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Bevis: The Story of a Boy

by Richard Jefferies · English · Gutenberg #35930 · 982,469 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Bevis: The Story of a Boy

Author: Richard Jefferies


        
Release date: August 11, 2011 [eBook #35930]
                Most recently updated: September 28, 2026

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35930

Credits: Nick Hodson


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEVIS: THE STORY OF A BOY ***




Bevis

The Story of a Boy

By

Richard Jefferies


Published by Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington,
London. This edition dated 1882.




Volume One, Chapter I.

BEVIS AT WORK.

One morning a large wooden case was brought to the farmhouse, and Bevis,
impatient to see what was in it, ran for the hard chisel and the hammer,
and would not consent to put off the work of undoing it for a moment.
It must be done directly.  The case was very broad and nearly square,
but only a few inches deep, and was formed of thin boards.  They placed
it for him upon the floor, and, kneeling down, he tapped the chisel,
driving the edge in under the lid, and so starting the nails.  Twice he
hit his fingers in his haste, once so hard that he dropped the hammer,
but he picked it up again and went on as before, till he had loosened
the lid all round.

After labouring like this, and bruising his finger, Bevis was
disappointed to find that the case only contained a picture which might
look very well, but was of no use to him.  It was a fine engraving of
“An English Merry-making in the Olden Time,” and was soon hoisted up and
slung to the wall.  Bevis claimed the case as his perquisite, and began
to meditate what he could do with it.  It was dragged from the house
into one of the sheds for him, and he fetched the hammer and his own
special little hatchet, for his first idea was to split up the boards.
Deal splits so easily, it is a pleasure to feel the fibres part, but
upon consideration he thought it might do for the roof of a hut, if he
could fix it on four stakes, one at each corner.

Away he went with his hatchet down to the withy-bed by the brook (where
he intended to build the hut) to cut some stakes and get them ready.
The brook made a sharp turn round the withy-bed, enclosing a tongue of
ground which was called in the house at home the Peninsula, because of
its shape and being surrounded on three sides by water.  This piece of
land, which was not all withy, but partly open and partly copse, was
Bevis’s own territory, his own peculiar property, over which he was
autocrat and king.

He flew at once to attack a little fir, and struck it with the hatchet:
the first blow cut through the bark and left a “blaze,” but the second
did not produce anything like so much effect, the third, too, rebounded,
though the tree shook to its top.  Bevis hit it a fourth time, not at
all pleased that the fir would not cut more easily, and then, fancying
he saw something floating down the stream, dropped his hatchet and went
to the edge to see.

It was a large fly struggling aimlessly, and as it was carried past a
spot where the bank overhung and the grasses drooped into the water, a
fish rose and took it, only leaving just the least circle of wavelet.
Next came a dead dry twig, which a wood-pigeon had knocked off with his
strong wings as he rose out of the willow-top where his nest was.  The
little piece of wood stayed a while in the hollow where the brook had
worn away the bank, and under which was a deep hole; there the current
lingered, then it moved quicker, till, reaching a place where the
channel was narrower, it began to rush and rotate, and shot past a long
green flag bent down, which ceaselessly fluttered in the swift water.
Bevis took out his knife and began to cut a stick to make a toy boat,
and then, throwing it down, wished he had a canoe to go floating along
the stream and shooting over the bay; then he looked up the brook at the
old pollard willow he once tried to chop down for that purpose.

The old pollard was hollow, large enough for him to stand inside on the
soft, crumbling “touchwood,” and it seemed quite dead, though there were
green rods on the top, yet it was so hard he could not do much with it,
and wearied his arm to no purpose.  Besides, since he had grown bigger
he had thought it over, and considered that even if he burnt the tree
down with fire, as he had half a mind to do, having read that that was
the manner of the savages in wild countries, still he would have to stop
up both ends with board, and he was afraid that he could not make it
water-tight.

And it was only the same reason that stayed his hand from barking an oak
or a beech to make a canoe of the bark, remembering that if he got the
bark off in one piece the ends would be open and it would not float
properly.  He knew how to bark a tree quite well, having helped the
woodmen when the oaks were thrown, and he could have carried the short
ladder out and so cut it high enough up the trunk (while the tree
stood).  But the open ends puzzled him; nor could he understand nor get
any one to explain to him how the wild men, if they used canoes like
this, kept the water out at the end.

Once, too, he took the gouge and the largest chisel from the workshop,
and the mallet with the beech-wood head, and set to work to dig out a
boat from a vast trunk of elm thrown long since, and lying outside the
rick-yard, whither it had been drawn under the timber-carriage.  Now,
the bark had fallen off this piece of timber from decay, and the surface
of the wood was scored and channelled by insects which had eaten their
way along it.  But though these little creatures had had no difficulty,
Bevis with his gouge and his chisel and his mallet could make very
little impression, and though he chipped out pieces very happily for
half an hour, he had only formed a small hole.  So that would not do; he
left it, and the first shower filled the hole he had cut with water, and
how the savages dug out their canoes with flint choppers he could not
think, for he could not cut off a willow twig with the sharpest splinter
he could find.

Of course he knew perfectly well that boats are built of plank, but if
you try to build one you do not find it so easy; the planks are not to
be fitted together by just thinking you will do it.  That was more
difficult to him than gouging out the huge elm trunk; Bevis could hardly
smooth two planks to come together tight at the edge or even to overlap,
nor could he bend them up at the end, and altogether it was a very
cross-grained piece of work this making a boat.

Pan: the spaniel, sat down on the hard, dry, beaten earth of the
workshop, and looked at Bevis puzzling over his plane and his pencil,
his footrule, and the paper on which he had sketched his model; then up
at Bevis’s forehead, frowning over the trouble of it; next Pan curled
round and began to bite himself for fleas, pushing up his nostril and
snuffling and raging over them.  No.  This would not do; Bevis could not
wait long enough; Bevis liked the sunshine and the grass under foot.
Crash fell the plank and bang went the hammer as he flung it on the
bench, and away they tore out into the field, the spaniel rolling in the
grass, the boy kicking up the tall dandelions, catching the yellow disk
under the toe of his boot and driving it up in the air.

But though thrown aside like the hammer, still the idea slumbered in his
mind, and as Bevis stood by the brook, looking across at the old willow,
and wishing he had a boat, all at once he thought what a capital raft
the picture packing-case would make!  The case was much larger than the
picture which came in it; it had not perhaps been originally intended
for that engraving.  It was broad and flat; it had low sides; it would
not be water-tight, but perhaps he could make it--yes, it was just the
very thing.  He would float down the brook on it; perhaps he would cross
the Longpond.

Like the wind he raced back home, up the meadow, through the garden,
past the carthouse to the shed where he had left the case.  He tilted it
up against one of the uprights or pillars of the shed, and then stooped
to see if daylight was visible anywhere between the planks.  There were
many streaks of light, chinks which must be caulked, where they did not
fit.  In the workshop there was a good heap of tow; he fetched it, and
immediately began to stuff it in the openings with his pocket-knife.
Some of the chinks were so wide, he filled them up with chips of wood,
with the tow round the chips, so as to wedge tightly.

The pocket-knife did not answer well.  He got a chisel, but that cut the
tow, and was also too thick; then he thought of an old table-knife he
had seen lying on the garden wall, left there by the man who had been
set to weed the path with it.  This did much better, but it was tedious
work, very tedious work; he was obliged to leave it twice--once to have
a swing, and stretch himself; the second time to get a hunch, or cog, as
he called it, of bread and butter.  He worked so hard he was so hungry.
Round the loaf there were indentations, like a cogged wheel, such as the
millwright made.  He had one of these cogs of bread cut out, and well
stuck over with pats of fresh butter, just made and fresh from the
churn, not yet moulded and rolled into shape, a trifle salt but
delicious.

Then on again, thrusting the tow in with the knife, till he had used it
all, and still there were a few chinks open.  He thought he would get
some oakum by picking a bit of rope to pieces: there was no old rope
about, so he took out his pocket-knife, and stole into the waggon-house,
where, first looking round to be sure that no one was about, he slashed
at the end of a cart-line.  The thick rope was very hard, and it was
difficult to cut it; it was twisted so tight, and the rain and the sun
had toughened it besides, while the surface was case-hardened by rubbing
against the straw of the loads it had bound.  He haggled it off at last,
but when he tried to pick it to pieces he found the larger strands
unwound tolerably well, but to divide them and part the fibres was so
wearisome and so difficult that he did not know how to manage it.  With
a nail he hacked at it, and got quite red in the face, but the tough
rope was not to be torn to fragments in a minute; he flung it down, then
he recollected some one would see it, so he hurled it over the hedge
into the lane.

He ran indoors to see if he could find anything that would do instead,
and went up into the bench-room where there was another carpenter’s
bench (put up for amateur work), and hastily turned over everything;
then he pulled out the drawer in his mamma’s room, the drawer in which
she kept odds and ends, and having upset everything, and mixed her
treasures, he lighted on some rag which she kept always ready to bind
round the fingers that used to get cut so often.  For a makeshift this,
he thought, would do.  He tore a long piece, left the drawer open, and
ran to the shed with it.  There was enough to fill the last chink he
could see; so it was done.  But it was a hundred and twenty yards to the
brook, and though he could lift the case on one side at a time, he could
not carry it.

He sat down on the stool (dragged out from the workshop) to think; why
of course he would fasten a rope to it, and so haul it along!  Looking
for a nail in the nail-box on the bench, for the rope must be tied to
something, he saw a staple which would do much better than a nail, so he
bored two holes with a gimlet, and drove the staple into the raft.
There was a cord in the summer-house by the swing, which he used for a
lasso--he had made a running noose, and could throw it over anything or
anybody who would keep still--this he fetched, and put through the
staple.  With the cord over his shoulder he dragged the raft by main
force out of the shed, across the hard, dry ground, through the gate,
and into the field.  It came very hard, but it did come, and he thought
he should do it.

The grass close to the rails was not long, and the load slipped rather
better on it, but farther out into the field it was longer, and the edge
of the case began to catch against it, and when he came to the furrows
it was as much as he could manage, first to get it down into the furrow,
next to lift it up a little, else it would not move, and then to pull it
up the slope.  By stopping a while and then hauling he moved it across
three of the furrows, but now the cord quite hurt his shoulder, and had
begun to fray his jacket.  When he looked back he was about thirty yards
from where he had started, not halfway to the gateway, through which was
another meadow, where the mowing-grass was still higher.

Bevis sat down on the sward to rest, his face all hot with pulling, and
almost thought he should never do it.  There was a trail in the grass
behind where the raft had passed like that left by a chain harrow.  It
wanted something to slip on; perhaps rollers would do like those they
moved the great pieces of timber on to the saw-pit.  As soon as he had
got his breath again, Bevis went back to the shed, and searched round
for some rollers.  He could not find any wood ready that would do, but
there was a heap of poles close by.  He chose a large, round willow one,
carried the stool down to it, got the end up on the stool, and worked
away like a slave till he had sawn off three lengths.

These he took to the raft, put one under the front part, and arranged
the other two a little way ahead.  Next, having brought a stout stake
from the shed, he began to lever the raft along, and was delighted at
the ease with which it now moved.  But this was only on the level ground
and down the slope of the next furrow, so far it went very well, but
there was a difficulty in getting it up the rise.  As the grass grew
longer, too, the rollers would not roll; and quite tired out with all
this work, Bevis flung down his lever, and thought he would go indoors
and sit down and play at something else.

First he stepped into the kitchen, as the door was open; it was a step
down to it.  The low whitewashed ceiling and the beam across it glowed
red from the roasting-fire of logs split in four, and built up on the
hearth; the flames rushed up the vast, broad chimney--a bundle of flames
a yard high, whose tips parted from the main tongues and rose disjointed
for a moment by themselves: the tiny panes of yellowish-green glass,
too, in the window reflected the light.  Such a fire as makes one’s lips
moist at the thought of the juicy meats and the subtle sweetness
imparted by the wood fuel, which has a volatile fragrance of its own.
Bevis thought he would get the old iron spoon, and melt some lead, and
cast some bullets in the mould--he had a mould, though they would not
let him have a pistol--he knew where there was a piece of lead-pipe, and
a battered bit of guttering that came off the house.

Or else he would put in a nail, make it white hot, and hammer it into an
arrowhead, using the wrought-iron fire-dog as an anvil.  The heat was so
great, especially as it was a warm May day, that before he could decide
he was obliged to go out of the kitchen, and so wandered into the
sitting-room.  His fishing-rod stood in the corner where he had left it;
he had brought it in because the second joint was splitting, and he
intended (as the ferrule was lost) to bind it round and round with
copper wire.  But he did not feel much inclined to do that either; he
had half a mind to go up in the bench-room, and take the lock of the old
gun to pieces to see how it worked.  Only the stock (with the lock
attached) was left; the barrel was gone.

While he was thinking he walked into the parlour, and seeing the
bookcase open--the door was lined within with green material--put his
hand involuntarily on an old grey book.  The covers were grey and worn
and loose; the back part had come off; the edges were rough and
difficult to turn over, because they had not been cut by machinery; the
margin, too, was yellow and frayed.  Bevis’s fingers went direct to the
rhyme he had read so often, and in an instant everything around him
disappeared, room and bookcase and the garden without, and he forgot
himself, for he could see the “bolde men in their deeds,” he could hear
the harper and the minstrel’s song, the sound of trumpet and the clash
of steel; how--

  “As they were drinking ale and wine
    Within Kyng Estmere’s halle:
  When will ye marry a wyfe, brother,
    A wyfe to glad us all?”

How the kyng and “Adler younge” rode to the wooing, and the fight they
had, fighting so courageously against crowds of enemies,--

  “That soone they have slayne the Kempery men,
    Or forst them forth to flee.”

Bevis put himself so into it, that he did it all, _he_ bribed the
porter, _he_ played the harp, and drew the sword; these were no words to
him, it was a living picture in which he himself acted.

He was inclined to go up into the garret and fetch down the old cutlass
that was there among the lumber, and go forth into the meadow and slash
away at “gix” and parsley and burdocks, and kill them all for Kempery
men, just as he out them down before when he was Saint George.  As he
was starting for the cutlass he recollected that the burdocks and the
rest where not up high enough yet, the Paynim scoundrels had not grown
tall enough in May to be slain with any pleasure, and a sense that you
were valiantly swording.  Still there was an old wooden bedstead up
there, on which he could hoist up a sail, and sail away to any port he
chose, to Spain, or Rhodes, or where the lotus-eaters lived.  But his
mind, so soon as he had put down the grey book, ran still on his raft,
and out he raced to see it again, fresh and bright from the rest of
leaving it alone a little while.




Volume One, Chapter II.

THE LAUNCH.

As he came near a butterfly rose from the raft, having stayed a moment
to see what this could be among the dandelions and buttercups, but Bevis
was too deeply occupied to notice it.  The cord was of no use; the
rollers were of no use; the wheelbarrow occurred to him, but he could
not lift it on, besides it was too large, nor could he have moved it if
it would go on.  Pan was not strong enough to help him haul, even if he
would submit to be harnessed, which was doubtful.  The cart-horses were
all out at work, nor indeed had they been in the stable would he have
dared to touch them.

What he wanted to do was to launch his raft before any one saw or
guessed what he was about, so that it might be a surprise to them and a
triumph to him.  Especially he was anxious to do it before Mark came; he
might come across the fields any minute, or along the road, and Bevis
wished to be afloat, so that Mark might admire his boat, and ask
permission to stop on board.  Mark might appear directly; it was odd he
had not heard his whistle before.  Full of this thought away went Bevis
back to the house, to ask Polly the dairymaid to help him; but she
hunted him out with the mop, being particularly busy that day with the
butter, and quite deaf to all his offers and promises.  As he came out
he looked up the field, and remembered that John was stopping the gaps,
and was at work by himself that day; perhaps he would slip away and help
him.

He raced up the meadow and found the labourer, with his thick white
leather gloves and billhook, putting thorn bushes in the gaps, which no
one had made so much as Bevis himself.

“Come and help me,” said Bevis.  Now John was willing enough to leave
his work and help Bevis do anything--for anything is sweeter than the
work you ought to do--besides which he knew he could get Bevis to bring
him out a huge mug of ale for it.

But he grinned and said nothing, and simply pointed through the hedge.
Bevis looked, and there was the Bailiff with his back against the great
oak, under which he once went to sleep.  The Bailiff was older now, much
older, and though he was so stout and big he did not do much work with
his hands.  He stood there, leaning his back against the oak, with his
hazel staff in his hand, watching the stone-pickers, who were gathering
up the bits of broken earthenware and rubbish from among the cowslips
out of the way of the scythe; watching, too, the plough yonder in the
arable field beyond; and with his eyes now and then on John.  While
those grey eyes were about, work, you may be sure, was not slack.  So
Bevis pouted, and picked up a stone, and threw it at the Bailiff, taking
good care, however, not to hit him.  The stone fell in the hedge behind
the Bailiff, and made him start, as he could not think what creature it
could be, for rabbits and weasels and other animals and birds move as
silently as possible, and this made a sharp tap.

Bevis returned slowly down the meadow, and as he came near the house,
having now given up hope of getting the raft to the brook, he caught
sight of a cart-horse outside the stable.  He ran and found the carter’s
lad, who had been sent home with the horse; the horse had been hauling
small pieces of timber out of the mowing-grass with a chain, and the lad
was just going to take off the harness.

“Stop,” said Bevis, “stop directly, and hitch the chain on my raft.”

The boy hesitated; he dared not disobey the carter, and he had been in
trouble for pleasing Bevis before.

“This instant,” said Bevis, stamping his foot; “I’m your master.”

“No; that you beant,” said the boy slowly, very particular as to facts;
“your feyther be my master.”

“You do it this minute,” said Bevis, hot in the face, “or I’ll _kill_
you; but if you’ll do it I’ll give you--sixpence.”

The boy still hesitated, but he grinned; then he looked round, then he
turned the horse’s head--unwilling, for the animal thought he was going
to the manger--and did as Bevis told him.  Behind the strong cart-horse
the raft was nothing, it left a trail all across the grass right down to
the brook; Bevis led the way to the drinking-place, where the ground
sloped to the water.  The boy once embarked in the business, worked with
a will--highly delighted himself with the idea--and he and Bevis
together pushed the raft into the stream.

“Now you hold the rope,” said Bevis, “while I get in,” and he put one
foot on the raft.

Just then there came a whistle, first a long low call, then a quaver,
then two short calls repeated.

“That’s Mark,” said Bevis, and in he hastened.  “Push me off,” for one
edge of the raft touched the sandy shore.

“Holloa!” shouted Mark, racing down the meadow from the gateway; “stop a
minute! let me!--”

“Push,” said Bevis.

The boy shoved the raft off; it floated very well, but the moment it was
free of the ground and Bevis’s weight had to be entirely supported, the
water squirted in around the edges.

“You’ll be drownded,” said the carter’s lad.

“Pooh!” said Bevis.

“I shall jump in,” said Mark, making as if he were about to leap.

“If you do I’ll hit you,” said Bevis, doubling his fists; “I say!--”

For the water rushed in rapidly, and was already half an inch deep.
When he caulked his vessel, he stopped all the seams of the bottom, but
he had overlooked the chinks round the edges, between the narrow planks
that formed the gunwales or sides, and the bottom to which they were
fastened.

Bevis moved towards the driest side of the raft, but directly he stepped
there and depressed it with his weight the water rushed after him, and
he was deeper than over in it.  It came even over his boots.

“Let I get in,” said the boy; “mine be water-tights.”

“Pull me back,” said Bevis.

Mark seized the rope, and he and the boy gave such a tug that Bevis,
thrown off his balance, must have fallen into the brook had he not
jumped ashore and escaped with one foot wet through to the ankle.

“Yaa--you!” they heard a rough voice growling, like a dog muttering a
bark in his throat, and instantly the carter’s lad felt a grip on the
back of his neck.  It was the Bailiff who marched him up the meadow,
holding the boy by the neck with one hand and leading the cart-horse
with the other.  Bevis and Mark were too full of the raft even to notice
that their assistant had been haled off.

First they pulled till they had got it ashore; then they tilted it up to
let the water run out; then they examined the chinks where it had come
in.

“Here’s my handkerchief,” said Mark; “put that in.”

The handkerchief, a very dirty one, was torn into shreds and forced into
the chinks.  It was not enough, so Bevis tore up his; still there were
holes.  Bevis roamed up and down the grass in his excitement, gazing
round for something to stop these leaks.

“I know,” said he suddenly, “moss will do.  Come on.”

He made for a part of the meadow much overshadowed by trees, where the
moss threatened to overcome the grass altogether, so well did it
flourish in the coolness and moisture, for the dew never dried there
even at noonday.  The Bailiff had it torn up by the harrow, but it was
no good, it would grow.  Bevis always got moss from here to put in his
tin can for the worms when he went fishing.  Mark was close behind him,
and together they soon had a quantity of moss.  After they had filled
the chinks as they thought, they tried the boat again, Bevis insisting
on his right to get in first as it was his property.  But it still
leaked, so they drew it out once more and again caulked the seams.  To
make it quite tight Bevis determined to put some clay as well, to line
the chinks with it like putty.  So they had to go home to the garden,
get the trowel out of the summer-house where Bevis kept such things, and
then dig a few lumps of clay out of the mound.

