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The Island of Gold: A Sailor's Yarn

by Gordon Stables · English · Gutenberg #37588 · 457,250 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Island of Gold: A Sailor's Yarn

Author: Gordon Stables

Illustrator: Allan Stewart


        
Release date: October 1, 2011 [eBook #37588]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37588

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ISLAND OF GOLD: A SAILOR'S YARN ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




The Island of Gold
A Sailor's Yarn
By Gordon Stables
Illustrations by Allan Stewart
Published by Thomas Nelson and Sons, London, Edinburgh and New York.

The Island of Gold, by Gordon Stables.

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________
THE ISLAND OF GOLD, BY GORDON STABLES.

Book 1--CHAPTER ONE.

TWO MITHERLESS BAIRNS.

Ransey Tansey was up much earlier than usual on this particular morning,
because father was coming home, and there was a good deal to do.

As he crawled out of his bed--a kind of big box arrangement at the
farther end of the one-roomed cottage--he gave a glance towards the
corner where Babs slept in an elongated kind of basket, which by
courtesy might have been called a bassinette.

Yes, Babs was sound and fast, and that was something Ransey Tansey had
to be thankful for.  He bent over her for a few seconds, listening as if
to make sure she was alive; for this wee three-year-old was usually
awake long before this, her eyes as big as saucers, and carrying on an
animated conversation with herself in lieu of any other listener.

The boy gave a kind of satisfied sigh, and drew the coverlet over her
bare arm.  Then he proceeded to dress; while Bob, a beautiful, tailless
English sheep-dog, lay near the low hearth watching his every movement,
with his shaggy head cocked a trifle to one side, as if he had his
considering cap on.

In summer time--and it was early summer now--dressing did not take
Ransey long.

When he opened the door at last to fetch some sticks to light the fire,
and stood for a moment shading his brow with his hand against the red
light of the newly-risen sun, and gazing eastwards over a landscape of
fields and woods, he looked a strange little figure.  Moreover, one
could understand now why he had taken such a short few minutes to dress.

The fact is, Ransey Tansey hadn't very much to wear just then.  Barely
eight years of age was Tansey, though, as far as experience of the world
went, he might have been called three times as old as that; for, alas,
the world had not been over-gentle with the boy.

Ransey wore no cap, just a head of towy hair, which was thick enough,
however, to protect him against summer's sun or winter's cold.  The
upper part of his body was arrayed in a blue serge shirt, very much open
at the neck; while below his waist, and extending to within nine inches
of his bare feet, where they ended in ragged capes and promontories like
a map of Norway, he wore a pair of pants.  It would have been difficult,
indeed, to have guessed at the original colour of these pants, but they
were now a kind of tawny brindle, and that is the nearest I can get to
it.  They were suspended by one brace, a bright red one, so broad that
it must have belonged to his father.  I think the boy was rather proud
than otherwise of this suspender, although it had a disagreeable trick
of sliding down over his shoulder and causing some momentary
disarrangement of his attire.  But Ransey just hooked it back into its
place again with his thumb, and all was right, till the next time.

A rough little tyke you might have called Ransey Tansey, with his
sun-burnt face, neck, and bosom.  Yet there was something that was
rather pleasing than otherwise in his clear eyes and open countenance;
and when his red and rather thin lips parted in a smile, which they very
often did, he showed a set of teeth as clean and white as those of a
six-months-old Saint Bernard puppy, and you cannot better that.

Had this little lad been a town boy, hands and face and feet would have
been far from clean; but Ransey lived away down in the cool, green
country, in a midland district of Merrie England, and being as often in
the water as a duck, he was just as clean as one.

Away went Ransey Tansey now, and opened a rough old door in a rock which
formed part of the hill by the side of which the humble cottage stood.
The door opened into a kind of cave, which was a storehouse for all
kinds of things.

He was soon back again, and in five minutes' time had lit the fire,
swept the hearth as tidily as a girl could have done it, and hung the
kettle on a hook and chain.  By this time another member of this small
family came in, a very large and handsome tabby cat, with a white chest
and vandyked face.

Murrams, as he was called, was holding his head very high indeed.  In
fact he had to, else the nice young leveret he carried would have
trailed on the ground.  Bob jumped up to meet him, with joy in his brown
eyes.

Had Bob possessed a tail of any consequence, he would have wagged it.
Bob's tail, however, was a mere stump, and it was quite buried in the
rough, shaggy coat that hung over his rump.  But though honest Bob had
only the fag-end of a tail, so to speak, he agitated this considerably
when pleased.

He did so when he saw that leveret.

"Oh, you clever old Murrams!"  Bob seemed to say.  "What a nice drop of
soup that'll make, and all the bones for me!"

Murrams walked gingerly past him, and throwing the leveret on the
hearth, proceeded to wash his face and warm his nose at the blaze.

Ransey put away the young hare, patted pussy on his broad, sleek
forehead, then took down a long tin can to go for the morning's milk.
He left the door open, because he knew that if Babs should awake and
scramble out of her cot, she would toddle right out to clutch at wild
flowers, beetles, and other things, instead of going towards the fire.

Ransey Tansey happened to look round when he was about thirty yards from
the cottage.  Why, here was Bob coming softly up behind.  Murrams
himself couldn't have walked more silently.

His ears disappeared backwards when he was found out, and he looked very
guilty indeed.

Ransey Tansey shook his finger at him.

"Back ye goes--back ye goes to look after Babs."

Bob lay down to plead.

"It ain't no go, Bob, I tell ye," continued Ransey Tansey, still shaking
his finger.  "Back to Babs, Bob--back to Babs.  We can't both on us
leave the house at the same time."

This latter argument was quite convincing, and back marched Bob, with
drooping head and with that fag-end of a tail of his drooping earthwards
also.

There grew on the top of the bank a solitary brown-stemmed pine-tree.
Very, very tall it was, with not a branch all the way up save a very
strong horizontal limb, which was used to hang people from in the happy
days of old.  The top of this tree was peculiar.  It spread straight out
on all sides, forming a kind of flat table of darkest green needled
foliage.  Had you been sketching this tree, then, after doing the stem,
you could easily have rubbed in the top of it by dipping your little
finger in ink and smudging the paper crosswise.

When not far from this gibbet-tree, as it was generally called, Ransey
looked up and hailed,--

"Ship ahoy!  Are ye on board, Admiral?"

And now a somewhat strange thing happened.  No sooner had the boy hailed
than down from a mass of central foliage there suddenly hung what, at
first sight, one might have taken for a snake.

It was really a bird's long neck.

"Craik--craik--crik--cr--cr--cray!"

"All right," cried Ransey, as if he understood every word.  "Ye mebbe
don't see nuthin' o' father, do ye?"

"Tok--tok--tok--cr--cray--ay!"

"Well, ye needn't flop down, Admiral.  I'll come up myself."

No lamplighter ever ran quicker up a ladder than did Ransey Tansey swarm
up that pine-tree.  In little over two minutes he was right out on the
green roof, and beside him one of the most graceful and beautiful cranes
it is possible to imagine.  The boy's father had bought the bird from a
sailor somewhere down the country; and, except on very stormy nights, it
preferred to roost in this tree.  The neck was a greyish blue, as was
also the back; the wings were dark, the legs jet black, the tail purple.
Around the eyes was a broad patch of crimson; and the bill was as long
as a penholder, more or less slender, and slightly curved downwards at
the end.  [A species of what is popularly known an the dancing crane.]

The Admiral did all he could to express the pleasure he felt at seeing
the boy, by a series of movements that I find it difficult to describe.
The wings were half extended and quivering with delight, the neck
forming a series of beautiful curves, the head at times high in air, and
next moment down under Ransey's chin.  Then he twisted his neck right
round the boy's neck, from left to right, then from right to left, the
head being laid lovingly each time against his little master's cheek.

"Now then, Admiral, when ye're quite done cuddlin' of me, we'll have a
look for father's barge."

From his elevated coign of vantage, Ransey Tansey could see for many
miles all around him.  On this bright, sunny summer morn, it was a
landscape of infinite beauty; on undulating, well-wooded, cultivated
country, green and beautiful everywhere, except in the west, where a
village sheltered itself near the horizon, nestling in a cloudland of
trees, from which the grey flat tower of a church looked up.

To the left yonder, and near to the church, was a long strip of silver--
the canal.  High on a wooded hill stood the lord of the manor's house,
solid, brown, and old, with the blue smoke therefrom trailing lazily
along across the tree-tops.

But the house nearest to Ransey's was some distance across the fields
yonder--an old-fashioned brick farm-building with a steading behind it,
every bit of it green with age.

"So ye can't see no signs o' father, or the barge, eh?  Look again,
Admiral; your neck's a bit longer'n mine."

"Tok--tok--tok--cray!"

"Well, I'm off down.  There's the milk to fetch yet; and if I don't
hurry up, Bob and Babs are sure to make a mess on't afore I gets back.
Mornin' to ye, Admiral."

And Ransey Tansey slid down that tree far more quickly even than he had
swarmed up it.

Scattering the dew from the grass and the milk-white clover with his
naked feet, the lad went trotting on, and very quickly reached the farm.
He had to stop once or twice by the way, however.  First, Towsey, the
short-horned bull, put his great head over a five-barred gate, and
Ransey had to pause to scratch it.  Then he met the peacock, who
insisted on instant recognition, and walked back with him till the two
were met by Snap, the curly-coated retriever.

"I don't like Snap," said the peacock.  "I won't go a bit further.  The
ugly brute threatened to snap my head off; that's the sort of Snap he
is."

The farmer's wife was fat and jolly looking.

"Well, how's all the family?"

"Oh, they're all right, ye know; especially Babs, 'cause she's asleep.
And we kind of expect father to-day.  But even the Admiral can't see
'im, with _his_ long neck."

She filled his can, and took the penny.  That was only business; but the
kindly soul had slyly slipped two turkey's eggs into the can before she
poured in the milk.

When he got back to his home, the first thing he saw was that crane,
half hopping, half flying round and round the gibbet-tree.  The fact of
the matter is this: the bird did not wish to go far away from the house
just yet, as he generally followed his little master to the brook or
stream; but, nevertheless, on this particularly fine morning he found
himself possessed of an amount of energy that must be expended somehow,
so he went hopping round the tree, dangling his head and long neck in
the drollest and most ridiculous kind of way imaginable.  Ransey Tansey
had to place his milk-can on the ground in order to laugh with greater
freedom.  The most curious part of the business was this: crane though
he was, wheeling madly round like this made him dizzy, so every now and
then he stopped and danced round the other way.

The Admiral caught flies wherever he saw them; but flies, though all
very well in their way, were mere tit-bits.  Presently he would have a
few frogs for breakfast, and the bird was just as fond of frogs as a
Frenchman is.

Ransey Tansey opened the door of the little cottage very quietly, and
peeped in.  Bob was there by the bassinette.  He agitated that fag-end
of a tail of his, and looked happy.

Murrams paused in the act of washing his ears, with one paw held aloft.
He began to sing, because he knew right well there was milk in that can,
and that he would have a share of it.

Babs's blue eyes had been on the smoke-grimed ceiling, but she lowered
them now.

"Oh," she said, "you's tome back, has 'oo?"

"And Babs has been so good, hasn't she?" said Ransey.

"Babs is dood, and Bob is dood, and Murrams is dooder.  'Ift [lift] me
up twick, 'Ansey."

Two plump little arms were extended towards her brother, and presently
he was seated near the fire dressing her, as if he had been to the
manner born.

There was a little face to wash presently, as well as two tiny hands and
arms; but that could be done after they had all had breakfast.

"Oh, my!" cried Ransey Tansey; "look, Babs!  Two turkey's eggs in the
bottom of the can!"

"Oh, my!  'Ansey," echoed the child.  "One tu'key's egg fo' me, and one
fo' 'oo."

The door had been left half ajar, and presently about a yard of long
neck was thrust round the edge, and the Admiral looked lovingly at the
eggs, first with one roguish eye, then with the other.

This droll crane had a weakness for eggs--strange, perhaps, but true.
When he found one, he tossed it high in air, and in descending caught it
cleverly.  Next second there was an empty egg-shell on the ground, and
some kind of a lump sliding slowly down the Admiral's extended gullet.
When it was fairly landed, the bird expressed his delight by dancing a
double-triple fandango, which was partly jig, partly hornpipe, and all
the rest a Highland schottische.

"Get out, Admiral!--get out, I tell ye!" cried the boy.  "W'y, ye
stoopid, if the door slams, off goes yer head."

The bird seemed to fully appreciate the danger, and at once withdrew.

Ransey placed the two turkey's eggs on a shelf near the little gable
window.  One pane of glass was broken, and was stuffed with hay.

Well, the Admiral had been watching the boy, and as soon as his back was
turned, it didn't take the bird long to pull out that hay.

"O 'Ansey, 'ook! 'ook!" cried Babs.

It was too late, however, for looking to do any good.  For the same yard
of neck that had, a few minutes before, appeared round the edge of the
doorway, was now thrust through the broken pane, and only one turkey's
egg was left.

Babs looked very sad.  She considered for a bit, then said solemnly,--

"'Oo mus' have the odel [other] tu'key's _egg_.  You is dooder nor me."

But Ransey didn't have it.  He contented himself with bread and milk.

And so the two mitherless bairns had breakfast.

Book 1--CHAPTER TWO.

LIFE IN THE WOODS.

I trust that, from what he has already seen and heard of Ransey Tansey,
the reader will not imagine I desire this little hero of mine to pose as
a real saint.  Boys should be boys while they have the chance.  Alas,
they shall grow up into men far too soon, and then they needn't go long
journeys to seek for sorrow; they will find it near home.

And now I think, reader, you and I understand each other, to some extent
at all events.  Though I believe he was always manly and never mean,
yet, as his biographer, I am bound to confess that there was just as
much monkey-mischief to the square inch about Ransey Tansey, as about
any boy to whom I have ever had the honour of being introduced.

It was said of the immortal George Washington that when a boy at school
he climbed out of a bedroom window and robbed a wall fruit tree, because
the other boys were cowards and afraid to do so.  But George refused to
eat even a bite of one of these apples himself.  I think that Ransey
Tansey could have surpassed young Washington; for not only would he have
taken the apples, but eaten his own share of them afterwards.

To do him justice, however, I must state that on occasions when his
father went in the barge to a distant town on business, as he had been
now for over a week, Ransey being left in charge of his tiny sister and
the whole establishment, the sense of his great responsibility kept him
entirely free from mischief.

Now a very extraordinary thing happened on this particular morning--
Ransey Tansey received a letter.

The postman was sulky, to say the least of it.

"Pretty thing," he said, as he flung the letter with scant ceremony in
through the open doorway; "pretty thing as I should have to come
three-quarters of a mile round to fetch a letter to the likes o' you!"

"Now, look 'ee here," said Ransey, "if ye're good and brings my letters
every day, and hangs yer stockin' out at Christmas-time, I may put
somethin' in it."

"Gur long, ye ragged young nipper!"

Ransey was dandling Babs upon his knee, but he now put her gently down
beside the cat.  Then he jumped up.

"I'se got to teach you a lesson," he said to the boorish postman, "on
the hadvantages o' civeelity.  I ain't agoin' to waste a good pertater
on such a sconce as yours, don't be afeard; but 'ere's an old turmut
[turnip] as'll meet the requirements o' the occasion."

It was indeed an old turnip, and well aimed too, for it caught the
postman on the back of the neck and covered him with slush from head to
toe.

The lout yelled with rage, and flew at Ransey stick in hand.  Next
moment, and before he could deal the boy a blow, he was lying flat on
the grass, with Bob standing triumphantly over him growling like a wild
wolf.

"Call off yer dog, and I won't say no more about it."

"Oh, ye won't, won't ye?  I calls that wery considerate.  But look 'ee
here, I ain't agoin' to call Bob off, until ye begs my parding in a
spirit o' humility, as t'old parson says.  If ye don't, I'll hiss Bob on
to ye, and ye'll be a raggeder nipper nor me afore Bob's finished the
job to his own satisfaction."

Well, discretion is the better part of valour, and after grumbling out
an apology, the postman was allowed to sneak off with a whole skin.

Then Ransey kissed Bob's shaggy head, and opened his letter.

  "Dear Sonnie,--Can't get home before four days.  Look after Babs.
  Your Loving Father."

That was all.  The writing certainly left something to be desired, but
it being the first letter the boy had ever received, he read it twice
over to himself and twice over to Babs; then he put it away inside his
New Testament.

"Hurrah, Babs!" he cried, picking the child up again, and swinging her
to and fro till she laughed and kicked and crowed with delight--"hurrah,
Babs! we'll all away to the woods.  Murrams shall keep house, and we'll
take our dinner with us."

It was a droll procession.  First walked Bob, looking extremely solemn
and wise, and carrying Ransey's fishing-rod.  Close behind him came the
tall and graceful crane, not quite so solemn as Bob; for he was catching
flies, and his head and neck were in constant motion, and every now and
then he would hop, first on one leg, and then on the other.  Ransey
Tansey himself brought up the rear, with a small bag slung in front of
him, and Babs in a shawl on his back.

Away to the woods?  Yes; and there was a grand little stream there, and
the boy knew precisely where the biggest fish lay, and meant to have
some for supper.  The leveret could hang for a few days.

Arrived at his fishing-ground, where the stream swept slowly through the
darkling wood, Ransey lowered his back-burden gently on the moss, and
lay down on his face in front of her to talk Babs into the best of
tempers.

This was not difficult to do, for she was really a good-natured child;
so he gave her his big clasp-knife and his whistle, and proceeded to get
his rod in order and make a cast.  Bob lay down beside the tiny mite to
guard her.  She could whistle herself, but couldn't get Bob to do the
same, although she rammed the whistle halfway down his throat, and
afterwards showed him how she did it.

Well, there are a few accomplishments that dogs cannot attain to, and I
believe whistling is one of them.

The fish were very kind to-day, and Ransey was making a very good bag.
Whenever he had finished fishing in about forty yards of stream, he
threw down his rod and trotted off back for Babs, and placed her down
about twenty yards ahead of him, fished another forty yards and changed
her position again, Bob always following close at the boy's heels and
lying down beside his charge, and permitting himself to be pulled about,
and teased, and cuddled, and kissed one moment, and hammered over the
nose with that tin whistle the next.  Even when Babs tried to gouge his
eye out with a morsel of twig, he only lifted his head and licked her
face till, half-blinded, she had to drop the stick and tumble on her
back.

"You's a funny dog, Bob," she said; "'oor tisses is so lough [rough]."

Of course they were.  He meant them to be, for Bob couldn't afford to
lose an eye.

I think the Admiral enjoyed himself quite as much as any one.  He chose
a bit of the stream for himself where the bank was soft, and there he
waded and fished for goodness only knows what--beetles, minnows, tiny
frogs, anything alive and easy to swallow.

I don't think, however, that the Admiral was a very good Judge of his
swallowing capabilities.  That neck of his was so very, very long, and
though distensible enough on the whole, sometimes he encountered
difficulties that it was almost impossible to surmount.  Tadpoles slid
down easily enough, so did flies and other tiny insects; but a too-big
frog, if invited to go down head-foremost, often had a disagreeable way
of throwing his hind-legs out at right angles to the entrance of the
Admiral's gullet.  This placed the Admiral in a somewhat awkward
predicament.  No bird can look his best with its beak held forcibly
agape, and the two legs of a disorderly frog sticking out one at each
side.

The crane would hold his head in the air and consider for a bit, then
lower his face against the bank and rub one leg in, then change cheeks
and rub the other in; but lo! while doing so, leg number one would be
kicked out again, and by the time that was replaced out shot leg number
two.

It was very annoying and ridiculous.  So the Admiral would step
cautiously on to the green bank, and stride very humbly down the stream
to Ransey Tansey, with his neck extended and his head on a level with
his shoulders.

"You see the confounded fix I'm in," he would say, looking up at his
master with one wonderfully wise eye.

Then Ransey would pull out the frog, and the little rascal would hop
away, laughing to himself apparently.

"Crok--crok--cray--ay!" the Admiral would cry, and go joyfully back to
his fishing-ground.

But sometimes Mr Crane would swallow a big water-beetle, and if this
specimen had a will of its own, as beetles generally have, it would
catch hold of the side of the gullet and hang on halfway down.

"I ain't going another step," the beetle would say; "it isn't good
enough.  The road is too long and too dark."

So this disobliging beetle would just stop there, making a kind of a
mump in the poor Admiral's neck.

When Ransey saw his droll pet stride out of the pool and walk solemnly
towards a tree and lean his head against it, and close his eyes, the lad
knew pretty well what was the matter.

There is nothing like patience and plenty of it, and presently the
beetle would go to sleep, relax its hold, and slip quietly down to
regions unknown.  There would be no more mump now, and the crane would
suddenly take leave of his senses with joy.

"Kaik--kaik--kay--ay?" he would scream, and go madly hopping and dancing
round the tree, a most weird and uncanny-looking object, raising one leg
at a time as high as he could, and swinging his head and neck fore and
aft, low and aloft, from starboard to port, in such a droll way that
Ransey Tansey felt impelled to throw himself on his back, so as to laugh
without bursting that much-prized solitary suspender of his, while Bob
sat up to bark, and Babs clapped her tiny hands and crowed.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ransey got tired of fishing at last, and made up his rod.  There was
some sort of silent joy or happiness away down at the bottom of the
boy's heart, and for a moment he couldn't make out what was causing it.
The big haul of fish he had caught?  Oh, no; that was a common exploit.
Having smashed the postman with a mushy turnip?  That was capital, of
course, but that wasn't it.  Ah! now he has remembered--father was
coming home in four days.  Hurrah! he must have some fun on the head of
it.  Ransey loved to have a good time.

But, duty first.  Babs was a good little girl--or a "dood 'ittle dirl,"
as she phrased it--but even good girls get hungry sometimes.  Babs must
be fed.  She held her arms straight out towards him.

