Devon Boys | Page 2

was our Sam
waiting with the donkey-cart to take mine and Bigley's boxes, and Bob

Chowne went on to Ripplemouth, after promising to join us next day
for a grand hunt over the new place.
The next day came, and with it Bob Chowne from Ripplemouth and
Bigley Uggleston from the Gap; and we three boys set off over the cliff
path for a regular good roam, with the sun beating down on our backs,
the grasshoppers fizzling in amongst the grass and ferns, the gulls
squealing below us as they flew from rock to rock, and, far overhead
now, a hawk wheeling over the brink of the cliff, or a sea-eagle rising
from one of the topmost crags to seek another where there were no
boys.
Now I've got so much to tell you of my old life out there on the wild
North Devon coast, that I hardly know where to begin; but I think I
ought, before I go any farther, just to tell you a little more about who I
was, and add a little about my two school-fellows, who, being very
near neighbours, were also my companions when I was at home.
Bob Chowne was the son of an old friend of my father--"captain"
Duncan, as people called him, and lived at Ripplemouth, three or four
miles away. The people always called him Chowne, which they had
shortened from Champernowne, and we boys at school often
substituted Chow for Bob, because we said he was such a disagreeable
chap.
I do not see the logic of the change even now, but the nickname was
given and it stuck. I must own, though, that he was anything but an
amiable fellow, and I used to wonder whether it was because his father,
the doctor, gave him too much physic; but it couldn't have been that,
for Bob always used to say that if he was ill his father would send him
out without any breakfast to swallow the sea air upon the cliffs, and
that always made him well.
Bigley Uggleston, my other companion, on the contrary, was about the
best-tempered fellow that ever lived. He was the son of old Jonas
Uggleston, who lived at the big cottage down in the Gap, on one side of
the little stream. Jonas was supposed to be a fisherman, and he certainly
used to fish, but he carried on other business as well with his

lugger--business which enabled him to send his son to the
grammar-school, where he was one of the best-dressed of the boys, and
had about as much pocket-money as Bob and I put together, but we
always spent it for him and he never seemed to mind.
I have said that he was an amiable fellow, and he had this peculiarity,
that if you looked at him you always began to laugh, and then his broad
face broke up into a smile, as if he was pleased because you laughed at
him, and tease, worry, or do what you liked, he never seemed to mind.
I never saw another boy like him, and I used to wonder why Bob
Chowne and I should be a couple of ordinary robust boys of fourteen,
while he was five feet ten, broad-shouldered, with a good deal of dark
downy whisker and moustache, and looked quite a man.
Sometimes Bob and I used to discuss the matter in private, and came to
the conclusion that as Bigley was six months older than we were, we
should be like him in stature when another six months had passed; but
we very soon had to give up that idea, and so it remained that our
school-fellow had the aspect of a grown man, but what Bob called his
works were just upon a level with our own, for, except in appearance,
he was not manly in the slightest degree.
CHAPTER TWO.
OUR CLIFFS.
I believe the sheep began all the creepy paths in our part of the
country--not sheep such as you generally see about farms, or down to
market, but our little handsome sheep with curly horns that feed along
the sides of the cliffs in all sorts of dangerous places where a false step
would send them headlong six or seven hundred feet, perhaps a
thousand, down to the sea. For we have cliff slopes in places as high as
that, where the edge of the moor seems to have been chopped right off,
and if you are up there you can gaze down at the waves foaming over
the rocks, and if you looked right out over the sea, there away to the
north was Taffyland, as we boys called it, with the long rugged Welsh
coast stretching right and left, sometimes dim and hazy, and sometimes

standing out blue