Home > Authors Index > George Manville Fenn > Cormorant Crag; A Tale of the Smuggling Days > This page
Cormorant Crag; A Tale of the Smuggling Days, a fiction by George Manville Fenn |
||
Chapter 2. "Two For A Pair" |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER TWO. "TWO FOR A PAIR" "Hullo, Cinder!" "Hullo, Spoon!" "Who are you calling Cinder?" "Who are you calling Spoon?" "You. Well, Ladle then, if you don't like Spoon." "And you have it Scorcher if you like, old Burnet." "Burnet's a better name than Ladelle." "Oh, is it! I don't know so much about that, Vincey. And it isn't pronounced as if it was going into a soup tureen. You know that well enough. It's a fine old French name." "Of course I know your finicking way of calling it _Lah Delle_; but, if you're English, it's Ladle. Ha, ha, ha! Ladle for frog soup, Frenchy." "You won't be happy till I've punched your head, Vince Burnet." "Shan't I? All right, then: make me happy," said Vince to another sun-browned lad whom he had just encountered among the furze and heather--all gold and purple in the sunny islet where they dwelt--and in the most matter-of-fact way he took off his jacket; and then began a more difficult task, which made him appear like some peculiar animal struggling out of its skin: for he proceeded to drag off the tight blue worsted jersey shirt he wore, and, as it was very elastic, it clung to his back and shoulders as he pulled it over his head, and, of course, rendered him for the moment helpless--a fact of which his companion was quite ready to take advantage. "Want to fight, do you?" he cried: "you shall have it then," and, grinning with delight, he sprang upon the other's back, nipping him with his knees, and beginning to slap and pummel him heartily. Vince Burnet made a desperate effort to get free, but the combination of his assailant's knees and the jersey effectively imprisoned him, and, though he heaved and tossed and jerked himself, he could not dislodge the lad, who clung to him like Sinbad's old man of the sea, till he fell half exhausted in a thick bed of heather, where he was kept down to suffer a kind of roulade of thumps, delivered very heartily upon his back as if it were a drum. "Murder! murder!" cried Vince, in smothered tones, with the jersey over his head. "Yes, I'll give you murder! I'll give you physic! How do you like that, and that, and that, Doctor?" Each question was followed by a peculiar double knock on back or ribs. "Don't like it at all, Mike. Oh, I say, do leave off!" "Shan't. Don't get such a chance every day. I'll roast your ribs for you, my lad." "No, no: I give in. I'm done." "Ah! that sounds as if you didn't feel sure. As your father says to me when I'm sick, I must give you another dose." "No, no, don't, please," cried Vince: "you hurt." "Of course I do. I mean it. How many times have you hurt me?" "But it's cowardly to give it to a fellow smothered up like I am." "'Tisn't cowardly: it's the true art of war. Get your enemy up in a corner where he can't help himself, and then pound him like that, and that." "Oh!--oh!" "Yes, it is 'Oh!' I never felt any one with such hard, bony ribs before; Jemmy Carnach is soft compared to you." "I say, you're killing me!" "Am I? Like to be killed?" "No. Oh! I say, Mike, don't, there's a good fellow! Let me get up." "Are you licked?" "Yes, quite." "Will you hit me if I let you get up?" "No, you coward." _Bang, bang_. "Oh! I say, don't!" "Am I a coward, then?" "Yes.--Oh!" "Now am I a coward?" "No, no. You're the bravest, best fellow that ever lived." "Then you own you're beaten?" "Oh yes, thoroughly. I say, Mike, I can hardly breathe. Honour bright!" "Say, you own you're licked, then." "Yes. Own I'm licked, and--Ah-h-ah!" Vince gave a final heave, and with such good effect that his assailant was thrown, and by the time he had recovered himself Vince's red face was reappearing from the blue jersey, which the boy had tugged down into its normal position. "Oh! won't I serve you out for this some day, Mikey!" he cried, as the other stood on his guard, laughing at him. "You said you were beaten." "Yes, for to-day; but I can't afford to let you knock me about like this. I say, you did hurt." "Nonsense! I could have hit twice as hard as that. Pull your jersey over your head again, and I'll show you." "Likely! Never mind, old chap," said Vince, giving himself a shake; "I'll save it up for you. Phew! you have made me hot." "Do you good," said Mike, imitating his companion by throwing himself down at full length upon the elastic heath, to lie gazing at the brilliant blue sea, stretching far away to where a patch of amethyst here and there on the horizon told of other islands, bathed in the glowing sunshine. The land ended a hundred yards from where the