O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas, Gordon Stables [microsoft ebook reader TXT] 📗
- Author: Gordon Stables
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We sailed past the Isle of Wight with a grey chopping sea all around us,
grey clouds above us, a bitter cold wind blowing, and a drizzling rain
borne along on its wings.
Then we entered Portsmouth harbour, and cast anchor among the wooden
walls of England. Finally I landed. Landed, much to my disgust, upon
stones instead of soft sand. Landed, still more to my disgust, among
crowds of people who stared at me as if I had a plurality of heads, or
only one eye right in the middle of my brow. I glanced around me with
all the proud dignity of a savage prince. The crowd laughed, and
Roberts hurried me on.
I daresay a visit to a fashionable tailor and its subsequent results
made me a little more presentable, but I disliked this town of
Portsmouth with a healthy dislike, and was glad when my friend took me
away.
I had to go to London. The railway amused me, and made me wonder, but
used as I was to the quiet of the desert and forest, it deafened me, and
the shaking tired me beyond conception.
My solicitor, a prim white-haired man, said he was _so_ glad to see me,
though I do believe he was a little afraid of me. Probably not without
cause, for at the very moment he was entering into business as he called
it, and arranging preliminaries, I was thinking how quickly Otakooma's
savages would rub all the starch out of this respectable citizen.
_They_ would not take long to arrange preliminaries with the little man,
and as to entering into business, they would do so in a way that would
considerably astonish his nerves.
"Bother business!" I exclaimed at last, in a voice that made the prim
solicitor almost spring off his chair.
"Oh! my dear sir," he pleaded, mildly. "We _must_ go into these little
matters."
He ventured to give me two fingers to shake as I left the office with
Roberts. I feel sure he was afraid to entrust me with all his hand.
"And as soon as you get home you will telegraph to me; won't you, Mr
Radnor?"
"Telegraph!" I said in astonishment. "Telegraph! and you tell me it is
five hundred miles from here to Dunryan. Do you think you can see a
fire at that distance? It must be a precious big one I'll have to
light, and the mountains around Dunryan must be amazingly high."
Both Roberts and the solicitor laughed; they could see that the only
idea I had of telegraphing was the building of fires on hill-tops.
I arrived at Dunryan at last--my small patrimony. If I was pleased with
it at all, it was simply because it was my own; but everything was so
new and so strange and so tame, that as soon as my friend saw me what he
called "settled," and went away to sea and left me, I began, in the most
methodical manner possible, to dislike everything round me.
People called on me, but I'm sure they were merely curious to hear my
history from my own lips, and partly afraid of me at the same time.
They invited me out to tea! Ha! ha! ha! I really cannot help laughing
about it now as I write; but fancy a savage sitting down to tea, of all
treats in the world, with a company of gossiping ladies of both sexes.
Now my neighbours made me out to be a bigger savage than I really was,
because, to do myself justice, I did know a little of the courtesies of
civilised life. There was one lady who expressed a wish to have the
"dreadful creature" to tea with her. I found out before I went that she
had styled me so, though her note of invitation was most politely
worded.
The "dreadful creature" did go to tea, intent on a kind of quiet
revenge. They could not get a word out of me--neither my hostess nor
the three old ladies she had asked to meet me by way of protection. I
did nothing but drink cup after cup of tea, handing in my cup to be
replenished, and drinking it at once. The bread and butter disappeared
in a way that seemed to them little short of miraculous. I saw that
they were getting frightened, so I thought I would make them a little
soothing speech.
"Ahem!" I began, standing up. I never got any further.
One old lady fainted; another "missed stays," as a sailor would say,
when making for the doorway, and tumbled on the floor; a third fell over
the piano-stool. All screamed--all thought I was about to do something
very dreadful.
All I did do was to step gingerly out into the hall, pick up my hat, and
go off.
I lived in Dunryan for a year. The scenery all around was charming in
the extreme. The very name will tell you that Dunryan is in Scotland;
the very word Scotland conjures up before the eye visions both of beauty
and romance.
But one year even of Scotland, the "land of green heath and shaggy
wood," was enough for me then.
There was no sport, no wild adventure; all was tame, tame, tame,
compared to what I had been used to.
But if following game in Scotland seemed tame to me, what could I say of
sport in English fashion? I tried both; grew sick of both. Hunting the
wild gorilla in the jungles of Africa was more in my line.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
One night, soon after the first snow had fallen, a carriage drove up to
my door. It was to bear me away to the distant railway-station. The
moon was shining brightly down upon our little village as we drove
through; here and there in the windows shone a yellow light; but all was
silent, and neither the horses' hoofs nor the carriage wheels could be
heard on the snow-muffled street.
It was a peaceful scene, and I heaved one sigh--well, it might have been
of regret. For many and many a long year to come I never saw Dunryan
again.
CHAPTER NINE.
"The dismal wreck to view
Struck horror to the crew."
