For the polishing of gems the dust of gems is necessary. And for the training of boys other boys are essential. Eager cast about for other boys against whom his colts might wear off some of their angles.
Some men have a wonderful power of attracting and drawing out all that is best in their fellows. Personal magnetism, we call it, and it is a mighty gift of the gods.
Charles Eager had that gift in a very remarkable degree, and with it many others that appealed to the most difficult of all sections of the community. Boys hate being made good. The man who can lift them to higher planes without any unpleasant consciousness thereof on their part is a genius, and more than a genius. We have, some of us, met such in our lives, and we think of them with most affectionate reverence and crown them with glory and honour, though, all too often, the world passes them by with but scant acknowledgment.
But diamond-dust alone will polish diamonds. Softer stuff is useless, and the supply of boy-diamond-dust in that neighbourhood was small. So he laid masterful hands on what there was.
Just outside Wyvveloe, between that and Wynsloe, lay Knoyle, the residence of Sir George Herapath, the great army contractor. He was a man of sixty-five, tall, gray-bearded, genial, enjoying a well-earned rest from a life of many activities. He had married late, and had one son, George, aged fifteen, and one daughter, Margaret, a year younger. His wife was dead.
The firm of Herapath & Handyside, and its trade-mark of interlocked H.'s, was as well known in army circles as the War Department's own private mark. During the Napoleonic wars its business dealings were on a gigantic scale. It fed and clothed and sheltered armies in many lands, and carried out its every undertaking to the letter, cost what it might. The first consideration with the firm of H. and H. was perfect fulfilment of its obligations. None knew better how much depended on its exertions--how helpless the most skilful commander was unless he could count absolutely on his supplies. H. and H. never failed in their duty, and the firm reaped its reward, both in honours and in cash. But to both Herapath and his partner Handyside the honour they cherished most of all was the fact that their name and mark stood everywhere as a guarantee of reliability and fair dealing.
Handyside died five years after his partner's baronetcy, and left the bulk of his money to Herapath, having no near relatives of his own. And Sir George, desirous of rest before he grew past the enjoyment of it, took into partnership his right-hand man, Ralph Harben, who had grown up with the firm, strung another H on to the bar of the first big one, which represented himself--so that the mark of the firm came to look something like a badly made hurdle--and left the direction of affairs chiefly in his hands.
Eager, in the course of his duties, had called at Knoyle and had met with a congenial welcome. George and Margaret Herapath would be useful to his cubs now that they were licking into shape. His thoughts turned to them at once.
There had been another boy with them at church the previous Sunday, he noticed. The more the merrier. He would rope them all in, for games good enough with four are many times as good with eight or more.
"Yes, I heard you'd tackled the Carron colts," smiled Sir George. "Bit of a handful, I should say, from all accounts."
"I like bits of handfuls," said Eager. "I've got good material to work on. I shall make men of those two."
"You'll have done a good work. And how can Knoyle be of service to you, Mr. Eager?"
"In heaps of ways. I want your two in our games. Four are really not enough for proper work. Who's the new youngster I saw with you on Sunday?"
"That's young Harben, my partner's son. His father is in Spain just now, and his mother's dead, so I've taken him in for a time."
"The more the merrier! I wish you had another half-dozen."
"H'm! I don't. My two keep me quite lively enough."
"I want you to let me break my two in on some of your horses, too. You've got more than you can keep in proper condition, and the old curmudgeon at Carrie flatly refuses to buy them ponies. I've done my best with him, and riding's about due with my two. They can fence and swim and box. They beat me at running. Boating's no good here, and wouldn't be much use to them later, anyway. They're for the army, of course. Your boy, too, I suppose?"
"Yes, George is for the army, and young Harben too, I judge, from his talk. Suppose you bring your two up, say, to-morrow, and they can have a fling at the ponies, and----"
"And you can form your own judgment of them," said Eager, with a quiet chuckle. "That's all right. They're presentable, or I should not have proposed it, and yours will help to polish them, and that's what I want."
"I see. To-morrow morning, then, and they can tumble off the ponies in the paddock to their hearts' content."
So--three very excited faces, and three pairs of very eager eyes, as they pressed up the avenue to Knoyle next morning, and keen little noses sniffing anxiously for ponies, for Gracie was not going to miss such a chance, and as for the boys, wild mustangs of the prairies would not have daunted them.
Life--what with swimming and fencing and boxing and cricket and hockey and football--had suddenly widened its bounds beyond belief almost, and now, the crowning glory of horses loomed large in front.
