"Cherry jam is certainly very runny," said Aunt Mary at tea-time.
"Do you put a handful of gooseberries into it?" Mollie asked rather dreamily, as she tried in vain to spread her scone tidily.
"Gooseberries! Why, no; I never thought of it. It might be quite a good idea."
"Or red currants?" Mollie went on.
"Red currants! Bless the child! I didn't know you were a cook, Mollie."
"Neither I am," said Mollie, rousing herself up to the fact that she was back in Chauncery, and must set a watch upon her tongue. Why was it, she wondered, that she forgot Chauncery so much more when she was with those other children than she forgot the children when she was at Chauncery? "I once heard a person say they put gooseberries and red currants into cherry jam, and I suddenly remembered," she told Aunt Mary.
"Well, it is too late for cherries, but I will try it for the strawberries to-morrow. It will be quite an interesting experiment."
Mollie resolutely pushed her thoughts about the cherry garden and its occupants into the background, and gave her whole mind to a game of patience with Grannie, who was getting a little tired of jig-saw. But when that was over, and Grannie was absorbed in casting on a stocking-top with an intricate pattern, while Aunt Mary wrote letters, she began again to think and wonder about her curious journey, which for some reason seemed less strange to-day than it had done yesterday. She pondered over ways and means to get Dick across, or over, or through, "or whatever you call it when you travel in Time", she thought; "back might be the best word. I do wish I could tell Aunt Mary."
She looked thoughtfully at her aunt, whose head was bent over her writing, the smooth bands of her silky, brown hair shining brightly in the lamp-light. No doubt some, perhaps most, grown-ups would scoff at her tale if she told it, Mollie thought. Grown-up people as a rule love best to jog along on well-trodden, safe, commonplace paths, and avoid adventurous by-ways, but Aunt Mary, Mollie felt sure, was an anti-jogger, so to speak, and would always choose adventures if she had a choice. "It's funny to think," Mollie reflected, "that she can't be so very much younger than Mrs. Campbell is—was—is—was then. I suppose she is about thirty-five, and Mrs. Campbell forty or so—she looks—looked old enough to be Aunt Mary's mother. Being good at games keeps her young; she can beat me to a frazzle at golf and tennis; and she is frightfully keen on aeroplanes; I'm sure she would fly if it weren't for Grannie. I wonder why she never got married?"
Mollie had not yet come to the age of sentiment, but now and then she reached forward a little and surveyed its possibilities, and now she paused awhile to muse upon the subject of her aunt's spinsterhood. Not for long, however; she decided that Aunt Mary must have had excellent reasons of her own for remaining single, and returned to the more pressing problem of how to get Dick into the Campbells' garden. Finally she thought of a plan worth trying.
"Grannie, may I have the loan of one of your photographs?" she asked. "Dick has a way of copying them with a thing he has that makes them look like drawings, and the old-fashioned ones are the prettiest."
"By all means, if he will be careful," Grannie answered, nine-tenths of her mind being fixed on her new pattern and only one-tenth upon her grandchild's peculiar fancy for Victorian photographs. So Mollie wrote a short letter to her brother, enclosing the group which had worked the magic charm for herself that afternoon. She put it into the evening post-bag with a sigh. "If that doesn't do it I can't think of anything else," she said to herself.
It is remarkable how quickly one becomes used to a new routine. Already Mollie was making more use of her hands and head because she could not use her feet. She was fond of writing, and decided next morning to begin an account of her strange adventure while it was still fresh in her mind. In the intervals of other plans for her future career she had dreams of becoming a writer of books, but her difficulty hitherto had been that the usual sort of book is so ordinary, and she had never been able to think of anything remarkably unusual to write about. The autobiography of a person who could live in various periods of the Christian Era might turn out to be quite interesting, she thought, if only people would believe that it was true. The trouble was that most likely they would think she was inventing it, "and anyone can invent any old thing. And this is only the beginning of my adventures. When I have thoroughly learnt how to Time-travel I will go back much further—perhaps to the French Revolution, and watch people being guillotined."
She scribbled diligently in the thick exercise-book, which Aunt Mary produced without once asking what it was wanted for. "It just shows—" Mollie murmured gratefully; "some people would have teased me to death."
