster asleep on the water.“Humph! you may well ask the question,” growled the Captain, jobbing his stick down with an extra thump. “That is what they call a ‘ship’ now-a-days! She’s an ‘armour-clad’ of the latest type, with all the improvements, though very different to the craft I and your Uncle Ted were accustomed to see in the good old times when ships were ships!”“Why, Captain Dresser,” said Bob sympathetically, “she’s just like the roof of a house!”“You’re not far out, my boy. They all resemble floating barns more than anything else,” grumbled the old sailor, bewailing the gallant frigates and three-deckers of the past. “But, come on now, let us get to the dockyard, and I will show you one or two vessels of the right sort that we still have got left, thank God, to remind us of what England’s navy once was!”With these words, he dragged the boys, much against their will, away from the busy scene on the common and past the last remaining bastion of the old fortifications that once encircled Portsmouth; and, finally getting into the town he dived through all sorts of queer little streets and alleys, and then along the new road running by the side of the Gunwharf until they reached the Hard.Here, stopping outside an outfitter’s shop not far from the dockyard, the Captain seized hold of Dick and pulled him forwards towards the door.“Do you know what I’m going to do with you, eh, you young rascal?” he asked him, with a chuckle which took all the sternness out of his threatening tones. “Can you guess?”“No, sir,” replied the lad; but, evidently did not anticipate anything very dreadful, for he grinned all over his face. “I carn’t!”“I’m going to give you a new rig-out,” went on the other. “Do you know what that is, eh?”“No, sir,” again answered Dick, thinking though that the Captain perhaps meant something to eat. “I dunno.”“Well, come in here and you shall see.”So saying, the old sailor led the way into the shop, where on his giving a few short, sharp, and curt directions to an attendant, Dick was taken in hand and twisted this way and that and measured; the whilom ragged runaway being in the end apparelled in a bran-new suit of navy serge that made him look like a smart young reefer, very different indeed to the ragged runaway who had forced his way into the railway-carriage frightening Bob and Nellie during their journey Portsmouth-wards from Guildford twenty-four hours before.“There, what do you think of yourself now?” asked the Captain, wheeling him round in front of a cheval glass so that he could see his reflection in the mirror. “Eh, you rascal?”Dick did not say anything; but, the look, of mingled wonder, self-satisfaction and gratitude, that overspread his speaking face more than rewarded the good-hearted sailor for his thoughtful generosity.“He only wants his ’air cut and a pair o’ decent boots, sir, and then he’ll be a reg’ler tiptopper,” suggested the shopman. “I wouldn’t know him now for the same chap ag’in, sir!”“Thank you, my friend, for the hint,” said the Captain politely. “You can fit him with some boots, and we’ll see about the ‘’air’ when we get outside!”Bob, of course, went into convulsions of laughter when the Captain thus mimicked the man’s disregard of his aspirates.The shopman’s failing in this respect was all the more amusing from the fact that the poor fellow was quite unaware of his ‘little weakness’; and, one boy’s merriment affecting the other, while the Captain joined in from sympathy, they all went out of the shop in the highest of spirits, the old sailor before leaving directing the attendant to send home another suit of clothes with a complete sailor’s kit, so that Dick might have what he called “a regular rig-out.”Subsequently, Dick had his hair cut, after which the Captain took him into the dockyard, with the intention of his being entered for service in the Navy, the boy having expressed so strong a desire to go to sea.However, as he was not broad enough in his chest measurements, although sufficiently tall for his age, his joining a training ship had to be postponed until our runaway had, as the old warrant officer at the depot said, “Stowed a lot more beef and bread in his skid.”But, even beyond this material point, Captain Dresser was reminded by this courteous veteran of something he had entirely forgotten; namely, that Dick would have to produce a certificate of birth to show his proper age, and also a paper containing the written consent to his going to sea of his parents, or guardians in the case of his being an orphan—which he was nearly if not quite—before Dick would be permitted to join “Her Majesty’s Service.”These documents, it may be mentioned here, slightly anticipating matters, Captain Dresser subsequently obtained through the clergyman of Dick’s parish at Guildford, to whom he wrote, and who gave the young runaway the best of characters.This gentleman stated that the lad was not only honest and truthful, but the steadiest scholar he had in his Sunday school; and he added that the good news which he had been able to tell Dick’s mother after hearing from the Captain, of his having fallen into such friendly hands, had made up in some way for her sorrow at being forced to part with her dear son.“Well, what shall we do with you now?” said the Captain to Dick on their leaving the dockyard, where, in addition to going on board the training ship attached to the port, the boys had seen most that was to be seen—going over the smithery; the building-sheds, in which ponderous leviathans of iron, that would anon plough the deep, were being welded together; the mast and rigging houses; the sail-loft; they had gone over everything in fact! “You see they won’t have you yet in the Navy, my lad; so, what is to be done with you, eh?”“Dunno, sir,” answered Dick, scratching his newly-shorn head reflectively and staring in the face of the old sailor, who had stopped abruptly just outside the dockyard-gates to ask him the question. “I’ll leave it to yer for to settle anythink yer likes.”“Humph! I tell you what, we’ll wait a bit and then try again for the training ship three months hence, or so; when, perhaps, you’ll have better luck,” decided the Captain, who it need hardly be told had already made up his mind on the subject. “But, in the meantime, my lad, you shall stop with me and see if you can make yourself of use.”“Oh, sir,” said Dick with tears in his eyes and his voice broken with emotion. “I can never thank yer, sir, for all as ye’ve done for me! I’ll work day and night, sir, and do anythink as yer tells me!”“We’ll see, my lad,” replied the Captain, walking on again, the watermen along the Hard touching their hats to him. “I shall probably take you on board my yacht by and by, when the racing season begins. You will, thus, learn something of your future profession; and be able to pull a rope and box the compass before the time comes for you to join the training ship.”“O-o-oh!” exclaimed Bob, the vista of delight thus presented being almost too great for words; for the sight of the sea, now that he had seen it and been actually on board a ship, had made him long for a sail, his involuntary dip of the previous night not having any deterrent influence. “Won’t that be jolly, Dick?”Dick grinned a sympathetic grin, his own peculiar way of showing how pleased he was.“I only hopes as how I’ll suit the Capting,” said he earnestly. “I’ll try to—that I will!”“Suit me, eh?” cried that worthy with a chuckle, and his little black eyes twinkling away. “That will be ‘changey for changey, black dog for white monkey,’ as the niggers say. You will have to suit me in return for my havingsuit-edyou, my lad, eh? Ho—ho—ho!”
Dick was now “in clover!”
Running away from a poor home and the tyranny of a cruel step-father, he had, in the first instance, providentially succeeded in getting ‘a free passage,’ as the Captain expressed it, to Portsmouth, the goal of his fondest ambition.
Then, after thus successfully overcoming the obstacles that lay in the way of his going to sea, so far as this initial stage to that ultimate end was concerned, the lucky fellow, in addition to gaining the Captain’s favour and making the acquaintance of Bob and Nellie, put the finishing-touch to his good fortune by winning over Mrs Gilmour to his side—a lady who, as a friend, was worth perhaps all the rest, she being true as steel and thoughtful and considerate in every way.
For the Captain’s sake alone, she would willingly have given the poor homeless lad house-room; but, beyond that, she had taken a strong fancy to Dick from noticing his willing manner and anxiety to oblige those who had been kind to him at the station, an impression that was more than confirmed subsequently when she witnessed his gallant conduct in plunging into the water to try and save the impulsive Bob.