Picture them in their scanty blue knee-breeches and blue jerseys, no hats, but fine crops of black hair, their eager, handsome faces the colour of the sand, with the hot blood close under the tan, bare legs and homely leather sandals, black eyes with sparks in them; Gracie in a little blue jersey also and a short blue frock, bare-legged and in sandals too, for life on the sands had proved altogether too destructive of stockings; on her streaming hair, and generally hanging by its strings, a sunbonnet originally blue, but now washing out towards white.
"There they are!" gasped Gracie, dancing with excitement as usual. "In that field over there----"
"And here are Sir George and the others. Remember to salute him, boys; and look him straight in the eye when he speaks to you. He's a jolly old boy."
"And, for goodness' sake, don't fight if you can possibly help it!" said Gracie impressively.
"I congratulate you on your colts, Mr. Eager," said Sir George, as they followed the youngsters to the paddock. "They're miles ahead of what I expected. I had my misgivings, I confess, but now they are gone. You've done wonders with them already."
"Good material, Sir George. But there's plenty still to do. You can't cure the neglect of years in a few months."
"If any man could, you could. They're a well-set-up pair, and look as fit as fiddles."
"Their free life on the sands has done that for them at all events. If they've missed much, they have also gained much, and, by God's help, I'm going to supply the rest. There are the makings of two fine men there."
"You'll do it. Why! What are they up to now?"
"Only fighting," laughed Eager. "They rarely dispute in words, alwaysvi et armis. Jack! Jim! Stop that! What's the matter now?" as the boys got up off the ground with flushed faces and dancing eyes. "A mighty good-looking pair!" thought Sir George to himself. "And which is which and which is t'other, I couldn't tell to save my life."
"I was going to help Gracie over, and he cut in," said Jack.
"I wanted to help her over too," grinned Jim.
"Sillies!" said Gracie. "I didn't need you. I got through. Oh, what beauties!" as a bay pony and a grey came trotting up to their master and mistress for customary gifts and caresses.
"This is mine," said Margaret, kissing the soft dark muzzle. "Dear old Graylock! Want a bit of sugar? There then, old wheedler!" And Graylock tossed his head and savoured his morsel appreciatively, with a mouth that watered visibly for more.
"Lend me a bit, Meg," begged her brother. "I forgot the greedy little beggars. You spoil 'em. Here you are, Whitefoot."
"Bridles only, at present, Bob," said Sir George, to a stable-boy who had come down laden with gear. "Let the youngsters begin at the beginning. Now you, Jack and Jim--I don't know which of you's which--have a go at them barebacked, and let's see what you're made of." And the boys flung themselves over the ponies with such vehemence that Jim came down headlong on the other side while Graylock danced with dismay; and Jack hung over Whitefoot like a sack, but got his leg over at last, with such a yell of triumph that his startled steed shot from under him and left him in a heap on the grass.
But they were both up in a moment and at it again.
"Twist yer hand in his mane," instructed Bob, "an' hang on like the divvle. There y'are! Now clip him tight wi' yer knees an' shins. You're aw reet!" And Jim and Graylock went off down the paddock in a series of wild leaps and bounds, while Bob ran after them administering counsel.
"Loose yer reins a bit! Don't tickle him wi' yer toes! . . . Stiddy then! Go easy, my lad! Don't fret 'im!"--as Jack and Whitefoot bore down upon him in like fashion.
"They'll ride aw reet," he said, as he came back crab-fashion to the lookers-on, with his eyes fixed on the riders. "Stick like cats, they do. And them ponies is enjoying theirselves."
"Promising, are they, Bob?" asked Sir George.
"They're aw reet. They'll ride," said Bob emphatically. When the horsemen wore round towards the group they were in boastful humour.
"I was up first," from Jack.
"I was off first," from Jim.
"Ay--on ground!"
"Nay, on pony! You were sitting on grass."
"You fell over t'other side."
"I'll fight you!" And in a moment they were off their steeds and locked in fight, to the great scandal of Gracie.
"Oh you dreadful boys!" And she danced wildly about them. "Didn't I tell you----"
"Stop it, boys!" And Eager laughingly shook them apart.
"The old Adam will out," he said to Sir George, who was enjoying them mightily.
"They've no lack of pluck. Keep 'em on right lines, Mr. Eager, and you'll make men of them. Now then, who's for next mount? Rafe, my lad, what do you say to a bareback?"
"Sooner have a saddle, sir," said young Harben, and sat tight on the paling.
"You, missie?" as Gracie danced imploringly before him. "Saddle up, Bob. . . . Well, I'm----!" as the ponies went off down the field again with the boys struggling up into position. "Oh, they'll do all right. I like their spirit."