"Babs is detting tired," she lisped.

So he took her up, kissed her, and made much of her for a minute, then
set her against a tree where the moss was green and soft.  With a bit of
string and a burdock leaf he made her a beautiful bib; for though Ransey
himself was scantily attired, the child was really prettily dressed.

And now the boy produced a pickle bottle from the luncheon bag, likewise
a small horn spoon.  The pickle bottle contained a pap of bread and
milk; and with this he proceeded to feed Babs somewhat after the manner
of cramming turkeys, until she shook her head at last, and declared she
would _never_ eat any more--"Never, never, _never_!"

There was a turnip-field not far off.  Now Bob was as fond of raw
turnips as his master.  He knew where the field was, too.

"Off ye go for a turmut, Bob; and mind ye bring a big 'un.  I'll look
after Babs till ye comes back."

Bob wasn't long gone.  He had obeyed his master's instructions to the
very letter--in fact, he had pulled more than six turnips before he
found one to please him.  [It is easy to teach a dog this trick, only
stupid farmer folks sometimes don't see the fun of it.  Farmer folks are
obtuse.--G.S.]  That "turmut" made Bob and Ransey an excellent luncheon,
and Babs had a slice to amuse herself with.

The day was delightfully warm, and the wind soft and balmy.  The
sunshine filtered down through a great beech-tree, and wherever it fell
the grass was a brighter green or the dead leaves a lighter brown.  Now
and then a May beetle would go droning past; there were flies of all
sorts and sizes, from the gnats that danced in thousands over the bushes
to the great rainbow-like dragonfly that darted hither and thither
across the stream; grasshoppers green and brown that alighted on a leaf
one moment, gave a click the next, and hurled themselves into space; a
blackbird making wild melody not far off; the bold lilt of a chaffinch;
the insolent mocking notes of a thrush; and the coo-cooing of
wood-pigeons sounding mournfully from a thicket beyond the stream.

High up in that beech-tree myriads of bees were humming, though they
could not be seen.  No wonder that under such sweet drowsy influences
Babs began to wink and wink, and blink and blink, till finally her wee
head fell forward on her green-bough bib.

Babs was sound asleep.

Book 1--CHAPTER THREE.

"O EEDIE, I'VE FOUND A CHILD."

Ransey Tansey took his tiny sister tenderly up and spread her, as it
were, on the soft moss.

"She's in for a regular forenooner, Bob," said the boy, "and I'm not
sure I don't like Babs just as well when she is asleep.  Seems so
innercent-like, you know."

Bob looked as if he really did understand, and tried by means of his
brown eyes and that fag-end of a tail to let his master know that he too
liked Babs best asleep, because then no attempts were made to gouge his
eyes out with pieces of stick, or to ram the business end of a tin
whistle halfway down his throat.

"Bob!" said Ransey.

"Yes, master," said Bob, raising his ears.

"Babs is a sailor's darter, ye know."

Bob assented.

"Well, she ought'er sleep in a hammock."

"To be sure.  I hadn't thought of that," said Bob.

"I can make one in a brace o' shakes, and that's sailor langwidge.  Now
just keep your eyes on me, Bob."

Ransey Tansey was busy enough for the next five minutes.  He took that
shepherd-tartan shawl, and by means of some pieces of string, which he
never went abroad without, soon fashioned it into a neat little hammock.
Two saplings grew near, and by bending a branch downward from each, he
slung that hammock so prettily that he was obliged to stand back for a
little while to smile and admire it.

When he lifted Babs and put her in it, and fastened the two sides of the
hammock across her chest with some more string and a horse-shoe nail, so
that she could not fall out, the whole affair was complete.

  "Hush-a-bye, baby, upon the tree-top,
  When the wind blown the cradle will rock."

Well, the wind did blow, but ever so softly, and the little hammock
swayed gently to and fro.  And the blackbird's voice seemed to sound
more melodiously now; the thrush went farther away; only the wild
pigeons continued to coo, coo, and the bees to hum, high, high up in the
green beech-tree.

No wonder that the baby slept.

"Come along now, Bob.  We've a whole hour at least."

The boy placed his rod and bag on the branches of a tree.

"A whole hour, Bob, to do as we likes.  No good me askin' that idiot of
an Admiral to watch Babs.  He'd only begin scray-scrayin' and hopping
around the hammock, and Babs would wake.  I'm goin' to run wild for a
bit, are you?"

And off he bounded, with Bob at his heels.

The Admiral, whose feet were getting cold now, hopped out of the stream,
stretched out his three-foot neck, and looked after them.

"They think they're going to leave me behind, do they?  Tok--tok--
tok,"--which in craneish language means "No--no--no."

So away _he_ went next, with his head and his long neck about a yard in
front of him, and his wings expanded.  It would have puzzled any one to
have told whether the Admiral was running or flying.

If Ransey Tansey climbed one tree he climbed a dozen.  Ransey walked
through the wood with upturned face, and whenever he saw a nest, whether
it belonged to magpie, hawk, or hooded crow, skywards he went to have a
look at it.

He liked to look at the eggs best, and sometimes he brought just one
down in his mouth if four were left behind, because, he thought, one
wouldn't be missed.  But even this was sinful; for although birds are
not very good arithmeticians, every one of them can count as far as the
number of its eggs--even a partridge or a wren can.

Sometimes the Admiral wanted to investigate the nests, but Ransey
sternly forbade him.  He might dance round the tree as much as he liked,
but he must not fly up.

Bob used to bark at his master as he climbed up and up.  Indeed, when
perched on the very, _very_ top of a tall larch-tree Ransey himself
didn't look much bigger than a rook.

Yet I think the ever-abiding sorrow with Bob was not that he had not a
tail worth talking about, but that he could not climb a tree.

Different birds behaved in different ways when Ransey visited their
nests.  Thus: a linnet or a robin, flying from its sweet, cosy little
home in a bush of orange-scented furze, would sit and sing at no great
distance in a half-hysterical kind of way, as if it really didn't know
what it was about.  A blackbird from a tall thorn-tree or baby spruce,
would go scurrying off, and make the woods resound with her cries of
"beet, beet, beet," till other birds, crouching low on their nests,
trembled with fear lest their turn might come next.  A hooded crow would
fly off some distance and perch on a tree, but say nothing: hooded crows
are philosophers.  A magpie went but a little distance away, and sat
nodding and chickering in great distress.  A hawk would course round and
round in great circles in the air, uttering every now and then a most
distressful scream.

But one day, I must tell you, a large hawk played the lad a very
mischievous trick.  Ransey was high up near the top of a tall,
stone-pine-tree, and had hold of a sturdy branch above, being just about
to swing himself in through the needled foliage, when, lo! the stump on
which one foot was resting gave way, leaving him suspended betwixt
heaven and earth, like Mohammed's coffin--and kicking too, because he
could not for some time swing himself into the tree.

Now that hawk needn't have been so precious nasty about it.  But he saw
his chance, and went for Ransey straight; and the more the boy shouted
at the hawk, and cried "Hoosh-oo!" at him, the more that hawk wouldn't
leave off.  He tore the boy's shirt and back, and cut his suspender
right through, so that with the kicking and struggling his poor little
pants came off and fluttered down to the ground.

Ransey Tansey was only second best that day, and when--a sadder and a
wiser boy--he reached the foot of the tree, he found that Bob had been
engaged in funeral rites--obsequies--for some time.  In fact, he had
scraped a hole beneath a furze bush and buried Ransey's pants.

Whether Bob had thought this was all that remained of his master or not,
I cannot say.  I only state facts.

But to hark back: after Ransey Tansey had seen all the nests he wanted
to see, he and his two companions rushed off to a portion of the wood
where, near the bank of the stream, he kept his toy ship under a
moss-covered boulder.

He had built this ship, fashioning her out of a pine-log with his knife,
and rigged her all complete as well as his somewhat limited nautical
knowledge permitted him to do.  In Ransey's eyes she was a beauty--
without paint.

Before he launched her to-day he looked down at Bob and across at the
Admiral, who was quite as tall as the boy.

"We're going on a long and dangerous voyage, Bob," he said.  "There's no
sayin' wot may happen.  We may run among rocks and get smashed; we may
get caught-aback-like and flounder,"--he meant founder--"or go down wi'
all han's in the Bay o' Biscay--O."

Bob tried to appear as solemn and sad as the occasion demanded, and let
his fag-end drop groundwards.

But the crane only said "Tok," which on this occasion meant "All
humbug!" for he knew well enough that Ransey Tansey was seldom to be
taken seriously.

Never mind, the barque was launched on the fathomless deep, the summer
breeze filled her sails--which, by the way, had been made out of a piece
of an old shirt of the boy's father's--and she breasted the billows like
a thing of life.

Then as those three young inseparables rushed madly and delightedly
along the bank to keep abreast of the ship, never surely was such
whooping and barking and scray-scraying heard in the woods before.

But disaster followed in the wake of that bonnie barque on this voyage.
I suppose the helmsman forgot to put his helm up at an ugly bend of the
river, so the wind caught her dead aback.  She flew stern-foremost
through the water at a furious rate, then her bows rose high in air, she
struggled but for a moment ere down she sank to rise no more, and all on
board must have perished!

When I say she sank to rise no more I am hardly in alignment with the
truth.

The fact is, that although Ransey Tansey could easily have made another
ship with that knife of his, he was afraid he could not requisition some
more shirt for sails.

"Oh, I ain't agoin' to lose her like that, Bob," said Ransey.

Bob was understood to say that _he_ wouldn't either.

"Admiral, ye're considerabul longer nor me in the legs and neck;
couldn't ye wade out and make a dive for her?"

The crane only said, "Tok!"

By this time Ransey was undressed.

"Hoop!" he cried, "here goes," and in he dived.

"Wowff!" cried Bob, "here's for after," and in _he_ sprang next.

"Kaik--kaik!" shrieked the crane, and followed his leader, but he
speedily got out again.  The water was deep, and as a swimmer the
Admiral was somewhat of a failure.

But the barque was raised all and whole, and after a good swim Ransey
and Bob returned to the bank.  Bob shook himself, making little rainbows
all round him, and the boy rolled in the moss till he was dry, but
stained rather green.

Then he dressed himself, and looked at his watch--that is, he looked at
the sun.

"Why, Bob," he cried, "it is time to go back to Babs."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was such a lovely forenoon that day that the elderly Miss Scragley
thought a walk in the woods and wilds--as she phrased it--would do her
good.  So she took her little six-year-old niece Eedie with her, and
started.

The butler wanted to know if he would send a groom with her.  But she
declined the service.

"It is ever so much better," she told Eedie, "going all alone and
enjoying things, than having a dressed-up doll of a flunkey dawdling
behind you carrying wraps."

I think Miss Scragley was right.

The Scragleys were a very old family, and that was their mansion I have
already mentioned as standing high up on the hill in a cloudland of
glorious trees.  But excepting Miss Scragley herself, and this little
niece, Miss Eedie Moore, the rest of the Scragleys were all dead and
away.

Though the family estates were intact and financially secure,
afflictions of all sorts had decimated the Scragleys.  No less than two
had died on the hunting-field; one, a soldier, had fallen on the field
of fame in far Afghanistan; another, a captain in the royal navy, had
succumbed to fever at sea; and still another had sailed away in a ship
that never returned.

Others had died in peace and at home.  So Miss Scragley was indeed a
relic of the past, but she was lord of the manor for the time being.
Her heart was bound up in little Eedie; and the girl would have to
change her name when of age, as she would then be heir to all the
Scragley estates.  Even if she married, her husband must become a
Scragley.  It would never do to let the glorious name of Scragley die
out.

But Miss Scragley was somewhat antiquated though not very old; somewhat
set up and starchy in manner too.  She preferred to import good people
from London to mixing with the residents around, with the exception of
the kindly-faced, white-haired old rector, Captain Weathereye, R.N., and
Dr Fairincks.

In bygone ages it was currently believed that this rough old sea-dog of
a captain, Weathereye would lead the then graceful Miss Scragley to the
altar, and the lady herself still believed that the happy event would
yet come off.

And she was quite gay when she thought of it.  At Christmas-time, when
she imported more good people from London than usual, and turned on the
family ghost for the occasion, when she had the special brand of port
decanted that old Weathereye so dearly loved, and when Scragley Hall
resounded with mirth and laughter, and was lighted up from basement to
attics, Miss Scragley nursed the fond hope that the captain was almost
sure to pop the question.

Old Captain Weathereye praised the port.  But--well, he loved to hear
corks popping, only he wouldn't pop himself.

Poor Miss Scragley!

"I wonder will he _ever_?" she used to remark to herself, when she
had finished saying her prayers and was preparing to
undress--"ever--_ever_?"

"Never--never," old Weathereye would have unfeelingly replied had he
heard her.

On this particular occasion Miss Scragley extended her walk far into the
very wood--forest, she romantically called it--where Ransey Tansey and
his pets were enjoying themselves.

She and her niece wandered on and on by the banks of the stream, till
they came to the place where little Babs lay, still sound asleep in her
hammock, and this was swaying gently to and fro in the summer wind.

"O Eedie!" cried Miss Scragley, "why, I've found a child!"

"Oh, the wee darling!" exclaimed Eedie; "mayn't I kiss it, auntie?"

"If you kissed it," said the lady, as if she knew all about babies and
could write a book about them--"if you kissed it, dear, it would awake,
and the creature's yells would resound through the dark depths of the
forest."

"But there is no one near," she continued; "it must be deserted by its
unfeeling parents, and left here to perish."

She went a little nearer now and looked down on the sleeping child's
face.

A very pretty face it was, the rosy lips parted, the flush of sleep upon
her face; and one wee chubby hand and arm was lying bare on the shawl.

"Oh dear!" cried Miss Scragley, "I feel strangely agitated.  I cannot
let the tiny angel perish in the silvan gloom.  I must--_you_ must,
Eedie--well, _we_ must, dear, carry it home with us."

"Oh, will ye, though?"  The voice was close behind her.  "Just you leave
Babs alone, and attend to yer own bizness, else Bob will have somethin'
till say to ye."

Miss Scragley started, as well she might.

"Oh," she cried, looking round now, "an absurd little gipsy boy!"

"_Yes_," said Ransey Tansey, touching his forelock, "and I'm sorry for
bein' so absurd.  And ashamed all-so.  If a rabbit's hole was handy, I'd
soon pop in.  But, bless yer beautiful ladyship, if I'd known I was to
'ave the perleasure o' meetin' quality, I'd 'ave put on my dress soot,
and carried my crush hat under my arm.

"Don't be afeard, mum," he continued, as the crane came hopping out of
the bush.  "That's only just the Admiral; and this is Bob, as would die
for me or Babs."

"And who is Babs, you droll boy?"

"Babs is my baby, and no one else's 'cept Bob's.  And Bob and I would
make it warm for anybody as tried to take Babs away.  Wouldn't us, Bob?"

Just then his little sister awoke, all smiles and dimples as usual.

Ransey Tansey went to talk to her, and for a time the boy forgot all the
world except Babs.

Book 1--CHAPTER FOUR.

"RANSEY, FETCH JIM; WE'RE GOIN' ON."

"I'se glad 'oo's tome back, 'Ansey.  Has I been afeep [asleep], 'Ansey?"

"Oh, yes; and now I'm goin' to feed Babs, and Babs'll lie and look at
the trees till I cook dinner for Bob and me."

"That wady [lady] won't take Babs away, 'Ansey?"

"No, Babs, no."

Ransey Tansey fed Babs once more from the pickle bottle with the horn
spoon, much to Miss Scragley's and little Eedie's astonishment and
delight.

Then he commenced to build a fire at a little distance, and laid out
some fish all ready to cook as soon as the blazing wood should die down
to red embers.

"You're a very interesting boy," said Miss Scragley politely.  "May I
look on while you cook?"

"Oh, yes, mum.  Sorry I ain't got a chair to offer ye."

"And oh, please, interesting boy," begged Eedie, "may I talk to Babs?"

"Cer--tain--lee, pretty missie.--Babsie, sweet," he added, "talk to this
beautiful young lady."

"There's no charge for sittin' on the grass, mum," said Ransey the next
minute.

And down sat Miss Scragley smiling.

The boy proceeded with the preparation of the meal in real gipsy
fashion.  He cooked fish, and he roasted potatoes.  He hadn't forgotten
the salt either, nor a modicum of butter in a piece of paper, nor bread;
and as he and Bob made a hearty dinner, he gave every now and then the
sweetest of tit-bits to Babs.

Eedie and the child got on beautifully together.

"May I ask you a question or two, you most interesting boy?" said Miss
Scragley.

"Oh, yes, if ye're quite sure ye ain't the gamekeeper's wife.  The
keeper turned me out of the wood once.  Bob warn't there that day."

"Well, I'm sure I'm not the gamekeeper's wife.  I am Miss Scragley of
Scragley Hall."

The boy was wiping his fingers and his knife with some moss.

"I wish I had a cap on," he said.

"Why, dear?"

"So as I could take her off and make a bow," he explained.

"And what is your name, curious boy?"

"Ransey; that's my front name."

"But your family name?"

"Ain't got ne'er a family, 'cepting Babs."

"But you have a surname--another name, you know."

"Ransey Tansey all complete.  There."

"And where do you live, my lad?"

"Me and Babs and Bob and Murrams all lives, when we're to home, at
Hangman's Hall; and father lives there, too, when 'ee's to home; and the
Admiral, yonder, he roosts in the gibbet-tree."

"And what does father do?"

"Oh, father's a capting."

"A captain, dear boy?"

"No, he's not a boy, but a man, and capting of the _Merry Maiden_, a
canal barge, mum.  An' we all goes to sea sometimes together, 'cepting
Murrams, our pussy, and the Admiral.  We have such fun; and I ride Jim
the canal hoss, and Babs laughs nearly all the time."

"So you're very happy all of you, and always were?"

"Oh, yes--'cepting when father sometimes took too much rum; but that's a
hundred years ago, more or less, mum."

"Poor lad!  Have you a mother?"

"Oh, yes, we has a mother, but only she's gone dead.  The parson said
she'd gone to heaven; but I don't know, you know.  Wish she'd come back,
though," he added with a sigh.

"I'm so sorry," said Miss Scragley, patting his hand.

"Oh, don't ye do that, mum, and don't talk kind to me, else I'll cry.  I
feels the tears a-comin' now.  Nobody ever, ever talks kindly to me and
Babs when at home, 'cepting father, in course, 'cause we're on'y common
canal folks and outcasts from serciety."

Ransey Tansey was very earnest.  Miss Scragley had really a kind heart
of her own, only she couldn't help smiling at the boy's language.

"Who told you so?"

"W'y, the man as opens the pews."

"Oh, you've been to church, then?"

"Oh, yes; went the other Sunday.  Had nuthin' better to do, and thought
I'd give Babs a treat."

"And did you go in those--clothes?"

"Well, mum, I couldn't go with nuthin' on--could I, now?  An' the
pew-man just turned us both out.  But Babs was so good, and didn't cry a
bit till she got out.  Then I took her away through the woods to hear
the birds sing; and mebbe God was there too, 'cause mother said He was
everywhere."

"Yes, boy, God is everywhere.  And where does your mother sleep,
Ransey?"

"Sleep?  Oh, in heaven.  Leastways I s'pose so."

"I mean, where was your gentle mother buried?"

"Oh, at sea, mum.  Sailor's grave, ye know."

Ransey looked very sad just then.

"You don't mean in the canal, surely?"

"Yes, mum.  Father wouldn't have it no other way.  I can't forget;
'tain't much more'n a year ago, though it looks like ten.  Father, ye
know, 'ad been a long time in furrin parts afore he was capting o' the
_Merry Maiden_."

The lad had thrown himself down on the grass at a respectable distance
from Miss Scragley, and his big blue, eyes grew bigger and sadder as he
continued his story.

"'Twere jest like this, mum.  Mother'd been bad for weeks and so quiet
like, and father _so_ kind, 'cause he didn't never touch no rum when
mother was sick.  We was canal-ing most o' the time; and one night we
stopped at the `Bargee's Chorus'--only a little public-house, mum, as
perhaps you wouldn't hardly care to be seen drinkin' at.  We stopped
here 'cause mother was wuss, and old dad sent for a doctor; and I put
Jim into the meadow.  Soon's the doctor saw poor mother, he sez, sez he,
`Ye'd better get the parson.  No,' he sez, `I won't charge ye nuthin'
for attendance; it's on'y jest her soul as wants seein' to now.'

"Well, mum, the parson came.  He'd a nice, kind face like you has, mum,
and he told mother lots, and made her happy like.  Then he said a
prayer.  I was kind o' dazed, I dussay; but when mother called us to
her, and kissed me and Babs, and told us she was goin' on to a happier
land, I broke out and cried awful.  And Babs cried too, and said, `An'
me too, ma.  Oh, take Babs.'

"Father led us away to the inn, and I jest hear him say to the parson,
`No, no, sir, no.  No parish burial for me.  She's a sailor's wife;
she'll rest in a sailor's grave!'

"I don't know, mum, what happened that night and next day, for me and
Babs didn't go on board again.

"Only, the evenin' arter, when the moon and stars was ashinin' over the
woods and deep down in the watur, father comes to me.

"`Ransey,' sez father, `fetch Jim; we're goin' on.'  And I goes and
fetches Jim, and yokes him to and mounts; and father he put Babs up
aside me, 'cause Jim's good and never needs a whip.

"`Go on, Ransey,' sez he, an' steps quietly on board and takes the
tiller.

"Away we went--through the meadows and trees, and then through a long,
quiet moor.

"Father kep' the barge well out, and she looked sailin' among the
stars--which it wasn't the stars, on'y their 'flection, mum.  Well, we
was halfway through the moor, and Babs was gone sound asleep 'cross my
arm, when I gives Jim his head and looks back.

"An', oh, mum, there was old dad standin' holdin' the tiller wi' one
hand.  The moon was shinin' on his face and on his hair, which is grey
kind, and he kep' lookin' up and sayin' somethin'.

