Menhardoc | Page 9

best thing, made a sailor of you in a lugger. She's mine
now with all her craft of nets--leastwise she's aunt's, for she keeps the
accounts; but some day when I'm sewn up and dropped overboard out
of the world, the lugger'll all be yours; only if I go first, Will," he
whispered, drawing the lad closer to him, "never mind the bit of a
safety-valve as fizzles and whistles and snorts; be kind, lad, to your
aunt."
"I don't want the lugger," cried Will, laying his hands on the old man's
shoulders. "I want my dear old uncle to stop, and see him enjoy his
pipe, and I won't take a hit of notice--"
"Of the safety-valve, Will?"
"No, uncle; but I want to get on," cried the lad excitedly. "I'm tired of
being a burden to you, uncle, and--"

"Hasn't that boy changed his things yet?"
"Right, Ruth, my dear," cried the old purser loudly, assuming his old
sea lingo. "Here, you, sir, how much longer are you going to stand
jawing there. Heave ahead and get into a fresh rig with you."
Here he winked and frowned tremendously at Will, giving one of his
hands a tremendous squeeze, and the lad ran upstairs.
The lugger was not to put out again till evening, when the soft breeze
would be blowing, and the last rays of the sun be ready to glorify sea,
sky, and the sails and cordage of the fishing-boats as they stole softly
out to the fishing-ground for the night, so that as Mrs Marion had gone
up to lie down after dinner, according to custom, and the old purser
was in the little summer-house having his after-dinner pipe, as he
called it, one which he invariably enjoyed without lighting the tobacco
and with a handkerchief over his head, Will was at liberty to go out
unquestioned. Accordingly he hurried down to the harbour, where the
tide was out, the gulls were squealing and wailing, and apparently
playing a miniature game of King of the Castle upon a little bit of black
rock which appeared above the sea a couple of hundred yards out.
In the harbour the water was so low that the Pretty Ruth, Abram
Marion's lugger--named, for some reason that no one could see, after
the old man's wife--was lying over nearly on her beam-ends, so that, as
Josh Helston, who was on board, went to and fro along the deck with a
swab in his hands it was impossible to help thinking that if nature had
made his legs like his arms, one very much shorter than the other, he
would have found locomotion far easier.
As it was, he had to walk with one knee very much, bent, so greatly was
the deck inclined; but it did not trouble him, his feet being bare and his
toes spreading out widely and sticking to the clean narrow planks as if
they were, like the cuttle-fish, provided with suckers.
Josh was swabbing away at the clinging fish-scales and singing in a
sweet musical voice an old west-country ditty in which a lady was
upbraiding someone for trying "to persuade a maiden to forsake the

jacket blue," of course the blue jacket containing some smart young
sailor.
"Hi, Josh!"
"Oh, it's you, is it?" said Josh, rubbing his nose with the mop handle.
"No, I'm busy. I sha'n't come."
"Yes, do come, Josh," said Will, crossing three or four luggers and
sitting on the rail of the Pretty Ruth.
"What's the good, lad?"
"Good, Josh? Why, I've told you before. I can't bear this life."
"Fisherman's a good honest life," said Josh sententiously.
"Not when a lad feels that he's a dependant and a burden on his
friends," cried Will excitedly. "I want to get on, Josh. I want to succeed,
and--there, I knew you'd come."
For Josh had thrown away the mop with an angry movement, and then
dragging on a pair of great blue stockings he put on shoes and
followed Will without a word.
Out along the beach and away from the village, and in and out among
the rocks for quite two miles, till they were where the cliff went sheer
up like a vast wall of rugged granite, at a part of which, where a mass
of broken stone had either fallen or been thrown down, Will stopped
and looked round to see if they were observed. As they were alone with
no other watchers than a swarthy-looking cormorant sitting on a sunny
lodge drying his wings, and a shag or two perched with outstretched
neck, narrowly observing them, Will climbed up, followed by Josh, till
they were upon a broad shelf a hundred and fifty feet above the sea--a
wild solitary place, where the heap of debris, lichened and