When the ponies were captured, Gracie had her ride under Margaret's care, and expressed herself very plainly on the subject of side-saddles and the advantages of being a boy. And the boys took to saddle and stirrups as they had to the swimming.
"They'll ride," was Bob's final and emphatic verdict again.
Sir George insisted on their waiting for midday dinner, an experience which some of them enjoyed not at all and would gladly have escaped.
Gracie sat between Jack and Jim, and got very little dinner because of her maternal anxieties on their account. By incessant watchfulness on both sides at once she managed to keep them from any very dreadful exhibition of inexperience, but she got very red in the face over it, and rather short in the temper, which perhaps was not to be wondered at considering the state of her appetite and the many tempting dishes she had no time to do justice to.
The boys scuffled through somehow, with very wide eyes--to say nothing of mouths--for hitherto untasted delicacies. Mrs. Lee's commissariat tended to the solidly essential, and disdained luxuries for growing lads.
Muter Harben made the Little Lady's ears tingle more than once with an Appreciative guffaw at her protégés' solecisms, and if quick indignant glances could have pierced him he would have suffered sorely. As it was, Margaret frowned him back to decency, and George intimated in unmistakable gesture that punishment awaited him in the privacy of the immediate future.
But Jack and Jim, the prime causes of all this disturbance, ate on imperturbably, and followed the directions, conveyed by their monitress in brief fierce whispers and energetic side-kicks, to the best of their powers, so long as these imposed no undue restraint on the reduction of two healthy appetites.
And more than once Eager caught Sir George's eye resting thoughtfully on the pair, and knew what he was thinking.
"I suppose you know them apart?" he asked quietly, one time when Eager caught him watching them.
"Oh yes, I know them, but it took me a few days."
"A deuced troublesome business! No wonder the old man's gone sour over it. I don't see what he can do."
"He can do nothing but wait."
"And it's bitter waiting when the sands are running out."
On the way home the Little Lady blew away some of the froth of their exultation at their own prowess, by her biting comments on their shortcomings at table. But this new and grand addition to their lengthening list of acquirements overtopped everything else, and they exulted in spite of her.
"We stuck on barebacked, anyway," said Jim; "and what does it matter how you eat?"
"It matters a great deal if you want to be gentlemen," said Gracie vehemently.
"We're going to be soldiers," said Jack.
Next day, when the Rev. Charles was putting all his skill into underhand twisters for the overthrow of Jack, who, to Jim's great exasperation, had got the hang of them and was driving them all over the shore, and Gracie was dancing with wild exhortation to her brother to get him out, as it was her innings next--she stopped suddenly with a shout and started off towards the sand-hills. And the others, turning to see what had taken her, found the Knoyle party threading its way among the devious gullies, and presently they all came cantering through the loose sand to the flats.
"Morning, Mr. Eager; we've come for a game. Will you have us?" cried Sir George exuberantly.
"Rather! It's just what we wanted. You'll play, sir?"
"That's what I came for. Renew my youth, and all that kind of thing! See to the horses, Bob. Eh, what?"--at sight of the lad's eager face--"Like to take a hand too? Well, see If you can tether 'em--away from those bents. Bents won't do them any good. Now then, how shall we play?"
"Oh, Carne versus Knoyle," said Eager. "All to field, and Margaret goes in for both sides."
Knoyle beat Carne that time, thanks to George and Bob. Sir George "renewed his youth, and all that kind of thing." And young Ralph Harben entered vigorous protest every time he was put out, and argued the points till George punched his head for him.
After the game the boys were allowed to take the stiffness out of the ponies' legs. And altogether--as the first of many similar ones--that was a memorable day.
Eager rejoiced greatly in the success of his planning, for the close contact with these other bright and restless spirits had a wonderful effect on his boys. They toned down and they toned up, and it seemed to him that he could trace improvement in them each day.
He had his doubts now and again of the effects of young Harben on his own two. The lad was difficult and had evidently been much spoiled at home. Eager quietly did his best to remedy his more visible defects, and George Herapath seconded him with bodily chastisement whenever occasion offered.
Eager and Sir George were sitting resting in the side of a sand-hill one day, and watching the younger folk at a game in which Ralph was perpetually disputatious odd-man-out. It seemed impossible for him to get through any game without some wrangle.
Eager made some quiet comment on the matter and Sir George said:
"Yes, he's difficult. He's the only child, and his mother spoiled him sadly. When she died his father sent him to a second-rate school, and this is the result. But I hope he'll pull round. We must do what we can for him. Harben is in treaty for the Scarsdale place just beyond Wynsloe, so you'll be able to keep an eye on the boy. Your two are marvels. I never see them squabbling."