"Then there was a plash.  Oh, I knew then it was dead mother; and--and--
I jest let Jim go on--and--and--"

But Ransey's story stopped right here.  He was pursing up his lips and
trying to swallow the lump in his throat; and Miss Scragley herself
turned her head away to hide the moisture in her eyes.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Grief does not stay long at a time in the hearts of children.  It comes
there all the same, nevertheless, and is quite as poignant while it does
last as it is in the breasts of older folks.  Children are like the
traditional April day--sunshine and showers.

"I think, mum," said Ransey after a while, "it is time for us to bundle
and go."

Miss Scragley watched the lad with considerable interest while he struck
his little camp.  First he scattered the remains of his fire and ashes
carefully, so that there should be no danger to the wood.  Then he
prepared to hide his ship.

"Did you make that pretty ship?" said Eedie.

"Oh, yes; I can make beautiful ships and boats, 'cause I seed lots on
'em w'en father took me to Southampton.  Oh, that seems millions and
millions o' years ago.  And ye see, miss," he added, "I'm goin' to be a
sailor anyhow, and sail all over the wide world, like father did, and
by-and-by I'll be rich enough to have a real ship of my own."

"Oh, how nice!  And will Babs go with you?"

"As long as Babs is quite little," he answered, "I can't go to sea at
all, 'cause Babs would die like dead mother if I went away."

He had Babs in his arms by this time, and it was evident enough that the
affection between these two little canal people was very strong indeed.

Seated on his left shoulder, and hugging Ransey's head towards her, Babs
evidently thought she was in a position to give a harangue.

She accordingly addressed herself to Eedie:--

"My bloder 'Ansey is doin' to drow a big, big man.  As big as dad.  My
bloder 'Ansey is doin' to be a sailor in s'ips, and Babs is doin'.  'Oo
_mufn't_ [mustn't] take my bloder away from Babs.  'Oor mudder mufn't,
and noboddy mufn't."

Meanwhile her brother was nearly strangled by the vehemence of her
affection.  But he gently disengaged the little arm and set her on the
moss once more.  He speedily enveloped her in the shawl, and then
hoisted her on his back.

Next he hung his bag in front, and handed the fishing-rod to Bob.

"We must all go now, lady."

"Oh, yes, and we too must go.  We have to thank you for a very
interesting half-hour."

Ransey wasn't used to such politeness as this little speech indicated.
What to say in reply did not readily occur to him.

"Wish," he said awkwardly and shyly, "I could talk as nice like as you
and t'other young lady."

Miss Scragley smiled.  She rather liked being thought a young lady even
by a little canal boy like Ransey.

"Oh, you will some day.  Can you read?"

"Ye-es.  Mother taught me to read, and by-and-by I'll teach Babs like
one o'clock.  I can read `Nick o' the Woods' and the `Rev'lations o'
Saint John;' but Babs likes `Jack the Giant Killer' better'n the Bible.
An' oh," he added, somewhat proudly, "I got a letter to-day, and I could
read that; and it was to say as how father was comin' home in four days.
And the postman cheeked us, and shook his head, threat'nin' like, and I
threw a big turmut and broke it."

"What! broke his head?"

"Oh, no, mum, only jest the turmut.  An' Bob went after him, and down
went postie.  Ye would have larfed, mum."

"I'm afraid you're a bad boy sometimes."

"Yes, I feels all over bad--sometimes."

"I like bad boys best," said Eedie boldly, "they're such fun."

"Babs," said Ransey, "you'll hang me dead if you hold so tight."

"Well, dears, I'm going to come and see you to-morrow, perhaps, or next
day, and bring Babs a pretty toy."

"Babs," said the child defiantly, "has dot a dolly-bone, all dlessed and
boo'ful."  This was simply a ham-bone, on the ball of which Ransey had
scratched eyes and a mouth and a nose, and dressed it in green moss and
rags.  And Babs thought nothing could beat that.

As she rode off triumphantly on Ransey's back, Babs looked back, held
one bare arm on high, and shouted, "Hullay!"

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"What strange children!" said Miss Scragley to her niece.  "They're not
at all like our little knights of the gutter down in the village where
we visit.  This opens up life to me in quite a new phase.  I'm sure
Captain Weathereye would be much interested.  There is good, in those
poor canal children, dear, only it wants developing.  I wonder how we
could befriend them without appearing officious or obtrusive.  Consult
the captain, did you say?"

"I did not speak at all, aunt."

"Didn't you?  However, that _would_ be best, as you suggested."

Miss Scragley did not call at Hangman's Hall next day--it looked
showery; but about twelve o'clock, while Ransey Tansey was stewing that
leveret with potatoes and a morsel of bacon, and Babs was nursing her
dolly-bone in the bassinette, where Ransey had placed her to be out of
the way, some one knocked sharply and loudly at the door.

The Admiral, swaying aloft in the gibbet-tree, sounded his tocsin, and
Bob barked furiously.

"Down, Bob!" cried Ransey, running to the door.  He half expected the
postman.

He was mistaken, however, for there stood a smart but pale-faced flunkey
in a brown coat with gilt buttons.

Now Ransey could never thoroughly appreciate "gentlemen's gentlemen" any
more than he could gamekeepers.

The flunkey had a large parcel under his arm, which he appeared to be
rather ashamed of.

"Aw!" he began haughtily, "am I right in my conjecture that this is
'Angman's 'All?"

"Your conjecture," replied Ransey, mimicking the flunkey's tone and
manner, "is about as neah wight as conjectures gener'ly aw.  What may be
the naychure of your business?"

"Aw!  An' may I enquiah if you are the--the--the waggamuffin who saw
Miss Scwagley in the wood yestah-day?"

"I'm the young _gentleman_" said Ransey, hitching up his suspender, "who
had the honah of 'alf an hour's convehsation with the lady.  I am Ransey
Tansey, Esq., eldest and only son of Captain Tansey of the _Mewwy
Maiden_.  And," he added emphatically, "this is my dog _Bob_."

Bob uttered a low, ominous growl, and walked round behind the flunkey on
a tour of inspection.

The only comfort the flunkey had at that moment arose from the fact that
his calves were stuffed with hay.

"Aw!  Beautiful animal, to be shuah.  May I ask if this is the doag that
neahly killed the postman fellah?"

"That's the doag," replied Ransey, "who _would_ have killed the postman
fellah dead out, if I had tipped him the wink."

"Aw!  Well, my business is vewy bwief.  Heah is a pawcel from Miss
Scwagley, of which she begs your acceptance."

"Ah, thank you.  Dee--lighted.  Pray walk in.  Sorry my butler is out at
pwesent.  But what will you dwink--sherry, port, champagne--wum?  Can
highly wecommend the wum."

"Oh, thanks.  Then I'll have just a spot of wum."

Ransey brought out his father's bottle--a bottle that had lain untouched
for a long time indeed--and his father's glass, and the flunkey drank
his "spot," and really seemed to enjoy it.

Ransey opened the door for him.

"Convey my best thanks to Miss Scwagley," he said, "and inform her that
we will be ree--joiced to receive her, and that Miss Tansey and myself
will not fail to return the call at a future day.  Good mo'ning."

"Good mawning, I'm shuah."

And the elegant flunkey lifted his hat and bowed.

Ransey ran in, gave the leveret stew just a couple of stirs to keep it
from burning, then threw himself into his father's chair, stretched out
his legs, and laughed till the very rafters rang.

Book 1--CHAPTER FIVE.

"OH, NO!  I'LL NEVER LEAVE 'ANSEY TILL WE IS BOF DEADED."

The day had looked showery, but the sun was now shining very brightly,
and so Ransey Tansey laid dinner out of doors on the grass.

As far as curiosity went, Babs was quite on an equality with her sex,
and the meal finished, and the bones eaten by Bob, she wanted to know at
once what the man with the pretty buttons had brought.

Ransey's eyes, as well as his sister's, were very large, but they grew
bigger when that big parcel was opened.

There was a note from Miss Scragley herself right on the top, and this
was worded as delicately, and with apparently as much fear of giving
offence, as if Ransey had been the son of a real captain, instead of a
canal bargee.

Why, here was a complete outfit: two suits of nice brown serge for
Ransey himself, stockings and light shoes, to say nothing of real Baltic
shirts, a neck-tie, and sailor's cap.

"She's oceans too good to live, that lady is!" exclaimed Ransey,
rapturously.

"Me see!--me see!  Babs wants pletty tlothes."

"Yes, dear Babs, look!  There's pretty clothes."

That crimson frock would match Babs's rosy cheeks and yellow curly hair
"all to little bits," as Ransey expressed it.

After all the things had been admired over and over again, they were
refolded and put carefully away in father's strong locker.

I think that the Admiral knew there was gladness in the children's eyes,
for he suddenly hopped high up the hill, and did a dance that would have
delighted the heart of a Pawnee Indian.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"No," said Miss Scragley that same day after dinner, as she and her
friends sat out in the great veranda, "one doesn't exactly know, Mr
Davies, how to benefit children like these."

The parson placed the tips of his fingers together meditatively, and
looked down at Miss Scragley's beautiful setter.

"Of course," he said, slowly and meditatively, "teaching is essential to
their bodily as well as to their spiritual welfare."

"Very prettily put, Mr Davies," said Miss Scragley; "don't _you_ think
so, Dr Fairincks?"

"Certainly, Miss Scragley, certainly; and I was just wondering if they
had been vaccinated.  I'd get the little one into a home, and the boy
sent to a Board school.  And the father--drinks rum, eh?--get him into
the house.  Let him end his days there.  What should you propose,
Weathereye?"

"Eh?  Humph!  Do what you like with the little one.  Send the boy to
school--a school for a year or two where he'll be flogged twice a day.
Hardens 'em.  So much for the bodily welfare, parson.  As to the
spiritual, why, send him to sea.  Too young, Miss Scragley?
Fiddlesticks!  Look at me.  Ran away to sea at ten.  In at the
hawse-hole, in a manner o' speaking.  Just fed the dogs and the ship's
cat at first, and emptied the cook's slush-bucket.  Got buffeted about a
bit, I can tell you.  When I went aft, steward's mate kicked me for'ard;
when I got for'ard, cook's mate kicked me aft.  No place of quiet and
comfort for me except swinging in the foretop with the purser's monkey.
But--it made a man of me.  Look at me now, Miss Scragley."

Miss Scragley looked.

"Staff-commander of the Royal Navy.  Three stripes.  Present arms from
the sentries, and all that sort of thing.  Ahem!"

And the bold mariner helped himself to another glass of Miss Scragley's
port.

"But you won't go to the wars again, Captain Weathereye?" ventured Miss
Scragley.

The Captain rounded on her at once--put his helm hard up, so to speak,
till he was bows on to his charming hostess.

His face was like a full moon rising red over the city's haze.

"How do _you_ know, madam?  Not so very old, am I?  War, indeed!
Humph!--I'll be sorry when that's done," he added.

"What! the war, Captain Weathereye?" said the lady.

"Fiddlesticks!  No, madam, the _port_--if you will have it."

"As for the father of these children," he continued, after looking down
a little, "if he's been a sailor, as you say, the house won't hold him.
As well expect an eagle to live with the hens.  Rum?  Bah!  I've drunk
as much myself as would float the _Majestic_."

"But I say, you know," he presently remarked as he took Eedie on his
knee; "Little Sweetheart here and I will run over to see the children
to-morrow forenoon, and we'll take the setter with us.  Anything for a
little excitement, when one can't hunt or shoot.  And we'll take you as
well, madam."

Miss Scragley said she would be delighted; at the same time she could
not help thinking the gallant captain's sentences might have been better
worded.  He might have put _her_ before the setter, to say the least.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Next morning was a very busy one at Hangman's Hall.

Ransey Tansey was up betimes, but he allowed Babs to sleep on until he
had lit the fire, hung on the kettle, and run for the milk.

Ransey was only a boy, and boys will be boys, so he could not help
telling kind Mrs Farrow, the farmer's wife, of his luck, and how he
expected real society people to visit himself and Babs that day, so he
must run quickly home to dress.

"Certainly, dear," said Mrs Farrow; "and here are some lovely new-laid
eggs.  You brought me fish, you know; and really I have so many eggs I
don't know what to do with them all.  Good-bye, Ransey.  Of course
you'll run across and tell me all about it to-night, and bring Babs on
your back."

Babs was a "dooder dirl" than usual that morning, if that were possible.

Ransey was so glad that the sun was shining; he was sure now that the
visit would be paid.  But he had Babs to wash and dress, and himself as
well.  When he had washed Babs and combed her hair, he set her high up
on the bank to dry, as he phrased it, and gave her the new doll to play
with.  Very pretty she looked, too, in that red frock of hers.

Well, away went Ransey to the stream, carrying his bundle.  Bob was left
to mind Babs.

Ransey was gone quite a long time, and the child grew weary and sighed.

"Bob!" said Babs.

"Yes, Babs," said Bob, or seemed to say.

"Tiss my new dolly."

Bob licked the doll's face.  Then he licked Babs's hand.  "Master'll
soon be back," he tried to tell her.

She was quiet for a time, singing low to her doll.

"Bob!" she said, solemnly now; "does 'oo fink [think] 'Ansey 'as fallen
in and dlowned hisself?"

"Oh, look, look, Bob," she cried the next moment, "a stlange man toming
here!"

Bob started up and barked most savagely.  He was quite prepared to lay
down his life for his little charge.  But as he rushed forward he
quickly changed his tune.

It was Ransey Tansey right enough, but so transformed that it was no
wonder that Babs and Bob took him for a stranger.

Even the Admiral must fly down from the gibbet-tree and dance wildly
round him.  Murrams, the great tom-cat, came out and purred aloud; and
Babs clapped her tiny hands and screamed with delight.

"'Oo's a zentleman now," she cried; "and I'se a lady.  Hullay!"

Ransey didn't feel quite comfortable after all, especially with shoes
on.  To go racing through the woods in such a rig as this would be quite
out of the question.  The only occupation that suggested itself at
present was culling wild flowers, and stringing them to put round Bob's
neck.

But even gathering wild flowers grew irksome at last, so Ransey got his
New Testament, and turning to Revelation, read lots of nice sensational
bits therefrom.

Babs was not so well pleased as she might and ought to have been; but
when her brother pulled out "Jack the Giant Killer," she set herself to
listen at once, and there were many parts she made Ransey read over and
over again, frequently interrupting with such questions as,--

"So Jack killed the big ziant, did he?  'Oo's _twite_ sure o' zat?"

"And ze axe was all tovered wi' blood and ziant's hair?  My! how nice!"

"Six 'oung ladies, all stlung up by ze hair o' zer heads?  Boo'ful!
'Oo's _twite_ sure zer was six?"

"An' the big ziant was doin' to kill zem all?  My! how nice!"

Ransey was just describing a tragedy more ghastly than any he had yet
read, when from the foot of the slope came a stentorian hail:--

"Hangman's Hall, ahoy!  Turn out the guard!"  The guard would have
turned out in deadly earnest--Bob, to wit--if Ransey hadn't ordered him
to lie down.  Then, picking up Babs, he ran down the hill, heels first,
lest he should fall, to welcome his visitors.

Miss Scragley was charmed at the change in the lad's personal
appearance, and Eedie frankly declared him to be the prettiest boy she
had ever seen.

Captain Weathereye hoisted Babs and called her a beautiful little rogue.
Then all sat down on the side of the hill to talk, Babs being perfectly
content, for the time being, to sit on the captain's knee and play with
his watch and chain.

"And now, my lad," said bold Weathereye, "stand up and let us have a
look at you.  Attention!  That's right.  So, what would you like to be?
Because the lady here has a heart just brimful of goodness, and if you
were made of the right stuff she would help you to get on.  A sailor?
That's right.  The sea would make a man of you, lad.  And if you were in
a heavy sea-way, with your masts gone by the board, bothered if old Jack
Weathereye wouldn't pay out a hawser and give you a helping hand
himself.  For I like the looks of you.  Glad you paid the postman out.
Just what I'd have done myself.  Ahem!"

Ransey felt rather shy, though, to be thus displayed as it were.  It was
all owing to the new clothes, I think, and especially to the shoes.

"Now, would you like to go to school?"

"What! and leave Babs?  No, capting, no.  I'd hate school anyhow; I'd
fight the small boys, and bite the big uns, and they'd soon turn me
adrift."

"Bravo, boy!  I never could endure school myself.--What I say is this,
Miss Scragley, teach a youngster to read and write, with a trifle of
'rithmetick, and as he gets older he'll choose all the knowledge
himself, and tackle on to it too, that's needed to guide his barque
across the great ocean of life.  There's no good in schools, Miss
Scragley, that I know of, except that the flogging hardens them.--Well,
lad, you won't go to school?  There!  And if you'll get your father to
allow you to come up to the Grange, just close by the village and
rectory, I'll give you a lesson myself, three times a week."

"Oh, thank you, sir!  I'm sure father'll be pleased to let me come when
I'm at home and not at sea."

"Eh? at sea?  Oh, yes, I know; you mean on the barge, ha, ha, ha!  Well,
you'll live to face stormier seas yet."

"An' father's comin' to-morrow, sir, and then we're goin' on."

"Going on?"

"He means along the canal," said Miss Scragley.

"To be sure, to be sure.  What an old fool I am!  And now, lad, let me
think what I was going to say.  Oh, yes.  Don't those shoes pinch a
bit?"

"Never wears shoes and stockin's 'cept in winter, sir.  I keeps 'em in
dad's locker till snow time."

"Now, in you go to your house or hut and take them off."

"Ha!" said Weathereye, when Ransey returned with bare feet and ankles,
"that's ship-shape and Bristol fashion.  Now, lad, listen.  If Miss
Scragley here asks you to come and see her--and I'm sure she will, for
she's an elderly lady, and likes to be amused,"--Miss Scragley winced a
little, but Weathereye held on--"when you're invited to the ancestral
home of the Scragleys, then you can wear them togs and your shoes; but
when you come to the Grange, it'll be in canvas bags, bare feet, a straw
hat, and a blue sweater--and my own village tailor shall rig you out.
Ahem!"

Captain Weathereye glanced at Miss Scragley as if he owed her a grudge.
The look might have been interpreted thus: "There are other people who
can afford to be as generous as you, and have a far better notion of a
boy's requirements."

"And now, Babs," he continued, kissing the child's little brown hand,
"I've got very fond of you all at once.  Will you come and live with
me?"

"Tome wiz 'oo and live!  Oh, no," she replied, shaking her yellow curls,
"I'll never leave 'Ansey till we is bof deaded.  Never!"

And she slid off the captain's knee and flew to Ransey with outstretched
arms.

The boy knelt on one knee that she might reach his neck.  Then he lifted
her up, and she looked defiantly back at the captain, with her cheek
pressed close to Ransey's.

Weathereye glanced towards Miss Scragley once again, and his voice was a
trifle husky when he spoke.

"Miss Scragley," he said, "old people like _you_ and me are apt to be
faddy.  We will both do something for these poor children, but, bless
them, there's a bond of union betwixt their little hearts that we dare
not sever.  The bairns must not be parted."

Book 1--CHAPTER SIX.

CHEE-TOW, THE RED CHIEF OF THE SLIT-NOSED INDIANS.

During the time the memorable visit lasted no one took much notice of
Ransey Tansey's pets.  Yet each one of the three of them was interested,
and each showed his interest in his own peculiar way.

The Admiral had flown gracefully down from the gibbet-tree, and alighted
on the ground not more than a dozen yards from the group.

"Craik--a-raik--a--r-r-r--a--cray--ay!" he said to himself, which being
interpreted seemed to signify, "What do _they_ want here, anyhow?
That's about the same gang I saw in the woods.  Curr-r-r!  Well, they
haven't guns anyhow, like the beastly biped called a keeper, who tried
to shoot my hind-legs off because I was a strange bird.  I was only
tasting some partridge's eggs, nothing else.  Shouldn't I have liked
just to have gouged out his ugly eyes, thrown 'em one by one into the
air, caught 'em coming down, and swallowed 'em like eggs."

All the time the talking was going on the Admiral stood twisting his
body about, sometimes crouching low to the ground, his neck stretched
straight out towards them, the head on one side and listening, the next
moment erect as a bear pole, and seeming to look surprised and angry at
what he heard them saying.

Bob had rushed to see about the setter.  He lay down at some distance
off, with his nose between his paws, and the setter _set_, and finally
_sat_.

"Not a yard nearer, Mr Sportsman, if _you_ please," said Bob; "I'm a
rough 'un to look at, and a tough 'un to tackle.  I suppose you call
yourself a gentleman's dog; you live in marble halls, sleep on skins,
and drink from a silver saucer.  I'm only a poor man's doggie; I sleep
where I can, eat what I can get, and drink from bucket or brook.  But I
love my master maybe more than you love yours.  Yonder is my home, and
yonder is our cat in the door of it; but my humble home is my master's
castle.  Just try to come a yard or two nearer, if you're tired of your
silly life."

But Dash preferred to stay where he was.

Murrams the cat behaved with the utmost dignity and indifference.  He
sat in the doorway washing his face, with dreamy, half-shut eyes.  To
have seen him you would have said that butter wouldn't melt in his
mouth, so cool was he; yet if Mr Dash had come round that way, Murrams
would have mounted his back and never ceased clawing the dog till he had
ridden him half a mile at least from Hangman's Hall.

It wasn't, however, until the visitors had taken their departure that
the grand jubilee commenced.

"_They're_ gone!" said Bob, running up and licking the pussy's ear.
"That's a jolly good job!"

"_They're_ gone!" said pussy in reply, as he rubbed shoulders with Bob.

"_They're_ gone!" cried the crane, hopping madly round the pair of them.

And as she nestled closer in her brother's arms, Babs sighed and said
just the same thing.

"Hurrah!" cried Ransey Tansey; "let's run off to the woods."

"Let's wun off to ze woods at wance," echoed Babs.

