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Devon Boys: A Tale of the North Shore, a fiction by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 23. Old Sam Is Unhappy |
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_ CHAPTER TWENTY THREE. OLD SAM IS UNHAPPY Seventeen, and grown as big as Bigley, with the consequence that I could not help thinking a good deal of what people said to me when I went in to Ripplemouth or down to the Gap. The salute I generally met was: "Why, Master Sep Duncan, you are growing quite a man." I suppose I was in appearance, but, thank goodness, I was still only a boy at heart. Plenty to see, plenty to hear. The fishermen and people at the tiny port were always looking out to sea, and shutting their eyes and shaking their heads. "Ay, and we need look out, master," they would say. "Strange doings now. Who knows how soon they Frenchies will come down upon us and try to take the town. But we're going to fight 'em to a man." I remember even then laughing to myself as I went home one morning after being disappointed in finding Bob Chowne, who had gone on a round with his father, for I asked myself what the French, whom the Ripplemouth people saw in every passing vessel, would gain by making a descent upon our rock-strewn shore. But when I ventured to hint at their being more likely to attack Plymouth or Portsmouth, old Teggley Grey, who was down on the pier loading up with coal that had come over in a sloop from Monmouth, shook his head. "Ay, it be well for you, lad, with all they big cannon guns in front o' your house ready to sink the Frenchy ships; but we ar'n't no guns here, on'y the one in the look-out, and she be rusted through." Oddly enough, when I reached home there was no one in the house. My father had gone down to the mine, and I was thinking about going after him, but being hot with my walk, I strolled down first into the garden on the cliff, but only to stop short, for there was a curious hissing sound in the air. "What, a snake!" I said to myself. And then, "No, it's too loud." I stood listening, and I learned directly what caused the hissing, which gave place directly to a peculiar humming, and then after more hissing a familiar raspy voice roared out, its owner imagining he was singing:
"Ah, Mas' Sep: can't you see? Washing out the bull-dogs' throats to make 'em bite the Peccavis when they come." I laughed as I looked at the old man, who was busy at work with a mop and pail cleaning out the old cannons on my father's sham fort. "Why, Sam, what's the good of that?" "Good, my lad?" he cried, ramming the wet mop down one of the guns and making the water spurt out of the touch-hole like a little fountain, "Good! Why, we'll blow the Frenchy ships out of the water if they come anigh us." "Why, there's no powder," I said. "Powder! Eh, but there is: lots, my lad." "But there are no cannon-balls." Old Sam stopped short with the mop right in the gun, and loosening one hand, he tilted his old sou'-wester hat that he wore summer and winter with no difference, only that he kept cabbage-leaves in it in summer, and stood scratching his head. "No cannon-balls!" he said. "No cannon-balls!" "Not one," I said; "only the big one indoors we use for a door-weight, and that would not go in." "Well, now, that be a rum un, Master Sep, that be a rum un. I never thought o' that. Never mind, it don't matter. They Frenchies 'll hear the guns go off and see the smoke, and that's enough for them. They'll go back again." "Go back again," I said laughing. "Why, they'll never come." "Get out, lad! You're too young to understand they things. You wait a bit, and you'll see that they will come and find us ready for them too." "With six-foot two of trench, eh, Sam?" I said. "Eh? What? What do you mean?" "Why, weren't you singing something about burying them all. Here, sing us the rest." "Nay, nay, nay, my lad; I can't sing." "Why, I heard you, Sam." "Ay, but that's all I know; and I must get on with my job afore they come." "Before they come, Sam! Why, they'll never come. Go and hoe up your cabbages and potatoes and you'll be doing some good." "Nay, lad, this be no time for hoeing up cabbage and 'tater. Why, what for?--ready for the French?" "French!" I said with a laugh as I leaned over the low wall and looked down the perpendicular cliff at the piled-up masses of fallen fragments. "No French will ever trouble us." For it looked ridiculous to imagine that a foreign enemy would ever attempt to make a landing anywhere beneath the grand wall of piled-up rock that protected our coast from a far more dangerous enemy than any French fleet, for the sea was ready to attack and sweep away even the land, and this a foreign fleet could never do. I sat on the edge looking down at the ivy, and toad-flax, and saxifrage, and ferns that climbed and clustered all over the steep cliff-face; and as I sat looking and enjoying the sea-breeze and the rest from all school labours, old Sam went on cleaning out the guns and expressing in his way the feelings of nearly everybody round the coast. "Is my father over at the mine?" I said. "Ay, my lad; he's always there. Going over?" "Yes, Sam, when I'm rested. They're very busy now, I suppose." "Wonderful, Master Sep, wonderful. Who'd ha' thought it?" he exclaimed, sticking the mop handle on the path and resting his bare brown arms upon the wet woollen rags that formed the top. "Who'd have thought what, Sam?" "Why, as there'd be lead and silver under they slates down at the Gap. Always looked to be nothin' but clatter, and old massy rock and no soil." "Ah, it was a discovery, Sam," I said. "Discovery, my lad! Why, when they said as the Captain had bought the old place I went into my tool-shed and sat down on a 'tater heap and 'most cried." "'Most cried, Sam--you?" "Ay, my lad, for I thought the Captain had gone off his head and everything would be in rack and ruin." "Instead of which my father is making quite a fortune out of it, Sam." "Ay, I s'pose so, my lad, but fortuns aren't everything. It makes him look worried, it do, and he've give up his garden, as is a bad sign. I don't like to see a man give up his garden. It means weeds." "Well, then, why don't you hoe them up, Sam?" I said sharply. "Hoe 'em up, lad? I can't put a hoe in his mind, can I? That's where the weeds grows, my dear lad. Why, he never takes no interest in his guns now, and if I hadn't set to this morning to scour 'em out and give 'em a regular good cleaning, where would they have been when the French come?" _ |
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