"Oh, they never squabble. They just fight it out, and no temper in it. They're really capital boxers, and they're coming on in their fencing."
"You'll make men of those two yet."
"I'll do my best."
"And if the old man dies? What will happen then?"
"God knows. It's as hard a nut as I ever came across."
"That infernal old woman up at Carrie could crack it if she would, I suppose?"
"I have no doubt; but she won't speak. And I'm afraid no one would believe her if she did."
"Deuced rough on the old man!" And Sir George lapsed into musing, and watched the riddles of Carne as they sped to and fro, as active as panthers and as careless as monkeys of the trouble they represented.
One day when they were all hard at it, Gracie suddenly sped from her post, as her manner was, heedless of the shouts of the rest, darted in among the hummocks, and came back dragging the not very reluctant Kettle Rimmer and insisted on her joining the game. And Kattie, nothing loth, succeeded in cloaking her lack of knowledge with such untiring energy that she proved a welcome recruit and was forthwith pressed into the company. For where numbers are few and more are needed, trifling distinctions of class lose their value. She was very quick and bright, too, and soon picked up the rules of the games; and when she was not flying after balls she was watching Margaret and Gracie with worshipful observant eyes, and assimilating from them a new code of manners for her own private use.
Gracie's usual behaviour in games, indeed, was that of a pea on a hot shovel. But Margaret, no whit behind her in her zeal for the business on hand, bore herself with something more of the dignity and decorum of a young lady in her fifteenth year--except just on occasion, when, at a tight pinch, everything went overboard and she flung herself into things with the abandon of Gracie and Kattie combined.
Eager watched her with great appreciation. He could divine the coming woman in the occasional sweet seriousness of the charming face, and rejoiced in her as he did in all beautiful things.
And George Herapath, with much of his father in him, was always a tower of good-humoured common sense and abounding energy. He backed up Eager's efforts in every direction, licked Harben or the tiger-cubs conscientiously, as often as occasion arose, and brought to their play the experience and tone of the public schoolboy up to date. He was at Harrow, and his house was closed on account of an outbreak of scarlet fever, which all except the higher powers counted mighty luck and all to the good.
They soon dropped into the way of all bathing together of a morning, before starting their game--all except Sir George, whose sea-bathing days were over, and who preferred cantering over the sands with them, all racing alongside like a pack of many-coloured hounds, shouting aloud in the wild glee of the moment, splashing through the shimmering pools in rainbow showers, tumbling headlong into the tideway, and then in dogged silence breasting fearlessly out to sea, while Sir George rode his big bay into the water after them as far as his discretion would permit.
And at times they sped far afield over the countryside, when, if Jack and Jim were hares, they were never caught, and if they were hounds they picked up an almost invisible scent in a way that did credit to their powers and to Mr. Fenimore Cooper. They might be beaten at cricket or hockey, whose finer rules they were always transgressing, but in this wider play none could come near them.
It took the new-comers a very long time to distinguish between them; and even when they thought they had got them fixed at last, they were as often wrong as right, for the boys delighted to puzzle them, and even went the length of refusing to answer to their right names and assuming one another's with that sole end in view.
"They beat me," laughed Sir George, more than once. "I never know t'other from which, and when I'm quite sure of 'em I'm always wrong."
"They do it on purpose," said Gracie. "They're little rascals, but they're as different as different to me. I can't see any likeness in them, except that they're both rather bad at times--but nothing to what they used to be, I assure you, Sir George."
"Well, well I Perhaps I'll get to know them in time, my dear; and meanwhile you just wink at me when they're making game of the old man."
"I will," said Gracie solemnly. "But they don't really mean any harm, you know. It's just their fun."
From his upper windows in the house of Carne that other old man watched them also, with scowling face and twisted heart. The sands were running--running--running, and he was no nearer the solution of his life's puzzle than he had been ten years ago. Farther away if anything, for babies die more easily than lusty, tight-knit, sun-tanned boys who never knew an ailment, and grew stronger every day.
But there were keener eyes still, sharpened by a vast craving love for the wakening souls committed to his care, watching them all the time, and eager for every sign of growth and development. Love blinds, they say, and so it may to that which it does not wish to see. But Love is a mighty revealer, too, and Doubt and Dislike attain no revelations but the shadows of themselves.
Charles Eager studied those boys with many times the eagerness and acumen that he had ever brought to his books. Here was a living enigma, and he found it fascinating. But the weeks grew into months, and he found himself not one step nearer its solution.