So, Dick was in clover!
Like Master Bob, he had his wet clothes stripped off as soon as he got within doors, and wrapped in warm blankets was put into an equally cosy little bed; a hot treacle posset being afterwards given to each boy when comfortably tucked in by Mrs Gilmour herself, which drink even Bob, accustomed as he was to good things, said was ‘not so bad, you know,’ while to poor Lazarus-like Dick it tasted as nectar!
Nor was this the end of our runaway’s good fortune.
In the morning, after a sound sleep which effectually banished all the ill effects of their impromptu ducking from both Bob and himself, Dick awoke, or rather was awakened by his hostess in person, to be told that the Captain was waiting and wanted to see him particularly.
“I think too, my boy, it really is time for you to get up,” added the lady kindly. “Do you know it’s past ten o’clock?”
“Law, mum!” exclaimed Dick, ashamed of his laziness, having been accustomed at Guildford to turn out at sunrise, that is if he went to bed at all; for his unkind step-father often locked him out of a night when in an especially angry mood. “Law, mum, whatever be I a-doing of a-lying here in broad daylight! I humbly asks yer parding, mum.”
“Oh, never mind that, you’re not so very late, my poor boy, considering all you went through yesterday and last night,” said Mrs Gilmour smiling. “But, come now, you mustn’t keep the Captain waiting, or we’ll have him trotting upstairs after you himself. Dress as quickly as you can; I have had your things dried at the kitchen fire, and here they are in this chair near the door.”
So saying, Mrs Gilmour left the room, and Dick hopped out of bed immediately afterwards, proceeding to put on his clothes; thinking, poor fellow, as he did so, how shabby and ragged they were, and that they and he were altogether sadly out of place in an apartment which, to his rustic eyes, used only to the surroundings of his village home, appeared a palace.
As soon as he was dressed and opened the door of the room, he found, waiting on the landing, a maidservant, who, first taking him downstairs to the kitchen, where she gave him a good breakfast, afterwards showed him the way to the parlour.
Here Mrs Gilmour and the Captain, with Bob and Nellie, were all assembled, apparently ready to go out, the ladies having their walking things on.
“A pretty time of day for a youngster like you to be getting up,” cried the old sailor jocularly as he entered. “I wonder the bright sun hasn’t scorched your eyes out long before this, sir!”
Dick was commencing an abject apology, but Mrs Gilmour stopped him.
“Oh, never mind the Captain,” she said laughing at the poor lad’s look of contrition. “He’s only ‘taking a rise’ out of you, as he would call it.”
“Humph! is he?” growled the Captain, blinking away and pretending to be very serious. “But, come now, we must be off. I want you to go along with me into Portsmouth; so, get your cap and we’ll start at once.”
“Mayn’t we come too?” shouted Bob and Nellie in one breath together. “Do say yes, Captain Dresser!”
“Well, I don’t know about you, Miss Nellie, for I may have to go into places where little girls may be in the way; besides which, I don’t think you would like to leave your aunt all alone, eh?”
“Of course not, dear Captain, I forgot that,” said Nellie, accepting this quiet suggestion of the old sailor as a final settlement of the question, without betraying a particle of ill-temper or dissatisfaction. “I will stop with auntie.”
“Ah, you shan’t lose anything by doing it, me darlint,” smilingly said Mrs Gilmour, giving her an approving little pat on the cheek by way of caress. “You and I, Nell, may have a little expedition of our own, perhaps.”
“But I may go with you and Dick,” interposed Bob, by no means content to be left behind. “Mayn’t I, Captain?”
“Oh yes, you may go or come, just as you please to call it,” replied the Captain, making a move towards the door, with an energetic thump of his malacca cane on the floor. “Look sharp, though, or it will be midday before we’re out of the house!”
This contingency, however, did not happen, for within a minute or so he and the two boys were out on the parade; the party being further increased by the presence of Rover, who had been lurking in the passage and followed them out unobserved. Not a bark or a gambol betrayed that he was after them, until the Captain on turning round suddenly saw him in their rear, close up to Bob’s heels.
“Hullo!” he exclaimed; “I can’t have that dog with us. Rover is a very fine fellow and a brave animal too; but, he’s somewhat skittish as yesterday’s proceedings at the railway-station showed me. I don’t want to get into any more scrapes with him, such as knocking down harmless old women—she was a tartar, though, by Jove! Besides, I may have to go into the dockyard, and they do not allow dogs in there.”
“Don’t they?” asked Bob, catching hold of Rover’s collar and preparing to take him back to the house. “Not even if they’re well-behaved?”
“No, my boy, they draw the line at puppies! I mean those jackanapes of midshipmen and sub-lieutenants, as they call mates now, with their dandified airs. In my time, the reefers weren’t half so conceited and didn’t try to turn themselves into land swabs as they do now-a-days,” said the Captain grimly, he being, like most sailors of the old school, a thorough believer in the times gone by. “But, go back now, and take that rascal of a dog in. Dick and I will wait for you at the corner.”
Rover did not like this arrangement at all, but he had to submit to the force of circumstances; so, Bob disposing of him within doors and closing the outside gate as well for additional precaution, all presently made a fresh start for their destination.
While crossing Southsea Common, the boys were delighted with the sight of the soldiers of the garrison mustered for brigade drill, the troops marching and wheeling and countermarching to the music of the bands, which played such inspiriting airs that even the old Captain could not help keeping step, his trusty malacca coming down with a thump on the springy turf, in time with the rub-a-dub-dub of the drums.
Bob had seen a regiment or two before in London, at parades in front of the Horse Guards, or when reviewed on a small scale in Hyde Park; but, never previously, had he witnessed so many battalions marshalled together in all the pomp of war as now—the men formed up in double columns of companies, with the sunlight glinting on the bayonets of their sloped rifles and their legs looking like those of gigantic centipedes as they stepped forward in changing ground to the left, first the red stripe showing on one trouser-leg and then only the dark cloth of the other.
“How funny they look!” exclaimed Bob, lost in admiration as he took note of these little details, not a thing escaping him, the hoarse commands of the officers, the galloping to and fro of mountedaides-de-campand ‘orderlies,’ the tooting bugle-calls, each in turn attracting his attention. “All move as if they were one man!”
“Aye, they march well, my boy,” replied the Captain, taking advantage of the opportunity to point a moral lesson. “But, recollect it’s all owing to discipline and obedience to orders!”
Beyond the troops, the blue sea could be seen reflecting the hue of the cloudless sky overhead, its surface dotted here and there with the white sail of some yacht or other, passing between Cowes and Spithead, or beating out into the Channel in the distance; while, in the more immediate foreground, anchored abreast of one of the harbour forts, was a modern ironclad man-of-war.
“What is that?” inquired Bob, pointing in the direction where the vessel lay, looking like some marine monster asleep on the water.
“Humph! you may well ask the question,” growled the Captain, jobbing his stick down with an extra thump. “That is what they call a ‘ship’ now-a-days! She’s an ‘armour-clad’ of the latest type, with all the improvements, though very different to the craft I and your Uncle Ted were accustomed to see in the good old times when ships were ships!”
“Why, Captain Dresser,” said Bob sympathetically, “she’s just like the roof of a house!”
“You’re not far out, my boy. They all resemble floating barns more than anything else,” grumbled the old sailor, bewailing the gallant frigates and three-deckers of the past. “But, come on now, let us get to the dockyard, and I will show you one or two vessels of the right sort that we still have got left, thank God, to remind us of what England’s navy once was!”