There was only one place where there was any clay accessible, they knew
the spot well--was there anything they did not know?  Working up the
lumps of clay with their hands and the water so as to soften and render
it plastic, they carefully lined the chinks, and found when they
launched the raft that this time it floated well and did not admit a
single drop.  For the third time, Bevis stepped on board, balancing
himself with a pole he had brought down from the garden, for he had
found before that it was difficult to stand upright on a small raft.
Mark pushed him off: Bevis kept one end of the pole touching the bottom,
and so managed very well.  He guided the raft out of the drinking-place,
which was like a little pond beside the brook, and into the stream.

There the current took it, and all he had to do was to keep it from
grounding on the shallows, where the flags were rising out of the mud,
or striking against the steep banks where the cowslips overhung the
water.  With his feet somewhat apart to stand the firmer, his brow
frowning (with resolution), and the pole tight in his hands--all grimed
with clay--Bevis floated slowly down the stream.  The sun shone hot and
bright, and he had of course left his hat on the sward where it had
fallen off as he stooped to the caulking: the wind blew and lifted his
hair: his feet were wet.  But he never noticed the heat, nor the wind,
nor his wet feet, nor his clayey hands.  He had done it--he was quite
lost in his raft.

Round the bend the brook floated him gently, past the willow where the
wood-pigeon built (he was afraid to come near his nest while they were
about), past the thick hawthorn bushes white with may-bloom, under which
the blackbirds love to stay in the hottest days in the cool shadow by
the water.  Where there were streaks of white sand sifted by the stream
from the mud, he could see the bottom: under the high bank there was a
swirl as if the water wrestled with something under the surface: a
water-rat, which had watched him coming from a tiny terrace, dived with
a sound like a stone dropped quietly in: the stalks of flags grazed the
bottom of the raft, he could hear them as it drew on: a jack struck and
rushed wildly up and down till he found a way to slip by; the raft gave
a heave and shot swiftly forward where there had once been a bay and was
still a fall of two inches or so: a bush projected so much that he could
with difficulty hold the boughs aside and prevent the thorns from
scratching his face: a snag scraped the bottom of the boat and the jerk
nearly overthrew him--he did not mind that, he feared lest the old stump
had started a seam, but fortunately it had not done so.

Then there was a straight course, a broad and open reach, at which he
shouted with delight.  The wind came behind and pushed his back like a
sail and the little silvery ripples ran before him, and dashed against
the shore, destroying themselves and their shadows under them at the
same time.  The raft floated without piloting here, steadily on.  Bevis
lifted his pole and waved his hand in triumph.

From the gateway the carter’s lad watched him; he had got away from the
angry Bailiff.  From the garden ha-ha, near the rhubarb patch, Polly the
dairymaid watched him, gesticulating every now and then with her arms,
for she had been sent to call him to dinner.  Mark, wild with envy and
admiration and desire to share the voyage, walked on the bank, begging
to come in, for Bevis to get out or let him join him, threatening to
leap aboard from the high bank where the current drifted the raft right
under him, pulling off his shoes and stockings to wade in and seize the
craft by main force; then, changing his mind, shouting to Bevis to mind
a boulder in the brook, and pointing out the place.

The raft swept with steady, easy motion down the straight broad reach;
Bevis did not need his pole, he stood without its help, all aglow with
joy.

The raft came to another bend, and Bevis with his pole guided it round,
and then, looking up, stamped his foot with vexation, for there was an
ancient, hollow willow right in front, so bowed down that its head
obstructed the fair way of the stream.  He had quite hoped to get down
to the Peninsula, and to circumnavigate it, and even shoot the cataract
of the dam below, and go under the arch of the bridge, and away yet
farther.  He was not fifty yards from the Peninsula, and Mark had run
there to meet him; but here was this awkward tree, and before he could
make up his mind what to do, bump the raft struck the willow, then it
swung slowly round and one side grounded on the bank, and he was at a
standstill.

He hit the willow with his pole, but that was of no use, and called to
Mark.  Bevis pushed the willow with his pole, Mark pulled at a branch,
and together they could shake it, but they could not move it out of the
way; the stream was blocked as if a boom had been fastened across it.
The voyage was over.

While they consulted, Polly came down, having failed to make them hear
from the garden, and after she had shook them each by the shoulder
brought them to reason.  Though she would have failed in that too had
not the willow been there, not for dinner or anything would Bevis have
abandoned his adventure, so bent was he always on the business he had in
hand.

But the willow was obstinate, they could not get past it, so reluctantly
he agreed to go home.  First Polly had to fetch his hat, which was two
hundred yards away on the grass by the drinking-place; then Mark had to
put his shoes and stockings on, and take one off again because there was
a fragment of stone in it.  Next, Bevis had to step into the raft
again--a difficult thing to do from the tree--in order to get the cord
fastened to the staple to tie it up, not that there was the least risk
of the raft floating away, still these things, as you know, ought to be
done quite properly.

After he had tied the cord or painter to a branch of the willow as
firmly as possible, at last he consented to come.  But then catching
sight of the carter’s lad, he had first to give him his sixpence, and
also to tell him that if he dared go near the raft, even to look at it,
he would be put in the brook.  Besides which he had to wash his hands,
and by the time Mark and he reached the table the rest had finished.
The people looked at them rather blackly, but they did not mind or
notice in the least, for their minds were full of projects to remove the
willow, about which they whispered to each other.

Pan raced beside them after dinner to the ha-ha wall, down which they
jumped one after the other into the meadow.  The spaniel hesitated on
the brink, not that he feared the leap, which he had so often taken, but
reflection checked him.  He watched them a little way as they ran for
the brook, then turned and walked very slowly back to the house; for he
knew that now dinner was over, if he waited till he was remembered, a
plateful would come out for him.




Volume One, Chapter III.

THE MISSISSIPPI.

They found the raft as they had left it, except that petals of the
may-bloom, shaken from the hawthorn bushes by the breeze, as they came
floating down the stream had lodged against the vessel like a white line
on the water.  Already, too, the roach, which love a broad shadow to
play about its edge, had come underneath, but when they felt the shaking
of the bank from the footsteps turned aside, and let the current drift
them down.  Bevis fetched his hatchet from the Peninsula and began to
hack at the willow; Mark, not without some difficulty, got leave to
climb into the raft, and sit in the centre.  The chips flew, some fell
on the grass, some splashed into the brook; Bevis made a broad notch
just as he had seen the men do it; and though his arm was slender, the
fire behind it drove the edge of the steel into the wood.  The willow
shook, and its branches, which touched the water, ruffled the surface.

But though the trunk was hollow it was a long way through, and when
Bevis began to tire he had only cut in about three inches.  Then Mark
had to work, but before he had given ten strokes Bevis said it was of no
use chopping, they could never do it, they must get the grub-axe.  So
they went back to the house, and carried the ungainly tool down to the
tree.

It was too cumbrous for them, they pocked up a little turf, and just
disturbed the earth, and then threw the clumsy thing on the grass.  Next
they thought of the great saw--the cross-cut--the men used, one at each
end, to saw though timber; but that was out of their reach, purposely
put up high in the workshop, so that they should not meddle with it or
cut themselves with its terrible teeth.

“I know,” said Mark, “we must make a fire, and burn the tree; we are
savages, you know, and that is how they do it.”

“How silly you are!” said Bevis.  “We are _not_ savages, and I shall not
play at that.  We have just discovered this river, and we are going down
it on our raft; and if we do not reach some place to-night and build a
fort, very likely the savages will shoot us.  I believe I heard one
shouting just now; there was something rustled, I am sure, in the
forest.”

He pointed at the thick double-mound hedge about a hundred yards
distant.

“What river is it?” said Mark.  “Is it the Amazon, or the Congo, or the
Yellow River, or the Nile--”

“It is the Mississippi, of course,” said Bevis, quite decided and at
ease as to that point.  “Can’t you see that piece of weed there.  My
papa says that weed came from America, so I am sure it is the
Mississippi, and nobody has ever floated down it before, and there’s no
one that can read within a thousand miles.”

“Then what shall we do?”

“O, there’s always something you can do.  If we could only get a beaver
now to nibble through it.  There’s always something you can do.  I
know,” and Bevis jumped up delighted at his idea, “we can bore a hole,
and blow it up with gunpowder!”

“Lot us fetch an auger,” said Mark.  “The gimlet is not big enough.”

“Be quick,” said Bevis.  “Run back to the settlement, and get the auger;
I will mind the raft and keep off the savages; and, I say, bring a spear
and the cutlass; and--I say--”

But Mark was too far, and in too much of a hurry to hear a word.  Bevis,
tired of chopping, rolled over on his back on the grass, looking up at
the sky.  The buttercups rose high above his head, the wind blew and
cooled his heated forehead, and a humble-bee hummed along: borne by the
breeze from the grass there came the sweet scent of green things growing
in the sunshine.  Far up he saw the swallows climbing in the air; they
climbed a good way almost straight up, and then suddenly came slanting
down again.

While he lay there he distinctly heard the Indians rustling again in the
forest.  He raised himself on one arm, but could not see them; then
recollecting that he must try to conceal himself, he reclined again, and
thought how he should be able to repel an attack without weapons.  There
was the little hatchet, he could snatch up that and defend himself.
Perhaps they would sink the raft?  Perhaps when Mark returned they had
better tow it back up stream, and draw it ashore safely at home, and
then return to the work of clearing the obstruction.  As he lay with his
knees up among the buttercups he heard the thump, thump of Mark’s feet
rushing down the hill in eager haste with the auger.  So he sat up, and
beckoned to him to be quiet, and explained to him when he arrived that
the Indians were certainly about.  They must tow the raft back to the
drinking-place.  Bevis untied the cord with which the raft was fastened
to the willow, and stepped on board.

“Don’t pull too quick,” he said to Mark, giving him the cord; “or
perhaps I shall run aground.”

“But you floated down,” said Mark.  “Let me get in, and you tow; it’s my
turn.”

“Your turn?” shouted Bevis, standing up as straight as a bolt.  “This is
_my_ raft.”

“But you always have everything, and you floated down, and I have not;
you have everything, and--”

“You are a great story,” said Bevis, stamping so that the raft shook and
the ripples rushed from under it.  “I don’t have everything, and you
have more than half; and I gave you my engine and that box of gun-caps
yesterday; and I hate you, and you are a big story.”

Out he scrambled, and seizing Mark by the shoulders, thrust him towards
the raft with such force that it was with difficulty Mark saved himself
from falling into the brook.  He clung to the willow--the bark gave way
under his fingers--but as he slipped, he slung himself over the raft and
dropped on it.

“Take the pole,” said Bevis, still very angry, and looking black as
thunder.  “Take the pole, and steer so as not to run in the mud, and not
to hit against the bank.  Now then,” and putting the cord over his
shoulder, off he started.

Mark had as much as ever he could do to keep the raft from striking one
side or the other.

“Please don’t go so fast,” he said.

Bevis went slower, and towed steadily in silence.  After they had passed
the hawthorn under the may-bloom, Mark said, “Bevis,” but Bevis did not
answer.

“Bevis,” repeated Mark, “I have had enough now; stop, and you get in.”

“I shall not,” said Bevis.  “You are a great story.”

In another minute Mark spoke again:--

“Let me get out and tow you now.”  Bevis did not reply.  “I say--I say--
I say, Bevis.”

No use.  Bevis towed him the whole way, till the raft touched the
shallow shore of the drinking-place.  Then Mark got out and helped him
drag the vessel well up on the ground, so that it should not float away.

“Now,” said Bevis, after it was quite done.  “Will you be a story any
more?”

“No,” said Mark, “I will not be a story again.”

So they walked back side by side to the willow tree; Mark, who was
really in the right, feeling in the wrong.  At the tree Bevis picked up
the auger, and told him to bore the hole.  Mark began, but suddenly
stopped.

“What’s the good of boring the hole when we have not got any gunpowder,”
said he.

“No more we have,” said Bevis.  “This is very stupid, and they will not
let me have any, though I have got some money, and I have a great mind
to buy some and hide it.  Just as if we did not know how to use powder,
and as if we did not know how to shoot!  Oh, I know!  We will go and cut
a bough of alder--there’s ever so many alders by the Longpond--and burn
it and make charcoal; it makes the best charcoal, you know, and they
always--use it for gunpowder, and then we can get some saltpetre.  Let
me see--”

“The Bailiff had some saltpetre the other day,” said Mark.

“So he did: it is in the dairy.  Oh yes, and I know where some sulphur
is.  It is in the garden-house, where the tools are, in the orchard;
it’s what they use to smother the bees with--”

“That’s on brown paper,” said Mark; “that won’t do.”

“No it’s not.  You have to melt it to put it on paper, and dip the paper
in.  This is in a piece, it is like a short bar, and we will pound it up
and mix; them all together and make capital gunpowder.”

“Hurrah!” cried Mark, throwing down the auger.  “Let’s go and cut the
alder.  Come on!”

“Stop,” said Bevis.  “Lean on me, and walk slow.  Don’t you know you
have caught a dreadful fever, from being in the swamps by the river, and
you can hardly walk, and you are very thin and weak?  Lean on my arm and
hang your head.”

Mark hung his head, turning his rosy cheeks down to the buttercups, and
dragged his sturdy fever-stricken limbs along with an effort.

“Humph!” said a gruff voice.

“It’s the Indians!” cried Bevis, startled; for they were so absorbed
they had not heard the Bailiff come up behind them.  They quite jumped,
as if about to be scalped.

“What be you doing to that tree?” said the Bailiff.

“Find out,” said Bevis.  “It’s not your tree: and why don’t you say when
you’re coming?”

“I saw you from the hedge,” said the Bailiff.  “I was telling John where
to cut the bushes from for the new harrow.”  That caused the rustling in
the forest.  “You’ll never chop he down.”

“That we shall, if we want to.”

“No, you won’t--he stops your ship.”

“It isn’t a ship: it’s a raft.”

“Well, you can’t get by.”

“That we can.”

“I thinks you be stopped,” said the Bailiff, having now looked at the
tree more carefully.  “He be main thick,”--with a certain sympathy for
stolid, inanimate obstruction.

“I tell you, people like us are never stopped by anything,” said Bevis.
“We go through forests, and we float down rivers, and we shoot tigers,
and move the biggest trees ever seen--don’t we, Mark?”

“Yes, that we do: nothing is anything to us.”

“Of course not,” said Bevis.  “And if we can’t chop it down or blow it
up, as we mean to, then we dig round it.  O, Mark, I say!  I forgot!
Let’s dig a canal round it.”

“How silly we were never to think of that!” said Mark.  “A canal is the
very thing--from here to the creek.”

He meant where the stream curved to enclose the Peninsula: the proposed
canal would make the voyage shorter.

“Cut some sticks--quick!” said Bevis.  “We must plug out our canal--that
is what they always do first, whether it is a canal, or a railway, or a
drain, or anything.  And I must draw a plan.  I must get my pocket-book
and pencil.  Come on, Mark, and get the spade while I get my pencil.”

Off they ran.  The Bailiff leaned on his hazel staff, one hand against
the willow, and looked down into the water, as calmly as the sun itself
reflected there.  When he had looked awhile he shook his head and
grunted: then he stumped away; and after a dozen yards or so, glanced
back, grunted, and shook his head again.  It could not be done.  The
tree was thick, the earth hard--no such thing: his sympathy, in a dull
unspoken way, was with the immovable.

Mark went to work with the spade, throwing the turf he dug up into the
brook; while Bevis, lying at full length on the grass, drew his plan of
the canal.  He drew two curving lines parallel, and half an inch apart,
to represent the bend of the brook, and then two, as straight as he
could manage, across, so as to shorten the distance, and avoid the
obstruction.  The rootlets of the grass held tight, when Mark tried to
lift the spadeful he had dug, so that he could not tear them off.

He had to chop them at the side with his spade first, and then there was
a root of the willow in the way; a very obstinate stout root, for which
the little hatchet had to be brought to cut it.  Under the softer turf
the ground was very hard, as it had long been dry, so that by the time
Bevis had drawn his plan and stuck in little sticks to show the course
the canal was to take, Mark had only cleared about a foot square, and
four or five inches deep, just at the edge of the bank, where he could
thrust it into the stream.

“I have been thinking,” said Bevis as he came back from the other end of
the line, “I have been thinking what we are, now we are making this
canal?”

“Yes,” said Mark, “what are we?--they do not make canals on the
Mississippi.  Is this the Suez canal?”

“Oh no,” said Bevis.  “This is not Africa; there is no sand, and there
are no camels about.  Stop a minute.  Put down that spade, don’t dig
another bit till we know what we are.”

Mark put down the spade, and they both thought very hard indeed, looking
straight at one another.

“I know,” said Bevis, drawing a long breath.  “We are digging a canal
through Mount Athos, and we are Greeks.”

“But was it the Greeks?” said Mark.  “Are you sure--”

“Quite sure,” said Bevis.  “Perfectly quite sure.  Besides, it doesn’t
matter.  _We_ can do it if they did not, don’t you see?”

“So we can: and who are you then, if we are Greeks?”

“I am Alexander the Great.”

“And who am I!”

“O, you--you are anybody.”

“But I _must_ be somebody,” said Mark, “else it will not do.”

“Well, you are: let me see--Pisistratus.”

“Who was Pisistratus?”

“I don’t know,” said Bevis.  “It doesn’t matter in the least.  Now dig.”

Pisistratus dug till he came to another root, which Alexander the Great
chopped off for him with the hatchet.  Pisistratus dug again and
uncovered a water-rat’s hole which went down aslant to the water.  They
both knelt on the grass, and peered down the round tunnel: at the bottom
where the water was, some of the fallen petals of the may-bloom had come
in and floated there.

“This would do splendidly to put some gunpowder in and blow up, like the
miners do,” said Bevis.  “And I believe that is the proper way to make a
canal: it is how they make tunnels, I am sure.”

“Greeks are not very good,” said Mark.  “I don’t like Greeks: don’t
let’s be Greeks any longer.  The Mississippi was very much best.”

“So it was,” said Bevis.  “The Mississippi is the nicest.  I am not
Alexander, and you are not Pisistratus.  This is the Mississippi.”

“Let us have another float down,” said Mark.  “Let me float down, and I
will drag you all the way up this time.”

“All right,” said Bevis.

So they launched the raft, and Mark got in and floated down, and Bevis
walked on the bank, giving him directions how to pilot the vessel, which
as before was brought up by the willow leaning over the water.  Just as
they were preparing to tow it back again, and Bevis was climbing out on
the willow to get into the raft they heard a splashing down the brook.

“What’s that?” said Mark.  “Is it Indians?”

“No, it’s an alligator.  At least, I don’t know.  Perhaps it’s a canoe
full of Indians.  Give me the pole, quick; there now, take the hatchet.
Look out!”

The splashing increased; then there was a “Yowp!” and Pan, the spaniel,
suddenly appeared out of the flags by the osier-bed.  He raced across
the ground there, and jumped into the brook again, and immediately a
moorcock, which he had been hunting, scuttled along the water, beating
with his wings, and scrambling with his long legs hanging down, using
both air and water to fly from his enemy.  As he came near he saw Bevis
on the willow, and rose out of the brook over the bank.  Bevis hit at
him with his pole, but missed; and Mark hurled the hatchet in vain.  The
moorcock flew straight across the meadow to another withy-bed, and then
disappeared.  It was only by threats that they stopped the spaniel from
following.

Pan having got his plateful by patiently waiting about the doorway,
after he had licked his chops, and turned up the whites of his eyes, to
see if he could persuade them to give him any more, walked into the
rick-yard, and choosing a favourite spot upon some warm straw--for straw
becomes quite hot under sunshine--lay down and took a nap.  When he
awoke, having settled matters with the fleas, he strolled back to the
ha-ha wall, and, seeing Bevis and Mark still busy by the brook, went
down to know what they were doing.  But first going to a place he well
knew to lap he scented the moorcock, and gave chase.

“Come here,” said Bevis; and, seizing the spaniel by the skin of his
neck, he dragged him in the raft, stepped in quickly after, and held Pan
while Mark hauled at the tow-line.  But when Bevis had to take the pole
to guide the raft from striking the bank Pan jumped out in a moment,
preferring to swim rather than to ride in comfort, nor could any
persuasions or threats get him on again.  He barked along the shore,
while Mark hauled and Bevis steered the craft.

Having beached her at the drinking-place on the shelving strand, they
thought they had better go up the river a little way, and see if there
were any traces of Indians; and, following the windings of the stream,
they soon came to the hatch.  Above the hatch the water was smooth, as
it usually is where it is deep and approaching the edge, and Bevis’s
quick eye caught sight of a tiny ripple there near one bank, so tiny
that it hardly extended across the brook, and disappeared after the
third wavelet.

“Keep Pan there!” he said.  “Hit him--hit him harder than that; he
doesn’t mind.”

Mark punched the spaniel, who crouched; but, nevertheless, his body
crept, as it were, towards the hatch, where Bevis was climbing over.
Bevis took hold of the top rail, put his foot on the rail below, all
green and slippery with weeds where the water splashed, like the rocks
where the sea comes, then his other foot further along, and so got over
with the deep water in front, and the roar of the fall under, and the
bubbles rushing down the stream.  The bank was very steep, but there was
a notch to put the foot in, and a stout hawthorn stem--the thorns on
which had long since been broken off for the purpose--gave him something
to hold to and by which to lift himself up.