And so time passed, and half-past two came round again in the usual inevitable way, and Mollie lay expecting Prudence as calmly as though she were coming from next door. She had the album on her lap, and was turning the pages in search of a new photograph, when in the twinkling of an eye Prue was there.
"We don't need that now," she said, "but we must have Aunt Mary's tunes. Where is she?"
"Oh dear, dear, I forgot!" Mollie cried in dismay. "I do believe Aunt Mary is making strawberry jam, and I went and told her about putting in gooseberries and red currants, and her head will be full of them and she will forget me!"
But the lullaby had not been forgotten. At that very moment the piano began—a tune Mollie knew well this time, for she had often heard the American soldiers sing it in London:
"Oh, darkies, how my heart grows weary, Far from the old folks at home".
"Give me your hand—quick," said Prue in a whisper.
* * * * *
Mollie found herself standing on a wide beach in the curve of a beautiful bay. Before her lay the sea, dark blue in the distance, a clear emerald green by the shore. To the right of her the beach stretched as far as she could see, firm yellow sand on the lower half, fine white silvery sand higher up. On the left it only ran for a couple of miles or so and then ended in rocks, over which the sea threw a cool white spray. Behind her, Mollie saw, when she turned, the line of the beach was followed by sandhills, some covered with low-growing scrub and some quite bare and treeless, shining like snow in the hot sunlight.
The children were all there. At a little distance from where she stood Mollie could see Hugh and Prudence, Hugh lightly clad in a swimming-suit, and Prue with her skirts rolled up and her feet bare. A wide sun-hat covered her head, and her brown curls were fastened back with a clasp, which made her look older, Mollie thought.
The two children were hauling a large, square, flat object down to the sea, Hugh pulling in front with ropes, and Prudence pushing behind.
"I do believe it's the raft," thought Mollie. "This must be Brighton, and I suppose the summer holidays have come round again. It is a little difficult to keep up with Time here. I do wish Dick could come!"
Grizzel was sitting on the beach close beside her, and seemed to be gathering shells from a little pale-rose patch on the sand at her feet. She was very absorbed in her task, but she looked up at Mollie with a smile, apparently not at all surprised to see her there. She was dressed, like Prue, in a turned-up overall and wore a wide hat, which hid the red curls from view and gave her an unfamiliar look. Bridget was sitting not far from Grizzel, busily doing crochet-work and singing a song about a wild Irish boy, while her eyes wandered after Baby, who was singing a little song of her own invention about a poor lonely whale who had a loving heart. Higher up the beach, at the foot of the sandhills, Mollie could see Professor and Mrs. Campbell, one reading aloud and the other sewing.
"Where shall I go first?" Mollie asked herself, "I think I'll go and see what Hugh and Prudence are doing."
She found, when she began to walk, that she was bare-legged and bunchy about the skirts like the other girls, and that her head was covered with a sun-hat like theirs, a tanned Panama straw, light as a feather, and shading her eyes from the glare of sea and sand. The sun was very hot and the sand was warm under her feet.
"Hullo! Here's Mollie the Jolly!" exclaimed Hugh, as she drew near. "Come along and lend a hand—we are just about to launch the good ship Nancy Lee on her trial trip."
Mollie examined the raft with deep interest. It was really very neatly made, the planks straight and smooth, and firmly held together by cross-bars underneath. There was a mast in the exact centre, with a sail at present close-reefed, and there was a pair of old oars which, Hugh explained, had been purchased from a boatman of his acquaintance. All round the raft were bunches of corks, several hundreds at least.
"Did Prue and Grizzel find all those?" Mollie asked.
"We all collected 'em," Hugh replied; "lots of people gave us corks—jolly old winebibbers they must be," he added ungratefully. "Now then—with a long, long pull and a strong, strong pull!"
They got to the edge of the water, and the two girls waded in as far as they could go without getting their clothes wet, before the raft finally took to her natural element and rocked up and down on the smoothly rippling wavelets. A gentle breeze was blowing off the sea, but the tide was running out, which, Hugh remarked, was a good plan, as the raft would go out to sea with the tide and come back with the wind in her sail. He thought, however, that he would not carry any passengers on the first trip—in fact, to begin with, he would harness himself to his craft and pull her both out and in, "just till I see how she goes; she's got to find her sea-legs."