With these words, he dragged the boys, much against their will, away from the busy scene on the common and past the last remaining bastion of the old fortifications that once encircled Portsmouth; and, finally getting into the town he dived through all sorts of queer little streets and alleys, and then along the new road running by the side of the Gunwharf until they reached the Hard.
Here, stopping outside an outfitter’s shop not far from the dockyard, the Captain seized hold of Dick and pulled him forwards towards the door.
“Do you know what I’m going to do with you, eh, you young rascal?” he asked him, with a chuckle which took all the sternness out of his threatening tones. “Can you guess?”
“No, sir,” replied the lad; but, evidently did not anticipate anything very dreadful, for he grinned all over his face. “I carn’t!”
“I’m going to give you a new rig-out,” went on the other. “Do you know what that is, eh?”
“No, sir,” again answered Dick, thinking though that the Captain perhaps meant something to eat. “I dunno.”
“Well, come in here and you shall see.”
So saying, the old sailor led the way into the shop, where on his giving a few short, sharp, and curt directions to an attendant, Dick was taken in hand and twisted this way and that and measured; the whilom ragged runaway being in the end apparelled in a bran-new suit of navy serge that made him look like a smart young reefer, very different indeed to the ragged runaway who had forced his way into the railway-carriage frightening Bob and Nellie during their journey Portsmouth-wards from Guildford twenty-four hours before.
“There, what do you think of yourself now?” asked the Captain, wheeling him round in front of a cheval glass so that he could see his reflection in the mirror. “Eh, you rascal?”
Dick did not say anything; but, the look, of mingled wonder, self-satisfaction and gratitude, that overspread his speaking face more than rewarded the good-hearted sailor for his thoughtful generosity.
“He only wants his ’air cut and a pair o’ decent boots, sir, and then he’ll be a reg’ler tiptopper,” suggested the shopman. “I wouldn’t know him now for the same chap ag’in, sir!”
“Thank you, my friend, for the hint,” said the Captain politely. “You can fit him with some boots, and we’ll see about the ‘’air’ when we get outside!”
Bob, of course, went into convulsions of laughter when the Captain thus mimicked the man’s disregard of his aspirates.
The shopman’s failing in this respect was all the more amusing from the fact that the poor fellow was quite unaware of his ‘little weakness’; and, one boy’s merriment affecting the other, while the Captain joined in from sympathy, they all went out of the shop in the highest of spirits, the old sailor before leaving directing the attendant to send home another suit of clothes with a complete sailor’s kit, so that Dick might have what he called “a regular rig-out.”
Subsequently, Dick had his hair cut, after which the Captain took him into the dockyard, with the intention of his being entered for service in the Navy, the boy having expressed so strong a desire to go to sea.
However, as he was not broad enough in his chest measurements, although sufficiently tall for his age, his joining a training ship had to be postponed until our runaway had, as the old warrant officer at the depot said, “Stowed a lot more beef and bread in his skid.”
But, even beyond this material point, Captain Dresser was reminded by this courteous veteran of something he had entirely forgotten; namely, that Dick would have to produce a certificate of birth to show his proper age, and also a paper containing the written consent to his going to sea of his parents, or guardians in the case of his being an orphan—which he was nearly if not quite—before Dick would be permitted to join “Her Majesty’s Service.”
These documents, it may be mentioned here, slightly anticipating matters, Captain Dresser subsequently obtained through the clergyman of Dick’s parish at Guildford, to whom he wrote, and who gave the young runaway the best of characters.
This gentleman stated that the lad was not only honest and truthful, but the steadiest scholar he had in his Sunday school; and he added that the good news which he had been able to tell Dick’s mother after hearing from the Captain, of his having fallen into such friendly hands, had made up in some way for her sorrow at being forced to part with her dear son.
“Well, what shall we do with you now?” said the Captain to Dick on their leaving the dockyard, where, in addition to going on board the training ship attached to the port, the boys had seen most that was to be seen—going over the smithery; the building-sheds, in which ponderous leviathans of iron, that would anon plough the deep, were being welded together; the mast and rigging houses; the sail-loft; they had gone over everything in fact! “You see they won’t have you yet in the Navy, my lad; so, what is to be done with you, eh?”
“Dunno, sir,” answered Dick, scratching his newly-shorn head reflectively and staring in the face of the old sailor, who had stopped abruptly just outside the dockyard-gates to ask him the question. “I’ll leave it to yer for to settle anythink yer likes.”
“Humph! I tell you what, we’ll wait a bit and then try again for the training ship three months hence, or so; when, perhaps, you’ll have better luck,” decided the Captain, who it need hardly be told had already made up his mind on the subject. “But, in the meantime, my lad, you shall stop with me and see if you can make yourself of use.”
“Oh, sir,” said Dick with tears in his eyes and his voice broken with emotion. “I can never thank yer, sir, for all as ye’ve done for me! I’ll work day and night, sir, and do anythink as yer tells me!”
“We’ll see, my lad,” replied the Captain, walking on again, the watermen along the Hard touching their hats to him. “I shall probably take you on board my yacht by and by, when the racing season begins. You will, thus, learn something of your future profession; and be able to pull a rope and box the compass before the time comes for you to join the training ship.”
“O-o-oh!” exclaimed Bob, the vista of delight thus presented being almost too great for words; for the sight of the sea, now that he had seen it and been actually on board a ship, had made him long for a sail, his involuntary dip of the previous night not having any deterrent influence. “Won’t that be jolly, Dick?”
Dick grinned a sympathetic grin, his own peculiar way of showing how pleased he was.
“I only hopes as how I’ll suit the Capting,” said he earnestly. “I’ll try to—that I will!”
“Suit me, eh?” cried that worthy with a chuckle, and his little black eyes twinkling away. “That will be ‘changey for changey, black dog for white monkey,’ as the niggers say. You will have to suit me in return for my havingsuit-edyou, my lad, eh? Ho—ho—ho!”
