Part 3 (1/2)

”What's that?”

”Don't you never say your prayers when you take the watch below?”

”Sometimes we does, when mother isn't too tired, and the ould man's middling drunk and quiet.”

”Then don't you like to then?”

”Aw, yes, though, I'm liking it scandalous.”

The wreckers agreed to say their prayers, and got up again and said them, knee to knee, with their two little faces to the fire, and then stretched themselves out afresh.

”Pete, where's your hand?”

”Here you are, Phil.”

In another minute, under the solemn darkness of the night, broken only by the smouldering fire, amid the thunderous quake of the cavern after every beat of the waves on the beach, the Carrasdhoo men were asleep.

Sometime in the dark reaches before the dawn Pete leapt up with a start ”What's that?” he cried, in a voice of fear.

But Philip was still in the mists of sleep, and, feeling the cold, he only whimpered, ”Cover me up, Pete.”

”Phil!” cried Pete, in an affrighted whisper.

”Cover me up,” drawled Philip.

”I thought it was Black Tom,” said Pete.

There was some confused bellowing outside the cave.

”My goodness grayshers!” came in a terrible voice, ”it's them, though, the pair of them! Impozzible! who says it's impozzible? It's themselves I'm telling you, ma'm. Guy heng! The woman's mad, putting a scream out of herself like yonder. Safe? Coorse they're safe, bad luck to the young wastrels! You're for putting up a prayer for your own one. Eh? Well, I'm for hommering mine. The dirts? Weaned only yesterday, and fetching a dacent man out of his bed to find them. A fire at them, too! Well, it was the fire that found them. Pull the boat up, boys.”

Philip was half awake by this time. ”They've come,” he whispered. ”The s.h.i.+ps is come, they're on the reef. Oh, dear me! Best go and meet them.

P'raps they won't kill us if--if we--Oh, dear me!”

Then the wreckers, hand in hand, quaking and whimpering, stepped out to the mouth of the cave. At the next moment Philip found himself s.n.a.t.c.hed up into the arms of Aunty Nan, who kissed him and cried over him, and rammed a great chunk of sweet cake into his cheek. Pete was faring differently. Under the leathern belt of Black Tom, who was thras.h.i.+ng him for both of them, he was howling like the sea in a storm.

Thus the Carrasdhoo men came home by the light of early morning--Pete skipping before the belt and bellowing; and Philip holding a piece of the cake at his teeth to comfort him.

IV.

Philip left home for school at King William's by Castletown, and then Pete had a hard upbringing. His mother was tender enough, and there were good souls like Aunty Nan to show pity to both of them. But life went like a springless bogey, nevertheless. Sin itself is often easier than simpleness to pardon and condone. It takes a soft heart to feel tenderly towards a soft head.

Poor Pete's head seemed soft enough and to spare. No power and no persuasion could teach him to read and write. He went to school at the old schoolhouse by the church in Maughold village. The schoolmaster was a little man called John Thomas Corlett, pert and proud, with the sharp nose of a pike and the gait of a bantam. John Thomas was also a tailor.

On a cowhouse door laid across two school forms he sat cross-legged among his cloth, his ”maidens,” and his smoothing irons, with his boys and girls, cla.s.s by cla.s.s, in a big half circle round about him.

The great little man had one standing ground of daily a.s.sault on the dusty jacket of poor Pete, and that was that the lad came late to school. Every morning Pete's welcome from the tailor-schoolmaster was a volley of expletives, and a swipe of the cane across his shoulders. ”The craythur! The dunce! The durt! I'm taiching him, and taiching him, and he won't be taicht.”

The soul of the schoolmaster had just two human weaknesses. One of these was a weakness for drink, and as a little vessel he could not take much without being full. Then he always taught the Church catechism and swore at his boys in Manx.

”Peter Quilliam,” he cried one day, ”who brought you out of the land of Egypt and the house of bondage?”