two lads lay as suddenly as if it had been cut sharply off, and went down perpendicularly some two hundred and fifty feet to where the transparent waves broke softly, with hardly a sound, amongst the weedy rocks, all golden-brown with fucus, or running quietly over the yellow sand, but which, in a storm, came thundering in, like huge banks of water, to smite the face of the cliff, fall back and fret, and churn up the weed into balls of froth, which flew up, and were carried by the wind right across the island. "Where's old Deane?" said Vince suddenly. "Taken a book to go and sit on the rock shelf and read Plutarch. I say, what a lot he does know!" "No wonder," said Vince, who was parting the heather and peering down beneath: "he's always reading. I wish he was fonder of coming out in a boat and fishing or sailing." "So do I," said Mike. "We'd make him do the rowing. Makes us work hard enough." "I don't see why he shouldn't help us," continued Vince. "Father says a man ought to look after his body as well as his brains, so as always to be healthy and strong." "Why did he say that?" said Mike sharply. "Because it was right," said Vince. "My father's always right." "No, he isn't. He didn't know what was the matter with my dad." Vince laughed. "What are you grinning at?" "What you said. He knew well enough, only he wouldn't say because he did not want to offend your father." "What do you mean?" "That he always sat indoors, and didn't take enough exercise." "Pish! The Doctor did not know," said Mike sharply, and colouring a little; "and I don't believe he wants people to be well." "Hi! Look here!" cried Vince excitedly. "Lizard!" A little green reptile, looking like a miniature crocodile, disturbed by the lad's investigating hands, darted out from beneath the heath into the sunshine; and Mike snatched off his cap, and dabbed it over the little fugitive with so true an aim that as he held the cap down about three inches of the wiry tail remained outside. "Got him!" cried Mike triumphantly. "Well, don't hurt it." "Who's going to hurt it!" "You are. Suppose a Brobdig-what-you-may-call-him banged a great cap down over you--it would hurt, wouldn't it?" "Not if I lay still; and there wouldn't be a bit of tail sticking out if he did," said Mike laughing.--"I'm not going to hurt you, old chap, but to take you home and put you in the conservatory to catch and eat the flies and blight. Come along." "Where are you going to put him?" "In my pocket till I go home. Look here: I'll put my finger on his tail and hold him while you lift my cap; then I can catch him with my other hand." "Mind he don't bite." "Go along! He can't bite to hurt. Ready?" "Yes," said Vince, stretching out his hand. "Better let him go." "Yes, because you don't want him. I do. Now, no games." "All right." "Up with the cap, then." Vince lifted the cap, and burst out laughing, for it was like some conjuring trick--the lizard was gone. "Why, you never caught it!" he said. "Yes, I did: you saw its tail. I've got it under my hand now." "You've dropped it," cried Vince. "Lift up." Mike raised his hand, and there, sure enough, was the lizard's tail, writhing like a worm, and apparently as full of life as its late owner, but, not being endowed with feet, unable to escape. "Poor little wretch!" said Vince; "how horrid! But he has got away." "Without his tail!" "Yes; but that will soon grow again." "Think so?" "Why, of course it will: just as a crab's or lobster's claw does." "Hullo, young gentlemen!" said a gruff voice, and a thick-set, elderly man stopped short to look down upon them, his grim, deeply-lined brown face twisted up into a smile as he took off an old sealskin cap and began to softly polish his bald head, which was surrounded by a thick hedge of shaggy grey hair, but paused for a moment to give one spot a rub with his great rough, gnarled knuckles. His hands were enormous, and looked as if they had grown into the form most suitable for grasping a pair of oars to tug a boat against a heavy sea. His dress was exceedingly simple, consisting of a coarsely-knitted blue jersey shirt that might have been the great-grandfather of the one Vince wore; and a pair of trousers, of a kind of drab drugget, so thick that they would certainly have stood up by themselves, and so cut that they came nearly up to the man's armpits, and covered his back and chest, while the braces he wore were short in the extreme. To finish the description of an individual who played a very important part in the lives of the two island boys, he had on a heavy pair of fisherman's boots, which might have been drawn up over his knees, but now hung clumsily about his ankles, like those of smugglers in a penny picture, as he stood looking down grimly, and slowly resettled his