The girls watched the raft and its owner depart into deep water; they saw Hugh climb on board, and decided that the passengers who sailed aboard the Nancy Lee would be most suitably attired in bathing-dresses, as she appeared to slide along as much below the ocean as above it. After standing for some minutes they wandered along towards Grizzel, who was still sitting by the pale rosy patch on the sand. When they sat down beside her Mollie saw that the shells she was gathering were so tiny that they were hardly larger than a pin's head, and yet they were perfect in form and colour; she thought she had never seen anything more exquisite.
"We thread them and make necklaces," Prudence explained; "they are so thin that you can stick a needle through them quite easily; they come in beds like this all along the beach. There are lots of lovely shells here, and sea-eggs too. We collect them sometimes, but our collections have such a way of getting lost somehow, they are always beginning over again and ending too soon."
"Can you say 'She sells sea-shells' twenty times running, as fast as lightning?" asked Grizzel.
"Not running as fast as lightning," Mollie answered, "but I could say it if I were walking rather slowly."
"I couldn't," said Grizzel, taking no notice of Mollie's flippancy, "if I were to crawl at the rate of half an inch a year I should be saying 'She shells sea-shells' the whole time."
"You are talking nonsense," said Prudence. "Come up and see Papa and Mamma."
Mollie was greeted kindly by the older people. She had forgotten to ask if she was supposed to be a visitor or only spending the day with the Campbells, but gathered from Mamma's conversation that she was paying a visit and had arrived that morning. She wondered again how they heard about her coming; the children appeared to take her for granted, but, of course, they knew she was a Time-traveller!
As the girls sat by their elders, idly playing with the silvery sand and chatting to each other, a large steamship came in view, coming from the north and heading south-west. They all stopped working and talking as they watched her steaming along, a trail of smoke blowing behind her, smudging the blue sky with clouds, black at first and gradually fading to grey.
"That's the English mail," Papa said at last; "she was due to leave the Semaphore at three o'clock to-day."
They were silent again; the great ship drew nearer—now she was almost opposite.
"Oh—John—Home!" Mamma said. There was a tremble in her voice that made Prudence and Mollie look up—there were tears in her eyes.
"I know, little wife, I know," Papa answered softly, putting a hand over the white hands which had dropped the busy needle.
The girls rose to their feet and left Papa and Mamma. They went down to the edge of the shore, and stood watching the ship as she began to slip over the horizon.
"Now she has begun to go down the Big Hill," said Prue. "She will sail for miles and miles and thousands of miles, and for days and nights and weeks across all that sea. I wonder if some children on the other side will be playing on that beach, and will watch her funnel climb over the top of the hill again and say: 'Here comes the Australian mail!'"
Mollie did not answer. She could not remember ever taking much interest in the Australian mail. But in future she determined she would always watch when she had the chance, and wave a friendly hand to the incoming ships.
Soon there was nothing to be seen of the big steamer but a trail of smoke, which lingered long in the sky.
Prudence had fallen into a day-dream; and Mollie's eyes were roaming over the blue sea, when suddenly she caught sight of the raft bobbing about on the little waves, sometimes above and sometimes below. In the water in front of the raft she could see Hugh's head, like a round black ball—and—yes, she was not mistaken, there were two other round black balls which must also be heads. That was rather odd, she thought; she had not noticed any other boys about.
"Look, Prue!" she exclaimed, catching Prue by the arm, "look—there is Hugh, and he has got someone with him—oh, do you think he has rescued some drowning sailors?"
Prue came out of her day-dream with a jerk, and brought her thoughts and her eyes back to earth, or rather to sea.
"Yes, he has someone with him," she said. "How funny!"
As they gazed, the three swimmers turned round and, with a good deal of ducking and slipping, climbed aboard the raft, which triumphantly survived and remained afloat, though decidedly wet about the deck. They proceeded to unfurl the sail, which one boy held while the other two took to the oars, and, after some hard work, the Nancy Lee was safely beached. Grizzel joined Mollie and Prudence, and the three girls watched the three boys, not offering to go and help with the raft because they felt a little shy of the strangers.