Then he walked stealthily along the bank--it overhung the dark deep
water, and seemed about to slip in under him.  There was a plantation of
trees on that side, and on the other a hawthorn hedge, so that it was a
quiet and sheltered spot.  As he came to the place where he had seen the
ripple, he looked closer, and in among a bunch of rushes, with the green
stalks standing up all round it, he saw a moorhen’s nest.  It was made
of rushes, twined round like a wreath, or perhaps more like a large
green turban, and there were three or four young moorhens in it.  The
old bird had slipped away as he came near, and diving under the surface
rose ten yards off under a projecting bush.

Bevis dropped on his knee to take one of the young birds, but in an
instant they rolled out of the nest, with their necks thrust out in
front, and fell splash in the water, where they swam across, one with a
piece of shell clinging to its back, and another piece of shell was
washed from it by the water.  Pan was by his side in a minute; he had
heard the splash, and seen the young moorhens, and with a whine, as Mark
kicked him--unable to hold him any longer--he rushed across.

“They are such pretty dear little things,” said Bevis, in an ecstasy of
sentiment, calling to Mark.  “Lie down!” banging Pan with a dead branch
which he hastily snatched up.  The spaniel’s back sounded hollow as the
wood rebounded, and broke on his ribs.  “Such dear little things!  I
would not have them hurt for anything.”

Bang again on Pan’s back, who gave up the attempt, knowing from sore
experience that Bevis was not to be trifled with.  But by the time Mark
had got there the little moorhens had hidden in the grasses beside the
stream, though one swam out for a minute, and then concealed itself
again.

“Don’t you love them?” said Bevis.  “I do.  I’ll _smash_ you,”--to Pan,
cowering at his feet.

The moorhens did not appear again, so they went back and sat on the top
of the steep bank, their legs dangling over the edge above the bubbling
water.

A broad cool shadow from the trees had fallen over the hatch, for the
afternoon had gone on, and the sun was declining behind them over the
western hills.  A broad cool shadow, whose edges were far away, so that
they were in the midst of it.  The thrushes sang in the ashes, for they
knew that the quiet evening, with the dew they love, was near.  A
bullfinch came to the hawthorn hedge just above the hatch, looked in and
out once or twice, and then stepped inside the spray near his nest.  A
yellow-hammer called from the top of a tree, and another answered him
across the field.  Afar in the mowing-grass the crake lifted his voice,
for he talks more as the sun sinks.

The swirling water went round and round under the fall, with lines of
white bubbles rising, and quivering masses of yellowish foam ledged on
the red rootlets under the bank and against the flags.  The swirling
water, ceaselessly beaten by the descending stream coming on it with a
long-continued blow, returned to be driven away again.  A steady roar of
the fall, and a rippling sound above it of bursting bubbles and crossing
wavelets of the hastening stream, notched and furrowed over stones,
frowning in eager haste.  The rushing and the coolness, and the song of
the brook and the birds, and the sense of the sun sinking, stilled even
Bevis and Mark a little while.  They sat and listened, and said nothing;
the delicious brook filled their ears with music.

Next minute Bevis seized Pan by the neck and pitched him over into the
bubbles.  In an instant, before he came to the surface, as his weight
carried him beneath, Pan was swept down the stream, and when he came up
he could not swim against it, but was drifted away till he made for the
flags, which grew on a shallow spot.  There he easily got out, shook
himself, and waited for them to come over.

“I am hungry,” said Mark.  “What ought we to have to eat; what is right
on the Mississippi?  I don’t believe they have tea.  There is Polly
shouting for us.”

“No,” said Bevis thoughtfully; “I don’t think they do.  How stupid of
her to stand there shouting and waving her handkerchief, as if we could
not find our way straight across the trackless prairie.  I know--we will
have some honey!  Don’t you know?  Of course the hunters find lots of
wild honey in the hollow trees.  We will have some honey; there’s a big
jar full.”

So they got over the hatch, and went home, leaving their tools scattered
hither and thither beside the Mississippi.  They climbed up the ha-ha
wall, putting the toes of their boots where the flat stones of which it
was built, without mortar, were farthest apart, and so made steps while
they could hold to the wiry grass-tufts on the top.

“Where’s your hat?” said Polly to Bevis.

“I don’t know,” said Bevis.  “I suppose it’s in the brook.  It doesn’t
matter.”




Volume One, Chapter IV.

DISCOVERY OF THE NEW SEA.

Next morning Bevis went out into the meadow to try and find a plant
whose leaves, or one of them, always pointed to the north, like a green
compass lying on the ground.  There was one in the prairies by which the
hunters directed themselves across those oceans of grass without a
landmark as the mariners at sea.  Why should there not be one in the
meadows here--in these prairies--by which to guide himself from forest
to forest, from hedge to hedge, where there was no path?  If there was a
path it was not proper to follow it, nor ought you to know your way; you
ought to find it by sign.

He had “blazed” ever so many boughs of the hedges with the hatchet, or
his knife if he had not got the hatchet with him, to recognise his route
through the woods.  When he found a nest begun or finished, and waiting
for the egg, he used to cut a “blaze”--that is, to peel off the bark--or
make a notch, or cut a bough off about three yards from the place, so
that he might easily return to it, though hidden with foliage.  No doubt
the grass had a secret of this kind, and could tell him which was the
way, and which was the north and south if he searched long enough.

So the raft being an old story now, as he had had it a day, Bevis went
out into the field, looking very carefully down into the grass.  Just by
the path there were many plantains, but their long, narrow leaves did
not point in any particular direction, no two plants had their leaves
parallel.  The blue scabious had no leaves to speak of, nor had the red
knapweed, nor the yellow rattle, nor the white moon-daisies, nor golden
buttercups, nor red sorrel.  There were stalks and flowers, but the
plants of the mowing-grass, in which he had no business to be walking,
had very little leaf.  He tried to see if the flowers turned more one
way than the other, or bowed their heads to the north, as men seem to
do, taking that pole as their guide, but none did so.  They leaned in
any direction, as the wind had left them, or as the sun happened to be
when they burst their green bonds and came forth to the light.

The wind came past as he looked and stroked everything the way it went,
shaking white pollen from the bluish tops of the tall grasses.  The wind
went on and left him and the grasses to themselves.  How should I knew
which was the north or the south or the west from these?  Bevis asked
himself, without framing any words to his question.  There was no
knowing.  Then he walked to the hedge to see if the moss grew more on
one side of the elms than the other, or if the bark was thicker and
rougher.

After he had looked at twenty trees he could not see much difference;
those in the hedge had the moss thickest on the eastern side (he knew
which was east very well himself, and wanted to see if the moss knew),
and those in the lane just through it had the moss thickest on their
western side, which was clearly because of the shadow.  The trees were
really in a double row, running north and south, and the coolest shadow
was in between them, and so the moss grew there most.  Nor were the
boughs any longer or bigger any side more than the other, it varied as
the tree was closely surrounded with other trees, for each tree repelled
its neighbour.  None of the trees, nor the moss, nor grasses cared
anything at all about north or south.

Bevis sat down in the mowing-grass, though he knew the Bailiff would
have been angry at such a hole being made in it; and when he was sitting
on the ground it rose as high as his head.  He could see nothing but the
sky, and while he sat there looking up he saw that the clouds all
drifted one way, towards his house.  Presently a starling came past,
also flying straight for the house, and after a while another.  Next
three bees went over as straight as a line, all going one after another
that way.  The bees went because they had gathered as much honey as they
could carry, and were hastening home without looking to the right or to
the left.  The starlings went because they had young in their nests in a
hole of the roof by the chimney, and they had found some food for their
fledglings.  So now he could find his way home across the pathless
prairie by going the same way as the clouds, the bees, and the
starlings.

But when he had reached home he recollected that he ought to know the
latitude, and that there were Arabs or some other people in Africa who
found out the latitude of the place they were in by gazing at the sun
through a tube.  Bevis considered a little, and then went to the
rick-yard, where there was a large elder bush, and cut a straight branch
between the knots with his knife.  He peeled it, and then forced out the
pith, and thus made a tube.  Next he took a thin board, and scratched a
circle on it with the point of the compasses, and divided it into
degrees.  Round the tube he bent a piece of wire, and put the ends
through a gimlet-hole in the centre of the board.  The ends were opened
apart, so as to fasten the tube to the board, allowing it to rotate
round the circle.  Two gimlet-holes were bored at the top corners of the
board, and string passed through so that the instrument could be
attached to a tree or post.

He was tying it to one of the young walnut-trees as an upright against
which to work his astrolabe, when Mark arrived, and everything had to be
explained to him.  After they had glanced through the tube, and decided
that the raft was at least ten degrees distant, it was clearly of no use
to go to it to-day, as they could not reach it under a week’s travel.
The best thing, Mark thought, would be to continue their expedition in
some other direction.

“Let’s go round the Longpond,” said Bevis; “we have never been quite
round it.”

“So we will,” said Mark.  “But we shall not be back to dinner.”

“As if travellers ever thought of dinner!  Of course we shall take our
provisions with us.”

“Let’s go and get our spears,” said Mark.

“Let’s take Pan,” said Bevis.

“Where is your old compass?” said Mark.

“O, I know--and I must make a map; wait a minute.  We ought to have a
medicine-chest; the savages will worry us for physic: and very likely we
shall have dreadful fevers.”

“So we shall, of course; but perhaps there are wonderful plants to cure
us, and we know them and the savages don’t--there’s sorrel.”

“Of course, and we can nibble some hawthorn leaf.”

“Or a stalk of wheat.”

“Or some watercress.”

“Or some nuts.”

“No, certainly not; they’re not ripe,” said Bevis, “and unripe fruit is
very dangerous in tropical countries.”

“We ought to keep a diary,” said Mark.  “When we go to sleep who shall
watch first, you or I?”

“We’ll light a fire,” said Bevis.  “That will frighten the lions; they
will glare at us, but they can’t stand fire--you hit them on the head
with a burning stick.”

So they went in, and loaded their pockets with huge double slices of
bread-and-butter done up in paper, apples, and the leg of a roast duck
from the pantry.  Then came the compass, an old one in a brass case;
Mark broke his nails opening the case, which was tarnished, and the card
at once swung round to the north, pointing to the elms across the road
from the window of the sitting-room.  Bevis took the bow and three
arrows, made of the young wands of hazel which grow straight, and Mark
was armed with a spear, a long ash rod with sharpened end, which they
thrust in the kitchen fire a few minutes to harden in the proper manner.

Besides which, there was Bevis’s pocket-book for the diary, and a large
sheet of brown paper for the map; you see travellers have not always
everything at command, but must make use of what they have.  Pan raced
before them up the footpath; the gate that led to the Longpond was
locked, and too high to be climbed easily, but they knew a gap, and
crept through on hands and knees.

“Take care there are no cobras or rattlesnakes among those dead leaves,”
said Mark, when they were halfway through, and quite over-arched and
hidden under brambles.

“Stick your spear into them,” said Bevis, who was first, and Mark,
putting his spear past him, stirred up the heap of leaves.

“All right,” said he.  “But look at that bough--is it a bough or a
snake?”

There was an oak branch in the ditch, crooked and grey with lichen, half
concealed by rushes; its curving shape and singular hue gave it some
resemblance to a serpent.  But when he stabbed at it with his spear it
did not move; and they crept through without hurt.  As they stood up in
the field the other side they had an anxious consultation as to what
piece of water it was they were going to discover; whether it was a lake
in Central Africa, or one in America.

“I’m tired of lakes,” said Mark.  “They have found out such a lot of
lakes, and the canoes are always upset, and there is such a lot of mud.
Let’s have a new sea altogether.”

“So we will,” said Bevis.  “That’s capital--we will find a new sea where
no one has ever been before.  Look!”--for they had now advanced to where
the gleam of the sunshine on the mere was visible through the
hedge--“look! there it is; is it not wonderful?”

“Yes,” said Mark, “write it down in the diary; here’s my pencil.  Be
quick; put ‘Found a new sea’--be quick--there, come on--let’s run--
hurrah!”

They dashed open the gate, and ran down to the beach.  It was a rough
descent over large stones, but they reached the edge in a minute, and as
they came there was a splashing in several places along the shore.
Something was striving to escape, alarmed at their approach.  Mark fell
on his knees, and put his hand where two or three stones, half in and
half out of water, formed a recess, and feeling about drew out two
roach, one of which slipped from his fingers; the other he held.  Bevis
rushed at another splashing, but he was not quick enough, for it was
difficult to scramble over the stones, and the fish swam away just as he
got there.  Mark’s fish was covered with tiny slippery specks.  The
roach had come up to leave their eggs under the stones.  When they had
looked at the fish they put it back in the water, and with a kind of
shake it dived down and made off.  As they watched it swim out they now
saw that three or four yards from the shore there were crowds upon
crowds of fish travelling to and fro, following the line of the land.

They were so many, that the water seemed thick with them, and some were
quite large for roach.  These had finished putting their eggs under the
stones, and were now swimming up and down.  Every now and then, as they
silently watched the roach--for they had never before seen such
countless multitudes of fish--they could hear splashings further along
the stones, where those that were up in the recesses were suddenly
seized with panic fear without cause, and struggled to get out, impeding
each other, and jammed together in the narrow entrances.  For they could
not forget their cruel enemies the jacks, and dreaded lest they should
be pounced upon while unable even to turn.

A black cat came down the bank some way off, and they saw her swiftly
dart her paw into the water, and snatch out a fish.  The scales shone
silver white, and reflected the sunshine into their eyes like polished
metal as the fish quivered and leaped under the claw.  Then the cat
quietly, and pausing over each morsel, ate the living creature.  When
she had finished she crept towards the water to get another.

“What a horrid thing!” said Mark.  “She ate the fish alive--cruel
wretch!  Let’s kill her.”

“Kill her,” said Bevis; and before he could fit an arrow to his bow Mark
picked up a stone, and flung it with such a good aim and with such force
that although it did not hit the cat, it struck a stone and split into
fragments, which flew all about her like a shell.  The cat raced up the
bank, followed by a second stone, and at the top met Pan, who did not
usually chase cats, having been beaten for it, but seeing in an instant
that she was in disgrace, he snapped at her and drove her wild with
terror up a pine-tree.  They called Pan off, for it was no use his
yapping at a tree, and walked along the shore, climbing over stones, but
the crowds of roach were everywhere; till presently they came to a place
where the stones ceased, and there was a shallow bank of sand shelving
into the water and forming a point.

There the fish turned round and went back.  Thousands kept coming up and
returning, and while they stayed here watching, gazing into the clear
water, which was still and illuminated to the bottom by the sunlight,
they saw two great fish come side by side up from the depths beyond and
move slowly, very slowly, just over the sand.  They were two huge tench,
five or six pounds a-piece, roaming idly away from the muddy holes they
lie in.  But they do not stay in such holes always, and once now and
then you may see them like this as in a glass tank.  The pair did not go
far; they floated slowly rather than swam, first a few yards one way and
then a few yards the other.  Bevis and Mark were breathless with
eagerness.

“Go and fetch my fishing-rod,” whispered Bevis, unable to speak loud; he
was so excited.

“No, you go,” said Mark; “I’ll stay and watch them.”

“I shan’t,” said Bevis sharply, “you ought to go.”

“I shan’t,” said Mark.

Just then the tench, having surveyed the bottom there, turned and faded
away into the darker deep water.

“There,” said Bevis, “if you had run quick!”

“I won’t fetch everything,” said Mark.

“Then you’re no use,” said Bevis.  “Suppose I was shooting an elephant,
and you did not hand me another gun quick, or another arrow; and
suppose--”

“But _I_ might be shooting the elephant,” interrupted Mark, “and you
could hand me the gun.”

“Impossible,” said Bevis; “I never heard anything so absurd.  Of course
it’s the captain who always does everything; and if there was only one
biscuit left, of course you would let me eat it, and lie down and die
under a tree, so that I might go on and reach the settlement.”

“I _hate_ dying under a tree,” said Mark, “and you always want
everything.”

Bevis said nothing, but marched on very upright and very angry, and Mark
followed, putting his feet into the marks Bevis left as he strode over
the yielding sand.  Neither spoke a word.  The shore trended in again
after the point, and the indentation was full of weeds, whose broad
brownish leaves floated on the surface.  Pan worked about and sniffed
among the willow bushes on their left, which, when the lake was full,
were in the water, but now that it had shrunk under the summer heat were
several yards from the edge.

Bevis, leading the way, came to a place where the strand, till then so
low and shelving, suddenly became steep, where a slight rise of the
ground was cut as it were through by the water, which had worn a cliff
eight or ten feet above his head.  The water came to the bottom of the
cliff, and there did not seem any way past it except by going away from
the edge into the field, and so round it.  Mark at once went round,
hastening as fast as he could to get in front, and he came down to the
water on the other side of the cliff in half a minute, looked at Bevis,
and then went on with Pan.

Bevis, with a frown on his forehead, stood looking at the cliff, having
determined that he would not go round, and yet he could not get past
because the water, which was dark and deep, going straight down, came to
the bank, which rose from it like a wall.  First he took out his
pocket-knife and thought he would cut steps in the sand, and he did cut
one large enough to put his toe in; but then he recollected that he
should have nothing to hold to.  He had half a mind to go back home and
get some big nails and drive into the hard sand to catch hold of, only
by that time Mark would be so far ahead he could not overtake him and
would boast that he had explored the new sea first.  Already he was
fifty yards in front, and walking as fast as he could.  How he wished he
had his raft, and then that he could swim!  He would have jumped into
the water and swam round the cliff in a minute.

He saw Mark climbing over some railings that went down to the water to
divide the fields.  He looked up again at the cliff, and almost felt
inclined to leave it and run round and overtake Mark.  When he looked
down again Mark was out of sight, hidden by hawthorn bushes and the
branches of trees.  Bevis was exceedingly angry, and he walked up and
down and gazed round in his rage.  But as he turned once more to the
cliff, suddenly Pan appeared at an opening in the furze and bramble
about halfway up.  The bushes grew at the side, and the spaniel, finding
Bevis did not follow Mark, had come back and was waiting for him.
Bevis, without thinking, pushed into the furze, and immediately he saw
him coming, Pan, eager to go forward again, ran along the face of the
cliff about four feet from the top.  He seemed to run on nothing, and
Bevis was curious to see how he had got by.

The bushes becoming thicker, Bevis had at last to go on hands and knees
under them, and found a hollow space, where there was a great
rabbit-bury, big enough at the mouth for Pan to creep in.  When he stood
on the sand thrown out from it he could see how Pan had done it; there
was a narrow ledge, not above four inches wide, on the face of the
cliff.  It was only just wide enough for a footing, and the cliff fell
sheer down to the water; but Bevis, seeing that he could touch the top
of the cliff, and so steady himself, never hesitated a moment.

He stepped on the ledge, right foot first, the other close behind it,
and hold lightly to the grass at the edge of the field above, only
lightly lest he should pull it out by the roots.  Then he put his right
foot forward again, and drew his left up to it, and so along, keeping
the right first (he could not walk properly, the ledge being so narrow),
he worked himself along.  It was quite easy, though it seemed a long way
down to the water, it always looks very much farther down than it does
up, and as he glanced down he saw a perch rise from the depths, and it
occurred to him in the moment what a capital place it would be for
perch-fishing.

He could see all over that part of the lake, and noticed two moorhens
feeding in the weeds on the other side, when puff! the wind came over
the field, and reminded him, as he involuntarily grasped the grass
tighter, that he must not stay in such a place where he might lose his
balance.  So he went on, and a dragonfly flew past out a little way over
the water and then back to the field, but Bevis was not to be tempted to
watch his antics, he kept steadily on, a foot at a time, till he reached
a willow on the other side, and had a bough to hold.  Then he shouted,
and Pan, who was already far ahead, stopped and looked back at the
well-known sound of triumph.

Running down the easy slope, Bevis quickly reached the railings and
climbed over.  On the other side a meadow came down to the edge, and he
raced through the grass and was already halfway to the next rails when
some one called “Bevis!” and there was Mark coming out from behind an
oak in the field.  Bevis stopped, half-pleased, half-angry.

“I waited for you,” said Mark.

“I came across the cliff,” said Bevis.

“I saw you,” said Mark.

“But you ran away from me,” said Bevis.

“But I am not running now.”

“It is very wrong when we are on an expedition,” said Bevis.  “People
must do as the captain tells them.”

“I won’t do it again,” said Mark.

“You ought to be punished,” said Bevis, “you ought to be put on
half-rations.  Are you quite sure you will never do it again?”

“Never.”

“Well then, this once you are pardoned.  Now, mind in future, as you are
lieutenant, you set a good example.  There’s a summer snipe.”

Out flew a little bird from the shore, startled as Pan came near, with a
piping whistle, and, describing a semicircle, returned to the hard mud
fifty yards farther on.  It was a summer snipe, and when they
approached, after getting over the next railings, it flew out again over
the water, and making another half-circle passed back to where they had
first seen it.  Here the strand was hard mud, dried by the sun, and
broken up into innumerable holes by the hoofs of cattle and horses which
had come down to drink from the pasture, and had to go through the mud
into which they sank when it was soft.  Three or four yards from the
edge there was a narrow strip of weeds, showing that a bank followed the
line of the shore there.  It was so unpleasant walking over this hard
mud, that they went up into the field, which rose high, so that from the
top they had a view of the lake.




Volume One, Chapter V.

BY THE NEW NILE.

“Do you see any canoes?” said Mark.

“No,” said Bevis.  “Can you?  Look very carefully.”

They gazed across the broad water over the gleaming ripples far away,
for the light wind did not raise them by the shore, and traced the edge
of the willows and the weeds.

“The savages are in hiding,” said Bevis, after a pause.  “Perhaps
they’re having a feast.”

