Part 12 (1/2)

”Well, but you can bring Charlie along with you,” said Young, ”and I'll engage to carry him and you too if you get tired. There, run away; find him, and fetch him quick.”

Little Sall went off like the wind, and soon returned with the redoubtable Charles in her arms. It was all she could do to stagger under the load; but Charlie Christian had not yet attained to facility in walking. He was still in the nude stage of childhood, and his faithful nurse, being afraid lest he should get badly scratched if dragged at a rapid pace through the bushes, had carried him.

Submitting, according to custom, in solemn and resigned surprise, Charlie was soon seated on the shoulders of our mids.h.i.+pman, who led the way to the cliffs. William Brown followed, leading Sally by the hand, for she refused to be carried, and Nehow brought up the rear.

The cliffs to which their steps were directed were not more than an hour's walk from the settlement at Bounty Bay, though, for Sally's sake, the time occupied in going was about half-an-hour longer. It was a wild spot which had been selected. The towering walls of rock were rugged with ledges, spurs, and indentations, where sea-birds in myriads gave life to the scene, and awakened millions of echoes to their plaintive cries. There was a pleasant appearance of sociability about the birds which was powerfully attractive. Even Nehow, accustomed as he was to such scenes, appeared to be impressed. The middy and the botanist were excited. As for Sally, she was in ecstasies, and the baby seemed lost in the profoundest fit of wonder he had experienced since the day of his birth.

”Oh, Challie,” exclaimed his nurse in a burst of laughter, ”what a face you's got! Jis' like de fig'r'ead o' the _Bounty_.” (Sall quoted here!) ”Ain't they bootiful birds?”

She effectually prevented reply, even if such had been intended, by suddenly seizing her little charge round the neck and kissing his right eye pa.s.sionately. Master Charlie cared nothing for that. He gazed past her at the gulls with the un.o.bliterated eye. When she kissed him on the left cheek, he gazed past her at the gulls with the other eye. When she let him go, he continued to gaze at the gulls with both eyes. He had often seen the same gulls at a distance, from the lower level of Bounty Bay, but he had never before stood on their own giddy cliffs, and watched them from their own favourite bird's-eye-view point; for there were thousands of them sloping, diving, and wheeling in the airy abyss, pictured against the dark blue sea below, as well as thousands more circling upwards, floating and gyrating in the bright blue sky above.

It seemed as if giant snowflakes were trembling in the air in all directions. Some of the gulls came so near to those who watched them that their black inquiring eyes became distinctly visible; others swept towards them with rustling wings, as if intending to strike, and then glanced sharply off, or upwards, with wild cries.

”Wouldn't it be fun to have wings?” asked Brown of Sally, as she stood there open-mouthed and eyed.

”Oh, _wouldn't_ it?”

”If I had wings,” said Young, with a touch of sadness in his tone, ”I'd steer a straight course through the air for Old England.”

”I didn't know you had such a strong desire to be hanged,” said Brown.

”They'd never hang me,” returned Young. ”I'm innocent of the crime of mutiny, and Captain Bligh knows it.”

”Bligh would be but a broken reed to lean on,” rejoined Brown, with a shrug of contempt. ”If he liked you, he'd favour you; if he didn't, he'd go dead against you. I wouldn't trust myself in _his_ hands whether innocent or guilty. Depend upon it, Mr Young, Fletcher Christian would have been an honour to the service if he had not been driven all but mad by Bligh. I don't justify Mr Christian's act--it cannot be defended,--but I have great sympathy with him. The only man who deserves to be hanged for the mutiny of the _Bounty_, in my opinion, is Mr Bligh himself; but men seldom get their due in this world, either one way or another.”

”That's a powerfully radical sentiment,” said Young, laughing; ”it's to be hoped that men will at all events get their due in the next world, and it is well for you that Pitcairn is a free republic. But come, we must go to work if we would have a kettle of fresh eggs. I see a ledge which seems accessible, and where there must be plenty of eggs, to judge from the row the gulls are making round it. I'll try. See, now, that you don't get yourself into a fix that you can't get out of. You know that the heads of you landsmen are not so steady as those of seamen.”

”I know that the heads of landsmen are not stuffed with such conceit as the heads of you sailors,” retorted Brown, as he went off to gather eggs.

”Now, Sally, do you stop here and take care of Charlie,” said Young, leading the little girl to a soft gra.s.sy mound, as far back from the edge of the cliff as possible. ”Mind that you don't leave this spot till I return. I know I can trust you, and as for Charlie--”

”Oh, he never moves a'most, 'xcept w'en I lifts 'im. He's _so_ good!”

interrupted Sally.

”Well, just keep a sharp eye on him, and we'll soon be back with lots of eggs.”

While Edward Young was thus cautioning the child, William Brown was busy making his way down the cliffs to some promising ledges below, and Nehow, the Otaheitan, clambered up the almost perpendicular face of the part that rose above them. [See frontispiece.]

It was interesting to watch the movements of the three men. Each was, in his own way, venturesome, fearless, and more or less practised in cliff climbing. The mids.h.i.+pman ascended the perpendicular face with something of a nautical swagger, but inasmuch as the ledges, crevices, and projections were neither so well adapted to the hands nor so sure as ratlines and ropes, there was a wholesome degree of caution mingled with his confidence. When the wished-for ledge was gained, he gave relief to his feelings in a hearty British cheer that reverberated from cliff to cliff, causing the startled sea-gulls to drive the very echoes mad with their clangour.

The botanist, on the other hand, proceeded with the extreme care of a man who knew that a false step or uncertain grip might send him into the seething ma.s.s of foam and rocks below. But he did not hesitate or betray want of courage in attempting any difficulty which he had made up his mind to face.

The proceedings of Nehow, however, seemed little short of miraculous.

He appeared to run up perpendicular places like a cat; to leap where the others crept, to scramble where his companions did not dare to venture, and, loosely speaking, to hang on occasionally to nothing by the point of his nose, his eyelids, or his finger-nails! We say that he appeared to do all this, but the gulls who watched and followed him in noisy indignation could have told you, if they had chosen, that his eye was quick, that his feet and hands were sure, and that he never trusted foot or hand for one moment on a doubtful projection or crevice.

For some time all went well. The three men soon returned, each with a few eggs which they laid on the gra.s.s in three little heaps, to be watched and guarded by Sally, and to be stared at in grave surprise by Charlie. They carried their eggs in three round baskets without lids, and with handles which folded over on one side, so that the baskets could be fitted into each other when not in use, or slung round the necks of the egg-collectors while they were climbing.

The last to return to the children was William Brown. He brought his basket nearly half full of fine eggs, and set it down beside the two heaps already brought in.

”Ain't they lovely, Sall?” asked Brown, wiping the perspiration from his brow with the sleeve of his coat. That same coat, by the way, was very disreputable--threadbare and worn,--being four years old on the lowest calculation, and having seen much rough service, for Brown had an objection to the tapa cloth, and said he would stick to the old coat as long as it would stick to him. The truth is he felt it, with his worn canvas trousers and Guernsey s.h.i.+rt, to be in some sense a last link to ”home,” and he was loath to part with them.