Presently one of them turned round—and Mollie gave a jump. The boy's hair hung over his forehead in wet, black streaks, and he was dressed, or rather undressed, in a swimming-suit, the rest of him being wet, white skin; but in spite of this unusual appearance Mollie was almost sure—in fact she was quite sure—that it was Young Outram. And the other boy—who kept his back turned in a provoking way as he examined the raft—why, that boy—yes, it surely was Dick! Mollie squealed and caught Prue by the arm:
"It's Dick and Jerry Outram!" she exclaimed, jumping up and down with excitement. "Oh, Prue—have they swum all the way from London without any clothes?"
Prudence laughed. "Mollie, you are a goose! Do you think they could swim fourteen thousand miles?"
"Well how—? Oh, I forgot! It is so hard to remember about Time-travelling here! Oh, Prue, how exciting it is!"
At that moment Dick looked round and saw his sister. Both boys came racing along the sand towards the girls, kicking up their heels like young colts.
"Cheerio!" cried Dick, as he pranced up. "What price school! How's this for a rag? Jolly old beano, I call it!"
"What does he say?" asked Grizzel.
"He says that school isn't much of a place, and that this is a great lark, and that he enjoys being here immensely," translated Mollie. "Some psychical phenomena!" exclaimed Young Outram, prancing up in his turn.
"I'm afraid we haven't got any," said Prudence politely.
"And you forgot to say 'Please' if we had," said Grizzel, with a frown.
"What do they say?" asked Young Outram, looking puzzled.
"Prudence thought you were asking for some what's-its-name-how-much," Mollie explained again.
"What does he mean then?" Grizzel asked.
"He means that this is the loveliest magic that he ever heard of," said Mollie. "You shouldn't use such long words, Jerry, and they aren't true either, for this is not thingummy phenomena, it is simply common everyday magic."
"There is no such thing as common magic," said Jerry.
"There is," said Mollie.
"There isn't," said Jerry.
"What do you call it when your mother gives you a dirty little brown onion to put in the ground and you bring it back to her turned into a parrot-tulip?" asked Mollie.
"Oh—if you—"
"Stow it, Young Outram, you blighter," Dick interrupted. "Don't be such a silly old Juggins, making them ratty first go-off like that. Keep your hair on, Mollie, and don't get the hump over nothing. If you must jaw about parrots, jaw about the dossy chap we spotted in school; you are simply talking hot air, both of you."
"What does he say?" asked Hugh, who had come up by this time.
"I wish to goodness you boys would speak plain English," Mollie said impatiently. "I don't want to spend all my time explaining you to the others."
"Irry yourry tawrry lierry tharry weerry wirry tawrry lierry thirry, arry therry yourry woerry urrystarry wurry wurry tharry weerry sayrry," said Grizzel, rather angrily and very rapidly.
"What does she say?" asked both boys at once.
"It's only our private language," said Prudence; "she says that if you talk that way we'll talk our way, and then you won't understand us. That wouldn't do any good. I think we'd better have a Circle. Give me your hand, Mollie, and you take Hugh's. And Hugh Dick's, and Dick Grizzel's, and Grizzel Young Outram's, and Young Outram my other hand. Now all stand quite still and shut your eyes; listen to the waves, and try and think of three nice things about the people next you."
The six children stood in a circle, silent and still, as Prudence had ordered, their eyes tightly closed. They felt the hot beams of the sun pouring over them, and the cool salt wind blew on their faces and through their hair; their toes curled and wriggled in the warm, wet sand, and in their ears was the plash-plash of the little waves beating backwards and forwards on the beach. It was very pleasant. It seemed quite easy to think of those three nice things. And presently each child felt a warm and friendly glow steal up its left arm, through its heart, down its right arm—and so on to its neighbour. When this pleasing and cheerful sensation had gone round the Circle three times, Prudence said: "Now, open your eyes and let go."
They stood there smiling at each other, and feeling almost ready to burst with goodness and loving kindness towards all the world.
