Captain Mugford

Captain Mugford, by W.H.G.
Kingston

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Title: Captain Mugford Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors
Author: W.H.G. Kingston
Illustrator: Holloway
Release Date: May 15, 2007 [EBook #21453]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPTAIN
MUGFORD ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Captain Mugford
or Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors

by W.H.G. Kingston
CHAPTER ONE.
INTRODUCTORY.
We belong to a Cornish family of the greatest respectability and high
antiquity--so say the county records, in which we have every reason to
place the most unbounded confidence. The Tregellins have possessed
the same estate for I do not know exactly how long; only I suppose it
must have been some time after Noah disembarked from the ark, and,
at all events, for a very long time. The estate of which I speak was in a
wild part of the country, and not at that time very productive; but I
believe that my father would not have parted with it for ten times its
market value. It contained between four and five hundred acres of hill
and dale, and rock and copse, and wood; its chief feature a lofty cape,
which ran out for a considerable distance into the sea. On one side it
was exposed to the almost unbroken sweep of the Atlantic Ocean; on
the other it was washed by the tranquil waters of a deep bay, which
formed a safe and picturesque harbour for numerous small craft which
frequently took shelter there from press of weather when running up
channel.
That headland, where the happiest half-year of all my boyhood's days
was passed, is now dotted with several pleasant summer residences; its
acres are marked off by fences and walls, and variegated with the
diverse crops of well-tilled fields, and on its bay-side are occasional
small wharves for pleasure-boats. Fifty years ago it was very different,
and, (though, perhaps, I may be an old fogey and have that grey-hair
fashion of thinking, with an expressive shrug, "Ah, things are not as
they were when I was a boy!") I must say, far more beautiful to my
eyes than it is now. You have seen a bold, handsome-bearded, athletic
sailor-fellow, with a manner combining the sunniness of calms, the
dash of storms, and the romance of many strange lands about him. Now,
if our admired hero should abandon his adventurous profession, and
settle down quietly into the civilised career of an innkeeper, or village
constable, or shopman, or sedate church clerk, and we chanced to meet

him years after his "life on the ocean wave," it would probably be to
find a sober-faced gentleman, with forehead a little bald, with
somewhat of a paunch, with sturdy legs and gaiters, perhaps with a stiff
stock and dignified white collar--altogether a very respectable, useful
citizen. But the eye and the heart could not find in our excellent
acquaintance the fascination which so charmed us in our friend the
brave sailor. So with our cape: fifty years ago, in all its natural wildness;
in the beauty of its lonely beaches strewn with pieces of shivered
waterlogged spars and great rusty remnants of ship-knees and keels; in
the melancholy of those strips of short brown heath on the seaside,
disappearing in the white sand; in the frowning outlines of the
determined rocks that like fortresses defied their enemy the ocean; in
the roll of crisp pasturage that in unbroken swells covered the long
backbone of the cape; in the few giant old trees, and, more than all, in
its character of freedom, loneliness, and isolation, there was a savage
charm and dignity that the thrift and cultivation, the usefulness and
comfort of civilisation's beauty can never equal.
My first sight of the old cape was when I was about nine years of age.
My father took me with him in a chaise from Bristol--two days' journey
in those times; and I do not think now that my year's tour of Europe,
fifteen years after, was half as full of incident and delight as that my
first expedition of a few hours. I can recall how the man at the toll-gate
hobbled to us on his crutch; how my father chatted with him for a few
moments; how, as we drove off, the man straightened himself on his
crutch and touched the brim of his hat with the back of his hand. How
well I remember the amazement with which I then heard