“Or gone somewhere to war.”

“Are they cannibals?” said Mark.  “I should not like to be gnawn.”

“Very likely,” said Bevis.  “No one has ever been here before, so they
are nearly sure to be; they always are where no one has been.  This
would be a good place to begin the map as we can see so far.  Let’s sit
down.”

“Let’s get behind a tree, then,” said Mark; “else if we stay still long
perhaps we shall be seen.”

So they went a little farther to an ash, and sat down by it.  Bevis
spread out his sheet of brown paper.

“Give me an apple,” said Mark, “while you draw.”  Bevis did so, and
then, lying on the ground at full length, began to trace out the course
of the shore; Mark lay down too, and held one side of the paper that the
wind might not lift it.  First Bevis made a semicircle to represent the
stony bay where they found the roach, then an angular point for the
sandy bar, then a straight line for the shelving shore.

“There ought to be names,” said Mark.  “What shall we call this?”
putting his finger on the bay.

“Don’t splutter over the map,” said Bevis; “take that apple pip off it.
Of course there will be names when I have drawn the outline.  Here’s the
cliff.”  He put a slight projection where the cliff jutted out a little
way, then a gentle curve for the shore of the meadow, and began another
trending away to the left for the place where they were.

“That’s not long enough,” said Mark.

“It’s not finished,” said Bevis.  “How can I finish it when we have only
got as far as this?  How do I know, you stupid, how far this bay goes
into the land?  Perhaps there’s another sea round there,” pointing over
the field.  “Instead of saying silly things, just find out some names,
now.”

“What sea is it?” said Mark thoughtfully.

“I can’t tell,” said Bevis.  “It is most extraordinary to find a new
sea.  And such an enormous big one.  Why how many days’ journey have we
come already?”

“Thirty,” said Mark.  “Put it down in the diary, thirty days’ journey.
There, that’s right.  Now, what sea is it?  Is it the Atlantic?”

“No; it’s not the Atlantic, nor the Pacific, nor the South Sea; it’s
bigger than all those.”

“It’s much more difficult to find a name than a sea,” said Mark.

“Much,” said Bevis.  They stared at each other for awhile.  “I know,”
said Bevis.

“Well, what is it?” said Mark excitedly, raising himself on his knees to
hear the name.

“I know,” said Bevis.  “I’ll lie down and shut my eyes, and you take a
piece of grass and tickle me; then I can think.  I can’t think unless
I’m tickled.”

He disposed himself very comfortably on his back with his knees up, and
tilted his straw hat so as to shade that side of his face towards the
sun.  Mark pulled a bennet.

“Not _too_ ticklish,” said Bevis, “else that won’t do: don’t touch my
lips.”

“All right.”

Mark held the bending bennet (the spike of the grass) bending with the
weight of its tip, and drew it very gently across Bevis’s forehead.
Then he let it just touch his cheek, and afterwards put the tip very
daintily on his eyelid.  From there he let it wander like a fly over his
forehead again, and close by, but not in the ear (as too ticklish),
leaving little specks of pollen on the skin, and so to the neck, and
next up again to the hair, and on the other cheek under the straw hat.
Bevis, with his eyes shut, kept quite still under this luxurious
tickling for some time, till Mark, getting tired, put the bennet
delicately on his lip, when he started and rubbed his mouth.

“Now, how stupid you are, Mark; I was just thinking.  Now, do it again.”

Mark did it again.

“Are you thinking?” he asked presently.

“Yes,” whispered Bevis.  They were so silent they heard the grasshoppers
singing in the grass, and the swallows twittering as they flew over, and
the loud midsummer hum in the sky.

“Are you thinking?” asked Mark again.  Bevis did not answer--he was
asleep.  Mark bent over him, and went on tickling, half dreamy himself,
till he nodded, and his hat fell on Bevis, who sat up directly.

“I know.”

“What is it?”

“It is not one sea,” said Bevis; “it is a lot of seas.  That’s the Blue
Sea, there,” pointing to the stony bay where the water was still and
blue under the sky.  “That’s the Yellow Sea, there,” pointing to the low
muddy shore where the summer snipe flew up, and where, as it was so
shallow and so often disturbed by cattle, the water was thick for some
yards out.

“And what is that out there!” said Mark, pointing southwards to the
broader open water where the ripples were sparkling bright in the
sunshine.

“That is the Golden Sea,” said Bevis.  “It is like butterflies flapping
their wings,”--he meant the flickering wavelets.

“And this round here,” where the land trended to the left, and there was
a deep inlet.

“It is the Gulf,” said Bevis; “Fir-Tree Gulf,” as he noticed the tops of
fir-trees.

“And that up at the top yonder, right away as far as you can see beyond
the Golden Sea?”

“That’s the Indian Ocean,” said Bevis; “and that island on the left side
there is Serendib.”

“Where Sinbad went?”

“Yes; and that one by it is the Unknown Island, and a magician lives
there in a long white robe, and he has a serpent a hundred feet long
coiled up in a cave under a bramble bush, and the most wonderful things
in the world.”

“Let’s go there,” said Mark.

“So we will,” said Bevis, “directly we have got a ship.”

“Write the names down,” said Mark.  “Put them on the map before we
forget them.”

Bevis wrote them on the map, and then they started again upon their
journey.  Where the gulf began they found a slight promontory, or
jutting point, defended by blocks of stone; for here the waves, when the
wind blew west or south, came rolling with all their might over the long
broad Golden Sea from the Indian Ocean.  Pan left them while they stood
here, to hunt among the thistles in an old sand-quarry behind.  He
started a rabbit, and chased it up the quarry, so that when they looked
back they saw him high up the side, peering into the bury.  Sand-martins
were flying in and out of their round holes.  At one place there was
only a narrow strip of land between the ocean and the quarry, so that it
seemed as if its billows might at any time force their way in.

They left the shore awhile, and went into the quarry, and winding in and
out the beds of nettles and thistles climbed up a slope, where they sank
at every step ankle deep in sand.  It led to a broad platform of sand,
above which the precipice rose straight to the roots of the grass above,
which marked the top of the cliff with brown, and where humble-bees were
buzzing along the edge, and, bending the flowers down on which they
alighted, were thus suspended in space.  In the cool recesses of the
firs at the head of Fir-Tree Gulf a dove was cooing, and a great aspen
rustled gently.

They took out their knives and pecked at the sand.  It was hard, but
could be pecked, and grooves cut in it.  The surface was almost green
from exposure to the weather, but under that white.  When they looked
round over the ocean they were quite alone: there was no one in sight
either way, as far as they could see; nothing but the wall of sand
behind, and the wide gleaming water in front.

“What a long way we are from other people,” said Mark.

“Thousands of miles,” said Bevis.

“Is it quite safe?”

“I don’t know,” doubtfully.

“Are there not strange creatures in these deserted places?”

“Sometimes,” said Bevis.  “Sometimes there are things with wings, which
have spikes on them, and they have eyes that burn you.”

Mark grasped his knife and spear, and looked into the beds of thistles
and nettles, which would conceal anything underneath.

“Let’s call Pan,” he whispered.

Bevis shouted “Pan.”

“Pan!” came back in an echo from another part of the quarry.  “Pan!”
shouted Bevis and Mark together.  Pan did not come.  They called again
and whistled; but he did not come.

“Perhaps something has eaten him,” said Mark.

“Very likely,” said Bevis.  “We ought to have a charm.  Don’t forget
next time we come to bring a talisman, so that none of these things can
touch us.”

“I know,” said Mark.  “I know.”  He took his spear and drew a circle on
the platform of sand.  “Come inside this.  There, that’s it.  Now stand
still here.  A circle is magic, you know.”

“So it is,” said Bevis.  “Pan!  Pan!”

Pan did not come.

“What’s in those holes?” said Mark, pointing to some large
rabbit-burrows on the right side of the quarry.

“Mummies,” said Bevis.  “You may be sure there are mummies there, and
very likely magic writings in their hands.  I wish we could get a magic
writing.  Then we could do anything, and we could know all the secrets.”

“What secrets?”

“Why, all these things have secrets.”

“All?” said Mark.

“All,” said Bevis, looking round and pointing with an arrow in his hand.
“All the trees, and all the stones, and all the flowers--”

“And these?” said Mark, picking up a shell.

“Yes, once; but can’t you see it is dead, and the secret, of course, is
gone.  If we had a magic writing.”

“Let’s buy a book,” said Mark.

“They are not books; they are rolls, and you unroll them very slowly,
and see curious things, pictures that move over the paper--”

Boom!

They started.  Mark lifted his spear, Bevis his bow.  A deep, low, and
slow sound, like thunder, toned from its many mutterings to a mighty
sob, filled their ears for a moment.  It might have been very distant
thunder, or a cannon in the forts far away.  It was one of those
mysterious sounds that are heard in summer when the sky is clear and the
wind soft, and the midsummer hum is loud.  They listened, but it did not
come again.

“What was that?” said Mark at last.

“I don’t know; of course it was something magic.”

“Perhaps they don’t like us coming into these magic places,” said Mark.
“Perhaps it is to tell us to go away.  No doubt Pan is eaten.”

“I shall not go away,” said Bevis, as the boom did not come again.  “I
shall fight first;” and he fitted his arrow to the string.  “What’s
that!” and in his start he let the arrow fly down among the thistles.

It was Pan looking down upon them from the edge above, where he had been
waiting ever since they first called him, and wondering why they did not
see him.  Bevis, chancing to glance up defiantly as he fitted his arrow
to shoot the genie of the boom, had caught sight of the spaniel’s face
peering over the edge.  Angry with Pan for making him start, Bevis
picked up a stone and flung it at him, but the spaniel slipped back and
escaped it.

“Fetch my arrow,” said Bevis, stamping his foot.

Mark went down and got it.  As he came up the sandy slope he looked
back.

“There’s a canoe,” he said.

“So it is.”

A long way off there was a black mark as it were among the glittering
wavelets of the Golden Sea.  They could not see it properly for the
dazzling gleam.

“The cannibals have seen us,” said Mark.  “They can see miles.  We shall
be gnawn.  Let’s run out of sight before they come too near.”

They ran down the slope into the quarry, and then across to the
fir-trees.  Then they stopped and watched the punt, but it did not come
towards them.  They had not been seen.  They followed the path through
the firs, and crossed the head of the gulf.

A slow stream entered the lake there, and they went down to the shore,
where it opened to the larger water.  Under a great willow, whose tops
rose as high as the firs, and an alder or two, it was so cool and
pleasant, that Mark, as he played with the water with his spear, pushing
it this way and that, and raising bubbles, and a splashing as a whip
sings in the air, thought he should like to dabble in it.  He sat down
on a root and took off his shoes and stockings, while Bevis, going a
little way up the stream, flung a dead stick into it, and then walked
beside it as it floated gently down.  But he walked much faster than the
stick floated, there was so little current.

“Mark,” said he, suddenly stopping, and taking up some of the water in
the hollow of his hand, “Mark!”

“Yes.  What is it?”

“This is fresh water.  Isn’t it lucky?”

“Why?”

“Why, you silly, of course we should have died of thirst.  _That’s_ the
sea,” (pointing out).  “This will save our lives.”

“So it will,” said Mark, putting one foot into the water and then the
other.  Then looking back, as he stood half up his ankles, “We can call
here for fresh water when we have our ship--when we go to the Unknown
Island.”

“So we can,” said Bevis.  “We must have a barrel and fill it.  But I
wonder what river this is,” and he walked back again beside it.

Mark walked further out till it was over his ankles, and then till it
was half as deep as his knee.  He jumped up both feet together, and
splashed as he came down, and shouted.  Bevis shouted to him from the
river.  Next they both shouted together, and a dove flew out of the firs
and went off.

“What river is this?”  Bevis called presently.

“O!” cried Mark suddenly; and Bevis glancing round saw him stumble, and,
in his endeavour to save himself, plunge his spear into the water as if
it had been the ground, to steady himself; but the spear, though long,
touched nothing up to his hand.  He bent over.  Bevis held his breath,
thinking he must topple and fall headlong; but somehow he just saved
himself, swung round, and immediately he could ran out upon the shore.
Bevis rushed back.

“What was it?” he asked.

“It’s a hole,” said Mark, whose cheeks had turned white, and now became
red, as the blood came back.  “An awful deep hole--the spear won’t touch
the bottom.”

As he waded out at first on shelving sand he laughed, and shouted, and
jumped, and suddenly, as he stepped, his foot went over the edge of the
deep hole; his spear, as he tried to save himself with it, touched
nothing, so that it was only by good fortune that he recovered his
balance.  Once now and then in the autumn, when the water was very low,
dried up by the long summer heats, this hole was visible and nearly
empty, and the stream fell over a cataract into it, boiling and
bubbling, and digging it deeper.  But now, as the water had only just
begun to recede, it was full, so that the stream ran slow, held back and
checked by their sea.

This hollow was quite ten feet deep, sheer descent, but you could not
see it, for the shore seemed to slope as shallow as possible.

Mark was much frightened, and sat down on the root to put on his shoes
and stockings.  Bevis took the spear, and going to the edge, and leaning
over and feeling the bottom with it, he could find the hole, where the
spear slipped and touched nothing, about two yards out.

“It is a horrid place,” he said.  “How should I have got you out?  I
wish we could swim.”

“So do I,” said Mark.  “And they will never let us go out in a boat by
ourselves--I mean in a ship to the Unknown Island--till we can.”

“No; that they won’t,” said Bevis.  “We must begin to swim directly.  My
papa will show me, and I will show you.  But how should I have got you
out if you had fallen?  Let me see; there’s a gate up there.”

“It is so heavy,” said Mark.  “You could not drag it down, and fling it
in quick enough.  If we had the raft up here.”

“Ah, yes.  There is a pole loose there--that would have done.”  He
pointed to some railings that crossed the stream.  The rails were
nailed, but there was a pole at the side, only thrust into the bushes.
“I could have pulled that out and held it to you.”

Mark had now got his shoes on, and they started again, looking for a
bridge to cross the stream, and continue their journey round the New
Sea.  As they could not see any they determined to cross by the
railings, which they did without much trouble, holding to the top bar,
and putting their feet on the second, which was about three inches over
the water.  The stream ran deep and slow; it was dark, because it was in
shadow, for the trees hung over from each side.  Bevis, who was first,
stopped in the middle and looked up it.  There was a thick hedge and
trees each side, and a great deal of fern on the banks.  It was straight
for a good way, so that they could see some distance till the boughs hid
the rest.

“I should like to go up there,” said Mark.  “Some day, if we can get a
boat under these rails, let us go up it.”

“So we will,” said Bevis.  “It is proper to explore a river.  But what
river is this?”

“Is it the Congo?” said Mark.

“O! no.  The Congo is not near this sea at all.  Perhaps it’s the
Amazon.”

“It can’t be the Mississippi,” said Mark.  “That’s a long way off now.
I know--see it runs slow, and it’s not clear, and we don’t know where it
comes from.  It’s the Nile.”

“So it is,” said Bevis.  “It is the Nile, and some day we will go up to
the source.”

“What’s that swimming across up there?” said Mark.

“It is too far; I can’t tell.  Most likely a crocodile.  How fortunate
you did not fall in.”

When they had crossed, they whistled for Pan, who had been busy among
the fern on the bank, sniffing after the rabbits which had holes there.
Pan came and swam over to them in a minute.  They travelled on some way
and found the ground almost level and so thick with sedges and grass and
rushes that they walked in a forest of green up to their waists.  The
water was a long way off beyond the weeds.  They tried to go down to it,
but the ground got very soft and their feet sank into it; it was covered
with horsetails there, acres and acres of them, and after these shallow
water hidden under floating weeds.  Some coots were swimming about the
edge of the weeds too far to fear them.  So they returned to the firm
ground and walked on among the sedges and rushes.  There was a rough
path, though not much marked, which wound about so as to get the firmest
footing, but every now and then they had to jump over a wet place.

“What immense swamps,” said Mark; “I wonder where ever we shall get to.”

Underfoot there was a layer of the dead sedges of last year which gave
beneath their weight, and the ground itself was formed of the roots of
sedges and other plants.  The water had not long since covered the place
where they were, and the surface was still damp, for the sunshine could
not dry it, having to pass through the thick growth above and the matted
stalks below.  A few scattered willow bushes showed how high the water
had been by the fibres on the stems which had once flourished in it and
were now almost dried up by the heat.  A faint malarious odour rose from
the earth, drawn from the rotting stalks by the hot sun.  There was no
shadow, and after a while they wearied of stepping through the sedges,
sinking a little at every step, which much increases the labour of
walking.

The monotony, too, was oppressive, nothing but sedges, flags, and
rushes, sedges and horsetails, and they did not seem to get much farther
after all their walking.  First they were silent, labour makes us quiet;
then they stopped and looked back.  The perfect level caused the
distance to appear more than it really was, because there was a thin
invisible haze hovering over the swamp.  Beyond the swamp was the gulf
they had gone round, and across it the yellow sand-quarry facing them.
It looked a very long way off.




Volume One, Chapter VI.

CENTRAL AFRICA.

“We shall never get round,” said Mark, “just see what a way we have
come, and we are not half up one side of the sea yet.”

“I wonder how far it is back to the quarry,” said Bevis.  “These sedges
are so tiresome.”

“We shall never get round,” said Mark, “and I am getting hungry, and Pan
is tired of the rushes too.”

Pan, with his red tongue lolling out at one side of his mouth, looked
up, showed his white tusks and wagged his tail at the mention of his
name.  He had ceased to quest about for some time; he had been walking
just at their heels in the path they made.

“We _must_ go on,” said Bevis, “we _can’t_ go back; it is not proper.
Travellers like us never go back.  I wish there were no more sedges.
Come on.”

He marched on again.  But now they had once confessed to each other that
they were tired, this spurt soon died away, and they stopped again.

“It is as hot as Central Africa,” said Mark, fanning himself with his
hat.

“I am not sure that we are not in Central Africa,” said Bevis.  “There
are hundreds of miles of reeds in Africa, and as we have crossed the
Nile very likely that’s where we are.”

“It’s just like it,” said Mark, “I am sure it’s Africa.”

“Then there ought to be lions in the reeds,” said Bevis, “or elephants.
Keep your spear ready.”

They went on again a little way.

“I want to sit down,” said Mark.

“So do I,” said Bevis; “in Africa, people generally rest in the middle
of the day for fear of sunstrokes.”

“So they do; then we ought to rest.”

“We can’t sit down here,” said Bevis; “it is so wet, and it does not
smell very nice: we might have the fever, you know, if we stopped still
long.”

“Let’s go to the hedge,” said Mark, pointing to the hedge which
surrounded the shore and was a great way on their left hand.  “Perhaps
there is a prairie there.  And I am so thirsty, and there is no water we
can drink; give me an apple.”

“But we must not go back,” said Bevis; “I can’t have that; it would
never do to let the expedition fail.”

“No,” said Mark.  “But let us sit down first.”

Bevis did not quite like to leave the sedges, but he could not gainsay
the heat, and he was weary, so they left the rough path and went towards
the hedge, pushing through the sedges and rushes.  It was some distance,
and as they came nearer and the ground very gradually rose and became
drier, there was a thick growth of coarse grass between the other
plants, and presently a dense mass of reed-grass taller than their
shoulders.  This was now in bloom, and the pollen covered their sleeves
as they forced a way through it.  The closer they got to the hedge the
thicker the grasses became, and there were now stoles of willow, and
tall umbelliferous plants called “gix,” which gave out an unpleasant
scent as they rubbed against or pushed them down and stepped on them.
It was hard work to get through, and when at last they reached the hedge
they were almost done up.

Now there was a new difficulty, the hedge had grown so close and thick
it was impossible to creep through it.  They were obliged to follow it,
searching for a gap.  They could not see a yard in front, so that they
could not tell how far they might have to go.  The dust-like pollen
flying from the shaken grasses and the flowering plants got inside their
nostrils and on the roofs of their mouths and in their throats, causing
an unbearable thirst and tickling.  The flies, gathering in crowds,
teased them, and would not be driven away.  Now and then something
seemed to sting their necks, and, striking the place with the flat hand,
a stoatfly dropped, too bloated with blood, like a larger gnat, to
attempt to escape the blow.

Pushing through the plants they stumbled into a hollow which they did
not see on account of the vegetation till they stepped over the edge and
fell in it.  Mark struck his knee against a stone, and limped; Bevis
scratched his hands and wrist with a bramble.  The hollow was a little
wet at the bottom, not water, but soft, sticky mud, which clung to their
feet like gum; but they scrambled out of it quickly, not really hurt,
but out of breath and angry.  They were obliged to sit down, crushing
down the grasses, to rest a minute.

“Let’s go back to the path in the sedges,” said Mark.

“I shan’t,” said Bevis savagely.  He got up and went on a few steps, and
then took out his knife.  “Couldn’t we cut a way through the bushes?” he
asked.  They went nearer the hedge and looked, but it had been kept
thick that cattle might not stray into the marsh.  The outside twigs
could be cut of course, but hawthorn is hard and close-grained.  With
such little tools as their pocket-knives it would take hours--very
likely they would break them.

“If we only had something to drink,” said Mark.  They had no more
apples.  Though it was a marsh, though they were on the shore, there was
not a drop of water; if they went back to the sedges they could not get
at the water, they would sink to the knees in mud first.  The tall
reed-grass and “gix,” and other plants which so impeded their progress,
were not high enough to protect them in the least from the sun.  The
hedge ran north and south, and at noonday gave no shadow.  As they went
slowly forward, Mark felt the ground first with his spear to prevent
their falling into another hollow.  They pulled rushes, and bit the soft
white part which was cool to the tongue.  But the stalks of plants and
grass, each so easily bent when taken by itself, in the mass like this
began to prove stronger than they were.