Had little Eedie seen Ransey five minutes after this, I question whether
she would have pronounced him the prettiest boy she had ever known.

Ransey was himself again, old shirt, ragged pants, and all.

I think that the children and Bob, not to mention the gallant Admiral,
enjoyed themselves that afternoon in the woods as much as ever they had
done in their young lives.

Babs insisted on taking her ragged old dolly-bone with her, and leaving
the new one at home upside down in a corner.

Well, Ransey fished for just an hour, but had glorious luck and a good
string to take to Mrs Farrow.  This was enough, so he put away his rod,
and read some more horrors to Babs from "Nick o' the Woods."  The
torture scenes and the scalping took her fancy more than anything else.

So Ransey Tansey invented a play on the spot that would have brought
down the house in a twopenny theatre if properly put on the stage.

He, Ransey Tansey, was to be a wild Indian, Babs would be the white man,
Bob the bear, and the Admiral the spirit of the wild woods and ghost of
the haunted canon.

The play passed off without a hitch.  Only Ransey Tansey himself
required to dress for his part.  This he did to perfection.  He retired
to a secluded spot by the river's bank for the purpose.  He divested
himself of his pants and his solitary suspender.  These were but the
evidences of an effete civilisation.  What could such things as these
have to do with the red man of the wild West, the solitary scalp-hunter
of the boundless prairie?  But a spear and a tomahawk he must have, and
these were quickly and easily fashioned from the boughs of the
neighbouring trees.  He tied a piece of cord around his waist, and in
this he stuck his knife, open and ready for every emergency.  He fuzzed
up his rebellious hair, and stuck rooks' feathers in it; he thrust his
feet into the darkest and grimiest of mud to represent moccasins, and
streaked his face with the same.

When enveloped in his blanket (the big shawl) he stalked into the open
in all the ghastliness of his wur-paint, and said "Ugh!"  He was Ransey
Tansey no longer, but Chee-tow, the Red Chief of the Slit-nosed Indians.

On beholding the warrior, Babs's first impulse was to scream in terror;
her next--and this she carried out--was to roll on her back, her two
legs pointing skywards, and scream with laughter.

"Oh," she cried delightedly, "'oo _is_ such a boo'ful wallio!
[warrior]; be twick and tell somefing."

For the time being Babs was only the audience.  When she became an actor
in this great forest drama she would have to behave differently.

And now the red chief went prowling around, and presently out from a
bush darted a grizzly bear.

The bear was Bob.

Chee-tow uttered his wildest war-cry, and rushed onwards to the charge.

The grizzly held his ground and scorned to fly.

  "Then began the deadly conflict,
  Hand to hand among the mountains;
  From his eerie screamed the eagle [the crane]
          ...the great war-eagle,
  Sat upon the crags around them,
  Wheeling, flapped his wings above them.
  * * * * *.

  "Till the earth shook with the tumult
  And confusion of the battle.
  And the air was full of shoutings,
  And the thunder of the mountains
  Starting, answered `Baim-wa-wa.'"

This fierce fight with the terrible grizzly was so realistic that the
audience sat silent and enthralled, with its thumb in its mouth.

But it ended at last in the victory of the red chief.  The bear lay
dead, and the first Act came to a close.

In Act Two an Indian maiden has been stolen, and borne away by a white
man across the boundless prairie to his wigwam in the golden East.  The
red chief squats down on the moss with drooping head to bewail the loss
of his daughter, during which outburst of grief his streaks of war-paint
get rather mixed; but that can't be helped.  Then the spirit of the wild
woods appears to him--the ghost of the haunted canon (that is, between
you and me, the Admiral comes hopping up with his neck stretched out,
wondering what it is all about)--and whispers to him, and speaks in his
ear, and says:--

  "Listen to me, brave Chee-tow-wa,
  Lie not there upon the meadow;
  Stoop not down among the lilies,
  Lest the west wind come and harm you.
  Follow me across the prairie,
  Follow me across the mountains,
  I will find the maiden for you,
  The maid with hair like sunshine,
  Who has vanished from your sight."

So Chee-tow gets up, seizes his arms, and follows the spirit, who goes
hopping on in front of him in a very weird-like manner indeed.

Meanwhile Babs, knowing her part, has hidden herself in a bush, and in
due time is led back in triumph as the white man who stole the maiden.
He is tied to a tree, scalped, and tortured.  Then a fire is lit, and
thither the white man is dragged towards it to be burned alive.

But another bear (Bob again) rushes in to his assistance and enables him
to escape.

The same fire built to burn the white man (Babs) is being utilised to
roast potatoes for supper; only this is a mere detail.

And the play ends by the spirit of the wild woods bringing the maiden
back (Babs again) to the camp fire in the forest, and--and by a supper
of baked potatoes with salt.

All's well that ends well.  And shortly after the denouement there may
be seen, wending its way in the calm summer gloaming up the little
footpath that leads through the green corn, the following procession.
First, Bob solemnly carrying the fishing-rod; then Ransey Tansey with a
string of red-finned fish in front of him, and Babs on his back, wrapped
in the Indian's blanket; and last, but not least, the Admiral himself,
nodding his head not unlike a camel, and lifting his legs very high
indeed, because the dew was beginning to fall.

Babs had gone soundly to sleep by the time they reached the farm, but
she was lively enough a few minutes after this.

And Mrs Farrow made them stay to supper, every one of them, including
even the Admiral, although he said "Tok--tok--tok" several times, out of
politeness, perhaps when first invited in.

The kitchen at the farm was in reality a sitting-room, and a very jolly,
cosy one it was; nor did the fire seem a bit out of place to-night.

It took Ransey quite a long time to tell all his adventures, and dilate
upon the kindness of his visitors, especially rough but kindly Captain
Weathereye.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was almost dark before they got to the little cot at the foot of the
hill that they called their home; and here a fresh surprise awaited
them, for a light was shining through the little window, and through the
half-open door as well.

Babs herself was the first, I believe, to notice this.

"O 'Ansey," she cried, struggling with excitement on the boy's back, "O
'Ansey, look! fazer [father] has tomed!  Be twick, 'Ansey, be twick."

And Ransey quickened his pace now, while Bob ran on in front.

"Wowff, wowff," he barked, "wowff--wowff--wow!"  But it was in a
half-hysterical kind of way, as if there were a tear of joy mixed up
with it, joy at the hope of seeing a kind old master again.

Even the crane felt it his bounden duty to indulge in an extra hop or
two, and to shout, "Scray--scray--scray--ay--ay!"

It was the Admiral's voice that caused honest Tom Tandy to get up from
his chair, lay down his pipe, and hurry to the door.

"Hill--ll--o!" he shouted.  "Here we all are, Ransey Tansey, Babs, and
Bob, and all.  Why, this _is_ a merry meeting.  Come, Babs.  Hoist away,
Ransey.  Hee--hoy--ip! and there she is safely landed in harbour.  So
you missed your old father, little lass, did you?  Bless it.  But we're
all going on to-morrow, and the _Merry Maiden_ has got a new coat o'
paint, and new furniture for the cuddy, and it's no end of a jolly time
we'll all have."

Yes, it _was_ a merry meeting, and a right happy one.  I only wish that
both Miss Scragley and Captain Weathereye had seen it.

"Why," the former would have said to herself, "this good fellow could
surely never have been a slave to the bottle!"

Mr Tandy had never really been a constant imbiber of that soul-killing
curse of our country--drink; but some years gone by, like many another
old sailor, he was liable to slide into an occasional "bout," as it is
called, and it was with sorrow he thought of this now.  But Miss
Scragley and many others have yet to learn that it is often the
best-hearted and the brightest that fall most easily into temptation.

As for Weathereye, had he been a witness of this little reunion, he too
would have given his opinion about the sturdy old sailor.

"Why!" he would have cried frankly to Mr Tandy, [pronounced Tansey only
by the children] "why, my good fellow, Miss Scragley, who is faddy and
elderly, and myself, old fool that I am at the best, were considering
what best we could do for your children.  We were to do all kinds of
pretty things.  The boy was going to a school, the child to a home, and
you--ha, ha, ha--you, with your bold face and your sturdy frame, a man
of barely forty, were going to be sent to the house.  Ha, ha, no wonder
I laugh.  But tip us your flipper, Tandy, you're a man every inch--a man
and a sailor."

That is what Weathereye would have said had he seen Tandy sitting there
now.

They are right in saying that those whom animals and children love are
possessed of right good hearts of their own.

And here was this old sailor--the word "old" being simply a term of
endearment, for none but the sickly are old at forty, and they've been
old all the time--sitting erect in his chair, Babs on one knee, the
great cat on the other; Ransey on the hearth looking smilingly up at
father's bronzed face, silver-sprinkled hair and beard; the Admiral
standing on one leg behind the chair; and poor Bob asleep before the
fire, with his chin reposing on his old master's boot.

It was a pretty picture.

"Children," says Tandy at last, "it is getting late, and--just kneel
down.  I think we'll say a bit of a prayer to-night."

Book 1--CHAPTER SEVEN.

ON SILENT HIGHWAYS.

It was early next morning when Ransey Tansey ran off through the fields
for a double allowance of milk.

"Double allowance to-day, Mrs Farrow," he shouted.  "Oh, yes, father's
come; and we're goin' on to-day.  Isn't it just too awfully jolly for
anything?"

"Well, I'm sorry to lose you and Babs."

"Back in a month, Mrs Farrow.  It'll soon pass, ye know.  But I--I am a
kind o' sorry to leave you too, for ye've been so good to Babs and Bob
and me."

There was a tear in Ransey's eye as he took the milk-can and prepared to
depart.

"The Admiral can take care o' his little self," he said, "but there's
Murrams."

"Yes, dear boy, and our nipper shall go over every morning, and put
Murrams's bowl of milk in through the broken pane."

"Oh, now I'm happy, just downright happy."

"Well, off you run.  Mind never to forget to say your prayers."

"No; and I'll pray for Murrams, for the Admiral, for you, and all."

He waved his hand now, and quickly disappeared.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The world wasn't a very wide one just yet to these poor children, Ransey
and Babs.  It was chiefly made up of that little cottage which went by
the uncanny name of Hangman's Hall, and of the carrying barge or
canal-boat yclept _Ye Merry Maiden_.  But when at home, at the hut, they
had all the sweet, green, flowery fields around them, the stream, and
the wild woods.  These formed the grand seminary in which Ransey studied
nature, and moreover, studied it without knowing he was studying
anything.  To him every creature, whether clad in fur or in feather, was
a friend.  He knew all their little secrets, and they _knew_ that he
knew them.  Not a bird that sang was there that he did not know by its
eggs, its nest, or its notes; not a rabbit, hare, vole, or field-mouse
that he could not have told you the life-story of.  His was a--

  "Knowledge never learned at schools,
  Of the wild bee's morning chase.
  Of the wild flowers' time and place;
  Flight of fowl, and habitude
  Of the tenants of the wood;
  How the tortoise bears his shell;
  How the woodchuck digs his cell,
  And the ground mole makes his well;
  How the robin feeds her young;
  How the oriel's nest is hung;
  Of the black wasp's cunning way,
  Mason of his walls of clay;
  And the architectural plans
  Of grey hornet artisans."

It is true enough that this family was poor in the eyes of the world.  I
am sure they were not ashamed of it, however.

The poverty that goes hand in hand with honesty may hold up its head
before the Queen.

  "Is there, for honest poverty,
      That hangs his head, and a' that?
  The coward slave, we pass him by;
      We dare be poor for a' that!
          For a' that, and a' that,
              Our toils obscure, and a' that;
          The rank is but the guinea stamp,
              The man's the gowd for a' that?"

So sang the immortal Robert Burns.

But could any boy, or girl either, be really poor who had so many
friends in field and forest, and by the winding stream?  No; and such a
one as this, who has been in touch with nature in his or her early days,
may grow up, grow old, but never forget the days of youth, and never,
never lose faith in Heaven and a happy Beyond.

The cottage and the surrounding country, however, did not constitute all
the children's world.  There was the ship--as I have said--the barge
that went to sea, and in which they so often sailed.

For to them as yet the barge was a brig, and the canal the ocean wide
and wild.  Well, I might on second thoughts withdraw those "wee
wordies," _wide_ and _wild_.  The canal was not a very wide one, nor was
it ever very wild, in summer time at all events.

Never mind, to the imagination of Ransey, Babs, and Bob, the _Merry
Maiden_ was--

  "A gallant ship, with a crew as brave
  As ever sailed the ocean wave."

The crew of the _Merry Maiden_, I may tell you at once, was a very small
one indeed, and consisted--all told, that is--of the captain himself,
who was likewise cook, boatswain, and bedmaker all combined; one sturdy,
great boy of sixteen, strong enough to lift almost any weight, Sammy by
name, who was first lieutenant, supercargo, and chief engineer, and who
often took his trick at the wheel--that is, he took the tiller and
relieved his captain, or mounted Jim and relieved Ransey; Ransey
himself, who was second engineer--Jim, the stout old bay nag, being the
engine itself, the moving power when no fair wind was blowing; and Bob,
whose station was at the bows, and his duty to keep a good look-out and
hail those aft if any other ship hove in sight or danger was near.

The _Merry Maiden_ rejoiced in one mast, which had to be cleverly
lowered when a bridge had to be negotiated.  The sail was a fore-and-aft
one, though very full at times.  Picturesquely reddish-brown it was, and
looked so pretty sometimes against the green of the trees that, as the
craft sailed slowly on in the sunshine, dreamy artists, seated smoking
at their out-door easels, often made the _Merry Maiden_ part and parcel
of the landscape they were painting.

I think that Tandy himself liked being on board.  The barge was his own,
and carrying light wares or parcels from village to village, or town to
town, his trade.

Things had gone backwards with Tandy as long as he looked upon the rum
when it was red; he had got into debt.  But now he was comfortable,
jolly once more, because his keel was clear, as he phrased it; and as he
reclined to-day on the top of the cuddy, or poop, with the tiller in his
hand, Babs nestling near him, with the greenery of the woods, the
fields, and little round knolls floating dreamily past him in the
silvery haze of the sunshine, he looked a picture of health, happiness,
and contentment.

Ransey and Babs took their canal life very easily.  They never knew or
cared where they were going to, nor thought of what they might see.
Even the boy's knowledge of the geography of his own country was very
limited indeed.

He had some notion that his father's canal--he grandly termed it so
occasionally--was somewhere away down in the midlands.  And he was
right.  He hadn't learned to box the compass, however; and even had he
possessed the knowledge, there wasn't a compass on board the _Merry
Maiden_ to box or be boxed.  Besides, the ship's head was seldom a whole
hour in any one particular direction.  The canal was a very winding one,
its chief desire seeming to be to visit all the villages it could reach
without being bothered with locks.  These last were few and far between,
because the country was rather a level one on the whole.

Nevertheless the fact of their not knowing exactly where they were going
to, or what they would see next, lent an additional charm to the
children's canal life.  It was like the game children play on moonlight
nights in Scotland.  This is a very simple one, but has a great
fascination for tiny dwellers in the country, and, besides, it gives
excellent scope for the imagination.  One child blindfolds another, and
leads him here, there, and everywhere, without going far away from
home--round the stackyards, over the fields by the edge of the woods, or
across bridges, the blindfolded wondering all the time where he is, but
feeling as if he were in fairyland, till at last his eyes are free, and
he finds himself--well, in the very last place he could have dreamt of
being.

There is no reason why canal life in England should not be most
pleasant, and canal people just as happy as was the crew, all told, on
board the _Merry Maiden_.

The saloon of the _Maiden_, as Tandy grandly called it, was by no means
very large.  It was simply a dear little morsel of a doll's-house, but
the taste of the owner was shown in many different ways.  By day the
beds were folded up and were prettily draped with bright curtains.
There were a lounge, an easy-chair, a swing-lamp, a beautiful brass
stove, and racks above and at both sides of it for plates and mugs and
clear, clean tin cooking utensils; there were tiny cupboards and
brackets and mirrors, and in almost every corner stood vases of wild
flowers, culled by Babs and Ransey whenever they had a chance.  And this
was often enough, for really Jim was so wise a horse that he never
required any urging to do his duty.  He was never known to make either
break or stumble.  But when sail was on the ship, Jim had nothing to do
except to walk after her and look about him.  Sometimes the oats or the
wheat grew close to the path, and then, although a very honest horse,
Jim never failed to treat himself to a pluck.  So he was as sleek and
fat as any nag need be.

The weather was not always fine, of course, but on wet days Babs could
be sent below, with Bob to mind her, to play with her picture-books, her
lady doll, and her dolly-bone.

Ransey's father had made him discard now, for ever and ay, his ragged
garments, although the boy had not done so without a sigh of regret--
they were so free and easy.

His best clothes, presented by Miss Scragley, were stowed away for high
days and holidays, and the suit his father bought him and brought him
was simply neat and somewhat nautical.

Let us take a little cruise in the _Merry Maiden_.  Shall we, reader?

It will be a cruise in imagination certainly, but very real for all
that, because it is from the life.

It is very early, then, in the joyous month of June, and the _Merry
Maiden_ is lying alongside a green bank.  There is no pier here.  It is
a country place.  Yonder on the right is a pretty little canal-side inn,
the "Jolly Tapsters."  You can read its name on the sign that is
swinging to and fro beneath a wide-spreading elm-tree.  Under this tree
is a seat, and a table also; and on fine evenings, after their day's
work is done, honest labourers, dressed in smocks, who have been
haymaking all day, come here to smoke long clays, to talk to their
neighbours, and now and then beat the table with their pewters to ask
for "another pint, landlord, if _you_ please."

Tandy lay in here last night and left a whole lot of parcels and things
at that cosy hostelry; for the country all about is an agricultural one,
beautifully wooded with rolling hills, with many a smiling mansion
peeping grey or red above the trees, and many a well-tilled farm.  The
parcels will all be called for in due time.

The barge-master is up before even Ransey is stirring.  He has lit the
fire and made ready for breakfast.  Before going on shore by the little
gangway, he stirs Sammy up.  Sammy, the sixteen-year-old boy, has been
sleeping among the cargo with a morsel of tarpaulin for a blanket.  He
rubs his eyes, and in a few seconds pulls himself up, and begins, lazily
enough, to sort and arrange the parcels and make notes for the next stop
in a small black book, with a very thick pencil that he sticks in his
mouth about once every three seconds to make it write more easily.

"What a lovely morning!" thinks Tandy, and Bob, who has come bounding
after him, thinks so too.  The sun is already up, however.  From every
copse and plantation comes the melody of birds.  Flocks of rooks are
flying heavily and silently away to the distant river, where among the
reeds they will find plenty to eat.  Swimming about in the canal yonder
are half a score of beautiful ducks.  No, not wild; wild birds seldom
build on a busy canal side.  They are the innkeeper's Rouens, and that
splendid drake is very proud indeed.  He lifts himself high out of the
water and claps his wings in defiance as Bob passes.

Yonder is a lark lilting loudly and sweetly high above the green corn.
There are linnets and greenfinches in the hedges, and warblers among the
snow-white blossoms of the may.

There is a wealth of wild flowers everywhere--blue-eyed speedwells, the
yellow celandine, the crimson of clover, the ragged robin, and ox-eye
daisies weeping dew.

So balmy is the air and fresh that the barge-master has wandered further
than he had intended.  Hunger warns him to beat a retreat.  Canal
people, like caravan folks, have excellent appetites.

But here he is on board again.  Ransey has already cooked and laid the
breakfast, dressed Babs, and folded up the beds.  With the ports all
open the tiny saloon is sweet and clean.

"For what we are about to receive," the father begins, and little
Ransey's head is bent and Babs's hands are clasped till grace is said.

Those eggs are fresh.  The fish was caught but yesterday.  Butter and
beautiful bread are always to be had cheap all along the canal.

Sammy's breakfast and Bob's are duly handed up the companion-way, and in
half an hour after this the horse is yoked, the landlord has wished them
all good luck, and they have gone on.

But the wind, though slight, is dead ahead for miles, and Jim has a
heavy drag.  Jim doesn't mind that a bit.  He jingles his light harness,
strains nobly to his work, and jogs right merrily on.

Gradually the country wakens up to newness of life.  Smoke comes curling
up from many a humble cottage; cocks are crowing here and there; and
busy workman-like dogs are hurrying to and fro as they drive cattle or
sheep to distant pasture lands.

There are houses dotted about everywhere, some very close to the canal
side, from the doors of which half-dressed children rush out to wave
naked arms and "hooray" as the barge goes slowly floating past.  To
these Babs must needs wave her wee hands and give back cheer for cheer.

Many of those cots, humble though they be, have the neatest of gardens,
with flowers already blooming in beds and borders, in tubs and in boxes;
neat little walks all sanded and yellow; and strings along the walls, up
which, when summer is further advanced, climbers will find their way and
trail in their loveliness over porch and windows.

There are orchards behind many of these, the gnarled trees snowed over
with bloom, many clad in pink or crimson.  All this brings to one's mind
snatches from Mrs Hemans:--

  "The cottage homes of England,
      By thousands on her plains,
  They are smiling o'er the silvery brooks,
      And round the hamlet-fanes.
  Through glowing orchards forth they peep,
      Each from its nook of leaves,
  And fearless there the lowly sleep
      As the bird beneath their eaves."

The sun climbs higher and higher, and the mists have disappeared from
the far-off hills, and now you can tell it is school time.

Well-dressed children, in groups, are wending their way all in one
direction.  But they find time to cull wild flowers for teacher; and
see, a bold, bright-faced lad comes near to the edge of the canal.
Perhaps he is charmed by the innocent beauty of little Babs.  Who can
tell?  One thing we _are_ sure of--he has learned a little French, and
is proud to air it.

"_Bon voyage_," he shouts.

And next moment a bonnie bunch of flowers falls right into the child's
lap.

"Kiss your hand to him, dear," says father.

Babs smilingly does as she is told.  No actress could do so more
naturally.

