CHAPTER VIHOW THE CAT CLIMBED
WhenStumpy had gone, Ronald wandered off among the rocks looking for sea-birds’ eggs for his collection, and Lesley strolled along the shore picking up shining shells and telling herself a story. In this romantic tale she was a princess prisoned in a tower on a far-off island, but the suitors who landed there, having heard of her marvelous beauty, were unable to declare their passion as, unfortunately, she understood no tongue but her own and that was strange to all of them.
As it fell out, the long-lost prince, her brother, in command of a gallant ship, chanced to pass by the island and, arriving at exactly the right moment, was beginning to give language-lessons to the handsomest of the suitors, when—
“Hi, Lesley, hi! Where’s Ronnie?” called a hoarse voice that broke in upon her dreams.
“Ronnie? He’s right here—”
“Where, then? I no see,” objected Stumpy, limping down among the pebbles.
“Hewashere a moment ago— Oh,” in immediate fright, “wherecanthat boy be?”
“You no watch him?” asked Stumpy, with lifted eyebrows. “I think you always watch Ronnie.”
“I do,” answered Lesley, in a grieved voice, “Ialwaysdo, but I forgot one moment. Oh,” breaking into sobs, “whereis he and what will mother say?”
“I know very well what she say,” observed Stumpy, dryly, “but what we do before she say?”
“He must be climbing the rocks, somewhere, hemustbe, for he said only this morning that he hadn’t found a murre’s egg since he lived in this country.”
Stumpy could not but smile at this Ronald-like speech, though at heart he was a little anxious. “H——m,” he murmured. “Well, if it was a murre’s egg he want, he have to climb pretty high— Halloo, halloo, Ronald!” he shouted—“Where are you? Halloo! Halloo!”
“Halloo! Halloo, Ronnie!” called Lesley in her high, clear voice.
No answer, but an unusual fluttering and screaming of sea-birds around the “Gateway Rock” showed that something was amiss there and the old sailor and the girl started off in that direction.
Now the Gateway Rock was the central one of three sisters stretching out from shore, the third being entirely surrounded by water and the second one partly on and to be reached by land. Near the top of its jagged, shining masses was a narrow opening like a door through which you saw the heaving blue waters of the Pacific like a picture in a frame of ebony. The three rocks were particularly favored by gulls, murres, and cormorants as their resting-place and Ronald had climbed there before under his father’s advice and direction. Now, however, he had mounted the heights alone, for Lesley could plainly see his small figure in the Gateway as they drew near and a bit of something white that must be a handkerchief, fluttering in his hand.
When they had painfully reached the base of the Gateway Rock, it was plain that Ronald was calling them and that he was not hurt. The roar of the breakers against the cliffs was so loud that they could not hear a word he said, but his gestures showed that he had got himself into a trap and saw no way to get out.
LESLEY COULD PLAINLY SEE HIS SMALL FIGURE IN THE GATEWAY
LESLEY COULD PLAINLY SEE HIS SMALL FIGURE IN THE GATEWAY
LESLEY COULD PLAINLY SEE HIS SMALL FIGURE IN THE GATEWAY
“I can help him down if I can only get up there,” cried Lesley, starting to climb the slippery cliff, butStumpy held her back. “No,” he shouted, “one enough; I get him down.”
“But how can you, Stumpy,” Lesley faltered, “with your wooden leg?”
“Got wooden leg, yes,” answered Stumpy, cheerfully, “but got two arms all right. No be sailor for nothing. You wait; you see!”—and waving his hand to Ronnie he started off for the storehouse.
Lesley waited on the black rocks in an agony of fear expecting every moment that Ronald would slip down from his perch, and while she watched his small figure and turned with almost every breath to see if Stumpy hove in sight, she kept saying to herself, “No, I didn’t watch him; I didn’t. I forgot all about him. Mother will never call me her faithful little girl again!”
There was, in fact, no danger for Ronald if he kept quiet and did not try to climb down the steep cliff alone, but the anxious sister did not realize this, and it seemed to her that hours had passed when she spied Stumpy limping down among the rocks with a large bundle under his arm.
“All right, Ronnie!” he shouted, as he drew near, “I come pretty soon, now.” And he unrolled a coil ofrope before Lesley’s astonished eyes and took from within it his Indian bow and a bundle of arrows.
He held up the bow and the rope to the boy, who could see, though he could not hear, and who waved his hands and clapped them to show that he understood. Not so did Lesley, however, who looked on with a white face as if she thought that Stumpy intended to tie Ronald up with the rope and then shoot him with the arrows.
“See, little daughter,” explained Stumpy, kindly; “I tie little string to arrow, tie big rope with loop on end to string, then shoot arrow up to Ronnie. He pull up rope and slip loop round big rock. Then I climb up rope, so”—illustrating hand-over-hand movement—“and I be up there pretty quick.”