sealskin cap upon his head. "What are you two a-doing of?" he asked. "Nothing," said Mike shortly. "And what brings you round here?" "I've been taking Jemmy Carnach a bottle of physic; and we came round," cried Vince. "Why?" "Taking Jemmy Carnach a bottle of physic," said the old fellow, with a low, curious laugh, which sounded as if an accident had happened to the works of a wooden clock. "He's mighty fond o' making himself doctor's bills. I'd ha' cured him if he'd come to me." "What would you have given him, Daygo?" "Give him?" said the man, rubbing his great brown eagle-beak nose with a finger that would have grated nutmeg easily: "I'd ha' give him a mug o' water out of a tar tub, and a lotion o' rope's end, and made him dance for half an hour. He'd ha' been 'quite well thank ye' to-morrow morning." Vince laughed. "Ay, that's what's the matter with him, young gentleman. A man who can't ketch lobsters and sell 'em like a Christian, but must take 'em home, and byle 'em, and then sit and eat till you can see his eyes standing out of his head like the fish he wolfs, desarves to be ill. Well, I must be off and see what luck I've had." "Come on, Mike," cried Vince, springing up--an order which his companion obeyed with alacrity. The old fellow frowned and stared. "And where may you be going?" he asked. "Along with you," said Vince promptly. "Where?" "You said you were going out to look at your lobster-pots and nets, didn't you?" "Nay, ne'er a word like it," growled the man. "Yes, you did," cried Mike. "You said you were going to see what luck you'd had." "Ay, so I did; but that might mean masheroons or taters growing, or rabbit in a trap aside the cliff." "Yes," said Vince, laughing merrily; "or a bit of timber, or a sea chest, or a tub washed up among the rocks, mightn't it, Mike? Only fancy old Joe Daygo going mushrooming!" "You're a nice sarcy one as ever I see," said the man, with another of his wooden-wheel laughs. "I like masheroons as well as any man." "Yes, but you don't go hunting for them," said Vince; "and you never grow potatoes; and as for setting a trap for a rabbit--not you." "You're fine and cunning, youngster," said the man, with a grim look; and his keen, clear eyes gazed searchingly at the lad from under his shaggy brows. "Sit on the cliff with your old glass," said Vince, "when you're not fishing or selling your lobsters and crabs. He don't eat them himself, does he, Mike?" "No. My father says he makes more of his fish than any one, or he wouldn't be the richest man on the island." The old man scowled darkly. "Oh! Sir Francis said that, did he?" "Yes, I heard him," cried Vince; "and my father said you couldn't help being well off, for your place was your own, and it didn't cost you anything to live, so you couldn't help saving." A great hand came down clap on the lad's shoulder, and it seemed for the moment as if he were wearing an epaulette made out of a crab, while the gripping effect was similar, for the boy winced. "I say, gently, please: my shoulder isn't made of wood." "No, I won't hurt you, boy," growled the old fellow; "but your father's a man as talks sense, and I won't forget it. I'll be took bad some day, and give him a job, just to be neighbourly." "Ha, ha!" laughed Vince. "What's the matter?" growled the old man, frowning. "You talking of having father if you were ill. Why, you'd be obliged to." "Nay. If I were bad I dessay I should get better if I curled up and went to sleep." "Send for me, Joe Daygo," cried Mike merrily, "and I'll bring Vince Burnet. We'll give you a mug of water out of a tar-barrel, and make you dance with the rope's end." "Nay, nay, nay! don't you try to be funny, young Ladle." "_Ladelle_!" shouted the boy angrily. "Oh, very well, boy. Only don't you try to be funny: young doctor here's best at that." All the same, though, the great heavy fellow broke into another fit of wooden chuckling, nodded to both, and turned to go, but back on the track by which he had come. Vince gave Mike a merry look, and they sprang after him, and the man faced round. "What now?" "We're coming out with you, Joe Daygo." "Nay; I don't want no boys along o' me." "Oh yes, you do," said Vince. "I say--do take us, and we'll row all the time." "I don't want no one to row me. I've got my sail." "All right, then; we'll manage the sail, and you can steer." "Nay; I don't want to be capsized." "Who's going to capsize you? I say, do take us." The man scowled at them both, and filed his sharp, aquiline nose with a rough finger as if hesitating; then, swinging himself round, he strode off in his great boots, which crushed down heather and furze like a pair of mine stamps. But he uttered the words which sent a thrill through the boys' hearts--and those words were: "Come on!" _ |
||