Then the boy runs off, looking happy, and the barge floats on.

Book 1--CHAPTER EIGHT.

"POOR MARY!  SHE HAS GONE ON."

The barge floats on, and soon the village appears in sight.  Yes,
thoroughly English, and therefore pretty: the old grey houses only half
seen in the midst of the foliage; the wreaths of blue smoke; the broad,
squat steeple; wooded hills behind, and amongst these latter here and
there a tall Elizabethan house sheltering itself in a hollow, for wildly
in winter do the winds sweep through the leafless oaks and elms now clad
in all the glory of summer's green.

The canal makes a sweep just before it comes up to the village, as if it
had entertained some thoughts of going past without calling.  But it
hasn't the heart to do so, and presently the barge is close alongside a
kind of wooden platform which is dignified by the name of wharf.

Ransey dismounts to water his horse and slip on the nose-bag.  Then,
while Sammy is busy with his note-book, handing out cargo and taking
fresh orders, he takes delighted Babs and Bob on shore to look at the
shops.  These visits to villages are much appreciated by her tiny
ladyship, but if the streets are steep Ransey Tansey must take her on
his back, and thus the two go on.

No fear of the "ship" leaving without them; and why, here is father
himself, his hands deep in the pockets of his pilot jacket, and smoking.

A penny to Ransey and a halfpenny to Babs secure them additional
happiness; but in less than an hour the anchor is weighed, and the
_Merry Maiden_ is once more going on.

The wind changes, or the canal, or something; anyhow sail can now be
set, and Jim thinks himself about the happiest horse in all creation.

On and on through the quiet country, by the most silent of all
thoroughfares, goes the barge.  Babs is getting drowsy; father makes her
a bed with a bundle of sacks, shading her face from the sun; and soon
she is in the land of forgetfulness.

Were it not for the breeze that blows freshly over the meadows, the day
would be a warm and drowsy one.  No fear of Sammy falling asleep,
however, for as the canal winds in and out he has to tighten or loosen
the sheet according to the shift.

Just at present the sounds that are wafted towards the barge are all
lulling and dreamy: the far-off singing of birds; the sound of the
woodman's axe in the distant wood; the rattle of a cart or carriage on a
road that is nowhere visible; the jangle of church bells from a village
that may be in the sky for anything any one can tell; and now the merry
laughter of young men and maidens making hay, and these last come in
sight just round the next green bend.

It suddenly occurs to Jim that a dance wouldn't be at all a bad idea.
Ransey is some distance behind his horse, when he sees him lower his
head and fling his heels high in air.  This is merely preparatory; next
minute he is off at a gallop, making straight for that meadow of
fragrant hay, the wind catching mane and tail and blowing it straight
out fore and aft.

When tired of galloping round the field, Jim bears right down upon the
haymakers themselves.

"That stuff," he says, with distended nostrils, "smells uncommonly nice.
Give us a tuft."

He is fed handsomely by both lads and lasses gay.  But they get gayer
than ever when Jim throws himself down on his back, regardless of the
confused entanglement of bridle and traces.  But Jim knows better than
to roll on the bare ground.  He has thrown down a hay-cock for himself,
and it is as good as a play to witness the girls bury him up till there
is nothing to be seen of him except his four legs kicking skywards.

He gets up at last, and looks very sober and solemn.  One girl kisses
him on the muzzle; another is busy doing something that Ransey cannot
make out, but a minute or two after this, when Jim comes thundering
back, there is a huge collar of hay around his neck.  Ransey mounts him
bareback, and, waving his hand to the haymakers, goes galloping off to
overtake the barge, and throw the hay on board.  A nice little snack it
will make for Jim some time later on!

To-day Mr Tandy has bought a newspaper.  He had meant to read it, but
he is too fond of country sights and sounds to bother about it now.  In
the evening, perhaps, over a pipe.

On, ever on.  There are locks to get through now, several of them, and
lockmen are seldom, if ever, more than half awake; but everybody knows
Tandy, and has a kindly word to say to Ransey Tansey, and perhaps a kiss
to blow to Babs, who has just awakened, with eyes that shine, and lips
and cheeks as red as the dog-roses that trail so sweetly over a hedge
near by.

The country here is higher--a bit of Wales in the midlands, one might
almost say.  And so it continues for some time.

Sammy takes his trick at the wheel, and prefers to steer by lying on his
back and touching the tiller with one bare foot.  Sammy is always
original and funny, and now tells Babs wonderful stories about fairies
and water-babies that he met with a long time ago when he used to dwell
deep down beneath the sea.

Babs has never seen the real sea, except in pictures, and is rather hazy
about it.  Nevertheless, Sammy's stories are very wonderful, and
doubtless very graphic.  The sail is lowered at last, and the saucy
_Merry Maiden_ moored to a green bank.

The dinner is served, and all hands, including Jim, do justice to it.

I said the barge was "moored" here.  Literal enough, for a wide, wild
moor stretches all around.  Sheep are feeding not far off, and some
droll-looking ponies that Jim would like to engage in conversation.
There are patches of heath also, and stunted but prettily-feathered
larch-trees now hung with points of crimson.  Great patches of golden
gorse hug the ground and scent the air for yards around.  Linnets are
singing there, and now and then the eye is gladdened by the sight of a
wood-lark.  Sometimes he runs along the ground, singing more sweetly
even than his brother musician who loves to soar as high as the clouds.

Here is a cock-robin, looking very independent and lilting defiance at
everybody.  Robins do not always live close to civilisation.  This robin
comes close enough to pick up the crumbs which Ransey throws towards
him.  He wants Ransey to believe that all the country for miles and
miles around belongs to him--Cock-Robin--and that no bird save him has
any real business here.

There are pine-trees waving on the hills yonder, and down below, a town
much bigger than any they yet have arrived at.

But see, there is a storm coming up astern, so, speedily now, the _Merry
Maiden_ is once more under way.

Babs is bundled down below, and Bob goes with her.

Presently the air is chilly enough to make one shiver.  A puff of high
wind, a squall we may call it, brings up an army of clouds and darkness.
Thunder rolls, and the swift lightning flashes--red, bright, intense--
then down come the rain and the big white hailstones.  These rattle so
loudly on the poop deck, and on the great tarpaulin that covers the
cargo, that for a time the thunder itself can scarcely be heard.

But in twenty minutes' time the sun is once more shining, the clouds
have rolled far to leeward, the deck is dry, and but for the pools of
water that lie in the hollows of the hard tarpaulin, no evidence is left
that a summer storm had been raging.

But away with the storm has gone the wind itself, and Jim is once more
called into requisition.  Then onwards floats the barge.

Through many a bridge and lock, past many a hamlet, past woodlands and
orchards, and fields of waving wheat, stopping only now and then at a
village, till at last, and just as the sun is westering, the distant
town is reached.

Oh, a most unsavoury sort of a place, a most objectionable kind of a
wharf, at which to pass a night.

Tandy sends Babs and Bob below again; for a language is spoken here he
does not wish the child to listen to, sights may be seen he would not
that her eyes should dwell upon.  Yonder is an ugly public-house with
broken windows in it, and a bloated-faced, bare-armed woman, the
landlady, standing with arms akimbo defiantly in the doorway.  Ah! there
was a time when Tandy used to spend hours in that very house.  He
shudders to think of it now.

There is one dead tree at the gable of this inn, which--half a century
ago, perhaps--may have been a country hostelry surrounded by meadows and
hedges.  That tree would then be green, the air fresh and sweet around
it, the mavis singing in its leafy shade.  Now the sky is lurid, the air
is tainted, and there is smoke everywhere.  Not even the bark is left on
the ghastly tree.  It looks as if it had died of leprosy.

But the work is hurried through, and in a comparatively short time the
_Merry Maiden_ is away out in the green quiet country.

What a blessed change from the awful town they have just left!

The sun has already gone down in such a glory of crimson, bronze, and
orange, as we in this country seldom see.

This soon fades away, however, as everything that is beautiful to behold
must fade.

The stars come out now in the east, and just as gloaming is merging into
night the boat draws near to a little canal-side inn, and Jim, the
horse, who is wiser far than many a professed Christian, stops of his
own accord.

For Ransey had gone to sleep--oh, he often rode thus and never fell.  He
awakes now, however, with a start, and gazes wonderingly around him.
His eyes fall upon the sign.  And there, in large white letters, the boy
can read easily enough though the light is fading--the "Bargee's
Chorus."

And not only could he read, but he could remember: it was here they lay
that sad, sad night--what a long time ago it seemed--when mother died.

Here was the landlord himself with his big apron on, a burly fellow with
a kindly face, and as Tandy stepped on shore he was welcomed with a
hearty handshake.

"Ah: Cap'en Tandy, and 'ow's you.  And here is Ransey Tansey, bright and
bobbish, and little Babs, and Bob, and everybody.  How nice you all
look!  But la!" he added, "it do seem such a long, long time since you
were here before."

"I've not had the heart to come much this way, Mr Shirley.  I've been
trading at the southern end o' the canal."

"And ye've never been here once since you put up the bit of marble slab
to mark the spot where _she_ lies?"

Ransey knew his mother was referred to, and turned aside to hide the
tears.

"Never since," says Tandy.

"Ah, cap'en, many's the one as asks me about that slab.  And the old
squire himself stopped here one day and got all the story from me.  And
when I'd finished, never a word he said.  He just heaved a biggish sort
of a sigh, and went trotting on.

"But come in, Ransey, Babs, and Bob, and all.  The night's going to be
chilly, and an air of the fire will do the children good.

"Sammy, just take the horse round to the stable.  We'll have a bit o'
frost to-night, I thinks."

Ransey runs on board for a few minutes to touch up the fire, put on the
guard, and make down the beds; then he joins the group around the cosy
parlour fire.

The kindly landlady, as plump and rosy as her husband, makes very much
of the children, and the supper she places before them is a right hearty
one, nor is Bob himself forgotten.

A very quiet and pleasant evening is spent, then good-nights are said,
and the seafaring folks, as they humorously call themselves, go on board
to bed.

Sammy is already sound asleep beneath the tarpaulin, and Ransey takes
his little sister below to bed at once.

But father stops on deck a little while, to think and muse.

How still the night is!  Not a breath of wind now; not a sound save the
distant melancholy hooting of an owl as he flies low across the fields,
the champ-champing of the horse in the stable, and an occasional plash
in the canal as some great frog leaps off the bank.

Nothing more.

But high above shine God's holy stars.  There may be melancholy in the
old sailor's heart as he gazes skywards, but there is hope as well, for
these little points of dazzling light bear his thoughts away to better
worlds than this.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is early morning again, and soon the barge is well on its way.

But when it is stopped in the middle of a somewhat lonesome moor, and
Tandy takes his children on shore, the boy knows right well where they
are going, though innocent little Babs doesn't.

"Father," he says presently, as they are near to a clump of tall trees,
"isn't it just _here_ where mother was laid?"

The rough weather-beaten old sailor uncovers his head.

He points to a spot of the canal that is gleaming bright in the rays of
the morning sun.

"Just down there, dear boy," he says.  "The coffin was leaded; it could
never rise."

The last words are spoken apparently to himself, as he turns sadly away
towards the trees.

Still holding Ransey's hand, and with Babs in his arms, he points to the
tallest, strongest tree of all.  It is a beautiful beech.

And there, about eight feet from the ground, and evidently let deeply
into the tree, is a small and lettered slab of marble.

The bark has begun to curl in a rough lip over its edge all round as if
to hold it more firmly in its place.

  POOR MARY.
  She has gone on.
  _Feby. 19th--82_.

The letters were not over-well formed.  Perhaps they were cut by Tandy's
own hand.  What mattered it?  The little tablet was meant but for _his_
eyes.  Simplicity is best.

"Poor Mary!  She has gone on."

And the words are written not only there upon the marble, but upon the
honest sailor's heart.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

End of Book One.

Book 2--CHAPTER ONE.

"JUST THREE YEARS SINCE RANSEY WENT TO SEA."

"O father," said Babs one autumn evening, "aren't _you_ frightened at
the roaring of the sea?"

Tandy and his child were sitting together, that autumn evening, in the
best parlour.  They were waiting for the postman to come round the
corner; and as the waves were making a clean breach over the black,
smooth rocks down yonder, and the spray was dashing high over the road
and rattling like hail upon the panes of glass in the little cottage
window, the postman would be wearing his waterproof cape to-night to
keep the letters dry.

Babs had been watching for a man in a glittering oilskin, very
anxiously, too, with her little face close to the glass, when a bigger
wave than any she had yet seen rolled green and spumy and swiftly across
the boulders, till meeting the resistance offered by the cliff it rose
into the air for twenty feet at least, then broke like a waterfall on
the asphalt path which was dignified by the name of esplanade.

No wonder she rushed back from the window, and now stood trembling by
her father's side.

He took her gently on his knee.

Though five years have elapsed since the night they had visited mother's
tree, and she is now eight years of age, she is but a little thing.  Ay,
and fragile.

As she sits there, with one arm about his neck, he looks at her, and
talks to her tenderly.  She has her mother's eyes.

But how lonely he would be, he cannot help thinking, if anything
happened to his little Nelda--to Babs.  The thought causes him to shiver
as he sits there in his easy-chair by the fire, for chill is the breeze
that blows from off the sea to-night.

"Daddy!"

"Yes, dear."

"To-morrow, when it comes, will make it just three years since Ransey
went to sea."

"Three years?  Yes, Babs, so it will.  Oh, how quickly the time has
flown!  And how good your memory is, darling!"

"Flown quickly, father?  Oh, I think every one of those years has been
much, much longer than the other.  And I think," she added, "lazy postie
will never come to-night.  But I dreamt, daddy, we would have a letter
from Ransey, and it is sure to come."

Three years.  Yes, and years do fly fast away when men or women get
elderly.

Those years though--ay, and the whole five--had been very busy ones with
Ransey Tansey, very eventful, I might almost say.

Old Captain Weathereye had proved a right good friend to Ransey.  Nor
did he take the least degree of credit to himself for being so.

"The boy has got the grit in him," he told Miss Scragley, "and just a
spice of the devil; and without that, I can assure you, madam, no boy is
going to get well on in this world."

Miss Scragley didn't care to swallow this doctrine quite; but Eedie,
whom Ransey looked upon as a kind of fairy, or goddess, immeasurably
better than himself, took the captain's view of the matter.

"Oh, yes," she astonished Miss Scragley by exclaiming, "the devil is
everywhere, auntie.  Mr Smith himself said so in the church.  He is in
roaring lions and in lambs when they lie down together, and in little
boys, and then they are best and funniest."

Miss Scragley sighed.

"It is a world of sin and sorrow," she murmured.

"A world of fiddlesticks, madam!" cried Weathereye.  "I tell you, it is
a splendid world, a grand old world; but you've got to learn how to take
your own part in it.  Take my word for it, Miss Scragley, the world
wasn't made for fools.  Fools have got to take a back seat, and just
look on, while men of grit do the work and enjoy the reward.  Ahem!"

"I've got to make a man of that lad," he went on, "and, what's more, I'm
doing it.  He needs holy-stoning--I'm holy-stoning him.  He may want a
little polishing after, but rubbing against the world will do that."

"You're very good, Captain Weathereye; you will be rewarded, if not in
this world, in the next--"

"Tut--tut--tut," cried the old sailor impatiently, and it must be
admitted somewhat brusquely, "women folks will talk, especially when
they don't know what to say; but pray keep such sentiments and
platitudes as these for your next Dorcas meeting, madam.  Reward,
indeed!  Next world, forsooth!  I tell you that I'm having it in _this_.
I live my own early days over again in the boy's youth.  It is moral
meat and drink for the old--well, the middle-aged, like myself, ahem!--
to mingle with the young and get interested, not so much in their
pursuits, because one's joints are too stiff for that, but in their
hopes and aspirations for the future which is all before them.  Ever
hear these lines, Miss Scragley?

  "`In the lexicon of youth
  That fate reserves for a bright manhood,
  There is no such word as fail.'

"I'd have them printed on the front page of every copybook laid before a
child in school, and I'd have him to learn them as soon as he can lisp."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, right happy years these had been for Ransey Tansey, and little
Babs as well, to say nothing of gentle Eedie.  As the world began to
smile upon Tandy himself, he tried to do all he could for his children's
comfort.  Even the little cottage at the foot of the hill was made more
ship-shape, and furnished with many a comfort it had previously lacked.

Tandy was a man of a speculative turn of mind, and moreover inventive.
His speculations, however, did not succeed so well as he could have
wished.  I am never sorry for the downfall of speculators; for, after
all, what is speculation but a species of gambling--gambling for high
stakes?  And supposing that a man wins, which once in a way he may;
supposing even that he is strong enough in pocket to establish a
"corner," as it is called in Yankee-land, to buy up the whole of some
great commodity, and shut it up until the people are starving for it and
glad to pay for it at three times the original value, well, the corner
knight becomes a millionaire.  Yes; and very often a miser, and
miserable at that.  Can a millionaire enjoy sport or play any better
than you or I, reader?  No, nor so much.

Has he a better appetite from the fact that he can afford to coax it
with every costly dainty that cash can purchase?  More likely a worse.

Is he more healthy?  That were impossible.

Is he more happy?  Ah, here we come to the test question.  Well, he can
have a larger and a finer house than most people, and it may be
furnished like a palace.  Pictures of the old masters may adorn its
walls; musical instruments of rare value, works of art and vertu, may
meet the eye at every turn; the gardens, and rose lawns, and
conservatories may be more gorgeous than the dream of an Eastern prince.
But can he live in more than one room at a time, or enjoy anything
around him a bit better than the friends do whom he invites to his home
that they may admire everything and envy _him_?

But even the millionaire tires of home.  He is satiated with the good
things his gold has brought him; and if he travels abroad he will not
find half the enjoyment in those beauties of nature--which even the
millionaire's gold cannot deprive the poorest man of--that the poet or
the naturalist does.

I think there is one thing that most of us have to be thankful for--
namely, that we are not over-ambitious, and have no desire to become
millionaires.

Yes, but Tandy's ambition was not a morbid one; it was not selfish.  He
felt that he could die contentedly enough, could he make as sure as any
one can be sure that his boy and girl would not become waifs and strays
on the great highway of life.

How to make sure?  That had been the question he had tried to answer
many and many a time as he lay on the poop of his little craft and
sailed slowly through the meadows and moors.

I have said he was inventive.  His inventive faculties, however, took
him far too high at first, like a badly ballasted balloon.  He thought
of ministering to governments of nations--of putting into their hands
instruments for the destruction of his fellow mortals that should render
war impossible, and many other equally airy speculations.

He failed, and had to come down a piece.  There is no use in soaring too
high above the clouds if one would be a useful inventor and a benefactor
to mankind.  Darning-needles are of more service to the general public
than dynamite guns, and they are more easily manufactured.  So Tandy
failed in all his big things.  That balloon of his was still soaring too
high.

"I guess," he said to himself, "I'll have to come a little lower still
before I find out just what the world wants, and what _all_ the world
wants."

Food?  Physic?  Fire?

Ha! he had it.  Fire, of course.  How many a poor wretch starves to
death in a garret just because coals are too dear to purchase.  "And
why?" he asked himself; and the answer came fast enough, "Because coals
are wasted by the rich."

Then Tandy set his brains on to simmer, and invented one of the simplest
contrivances in the world for saving waste.

Yes, he had it at last, and in two years' time he began to gain a
competence, which was gradually increasing.

This little cottage down by the sad, sad sea, as sentimental old maids
call it, was his own.  He and Babs--or little Nelda, as we may now call
her--had only been here for six months.  The place was by no means a
fashionable one, although many people came here in summer to seek for
health on the glorious sands and rocks, and among the fields and woods
that stretched northwards into the interior.

As for Ransey Tansey, Captain Weathereye had really done his best to
secure the welfare of this half-wild lad, just as Miss Scragley tried to
assist his wee sister.

Impressionable children learn very quickly, and in a year's time Ransey
was so much improved in manners that Miss Scragley rather encouraged his
visits to the Hall than otherwise, especially when the Admiral and Bob
came along with him.

Grand old lawns and shrubberies surrounded the Hall, and these ended in
woods.  There were artificial lakes and islands in them too.  These
islands were the especial property of many beautiful ducks; but one was
so large, and surrounded by such a big stretch of water, that the only
thing to make it perfect--so Ransey thought--was a boat or skiff.  Eedie
was of the same opinion; so was Babs and Bob.

"Isn't it possible to build one?" thought Ransey.  He felt sure it was;
so did Eedie.

Before two months had passed, that skiff, with the assistance of
Weathereye, was a _fait accompli_; and the old captain was just as proud
of it as the children themselves.

The ducks didn't have it all their own way now on the island.  For here
a wigwam was built, and almost every fine day--that is, when Ransey was
not at his lessons--the children played at Crusoes and wild Indians, and
I don't know what all.

There was no end to Tansey's imagination, no end to his daring, no end
to his tricks, and in these last, I fear, Eedie encouraged him.

She was but two years younger than Ransey, but she was four years older
as far as worldly wisdom was concerned; and with her assistance the
dramas, or theatrical performances, carried out on the island were at
times startling in the extreme.

When Eedie brought children friends of hers to see these plays, Ransey
would have felt very shy indeed had he not had, figuratively speaking,
Eedie's wing to shelter under.  Encouraged by her, he soon found out
that real talent can make its own way, and be appreciated, however
humble its possessor may be.

When Tandy first met Captain Weathereye, he wanted to be profuse in his
thanks to this kindly staff-commander.  But the latter would have none
of this.

"Tandy," he said, "I know by your every action that you are a true
sailor, like--ahem!--myself.  Perhaps what you call kindness to your boy
is only a fad of mine, and therefore selfishness after all."

"No, no."

"But I can say `Yo, yo,' to your `No, no.'  Besides, we are all of us
sailing over the sea of life for goodness knows where, and we are in
duty bound to help even little boats we may sight, if we see they're in
distress."