“But how can you get Ronnie down? He couldn’t climb down a rope.”
“No, that all right. He know. I do that one day up by Lighthouse. You remember? I let your father down by rope to get little lamb that fall over cliff and catch on rock. You remember?”
“Oh, yes,” eagerly. “Stumpy’s coming, Stumpy’s coming!” she cried, turning to the boy.
The proper arrow was finally selected, the cordfastened to it, the great bow bent, and whiz! went the shaft to its mark, the side of the Gateway. In a moment Ronald had snatched it, pulled up the rope with all the strength of eight-year-old arms, found the loop and slipped it over a convenient peak. He tried it to see that it was taut—(“Smart boy, that!” murmured Stumpy)—and waved his hand to show that it was all right.
Stumpy limped to where the end of the rope hung dangling, threw off his cap and woolen jacket, wet his hands in a pool of the rocks and started to climb, as he had once done on shipboard. It was not far—one hundred feet, perhaps—but far enough for a one-legged man and far enough for a small boy shivering in the windy Gateway above, who knew well enough that he should not have been where he was and that he was causing untold trouble by his carelessness.
There were sharp points and projections here and there in the great rock against which Stumpy could rest his good foot and get a little breath, but he reached the top almost at the end of his strength and unable to return Ronald’s bear-like hug of welcome.
“You get down, young man, ’bout as soon as you can,” he panted. “This be ’bout the last timeStumpy get you out o’ trouble. He getting too old.”
So saying he pulled up the end of the rope, motioned the boy to come nearer, fastened it cleverly about his body with loops over the shoulders, told him to sit down in the threshold of the Gateway, with legs hanging over the cliff, and with a “Ready, now! All right!” lowered him slowly downward into Lesley’s arms. The old sailor braced himself, meantime, against the needle of rock where the rope was fastened, but even so and with Ronald’s light weight it was all he could do to manage the job, and the boy noted with distress how long it took his beloved friend and playmate to recover his breath and gather strength to climb down the rope himself.
Ronald was ready to meet him when he reached the safety of the rocks below and to hold out his hand and say, like a man, “I’m sorry, Stumpy, and I’ll never be so careless again. Thank you, and Mother and Father will thank you, too.”
“Oh, no need thank,” smiled Stumpy. “Everybody help friend in trouble. But now other trouble begin. Got to go home and tell boss what you do and Lesley tell she forgot to watch like Mother say.”
Both children hung their heads and blushed, butthey knew their duty well enough and had known it without Stumpy’s reminder, so they set off for the Lighthouse, hand in hand, with a sorrowful good-bye for Stumpy.
The soft-hearted old man watched them go with a half-smile and a half-sigh. “Good children!” he said. “Good boy, that Ronnie, but too much like little cat. Climb up so far she can go; never think how she get down!”
Mr. and Mrs. McLean heard the children’s story quietly and laid the blame on Ronald, where it rightfully belonged.
“Youmustlearn to be more careful, son,” warned his father. “It’s no good for me to punish you. You must find out how to punish yourself so that it will make you remember.”
“I’ll give up the murre’s egg!” cried Ronald, who had carried it safe home in the breast of his jacket, in spite of his adventures.
“That would be a foolish thing,” objected his mother. “You did no wrong in trying to get the egg, only in not asking Stumpy if it was safe for you to go up the Gateway Rock alone.”
“I won’t go down to Stumpy’s for a month, then,” sniffed the culprit.
“That would be punishing Lesley as well as yourself,” said his father, severely. “Think again!”
“But Ideserveto be punished,” interrupted Lesley. “I didn’t watch Ronnie, like Mother always says, and I’m older than he is and ought to remember.”
The boy’s face flushed at his sister’s generous words. “Then I’ll let Lesley take Jenny Lind to water for a whole week,” he cried, “though you always said”—this with a catch in the breath—“that it was a man’s place.”
“So it is,” said his father, affectionately, “and now you talk like a man.”
“And I’ll give up my pudding for a week, and maybe I’d better go to bed now and then I shan’t hear you read the next chapter of ‘Robinson Crusoe’ to-night.” And here the small sufferer really began to sniff, and made his way blindly to the staircase, still with the murre’s egg tightly clasped in his grimy paw.
“Oh, Father, oh, Mother!” sobbed Lesley. “He won’t have to go to bed, will he, poor Ronnie?”
“‘Poor Ronnie’ will have to learn to look before heleaps,” said his father, quietly. “Going to bed never hurt anybody, yet.” And though Margaret McLean’s own eyes were moist she nodded her head in silent agreement.