"Now we'll understand each other," said Prue. "Words don't matter much if you understand people. Now what shall we do?"
"Don't let's stand about any more," said Mollie; "the time does go so quickly, and there are lovely things to do. What would you like to do, Young Outram?"
"Call me Jerry all the time," he answered first. "I want to forget about school while I can—there are a good many of us at school," he explained to Prudence, "and we are called Old Outram, and Outram Two, and Young Outram; and there are three Outram Kids at the prep, and another kid at home."
"All boys!" exclaimed Prudence.
Jerry nodded. There had been nine Outram boys before the war! "Let's go out on the raft again—please," he added, with a wink at Grizzel, who smiled back. "You come too; we could easily push you along."
"We'll have to change into our bathing things first," said Prudence; "the raft looks a little wet. We won't be long."
The girls ran up into the sandhills to change, but before Prue disappeared she returned to the boys with a basket made of rushes in her hand, which she had begged from Bridget.
"Here are some buns and grapes," she said a little shyly, "I thought you might be feeling hungry, and it is a long time yet till tea-time."
Jerry decided on the spot that if he ever did go in for the peculiar entertainment of falling in love, he would choose a shy girl with brown curls who did not talk slang and went about distributing buns to hungry boys. "Her for mine," he expressed it to himself.
The girls were soon back, all in navy-blue bathing-suits, knickers below, and a belted tunic reaching to their knees above—too much clothed for Mollie's taste; she liked to be skimpy when she went swimming. But no one grumbles after they have been in a Circle—at least, not for the next twenty-four hours—so Mollie endured her substantial garments philosophically and soon forgot all about them.
The girls waded out to the raft, which the boys had launched. They climbed on board and were soon in fairly deep water. Mollie and Prudence slipped off and left lazy Grizzel alone on deck, sitting cross-legged like a little tailor, one arm flung round the mast. The raft rocked gently up and down on the calm sea, while the children swam, ducked, and played about in the clear, sun-warmed water like a school of young porpoises. As Grizzel sat idly watching the rest, her eyes fell upon an object which floated at a little distance from the raft. It was a bottle—a common beer-bottle—its cork rammed well in and sealed with red wax.
"What's that?" she called to Hugh, pointing to the bottle as it danced about, twirling round and round, tossing from side to side in the wide ripples sent out by the children and the drifting raft.
They all made for it. "It's a message from the deep," cried Jerry; "probably from a ship-wrecked sailor."
Hugh, being the nearest, caught it by its red neck, and the whole party collected on and about the raft to see what would happen next. But Hugh refused to break the bottle until they went ashore again.
"The sea might get in and spoil the paper, and the broken glass would get on deck and cut us; we'll pull her in now and read the message on the beach," he decided.
They got under way and, practice making perfect, were soon high and dry on the beach, and the Nancy Lee dragged up and comfortably moored. The children seated themselves in a ring, and Hugh cautiously knocked off the neck of the bottle with a stone. He drew out a paper, which had been carefully rolled round a thin bamboo stick and tied with a red ribbon. There was no date on the paper, nor was there any sign to show where the bottle had been thrown in, but written in large, clear round-hand was the following message:
IF THE FINDER OF THIS BOTTLE WILL SEARCH THE CAVE UNDER THE DUKE'S NOSE HE WILL FIND SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE.
"Hidden treasure," said three boys all at once. "Where is The Duke's Nose?" asked Dick.
"Never heard of it," answered Hugh, looking hard at Jerry, whose nose was distinctly aquiline and promised to be more so in the future. "You aren't a duke by any chance, I suppose?" he asked.
"No, old sport, I'm not," Jerry answered, with a grin, "and if I were, the only treasure you would find in the cave under my nose would be some jolly sharp teeth, and they wouldn't be at all to your advantage either."
"It's probably among those rocks over there," Mollie suggested; "I expect if we went there and walked round we would see something that looked like a duke's nose."
"But there aren't any big enough to have a cave under them," said Prudence; "they are all quite little rocks."
"It will be a bit of the cliff, most likely," said Dick, "in fact it is almost bound to be if there is a cave."