In all their moods and humours, in their outstanding virtues and their no less prominent defects, they were one. They had grown up in the equal practice of qualities drawn, on the one side at all events, from the same source.
Bodily fear seemed quite outside their ken. They lacked the imagination which pictures possible consequences behind the deed. If they wanted to do a thing, they did not stop to consider what might come of it, but just did it. The consequences when they came were accepted as matters of course.
They were generous to a fault. They would, indeed, fight between themselves for the most trifling possessions, but it was from sheer love of fighting. They never kept for the mere sake of having, and most of their belongings they held in common--jointly against the world as they had known it. And this feeling of being two against outsiders had undoubtedly fostered the communal feeling. As their circle widened and others were admitted into it, the feeling extended to them. They possessed little, but what they had all were welcome to.
And they were by nature eminently truthful. To their grandfather or Mr. Kennet they might on occasion assume masks which belied their feelings, but that was in the nature of a ruse to mislead an enemy who by gross injustice had forced them into unnatural ways. To them it was no more acting a lie than is the broken fluttering of a bird which thereby draws the trespasser from its nest. They were in a state of perpetual war with the higher powers, and to them all things were fair.
Their faults were the natural complements of these better things. They were headstrong, reckless, careless, hot-tempered--defects, after all, which as a rule entail more trouble on their owners than on others, and are therefore regarded by the world with a lenient eye.
For many months Eager found no shade of difference in their development. They had started level, and they progressed in equal degree, and progressed marvellously. The virgin soil brought forth an abundant harvest. But then, in spite of all, it was good soil, and ready for the seed.
The grim old man at Carne sent now and again for Eager, and received him always, snuff-box in hand, with a cynical, "Well, Mr. Eager, no progress?"
"Progress, Sir Denzil? Heaps! We are advancing by leaps and bounds. We are doing splendidly."
"You've still got the two of them, I see,"--as though they were puppies Eager was trying to dispose of.
"Still got the two, sir, and I couldn't tell you which is the better of them. There are the makings of fine men in both."
"Then you're just where you were as to which is which?"
"Just where you have been these ten years, sir."
"You have seen more of them in ten weeks than I've seen in ten years."
"They are developing every day, but so far they run neck to neck. But, candidly, Sir Denzil, I scarcely know what signs one could take as any decisive indication of their descent. Heredity is a ticklish thing to draw any certain inference from. It plays odd tricks, as you know."
"I had hoped somewhat from those swimming lessons----" and he snuffed regretfully.
Eager laughed joyously at his disappointment.
"Why, they swam like ducks the very first day. You really have no idea what fine lads they are, sir. They are lads to be proud of."
"Ay--if there was but one."
"It's a thousand pities we can't find the right way out of the muddle without thinking of such things."
"We cannot," said the old man grimly.
As time went on, however, Eager's careful oversight of the boys began to note slight points of divergence in the lines of their characteristics, which had so far run absolutely side by side.
Jack, for instance, began to develop a somewhat tentative kind of self-control. His brain seemed to become more active. At times he even attempted to subject Jim to discipline for lapses from his own view of the right way of things. And Jim took him on right joyously; and the pitched battles, which Eager had been striving to relegate to the background, were renewed with vehemence, within the strict limits of the new rules thereto ordained.
Gracie was distressed at this falling away. But Eager bade her be of good cheer, and watched developments with interest. Meanwhile, the boys muscles and skill in self-defence grew mightily.
There was no doubt about it, Jack was harvesting his grain the quicker of the two--so far as could be seen, at all events. The difference between them when instruction was to the fore was somewhat marked. Jack gave his mind to it and took it in, evinced a desire to get to the bottom of things, even asked questions at times on points that were not clear to him. Jim, on the other hand, would sit gazing at the fount of wisdom with wide black eyes which presently wandered off after a seagull or a shadow, with a very visible inclination towards such things--or towards anything actively alive--rather than towards the passivity entailed by the pursuit of abstract knowledge.
Then again, Jack succeeded at times in forcing himself to sit quite still for whole minutes on end, while Jim, after a certain limited number of seconds, was on the wriggle to be up and doing. And the moment he was loosed, the quiescence of seconds had to be atoned for by many minutes of joyous activity.
They were, in fact, beginning to take the lines of the good scholar and the bad. And yet Eager confessed to himself a very warm heart for careless, happy-go-lucky Jim.
"The other looks like making the deeper mark," he said to himself. "But I can't help loving old Jim. He's all one could wish except in the brain. Maybe it will come!"