They had to part them with their arms first, like swimming, and then
push through, and the ceaseless resistance wore out their power.  Even
Bevis at last agreed that it was not possible, they must go back to the
path in the sedges on their right.  After standing still a minute to
recover themselves they turned to the right and went towards the sedges.
In about twenty yards Mark, who had been sounding with his spear,
touched something that splashed, he stopped and thrust again, there was
no mistake, it was water.  On going nearer, and feeling for the bottom
with the spear, Mark found it was deep too, he could not reach the
bottom.  The grasses grew right to the edge, and the water itself was so
covered with weeds that, had they not prodded the ground before they
moved, they would have stepped over the brink into it.  The New Sea,
receding, had left a long winding pool in a hollow which shut them off
from getting to the path in the sedges unless by returning the weary way
they had come.

“This is dreadful,” said Mark, when they had followed the water a little
distance and were certain they could not cross.  “We can’t get out and
we can’t go back; I am so tired, I can’t push through much longer.”

“We must go on,” said Bevis; “somehow or other we must go on.”  He too
dreaded the idea of returning through the entangled vegetation.  It was
less dense on the verge of the pool than by the hedge, and by feeling
their way with the spear they got on for a while.  Thirsty as he was
Mark could not drink from the weed-grown water; indeed he could not see
the water at all for weeds and green scum, and if he pushed these aside
with his spear the surface bubbled with marsh gases.  Bevis too
persuaded him not to drink it.  Slowly they worked on, the marsh on one
side, and the hedge on the other.

“Look,” said Mark presently.  “There’s a willow; can’t we climb up and
see round?”

“Yes,” said Bevis; and they changed their course to get to it; it was
nearer the hedge.  They felt the ground rise, it was two yards higher by
the willow, and harder; when the sea came up the spot in fact was an
islet.  There were bushes on it, brambles, and elder in flower; none of
these grow in water itself, but flourish on the edge.  There were
several tall willow-poles.  Bevis put down his bow and arrows, took off
his jacket (the pockets of which were stuffed full of things), took hold
of a pole, and climbed up.  Mark did the same with another.  The poles
were not large enough to bear their weight very high; they got up about
six or eight feet.

“There’s Sindbad’s Island,” said Mark, pointing to the right.  Far away,
beyond the sedges and the reeds, there was a broad strip of clear water,
and across it the island of Serendib.  “If we only had a canoe.”

“Perhaps we could make one,” said Bevis.  “They make them sometimes of
willow--and from oak, only we have nothing to cover the framework;
sometimes they weave the rushes so close as to keep out water--”

“I can plait rushes,” said Mark; “I can plait eight; but they would not
keep out water.  What’s over the hedge?”

They looked that way; they could see over the thick, close hawthorn, but
behind it there rose tall ash-poles, which shut out the view completely.

“It is a thick double-mound,” said Bevis.  “There’s ash in the middle;
like that in our field, you know.”

In front they could see nothing but the same endless reed-grass, except
that there were more bushes and willows interspersed among it, showing
that there must be numerous banks.  Tired of holding on to the poles,
which had no boughs of size enough to rest on, they let themselves
gradually slide down.  As they descended Mark spied a dove’s nest in one
of the hawthorn bushes; tired as he was he climbed up the pole again,
and looked into it from a higher level.  There was an egg in it; he had
half a mind to take it, but remembered that it would be awkward to
carry.

“We shall never get home,” he said, after he had told Bevis of the nest.

“Pooh,” said Bevis.  “Here’s something for you to drink.”  He had found
a great teazle plant, whose leaves formed cups round the stem.  In four
of these cups there was a little darkish water, which had been there
since the last shower.  Mark eagerly sipped from the one which had the
most, though it was full of drowned gnats; it moistened his lips, but he
spluttered most of it out again.  It was not only unpleasant to the
taste but warm.

“I hate Africa,” he shouted; “I _hate_ it.”

“So do I,” said Bevis; “but we’ve got to get through it somehow.”  He
started again; Mark followed sullenly, and Pan came behind Mark.  Thus
the spaniel, stepping in the track they made, had the least difficulty
of either.  Pan’s tail drooped, he was very hungry and very thirsty, and
he knew it was about the time the dishes were rattling in the kitchen at
home.

“Listen,” said Mark presently, putting his hand on Bevis’s shoulder, and
stopping him.

Bevis listened.  “I can’t hear anything,” he said, “except the midsummer
hum.”

The hum was loud in the air above them, almost shrill, but there was not
another sound.  Now Mark had called attention to it the noonday silence
in that wild deserted place was strange.

“Where are all the things?” said Mark, looking round.  “All the birds
have gone.”

Certainly they could hear none, even the brook-sparrows in the sedges by
the New Sea were quiet.  There was nothing in sight alive but a few
swifts at an immense height above them.  Neither wood-pigeon, nor dove,
nor thrush called; not even a yellow-hammer.

“I know,” whispered Bevis.  “I know--they are afraid.”

“Afraid?”

“Yes; can’t you see Pan does not hunt about?”

“What is it?” asked Mark in an undertone, grasping his spear tightly.
“There are no mummies here?”

“No,” said Bevis.  “It’s the serpent, you know; he’s a hundred feet
long; he’s come over from the Unknown Island, and he’s waiting in these
sedges somewhere to catch something; the birds are afraid to sing.”

“Could he swallow a man?” said Mark.

“Swallow a man,” with curling lip.  “Swallow a buffalo easily.”

“Hush! what’s that?”  A puff of wind rustled the grasses.

“It’s the snake,” said Mark, and off he tore.  Bevis close behind him,
Pan at his heels.  In this wild panic they dashed quickly through the
grasses, which just before had been so wearisome an obstacle.  But the
heat pulled them up in ten minutes, panting.

“Did you see him?” said Bevis.

“Just a little bit of him--I think,” said Mark.

“We’ve left him behind.”

“He’ll find us by our track.”

“Let’s tie Pan up, and let him swallow Pan.”

“Where’s a rope?  Have you any string?  Give me your handkerchief.”

They were hastily tying their handkerchiefs together, when Mark, looking
round to see if the monstrous serpent was approaching, shouted,--

“There’s a tree!”

There was a large hollow willow or pollard in the hedge.  They rushed to
it, they clasped it as shipwrecked men a beam.  Mark was first, he got
inside on the “touchwood,” and scrambled up a little way, then he worked
up, his back against one side, and his knees the other.  Bevis got
underneath, and “bunted” him up.  Bunting is shoving with shoulder or
hands.  There were brambles on the top; Mark crushed through, and in a
minute was firmly planted on the top.

“Give me my spear, and your bow, and your hand,” he said breathlessly.

The spear and the bow were passed up: Bevis followed, taking Mark’s hand
just at the last.  Mark put the point of his spear downwards to stab the
monster.  Bevis fitted an arrow to his bow.  Pan looked up, but could
not climb.  They watched the long grasses narrowly, expecting to see
them wave from side to side every instant, as the python wound his
sinuous way.  There was a rustling beneath, but on the other side of the
hedge.  Bevis looked and saw Pan, who had crept through.

“What are you going to do?” said Mark, as Bevis slung his bow on his
shoulder as if it was a rifle, and began to move out on the hollow top
of the tree, which as it became hollow had split, and partly arched
over.  Bevis did not answer: he crept cautiously out on the top which
vibrated under him; then suddenly seizing a lissom bough, he slipped off
and let himself down.  He was inside the hedge that had so long baffled
them.  Mark saw in an instant, darted his spear down and followed.  So
soon as he touched ground, off they set running.  There were no sedges
here, nothing but short grasses and such herbage as grows under the
perpetual shade of ash-poles, and they could run easily.  The ease of
motion was, in itself, a relief, after the struggle in the reed-grass.
When they had raced some distance, and felt safe, they stopped.

“Why, this is a wood!” said Mark, looking round.  Ash-stoles and poles
surrounded them on every side.

“So it is,” said Bevis.  “No, it’s a jungle.”

They walked forward and came to an open space, round about a broad
spreading oak.

“I shall sit down here,” said Bevis.

But as they were about to sit down, Pan, who had woke up when he scented
rabbits, suddenly disappeared in a hollow.

“What’s that,” said Mark.  He went to see, and heard a sound of lapping.

“Water!” shouted Mark, and Bevis came to him.  Deep down in a narrow
channel there was the merest trickle of shallow water, but running, and
clear as crystal.  It came from chalk, and it was limpid.  Pan could
drink, but they could not.  His hollow tongue lapped it up like a spoon;
but it was too shallow to scoop up in the palm of the hand, and they had
no tube of “gix,” or reed, or oat straw, or buttercup stalk to suck
through.  They sprang into the channel itself, alighting on a place the
water did not cover, but with the stream under their feet they could not
drink.  Nothing but a sparrow could have done so.

Presently Bevis stooped, and with his hands scratched away the silt
which formed the bottom, a fine silt of powdered chalk, almost like
quicksand, till he had made a bowl-like cavity.  The stream soon filled
it, but then the water was thick, being disturbed, and they had to wait
till it had settled.  Then they lapped too, very carefully, with the
hollow palm, taking care that the water which ran through their fingers
should fall below, and not above the bowl, or the weight of the drops
would disturb it again.  With perseverance they satisfied their thirst;
then they returned to the oak, and took out their provisions; they could
eat now.

“This is a jolly jungle,” said Mark, with his mouth full.

“That’s a banyan,” said Bevis, pointing with the knuckle-end of the
drum-stick he was gnawing at the oak over them.  “It’s about eleven
thousand years old.”

Then Mark took the drum-stick, and had his turn at it.  When it was
polished, Pan had it: he cracked it across with his teeth, just as the
hyenas did in the cave days, for the animals never learnt to split
bones, as the earliest men did.  Pan cracked it very disconsolately: his
heart was with the fleshpots.

Boom!

They starred.  It was the same peculiar sound they had heard before, and
seemed to come from an immense distance.  A pheasant crowed as he heard
it in the jungle close by them, and a second farther away.

“What can it be?” whispered Mark.  “Is there anything here?”--glancing
around.

“There may be some genii,” said Bevis quietly.  “Very likely there are
some genii: they are everywhere.  But I do not know what that was.
Listen!”

They listened: the wood was still; so still, they could hear a moth or a
chafer entangled in the leaves of the oak overhead, and trying to get
out.  Looking up there, the sky was blue and clear, and the sunlight
fell brightly on the open space by the streamlet.  There was nothing but
the hum.  The long, long summer days seem gradually to dispose the mind
to expect something unusual.  Out of such an expanse of light, when the
earth is tangibly in the midst of a vast illumined space, what may not
come?--perhaps something more than is common to the senses.  The mind
opens with the enlarging day.

It is said the sandhills of the desert under the noonday sun emit
strange sounds; that the rocky valleys are vocal; the primeval forest
speaks in its depths; hollow ocean sends a muttering to the becalmed
vessel; and up in the mountains the bound words are set loose.  Of old
times the huntsmen in our own woods met the noonday spirit under the
leafy canopy.

Bevis and Mark listened, but heard nothing, except the entangled chafer,
the midsummer hum, and, presently, Pan snuffling, as he buried his
nostrils in his hair to bite a flea.  They laughed at him, for his eyes
were staring, and his flexible nostrils turned up as if his face was not
alive but stuffed.  The boom did not come again, so they finished their
dinner.

“I feel jolly lazy,” said Mark.  “You ought to put the things down on
the map.”

“So I did,” said Bevis, and he got out his brown paper, and Mark held it
while he worked.  He drew Fir-Tree Gulf and the Nile.

“Write that there is a deep hole there,” said Mark, “and awful
crocodiles: that’s it.  Now Africa--you want a very long stroke there;
write reeds and bamboos.”

“No, not bamboos, papyrus,” said Bevis.  “Bamboos grow in India, where
we are now.  There’s some,” pointing to a tall wild parsnip, or “gix,”
on the verge of the streamlet.

“I’m so lazy,” said Mark.  “I shall go to sleep.”

“No you won’t,” said Bevis.  “I ought to go to sleep, and you ought to
watch.  Get your spear, and now take my bow.”

Mark took the bow sullenly.

“You ought to stand up, and walk up and down.”

“I can’t,” said Mark very short.

“Very well; then go farther away, where you can see more round you.
There, sit down there.”

Mark sat down at the edge of the shadow of the oak.  “Don’t you see you
can look into the channel; if there are any savages they are sure to
creep up that channel.  Do you see?”

“Yes, I see,” said Mark.

“And mind nothing comes behind that woodbine,” pointing to a mass of
woodbine which hung from some ash-poles, and stretched like a curtain
across the view there.  “That’s a very likely place for a tiger: and
keep your eye sharp on those nut-tree bushes across the brook--most
likely you’ll see the barrel of a matchlock pushed through there.”

“I ought to have a matchlock,” said Mark.

“So you did; but we had to start with what we had, and it is all the
more glory to us if we _get_ through.  Now mind you keep awake.”

“Yes,” said Mark.

Bevis, having given his orders, settled himself very comfortably on the
moss at the foot of the oak, tilted his hat aside to shelter him still
more, and, with a spray of ash in his hand to ward off the flies, began
to forget.  In a minute up he started.

“Mark!”

“Yes;” still sulky.

“There’s another oak--no, it’s a banyan up farther; behind you.”

“I know.”

“Well, if you hear any rustle there, it’s a python.”

“Very well.”

“And those dead leaves and sticks in the hole there by the stump of that
old tree?”

“I see.”

“There’s a cobra there.”

“All right.”

“And if a shadow comes over suddenly.”

“What’s that, then?” said Mark.

“That’s the roc from Sinbad’s Island.”

“I say, Bevis,” as Bevis settled himself down again.  “Bevis, don’t go
to sleep.”

“Pooh!”

“But it’s not nice.”

“Rubbish.”

“Bevis.”

“Don’t talk silly.”

In a minute Bevis was fast asleep.  He always slept quickly, and the
heat and the exertion made him forget himself still quicker.




Volume One, Chapter VII.

THE JUNGLE.

Mark was alone.  He felt without going nearer that Bevis was asleep, and
dared not wake him lest he should be called a coward.  He moved a little
way so as to have the oak more at his back, and to get a clearer view on
all sides.  Then he looked up at the sky, and whistled very low.  Pan,
who was half asleep too, got up slowly, and came to him; but finding
that there was nothing to eat, and disliking to be stroked and patted on
such a hot day, he went back to his old place, the barest spot he could
find, mere dry ground.

Mark sat, bow and arrow ready in his hand, the arrow on the string, with
the spear beside him, and his pocket-knife with the big blade open, and
looked into the jungle.  It was still and silent.  The chafer had got
loose, and there was nothing but the hum overhead.  He kept the
strictest watch, scarce allowing himself to blink his eyes.  Now he
looked steadily into the brushwood he could see some distance, his
glance found a way through between the boughs, till presently, after he
had searched out those crevices, he could command a circle of view.

Like so many slender webs his lines of sight thus drawn through mere
chinks of foliage radiated from a central spot, and at the end of each
he seemed as if he could feel if anything moved as much as he could see
it.  Each of these webs strained at his weary mind, and even in the
shade the strong glare of the summer noon pressed heavily on his
eyelids.  Had anything moved, a bird or moth, or had the leaves rustled,
it would have relieved him.  This expectation was a continual effort.
His eyes closed, he opened them, frowned and blinked; then he reclined
on one arm as an easier position.  His eyes closed, the shrill midsummer
hum sounded low and distant, then loud, suddenly it ceased--he was
asleep.

The sunburnt woodbine, the oaks dotted with coppery leaves where the
second shoot appeared, the ash-poles rising from the hollow stoles, and
whose pale sprays touching above formed a green surface, hazel with
white nuts, stiff, ragged thistles on the stream bank, burrs with
brown-tipped hooks, the hard dry ground, all silent, fixed, held in the
light.

The sun slipped through the sky like a yacht under the shore where the
light wind coming over a bank just fills the sails, but leaves the
surface smooth.  Through the smooth blue the sun slipped silently, and
no white fleck of foam cloud marked his speed.  But in the deep narrow
channel of the streamlet there was a change--the tiny trickle of water
was no longer illumined by the vertical beams, a slight slant left it to
run in shadow.

Burr! came a humble-bee whose drone was now put out as he went down
among the grass and leaves, now rose again as he travelled.  Burr!  The
faintest breath of air moved without rustling the topmost leaves of the
oaks.  The humble-bee went on, and disappeared behind the stoles.

A little flicker of movement happened among the woodbine, not to be seen
of itself, but as a something interrupting the light like a larger mote
crossing the beam.  The leaves of the woodbine in one place were drawn
together and coated with a white web and a tiny bird came to take away
the destroyer.  Then mounting to a branch of ash he sang, “Sip, sip--
chip, chip!”

Again the upper leaves of the oak moved and jostling together caused a
slight sound.  Coo! coo! there was a dove beyond the hazel bushes across
the stream.  The shadow was more aslant and rose up the stalks of the
rushes in the channel.  Over the green surface of the ash sprays above,
the breeze drew and rippled it like water.  A jay came into the farther
oak and scolded a distant mate.

Presently Pan awoke, nabbed another flea, looked round and shook his
ears, from which some of the hair was worn by continual rubbing against
the bushes under which he had crept for so many years.  He felt thirsty,
and remembering the stream, went towards it, passing very lightly by
Bevis, so closely as to almost brush his hat.  The slight pad, pad of
his paws on the moss and earth conveyed a sense of something moving near
him to Bevis’ mind.  Bevis instantly sat up, so quickly, that the
spaniel, half alarmed, ran some yards.

Directly Bevis sat up he saw that Mark had fallen asleep.  He thought
for a moment, and then took a piece of string from his pocket.  Stepping
quietly up to Mark he made a slip-knot in the string, lifted Mark’s arm
and put his hand through the loop above the wrist, then he jerked it
tight.  Mark scrambled up in terror--it might have been the python:--

“O!  I say!”

Before he could finish, Bevis had dragged him two or three steps towards
an ash-pole, when Mark, thoroughly awake, jerked his arm free, though
the string hung to it.

“How dare you?” said Bevis, snatching at the string, but Mark pushed him
back.  “How dare you? you’re a prisoner.”

“I’m not,” said Mark very angrily.

“Yes, you are; you were asleep.”

“I don’t care.”

“I will tie you up.”

“You shan’t.”

“If you sleep at your post, you have to be tied to a tree, you know you
have, and be left there to starve.”

“I won’t.”

“You must, or till the tigers have you.  Do you hear? stand still!”

Bevis tried to secure him, Mark pushed him in turn.

“You’re a wretch.”

“I hate you!”

“I’ll kill you!”

“I’ll shoot you!”

Mark darted aside and took his spear; Bevis had his bow in an instant
and began to draw it.  Mark, knowing that Bevis would shoot his hardest,
ran for the second oak.  Bevis in his haste pulled hard, but let the
arrow slip before he could take aim.  It glanced upon a bough and shot
up nearly straight into the air, gleaming as it went--a streak of
light--in the sunshine.  Mark stopped by the oak, and before Bevis could
fetch another arrow poised his spear and threw it.  The spear flew
direct at the enemy, but in his haste Mark forgot to throw high enough,
he hurled it point-blank, and the hardened point struck the earth and
chipped up crumbling pieces of dry ground; then it slid like a serpent
some way through the thin grasses.

Utterly heedless of the spear, which in his rage he never saw, Bevis
picked up an arrow from the place where he had slept, fitted the notch
to the string and looked for Mark, who had hidden behind the other oak.
Guessing that he was there, Bevis ran towards it, when Mark shouted to
him,--

“Stop!  I say, it’s not fair; I have nothing, and you’ll be a coward.”

Bevis paused, and saw the spear lying on the ground.

“Come and take your spear,” he said directly; “I won’t shoot.”  He put
his bow on the ground.  Mark ran out, and had his spear in a moment.
Bevis stooped to lift his bow, but suddenly in his turn cried,--

“Stop!  Don’t throw; I want to say something.”

Mark, who had poised his spear, put it down again on the grass.

“We ought not to fight now,” said Bevis.  “You know we are exploring,
people never fight then, else the savages kill those who are left; they
wait till they get home, and then fight.”

“So they do,” said Mark; “but I shall not be left tied to a tree.”

“Very well, not this time.  Now we must shake hands.”

They shook hands, and Pan, seeing that there was now no danger of a
chance knock from a flying stick, came forth from the bush where he had
taken shelter.

“But you want everything your own way,” said Mark sulkily.

“Of course I do,” said Bevis, glaring at him, “I’m captain.”

“But you do when you are not captain.”

“You are a big story.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m not.”

“People are not to contradict me,” said Bevis, looking very defiant
indeed, and standing bolt upright.  “I say I am captain.”

Mark did not reply, but picked up his bat, which had fallen off.
Without another word each gathered up his things, then came the question
which way to go?  Bevis would not consult his companion; his companion
would not speak first.  Bevis shut his lips very tight, pressing his
teeth together; he determined to continue on and try and get round the
New Sea.  He was not sure, but fancied they should do so by keeping
somewhat to the right.  He walked to the channel of the stream, sprang
across it, and pushing his way through the hazel bushes, went in that
direction; Mark followed silently, holding his arm up to stop the boughs
which as Bevis parted them swung back sharply.