Chapter Six.On the Beach.“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” cried Bob presently, stopping on their way homewards at a nice-looking pastry-cook’s shop hard by the dockyard-gates, whose wide green windows framed an appetising display of cakes and buns which appealed strangely to his gastronomic feelings; while a fragrant odour, as of hot mutton-pies, the speciality of the establishment, a renowned one in its way amongst middies and such like small fry who frequented the neighbourhood, oozed out from its hospitably-open door, perfuming lusciously the air around—“I amsohungry!”“By Jove, my boy, so am I, too, now I think of it,” said the Captain, likewise coming to a halt and proceeding to enter the shop, followed by his eager companions. “Let us pipe down to lunch at once. This is a famous place for pies; and you may rely on having mutton in ’em and not puppies!”The old Captain ‘stood treat,’ of course, and the boys had such a glorious ‘tuck out’ that they were behind time when they got back to Mrs Gilmour’s house on the south parade.“Aunt Polly” and Nellie were both ready and waiting for them outside, dressed in walking attire; while Rover was frisking round the ladies, though he darted up to his young master the moment he caught sight of him, forgetting, with all a good dog’s magnanimity, the ill-treatment he had received in not being allowed to accompany him to the dockyard.“Sure, you’re very late, Captain dear,” began Mrs Gilmour when the old sailor came near, with Dick following in his wake; but, suddenly noticing the latter’s wonderful transformation of appearance, she stopped her laughing reproaches anent the Captain’s dilatoriness, exclaiming in admiring tones—“My good gracious! Dear me! Who is this young gentleman?”Bob was in ecstasies.“We were sure you wouldn’t know him, auntie!” he cried, as little Miss Nellie joined him in a gleesome dance of triumph round the blushing, new-fledged Dick, and Rover gambolled behind the pair, barking loudly, in sympathetic accord. “We were sure you wouldn’t know him!”“Sure, you’re right, me dears, I wouldn’t really have recognised him for the same boy at all, at all!” cheerfully agreed Mrs Gilmour, as she turned towards the ex-runaway and scrutinising his altered guise in detail, critically but kindly. “Are ye, really, Dick, now?”“Yes, mum, I bees the same b’y, surely,” replied Dick, with a broad grin that spread over his face from ear to ear. “It’s the Cap’en, God bless him, mum, as made me for to look so foine that my own mother wouldn’t know me, leastways nobody else—thanks be to the Cap’en, mum.”“Pooh, pooh, there’s nothing to make a fuss about,” interposed the old sailor, anxious to let these personalities be dropped, being very shy of any of his good actions being noticed. “The boy’s all right. He has only changed his rig, that’s all, the same as you put on a new dress on going out walking, ma’am.”“That’s a nice thing to say of an economical person like me, sir!” said Mrs Gilmour, shaking her parasol at him in jocular anger. “One would think I was one of those fine ladies who have a new dress every day in the week, and milliners’ bills as long as your old malacca cane.”“Well, well, I apologise, ma’am, for I know better than that, as you are far too sensible a woman to spend all your money on finery,” said the Captain, with a low bow. “But where are we going to now, for I see you are dressed for walking?”“Down to the sea, of course,” she replied. “Nell and I went up to Landport this morning, while you and Bob were ‘transmogrifying’ that boy, as my old father used to say. We paid a visit to the old lady whose eggs were broken yesterday by Master Rover’s gambols. You may remember, Captain, I promised her some from my own fowls in place of those she lost. Don’t you recollect how anxious the poor creature was about them?”“Yes, yes, I remember,” said the old sailor, his face beaming with good-humour. “You’re always kind and thoughtful.”“Whish!” cried Mrs Gilmour playfully. “None of your blarney!”“Oh, Bob!” exclaimed Nellie, interposing at this juncture, while they still all stood talking together in front of the house, neither Mrs Gilmour nor the ‘old commodore’ having yet given the signal for sailing, “she has got such a dear little place of her own.”“Who’s ‘she’—the cat’s mother, Nell?”Nellie laughed.“I mean the old lady who had the broken eggs.”“Aye,” put in the Captain, “and who nearly had broken legs likewise!”This made Nellie laugh again.“Oh, you know who I mean very well, Bob,” said she, when she had ceased to giggle. “She has got the dearest little cottage, you ever saw. It is fitted up just like the cabin of a ship inside; her husband, who was a ship’s carpenter, having done it all. Why, the walls are covered with Chinese pictures and shells and curios which he picked up in all sorts of outlandish places, bringing them home after his various voyages. Oh, Bob, you never saw such funny things.”“Didn’t the woman say something of having an invalid daughter?” inquired the Captain. “I think I heard her speak of one yesterday at the station.”“Yes, poor thing,” said Mrs Gilmour. “She’s got spinal complaint, and we saw her lying on the sofa in the queer little parlour crammed with curiosities that Nell took such a fancy to. She seems a very nice girl, so happy and contented although in such a helpless state! Her old mother, whom I know you thought fussy and selfish, is quite devoted to her.”“Humph!” ejaculated the Captain, taking no notice of Mrs Gilmour’s allusions to his original impression of the stout personage with whom Rover had, so to speak, entangled them into an acquaintance. “Perhaps some of that old port wine of mine would do the girl good, eh, ma’am?”“Not a doubt of it, she looks so pale and delicate,” replied Mrs Gilmour. “But there will be plenty of time to think about that to-morrow. Let us go on now to the beach, or it will be too late for us to do so before dinner.”“Come on then, I’m yours obediently,” said the Captain with his usual chirpy chuckle. “By Jove, though, I think I’ve had pretty nearly walking enough for one day for an old fellow turned sixty.”This time they steered clear of the castle, the exciting memories of the previous evening being too vivid in Mrs Gilmour’s mind to allow the boys to go near the treacherous footing of the rampart again.Instead of going thither, they turned their footsteps rather to the eastern portion of the shore; where a shelving, shingly beach sloped gradually down to the water, and thus no danger to be feared of Master Bob or any one else plunging in suddenly without warning, as happened unfortunately before.Here, everything was new to the young people; the wet pebbles glistening like jewels after a last polish from the receding tide; the masses of many-hued seaweed; the quaint shells; and the rippling waves, laughing in the sunshine, and sportively throwing up in their joyous play little balls of foam or spindrift, which the buoyant south-westerly breeze, equally inclined for fun and frolic, tossed about here and there high in the air, until they were lost to sight in the distance beyond the esplanade.One or two silver-grey gulls, with white waistcoats on, as if going to some nautical dinner-party, were hovering above and occasionally making dashes down in their swooping curvilinear flight to pick up stray tit-bits from the tideway, to assuage their hunger until the grander repast to which they were invited was ready; while a whole colony of their kindred, the black, brown, and dusky-coloured gulls, not so fortunate in being asked out to the festive banquet, were anon floating about in groups on the water close inshore, anon suddenly taking wing and flying off, only to settle down again on the surface further out.Even more impressive, however, than all these evidences of moving life around, there was the sea, that touched their feet almost, and yet stretched out in its illimitable expanse away and away—to where?It was Nellie to whom these thoughts occurred; as for Bob, he was engaged in chasing little green crabs as they scuttled over the shingle, busily collecting as many as he could get hold of in a little pond he had scooped in the sand.This pond would now be filled as some venturesome wavelet broke over its brink; and then be drained as the tide fell back, leaving the poor little crabs left high and dry ashore to repeat their scrambling attempts at escape, only to tumble over on top of each other as they tried to climb the precipitous sides of Bob’s reservoir.“Isn’t it jolly!” cried that young gentleman, looking up at the Captain, who, leaning on his stick, stood near, watching his futile endeavours to restrain the vivacious, side-walking, unwieldy little animals that seemed gifted with such indomitable energy, and equal perseverance to that of Bruce’s spider. “Isn’t it jolly, sir?”“Not very jolly for the crabs, though,” observed the old sailor smiling. “I don’t think they would say so if you asked them the question!”