As to any deductions to be based upon these growing differences between the boys, he could find no sound footing.
"Jack seems undoubtedly the more able," he would reason it out, "but what does that point to? Is it the high result of two blue-blooded strains, or the enriching of a blue blood with a dash of stronger red? Which would the stronger blend run to--activity of mind or activity of body?"
The latter, he was inclined to think, but found it impossible to pronounce upon with anything like certainty, and realised that every other indication would inevitably lead to the same result. The riddle of Carne would never be read thus. Time and Providence might cut the knot and give to Carne its rightful heir. Pure reason, or the questionable affirmation of interested parties, never would.
From that point of view he saw his commission from Sir Denzil doomed to failure. But that, after all, he said to himself, with a bracing shake, was, from his own point of view, of minor consequence. The great thing was to make men of his boys and fit them for the battle of life to the best of his powers and theirs.
Twice, during the autumn, it seemed as though the riddle would be solved, or at all events the knot cut.
George Hempath and young Harben had gone off to school, but the reduced company still took its fill of the freedom of the sands. Sir George and Margaret rarely failed, and play and work progressed apace.
Boating on that coast was all toil and little pleasure. With a tide that ran out a full mile, the care of a boat, unless for strictly business purposes, would have been a burden. Old Seth Rimmer and his fellows kept their craft in the estuaries up Wytham way and at Wynsloe, where, with knowledge of the ever-shifting banks and much labour, it was possible to get out to sea in most states of the tide.
But Eager, desirous of an all-round education for his cubs, managed to teach them rowing in Kattie Rimmer's shallop on the Mere, to Kattie's great delight, since there she shone at first alone.
And it was there they made the acquaintance of Kattie's brother, young Seth, a great loose-limbed giant of nineteen or so, who helped his father at the fishing at times, and at times went ventures of his own on less respectable lines. A good-humoured giant, however, who would lie asprawl on a sand-hummock by the Mere-side, and laugh loud and long at new-beginners' first clumsy attempts at rowing, and more than once waded waist-deep into the water to set right-side-up some unfortunate whose ill-applied vigour had capsized the crank little craft.
Some of young Seth's doings were a sore discomfort and mortification to the older folk in the little wooden house. But he took his own way outside with dogged nonchalance, bore himself well towards them except on these sore points of his own private concerns, and worshipped Kattie.
Old Seth, you see, had always ordered his little household on the strictest--not to say straitest--lines of right and wrong. Young Seth, when he grew too big for bodily coercion, kicked over the lines and took his own way, in spite of all his father and mother could do to prevent him. And his way led at times through strange waters and in strange company.
He was away sometimes for days on end, and then, whether the little house lay basking in the sunshine or shaking in the gale, his mother would lie full of fears and prayers, and his father was quieter than ever in the boat, and Kattie, but half-comprehending the matter, would feel the gloom his absences cast and would question him volubly when he returned, but never got anything for her pains.
He would do anything for her or for any of them--except give up the ways he had chosen.
When the south-wester screamed over the flats for days at a time it set the ribbed sands humming with its steady persistence. Games were impossible then, and Eager's ready wit devised a means of turning the screamer to account.
He turned into Bob Ratchett's shed one day and said:
"Bob, I want some wheels--two big ones four feet across, and two about a foot smaller, and the tires of all must be a foot wide."
"My gosh, them's wheels! What'n yo' want 'em for?" grinned Bob admiringly.
"I'm going to make a boat--"
"Aw then, passon!--a boat now!"
"To run on the sands."
"Aw!" gasped Bob, and eyed "passon" doubtfully.
"You can make them?"
"Aw! I can mek 'em aw reet, but----"
"All right, Bob. You set to work, and I'll see to the rest."
"Passon's" boat became a great joke in the village. But bit by bit he worked it out, got his materials into shape, and with his own hands and the assistance, in their various degrees, of the boys and the excited oversight of Gracie, fitted it together into a somewhat nightmare resemblance to the skeleton of a boat.
Jack stuck pretty steadily to the novel work. Jim and Gracie fluttered about it, questioning, suggesting, doubting, went off for a game, came back, danced about, hindering more than helping, but always convinced in their own minds that but for them that boat would never have been built.
The two large wheels, rather wide apart, supported it abeam forward, and between them he stepped a stout little mast carrying jib and mainsail. The smaller wheels astern moved on a stout pin and acted as rudder, actuated by a. long wooden tiller. A rough wooden frame abaft the mast offered precarious accommodation for passengers. And when at last, after many days, it was finished, the villagers crowded round it, and joked and laughed themselves purple in the face over the oddest and most unlikely craft that coast had ever seen.
