Part 9 (1/2)
”Good-morning, missy! Good-morning, Master Clem! I'm good as my word, you see; though be sure I never reckoned to find 'ee up and out at this hour.”
”Myra woke me,” said Clem. ”I believe she keeps a clock in her head.”
”When I want to wake up at any particular hour, I just do it,” Myra announced calmly. ”Have they begun the rafting?”
”Bless your life, they've been working all night. There's one raft finished, and the other ought to be ready in a couple or three hours, to save the tide across the bay.”
”I don't hear them singing.”
”'Tisn't allowed. The Bo--your Aunt Hannah, I mean--says she don't mind what happens to sea, but she won't have her nights in harbour disturbed.
Old Billy Daddo hadn't laid hands on the first balk before he began to pipe, 'O for a thousand tongues to sing,' starting on the very first hymn in the collection like as if he meant to sing right through it. He hadn't got to 'music in the sinner's ears' before the old woman pushed her face overside by the starboard cathead, nightcap and all--in that time she must ha' nipped out of her berth, up the companion, and along the length of the deck--and says she, 'I ben't no sinner, William Daddo, but a staid woman that likes her sleep and means to have it.' 'Why, missus,' says Billy, 'you'll surely lev' a man ask a blessing on his labours!' 'Ask quiet then,' she says, 'or you'll get slops.' Since then they be all as mute as mice.”
Myra took Clem's hand, and the three hurried down the hill and through the sleeping village to the ferry-slip, where Tom had a s.h.i.+p's boat ready.
In fifty strokes he brought her alongside the barque where the rafters-- twenty-five or thirty--were at work, busy as flies. The _Virtuous Lady_ had been towed up overnight from her first anchorage to a berth under Hall gardens, and a hatch opened in her bows, through which the long balks of timber were thrust by the stevedores at work in the hold and received by a gang outside, who floated them off to be laid raftwise and lashed together with chains. The sun, already working around to the south, gilded the barque's top-gallant masts and yards, and flung a stream of gold along the raft already finished and moored in midstream. But the great hull lay as yet in the cool shadow of the hillside over which the larks sang.
Tom Trevarthen found the children a corner on the half-finished raft, out of the way of the workmen, and a spare tarpaulin to keep their clothes dry; and there they sat happily, the boy listening and Myra explaining, until Mrs. Purchase, having slept her sleep and dressed herself (partly), emerged on deck with a teapot to fill at the cook's galley, and, looking over the bulwarks, caught sight of them.
”Hullo! You don't tell me that Susannah,”--this was the housekeeper at Hall--”allows you abroad at this hour!”
Now the risk of Susannah's discovering their escape and pursuing was the one bitter drop in the cup of these truants' happiness. Susannah--a middle-aged, ill-favoured spinster, daughter of a yeoman-farmer, with whose second wife she could not agree--scorned the sea and all sailors.
Once, as a girl, she had committed her ample person to a sailing boat, and, thank G.o.d! that one lesson had been enough. s.h.i.+ps came and went under the windows of Hall, but in the children's eyes they and their crews belonged to an unknown world. Things real to them were the farm and farm stock, harvests and harvest-homes, the waggoners' teams, byres, orchards, garden, and cool dairy. s.h.i.+ps' captains arrived out of fairyland sometimes, and crossed the straw-littered townplace to hold audience with their grandfather; magic odours of hemp and pitch, magic chanty songs and clanking of windla.s.ses called to them up the hill; but until this morning they had never dared to obey the call. Had Clem been as other boys--.
But, being blind, he trusted to Myra, and Myra was a girl.
”Come aboard and have a drink of something cordial!” continued Mrs.
Purchase, holding the teapot aloft. She walked forward and looked down on the workers. ”Now you may sing, boys, if't pleases 'ee.”
”Thank'ee, ma'am,” answered up Billy Daddo; ”then lev' us make a start with Wrestling Jacob, Part Two--”
'Lame as I am, I take the prey'--
”'Tis a pleasant old tune and never comes amiss, but for choice o' seasons give me the dew o' the mornin'.”
He pitched the note in high falsetto, and after a couple of bars five or six near comrades joined in together--
”Speak to me now, for I am weak, But confident in self-despair: Speak to my heart, in blessings speak; Be conquer'd by my instant prayer!
Speak, or thou never hence shall move, And tell me if thy name is Love.”
Billy Daddo's gang hailed from a parish, three miles up the coast, noted for containing ”but one man that couldn't preach, and that was the parson.” Their fellow-labourers--the crew of the barque and half-a-score longsh.o.r.emen belonging to the port--heard without thought of deriding.
Though themselves unconverted--for life in a town, especially in a seaport town, makes men curious and critical rather than intense, and life in a s.h.i.+p ruled by Mrs. Purchase did not encourage visionaries--they were accustomed to the fervours of the redeemed.
”'Tis Love! 'tis Love! thou diedst for me: I hear thy whisper in my heart--!”
”Brayvo! 'tis workin'! 'tis workin'! Give it tongue, brother Langman!”
cried Billy, as a stevedore within the hold broke forth into a stentorian ba.s.s that made the s.h.i.+p rumble--
”The morning breaks, the shadows flee, Pure universal Love thou art: To me, to me thy bowels move, Thy nature and thy name is Love!”
Meanwhile young Tom Trevarthen had brought the children under the vessel's side, and was helping Clem up the ladder. Mrs. Purchase greeted them with a kiss apiece, and carried them off to the cabin, where they found Mr.
Purchase eating bread and cream.