“I’m not hurting them,” said Bob in excuse. “I only want to see them closely.”“I suppose you think they are all alike and belong to the same species, eh?” asked the Captain. “Don’t you?”“Well, I don’t see much difference in them,” replied Bob hesitatingly. “Do you, Captain Dresser?”“Humph! yes. I can see in that little pond of yours, now under my eyes, no less than three distinct varieties of the crab family.”“Never!” exclaimed Bob incredulously. “Why, they all look to me the same queer little green-backed things, with legs all over them that they do not know how to use properly.”“While you think, no doubt, that you could teach them better, eh?” said the Captain chuckling; but, the next moment, raising his hat and a graver expression stealing over his face as he looked upward towards the blue vault overhead, he added earnestly—“Ah, my boy, remember they have a wiser teacher than you or I! However, you’re wrong about their being all similar. The majority of those you’ve caught are certainly of the ordinary species of green crab and uneatable, if even they had been of any tolerable size; but, that little fellow there is a young ‘velvet fiddler’ or ‘swimming crab.’ If you notice, his hind legs are flattened, so as to serve him for oars, with which he can propel himself at a very good rate through the water if you give him a chance. Look now!”“I see,” cried Bob eagerly. “He’s quite different to this other chap here with the long legs.”“Oh that is a ‘spider crab.’ He is of very similar proclivities to his cousin though he lives ashore. The cunning fellow uses his sprawling long limbs in lieu of a web, and will lie in wait in some hole between the rocks, artfully poking his claws out to catch unwary animals—often those of his own or kindred species—as they pass by his den.”“What is this queer little chap?” asked Nellie, pointing to another, which was partly concealed in an old whelk-shell. “He seems to want to get out and can’t.”“Why, my dear, that is the ‘hermit crab.’ He does not want, though, to leave that comfortable lodging he has secured for himself, as you think. He’s an ‘old soldier,’ and knows when he’s well off! He belongs to what is called the ‘soft-tailed’ family, and being defenceless astern he has to seek an artificial protection against his enemies, in place of natural armour.”“How funny!” said Nellie, watching the little animal more closely. “What a queer fellow!”“Yes,” continued the Captain, “and, that is the reason why he goes prowling about for empty shells. Often, too, really he’s such a pugnacious fellow, he will turn the rightful tenant out, taking forcible possession. Just look at his tail and see how it is provided with a pair of pincers at the end. He is enabled by this means to hold on firmly to any shell, no matter how badly it may fit him, which he chooses for his temporary habitation.”As he spoke, the Captain extracted with some little difficulty the buccaneer crab from the whelk-shell, showing its peculiar formation, quite unlike that of the others. A young shrimp who had lost his latitude was also found in Bob’s pond, and the discovery led the old sailor to speak of these animals that form such a pleasant relish to bread-and-butter; and he told them that one of the best fishing-grounds for them was off the Woolsner Shoal, some four miles further along the beach to the eastwards, while another good place was Selsea Bill, more eastward still.While the Captain was giving this little lecture about the crabs and their congeners, Rover was prancing around and barking for some one to pitch in a stick or something for him to fetch out of the sea.Presently, in bringing back a piece of wood which Bob had thrown into the water, Rover dragged ashore a mass of seaweed, a portion of which was shaped somewhat like a lettuce and coloured a greenish purple.The Captain pounced on this at once.“Hullo!” he exclaimed—“why, it is laver.”“Isn’t that good to eat?” asked Mrs Gilmour. “I fancy I’ve heard people speak of it in London, or somewhere.”“I should rather think it was!” he replied. “It is, too, one of the best sorts, the purple laver, a variety of some value, I believe, in the London market.”“I can’t say I should like to eat it,” said Nellie, squeezing up her nose like a rabbit and making a wry face. “It looks too nasty!”“Wouldn’t you?” retorted the Captain. “I can tell you, missy, it is very good when well boiled, with the addition of a little lemon-juice. It tastes then better than spinach.”“Do all these sorts of seaweed grow in the sea, Captain Dresser?” asked Bob. “I mean in the same way as plants do in a garden?”“No, my boy,” replied the other. “They attach themselves to the rocks at the bottom of the sea, not to draw their sustenance from them in the same way as plants ashore derive their nourishment from the earth through their roots; but, simply to anchor themselves in a secure haven out of reach of the waves, getting all their nutriment from the water, which is the atmosphere of the sea in the same way as air is that of the land. Of course, some of these weeds of the ocean drift from their moorings, like that bladder wrack there with the berries.”“Don’t they pop jolly!” observed Master Bob, popping away as he delivered himself of this opinion. “Pop! There goes one!”“You are not the only boy who has found that out, or girl either,” said the Captain with a smile to Nellie, who was industriously following her brother’s example. “But, look here, children, I can now see something stranger than anything we’ve noticed yet.”“What?” exclaimed Bob and Nellie together, stooping down to where the Captain was poking about with the end of his malacca cane in the sandy shingle. “What is it, sir?”“A pholas,” he answered. “It is one of the most curious burrowing animals known, and has been a puzzle to naturalists for years, until Gosse discovered its secret, as to how it succeeded with its soft and tender shell in penetrating into the hardest rocks, within whose substance it is frequently found completely buried, so that, like the ‘Fly in Amber,’ one wonders how it ever got there!”“What did you say it was?” asked Mrs Gilmour. “A ‘fowl,’ sure? Faith it’s a quare-looken’ bird, Cap’en dear!”The Captain smiled, but he was not to be tempted away from his hobby.“The pholas, I said, ma’am,” he replied. “The ‘pholas dactylus,’ as scientific people call it, which, until Gosse, as I said, discovered its mode of action, was quite a puzzle to every one; although, now that the mystery is out, all wonder it was not cleared up before! If you look at the head of the shell, you’ll see it is provided with a regular series of little pointed spines at the end of the upper portion. These spines are of a much harder material than the main part of the shell, and are fixed into it, as you could notice better with a microscope, just in the same way as the steel points for the notes of any air are attached to the barrel of a common musical-box, projecting like so many teeth.”“Yes, I can see them,” observed Bob, who was listening attentively. “Look, Nell!”“Well, then,” the Captain went on, “besides this toothed head of his, the animal is provided with a sucker at his mouth, by which he can hold on to any wooden pile or stonework he may wish to perforate so as to make his nest inside; and, gripping this firmly with his sucker and working the head of his shell slowly backwards and forwards with a sort of circular rocking motion, he gradually bores his way into the object of his affections, getting rid of the refuse he excavates by the aid of a natural siphon that runs through his body, and by means of which he blows all his waste borings away—curious, isn’t it?”“Very,” said Mrs Gilmour; while the children, equally interested, wanted to learn not only all the Captain could tell them of this peculiar little animal, but also everything he knew of the other wonders of the shore. “Sure I wish I knew all you do, Captain!”But, if the Captain was learned and good-natured, the children taxed his patience, Miss Nellie especially.She had not lost any time in setting about making that collection of shells which she had mentioned to him in confidence when coming down in the train it was her intention to begin as soon as she got to the sea; and, all the time he had been speaking of the little crabs and other things, she had been busily gathering together all sorts of razor shells, pieces of cuttle-fish bone, cast-off lobsters’ claws, and bits of seaweed, which she now proudly drew his attention to, expecting the old sailor’s admiration.He was, on the contrary, however, extremely ungallant.“All rubbish!” he exclaimed on her asking him if he did not think her pile of curiosities nice. “But, those corallines, young lady, are good. They were long supposed to belong to the animal world, like the zoophytes; instead of which they are plants the same as any other seaweed. When that little branch you have there is dry, if you put the end of it to a lighted candle, it will burn with an intense white flame, similar to the lime-light, or that produced by electricity.”