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Devon Boys: A Tale of the North Shore, a fiction by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 45. Trying An Impossibility |
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_ CHAPTER FORTY FIVE. TRYING AN IMPOSSIBILITY We two set out to perform an impossibility: for though, starting together on a long journey, a good steady walker might tire out a horse carrying a man, and in a fortnight's work, before we had got half-way to Barnstaple, I knew that my father would have arranged to catch the coach, and I remembered that the coach would change horses every ten or twelve miles; and as all this forced itself into my mind, I sat down on a stone by the road-side. "Tired?" said Bigley, wiping the perspiration from his face. "No, not yet; but I've been thinking, and my thoughts get heavier every moment," I replied. "What do you mean?" cried Bigley. "That we cannot do this," I said; "and we should be doing something far more sensible if we go back home, and write a letter to my father. Why, it would get to him days before we could." Bigley took off his cap and rubbed his ear. "I'm afraid you are right," he said; "but I don't like to go back." "Then let's go on to Barnstaple, and write to him from there." "To be sure!" cried Bigley, jumping at the compromise. "Come along." "No, I said; it will not do. I've left his letter behind, and I don't know where to write." "Oh, Sep!" cried Bigley reproachfully. "Then, we must go back." We stood looking at each other just as we had made a fresh start, and the weariness we were beginning to feel brought with it a strange low-spirited sensation that was depressing in the extreme. "Come along," I said. "Let's get back, or we shall lose another day before we can get off a letter." "Wait a minute," said Bigley; "there's the half-way house not a quarter of a mile away. We'll go on there and have some bread and cheese and cider, then we shall be able to walk back more quickly." It did not take us long to reach the pretty little road-side ale-house, where the first thing I saw was the doctor's pony tied up to the gate by the rough stable or shed. "Some one ill?" I said. "Shall we tell Doctor Chowne what we were going to do?" I had hardly spoken these words when my father appeared at the door. "Why, Sep, Uggleston!" he exclaimed; "you here?" "Why, father!" I cried, catching him by the arm. "I thought you had gone." "The pony broke down, my boy," said my father, "and I have had to bring him back here--walking all the way; and I was undecided as to whether I should pay someone to take him home, or lead him myself, and make a fresh start to-morrow." "Come back," I said with a look full of delight. "He ought to come back, eh, Big?" Bigley nodded and smiled, and then I eagerly told him all. "It was Bigley's doing, father," I exclaimed. "He found it out." "My lad," said my father huskily, "you have saved me, for I could only have sold my property at a terrible loss." "And you will come back with us, father," I said. "Come back, my boy? Of course. Why, Bigley, my lad, you have always looked at me as if I felt a grudge against you for being your father's son; now, my boy, I shall always have to look at you as a benefactor, who has saved me from ruin." Bigley tried to say something about that dreadful night, and the attack on the mine premises, but my father stopped him. "Never mind about all that," he said; "let's get back and see if you are right, and that it is not a solitary chest which the Frenchmen have left us." "No fear of that, sir," cried Bigley. "I was down long enough to see that there was quite a lot of them." "Or of pieces of rock," said my father smiling. "I'm older than you are, my lad, and not so sanguine." "But I feel so sure, sir," cried Bigley. "That's right, my lad. I'm glad you do; but you have seen them, I have not." "But Sep saw them too." "I saw the box we hauled up," I said; "but I could not be sure about what was at the bottom amongst the rocks and weeds." Bigley looked so disappointed that my father smiled. "Come," he cried; "you think I am ungrateful, and throwing cold water upon your discovery, when there is plenty over it as it is. So come, let us assume that the treasure is there, and begin to make our plans about how to recover it." At the last moment we had been obliged to leave the pony at the little inn, and we were walking steadily back as this conversation went on. "Well, sir, it will be very easy," said Bigley eagerly. "Not so easy," said my father. "We shall want a couple of men who can dive." "Oh no, you will not, sir," replied Bigley. "I have thought it all out. All we shall want will be a clear day with the sea smooth." "Yes, highly necessary, Bigley," said my father. "Then we should want a very long smooth pole, and if we could not get one long enough two poles would have to be fished together." "And then you'd fish for the boxes?" I