Tandy and Weathereye had soon became good friends, and smoked many a
pipe together; nor did Tandy hesitate to tell the navy sailor about all
his inventions and little speculations, to which account the latter
listened delightedly enough.

"I say," he said to Tandy one day, "your lad is now over ten, and we
should send him right away to sea.  I tell you straight, Tandy, I'd get
him into the Royal Navy if it were worth while.  But he'd never be a
sailor, never learn seamanship."

"Confound their old tin-kettles," he added, bringing his fist down on
the table with a force that made the glasses jingle, "there isn't a
sailor on board one of them; only gunners and greasers.  [Greaser, a
disparaging name for an engineer in the Royal Navy.]  Let Ransey rough
it, Mr Tandy, and you'll make a man of him."

An apprenticeship in a Dundee trader, owned in Belfast, and sailing from
Cardiff, this was secured; though what use a lad not yet eleven might be
put to on board such a craft, I confess I hardly know.  But this I _do_
know, that the sooner a boy who is to be a British sailor goes to sea
the better.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Babs ventured back to the window at last, and glanced once more out into
the now gathering gloom.  Far away beyond Selsea Bill the sun had set
behind lurid coppery clouds, that boded little good for ships that were
toiling up the Channel.

"O daddy, here is postie at long, long last, and he's all, all dressed
in oilskins!  He is coming to the door!  Oh!"

She could not say another word for a few moments, but flew toward her
father.

"It is--it is--O daddy! _it's Ransey_!"

Book 2--CHAPTER TWO.

"SHIP-SHAPE AND SEAMAN-FASHION."

There wasn't a doubt about that, and no lad surely ever got a happier
welcome home.

Bob and Murrams knew him, and the Admiral too, who danced for joy in the
back-garden when Ransey Tansey went to see him.

Everybody, with the exception of the father, seemed to walk on air that
night.  Mr Tandy was simply quietly happy.

Ransey was quite a man, Babs told him, and she felt sure he would soon
have a moustache.  Indeed, she brought a small magnifying-glass to
strengthen her convictions on this point.

What a lot lads have to tell when they return from sea for the first
time! and their friends cannot give them greater pleasure than by
listening to all their adventures and "hairbreadth scapes;" sympathising
with them in sorrows past and gone, and dangers encountered, and
thanking Providence that they have been spared to come safely home from
off the stormy ocean.

Ransey had gone to the old cottage first, not knowing anything about the
change.  He had found strangers there, and his heart had sunk to zero.

"Perhaps," he thought, "they are dead and gone."

No Bob to meet him! no Babs! no dancing crane!

He hadn't had the heart to go in; he just ran right away to Captain
Weathereye's, and he told him all.

Ransey had had to sling his hammock here the first night, and visit Miss
Scragley's next day.

And Eedie was now ten years of age, and shy, but welcomed Ransey with a
soft handshake and a bonnie blush, and in her little secret morsel of a
heart admired him.

"Didn't I tell you I'd make a man of him, Miss Scragley?  See how tall
he is.  Look at those bold blue eyes of his, and the sea-tan on his
cheeks," said the captain.

No wonder that it was Ransey's turn to blush.

"Tell your father, dear boy, that in four or five days I'm coming down
to B--to see him.  A breath of the briny will do an old barnacle like me
a power of good."

"That I will," the boy had replied.

Then, after saying good-bye, Ransey went off to see Mrs Farrow; and
that good lady was indeed pleased, for she had always had an idea that
those who went to sea hardly ever returned.

She had to put the corner of her apron to her eyes now; but, if she did
shed a tear, it was one of joy and nothing else.

Well, it would have done your heart good to have witnessed the happiness
of Ransey and Babs, as they wandered hand in hand along the golden
sands.  Bob, too, was so elated that he hardly knew what to do with
himself at first.  This joy, however, settled down into a watchful kind
of care and love for his young master; and he used to walk steadily
behind him on the beach as if afraid that, if he once let him out of
sight, he might be spirited away and never be seen again.

The Admiral was quite a seafarer now, and wonderful and sweet were the
morsels he found or dug up for himself on the wet stretches of sand.
The sea-gulls at first had taken him for something uncanny; but they now
took him for granted, and walked about quite close to him, although at
times, when this marvellous bird took it into his long head that a dance
would do him good and increase his circulation, they were scared indeed,
and flew screaming seawards.

But the Admiral didn't mind that a bit; he just kept dancing away till
there really didn't seem to be a bit more dance left in him.  Then he
desisted, and went in for serious eating once more.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

One beautiful day, while the dancing crane was holding a levee of
sea-gulls, with a sprinkling of rooks, far seawards on the wet sands,
while Mr Tandy was seated, smoking as usual, on a bench with his
children near him, Bob uttered a defiant kind of a growl, and stood up
with his hair on end from ears to rump.  A gentleman dressed in blue,
with sailor's cap on his head, and reading a newspaper, was approaching
the seat, on which there was plenty of room for one more.

But it was not at him that Bob was growling.  No, but at a beautiful
Scottish collie which was walking by his side.

Bob rushed forward at once, and the two met face to face and heads up.

Scottie carried his tail defiantly high.

Young England would have done the same with his, had he had anything to
show.

The conversation seemed to be somewhat as follows:--

"You and I are about the same size, aren't we?" said Bob.

"There isn't much to figure on between us, I think," replied Scottie.

"Lower your flag, then, or I'll shake you out of your skin."

"Scotland never lowered flag to a foreigner yet.  Why don't you raise
your standard?  Why, because you haven't got one to raise.  Ha, ha! what
a fright you are!  I only wonder your master lets you go about like
that."

"Yah--ah--r-r--r-r--r-r!"

"Waugh--r-r--r-r--r-r--r!"

And there _was_ war next second.

Tandy rushed to the scene of action.

"I'm very sorry, sir," he said.  "Which dog, do you think, began the
fight?"

"I think they both began it," said the newcomer, laughing.

Scotland and England were having a terrible tulzie, as Scotland and
England have often had in days long, long gone by.

They were rolling over each other, sometimes Bob above, sometimes Bob
below, and the yellow sands were soon stained with blood.

Little Nelda was in tears, and the Admiral scray-scraying and dancing
with joy.

"I think," said the stranger, "they've both had enough of it, and my
proposal is this--I'll pull my dog off by the tail, and you do the same
by yours."

"I'd gladly do so," said Tandy, laughing, "but, my dear sir, the fact is
that my dog is like Tam o' Shanter's mare after she escaped from the
witches--

  "`The ne'er a tail has he to shake.'"

Dogs are just like men, however, and these two, seemingly satisfied that
neither could kill the other, soon made it up, and presently they went
galloping off together to the sea to wash the sand out of their shaggy
jackets.

Down sat the stranger between Ransey and his father.  He rolled up his
paper and lit his pipe, and soon the two were engaged in a very animated
conversation.

Sailors all three.  No wonder that the acquaintance thus brought about
by their honest dogs ripened into friendship in a few days.

Captain Halcott--for so this new friend was named--had, some months
before this, reached England after a very long and strangely adventurous
cruise.

"Are you like me, I wonder?" he said to Tandy, as they sat smoking the
calumet of peace together on a breezy cliff-top, while Ransey and his
sister were fishing for curios in the pools of water left among the
rocks by the receding tide.  "Are you like me, I wonder? for I am no
sooner safely arrived in Merrie England than I begin once more to long
for life on the heaving billows."

"You're a free man, Captain Halcott; I've got a little family; and
you're a somewhat younger man, as well."

"Yes, yes; granted.  But, before going further, tell me what is your
Christian name?"

"Dick."

"Well, and mine's Charlie.  We're both seafarers; don't let us `Mr'
each other, or `captain' each other either.  You're Tandy or you're
Dick, I'm Halcott or I'm Charlie, just as, for the time being, the
humour may suit us.  Is that right?"

"That's right--ship-shape and seaman-fashion."  Two brown fists met and
were shaken--no mincing landlubber's shake, but a firm and hearty grip
and wholesome pressure; a grip that seemed to speak and to say,--"Thine,
lad, thine!  Thine in peace or war; in calm or tempest, thine!"

How is it that sailors so often resemble one another?  I cannot answer
the question.  But it is none the less true.

Tandy and Halcott appeared to have been cast in the same mould; the same
open, bronzed, and weather-beaten faces, the same eyes--eyes that could
twinkle with merriment one moment and be filled with pity the next.

Even Captain Weathereye himself, although older than either, and
somewhat lighter in complexion, might easily have passed as brother to
both.

"Well," said Halcott, "I daresay you have a story to tell."

"I've had strange experiences in life, and some were sad enough.  For
the sake of that dear boy and girl, I thank God I am no longer in the
grip of poverty; but, my friend, I've seen worse days."

"Tell us, Tandy."

Tandy told him, sitting there, all the reader already knows and much
more, receiving silent but heartfelt sympathy.

"So you've sold the _Merry Maiden_!"

"Yes; although some of the happiest years of my life were spent on board
of her, and in the little cottage.  Heigho!  I wish I could bring back
the past; but if I live to be able to afford it, I shall build a house
where the old cot stands, and will just end my days there, you know.
And now for your story."

"Oh, that is a strange and a sad one; but as your friend is coming down
to-morrow, I propose postponing it.  This Captain Weathereye must, from
all you say, be a real jolly fellow."

This was agreed to; and next morning Tandy met bluff old Weathereye at
the little railway station.

"I'll stay a week, Tandy, a whole week.  Yes, my hearty, I'll gladly
make your house my home, and shall rejoice to see your friend, and hear
the yarn he has got to spin."

Book 2--CHAPTER THREE.

A QUARTERDECK DREAM.

"Once a sailor, gentlemen," began Halcott, as he filled his pipe, gazing
thoughtfully over the sea, "always a sailor.

"That's a truism, I believe.  Why, the very sight of the waves out
yonder, with the evening sunlight dancing and playing on their surface,
makes me even at this moment long to tread the deck again.

"And there are, perhaps, few seafarers who have more inducements to stay
at home than I, Charlie Halcott, have.

"I have a beautiful house of my own, and some day soon, I hope, you will
both come and see it, and judge for yourselves.

"My house has a tower to it.  Many a night, while walking the
quarterdeck keeping my watch, with no companions save the silver-shining
stars, I have said to myself--`Charlie Halcott,' I have said, `if ever
you leave off ploughing the ocean wave, and settle down on shore, you
must have a house with a tower to it.'

"And now I've got it.

"A large, square, old-fashioned tower it is, with a mullioned window on
each side of it; and up the walls the dense green ivy climbs, with just
enough Virginia creeper to cast a glamour of crimson over it in autumn,
like the last red rays of the setting sun.

"One window looks up the valley of the Thames, where not far off is a
little Niagara, a snow-white weir: I can hear the drowsy monotone of its
foaming waters by night and by day, and its song is ever the same.
Another window looks away down the valley, and the river here goes
winding in and out among the meadows and the green and daisied leas,
till, finally, it takes the appearance of a silver string, and loses
itself, or is lost to me, amidst the distant trees.  A third window,
from which I dearly like to look early on a summer's morning, while the
blackbirds are yet in fullest, softest song, shows an English landscape
that to me is the sweetest of the sweet.  As far as eye can reach, till
bounded by the grey horizon's haze, are woods and wilds and meadows
green, with the red gables or the roofs of many a stately farm peeping
up through the rolling cloudland of foliage; and many a streamlet too,
seen here and there in the sunbeams, as it goes speeding on towards the
silent river.

"But though this house of mine has a tower to it, it is not a castle by
any means, apart from the fact that every Englishman's house is his
castle.  I have a tower, but no donjon keep.  My castle is a villa--`a
handsome modern-built villa,' the agent described it when I commenced
correspondence with a view to its purchase.  It is indeed a beautiful
villa, and it is situated high up on the brow of a hill, all among the
dreamy woods.

"Though I have been but a short spell on shore, my town friends already
call me the `Sailor hermit,' because I stick to my castle and its woods
and gardens.  Not for a single day can they prevail upon me to exchange
it for the bustle and din of hideous London.  But I retaliated on my
city friends by bringing them down to my `castle' in spring time, when
the early flowers were opening their petals in the warm sunshine, and
the very tulips seemed panting in the heat, and when there was such a
gush of bird-melody coming from grove and copse and hedgerow that every
leaf seemed to hide a feathered songster.  And I rejoiced to see those
friends of mine struck dumb by the wealth of beauty they beheld around
them.  For Philomel was making day melodious with a strange, unearthly
music.

"All through the darkness the bird sang to his mate, and all through the
day as well.  No bolder birds than our nightingales live.  They sing at
our side, at our feet; they sing as they fly, sing as they alight, sing
_to_ us, ay and _at_ us defiantly.  No wonder we all love this sweet
bird, this sweet spirit of the spring.

"So my quarterdeck dream has become a dear reality.

"Strange to say, it is always at night that I think most of the ocean.
And on nights of storm--then it is that I lie awake listening to the
wind roaring through the stately elms, with a sound like the sough of
gale-tossed waves.  It is then I long to tread once more the deck of my
own bonnie barque, and feel her move beneath me like a veritable thing
of life and reason.  My house with the ivied tower is well away among
the midlands; and yet on nights of tempest, sea-birds--the gull, and the
tern, and the light-winged kittywake--often fly around the house and the
trees.  I can hear their voices rising shrill and high above the roar of
the wind.

"`Kaye--kay--ay--ay,' they scream.  `Come away--come away--ay,' they
seem to cry.  `Why have you left us? why have you left the seas?  We
miss you.  Come away--come away--ay--ay.'

"Never into my quarterdeck dreams, gentlemen, had there come, strange to
say, a companion fair of womankind.  My house with the tower to it
should be just as it is to-day, just what--following out my dreams--I
have made it.  Its gardens all should bloom surpassing fair, my woods
and trees be green; the rose lawns should look like velvet; my ribboned
flower-beds like curves of coloured light; the nightingales in spring
should bathe in the spray of my fountains,--there should be joy and
loveliness and bird-song everywhere, but a wife?--well, I had somehow
never dreamt of that.  If any of the officers--for I was captain and
part owner of the good barque _Sea Flower_--had been bold enough to
suggest such a thing--I mean such a _person_, I should have laughed at
him where he stood.  `Who,' I should have said, `would many a simple
sailor like me, over thirty, brown-red in face, and hard in hands.  Who
indeed?'

"But into my quarterdeck dreams companions had come.  Should I not have
jolly farmers and solid-looking red-faced squires to dine with me, and
to smoke with me out of doors in the cool of midsummer evenings, or in
the cosy red parlour around the fire in the long forenights of winter,
and listen to my yarns of the dark blue sea, or talk to me of the
delights of rural life?  Well, it was a pretty dream, it must be
admitted.

"But it never struck me then, as it does now, that all the joys of life
are tame indeed, unless shared by some one you love more than all things
bright and fair.

"A pretty dream--and a beautiful dream.  A piece of ice itself is
beautiful at times; but perhaps, as we stand and admire it, the sunshine
may steal down and melt it.  Then we find that we love the sunshine even
more than we loved the ice.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"It is not every sailor who has the luck to be captain, or, to speak
more correctly, master, of so fine a sailing craft as the _Sea Flower_,
at the age of twenty-six.  But such had been my fortune; and I had
sailed the seas in her for six long years, and, with the exception of
the few accidents inseparable from a life at sea, I had never had a
serious mishap.  Many a wild gale had we weathered in her, my mate and
I; many a dark and tempestuous night had we staggered along under bare
poles; more than once had we sprung a leak, and twice had we been on
fire.

"But all ended well, and during our brief spells on shore, either in
England or in some foreign port, though James and I always managed to
enjoy ourselves in our own quiet way, yet neither he nor I was sorry
when we got back home again to our bonnie barque, and were once more
afloat on the heaving sea.

"James was perhaps more of a sailor than I.  Well, he was some years my
senior, and he was browner and harder by far, and every inch a man.  And
though a very shy one, as far as female society is concerned, he was a
very bold one nevertheless.  But for his courageous example on the night
of our last fire, the _Sea Flower_ would have helped to swell the list
of those ships that go to sea and are heard of no more.

"When we were taken aback in a white squall in the Indian Ocean, and it
verily seemed that we had but a few minutes to float, James was here,
there, and everywhere, his manly voice, calm and collected, ringing high
above the roaring of the wind and the surging of the terrible seas.  The
very fire of his bravery on that occasion affected the men, and they
worked as only bold men can work in face of death and danger, till our
craft was once more righted and tearing along before the wind.

"And just as brave on shore as afloat was sturdy James Malone.

"When our steward was attacked by fifty spear-armed savages on shore at
the Looboo Island, my mate seized a club that a gorilla could hardly
have wielded, and fought his way through the black and vengeful crowd,
till he reached and saved our faithful steward.

"And, that day, it was not until he had almost reached the ship that he
told me, with that half-shy and quiet smile of his, that he believed he
was slightly wounded.  Then he fainted dead away.

"I nursed poor James back to health.  Yes, but more than once, both
before and after that event, he nursed me, and I doubt if even a brother
could have been half so kind as my mate James.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"For many a long year, then, James and I had sailed the salt seas
together.  Without James sitting opposite me at the table at breakfast
or at dinner, the neatly painted and varnished saloon, with all its
glittering odds and ends, wouldn't have seemed the same.  Without James
sitting near me on the quarterdeck on black-dark evenings in the
tropics, I should have felt very strange and lonesome indeed.

"But James and I didn't agree on every subject on which we conversed.
Had we done so, conversation would have lost its special charm.  No, he
aired his opinions and I shook out mine.  There were times when I
convinced James; there were times when James convinced me; there were
times when neither convinced the other, and then we agreed to differ.

"`Very well, sir,' James would say, `you has your 'pinions, and I has
mine.  You keeps to your 'pinions, and I sticks to mine.'

"It will be noted that James's ordinary English would scarcely have
passed muster in the first families of Europe.  But, like many of his
class, James could talk correctly enough when he set himself the task.
But there was no better sailor afloat for all that, and on the stormiest
night or squalliest day I always felt safe when my first mate trod the
planks.

"James could tell a good story too, and I used to keep him at it of an
evening--any evening save Sunday.  On Sunday, James did nothing in the
intervals of duty except read the Bible--the `Good Book,' as he called
it.  This New Testament was one of those large type editions which very
old people use.

"His mother--dead and gone--had left him that Book, and also her
gold-rimmed specs, and it was interesting, on a Sunday afternoon, to see
James sitting solemnly down to the Book, and shipping those specs
athwart his nose.

"`What on earth,' I said once to him, `do you use the specs for, my
friend?'

"When James looked up at me, half-upbraidingly, those eyes of his, seen
through the powerful lenses, looked as big and wild and round as a
catamount's.  It was unearthly.

"`My mother bade me.  Would you disobey your mother?'

"This was a bombshell, and I said no more.

"But there was one subject on which James and I never disagreed--namely,
`the ladies,' as he called women folks.  `They are deceitful above all
things, and desperately wicked,' James would say, `and I means to steer
clear on 'em.'  And James always did.

"There was one pleasure James and I had in common--namely, witnessing a
good tragedy on the boards of Liverpool theatre.  You see this was our
port of destination on our return from the far, far south.  Mind, we
wouldn't go to see a drama, because there might be too much nonsensical
love business in it, and too many of `the frivolous antics of women'--
James's own words.  But in a tragedy the women often came to grief,
which James thought was only natural.

"So we chose tragedy.

"Now, one night at this same theatre, I had one of the strangest
experiences of my life; and never yet have I found any one who could
explain it.

"James and I had gone early that evening, because there was something
specially tragic on, and we desired to secure good seats.  We sat in the
front row, and at the left end of the row, because we wished to leave
the theatre between each act to enjoy a few whiffs of tobacco.

"The play was well begun, and my eyes were riveted on the stage.  There
was a momentary silence, and during this time I was sensible, from a
slight rustling noise, that the private box behind and above me was
being occupied.

"Did you ever hear psychologists mention the term or feeling `ecstasy'?
That was what stole over me now.  For a few minutes I saw nothing on the
stage; only a feeling of intense happiness, such as I have seldom
experienced since that night, stole over me, occupying, bathing, I may
say, my whole soul and mind.

"I turned at last, and my eyes met those of a young lady in that private
box.  Never before had I seen such radiant beauty.  Never had I been
impressed with beauty of any kind before.  My heart almost stood still.
It was really an awful moment--that is, if intense happiness can ever be
awful.

"Well, if it is possible for a sailor, with a face as brown as the back
of a fiddle, to blush, I blushed.  She, too, I think, coloured just a
little.

"What was it?  What could it mean?

"I know not how I sat out the act.  When I rose with James to go out, I
dared one other glance towards the box.  The lady had gone, and a
feeling of coldness crept round my heart.  I felt as depressed now as I
had recently felt happy.

"`James,' I said, `take me home, I--I believe I'm ill.'

"`Why,' said James, `you look as though you had seen a ghost.'

"I got home.  Something, I knew not what, was going to happen; but all
that night dream after dream haunted my pillow, and of every dream, the
sweet young face I had seen in the private box was the only thing I
could remember when daylight broke athwart the eastern sky."

Book 2--CHAPTER FOUR.

"DEAR, UNSELFISH, BUT SOMEWHAT SILLY FELLOW."

"I never had a secret from James Malone; no, not so much as one.  Had I
known what was the matter with me on the evening before, I should have
told James manfully and in a moment.

"But when he came to my rooms in the morning, to share my humble
breakfast, and consult about the duties of the day, we being just then
fitting out for sea,--

"`James,' I began--

"And then--well, then I told him all the story, even down to my strange
dreams and the sweet young face that had haunted them.

"`Why, James,' I concluded, `I have only to close my eyes now to see her
once again, and I can neither read nor write without thinking of her.'

"James sat silently beholding me for fully a minute.  His face was
clouded, and pity and anxiety were in every lineament of his manly
features.