After the hazel bushes there was fairly clear walking between the
ash-poles and especially near the oak-trees, each of which had an open
space about it.  Bevis went as straight as he could, but had to wind in
and out round the stoles and sometimes to make a curve when there was a
thick bramble bush in the way.  As they passed in Indian file under some
larger poles, Mark suddenly left the path and began to climb one of
them.  Bevis stopped, and saw that there was a wood-pigeon’s nest.  The
bird was on the nest, and though she felt the ash-pole tremble as Mark
came up, hand over hand, cracking little dead twigs, though her nest
shook under her, she stayed till his hand almost touched it.  Then she
flew up through the pale green ash sprays, and Mark saw there were two
eggs, for the sticks of which the nest was made were so thinly put
together that, now the bird was gone, he could see the light through,
and part of the eggs lying on them.

He brought one of the eggs down in his left hand, sliding down the pole
slowly not to break it.  The pure white of the wood-pigeon’s egg is
curiously and delicately mottled like the pores of the finest human
skin.  The enamel of the surface, though smooth and glossy, has beneath
it some water-mark of under texture like the arm of the Queen of Love,
glossy white and smooth, yet not encased, but imperceptibly porous to
that breath of violet sweetness which announces the goddess.  The
sunlight fell on the oval as Mark, without a moment’s pause, took a pin
from the hem of his jacket and blew the egg.

So soon as he had finished, Bevis went on again, and came to some
hawthorn bushes, through which they had much trouble to push their way,
receiving several stabs from the long thorns.  As it was awkward with
the egg in his hand, Mark dropped it.

There was a path beyond the hawthorn, very little used, if at all, and
green, but still a path--a trodden line--and Bevis went along it, as it
seemed to lead in the direction he wished.  By the side of the path he
presently found a structure of ash sticks, and stopped to look at it.
At each end four sticks were driven into the ground, two and two, the
tops crossing each other so as to make a small V.  Longer sticks were
laid in these V’s, and others across at each end.

“It’s a little house,” said Mark, forgetting the quarrel.  “Here’s some
of the straw on the ground; they thatch it in winter and crawl under.”
(It was about three feet high.)

“I don’t know,” said Bevis.

“I’m sure it is,” said Mark.  “They are little men, the savages who live
here, they’re pigmies, you know.”

“So they are,” said Bevis, quite convinced, and likewise forgetting his
temper.  “Of course they are, and that’s why the path is so narrow.  But
I believe it’s not a house, I mean not a house to live in.  It’s a place
to worship at, where they have a fetich.”

“I think it’s a house,” said Mark.

“Then where’s the fireplace?” asked Bevis decidedly.

“No more there is a fireplace,” said Mark thoughtfully.  “It’s a
fetich-place.”

Bevis went on again, leaving the framework behind.  Across those bars
the barley was thrown in autumn for the pheasants, which feed by darting
up and dragging down a single ear at a time; thus by keeping the barley
off the ground there is less waste.  They knew this very well.

“Bevis,” said Mark presently.

“Yes.”

“Let’s leave this path.”

“Why?”

“Most likely we shall meet some savages--or perhaps a herd of wild
beasts, they rush along these paths in the jungle and crush over
everything--perhaps elephants.”

“So they do,” said Bevis, and hastily stepped out of the path into the
wood again.  They went under more ash-poles where the pigeons’ nests
were numerous; they counted five all in sight at once, and only a few
yards apart, for they could not see far through the boughs.  Some of the
birds were sitting, others were not.  Mark put up his spear and pushed
one off her nest.  There was a continual fluttering all round them as
the pigeons came down to, or left their places.  Never had they seen so
many nests--they walked about under them for a long time, doing nothing
but look up at them, and talk about them.

“I know,” said Bevis, “I know--these savages here think the pigeons
sacred, and don’t kill them--that’s why there are so many.”

Not much looking where they were going, they came out into a space where
the poles had been cut in the winter, and the stoles bore only young
shoots a few feet high.  There was a single waggon track, the ruts
overhung with grasses and bordered with rushes, and at the end of it,
where it turned, they saw a cock pheasant.  They tried to go through
between the stoles, but the thistles were too thick and the brambles and
briars too many; they could flourish here till the ash-poles grew tall
and kept away the sun.  So they followed the waggon track, which led
them again under the tall poles.

To avoid the savages they kept a very sharp lookout, and paused if they
saw anything.  There was a huge brown crooked monster lying asleep in
one place, they could not determine whether an elephant or some unknown
beast, till, creeping nearer from stole to bush and bush to stole, they
found it to be a thrown oak, from which the bark had been stripped, and
the exposed sap had dried brown in the sun.  So the vast iguanodon may
have looked in primeval days when he laid him down to rest in the
brushwood.

“When shall we come to the New Sea again?” said Mark presently, as they
were moving more slowly through a thicker growth.

“I cannot think,” said Bevis.  “If we get lost in this jungle, we may
walk and walk and walk and never come to anything except banyan-trees,
and cobras, and tigers, and savages.”

“Are you sure we have been going straight?”

“How do I know?”

“Did you follow the sun?” asked Mark.  “No, indeed, I did not; if you
walk towards the sun you will go round and round, because the sun
moves.”

“I forgot.  O!  I know, where’s the compass?”

“How stupid!” said Bevis.  “Of course it was in my pocket all the time.”

He took it out, and as he lifted the brazen lid the white card swung to
and fro with the vibration of his hand.

“Rest your hand against a pole,” said Mark.  This support steadied
Bevis’s hand, and the card gently came to a standstill.  The north, with
the three feathers, pointed straight at him.

“Now, which way was the sea?” said Mark, trying to think of the
direction in which they had last seen it.  “It was that side,” he said,
holding out his right hand; he faced Bevis.

“Yes, it was,” said Bevis.  “It was on the right hand, now that would be
east,” (to Mark), “so if we go east we must be right.”

He started with the compass in his hand, keeping his eye on it, but then
he could not see the stoles or bushes, and walked against them, and the
card swung so he could not make a course.

“What a bother it is,” he said, stopping, “the card won’t keep still.
Let me see!”  He thought a minute, and as he paused the three feathers
settled again.  “There’s an oak,” he said.  “The oak is just east.  Come
on.”  He went to the oak, and then stopped again.

“I see,” said Mark, watching the card till it stopped.  “The elder bush
is east now.”

They went to the elder bush and waited: there was a great thistle east
next, and afterwards a bough which had fallen.  Thus they worked a
bee-line, very slow but almost quite true.  The ash-poles rattled now as
the breeze freshened and knocked them together.

“What a lot of leaves,” said Bevis presently; “I never saw such a lot.”

“And they are so deep,” said Mark.  They had walked on dead leaves for
some little while before they noticed them, being so eagerly engaged
with the compass.  Now they looked the ground was covered with brown
beech leaves, so deep, that although their feet sunk into them, they
could not feel the firm ground, but walked on a yielding substance.  A
thousand woodcocks might have thrown them over their heads and hidden
easily had it been their time of year.  The compass led them straight
over the leaves, till in a minute or two they saw that they were in a
narrow deep coombe.  It became narrower and with steeper sides till they
approached the end, when the chalk showed not white but dull as it
crumbled, the flakes hanging at the roots of minute plants.

“I don’t like these leaves,” said Mark.  “There may be a cobra, and you
can’t see him; you may step on him without knowing.”

Hastily he and Bevis scrambled a few feet up the chalky side; the danger
was so obvious they rushed to escape it before discussing.  When they
had got over this alarm, they found the compass still told them to go
on, which they could not do without scaling the coombe.  They got up a
good way without much trouble, holding to hazel boughs, for the hazel
grows on the steepest chalk cliffs, but then the chalk was bare of all
but brambles, whose creepers came down towards them; why do bramble
creepers, like water, always come down hill?  Under these the chalk was
all crumbled, and gave way under the foot, so that if they put one foot
up higher it slipped with their weight, and returned them to the same
level.

Two rabbits rushed away, and were lost beneath the brambles.  Without
conscious thinking they walked aslant, and so gained a few feet every
ten yards, and then came to a spot where the crust of the top hung over,
and from it the roots of beech-trees came curving down into the hollow
space in search of earth.  To one of these they clung by turns, some of
the loose chalky clods fell on them, but they hauled themselves up over
the projecting edge.  Bevis went first, and took all the weapons from
Mark; Pan went a long way round.

At the summit there was a beautiful beech-tree, with an immense round
trunk rising straight up, and they sat down on the moss, which always
grows at the foot of the beech, to rest after the struggle up.  As they
sat down they turned round facing the cliff, and both shouted at
once,--“The New Sea!”




Volume One, Chapter VIII.

THE WITCH.

The blue water had lost its glitter, for they were now between it and
the sun, and the freshening breeze, as it swept over, darkened the
surface.  They were too far to see the waves, but that they were rising
was evident since the water no longer reflected the sky like a mirror.
The sky was cloudless, but the water seemed in shadow, rough and hard.
It was full half a mile or more down to where the wood touched the shore
of the New Sea and shut out their view, so that they could not tell how
far it extended.  Serendib and the Unknown Island were opposite, and
they could see the sea all round them from the height where they sat.

“We left the sea behind us,” said Mark.  “The compass took us right away
from it.”

“We began wrong somehow,” said Bevis.  In fact they had walked in a long
curve, so that when they thought the New Sea was on Mark’s right, it was
really on his left hand.  “I must put down on the map that people must
go west, not east, or they will never get round.”

“It must be thousands of miles round,” said Mark; “thousands and
thousands.”

“So it is,” said Bevis, “and only to think nobody ever saw it before you
and me.”

“What a long way we can see,” said Mark, pointing to where the horizon
and the blue wooded plain below, beyond the sea, became hazy together.
“What country is that?”

“I do not know; no one has ever been there.”

“Which way is England?” asked Mark.

“How can I tell when I don’t know where we are?”

The ash sprays touching each other formed a green surface beneath them,
extending to the right and left--a green surface into which every now
and then a wood-pigeon plunged, closing his wings as the sea-birds dive
into the sea.  They sat in the shadow of the great beech, and the wind,
coming up over the wood, blew cool against their faces.  The swallows
had left the sky, to go down and glide over the rising waves below.

“Come on,” said Bevis, incapable of rest unless he was dreaming.  “If we
keep along the top of the hill we shall know where we are going, and
perhaps see a way round presently.”

They followed the edge of the low cliff as nearly as they could, walking
under the beeches where it was cool and shady, and the wind blow
through.  Twice they saw squirrels, but they were too quick, and Bevis
could not get a shot with his bow.

“We ought to take home something,” said Mark.  “Something wonderful.
There ought to be some pieces of gold about, or a butterfly as big as a
plate.  Can’t you see something?”

“There’s a dragonfly,” said Bevis.  “If we can’t catch him, we can say
we saw one made of emerald, and here’s a feather.”

He picked up a pheasant’s feather.  The dragonfly refused to be caught,
he rushed up into the air nearly perpendicularly; and seeing another
squirrel some way ahead, they left the dragonfly and crept from beech
trunk to beech trunk towards him.

“It’s a red squirrel,” whispered Mark.  “That’s a different sort.”  In
summer the squirrels are thought to have redder fur than in winter.
Mark stopped now, and Bevis went on by himself; but the squirrel saw
Pan, who had run along and came out beyond him.  Bevis shot as the
squirrel rushed up a tree, and his arrow struck the bark, quivered a
moment, and stuck there.

“The savages will see some one has been hunting,” said Mark.  “They are
sure to see that arrow.”

In a few minutes they came to some hazel bushes, and pushing through
these there was a lane under them in a hollow ten feet deep.  They
scrambled down and followed it, and came to a boulder-stone, on which
some specks sparkled in the sunshine, so that they had no doubt it was
silver ore.  Round a curve of the lane they emerged on the brow of a
green hill, very steep; they had left the wood behind them.  The trees
from here hid the New Sea, and in front, not far off, rose the Downs.

“What are those mountains?” asked Mark.

“The Himalayas, of course,” said Bevis.  “Let’s go to them.”

They went along the brow, it was delicious walking there, for the sun
was now much lower, and the breeze cool, and beneath them were meadows,
and a brook winding through.  But suddenly they came to a deep coombe--a
nullah.

“Look!” said Mark, pointing to a chimney just under them.  The square
top, blackened by soot, stood in the midst of apple-trees, on whose
boughs the young green apples showed.  The thatch of the cottage was
concealed by the trees.

“A hut!” said Bevis.

“Savages!” said Mark, “I know, I’ll pitch a stone down the chimney, and
you get your bow ready, and shoot them as they rush out.”

“Capital!” said Bevis.  Mark picked up a flint, and “chucked” it--it
fell very near the chimney, they heard it strike the thatch and roll
down.  Mark got another, and most likely, having found the range, would
have dropped it into the chimney this time, when Bevis stopped him.

“It may be a witch,” he said.  “Don’t you know what John told us? if you
pitch a stone down a witch’s chimney it goes off bang! and the stone
shoots up into the air like a cannon-ball.”

“I remember,” said Mark.  “But John is a dreadful story.  I don’t
believe it.”

“No, no more do I.  Still we ought to be careful.  Let’s creep down and
look first.”

They got down the hillside with difficulty, it was so steep and
slippery--the grass being dried by the sun.  At the bottom there was a
streamlet running along deep in a gully, a little pool of the clearest
water to dip from, and a green sparred wicket-gate in a hawthorn hedge
about the garden.  Peering cautiously through the gate they saw an old
woman sitting under the porch beside the open door, with a black teapot
on the window-ledge close by, and a blue teacup, in which she was
soaking a piece of bread, in one hand.

“It’s a witch,” whispered Mark.  “There’s a black cat by the
wall-flowers--that’s a certain sign.”

“And two sticks with crutch-handles,” said Bevis.  “But just look
there.”  He pointed to some gooseberry bushes loaded with the swelling
fruit, than which there is nothing so pleasant on a warm, thirsty day.
They looked at the gooseberries, and thirsted for them; then they looked
at the witch.

“Let’s run in and pick some, and run out quick,” whispered Mark.

“You stupid; she’d turn us into anything in a minute.”

“Well--shoot her first,” said Mark.  “Take steady aim; John says if you
draw their blood they can’t do anything.  Don’t you remember, they stuck
the last one with a prong.”

“Horrid cruel,” said Bevis.

“So it was,” said Mark; “but when you want gooseberries.”

“I wish we had some moly,” said Bevis; “you know, the plant Ulysses had.
Mind before we start next time we must find some.  Who knows what
fearful magic people we might meet?”

“It was stupid not to think of it,” said Mark.  “Do you know, I believe
she’s a mummy.”

“Why?”

“She hasn’t moved; and I can’t see her draw her breath.”

“No more she does.  This is a terrible place.”

“Can we get away without her seeing?”

“I believe she knows we’re here now, and very likely all we have been
saying.”

“Did she make that curious thunder we heard?”

“No; a witch isn’t strong enough; it wants an enchanter to do that.”

“But she knows who did it?”

“Of course she does.  There, she’s moved her arm; she’s alive.  Aren’t
those splendid gooseberries?”

“I’ll go in,” said Bevis; “you hold the gate open, so that I can run
out.”

“So I will; don’t go very near.”

Bevis fitted an arrow to the string, and went up the garden path.  But
as he came near, and saw how peaceful the old lady looked, he removed
the arrow from the string again.  She took off her spectacles as he came
up; he stopped about ten yards from her.

“Mrs Old Woman, are you a witch?”

“No, I bean’t a witch,” said the old lady; “I wishes I was; I’d soon
charm a crock o’ gold.”

“Then, if you are not a witch, will you let us have some gooseberries?
here’s sixpence.”

“You med have some if you want’s ’em; I shan’t take yer money.”

“What country is this?” said Bevis, going closer, as Mark came up beside
him.

“This be Calais.”

“Granny, don’t you know who they be?” said a girl, coming round the
corner of the cottage.  She was about seventeen, and very pretty, with
the bloom which comes on sweet faces at that age.  Though they were but
boys they were tall, and both handsome; so she had put a rose in her
bosom.  “They be Measter Bevis and Measter Mark.  You know, as lives at
Longcot.”

“Aw, to be sure.”  The old lady got up and curtseyed.  “You’ll come in,
won’t ’ee?”

They went in and sat down on chairs on the stone floor.  The girl
brought them a plate of the gooseberries and a jug of spring-water.
Bevis had not eaten two before he was up and looking at an old gun in
the corner; the barrel was rusty, the brass guard tarnished, the ramrod
gone, still it was a gun.

“Will it go off?” he said.

“Feyther used to make un,” said the girl.

Next he found a big black book, and lifted up the covers, and saw a rude
engraving of a plant.

“Is that a magic book?” said he.

“I dunno,” she replied.  “Mebbe.  Granny used to read un.”

It was an old herbal.

“Can’t you read?” said Bevis.

The girl blushed and turned away.

“A’ be a lazy wench,” said the old woman.  “A’ can’t read a mossel.”

“I bean’t lazy.”

“You be.”

Bevis, quite indifferent to that question, was peering into every nook
and corner, but found nothing more.

“Let’s go,” said he directly.

Mark would not stir till he had finished the gooseberries.

“Tell me the way round the--the--” he was going to say sea, but
recollected that they would not be able to understand how he and Mark
were on an expedition, nor would he say pond--“round the water,” he
said.

“The Longpond?” said the girl.  “You can’t go round, there’s the marsh--
not unless you goes back to Wood Lane, and nigh handy your place.”

“Which way did ’ee come?” asked the old woman.

“They come through the wood,” said the girl.  “I seen um; and they had
the spannul.”

She was stroking Pan, who loved her, as she had fed him with a bone.
She knew the enormity of taking a strange dog through a wood in the
breeding-season.

“How be um going to get whoam?” said the old woman.

“We’re going to walk, of course,” said Bevis.

“It’s four miles.”

“Pooh!  We’ve come thousands.  Come on, Mark; we’ll get round somehow.”

But the girl convinced him after a time that it was not possible,
because of the marsh and the brook, and showed him too how the shadows
of the elms were lengthening in the meadow outside the garden at the
foot of the hill.  Bevis reluctantly decided that they must abandon the
expedition for that day, and return home.  The girl offered to show them
the way into the road.  She led them by a narrow path beside the
streamlet in the gully, and then along the steep side of the hill, where
there were three or four more cottages, all built on the slope, steep as
it was.  The path in front of the doors had a kind of breastwork, that
folk might not inadvertently tumble over and roll--if not quite sober--
into the gully beneath.  Yet there were small gardens behind, which
almost stood up on end, the vegetables appearing over the roofs.

Upon the breastwork or mound they had planted a few flowers, all yellow,
or yellow-tinged, marigolds, sunflowers, wall-flowers, a stray tulip,
the gaudiest they knew.  These specks of brightness by the dingy walls
and grey thatch and whitened turf, for the chalk was but an inch under,
came of instinct on that southern slope, as hot Spain flaunts a yellow
flag.

Six or eight children were about.  One sat crying in the midst of the
path, so unconscious under the wrong he had endured as not to see them,
and they had to step right over his red head.  Some stared at them with
unchecked rudeness; one or two curtseyed or tugged at their forelocks.
The happiest of all was sitting on the breastwork (of dry earth) eating
a small turnip from which he had cut the dirt and rind with a rusty
table-knife.  As they passed he grinned and pushed the turnip in their
faces, as much as to say, “Have a bite.”  Two or three women looked out
after they had gone by, and then some one cried, “Baa!” making a noise
like a sheep, at which the girl who led them flushed up, and walked very
quickly, with scorn and rage, and hatred flashing in her eye.  It was a
taunt.  Her father was in gaol for lamb-stealing.  Her name was
Aholibah, and they taunted her by dwelling on the last syllable.

The path went to the top of the hill, and round under a red barn, and
now they could see the village, of which these detached cottages were an
outpost, scattered over the slope, and on the plain on the other side of
the coombe, a quarter of a mile distant.

“There’s the windmill,” said the girl, pointing to the tower-like
building.  “You go tow-ward he.  He be on the road.  Then you turn to
the right till you comes to the handing-post.  Then you go to the left,
and that’ll take ’ee straight whoam.”

“Thank you,” said Bevis.  “I know now; it’s not far to Big Jack’s house.
Please have this sixpence,” and he gave her the coin, which he had
unconsciously held in his hand ever since he had taken it out to pay for
the gooseberries.  It was all he had; he could not keep his money.

She took it, but her eyes were on him, and not on the money; she would
have liked to have kissed him.  She watched them till she saw they had
got into the straight road, and then went back, but not past the
cottages.

They found the road very long, very long and dull, and dusty and empty,
except that there was a young labourer--a huge fellow--lying across a
flint heap asleep, his mouth open and the flies thick on his forehead.
Bevis pulled a spray from the hedge and laid it gently across his face.
Except for the sleeping labourer, the road was vacant, and every step
they took they went slower and slower.  There were no lions here, or
monstrous pythons, or anything magic.

“We shall never get home,” said Mark.

“I don’t believe we ever shall,” said Bevis; “I hate this road.”

While they yawned and kicked at stray flints, or pelted the sparrows on
the hedge, a dog-cart came swiftly up behind them.  It ran swift and
smooth and even balanced, the slender shafts bending slightly like the
spars of a yacht.