Old Song.
The earlier history of a human being's life is engraved upon his mind as
with a pen of steel. After one comes to what are termed years of
discretion, the soul is not so impressionable, and events must be of
more than usual interest to be very long remembered. The story, then,
of a chequered life cannot be told with even a hopeful attempt at
minuteness, unless a log has been kept day after day and year after
year; and my opinion is, that although diaries are often most
religiously commenced, especially about New Year's time, they are seldom
if ever kept up very long.
My own adventures, and the scenes I passed through in the first stages
of my existence, were not, as the reader already knows, of a kind to be
very easily forgotten, even had my mind never been very impressionable.
It was easy enough, therefore, to record them in some kind of
chronological form.
The few adventures I and my friend Ben Roberts tell in the pages that
follow, and our sketches of life, are given as they occur to our memory;
often brought back to our minds by the incidents of our present everyday
life.
But I do not think that even if Ben and I live as long as Old Parr, we
shall either tire of spinning our yarns, or fall short of subject
matter.
Let me say a word or two about the place I live in now, and where Ben so
often pays me a visit.
We call it Rowan Tree Villa.
It stands mid-way up a well-wooded hill, about two and a half miles from
a dreamy, drowsy old village, in one of the dreamiest, drowsiest nooks
of bonnie, tree-clad Berkshire.
The top of the hill is covered by tall-stemmed pine trees, and from this
eminence you can see, stretching far away below, all the undulating
country, the fertile valley of the Thames, and the river itself winding
for many and many a mile through it--a silver thread amidst the green.
From the top of this hill, too, if you take the trouble to climb it, you
can have a bird's-eye view of Rowan Tree Villa.
There it is, a pretty, many-gabled cottage, with a comfortable-looking
kitchen garden and orchard behind it, and a long, wide lawn in front.
Now this lawn has one peculiarity. From the gate on each side up to the
terrace in front of the house sweeps a broad carriage drive, bounded on
both its sides, first by a belt of green grass, carefully trimmed and
dotted here and there with patches of flowers, and secondly by two rows
of rowan trees (the mountain ash), trained on wires, and forming the
prettiest bit of hedge-work you could easily imagine.
If you were Scotch, and looked at that hedge even for a moment, the
words, and maybe the air as well, of the Baroness Nairne's beautiful
song would rise in your mind--
"Thy leaves were aye the first in spring,
Thy flowers the summer's pride;
There was nae sic a bonnie tree
In a' the country side.
And fair wert thou in summer time,
Wi' a' thy clusters white,
And rich and gay thy autumn dress
Of berries red and bright.
Oh, rowan tree!"
Well, it is June to-day--an afternoon in June; a day to make one feel
life in every limb--a day when but to exist is a luxury. The roses are
bending their heads in the sweet sunshine, for there is not a cloud in
Heaven's blue. The butterflies are chasing each other among the flowers
on the lawn, where we recline among the daisies, and the big velvety
bees go droning and humming from clover blossom to clover blossom.
"Strange, is it not, my dear Ben," I said, "that on such a day as this,
and in the midst of sunshine, I should bethink me of some night-scenes
at sea and on land?
"I remember well my first experience of a storm by night in the Northern
Ocean. We were going to the Arctic regions, cruising in a sturdy and,
on the whole, not badly fitted, nor badly found ship.
"The anchor was weighed, the sails were set, and spread their wings to
the breeze; the crew had given their farewell cheer, and the rough old
pilot, having seen us safely out of Brassy Sound, had shaken the captain
roughly by the hand, and wishing us `God-speed and safely home,' had
disappeared in his boat round a point.
"We were once more on the deep and dark blue ocean. Then the night
began to fall, and soon the only sound heard was the tramp, tramp on
deck, or the steady wash of the water, as our vessel ever and anon
dipped her bows or waist in the waves.
"The captain had given his last orders on deck, and came below to our
little saloon, the only occupants of which were myself and the ship's
cat.
"Poor Pussy was endeavouring, rather ineffectually, to steady herself on
the sofa, and looked very much from home, while I myself was trebly
engaged: namely, in placing such articles as were constantly tumbling
down into a safer and steadier position, in keeping the fire brightly
burning, and in reading a nautical book.
"There was a shade of uneasiness on the captain's face as he looked at
the barometer; and when he entered his state-room, and presently after
emerged dressed in oilskins and a sou'-wester hat, I felt as sure we
were going to have a dirty night as though he had rigged himself out in
sackcloth and ashes.
"He sat down, and, calling for some coffee, invited me to join in a
social cup.
"`Is there plenty of sea-room?' I inquired.
"`Very little sea-room,' he replied; `but she must take her chance.'
"Then we relapsed into silence.
"About an hour or two after this it became a difficult matter to sit on
a chair at all, so much did the vessel pitch and roll.
"The captain had gone on deck, and as I
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