"`I'm taken aback,' he stammered at last.  `White squalls is nothin' to
it.  Charlie Halcott, you're _in love_.  It's an awful, fearful thing.
No surgical operation can do anything for you.  It's worse by far than I
thought.  A mild touch of the cholera would be mere moonshine to this.
A brush wi' Yellow Jack wouldn't be a circumstance to it.  O Halcott,
Halcott!  O Charlie! what _am_ I to do with you?'

"`James,' I interrupted, `light your pipe.  Did _you_ see the beautiful
vision--the lovely child?'

"`I followed your eyes.'

"`And what saw you, James?'  I asked, leaning eagerly towards him.

"`I saw what appeared to be--a woman.  Nothin' more and nothin' less.'

"`James, did you not notice her blue and heavenly eyes, that seemed to
swim in ether; her delicately pencilled eyebrows; the long lashes that
swept the rounded rosy cheeks; her golden hair like sunset's glow; her
little mouth; her lips like the blossom of the blueberry, and the
delicate play of her mobile countenance?'

"`Delicate play of a mobile marling-spike!' cried James, jumping up.  He
rammed a piece of paper into his pipe and thrust it into his pocket.

"`Charles Halcott, I'm off,' he cried.

"`Off, James?'

"`Yes, off.  Every man Jack shall be on board the _Sea Flower_ to-day,
bag and baggage.  We'll drop down stream to-morrow morning early, ship a
pilot, and get away to sea without more ado.'

"He was at the door by the time he had finished but he stopped a moment
with a look of wondrous pity on his handsome face, then came straight
back and clasped my hand in brotherly affection, and so, without another
word, walked out and away.

"Now, I was master of the _Sea Flower_, but in the matter of sailing
next day--three or four whole days before I had intended--I should no
more have thought of gainsaying honest James Malone than of disobeying
my father had he been alive.  James was acting towards me with true
brotherly affection, quite disinterestedly in my behalf, and--_quien
sabe_?--probably saving me from a lifetime's misery.

"I would be advised by James.

"So after he had left, and I had smoked in solitary sadness for about an
hour, I rose with a sigh, and commenced throwing my things together in
the great mahogany sea-chest that while afloat stood in my state-room,
and which on shore I never travelled without.

"For the whole of that forenoon I wandered about the streets of
Liverpool, looking chiefly at the photographers' windows.  I was
bewitched, and possessed some faint hope of seeing a photograph of her
who had bewitched me.  I even entered the shops under pretence of
bargaining for a likeness of my sailor-self, and looked over their books
of specimens.

"Had I come across her picture, the temptation to purchase it would, I
fear, have proved irresistible.

"Suddenly I pulled myself taut up with a round turn, and planked myself,
so to speak, on my mental quarterdeck before Commander Conscience.

"`What are you doing, or trying to do, Charles Halcott?' said Commander
Conscience.

"`Only trying,' replied Charles Halcott, `to procure a photograph of the
loveliest young lady on earth, whose eyes shine like stars in beauty's
night.'

"`Don't be a fool, Charles Halcott.  Are you not wise enough to know
that, even if you procure this photograph, you will have to keep it a
secret from honest James Malone?  His friendship is better far than love
of womankind.  Besides,' added Commander Conscience, `you need no
photograph.  Is not the image of the lady who has bewitched you
indelibly photographed upon your soul?  Charles Halcott, I am ashamed of
you!'

"I stood at a window for a few minutes, looking sheepish enough; then I
threw temptation to the winds, put about, and sailed right away back to
my chambers, studding-sails set low and aloft.

"I finished packing, saw my owners in the afternoon, and when James came
off to the ship he found me quietly smoking my biggest pipe in the
saloon of the _Sea Flower_.

"He smiled now.

"`Better already,' he said; `His name be praised!'

"James was a strange man in some ways.  This was one: he thanked Heaven
for every comfort, even the slightest, and did nothing without, in a
word or two, asking a blessing thereon.

"In three days' time we were staggering southwards, and away across
Biscay's blue bay, with every inch of canvas set.  And a pretty sight we
were--our white sails flowing in the sunshine--the sea as blue as the
sky, and the waves sparkling around us as if every drop of water
contained a diamond.

"All the way to the Cape, and farther, James treated me as tenderly and
compassionately as if I had been an invalid brother.  He never
contradicted me even once.  He used to keep me talking and yarning on
the quarterdeck, when he wasn't on watch, for whole hours at a stretch;
and in the evenings, when tired spinning me yarns, he would take his
banjo and sing to me old sea-songs in his bold and thrilling voice.  And
James could sing too; there were the brine, and the breeze, and the
billows' roll in every bar of the grand old songs he sang, and indeed I
was never tired of listening to them.  Sometimes I closed my eyes as I
sat in my easy-chair; then James's banjo notes grew softer and softer,
and ever so much farther away like, till at last it was ghostly music,
and I was in the land of dreams.

"When I awoke, perhaps it would be four bells or even six, and there
would be James, with his specs athwart his great jibboom of a nose,
poring earnestly over his mother's Bible.

"`You've had a nice little nap,' he would say cheerfully.  `Now you'll
toddle off to your bunk, and when you're safe between the sheets I'll
bring you a tiny little drop of rum and treacle.'

"Poor James!  Rum and treacle was his panacea for every ill; and yet I
don't believe any one in the wide world ever saw James the worse of even
rum and treacle.

"When we got as far as to Madeira, he proposed we should anchor here for
a few days and dispose of some of our notions.  Notions formed our
cargo; and notions must be understood to mean, Captain Weathereye, all
kinds of jewellery and knick-knacks, including table-knives and forks,
watches, strings of bright beads, cotton cloths, parasols, and guns.
Now I knew very well that we could easily dispose of all our cargo at
the Cape and other parts; but I also knew very well that James's main
object in stopping at Madeira was to give me a few delightful days on
shore.

"This was part of the cure, and I had to submit with the best grace I
could.

"We had, at that time, as handy and good a second mate as any one could
wish on the weather side of a quarterdeck.  So it was easy enough for
myself and James to leave the ship both at the same time, though this
had very seldom been our custom, except when in dock or in harbour.

"To put it in plain language, James did not seem to know how good to be
to me, nor how much to amuse me.  The honest, simple soul kept talking
and yarning to me all the while, and pointing out this, that, and the
other strange thing to me, until I was obliged to laugh in his face.
But James was not offended; not he.  He was working according to some
plan he had formulated in his own mind, and nothing was going to turn
him aside from his purpose.

"About midday we entered the veranda of a cool and delightful hotel, and
seating ourselves at a little marble table, James called for cigars and
iced drinks.  Then he proposed we should luncheon.  No, he would pay, he
said; it was not often he had the honour or pleasure of lunching with
his captain, in a marble palace like this.  So he pulled out an old sock
tied round with a morsel of blue ribbon, and thrusting his big brown paw
into it, brought forth money in abundance.

"`Never been here before?' he asked me quietly.

"`No,' I said; `strange to say I've touched at nearly every port in the
world except this place.'

"`Well, I have,' said James, `and I'm going to put you up to the ropes.'

"`Now,' he continued, when we stood once more under the greenery of the
trees that bordered the broad pavement, `will you have a hammock or a
horse?'

"Not knowing quite what he meant, I replied that I would leave it to
him.

"`Well,' he said, `this must be considered a kind of picnic, them's my
notions, and as you're far from well yet, I'll have a horse and you a
hammock.'

"Both horse and hammock were soon brought round to the door.  The
hammock was borne by two perspiring half-caste Portuguese, and was
attached to a pole, and on board I swung, while James got on board the
horse.  The saddle was a hard and horrid contrivance of leather and
wood, the stirrups a pair of old slippers, and the horse himself--well,
he was a beautiful study in equine osteology, and I really did not know
which to pity most, James or his Rosinante.  But in my hammock I felt
comfortably, dreamily happy.

"We passed through the quaint old town of Funchal, then upwards, and
away towards the mountains.  The day was warm and delightful--hot indeed
James must have found it, for he soon divested himself of coat and
waistcoat, and even then he had to pause at times to wipe his streaming
brow.  The peeps at the beautiful gardens I caught while being carried
along were charming in the extreme; the verandaed and trellised villas,
canopied with flowers of every hue and shape, the bright green lawns
where fairy-like children played, and the flowering trees--the whole
forming ever-changing scenes of enchantment--I shall never forget.  Then
the soft and balmy air was laden with perfume.

"`How nice,' I thought, `to be an invalid!  How kind of James to treat
me as one!  And he jogging along there on that bony horse's back, with
the boy holding fast by the tail!  Dear, unselfish, but somewhat silly
fellow!'

"Upwards still, steeper and steeper the hill.  And now we seemed to have
mounted into the very sky itself, and were far away from the tropics and
tropical flora.

"We came at last to a table-land.  For the life of me I could not help
thinking of the story of `Jack and the Bean-stalk.'  Here gorgeous
heaths and heather bloomed and grew; here birds of sweet song flitted
hither and thither among the scented and the yellow-tasselled broom; and
here solemn weird-like pine-trees waved dark against the far-off ocean's
blue.

"Under some of these trees, and close to the cliff, we disembarked to
rest.  We were fully half a mile above the level of the sea.  Yet not a
stone's throw from where we sat was the edge of the awful cliff that led
downwards without a break to that white line far beneath where the waves
frothed and fumed against the rocks.

"But far as the eye could reach, till lost in distance and merged into
the blue of the sky, lay the azure sea, with here and there a sail, the
largest of which looked no bigger than a white butterfly with folded
wings.

"A delicious sense of happiness stole over me, and for the first time,
perhaps, since leaving England I forgot the sweet young face that had so
completely bewitched me.

"I think I must have fallen asleep, for the next thing I was sensible of
was James tuning a broad guitar.

"Then his voice was raised in song, and I closed my eyes again, the
better to listen.

"Poor James, he played and sang for over an hour; no wild, wailing
sea-songs this time, however, but verses sweet and plaintive, and far
more in harmony with the notes of the sad guitar.  The romance of our
situation, the stillness of our surroundings, unbroken save in the
intervals of song by the flitting of a wild bird among the broom, and
the low whisper of the wind through the pine-trees overhead, with the
balmy ozonic air from the blue ocean, continued to instil into my soul a
feeling of calm and perfect joy to which I had hitherto been a stranger.

"Just as the sun was sinking like a great blood orange through a purple
haze that lay along the western horizon, James laughingly handed the
guitar to the boy who had carried it.  Then laughing still--he was so
strange and good this James of mine--he pulled out a silver-mounted
flask and poured me out a portion of its contents.

"It was a little rum and treacle.

"`The dews of night isn't going to harm you after that,' said James.

"Lights were glimmering here and there on the hills like glow-worms, and
far beneath us in the town, long before we reached the streets of
Funchal.

"We went straight to the hotel and discharged both horse and hammock.

"Then we dined.

"I thought I should be allowed to go on board after this.  Not that
there was the slightest hurry.

"However, I was mistaken for once.  James had not yet done with me for
the night.  I had still another prescription of his to use; and as I
knew it was part and parcel of James's love cure, I could not demur.  He
had given me so much pleasure on that day already, that when he asked me
to get up and follow him I did so as obediently as the little lamb
followed Mary.

"But that he, James Malone, who feared womankind, if he did not
positively hate them, should lead me to a Portuguese ballroom of all
places in the world, surprised me more than anything.

"I could hear the tinkling of guitars, the shuffling of feet, and the
music of merry, laughing voices, long before we came near the door.

"I stopped short.

"`James,' I said, `haven't you made some mistake?'

"His only answer was a roguish laugh.

"I repeated the question.

"`Not a bit of it,' he answered gaily.

"`Charlie Halcott,' he added, `if you were simply suffering from Yellow
Jack I'd hand you over to a doctor, but, Charles Halcott, it takes a
_man_ to cure love.  And you've been sorely hit.'

"This had been a day of surprises, but when I entered that ballroom
there came the greatest surprise of all.  Those here assembled were not
so-called gentle-folks.  They were the sons and daughters of the
ordinary working classes; but the taste displayed, the banks of flowers
around the orchestra, the gay bouquets and coloured lights along the
walls, the polished and not overcrowded floor, the romantic dresses of
the gallants that transported one back to the middle ages, the
snow-white costumes of the ladies, and, above all, their innocent,
ravishing beauty, formed a scene that reminded me strongly of stories I
had read in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.

"I was almost ashamed of my humble attire, but the courtesy of the
master of ceremonies was charming.  Would the strangers dance?  Surely
the stranger sailors would dance?  He would get us, as partners, the
loveliest senoritas in all the room.

"So he did.

"I forgot everything in that soft, dreamy waltz--everything save the
thrilling music and the sylph-like form of my dark-eyed partner, who
floated with me through the perfumed air, for surely our feet never
touched the floor.

"But the drollest thing of all was this--James was dancing too.  James
with his--well, I must not say aversion to, but fear and shyness of
womankind, was dancing; and I knew he was only doing so to encourage me.
A handsome fellow he looked, too, almost head and shoulders taller than
any man there, and broad and well-knit in proportion.  The master of
ceremonies had got him a partner `for to match,' as he expressed it;
certainly a beautiful girl, with a wealth of raven hair that I had never
seen equalled, far less surpassed.  I daresay she could dance lightly;
but James's waltzing was of a very solid brand indeed, and he swung his
pretty partner round the room in a way that seemed to indicate business
rather than pleasure.  Several couples cannoned off James and went
ricochetting to the farther end of the room, and one went down.  James
swung past me a moment after, apparently under a heavy press of canvas,
and as he did so I heard him say to his partner, referring to the couple
he had brought to deck,--

"`They should keep out o' the way, then, when people are dancing.'

"The hours sped quickly by, as they always do in a ballroom, and by the
time James and I got on board the _Sea Flower_ four bells in the
middle-watch were ringing out through the still, dark night.  But all
was safe and quiet on board.

"I took a turn on deck to enjoy a cigar before going below, just by way
of cooling my brow.  When I went down at last, why, there was James
seated at the table, his mother's Bible before him, and, as usual, the
awful specs across his nose.

"Poor James, he was a strange man, but a sincere friend, as the sequel
will show."

Book 2--CHAPTER FIVE.

"TILL THE SEA GIVES UP ITS DEAD."

From Madeira, where we stayed for many days, going on shore every
forenoon to sell some of our cargo to the shopkeepers, and every
afternoon for a long ride--horse and hammock--over some part or other of
this island of enchantment, sometimes finishing up with a dance--from
all this pleasure and delight, I say, we sailed away at last.

"South and away we sailed, and in due time we reached and anchored off
Saint James's Town, Saint Helena.

"Now, Saint Helena had not figured in our programme when we left Merry
England.  But here we were, and a most delightful place I found it.
Hills and dells, mountains and glens; wild flowers everywhere; and the
blue eternal sea dotted with many a snow-white sail, engirdling all.
This, then, was the `lonely sterile rock in the midst of the wild
tempestuous ocean,' to which Napoleon had been banished.

"James had been here before, although I had not, so everything was of
interest to me, and everything new.  And my good mate determined to make
it as pleasant for me as possible.  He seemed to know every one, and
every one appeared delighted to see him.  Such remarks as the following
fell upon our ears at every corner:--

"`Well, you've got back again, James?'

"`What! here you are once more, James, and welcome.'

"`Dee--lighted to see you, certain--lee!'

"`Ah!  Jeames,'--this from a very aged crone, who was seated on a stone
dais near her door, basking in the warm, white sunshine--`ah!  Jeames,
and sure the Lord is good to me.  And my old eyes are blessed once more
wi' a sight o' your kindly face!'

"`Glad to see you alive, Frilda.  And look, I have got a pound of tea
for you.  And I'll come to-night and read a bit out of my mother's Good
Book to you.'

"`Bless you, Jeames--bless you, my boy.'

"We went rambling all over the island that day.  We visited the fort,
where James had many friends; then we went up a beautiful glen, and on
reaching the top we struck straight off at right angles, and a walk of
about half a mile took us to one of the most pleasantly situated farms I
have ever seen.  It was owned by the farmer, a Scotsman of the name of
MacDonald.  Nothing flimsy about this fine house.  The walls were built
of sturdy stone, and must have been some feet thick, so that indoors in
the cheerful parlour it was cool and delightful, especially so with the
odour of orange blossom blowing through the open window and pervading
the whole room.

"`Man, James, I'm so pleased.  Here!  Hi!  Mrs Mac, where are you?
Here's James Malone, the honest, simple sumph come back again.  Jamie,
man, ye must stop all night and give us a song.'

"`We--ll--I--'

"`No _wells_ nor _I's_ about it.  And your friend here too.'

"Mrs Mac was a very little body, with rosy cheeks, a merry voice, and
blue eyes that looked you through and through.

"A little girl and boy came running in, and James soon had one on each
knee; and while I and MacDonald talked in the window recess, he was deep
in the mysteries of a mermaid story, his tiny audience listening with
wondering eyes and rosy lips apart.

"Mrs Mac had gone bustling away to send in a dram of hollands,
cunningly flavoured with seeds and fruit rind.  She disappeared
immediately again, to send orders down to James's Town for fish and
fowl.

"Of course we would stay all night?

"`Well,' I said, `the ship is safe, unless a tornado blows.'

"`There will be no tornado, sir,' said Farmer Mac.

"`I'll send off, then, and tell the second mate.'

"`My henchman is at your service, Captain Halcott.'

"`And look, see,' cried James, `just tell your henchman to bring my Good
Book and specs.  I haven't the heart to disappoint old Mother Banks.'

"`And the guitar,' I added.

"`Well--well, yes.'

"The children clapped their hands with glee, and Maggie, the girl,
pulled James's face towards her by the whiskers and kissed him.

"We started next for Longwood and Napoleon's tomb.  Maggie and Jack--ten
and nine years old respectively--came with us, and a right pleasant day
we spent.  There were bright-winged birds flitting hither and thither in
the dazzling sunshine, and singing sweet and low in trees of darkest
green; but the happy voices of the children made sweeter music far to my
ears, and I'm sure to James's too.

"All along the roadsides at some parts grew the tall cacti; they were
one mass of gorgeous crimson bloom, and here and there between, the
ground was carpeted with trailing blossoms white and blue; yet, in my
opinion, the laughing rosebud lips of Maggie and Jack's saucy eyes of
blue were prettier far than the flowers.

"And here, on the top of the dingle or glen, and overlooking the sea,
were Napoleon's house and garden.

"`Why, James,' I cried, `this isn't a dungeon any more than Saint Helena
is a rock.  It strikes me--a simple sailor--that Nap must have had fine
times of it.'

"`No, sir, no,' said James, shaking his head.  `Plenty to eat and drink,
plenty o' good clothes to wear, but ah!  Charles Halcott, he wasn't
free, and there burned inside him an unquenchable fire.  When in action,
on the field, or on the march, he had little time to think; but here, in
this solitude, the seared conscience regained its softness, and in his
thoughts by day and in his dreams at the dead hours o' night, Charles
Halcott, rose visions of the terrible misery he brought on Europe, and
the black and awful deeds he did in Egypt.  O sir, if you want to punish
a man, leave him alone to his conscience!'

"James Malone was in fine form that evening at Farmer Mac's.  He sang
and he yarned time about--the songs for the children, the yarns for us.
Parodying Tam o' Shanter, I might say:--

  "`The nicht drave on wi' sangs and clatter,
  Wi' childish glee, wi' bairnies' patter;
  The sailor tauld his queerest stories,
  The farmer's laugh was ready chorus;
  Till, hark! the clock strikes in the hall
  The wee short oor ayont the twal.'

"Before dinner that evening simple James had gone to see old Mother
Banks, and he spent a whole hour with her.

"`Good-bye, dear laddie,' she said, when he rose to leave; `I'll pray
for ye on the ragin' sea, but I know the Lord will never let me behold
ye again.'

"And simple James's eyes were wet with tears as he held her skinny hand
for a moment, then dropped it and bore away up the street, never once
looking back, so full was his heart.

"When the clock struck one, James shyly proposed a few moments'
devotion.  Then he mounted the awful specs and opened the Good Book.

"Half an hour after this, all in the great house were asleep, and not a
sound could I hear--for I lay long awake thinking--save the sighing of
the wind in the trees above my open jalousies, to me a very sweet and
soothing sound.

"`Heigho!'  I murmured to myself.  `Will I _ever_ have a home on the
green earth, I wonder, or shall I die on the blue sea?'

"Then I began to doze, and mingling with my waking thoughts came dreams
which proved that poor James's prescriptions had not yet been entirely
successful.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Just three weeks after this we were far away in the centre of the South
Atlantic Ocean, and bearing up for Rio de Janeiro.  The sea around us
was of the darkest blue, but sparkling in the sunshine, and there was
just sufficient wind to gladden the heart of a sailor.

"What induced James and me to change our plans and sail west instead of
south and east, I never could tell, though I have often thought about
it.  A friend of mine says it was Fate, and that Fate often rules the
destinies of men, despite all that can be done to alter her plans and
intentions.  This line of reasoning may be right; my friend is so often
right that I daresay it must be.

"But one thing now occurred to me that at times rendered me rather
uneasy, and which, when I tried to describe it to James, caused that
honest sailor some anxiety also.  I have spoken of it more than once to
so-called psychologists and even to so-called mediums; but their
attempted explanations, although seemingly satisfactory enough to
themselves, sounded to me like a mere chaos of words, the meaning of
which as a whole I never could fathom.  But the mystery with me was
this: I seemed at times to be possessed of a second self, or rather, a
second soul.

"I struggled against the feeling all I could, but in vain.  James read
his mother's Bible to me, and otherwise, not in a spiritual way, he did
all he could to cheer me up, as he phrased it.  But--and here comes in
the most curious part of it--I did not feel that I wanted any cheering
up.  I was happy enough in the companionship of my second self.  This
was not always present.  Sometimes absent for days indeed, and never as
yet did it talk to me in my dreams.  At other times it came, and would
be with me for hours; and it spoke to my mind as it were, I being
compelled to carry on a conversation, in thought, of course, but never
once did I have any notion beforehand as to what the remarks made were
to be.  They were simple in the extreme, and usually had reference to
the working or guidance of the ship, the setting or shortening of sail,
and making the good barque snug for the night.