It was drawn by a beautiful chestnut mare, too powerful by far for many,
which struck out with her fore-feet as if measuring space and carrying
the car of a god in the sky, throwing her feet as if there were no road
but elastic air beneath them.  The man was very tall and broad and sat
upright--a wonderful thing in a countryman.  His head was broad like
himself, his eyes blue, and he had a long thick yellowy beard.  The
reins were strained taut like a yacht’s cordage, but the mare was in the
hollow of his strong hand.

They did not hear the hoofs till he was close, for they were on a flint
heap, searching for the best to throw.

“It’s Jack,” said Mark.

Jack looked them very hard in the face, but it did not seem to dawn upon
him who they were till he had gone past a hundred yards, and then he
pulled up and beckoned.  He said nothing but tapped the seat beside him.
Bevis climbed up in front, Mark knelt on the seat behind--so as to look
in the direction they were going.  They drove two miles and Jack said
nothing, then he spoke:--

“Where have you been?”

“To Calais.”

“Bad--bad,” said Jack.  “Don’t go there again.”  At the turnpike it took
him three minutes to find enough to pay the toll.  He had a divine mare,
his harness, his cart were each perfect.  Yet for all his broad
shoulders he could barely muster up a groat.  He pulled up presently
when there were but two fields between them and the house at Longcot; he
wanted to go down the lane, and they alighted to walk across the fields.
After they had got down and were just turning to mount the gate, and
the mare obeying the reins had likewise half turned.  Jack said,--

“Hum!”

“Yes,” said Mark from the top bar.

“How are they all at home?” i.e. at Mark’s.

“Quito well,” said Mark.

“All?” said Jack again.

“Frances bruised her arm--”

“Much?” anxiously.

“You can’t see it--her skin’s like a plum,” said Mark; “if you just
pinch it it shows.”

“Hum!” and Jack was gone.

Late in the evening they tried hard to catch the donkey, that Mark might
ride home.  It was not far, but now the day was over he was very tired,
so too was Bevis.  Tired as they were, they chased the donkey up and
down--six times as far as it was to Mark’s house--but in vain, the moke
knew them of old, and was not to be charmed or cowed.  He showed them
his heels, and they failed.  So Mark stopped and slept with Bevis, as he
had done so many times before.  As they lay awake in the bedroom,
looking out of the window opposite at a star, half awake and half
asleep, suddenly Bevis started up on his arm.

“Let’s have a war,” he said.

“That would be first-rate,” said Mark, “and have a great battle.”

“An awful battle,” said Bevis, “the biggest and most awful ever known.”

“Like Waterloo?” said Mark.

“Pooh!”

“Agincourt?”

“Pooh!”

“Mal--Mal,” said Mark, trying to think of Malplaquet.

“Oh! more than anything,” said Bevis; “somebody will have to write a
history about it.”

“Shall we wear armour?”

“That would be bow and arrow time.  Bows and arrows don’t make any
banging.”

“No more they do.  It wants lots of banging and smoke--else its
nothing.”

“No; only chopping and sticking.”

“And smashing and yelling.”

“No--and that’s nothing.”

“Only if we have rifles,” said Mark thoughtfully; “you see, people don’t
see one another; they are so far off, and nobody stands on a bridge and
keeps back all the enemy all by himself.”

“And nobody has a triumph afterwards with elephants and chariots, and
paints his face vermilion.”

“Let’s have bow and arrow time,” said Mark; “it’s much nicer--and you
sell the prisoners for slaves and get heaps of money, and do just as you
like, and plough up the cities that don’t please you.”

“Much nicer,” said Bevis; “you very often kill all the lot and there’s
nothing silly.  I shall be King Richard and have a battle-axe--no, let’s
be the Normans.”

“Wouldn’t King Arthur do?”

“No; he was killed, that would be stupid.  I’ve a great mind to be
Charlemagne.”

“Then I shall be Roland.”

“No; you must be a traitor.”

“But I want to fight your side,” said Mark.

“How many are there we can get to make the war?”

They consulted, and soon reckoned up fourteen or fifteen.

“It will be jolly awful,” said Mark; “there will be heaps of slain.”

“Let’s have Troy,” said Bevis.

“That’s too slow,” said Mark; “it lasted ten years.”

“Alexander the Great--let’s see; whom did he fight?”

“I don’t know; people nobody ever heard of--nobody particular, Indians
and Persians and all that sort.”

“I know,” said Bevis; “of course!  I know.  Of course I shall be Julius
Caesar!”

“And I shall be Mark Antony.”

“And we will fight Pompey.”

“But who shall be Pompey?” said Mark.

“Pooh! there’s Bill, and Wat, and Ted; anybody will do for Pompey.”




Volume One, Chapter IX.

SWIMMING.

“Put your hands on the rail.  Hold it as far off as you can.  There--now
let the water lift your feet up behind you.”

Bevis took hold of the rail, which was on a level with the surface, and
then leaning his chest forward upon the water, felt his legs and feet
gradually lifted up, till he floated.  At first he grasped the rail as
tight as he could, but in a minute he found that he need not do so.
Just to touch the rail lightly was enough, for his extended body was as
buoyant as a piece of wood.  It was like taking a stick and pressing it
down to the bottom, and then letting it go, when it would shoot up
directly.  The water felt deliciously soft under him, bearing him up far
more gently than the grass, on which he was so fond of lying.

“Mark!” he shouted.  “Do like this.  Catch hold of the rail--it’s
capital!”

Mark, who had been somewhat longer undressing than impatient Bevis, came
in and did it, and there they both floated, much delighted.  The water
was between three and four feet deep.  When Bevis’s papa found that they
could not be kept from roaming, and were bent on boating on the
Longpond, which was a very different thing to the shallow brook, where
they were never far from shore, and out of which they could scramble, he
determined to teach Bevis and his friend to swim.  Till Bevis could
swim, he should never feel safe about him; and unless his companion
could swim too, it was of no use, for in case of accident, one would be
sure to try and save the other, and perhaps be dragged down.

They had begged very hard to be allowed to have one of the boats in
order to circumnavigate the New Sea, which it was so difficult to walk
round; and he promised them if they would really try and learn to swim,
that they should have the boat as a reward.  He took them to a place
near the old quarry they had discovered, in one corner of Fir-Tree Gulf,
where the bottom was of sand, and shelved gently for a long way out; a
line of posts and rails running into the water, to prevent cattle
straying, as they could easily do where it was shallow like this.  The
field there, too, was away from any road, so that they could bathe at
all times.  It was a sunny morning, and Bevis, eager for his lesson, had
torn off his things, and dashed into the water, like Pan.

“Now try one hand,” said his “governor.”

“Let one hand lie on the water--put your arm out straight--and hold the
rail with the other.”

Bevis, rather reluctantly, did as he was told.  He let go with his right
hand, and stretched it out,--his left hand held him up just as easily,
and his right arm seemed to float of itself on the surface.  But now, as
the muscles of his back and legs unconsciously relaxed, his legs drew up
under him, and he bottomed with his feet and stood upright.

“Why’s that?” he said.  “Why did I come up like that?”

“You must keep yourself a little stiff,” said the governor; “not rigid--
not quite stiff--just feel your muscles then.”

Bevis did it again, and floated with one hand only on the rail: he found
he had also to keep his left arm quite straight and firm.  Then he had
to do it with only two fingers on; while Mark and the governor stood
still, that no ripple might enter his mouth, which was only an inch
above the surface.  Next, Mark was taken in hand, and learnt the same
things; and having seen Bevis do it, he had not the least difficulty.
The governor left them awhile to practise by themselves, and swam across
to the mouth of the Nile, on the opposite side of the gulf.  When he
came back he found they had got quite confident; so confident, that
Bevis, thinking to surpass this simple lesson, had tried letting go with
both hands, when his chin immediately went under, and he struggled up
spluttering.

The governor laughed.  “I thought you would do that,” he said.  “You
only want a little--a very little support, just two fingers on the rail;
but you must have some, and when you swim you have to supply it by your
own motion.  But you see how little is wanted.”

“I see,” said Bevis.  “Why, we can very nearly swim now--can’t we,
Mark?”

“Of course we can,” said Mark, kicking up his heels and making a
tremendous splash.

“Now,” said the governor, “come here;” and he made Bevis go on his knees
in shallow water, and told him to put both hands on the bottom.  He did
so; and when he was on all fours, facing the shore, the water only
reached just above his elbow, which was not deep enough, so he had to
move backwards till it touched his chest.  He had then to extend his
legs behind him, till the water lifted them up, while his hands remained
on the bottom.  His chest rested on the water, and all his body was
buoyed up in the same pleasant way as when he had hold of the rail.

By letting his arms bend or give a little, he could tell exactly how
much the water would bear him up, exactly how strong it was under him.
He let himself sink till his chin was in the water and it came halfway
to his lower lip, while he had his head well back, and looked up at the
sycamore-trees growing in the field above the quarry.  Then he floated
perfectly, and there seemed not the least pressure on his hands; there
was a little, but so little it appeared nothing, and he could fancy
himself swimming.

“Now walk along with your hands,” said the governor.

Bevis did so; and putting one hand before the other, as a tumbler does
standing on his head, moved with ease, his body floating, and having no
weight at all.  One hand would keep him, or even one finger when he put
it on a stone at the bottom so that it did not sink in as it would have
done into the sand; but if he extended his right arm, it had a tendency
to bring his toes down to the bottom.  Mark did the same thing, and
there they crawled about in the shallow water on their hands only, and
the rest floating, laughing at each other.  They could hardly believe
that it was the water did it; it kept them up just as if they were
pieces of wood.  The governor left them to practise this while he
dressed, and then made them get out, as they had been in long enough for
one morning.

“Pan does not swim like you do,” said Mark, as they were walking home.

“No,” said the governor, “he paddles; he runs in the water the same as
he does on land.”

“Why couldn’t we do that?” asked Mark.

“You can, but it is not much use: you only get along so slowly.  When
you can swim properly, you can copy Pan in a minute.”

The governor could not go with them again for two days on account of
business; but full of their swimming, they looked in the old bookcase,
and found a book in which there were instructions, and among other
things they read that the frog was the best model.  Out they ran to look
for a frog; but as it was sunny there were none visible, till Mark
remembered there was generally one where the ivy of the garden wall had
spread over the ground in the corner.

In that cool place they found one, and Bevis picked it up.  The frog was
cold to the touch even in the summer day, so they put it on a
cabbage-leaf and carried it to the stone trough in the yard.  No sooner
did it feel the water than the frog struck out and crossed the trough,
first in one direction, and then in another, afterwards swimming all
round close to the sides, but unable to land, as the stone was to it
like a wall.

“He kicks,” said Mark, leaning over the trough; “he only kicks; he
doesn’t use his arms.”

The frog laid out well with his legs, but kept his forelegs, or arms,
still, or nearly so.

“Now, what’s the good of a frog?” said Bevis; “men don’t swim like
that.”

“It’s very stupid,” said Mark; “he’s no model at all.”

“Not a bit.”

The frog continued to go round the trough much more slowly.

“No use watching him.”

So they went away, but before they had gone ten yards Bevis ran back.

“He can’t get out,” he said; and placing the cabbage-leaf under the
frog, he lifted the creature out of the trough and put him on the
ground.  No sooner was the frog on the ground than he went under the
trough in the moist shade there, for the cattle as they drank splashed a
good deal over.  When they told the governor, he said that what they had
noticed was correct, but the frog was a good model in two things
nevertheless; first in the way he kicked, and secondly in the way he
leaned his chest on the water.  But a man had to use his arms so as to
balance his body and keep his chin and mouth from going under, besides
the assistance they give as oars to go forward.

Next morning they went to the bathing-place again.  Bevis had now to
hold the rail as previously, but when he had got it at arm’s length he
was told to kick like the frog.

“Draw your knees up close together and kick, and send your feet wide
apart,” said the governor.  Bevis did so, and the thrust of his legs
sent him right up against the rail.  He did this several times, and was
then ordered to go on hands and knees in the shallow water, just as he
had done before, and let his legs float up.  When they floated he had to
kick, to draw his knees up close together, and then strike his feet back
wide apart.  The thrust this time lifted his hands off the bottom on
which they had been resting, lifted them right up, and sent him quite a
foot nearer the shore.  His chest was forced against the water like an
inclined plane, and he was thus raised an inch or so.  When the impulse
ceased he sank as much, and his hands touched the bottom once more.

This pleased him greatly--it was quite half-swimming; but he found it
necessary to be careful while practising it that there were no large
stones on the bottom, and that he did not get in too shallow water, else
he grazed his knees.  In the water you scarcely feel these kind of
hurts, and many a bather has been surprised upon getting out to find his
knees or legs bruised, or even the skin off, from contact with stones or
gravel, of which he was unaware at the time.

Mark had no difficulty in doing the same, it was even easier for him, as
he had only to imitate, which is not so hard as following instructions.
The second, indeed, often learns quicker than the first.  They kicked
themselves along in fine style.

“Keep your feet down,” said the governor; “don’t let them come above the
surface, and don’t splash.  Mark, you are not drawing your knees up, you
are only lifting your heels; it makes all the difference.”

He then made them hold on to the rail in the deepest water they could
fathom--standing himself between them and the deeper water--and after
letting their legs float, ordered them to kick there, but to keep their
arms straight and stiff, not to attempt to progress, only to practise
the kick.  The object was that they might kick deep and strong, and not
get into a habit of shallow kicking, as they might while walking on
their hands on the sand.  All that lesson they had to do nothing but
kick.

In a day or two they were all in the water again, and after a
preliminary splashing, just to lot off their high spirits--otherwise
they would not pay attention--serious business began.

“Now,” said the governor, “you must begin to use your arms.  You are
half-independent of touching the bottom already--you can feel that you
can float without your feet touching anything; now you must try to float
altogether.  You know the way I use mine.”

They had seen him many times, and had imitated the motion on shore,
first putting the flat hands together, thumb to thumb; the thumbs in
their natural position, and not held under the palm; the tips of the
thumbs crossing (as sculls cross in sculling); the fingers together, but
not squeezed tight, a little interstice between them matters nothing,
while if always squeezed tight it causes a strain on the wrist.  The
flat hands thus put together held four to six inches in front of the
breast, and then shot out--not with a jerk, quick, but no savage jerk,
which wastes power--and the palms at the extremity of the thrust turned
partly aside, and more as they oar the water till nearly vertical.

Do not attempt a complete sweep--a complete half-circle--oar them round
as far as they will go easily without an effort to the shoulders, and
then bring them back.  The object of not attempting a full sweep is that
the hands may come back easily, and without disturbing the water in
front of the chest and checking progress, as they are apt to do.  They
should slip back, and then the thumbs being held naturally, just as you
would lay your flat hand on the table, they do not meet with resistance
as they do if held under the palm.  If the fingers are kept squeezed
tight together when the hands are brought back to the chest, should they
vary a hair’s breadth from a level position they stop progress exactly
like an oar held still in the water, and it is very difficult to keep
them absolutely level.  But if the fingers are the least degree apart,
natural, if the hand inclines a trifle, the fingers involuntarily open
and the water slips through, besides which, as there is no strain, the
hands return level with so much greater ease.  The thrust forward is so
easy--it is learnt in a moment--you can imitate it the first time you
see it--that the bringing back is often thought of no account.  In fact,
the bringing back is _the_ point, and if it be not studied you will
never swim well.  This he had told them from time to time on shore, and
they had watched him as he swam slowly by them, on purpose that they
might observe the manner.  But to use the arms properly on shore, when
they pass through air and meet with no resistance, is very different to
using them properly in the water.

Bevis had to stand facing the shore in water as deep as his chest; then
to stoop a little--one foot in front of the other for ease--till his
chin nearly rested on the surface, and then to strike out with his arms.
He was not to attempt anything with his feet, simply to stand and try
the stroke.  He put his flat hands together, pushed them out, and oared
them round as he had often done on land.  As he oared them round they
pushed him forward, so that he had to take a step on the bottom; they
made him walk a step forward.  This he had to repeat twenty times, the
governor standing by, and having much trouble to make him return his
hands to his chest without obstructing his forward progress.

Bevis became very impatient now to swim arms and legs together; he was
sure he could do it, for his arms, as they swept back, partly lifted him
up and pushed him on.

“Very well,” said the governor.  “Go and try.  Here, Mark.”

He took Mark in hand, but before they had had one trial Bevis had
started to swim, and immediately his head went under unexpectedly, so
that he came up spluttering, and had to sit on the rail till he could
get the water out of his throat.  While he sat there in no good temper
Mark had his lesson.  The governor then went for a swim himself, being
rather tired of reiterating the same instructions, leaving them to
practise.  On his return--he did not go far, only just far enough to
recover his patience--he set them to work at another thing.

Bevis had to go on his hands on the bottom as he had done before, and
let his limbs float behind.  Then he was told to try striking out with
the right hand, keeping the left on the sand to support himself.  He did
so, and as his arm swept back it pushed him forward just as an oar would
a boat.  The next time he did it he kicked with his legs at the same
moment, and the impetus of the kick and the motion of his right arm
together lifted his left hand momentarily off the bottom, and sent him
along.  This he did himself without being told, the idea of doing so
would occur to any one in the same position.

“That’s right,” said the governor.  “Do that again.”

Bevis did it again and again, and felt now that he was three-parts
swimming; he swam with his legs, and his right arm, and only just
touched the bottom with his left hand.  After he had repeated it six or
seven times he lifted his left hand a little way, and made a quarter
stroke with it too, and then jumped up and shouted that he could swim.

Mark had to have his lesson some yards away, for Bevis had so splashed
the water in his excitement that it was thick with the sand he had
disturbed.  Bevis continued his trials, raising his left arm a little
more every time till he could very nearly use both together.  They were
then both set to work to hold on to the rail, let their limbs float, and
strike out with one arm, alternately left and right, kicking at the same
moment.  This was to get into the trick of kicking and striking out with
the hands together.  Enough had now been done for that morning.

They came up again the next day, and the governor left them this time
almost to themselves to practise what they had learnt.  They went on
their hands on the sand, let their limbs float, and by degrees began to
strike out with both hands, first lifting the left hand a few inches,
then more, till presently, as they became at home in the water, they
could nearly use both.

The next time they bathed the governor set Bevis a fresh task.  He was
made to stand facing the shore in water as deep as his chest, then to
lean forward gently on it--without splash--and to strike out with both
his arms and legs together.  He did it immediately, at the first trial,
but of course stood up directly.  Next he was told to try and make two
strokes--one is easily made, but the difficulty is when drawing up the
knees and bringing the hands back for the second stroke.  The chin is
almost certain to go under, and some spluttering to follow.  Bevis did
his best, and held his breath, and let his head go down well till he
drew some water up his nostrils, and was compelled to sit on the rail
and wait till he could breathe properly again.

Mark tried with exactly the same result.  The first stroke when the feet
pushed from the ground was easy; but when he endeavoured to draw up his
knees for the second, down went his head.

The only orders they received were to keep on trying.

Two days afterwards they bathed again, but though they asked the
governor to tell them something else he would not do so, he ordered them
to try nothing but the same thing over and over again, to face the shore
and strike out.  If they liked they could push forward very hard with
their feet, if it was done without splash, and the impetus would last
through two strokes, and help to keep the body up while they drew up
their knees for the second stroke.  Then he went for a swim across to
the Nile and left them.

They tried their very hardest, and then went on their hands on the sand
to catch the idea of floating again.  After that they succeeded, but so
nearly together that neither could claim to be first.  They pushed off
from the ground hard, struck out, drew up their knees and recovered
their hands, and made the second stroke.  They had to hold their breath
while they did it, for their mouths _would_ go under, but still it was
done.  Shouting to the governor to come back they threw themselves at
the water, bold as spaniels dashing in, wild with delight.

“You can swim,” said the governor as he approached.

“Of course we _can_,” said Bevis, rushing out in the field for a dance
on the sward, and then back splash into the water again.  That morning
they could hardly be got away from it, and insisted on bathing next day
whether convenient or not, so the governor was obliged to accompany
them.  This time he took the punt, and let them row him to the
bathing-place.  The lake was too deep there for poling.  They had been
in boats with him before, and could row well; it is remarkable that
there is nothing both boys and girls learn so quickly as rowing.  The
merest little boy of five years old will learn to handle an oar in a
single lesson.  They grounded the punt and undressed on the sward where
there was more room.

“Now,” said the governor, as they began to swim their two strokes again,
“now do this--stand up to your chest, and turn towards the rail, and
when you have finished the second stroke catch hold of it.”

Bevis found that this was not so easy as it sounded, but after five or
six attempts he did it, and then of his own motion stood back an extra
yard and endeavoured to swim three strokes, and then seize it.  This was
very difficult and he could not manage it that morning.  Twice more the
governor came with them and they had the punt, and on the second time
they caught the third stroke.  They pushed off, that was one stroke,
swam one good stroke while floating, and made a third partly complete
stroke, and seized the rail.

“That will do,” said the governor.  He was satisfied: his object from
the beginning had been so to teach them that they could teach
themselves.  With a band beneath the chest he could have suspended them
(one at a time) from the punt in deep water, and so taught them, but he
considered it much better to let them gradually acquire a knowledge of
how far the water would buoy them up, and where it would fail to do so,
so as to become perfectly confident, but not _too_ confident.  For
water, however well you can swim, is not a thing to be played with.
They had seen now that everything could be done in water no deeper than
the chest, and even less than that, so that he had reason to believe if
left to themselves they would not venture further out till quite
competent.  He had their solemn promise not to go into deeper water than
their shoulders.  If you go up to your chin, the slightest wavelet will
lift you off your feet, and in that way many too venturesome people have
been drowned not twelve inches from safety.