Then willing hands took the ropes, and dragged it out of the village and through the gullies of the sand-hills with mighty labours, and so, at last, to the edge of the flats not far from Carne.
And there Eager climbed in by himself, with not a few fears that the doubts and laughter of the village might find their justification in him.
There was a strong wind blowing with a steady hum right on to the flats from the south-west. Eager hauled up his sails, lay down in the meagre cockpit, tiller in hand, and the scoffers started him off with a run.
They looked for him to come to a stop when they did; but instead, to their never-dying amazement, the wind gripped the sails, the clumsy-looking boat sped on, faster and faster, bumping over the hard-ribbed sands, rushing through the wind-rippled pools, and they stood gaping. In less than five minutes it was at the bend of the coast where it turns to the north-east, a good three miles away, and then, marvel of marvels for such a craft, just as they expected it to disappear round the corner, it ran up into the wind, came round on the other tack with a fine sweep and without a pause, and was rushing back towards them before their gaping mouths had closed. "Passon's" boat was a huge success, it raised him mightily in their opinions and inclined them to give ear even to his suggestions for the abolition of stinks, and to the boys and the rest it gave a new zest to life. Day after day, whenever the wind served, they were at it, and looked forward to the gray windy days as they had never done before.
Sir George had been away when the boat was launched, but he rode over the first morning after he got home, and after watching it for a time ventured on board himself, with Eager at the helm.
"Man!" he said, as he tumbled out after the run--blown and breathless and considerably shaken up--"that's wonderful! You ought to have been an engineer."
"So I am," laughed Eager, "and on a larger scale than most."
From the windows of Carne, Sir Denzil watched the novel craft careering wildly over the flats, and snuffed more hopefully.
"A sufficiently dangerous-looking toy, Kennet. It seems to ate that it might quite well kill one or more of them if it upset at that speed. Let us hope for the best!" And he and Kennet watched the new goings-on with interest.
Incidentally, the sand-boat one day came very near to solving the riddle of Carne on the lines of Sir Denzil's highest hopes.
There was something in the wild headlong motion that appealed with irresistible power to Jim's half-tamed nature. The mad bumping rush, with now one huge wheel barely skimming the ground, now the other; the hoarse dash through the pools, when, if the sun shone, you sat for a moment in a whirling rainbow of flying drops the keen zest and delicious risks of the turn; the novel sense of power in the lordship of the helm; these things thrilled him through and through, and he could not get too much of them.
He made himself the devoted slave of the sand-boat--spent his spare time in anointing its axles with all the fat he could coax, or otherwise procure, from Mrs. Lee, till the great wheels almost ran of their own accord, scraped the long tiller till it was as smooth as a sceptre--handled the ropes till they were as flexible almost as silk.
It was he who insisted on naming the boatGracie--"because it jumped about so," but in reality, of course, because the word Gracie represented to him the brightest and best that life had yet brought him.
They had all tried their hands at names. Sir George--The Flying Dutchman, because it certainly flew and was undoubtedly broad in the beam; Margaret--The Sylph, because it was so tubby; Gracie--The Sand-fly, because it flew over the sand; Jack, for abstruse reasons of his own--Chingachgook; Eager was quite content to leave it to them. But no matter what the others decided on, Jim always called itGracie--to the real Gracie's immense satisfaction; and as he talked Gracie ten times as much as all the rest put together,Gracieit finally became.
When wind and weather put the Gracie out of action she lay under the walls of Carne, with folded wings and docked tail--for Jim always carried away the tiller into the house, for love of the very feel of it, and partly perhaps in token of proprietorship. It stood in a corner where he could always see it, and slept by his bedside.
No one, however, ever thought of meddling with the sand-boat. In the first place, she belonged to Mr. Eager, and they held "passon" in highest esteem. And, in the second place, Carne was a dangerous place to wander round at night. Mr. Kennet had a gun, with which he was no great shot, indeed, but even the wildest bullet may find unexpected billet in the dark.
It happened, one afternoon in the late autumn, that Eager was away on the confines of his wide sheepfold, about his Master's business. It had been wet and blusterous all day, and the boys were desultorily employed on their books in a corner of the kitchen; Jim with theGracie'spolished tiller twisting fondly in his hand, as a devoted lover toys with a ribbon from his mistress's dress; Jack somewhat absorbed in the doings of Themistocles and Xerxes at Salamis, in a great volume which he had abstracted from the library the day before.
The polished tiller wriggled more and more restlessly in Jim's hand, as though it longed to be up and doing.