"We called at Rio.  The harbour here could contain all the war fleets in
the world; grand old hills; a city as romantic as Edinburgh--that is,
when seen from the sea--quaintness of streets, a wealth and beauty of
vegetation, of treescape and flowerscape, that I have never seen
equalled anywhere, and a quaintly dressed, quiet, and indolent people.

"We landed much stores here and filled up with others.  On the whole,
James and I were not sorry we had come, we drove such excellent
bargains.

"Again, at Buenos Ayres, with its fine streets and public buildings, and
its miles upon miles of shallow sea all in front, we did trade enough to
please us.

"`When I retire from sailing the salt seas, sir,' said James, `it's 'ere
and nowhere else I'm goin' to make my 'ome; and I only wish the old lady
were livin', for then I'd retire after the very next voyage.'

"Shortly after resuming our voyage southwards towards the stormy Cape
Horn, we encountered gale after gale of wind that taxed all the strength
of our brave barque, as well as the skill of the officers and seamen.
Again and again had we to lie to for long dark days and nights; and when
we ventured to run before the storm, we had literally to stagger along
under bare poles.

"But when we reached the Cape at last, and stood away to the west around
the bleak and inhospitable shores of Tierra del Fuego, or the Land of
Fire, never before in all the years I had been to sea had I encountered
weather so fearful or waves so high and dangerous.  So stormy, indeed,
did it continue, that hardly did either James or I dare to hope we
should ever double the Cape.  But we both had a sailor's aversion to
turning back, and so struggled on and on.

"The danger seemed to culminate and the crisis come in earnest, when one
weird moonlight midnight we suddenly found ourselves bows on to a huge
iceberg, or rather one vast island of ice that appeared to have no
horizon either towards the north or towards the south.  The barrier
presented seemed impassable.  We could only try, so we put about on the
port tack, the wind blowing there with great violence from the west and
north.

"This course took us well off the great ice island.  It took us
southwards, moreover.

"`But why not steer northwards?' said James.  `We'd have to tack a bit,
it is true, only we'd be lessening our danger; leastways that's my
opinion.  This berg may be twenty or thirty miles long, and every mile
brings us closer to great bergs that, down yonder, float in dozens.
Before now, Charles Halcott, I've seen a ship sunk in the twinkling of a
marling-spike by a--'

"`By striking against a berg, James?'  I interrupted.  `So have I.'

"`No, sir, no; you're on the wrong tack.  Wherever big bergs are there
are small ones too--little, hard, green lumps of ice, not bigger than
the wheel-house, that to hit bows on would scarcely spill your tea.
But, friend, it is different where there are mountain seas on.  These
little green bergs are caught by a wave-top and hurled against the
ship's side with the strength of a thousand Titans.  And--the ship goes
down.'

"There was something almost solemn in the manner James brought out the
last four words.  It kept me silent for minutes; and shading my eyes
with my hand, I kept peering southwards into the weird-like moonshine,
the ice away on the right, a strange white haze to leeward, and far
ahead the foam-tipped waves, wild-maned horses of the ocean, careering
along on their awful course.

"`James,' I said at last, `danger or not danger, southwards I steer.
Something tells me to do so; everything bids me.  "Steer south--steer
south," chimes the bell when it strikes; "steer south," ticks the clock.
James Malone, my very heart's pulse repeats the words; and I hear them
mournfully sung by the very waves themselves, and by the wind that goes
moaning through the rigging.  And--I'm going to obey.'

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"For nights I had hardly slept a wink, but now I felt as if slumber
would soon visit my pillow if I but threw myself on the bed.  The moon,
a full round one, was already declining in the west when I went below
and turned in all standing, and in three minutes' time I had sunk into a
deep and dreamless sleep.

"James told me afterwards that it had taken him one long minute of solid
shaking and shouting to arouse me, but he succeeded at last.

"`Anything wrong, James?'  I said anxiously, as I sat up in my cot.

"`Can't say as there's anything radically wrong, sir,' he replied
slowly.  `Leastways, our ship's all right.  Wind and sea have both gone
down.  We've doubled the berg at last, and a good forty mile she was,
and now we're nearing another.  But the strange thing is this, sir.
There is men on it, a-waving their coats and things, and makin' signs.
I can just raise 'em with our Mons Meg glass.'

"`Some natives of Tierra del Fuego, perhaps,' I said.  `Anyhow, James,'
I added, `keep bearing up towards them.'

"`Ay, ay, sir.'

"In ten minutes' time I was on deck, glass in hand.

"It was a grey uncertain morning, the sun just rising astern of us, and
tingeing the wave-tops with a yellow glare.

"I could see the people on the ice with the naked eye.  But I steadied
Mons Meg on the bulwark, and had a look through that.

"`Mercy on us, James!'  I cried, `these are no savages, but our own
countrymen or Americans.  I can count five alive, and oh, James, three
lie at some little distance stretched out dark and stiff.  Shake another
reef out--those people want us.  A sad story will be theirs to tell.'

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"We got them all on board at last, though with difficulty, for the surf
was beating high above the snow-clad ice, and twice our boat was dashed
against the hard, green edge of the monster berg, her timbers cracking
ominously.  We brought off the dead too, and buried them in a Christian
way, James himself reading over them the beautiful service of the
English Church.  Though they were strangers to us, yet, as their bodies
dropped down into the darkling sea, many a tear was shed that our
fellows scarce took pains to hide.

"`And there they'll sleep,' said a voice behind me, `till the sea gives
up its dead.'

"I turned slowly round, and the eyes of the speaker met mine.  Hitherto
I had paid most attention to the lifeless, and scarce had noticed the
living.

"But now a strange thrill went through me as this man, who was the
skipper of the lost ship, advanced with a sad kind of smile on his face
and held out his hand.

"`We have met before,' he said.

"`We seem to have met before,' I answered falteringly, `but where I
cannot tell.  Perhaps you--'

"`Yes, I can; I have seen you in a dream.  We must both have dreamt.'

"I staggered as if shot, and pressed my hand to my brow.

"`You seem puzzled,' he continued, `yet I am not.  I am a man who has
studied science somewhat.  I am often called a visionary on account of
my theories, yet I am convinced that there are times when, in answer to
prayer, the mind during sleep may be permitted to leave the body.  You,
sir, have saved the few poor fellows of my ship's crew who have escaped
death, and I thank you.  Think nothing strange, sir, in this world
simply because you do not understand it.  But you have an errand of
mercy yet to perform.  Heaven grant you may be as successful in that as
you have been in taking our poor helpless men from off the ice.'

"`Come below,' I said, `Captain--a--'

"`Smithson,' he put in.

"`Come below, Captain Smithson, and tell your story.  James, will you
bear us company?'

"I and James sat on one side of the table, our guest, with his thin,
worn face and dark eyes that seemed to pierce us with their very
earnestness, on the other.  He told his story rapidly--ran over it, as
it were, as a school-boy does something he has learned by heart.

"`It is but little more than five weeks since the good yacht _Windward_
cleared away from San Francisco--'

"`James,' I said, interrupting him, `how long have we been at sea?'

"`Wellnigh four months, sir.'

"`How the time has flown!  Pray, sir, proceed.'

"`I have never known a quicker passage than we had.  The wind was fair
all the way, and our little craft appeared to fly with it.  But it fell
dead calm about the latitude of 20 degrees south of the line.  My only
passengers--in fact, it was they who had chartered the _Windward_ to
take them to Monte Video--a lady and her daughter, began to be very
uneasy now.  They had heard so much about the fleetness of the
_Windward_ that they never expected a hitch.  No wonder they were
uneasy.  Their business in Monte Video was a matter of life or death.
The doctor there had assured them that if they were not out by a certain
time, the husband and father would never again be seen by them alive.

"`But the calm was not of long duration.  Worse was to come--a tornado
burst upon us with awful fury, and all but sunk us.  We were carried far
to the west out of our course.  Fierce gales succeeded the tempest; and
when the wind once more sank to rest we found ourselves surrounded by a
group of islands that, although I have sailed the South Pacific for many
a long year, I had never seen before.

"`That the natives of the largest and most beautiful of these islands
are savages and man-hunters I have not the slightest doubt.  The king
himself came off, evincing not the slightest fear of us; but both he and
his people remained so strangely pacific that it excited our suspicions
for a time.  We were glad, however, to be able here to repair damages
and to take on board fresh water; and the kindness of the natives was so
marked that our suspicions were entirely lulled, and for days we lived
almost among them, even going on shore unarmed in the most friendly way.

"`I must tell you, sir, that, owing to the heat and closeness of the
atmosphere, a screen-berth or tent had been rigged for the ladies close
to the bulwark on the port side, and almost abreast of the main-mast.
The first part of the night of the tenth was exceedingly dark, and it
was also hot and sultry.  The ladies had retired early, for a
thunderstorm that had been threatening about sunset broke over us with
tropical fury about ten by the clock, or four bells--the first watch.

"`And now, sir, comes the mystery.  The moon rose at twelve and silvered
all the sea, shedding its earth light upon the green-wooded hills of the
mainland till everything looked ethereal.  Not a sound was to be heard,
except now and then the plaintive cry of a sea bird, and the dull, low
moan of the breakers on the coral sand.

"`As was her custom just before turning in, the ladies' maid drew aside
their curtain to see if they wanted anything, and to say good-night.

"`I was walking the quarterdeck smoking, when pale and scared she rushed
toward me.

"`Oh!' she almost screamed, `they are gone!  The ladies have gone!'

"`No one thought of turning in that dreadful night; and when in the
morning the sun, red and flaming, leapt out of the sea, arming a boat as
well as I could, I rowed on shore and demanded audience of the king.

"`But we were not allowed to land.  The savages had assumed a very
different attitude now, and a shower of spears was our welcome.  One
poor fellow was killed outright, another died of his wounds only an hour
afterwards.  In fact, we were beaten off; and in an hour's time,
observing a whole fleet of boats coming off to attack our vessel, we
were forced to hoist sail and fly.

"`That is my story, and a sad one it is.  I was on my way to the nearest
town to seek assistance, when our vessel was crushed in the ice and sank
in less than twenty minutes, with all on board except those you have
seen.'

"Smithson was silent now.  With his chin resting on his hand he sat
there looking downwards at the deck, but apparently seeing nothing.  For
many minutes not a word was spoken by any one.  The vessel rose and fell
on the long, rolling seas; there was the creak of the rudder chains;
there was occasionally the flapping of a sail; all else was still.

"James Malone was the first to speak.

"`Charles Halcott,' he said--and I think I hear the earnest, manly tones
of his voice at this moment--`Charles Halcott, we have a duty to
perform, and it leads us to the northward and west.'

"I stood up now, and our hands met and clasped.

"`James Malone,' I replied, `Heaven helping us, we will perform that
duty faithfully and well.'

"`Amen, sir!  Amen!'"

Book 2--CHAPTER SIX.

"O MY FRIEND, MY BROTHER," I CRY.

"That same forenoon," continued Halcott, "the wind went veering round to
the southward and east.  The sea was darkly, intensely blue all day.
The sky was intensely blue at night, and the stars so big and bright and
near they seemed almost to touch the topmasts.  But here and there in
the darkness, on every side of us, loomed white icebergs like sheeted
ghosts, and every now and then there rolled along our beam--thudding
against the timbers as they swept aft--the smaller bergs or `bilts' we
could not avoid.

"James was on deck, and determined to remain there till morning, in
order, as he said, to give me the quiet and rest my health so much
required.

"In two days' time we had weathered the stormy Cape, bidden farewell to
the ice, and, with every stitch of canvas set which it was possible to
carry safely, were sailing westward and north, away towards the distant
islands of the South Pacific.

"In a few days we got into higher latitudes, and the weather became
delightfully warm and pleasant.  The sky was more than Italian in its
clear and cloudless azure; the rippling waves were all a-sparkle with
light; they kissed the bows of our bonnie barque, and came lapping and
laughing aft along our counter, their merry voices seeming to talk to us
and bid us welcome to these sunny seas.

"Birds, too, came wheeling around our ship--strange, swift gulls, the
lonesome frigate-bird, and the wondrous albatross, king of storms, great
eagle of the ocean wave.

"Had we not been upon the strange mission on which we were now bound,
and the outcome of which we could not even guess, both James and I would
have enjoyed this delightful cruise; for, like myself, he was every inch
a sailor, and loved his ship as a landsman may love his bride.

"`In five days' time,' said Captain Smithson to me one forenoon, `if it
holds like this, we ought to reach the Unfortunate Islands.'

"`Is that what you call them, captain?'  I said, smiling; `well, my
first mate and I mean to change their name.'

"`Heaven grant you may,' he answered.  `O sir, the loss of this yacht,
clipper though she was, and a beauty to boot, is nothing to mourn for--
she was well insured; even the death of my poor men is but an accident
that we sailors are liable to at any moment; but the fate of those two
innocent ladies--the mother so good and gentle, the daughter so
childlike and beautiful--is one that, if it is to remain a mystery, will
cloud my whole life.  Think of it, sir.  The savages must have crept on
board in the midst of the thick darkness and the storm, crept on board
like wet and slimy snakes, gagged their poor victims, and borne them
silently away--to what?'

"`It is all very terrible,' I said.

"`Well, now,' said James, `it strikes me talkin' about it isn't goin' to
help us.  Charles Halcott, I served on board a man-o'-war for seven
years.'

"`Yes, James.'

"`Well, sir, I know what they'd do now in a case like this.'

"`Yes, James.'

"`They'd muster their forces, and prepare for 'ventualities.'

"`You see, gentlemen,' he added, `we may have a bit o' good, solid
fightin' to do.  Heaven knows that, if it would do any good, I'd gird up
my loins and go all unarmed, save with the Word o' God--my mother's
Bible--among those poor, benighted heathens, and try to bring 'em to
their senses.  But I fear that would do but little good.  When we go
among the more humble and simple savages of lonely islands in the sea,
or on the mainland of Africa itself, our work o' conversion is easy,
because the creatures have no form o' religion to place against the
gospel.  But these head-hunters--and I know them of old--have their own
ghastly, blood-stained rites and sacrifices--I cannot call it religion,
sir--and these they set up as an awful barrier against the glad tidings
we fain would bring to their doors, to their lives.

"`No, gentlemen, we may have to crack skulls before we get the Word in.
But to save those helpless ladies Is a duty, a sacred duty we owe to our
own white race, as well as to our own consciences, for we'd ne'er be
happy if we didn't try.'

"`Heaven grant,' I said, `they may still be alive!'

"`That we must find out,' said James.  `Now, sir, shall we call all
hands, and see to rifles and ammunition?'

"James's suggestion was at once acted upon.

"The _Sea Flower_ was a very large barque, and once had been a
full-rigged ship.  And our hands were more numerous than are generally
carried, for many were working their voyage out, and might have been
called passengers.

"So now forty bold fellows, including two strong and sturdy black men,
and the negro boy we called the cook's mate, put in an appearance, and
drew shyly aft.  There were, in addition to these, Captain Smithson and
his four men.

"But these latter we determined the savages must not see, else their
suspicions would at once be raised, and, instead of our being able to
act peacefully and by strategy, we should have at once to declare
red-eyed war.

"`Will you speak first?'  I said to Captain Smithson.

"Without a word he strode forward, and, when he held up his hand, the
men came crowding round him.

"`Men of the _Sea Flower_!' he began, `I am going to tell you a story.
It is short and simple, but also a very sad one.  Maybe you know most of
the outs and ins and particulars of it already.  My men must have told
you all about our voyage and our lady passengers.'

"`Repeat, repeat!' cried the men; `we would have it all again from your
own lips, sir.'

"Briefly and pathetically Smithson did so, relating to them all the
particulars we already know.

"`Men,' he continued, `you are Christians, and you are Englishmen.  It
is on this latter fact I rely chiefly, in case we have to fight with the
savages of those Unfortunate Islands.  The elder of the two ladies we
are going to try to save is English, though she married an American,
though her home was on the Pacific slope, and her innocent and beautiful
daughter was born in San Francisco.  They are your country-people, then,
as much as ours.  But, apart from that, when I say they are women in
bondage and distress, I have said enough, I know, to appeal to the brave
heart of every Englishman who now stands before me.'

"A wild, heroic shout was the only reply.

"`Thank you,' said Smithson, `for that expression of feeling! and I will
only add that these ladies, especially the younger, were, all the way
out, the light and life of our poor, lost yacht, and that, by their
winning ways, they made themselves beloved both fore and aft.'

"`Now, lads,' cried James, and as he spoke he seemed a head taller than
I had ever seen him, `if we've got to fight, why, then, we'll fight.
But against these terrible savages we can't fight with porridge-sticks.
Luckily, in our cargo we have a hundred good rifles, and that is two for
each of us; and we have revolvers, too, and plenty of ammunition.  All
good, mind you; for I chose the whole cargo myself.  So now, bo's'n,
pipe up the guns; and this afternoon, men, and every day till we touch
at the Unfortunate Islands, I'll put you through your drill--which,
bein' an old navy man, I fancy I'm capable of doing.  Are you all
willing?'

"The cheer that shook the ship from stem to stern was a truly British
one.  It was their only answer, and the only answer needed or required.

"So the drilling was commenced, and entered into with great spirit.
After all, this drill was merely preparation for `possible
'ventualities,' as honest James called it, for fighting would be our
very last resort, and we earnestly prayed that we might not be driven to
it.

"At last, and early one morning, just as the sun was beginning to pencil
the feathery clouds with gold and green and crimson, land was discovered
on the lee bow.

"I brought the big telescope which James had named Mons Meg to bear upon
it.  Then I handed Meg to Smithson.  He looked at the land long and
earnestly, and glanced up at me with beaming face.

"`That's the principal island, Captain Halcott,' he said; `the king's
own.  How well we have hit it!'

"That same forenoon we cast anchor in Treachery Bay, close to the spot
where the yacht had lain not many weeks before.

"Our sails were furled in quite a business-like way.  We wanted to show
the savages that we were not one whit afraid of them, that we had come
to stay for a short spell, and hadn't the remotest intention of running
away.

"That you may better understand the shape or configuration of this
strange island, gentlemen, here I show you a rough sketch-map.  This
will enable you also to follow more easily our subsequent adventures in
the fastnesses of these terrible savages.

"Rude and simple though this plan is, a word or two will suffice to
explain it.  The island trends west and east, and is not more than
sixteen miles long by about ten to twelve in width.  It is divided into
two almost equal parts by a very rapid and dark-rolling river, which
rushes through rocky gorges with inconceivable speed, forming many a
thundering cataract as it fights its way to the sea.  It is fed from the
waters that flow from the mountains, and, probably, by subterranean
springs.  The whole western portion of the island, with the exception of
some green woods around the bay, is pretty low, but covered throughout
with the remains of a black and burned forest.  This forest is supposed
by the natives to be inhabited by fearsome demons and witches, and is
never visited, except for the purpose of sorcery by the medicine-men of
the tribe, and to bury the dead.  In the centre of the eastern portion
of the island, which is beautifully clad with woodlands, and rugged and
wild in the extreme, is a lake with one small, lonely isle; and around
this the mountains tower their highest, but are clad to their very
summits with forest trees, many of them bearing the most luscious of
fruits, and all draped with wild flowers, and sweetly haunted by bird
and bee.

"The only things else in the map I wish to draw your attention to,
gentlemen, are the parallel lines.  These mark the spot where was the
only bridge leading into the fastnesses of these savages, and the only
mode of communication with the lower land and bay, without walking round
by the head of the river, or following its course to the sea and
crossing in a boat.

"This bridge was primitive in the extreme, consisting merely of three
straight tree stems, and a rude life-line composed of the twisted withes
of a kind of willow.

"I have sad reason to remember that bridge, and shall not forget it
while life lasts.

"I have said nothing in my story yet about Lord Augustus Fitzmantle.
But it is time to do so.  Lord Augustus was our cook's mate.  It is well
to give a nigger boy a high-sounding name, and, if possible, a title.
He always tries to act up to it.  Lord Augustus was very, very black.
The other niggers were black enough certainly, but they looked brown
beside his merry, laughing little lordship.  Yes, always laughing,
always showing those white teeth of his and rolling his expressive eyes,
and good-tempered all day long.  Even a kick from the cook only made him
rub a little and laugh the more.  Lord Augustus wore a string of
sky-blue beads about his neck, and on warm days he wore very little
else.  But if Lord Augustus was black, he was also bright.  The sunshine
glittered and glanced on his rounded arms and cheeks, and he had
sunshine in his heart as well.  It goes without saying he was the pet of
the _Sea Flower_ and everybody's friend, and though all hands teased as
well as petted him, he took it all in good part.

"So long as Lord Fitzmantle kept his mouth shut, and didn't show those
flashing teeth of his, he was as invisible as Jack the Giant Killer on a
dark night.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Seeing our independence, the savages for hours held aloof.  At last a
white-headed, fearful-looking old man paddled alongside in a dug-out.
From the fact that he had a huge snake coiled around his chest and neck,
I took him to be the medicine-man, or sorcerer, of the tribe, and I was
not mistaken.

"He was certainly no beauty as he sat there grinning in his dark
dug-out.  His face was covered with scars in circles and figures, so,
too, was his chest; his eyes were the colour of brass; his teeth
crimson, and filed into the form of triangles.  But he climbed boldly on
board when beckoned to, and we loaded him with gifts of pretty beads,
and engirdled his loins with red cloth, then sent him grinning away.

"This treatment had the desired effect, and in half an hour's time the
bay was alive with the boats and canoes of the head-hunters.  Each of
their tall, gondola-like prows bore a grinning skull, the cheek bones
daubed with a kind of crimson clay, and the sockets filled with awful
clay eyes--not a pretty sight.

"Presently the king himself came off, and we received him wi

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