They might go to their shoulders, always on condition of facing the
shore and swimming towards it.  When they thought they could swim well
enough to go out of their depth he would come and watch.  Both promised
most faithfully, and received permission to go next time by themselves,
and in a short while, if they kept their word, they should have the
boat.

If any ladies should chance to read how Bevis and Mark learnt to swim,
when they are at the seaside will they try the same plan?  Choose a
smooth sea and a low tide (only to have it shallow).  Kneel in the
water.  Place the hands on the sand, so that the water may come almost
over the shoulders--not quite, say up to them.  Then let the limbs and
body float.  The pleasant sense of suspension without effort will be
worth the little trouble it costs.  On the softest couch the limbs feel
that there is something solid, a hard framework beneath, and so the
Sybarites put cushions on the floor under the feet of their couches.  On
the surface of the buoyant sea there is nothing under the soft couch.
They will find that there is no pressure on the hands.  They have no
weight.  Now let them kick with both feet together, and the propulsion
will send them forward.

Next use one arm in swimming style.  Next use one arm and kick at the
same time.  Try to use both arms, lifting the hand from the sand a
little first, and presently more.  Stand up to the chest in water, stoop
somewhat and bend the knee, one foot in front of the other, and use the
arms together, walking at the same time, so as to get the proper motion
of the hands.  Place the hands on the sand again, and try to use both
arms once more.

Finally, stand up to the chest, face the shore, lean forward, and push
off and try a stroke--the feet will easily recover themselves.
Presently two strokes will become possible, after awhile three; that is
swimming.  The sea is so buoyant, so beautiful, that let them only once
feel the sense of floating, and they will never rest till they have
learned.  Ladies can teach themselves so quickly, and swim better than
we do.  The best swimming I ever saw was done by three ladies together:
the waves were large, but they swam with ease, the three graces of the
sea.




Volume One, Chapter X.

SAVAGES.

Bevis and Mark went eagerly to bathe by themselves, but immediately left
the direct path.  Human beings must be kept taut, or, like a rope, they
will slacken.  The very first morning they took a leaping-pole with
them, a slender ash sapling, rather more than twice their own height,
which they picked out from a number in the rick-yard, intending to jump
to and fro the brook on the way.  But before they had got half way to
the brook they altered their minds, becoming eager for the water, and
raced to the bathing-place.  The pole was now to be an oar, and they
were to swim, supported by an oar, like shipwrecked people.

So soon as he had had a plunge or two, Bevis put one arm over the pole
and struck out with the other, thinking that he should be able in that
way to have a long swim.  Directly his weight pressed on the pole it
went under, and did not support him in the least.  He put it next
beneath his chest, with both arms over it, but immediately he pushed off
down it went again.  Mark took it and got astride, when the pole let his
feet touch the bottom.

“It’s no use,” he said.  “What’s the good of people falling overboard
with spars and oars?  What stories they must tell.”

“I can’t make it out,” said Bevis; and he tried again, but it was no
good, the pole was an encumbrance instead of a support, for it insisted
upon slipping through the water lengthways, and would not move just as
he wished.  In a rage he gave it a push, and sent it ashore, and turned
to swimming to the rail.  They did not know it, but the governor, still
anxious about them, had gone round a long distance, so as to have a peep
at them from the hedge on the other side of Fir-Tree Gulf by the Nile.
He could tell by the post and rails that they did not go out of their
depth, and went away without letting them suspect his presence.

When they got out, they had a run in the sunshine, which dried them much
better than towels.  The field sloped gently to the right, and their
usual run was on the slope beside a nut-tree hedge towards a group of
elms.  All the way there and back the sward was short and soft, almost
like that of the Downs which they could see, and dotted with bird’s-foot
lotus, over whose yellow flowers they raced.  But this morning, being no
longer kept taut, after they had returned from the elms with an enormous
mushroom they had found there, they ran to the old quarry, and along the
edge above.  The perpendicular sand-cliff fell to an enclosed pool
beneath, in which, on going to the very edge, they could see themselves
reflected.  Some hurdles and flakes--a stronger kind of hurdle--had been
placed here that cattle might not wander over, but the cart-horses, who
rub against everything, had rubbed against them and dislodged two or
three.  These had rolled down, and the rest hung half over.

While they stood still looking down over the broad waters of their New
Sea, the sun burned their shoulders, making the skin red.  Away they ran
back to dress, and taking a short path across a place where the turf had
partly grown over a shallow excavation pricked their feet with thistles,
and had to limp the rest of the way to their clothes.  Now, there were
no thistles on their proper racecourse down to the elms and back.

As they returned home they remembered the brook, and went down to it to
jump with the leaping-pole.  But the soft ooze at the bottom let the
pole sink in, and Bevis, who of course must take the first leap, was
very near being hung up in the middle of the brook.  Under his weight,
as he sprang off, the pole sank deep into the ooze, and had it been a
stiffer mud the pole would have stopped upright, when he must have
stayed on it over the water, or have been jerked off among the flags.
As it was it did let him get over, but he did not land on the firm bank,
only reaching the mud at the side, where he scrambled up by grasping the
stout stalk of a willow-herb.  In future he felt with the butt of the
pole till he found a firm spot, where it was sandy, or where the matted
roots of grasses and flags had bound the mud hard.  Then he flew over
well up on the grass.

Mark took his turn, and as he put the butt in the water a streak of mud
came up where a small jack fish had shot away.  So they went on down the
bank leaping alternately, one carrying the towels while the other flew
over and back.

Sometimes they could not leap because the tripping was bad, undermined
where cowslips in the spring hung over the stream, bored with the holes
of water-rats, which when disused become covered with grass, but give
way beneath the foot or the hoof that presses on them pitching leaper or
rider into the current, or it was rotten from long-decaying roots, or
about to slip.  Sometimes the landing was bad, undermined in the same
way, or higher than the tripping, when you have not only to get over,
but to deliver yourself on a higher level; or swampy, where a wet furrow
came to the brook; or too far, where there was nothing but mud to come
on.  They had to select their jumping-places, and feel the ground to the
edge first.

“Here’s the raft!” shouted Mark, who was ahead, looking out for a good
place.

“Is it?” said Bevis, running along on the other side.  They had so
completely forgotten it, that it came upon them like something new.
Bevis took a leap and came over, and they set to work at once to launch
it.  The raft slipped gradually down the shelving shore of the
drinking-place, and they thrust it into the stream.  Bevis put his foot
on board, but immediately withdrew it, for the water rushed through
twenty leaks, spurting up along the joins.  Left on the sand in the
sun’s rays the wood of the raft shrank a little, opening the planking,
while the clay they had daubed on to caulk the crevices had cracked, and
the moss had dried up and was ready to crumble.  The water came through
every where, and the raft was half-full even when left to itself without
any pressure.

“We ought to have thatched it,” said Mark.  “We ought to have made a
roof over it.  Let’s stop the leaks.”

“O! come on,” said Bevis, “don’t let’s bother.  Rafts are no good, no
more than poles or oars when you fall overboard.  We shall have a ship
soon.”

The raft was an old story, and he did not care about it.  He went on
with the leaping-pole, but Mark stayed a minute and hauled the raft on
shore as far as his strength would permit.  He got about a quarter of it
on the ground, so that it could not float away, and then ran after
Bevis.

They went into the Peninsula, and looked at all the fir-trees, to see if
any would do for a mast for the blue boat they were to have.  As it had
no name, they called it the blue boat to distinguish it from the punt.
Mark thought an ash-pole would do for the mast, as ash-poles were so
straight and could be easily shaved to the right size; but Bevis would
not hear of it, for masts were never made of ash, but always of pine,
and they must have their ship proper.  He selected a tree presently, a
young fir, straight as an arrow, and started Mark for the axe, but
before he had gone ten yards Mark came back, saying that the tree would
be of no use unless they liked to wait till next year, because it would
be green, and the mast ought, to be made of seasoned wood.

“So it ought,” said Bevis.  “What a lot of trouble it is to make a
ship.”

But as they sat on the railing across the isthmus swinging their legs,
Mark remembered that there were some fir-poles which had been cut a long
time since behind the great wood-pile, between it and the walnut-trees,
out of sight.  Without a word away they ran, chose one of these and
carried it into the shed where Bevis usually worked.  They had got the
dead bark off and were shaving away when it was dinner-time, which they
thought a bore, but which wise old Pan, who was never chained now,
considered the main object of life.

Next morning as they went through the meadow, where the dew still
lingered in the shade, on the way to the bathing-place, taking Pan with
them this time, they hung about the path picking clover-heads and
sucking the petals, pulling them out and putting the lesser ends in
their lips, looking at the white and pink bramble flowers, noting where
the young nuts began to show, pulling down the woodbine, and doing
everything but hasten on to their work of swimming.  They stopped at the
gate by the New Sea, over whose smooth surface slight breaths of mist
were curling, and stood kicking the ground and the stones as flighty
horses paw.

“We ought to be something,” said Mark discontentedly.

“Of course we ought,” said Bevis.  “Things are very stupid unless you
are something.”

“Lions and tigers,” said Mark, growling, and showing his teeth.

“Pooh!”

“Shipwrecked people on an island.”

“Fiddle!  They have plenty to do and are always happy, and we are not.”

“No; very unhappy.  Let’s try escaping--prisoners running away.”

“Hum!  Hateful!”

“Everything’s hateful.”

“So it is.”

“This is a very stupid sea.”

“There’s nothing in it.”

“Nothing anywhere.”

“Let’s be hermits.”

“There’s always only one hermit.”

“Well, you live that side,” (pointing across), “and I’ll live this.”

“Hermits eat pulse and drink water.”

“What’s pulse?”

“I suppose it’s barley water.”

“Horrid.”

“Awful.”

“You say what we shall be then.”

“Pan, you old donk,” said Bevis, rolling Pan over with his foot.  Lazy
Pan lay on his back, and let Bevis bend his ribs with his foot.

“Caw, caw!” a crow went over down to the shore, where he hoped to find a
mussel surprised by the dawn in shallow water.

Bang!  “Hoi!  Hoo!  Yah!”  The discharge was half a mile away, but the
crow altered his mind, and flew over the water as near the surface as he
could without touching.  Why do birds always cross the water in that
way?

“That’s Tom,” said Mark.  Tom was the bird-keeper.  He shot first, and
shouted after.  He potted a hare in the corn with bits of flint, a
button, three tin tacks, and a horse-stub, which scraped the old barrel
inside, but slew the game.  That was for himself.  Then he shouted his
loudest to do his duty--for other people.  The sparrows had flown out of
the corn at the noise of the gun, and settled on the hedge; when Tom
shouted they were frightened from the hedge, and went back into the
wheat.  From which learn this, shoot first and shout after.

“Shall we say that was a gun at sea?” continued Mark.

“They are always heard at night,” said Bevis.  “Pitch black, you know.”

“Everything is somehow else,” said Mark.  Pan closed his idle old eyes,
and grunted with delight as Bevis rubbed his ribs with his foot.  Bevis
put his hands in his pockets and sighed deeply.  The sun looked down on
these sons of care, and all the morning beamed.

“Savages!” shouted Mark kicking the gate to with a slam that startled
Pan up.  “Savages, of course!”

“Why?”

“They swim, donk: don’t they?  They’re always in the water, and they
have catamarans and ride the waves and dance on the shore, and blow
shells--”

“Trumpets?”

“Yes.”

“Canoes?”

“Yes.”

“No clothes?”

“No.”

“All jolly?”

“Everything.”

“Hurrah!”

Away they ran towards the bathing-place to be savages, but Mark stopped
suddenly, and asked what sort they were?  They decided that they were
the South Sea sort, and raced on again, Pan keeping pace with a kind of
shamble; he was too idle to run properly.  They dashed into the water,
each with a wood-pigeon’s feather, which they had found under the
sycamore-trees above the quarry, stuck in his hair.  At the first dive
the feathers floated away.  Upon the other side of the rails there was a
large aspen-tree whose lowest bough reached out over the water, which
was shallow there.

Though they made such a splashing when Bevis looked over the railings a
moment, he saw some little roach moving to and fro under the bough.  The
wavelets from his splashing rolled on to the sandy shore, rippling under
the aspen.  As he looked, a fly fell on its back out of the tree, and
struggled in vain to get up.  Bevis climbed over the rails, picked an
aspen leaf, and put it under the fly, which thus on a raft, and tossed
up and down as Mark dived, was floated slowly by the undulations to the
strand.  As he got over the rails a kingfisher shot out from the mouth
of the Nile opposite, and crossed aslant the gulf, whistling as he flew.

“Look!” said Mark.  “Don’t you know that’s a ‘sign.’  Savages read
‘signs,’ and those birds mean that there are heaps of fish.”

“Yes, but we ought to have a proper language.”

“Kalabala-blong!” said Mark.

“Hududu-blow-fluz!” replied Bevis, taking a header from the top of the
rail on which he had been sitting, and on which he just contrived to
balance himself a moment without falling backwards.

“Umplumum!” he shouted, coming up again.

“Ikiklikah,” and Mark disappeared.

“Noklikah,” said Bevis, giving him a shove under as he came up to
breathe.

“That’s not fair,” said Mark, scrambling up.

Bevis was swimming, and Mark seized his feet.  More splashing and
shouting, and the rocks resound.  The echo of their voices returned from
the quarry and the high bank under the firs.

They raced presently down to the elms along the sweet soft turf,
sprinkling the dry grass with the sparkling drops from their limbs, and
the sunlight shone on their white shoulders.  The wind blew and stroked
their gleaming backs.  They rolled and tumbled on the grass, and the
earth was under them.  From the water to the sun and the wind and the
grass.

They played round the huge sycamore trunks above the quarry, and the
massive boughs stretched over--from a distance they would have seemed
mere specks beneath the immense trees.  They raced across to a round
hollow in the field and sat down at the bottom, so that they could see
nothing but the sky overhead, and the clouds drifting.  They lay at full
length, and for a moment were still and silent; the sunbeam and the
wind, the soft touch of the grass, the gliding cloud, the eye-loved blue
gave them the delicious sense of growing strong in drowsy luxury.

Then with a shout, renewed, they ran, and Pan who had been waiting by
their clothes was startled into a bark of excitement at their sudden
onslaught.  As they went homewards they walked round to the little
sheltered bay where the boats were kept, to look at the blue boat and
measure for the mast.  It was beside the punt, half drawn up on the
sand, and fastened to a willow root.  She was an ill-built craft with a
straight gunwale, so that when afloat she seemed lower at stem and stern
than abeam, as if she would thrust her nose into a wave instead of
riding it.  The planks were thick and heavy and looked as if they had
not been bent enough to form the true buoyant curve.

The blue paint had scaled and faded, the rowlocks were mended with a
piece cut from an old rake-handle, there was a small pool of bilge water
in the sternsheets from the last shower, fall of dead insects, and
yellow willow leaves.  A clumsy vessel put together years ago in some
by-water of the far distant Thames above Oxford, and not good enough
even for that unknown creek.  She had drifted somehow into this
landlocked pond and remained unused, hauled on the strand beneath the
willows; she could carry five or six, and if they bumped her well on the
stones it mattered little to so stout a frame.

Still she was a boat, with keel and curve, and like lovers they saw no
defect.  Bevis looked at the hole in the seat or thwart, where the mast
would have to be stepped, and measured it (not having a rule with him)
by cutting a twig just to the length of the diameter.  Mark examined the
rudder and found that the lines were rotten, having hung dangling over
the stern in the water for so long.  Next they stepped her length,
stepping on the sand outside, to decide on the height of the mast, and
where were the ropes to be fastened? for they meant to have some
standing rigging.

At home afterwards in the shed, while Bevis shaved the fir-pole for the
mast, Mark was set to carve the leaping-pole, for the South Sea savages
have everything carved.  He could hardly cut the hard dried bark of the
ash, which had shrunk on and become like wood.  He made a spiral notch
round it, and then searched till he found his old spear, which had to be
ornamented and altered into a bone harpoon.  A bone from the kitchen was
sawn off while in the vice, and then half through two inches from the
largest end.  Tapping a broad chisel gently, Mark split the bone down to
the sawn part, and then gradually filed it sharp.  He also filed three
barbs to it, and then fitted the staff of the spear into the hollow end.
While he was engraving lines and rings on the spear with his
pocket-knife, the dinner interrupted his work.

Bevis, wearying of the mast, got some flints, and hammered them to split
off flakes for arrowheads, but though he bruised his fingers, he could
not chip the splinters into shape.  The fracture always ran too far, or
not far enough.  John Young, the labourer, came by as he was doing this
sitting on the stool in the shed, and watched him.

“I see a man do that once,” said John.

“How did he do it? tell me? what’s the trick?” said Bevis, impatient to
know.

“Aw, I dunno; I see him at it.  A’ had a gate-hinge snopping um.”

The iron hinge of a gate, if removed from the post, forms a fairly good
hammer, the handle of iron as well as the head.

“Where was it? what did he do it for?”

“Aw, up in the Downs.  Course he did it to soil um.”

The prehistoric art of chipping flints lingered among the shepherds on
the Downs, till the percussion-cap came in, and no longer having to get
flakes for the flintlock guns they slowly let it disappear.  Young had
seen it done, but could not describe how.

Bevis battered his flints till he was tired; then he took up the last
and hurled it away in a rage with all his might.  The flint whirled over
and over and hummed along the ground till it struck a small sarsen or
boulder by the wood-pile, put there as a spur-stone to force the
careless carters to drive straight.  Then it flew into splinters with
the jerk of the stoppage.

“Here’s a sharp ’un,” said John Young, picking up a flake, “and here’s
another.”

Altogether there were three pointed flakes which Bevis thought would do.
Mark had to bring some reeds next day from the place where they grew
half a mile below his house in a by-water of the brook.  They were
green, but Bevis could not wait to dry them.  He cut them off a little
above the knot or joint, split the part above, and put the flint flake
in, and bound it round and round with horsehair from the carter’s store
in the stable.  But when they were finished, they were not shot off,
lest they should break; they were carried indoors into the room upstairs
where there was a bench, and which they made their armoury.

They made four or five darts next of deal shaved to the thickness of a
thin walking-stick, and not quite so long.  One end was split in four--
once down and across that--and two pieces of cardboard doubled up thrust
in, answering the purpose of feathering.  There was a slight notch
two-thirds up the shaft, and the way was to twist a piece of twine round
it there crossed over a knot so as just to hold, the other end of the
twine firmly coiled about the wrist, so that in throwing the string was
taut and the point of the dart between the fingers.  Hurling it the
string imparted a second force, and the dart, twirling like an arrow,
flew fifty or sixty yards.

Slings they made with a square of leather from the sides of old shoes, a
small hole out out in the centre that the stone might not slip, but
these they could never do much with, except hurl pebbles from the
rick-yard, rattling up into the boughs of the oak, on the other side of
the field.  The real arrows to shoot with--not the reed arrows to look
at--were tipped with iron nails filed to a sharp point.  They had much
trouble in feathering them; they had plenty of goose-feathers (saved
from the Christmas plucking), but to glue them on properly was not easy.




Volume One, Chapter XI.

SAVAGES CONTINUED--THE CATAMARAN.

With all their efforts, they could not make a blow-tube, such as are
used by savages.  Bevis thought and thought, and Mark helped him, and
Pan grabbed his fleas, all together in the round blue summer-house; and
they ate a thousand strawberries, and a basketful of red currants, ripe,
from the wall close by, and two young summer apples, far from ready, and
yet they could not do it.  The tube ought to be at least as long as the
savage, using it, was tall.  They could easily find sticks that were
just the thickness, and straight, but the difficulty was to bore through
them.  No gimlet or auger was long enough; nor could they do it with a
bar of iron, red-hot at the end; they could not keep it true, but always
burned too much one side or the other.

Perhaps it might be managed by inserting a short piece of tin tubing,
and making a little fire in it, and gradually pushing it down as the
fire burnt.  Only, as Bevis pointed out, the fire would not live in such
a narrow place without any draught.  A short tube was easily made out of
elder, but not nearly long enough.  The tinker, coming round to mend the
pots, put it into their heads to set him to make a tin blow-pipe, five
feet in length; which he promised to do, and sent it in a day or two.
But as he had no sheet of tin broad enough to roll the tube in one
piece, he had made four short pipes and soldered them together.  Nothing
would go straight through it because the joints were not quite perfect,
inside there was a roughness which caught the dart and obstructed the
puff, for a good blow-tube must be as smooth and well bored as a
gun-barrel.

When they came to look over their weapons, they found they had not got
any throw-sticks, nor a boomerang.  Throw-sticks were soon made, by
cutting some with a good thick knob; and a boomerang was made out of a
curved branch of ash, which they planed down smooth one side, and cut to
a slight arch on the other.

“This is a capital boomerang,” said Bevis.  “Now we shall be able to
knock a rabbit over without any noise, or frightening the rest, and it
will come back and we can kill three or four running.”

“Yes, and one of the mallards,” said Mark.  “Don’t you know?--they are
always too far for an arrow, and besides, the arrow would be lost if it
did not hit.  Now we shall have them.  But which way ought we to throw
it--the hollow first, or the bend first?”

“Let’s try,” said Bevis, and ran with the boomerang from the shed into
the field.

Whiz!  Away it went, bend first, and rose against the wind till the
impetus ceased, when it hung a moment on the air, and slid to the right,
falling near the summer-house.  Next time it turned to the left, and
fell in the hedge; another time it hit the 

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