“We’ll try it to-night!” said Bob emphatically. “We’ll try it to-night!”“But, the Captain says it must be quite dry,” interposed his sister, somewhat appeased by the praise bestowed on her corallines for the wholesale condemnation her collection had received. “Isn’t that so, Captain?”“Right you are, my deary,” said he. “They would not burn unless they’re just like tinder.”Dick, who had meanwhile been listening to all that was being said, without intruding on the conversation, busying himself in picking up shells for Miss Nell, and, occasionally, diverting Rover’s attention by throwing a stick for him into the sea, happened to come across, just at this juncture, a queer-looking dark-coloured object that resembled an india-rubber tobacco-pouch more than anything else.“What be this, sir?” said he, holding up the article for inspection. “Be he good for aught, sir?”“Why, it’s only a piece of seaweed, of course!” declared Master Bob, settling the question in his own way. “Any one can see that.”“You’re wrong,” said the Captain. “You’re quite wrong, Master Sharp!”“It’s a fairy’s pillow-case,” cried Nellie. “Isn’t it?”“Your guess is the nearer of the two, missy,” decided Captain Dresser, thumping his malacca cane down to give greater effect to his words. “Strange to say, you’ve almost hit upon the very name; for, the fisher-folk hereabouts and down the coast call the things ‘mermaids’ purses.’ They once contained the egg of some young skate or shark, who, when he was old enough, hatched himself, leaving his shell behind; and this being elastic, like gutta-percha, closed up again, so that it cannot be told how he got out.”“Dear me!” exclaimed Mrs Gilmour. “I’ve often wondered what those things were, and never knew before.”“It’s never too late, ma’am, to learn,” said the Captain. “I myself only took up natural history, gathering the little knowledge I possess, after I was put on half-pay. Indeed, it was all owing to poor Ted, your husband and my old shipmate, that I ever thought of reading at all. He said it would be something for me to fall back upon for occupation when the Admiralty shoved me on the shelf; and, by Jove, he was right!”“Poor Ted!” sighed Mrs Gilmour somewhat sadly. “Poor old Ted!”“Not ‘poor,’ ma’am,” said the Captain reverently, taking off his hat and looking upwards as he had done before when calling the children’s attention to Him who taught the insects. “He’s ‘rich’ Ted, now; and better off in his snug moorings aloft than you and I here below!”“Yes, I know that, but it is hard to be content,” replied the other, appearing lost in thought for some moments; until presently, recovering herself, she looked at her watch, when, seeing what time it was, she said they must start back for home at once. “Come along, children, time’s up!”“O-o-o-oh!” exclaimed Bob and Nellie in great consternation. “Why, we’ve only just come!”“O-o-o-oh!” mimicked their aunt, amused at their woebegone faces. “Do you know that we’ve been down here nearly four hours! If we stop much longer, you’ll be ‘oh-ing’ for your dinner, when it will be too late to get any, and how would you like that?”“Humph! I thought I was feeling a bit peckish,” said the Captain, wheeling about and preparing to head the return procession home, accepting Mrs Gilmour’s remarks as a command. “Come on, children, we’ve got our sailing directions; so let us up anchor at once, for you’ll have plenty of the beach before you see the last of it. I tell you what, though, I’ll do for you if you are good.”“What, Captain?” cried Bob and Nellie, hanging on to his coat-tails as he stumped over the shingle by the side of their aunt, the faces of all now set homeward. “What?”“Ah, you must wait till to-morrow!” was all that they could get out of him, however, in spite of their wheedlings and coaxings as they crossed the Common, with Dick and Rover following behind; the latter being too hungry even to bark, and only able to give a faint wag of his tail now and then when especially addressed by name. “Wait till to-morrow!”
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” cried Bob presently, stopping on their way homewards at a nice-looking pastry-cook’s shop hard by the dockyard-gates, whose wide green windows framed an appetising display of cakes and buns which appealed strangely to his gastronomic feelings; while a fragrant odour, as of hot mutton-pies, the speciality of the establishment, a renowned one in its way amongst middies and such like small fry who frequented the neighbourhood, oozed out from its hospitably-open door, perfuming lusciously the air around—“I amsohungry!”
“By Jove, my boy, so am I, too, now I think of it,” said the Captain, likewise coming to a halt and proceeding to enter the shop, followed by his eager companions. “Let us pipe down to lunch at once. This is a famous place for pies; and you may rely on having mutton in ’em and not puppies!”
The old Captain ‘stood treat,’ of course, and the boys had such a glorious ‘tuck out’ that they were behind time when they got back to Mrs Gilmour’s house on the south parade.
“Aunt Polly” and Nellie were both ready and waiting for them outside, dressed in walking attire; while Rover was frisking round the ladies, though he darted up to his young master the moment he caught sight of him, forgetting, with all a good dog’s magnanimity, the ill-treatment he had received in not being allowed to accompany him to the dockyard.
“Sure, you’re very late, Captain dear,” began Mrs Gilmour when the old sailor came near, with Dick following in his wake; but, suddenly noticing the latter’s wonderful transformation of appearance, she stopped her laughing reproaches anent the Captain’s dilatoriness, exclaiming in admiring tones—“My good gracious! Dear me! Who is this young gentleman?”
Bob was in ecstasies.
“We were sure you wouldn’t know him, auntie!” he cried, as little Miss Nellie joined him in a gleesome dance of triumph round the blushing, new-fledged Dick, and Rover gambolled behind the pair, barking loudly, in sympathetic accord. “We were sure you wouldn’t know him!”
“Sure, you’re right, me dears, I wouldn’t really have recognised him for the same boy at all, at all!” cheerfully agreed Mrs Gilmour, as she turned towards the ex-runaway and scrutinising his altered guise in detail, critically but kindly. “Are ye, really, Dick, now?”
“Yes, mum, I bees the same b’y, surely,” replied Dick, with a broad grin that spread over his face from ear to ear. “It’s the Cap’en, God bless him, mum, as made me for to look so foine that my own mother wouldn’t know me, leastways nobody else—thanks be to the Cap’en, mum.”
“Pooh, pooh, there’s nothing to make a fuss about,” interposed the old sailor, anxious to let these personalities be dropped, being very shy of any of his good actions being noticed. “The boy’s all right. He has only changed his rig, that’s all, the same as you put on a new dress on going out walking, ma’am.”
“That’s a nice thing to say of an economical person like me, sir!” said Mrs Gilmour, shaking her parasol at him in jocular anger. “One would think I was one of those fine ladies who have a new dress every day in the week, and milliners’ bills as long as your old malacca cane.”
“Well, well, I apologise, ma’am, for I know better than that, as you are far too sensible a woman to spend all your money on finery,” said the Captain, with a low bow. “But where are we going to now, for I see you are dressed for walking?”
“Down to the sea, of course,” she replied. “Nell and I went up to Landport this morning, while you and Bob were ‘transmogrifying’ that boy, as my old father used to say. We paid a visit to the old lady whose eggs were broken yesterday by Master Rover’s gambols. You may remember, Captain, I promised her some from my own fowls in place of those she lost. Don’t you recollect how anxious the poor creature was about them?”
“Yes, yes, I remember,” said the old sailor, his face beaming with good-humour. “You’re always kind and thoughtful.”
“Whish!” cried Mrs Gilmour playfully. “None of your blarney!”
“Oh, Bob!” exclaimed Nellie, interposing at this juncture, while they still all stood talking together in front of the house, neither Mrs Gilmour nor the ‘old commodore’ having yet given the signal for sailing, “she has got such a dear little place of her own.”
“Who’s ‘she’—the cat’s mother, Nell?”
Nellie laughed.
“I mean the old lady who had the broken eggs.”
“Aye,” put in the Captain, “and who nearly had broken legs likewise!”
This made Nellie laugh again.
“Oh, you know who I mean very well, Bob,” said she, when she had ceased to giggle. “She has got the dearest little cottage, you ever saw. It is fitted up just like the cabin of a ship inside; her husband, who was a ship’s carpenter, having done it all. Why, the walls are covered with Chinese pictures and shells and curios which he picked up in all sorts of outlandish places, bringing them home after his various voyages. Oh, Bob, you never saw such funny things.”
