Part 99 (2/2)

The gale has lasted three days, and in that time we have run before it on our course 970 miles. The fourth morning breaks gloriously bright, with the shadows of a few fleecy clouds flying across the bright blue heaving sea. The s.h.i.+p, with all canvas crowded on her, alow and aloft, is racing on, fifteen knots an hour, with a brisk cold wind full on her quarter, heeling over till the water comes rus.h.i.+ng and spouting through her leeward ports, and no man can stand without holding on, but all are merry and happy to see the water fly past like blue champagne, and to watch the seething wake that the good s.h.i.+p leaves behind her. Ah! what is this, that all are crowding down to leeward to look at? Is this the Crystal Palace, of which we have read, come out to sea to meet us? No!

the young folks are going to be gratified. It is a great iceberg, and we shall pa.s.s about a mile to windward.

Certainly worth seeing. Much more tremendous than I had expected, though my imagination had rather run riot in expectation. Just a great floating cl.u.s.ter of s.h.i.+ning splintered crystals, about a mile long and 300 feet high, with the cold hungry sea leaping and gnawing at its base,--that is all. Send up those German musicians here, and let us hear the echo of one of Strauss' Waltzes come ringing back from the chill green caverns. Then away, her head in northward again now, we may sight the Falklands the day after to-morrow.

Hardly worth telling you much more about that happy voyage, I think, and really I remember but few things more of note. A great American s.h.i.+p in 45 degrees, steaming in the teeth of the wind, heaving her long gleaming sides through the roll of the South Atlantic. The Royal Charter pa.s.sing us like a phantom s.h.i.+p through the hot haze, when we were becalmed on the line, waking the silence of the heaving gla.s.sy sea with her throbbing propeller. A valiant vainglorious little gun-boat going out all the way to China by herself, giving herself the airs of a seventy-four, requiring boats to be sent on board her, as if we couldn't have stowed her, guns and all, on our p.o.o.p, and never crowded ourselves. A n.o.ble transport, with 53 painted on her bows, swarming with soldiers for India, to whom we gave three times three. All these things have faded from my recollection in favour of a bright spring morning in April.

A morning which, beyond all others in my life, stands out clear and distinct, as the most memorable. Jim Buckley shoved aside my cabin door when I was dressing, and says he,--”Uncle Jeff, my Dad wants you immediately; he is standing by the davits of the larboard quarterboat.”

And so I ran up to Sam, and he took my arm and pointed northward. Over the gleaming morning sea rose a purple mountain, shadowed here and there by travelling clouds, and a little red-sailed boat was diving and plunging towards us, with a red flag fluttering on her mast.

”What!” I said,--but I could say no more.

”The Lizard!”

But I could not see it now for a blinding haze, and I bent down my head upon the bulwarks--Bah! I am but a fool after all. What could there have been to cry at in a Cornish moor, and a Falmouth pilot boat? I am not quite so young as I was, and my nerves are probably failing. That must have been it. ”When I saw the steeple,” says M. Tapley, ”I thought it would have choked me.” Let me say the same of Eddystone Lighthouse, which we saw that afternoon; and have done with sentiment for good. If my memory serves me rightly, we have had a good deal of that sort of thing in the preceding pages.

I left the s.h.i.+p at Plymouth, and Sam went on in her to London. I satisfied my soul with amazement at the men of war, and the breakwater; and, having bought a horse, I struck boldly across the moor for Drumston, revisiting on my way many a well-known snipe-ground, and old trout haunt; and so, on the third morning, I reached Drumston once more, and stabled my horse at a little public-house near the church.

It was about eight o'clock on a Tuesday morning; nevertheless, the church-bell was going, and the door was open as if for prayer. I was a little surprised at this, but having visited the grave where my father and mother lay, and then pa.s.sed on to the simple headstone which marked the resting place of John Thornton and his wife, I brushed through the docks and nettles, towards the lychgate, in the shadow of which stood the clergyman, a gentlemanly looking young man, talking to a very aged woman in a red cloak.

He saluted me courteously, and pa.s.sed on, talking earnestly and kindly to his aged companion, and so the remarkable couple went into the church, and the bell stopped.

I looked around. Close to me, leaning against the gate, was a coa.r.s.e looking woman about fifty, who had just set down a red earthen pitcher to rest herself, and seemed not disinclined for a gossip. And at the same moment I saw a fat man, about my own age, with breeches, unb.u.t.toned at the knee, grey worsted stockings and slippers, and looking altogether as if he was just out of bed, having had too much to drink the night before; such a man, I say, I saw coming across the road, towards us, with his hands in his pockets.

”Good morning,” I said to the woman. ”Pray what is the clergyman's name?”

”Mr. Montague,” she answered, with a curtsey.

”Does he have prayers every morning?”

”Every marnin' of his life,” she said. ”He's a Papister.”

”You'm a fool, Cis Jewell,” said the man, who had by this time arrived.

”You'm leading the gentleman wrong, he's a p.u.s.s.yite.”

”And there bain't much difference, I'm thinking, James Gosford,” said Cis Jewell.

I started. James Gosford had been one of my favourite old comrades in times gone by, and here he was. Could it be he? Could this fat red-faced man of sixty-one, be the handsome hard-riding young dandy of forty years ago? It was he, doubtless, and in another moment I should have declared myself, but a new interruption occurred.

The bell began again, and service was over. The old woman came out of the porch and slowly down the pathway towards us.

”Is that all his congregation?” I asked.

”That's all, sir,” said Gosford. ”Sometimes some of they young villains of boys gets in, and our old clerk, Jerry, hunts 'em round and round all prayer time; but there's none goes regular except the old 'ooman.”

”And she had need to pray a little more than other folks,” said Cis Jewell, folding her arms, and balancing herself in a conversational att.i.tude. ”My poor old grandfather----”

Further conversation was stopped by the near approach of the old woman herself, and I looked up at her with some little curiosity. A very old woman she was surely; and while I seemed struggling with some sort of recollection, she fixed her eyes upon me, and we knew one another.

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