He got up at last and strolled out just to have a look at the rest of theGracie. Jack was too busy sinking Persian galleys in Salamis Bay to pay any heed to anything nearer home.
Jim found the wind blowing half a gale. It swept round the house with a scream, and seemed to meet again full on theGracie, who quivered and throbbed as though longing to be off.
The jib had been wrapped round the forestay, and the wind, working at it as though of one mind with him, had loosened the clew, and it was thrashing to and fro in desperate excitement.
He climbed aboard, fitted the tiller, and sat in vast enjoyment. Why, it would only need a pull at a rope here and there, and he believed she would be off. The rain had hardened the soft sand, and there was a good slope down to the ribbed flats below. He had always longed for a run all by himself, and he knew the ropes and how to steer her as well as Mr. Eager did.
In sheer self-defence he captured the thrashing sheet and twisted it round a cleat. The jib untoggled itself from the stay, bellied out full, and the boat began to move slowly down the slope.
The joy of it sent the blood up into Jim's head and set it spinning. He would have a run--just a little run--all by himself, just to prove to himself that he could do it.
The boat went rocking down the slope. He hauled at the halyard in a frenzy, and the mainsail went jumping up. He made it fast, grabbed his beloved tiller, and theGracie, with a roll and a shake, bounded away up the flats.
Faster and faster she went, the ribbed sands and the wind-whipped pools seemed to sweep along to meet her and fly beneath her all-devouring wheels, till Jim's head was spinning faster even than they. He yelled and waved his arms above his head, till the tiller banging him in the ribs nearly knocked him overboard and recalled him to his duties.
He was at the bend in the coast before he knew It. He threw his weight on to the tiller to bring her round on the curve which would allow her head to fall off on the other tack, but fooled it somehow, and instead she flew off at a tangent straight for the sea.
"Ecod!" said a watcher--for other purposes--in the sand-hills. "'Oo's gooin' reet to stick-sands!"--and started at a run after theGracie.
Jim always stoutly maintained that if he had only had room enough he would have got her round all right. But space and time were wanting.
All in a moment the solid ground seemed to vanish from below the whirling wheels. One wheel sank down into comparative space, the other spun on horizontally; theGracie'snose went down out of sight into a squirming mass of slimy sand, and Jim was flung head over heels into the midst of it.
He got his head up with his mouth full of watery sand which half choked him. Before he had coughed it out, fear and the clammy sand gripped him together. It clung to him like thick treacle. His feet and legs were bound and weighted--he could not move them. And when his arms got into it the deadly sand clasped them tightly. It was up to his chest, like cold dead giant arms folding him tighter and tighter in a last embrace, or the merciless coils of a boa-constrictor.
Presently it would have him by the throat, and the stuff would run into his mouth and choke him, and he would die and they would never find him.
He tried to shout, with little hope of any one hearing; but it was all he could do. The clammy death was at his throat, and the pressure on his chest was so great that his shout was of the feeblest.
Another minute and the riddle of Carne would have been solved. But feeble as was his shout, it was answered. The runner on the sands came panting up, and the sight of his anxious face was to Jim as the face of an angel out of heaven--and a great deal more, for Jim had never troubled much about angels.
"Help--Seth!"--he bubbled, through the sandy scum.
"Ay, ay, sir!" panted young Seth, and jumped on to the half-submergedGracie, whipped out his knife from its sheath at his back, and sliced the stays of the mast and had it out in a twinkling.
"Lay holt!"--and he shoved it towards the disappearing Jim. "And hang on tight, if it teks yore skin off! That's it. Twist rope round yo'!" And he dug his heels deep into the firm sand beyond, and laid himself almost flat as he hauled at his end of the mast.
The sweat broke in beads on his forehead, and rolled down his red face like tears, before the sands would let go their prey. But, inch by inch, he gained on them, while Jim gave up his legs for lost, so tightly did the sands hold on to them.
Inch by inch he was drawn back to life, joints cracking, sinews straining. It seemed impossible to him that he should come out whole. But there--his neck was clear, his chest, his body, his knees, and then, with a "swook" from the "stick-sands" that sounded like a disappointed curse, the rest of him came out and he lay spent on the solid earth beyond.
He remembered no more of the matter, but learned afterwards how young Seth, after thriftily staking the mast in the sand and lashing theGracieto it with a length of rope to prevent her sinking out of sight--had taken him over his shoulder, not quite sure whether he was dead or alive, but face downwards, so that if he were alive some of the sand and water might run out of him, and had set off with him so, for Carne.