“Didn’t the woman say something of having an invalid daughter?” inquired the Captain. “I think I heard her speak of one yesterday at the station.”
“Yes, poor thing,” said Mrs Gilmour. “She’s got spinal complaint, and we saw her lying on the sofa in the queer little parlour crammed with curiosities that Nell took such a fancy to. She seems a very nice girl, so happy and contented although in such a helpless state! Her old mother, whom I know you thought fussy and selfish, is quite devoted to her.”
“Humph!” ejaculated the Captain, taking no notice of Mrs Gilmour’s allusions to his original impression of the stout personage with whom Rover had, so to speak, entangled them into an acquaintance. “Perhaps some of that old port wine of mine would do the girl good, eh, ma’am?”
“Not a doubt of it, she looks so pale and delicate,” replied Mrs Gilmour. “But there will be plenty of time to think about that to-morrow. Let us go on now to the beach, or it will be too late for us to do so before dinner.”
“Come on then, I’m yours obediently,” said the Captain with his usual chirpy chuckle. “By Jove, though, I think I’ve had pretty nearly walking enough for one day for an old fellow turned sixty.”
This time they steered clear of the castle, the exciting memories of the previous evening being too vivid in Mrs Gilmour’s mind to allow the boys to go near the treacherous footing of the rampart again.
Instead of going thither, they turned their footsteps rather to the eastern portion of the shore; where a shelving, shingly beach sloped gradually down to the water, and thus no danger to be feared of Master Bob or any one else plunging in suddenly without warning, as happened unfortunately before.
Here, everything was new to the young people; the wet pebbles glistening like jewels after a last polish from the receding tide; the masses of many-hued seaweed; the quaint shells; and the rippling waves, laughing in the sunshine, and sportively throwing up in their joyous play little balls of foam or spindrift, which the buoyant south-westerly breeze, equally inclined for fun and frolic, tossed about here and there high in the air, until they were lost to sight in the distance beyond the esplanade.
One or two silver-grey gulls, with white waistcoats on, as if going to some nautical dinner-party, were hovering above and occasionally making dashes down in their swooping curvilinear flight to pick up stray tit-bits from the tideway, to assuage their hunger until the grander repast to which they were invited was ready; while a whole colony of their kindred, the black, brown, and dusky-coloured gulls, not so fortunate in being asked out to the festive banquet, were anon floating about in groups on the water close inshore, anon suddenly taking wing and flying off, only to settle down again on the surface further out.
Even more impressive, however, than all these evidences of moving life around, there was the sea, that touched their feet almost, and yet stretched out in its illimitable expanse away and away—to where?
It was Nellie to whom these thoughts occurred; as for Bob, he was engaged in chasing little green crabs as they scuttled over the shingle, busily collecting as many as he could get hold of in a little pond he had scooped in the sand.
This pond would now be filled as some venturesome wavelet broke over its brink; and then be drained as the tide fell back, leaving the poor little crabs left high and dry ashore to repeat their scrambling attempts at escape, only to tumble over on top of each other as they tried to climb the precipitous sides of Bob’s reservoir.
“Isn’t it jolly!” cried that young gentleman, looking up at the Captain, who, leaning on his stick, stood near, watching his futile endeavours to restrain the vivacious, side-walking, unwieldy little animals that seemed gifted with such indomitable energy, and equal perseverance to that of Bruce’s spider. “Isn’t it jolly, sir?”
“Not very jolly for the crabs, though,” observed the old sailor smiling. “I don’t think they would say so if you asked them the question!”
“I’m not hurting them,” said Bob in excuse. “I only want to see them closely.”
“I suppose you think they are all alike and belong to the same species, eh?” asked the Captain. “Don’t you?”
“Well, I don’t see much difference in them,” replied Bob hesitatingly. “Do you, Captain Dresser?”
“Humph! yes. I can see in that little pond of yours, now under my eyes, no less than three distinct varieties of the crab family.”
“Never!” exclaimed Bob incredulously. “Why, they all look to me the same queer little green-backed things, with legs all over them that they do not know how to use properly.”
“While you think, no doubt, that you could teach them better, eh?” said the Captain chuckling; but, the next moment, raising his hat and a graver expression stealing over his face as he looked upward towards the blue vault overhead, he added earnestly—“Ah, my boy, remember they have a wiser teacher than you or I! However, you’re wrong about their being all similar. The majority of those you’ve caught are certainly of the ordinary species of green crab and uneatable, if even they had been of any tolerable size; but, that little fellow there is a young ‘velvet fiddler’ or ‘swimming crab.’ If you notice, his hind legs are flattened, so as to serve him for oars, with which he can propel himself at a very good rate through the water if you give him a chance. Look now!”
“I see,” cried Bob eagerly. “He’s quite different to this other chap here with the long legs.”
“Oh that is a ‘spider crab.’ He is of very similar proclivities to his cousin though he lives ashore. The cunning fellow uses his sprawling long limbs in lieu of a web, and will lie in wait in some hole between the rocks, artfully poking his claws out to catch unwary animals—often those of his own or kindred species—as they pass by his den.”
“What is this queer little chap?” asked Nellie, pointing to another, which was partly concealed in an old whelk-shell. “He seems to want to get out and can’t.”
“Why, my dear, that is the ‘hermit crab.’ He does not want, though, to leave that comfortable lodging he has secured for himself, as you think. He’s an ‘old soldier,’ and knows when he’s well off! He belongs to what is called the ‘soft-tailed’ family, and being defenceless astern he has to seek an artificial protection against his enemies, in place of natural armour.”
“How funny!” said Nellie, watching the little animal more closely. “What a queer fellow!”
“Yes,” continued the Captain, “and, that is the reason why he goes prowling about for empty shells. Often, too, really he’s such a pugnacious fellow, he will turn the rightful tenant out, taking forcible possession. Just look at his tail and see how it is provided with a pair of pincers at the end. He is enabled by this means to hold on firmly to any shell, no matter how badly it may fit him, which he chooses for his temporary habitation.”
As he spoke, the Captain extracted with some little difficulty the buccaneer crab from the whelk-shell, showing its peculiar formation, quite unlike that of the others. A young shrimp who had lost his latitude was also found in Bob’s pond, and the discovery led the old sailor to speak of these animals that form such a pleasant relish to bread-and-butter; and he told them that one of the best fishing-grounds for them was off the Woolsner Shoal, some four miles further along the beach to the eastwards, while another good place was Selsea Bill, more eastward still.
While the Captain was giving this little lecture about the crabs and their congeners, Rover was prancing around and barking for some one to pitch in a stick or something for him to fetch out of the sea.
Presently, in bringing back a piece of wood which Bob had thrown into the water, Rover dragged ashore a mass of seaweed, a portion of which was shaped somewhat like a lettuce and coloured a greenish purple.
The Captain pounced on this at once.
“Hullo!” he exclaimed—“why, it is laver.”
“Isn’t that good to eat?” asked Mrs Gilmour. “I fancy I’ve heard people speak of it in London, or somewhere.”
“I should rather think it was!” he replied. “It is, too, one of the best sorts, the purple laver, a variety of some value, I believe, in the London market.”
“I can’t say I should like to eat it,” said Nellie, squeezing up her nose like a rabbit and making a wry face. “It looks too nasty!”
“Wouldn’t you?” retorted the Captain. “I can tell you, missy, it is very good when well boiled, with the addition of a little lemon-juice. It tastes then better than spinach.”
“Do all these sorts of seaweed grow in the sea, Captain Dresser?” asked Bob. “I mean in the same way as plants do in a garden?”