said. "No," said Bigley seriously; "you would have to sink the pole just down to where the chests lie, and rig up a block at the top, run a rope through it, hold one end of the rope in the boat to which the pole is made fast, and at the other end have a thick strong bag made of net." "Well, what then?" said my father. "Why, then you would put a big pig of lead in the bag, let me take hold of the bag, let the rope run slack, and I should go down to the bottom in an instant. Then I should lift a box into the net-bag and come up, leaving it there for you in the boat to haul it up." "Yes, that sounds very simple," said my father; "but could you do it?" "Could I do it!" cried Bigley. "Why, sir, we did get one up to the top without any proper things. I can dive." "Yes, he can dive, father," I said eagerly. "You need not be afraid about that." My father looked at us both, and grew very silent, as we trudged on, to reach the cottage at last utterly tired; and though Bigley proposed that we should go on and see whether the buoy we had left was all right, my father said that it might very well wait till morning, and Bigley stayed for the night. "I thought your father would have been ever so much more eager and excited about it," said Bigley, speaking to me from the inner room where he slept, the door having been left open. "He is excited," I said in a low voice, for across the passage I could hear him walking up and down in his own room; and that kept on till I dropped off asleep, and dreamed that the French had landed with four large boats and a great pole which they lowered down into the sea. Then they seemed to have got me fastened to the rope that ran through the wheel-block at the head, and they had fastened a pig of lead on to my chest, which pressed upon me as they hauled me up out of the boat, and then let go. It was all wonderfully real. I felt myself suspended over the water, which looked black as ink instead of lit up by the sun as it was when Bigley went down. And as I hung there, the oppression from the pig of lead was terrible, and it seemed to please Captain Gualtiere, who was there in a boat opposite, giving orders and laughing at my struggles to escape. "Now," I heard him say in his Frenchy English, "cease to hold ze ropes, and laissez let him go." Then there was a dull splash, and with the weight always upon me I seemed to part the waters and go down, down, down, into the deep black depths, which appeared to have no bottom. There was a growing sensation of suffocation; my boots hurt my feet, and the blister I had made upon my heel smarted, and all at once the pony, as it stood at the half-way house door, kicked out at me, just as I was beginning to suffocate; and this broke the rope, and I shot up to the surface. In other words, I started up awake, to find that I had been lying on my back, that I was bathed in perspiration, and that my father was still walking up and down his bed-room. "What stuff to go and dream!" I said to myself, as I felt very much relieved. "That comes of eating cold beef and pickled cucumber for supper." I turned upon my side to settle myself off to sleep again; but I could not doze off; and do what I would, the thought of being sent down into the black water with a pig of our lead upon my chest, and the pony down below ready to kick out at me kept haunting my mind, while across the passage there was my father still keeping up the regular tramp. Just then the clock at the bottom of the stairs began to strike, and I thought that it must be a dark morning and about four, but to my astonishment it struck eleven, and I felt sure that it must be wrong. And all this while there was the restless pace up and down my father's room, making the jug in the basin rattle faintly, and after turning over three or four times I made up my mind that it was impossible to sleep, so I would dress, and then go and wake Bigley and sit and talk. I had just made up my mind to this, as it seemed to me, when Bigley stood in the doorway and said: "Now, Sep, old fellow, wake up." I started up in bed and stared, for the room was flooded with sunshine, and I knew that I must have been sound asleep, while from across the passage came the regular pace of my father walking up and down, and the jug clattered in the basin. "Has he been walking up and down all night?" I said sleepily. "Oh, no!" said Bigley. "I have only just called him, and heard him get up. But make haste. It's a splendid morning, and the sea's like glass." "And the skin's all off my heel," I said; "and it's as sore as sore, and so is one of my toes." "Sep!" shouted my father just then; "make haste down, and tell Ellen that we want the breakfast as early as possible." "Yes, father," I said; but at the same moment Kicksey's voice came up the stairs as she heard what he said, and it was to announce that breakfast would be ready in ten minutes' time. _ |
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