“No, my boy,” replied the other. “They attach themselves to the rocks at the bottom of the sea, not to draw their sustenance from them in the same way as plants ashore derive their nourishment from the earth through their roots; but, simply to anchor themselves in a secure haven out of reach of the waves, getting all their nutriment from the water, which is the atmosphere of the sea in the same way as air is that of the land. Of course, some of these weeds of the ocean drift from their moorings, like that bladder wrack there with the berries.”
“Don’t they pop jolly!” observed Master Bob, popping away as he delivered himself of this opinion. “Pop! There goes one!”
“You are not the only boy who has found that out, or girl either,” said the Captain with a smile to Nellie, who was industriously following her brother’s example. “But, look here, children, I can now see something stranger than anything we’ve noticed yet.”
“What?” exclaimed Bob and Nellie together, stooping down to where the Captain was poking about with the end of his malacca cane in the sandy shingle. “What is it, sir?”
“A pholas,” he answered. “It is one of the most curious burrowing animals known, and has been a puzzle to naturalists for years, until Gosse discovered its secret, as to how it succeeded with its soft and tender shell in penetrating into the hardest rocks, within whose substance it is frequently found completely buried, so that, like the ‘Fly in Amber,’ one wonders how it ever got there!”
“What did you say it was?” asked Mrs Gilmour. “A ‘fowl,’ sure? Faith it’s a quare-looken’ bird, Cap’en dear!”
The Captain smiled, but he was not to be tempted away from his hobby.
“The pholas, I said, ma’am,” he replied. “The ‘pholas dactylus,’ as scientific people call it, which, until Gosse, as I said, discovered its mode of action, was quite a puzzle to every one; although, now that the mystery is out, all wonder it was not cleared up before! If you look at the head of the shell, you’ll see it is provided with a regular series of little pointed spines at the end of the upper portion. These spines are of a much harder material than the main part of the shell, and are fixed into it, as you could notice better with a microscope, just in the same way as the steel points for the notes of any air are attached to the barrel of a common musical-box, projecting like so many teeth.”
“Yes, I can see them,” observed Bob, who was listening attentively. “Look, Nell!”
“Well, then,” the Captain went on, “besides this toothed head of his, the animal is provided with a sucker at his mouth, by which he can hold on to any wooden pile or stonework he may wish to perforate so as to make his nest inside; and, gripping this firmly with his sucker and working the head of his shell slowly backwards and forwards with a sort of circular rocking motion, he gradually bores his way into the object of his affections, getting rid of the refuse he excavates by the aid of a natural siphon that runs through his body, and by means of which he blows all his waste borings away—curious, isn’t it?”
“Very,” said Mrs Gilmour; while the children, equally interested, wanted to learn not only all the Captain could tell them of this peculiar little animal, but also everything he knew of the other wonders of the shore. “Sure I wish I knew all you do, Captain!”
But, if the Captain was learned and good-natured, the children taxed his patience, Miss Nellie especially.
She had not lost any time in setting about making that collection of shells which she had mentioned to him in confidence when coming down in the train it was her intention to begin as soon as she got to the sea; and, all the time he had been speaking of the little crabs and other things, she had been busily gathering together all sorts of razor shells, pieces of cuttle-fish bone, cast-off lobsters’ claws, and bits of seaweed, which she now proudly drew his attention to, expecting the old sailor’s admiration.
He was, on the contrary, however, extremely ungallant.
“All rubbish!” he exclaimed on her asking him if he did not think her pile of curiosities nice. “But, those corallines, young lady, are good. They were long supposed to belong to the animal world, like the zoophytes; instead of which they are plants the same as any other seaweed. When that little branch you have there is dry, if you put the end of it to a lighted candle, it will burn with an intense white flame, similar to the lime-light, or that produced by electricity.”
“We’ll try it to-night!” said Bob emphatically. “We’ll try it to-night!”
“But, the Captain says it must be quite dry,” interposed his sister, somewhat appeased by the praise bestowed on her corallines for the wholesale condemnation her collection had received. “Isn’t that so, Captain?”
“Right you are, my deary,” said he. “They would not burn unless they’re just like tinder.”
Dick, who had meanwhile been listening to all that was being said, without intruding on the conversation, busying himself in picking up shells for Miss Nell, and, occasionally, diverting Rover’s attention by throwing a stick for him into the sea, happened to come across, just at this juncture, a queer-looking dark-coloured object that resembled an india-rubber tobacco-pouch more than anything else.
“What be this, sir?” said he, holding up the article for inspection. “Be he good for aught, sir?”
“Why, it’s only a piece of seaweed, of course!” declared Master Bob, settling the question in his own way. “Any one can see that.”
“You’re wrong,” said the Captain. “You’re quite wrong, Master Sharp!”
“It’s a fairy’s pillow-case,” cried Nellie. “Isn’t it?”
“Your guess is the nearer of the two, missy,” decided Captain Dresser, thumping his malacca cane down to give greater effect to his words. “Strange to say, you’ve almost hit upon the very name; for, the fisher-folk hereabouts and down the coast call the things ‘mermaids’ purses.’ They once contained the egg of some young skate or shark, who, when he was old enough, hatched himself, leaving his shell behind; and this being elastic, like gutta-percha, closed up again, so that it cannot be told how he got out.”
“Dear me!” exclaimed Mrs Gilmour. “I’ve often wondered what those things were, and never knew before.”
“It’s never too late, ma’am, to learn,” said the Captain. “I myself only took up natural history, gathering the little knowledge I possess, after I was put on half-pay. Indeed, it was all owing to poor Ted, your husband and my old shipmate, that I ever thought of reading at all. He said it would be something for me to fall back upon for occupation when the Admiralty shoved me on the shelf; and, by Jove, he was right!”
“Poor Ted!” sighed Mrs Gilmour somewhat sadly. “Poor old Ted!”
“Not ‘poor,’ ma’am,” said the Captain reverently, taking off his hat and looking upwards as he had done before when calling the children’s attention to Him who taught the insects. “He’s ‘rich’ Ted, now; and better off in his snug moorings aloft than you and I here below!”
“Yes, I know that, but it is hard to be content,” replied the other, appearing lost in thought for some moments; until presently, recovering herself, she looked at her watch, when, seeing what time it was, she said they must start back for home at once. “Come along, children, time’s up!”
“O-o-o-oh!” exclaimed Bob and Nellie in great consternation. “Why, we’ve only just come!”
“O-o-o-oh!” mimicked their aunt, amused at their woebegone faces. “Do you know that we’ve been down here nearly four hours! If we stop much longer, you’ll be ‘oh-ing’ for your dinner, when it will be too late to get any, and how would you like that?”
“Humph! I thought I was feeling a bit peckish,” said the Captain, wheeling about and preparing to head the return procession home, accepting Mrs Gilmour’s remarks as a command. “Come on, children, we’ve got our sailing directions; so let us up anchor at once, for you’ll have plenty of the beach before you see the last of it. I tell you what, though, I’ll do for you if you are good.”
“What, Captain?” cried Bob and Nellie, hanging on to his coat-tails as he stumped over the shingle by the side of their aunt, the faces of all now set homeward. “What?”
“Ah, you must wait till to-morrow!” was all that they could get out of him, however, in spite of their wheedlings and coaxings as they crossed the Common, with Dick and Rover following behind; the latter being too hungry even to bark, and only able to give a faint wag of his tail now and then when especially addressed by name. “Wait till to-morrow!”