The others agreed that this was probable. "What do you think the hidden treasure will be?" asked Grizzel. "A sack of diamonds and rubies?"
"I hope not," said Jerry, "for, if it is anything of that sort, we will have to give it up. If we were caught trying to sell diamonds we'd be copped at once, and the bobbies would think the bottle story was all made up. I expect we'd all be put in jail, and it would be jolly awkward for Dick and me when we got back to school. I think I see the Old Man's face when we explained that we couldn't come because we were in an Australian prison in the year 1879 for stealing diamonds. I don't think!"
"Schoolmasters and mistresses are extraordinarily stupid sometimes," said Mollie reflectively. "They are so hard to convince, even about quite simple things, if they don't want to be convinced. But I shouldn't care for diamonds myself. I'd like a swanky tennis-racket."
"I'd like a revolver, latest pattern," said Jerry.
"I should like a first-class camera," said Hugh.
"I'd like a pure-bred bull-dog," said Dick.
"I'd like a nice little model sewing-machine," said Prue.
"I'd like six pairs of stilts," said Grizzel, "and then we could all walk home on them."
Everyone looked a little ashamed; Grizzel was the only one who had thought of the five others. A murmur went round that of course they had meant six of everything. Then Mollie began to laugh: "How funny we will look if we each get all the things," she giggled. "We will walk home on the stilts, with a revolver and a sewing-machine tied on to each stilt, and a tennis-racket and a camera on our backs, and six bull-dogs trotting after us."
This flight of fancy made everyone laugh consumedly: "We must go home now, anyway," Prudence said, as she dried a tear, "because it is getting on for tea-time and we have got to get dressed. Perhaps there will be time to go to the rocks after tea and just look for a nose, and if we find it we'll take some spades in the morning and dig."
The Campbell's seaside cottage stood behind the sandhills. It had been built by a retired sea-captain, who had planned it to look as like a ship inside as a house could be made to look. The walls were panelled in wood, painted bird's-egg blue, and decorated with pictures of ships. The windows were round like portholes; the table stood across one end of the room and was screwed to the floor, as were also the benches on either side. In the children's rooms were bunks, in rows one above the other, and the washing-stands were fixtures. It was altogether very charming and romantic.
Tea was of the kind called high, and the hungry children disposed of cold ham, an extraordinary number of boiled eggs, several loaves of smoking hot new bread, and at least a pound of butter and two or three pounds of jam.
"May we go for a walk to the rocks?" asked Prudence, when tea was over. "We will go very quietly along the beach and not get wet, and be home before dark."
Papa said he would walk that way a little later on and meet them; so Mamma gave permission, and soon a party of six were wandering by the shore towards the rocks, carrying their boots and stockings slung round their necks. It did not take them long to cover the two miles which lay between their beach and the rocks. Mollie found it hard to pass by all the lovely shells with which the beach was strewn, but the rest were impatient. The sun was dropping down the sky and they had not too much time for their search.
It did not promise to be a very successful search, for nowhere was there anything even remotely like a duke's nose to be seen—nor indeed any sort of nose. The rocks were low and for the most part jagged, with pools of water in the hollows between them for unwary or careless people to slip into. Many of them were covered with periwinkles, which Grizzel could not resist gathering. She filled her boots with them.
"Papa likes them," she said, when Prudence and Mollie remonstrated with her for lingering; "he says they taste like a sea-breeze, and if we aren't going to take back a duke's nose I may as well take a periwinkle's nose; it will be better than nothing."
The cliffs were high and precipitous, but they were no particular shape, being, as Hugh said, merely the edge of Australia. The children scrambled along till they reached the turn of the coast-line, beyond which were more rocks and cliffs, much the same as those about them.
"Perhaps it isn't here at all," Prudence said, as they seated themselves in a row on the edge of a big boulder; "the message didn't say it was. It might be anywhere. Perhaps that bottle came hundreds of miles, and the Duke's Nose is at the South Pole."
"More likely Kangaroo Island or Yorke's Peninsula," Hugh said. "We might sail the raft across—it's only about fifty miles to the Peninsula."
"How'd you get her to go?" asked Jerry. "We couldn't swim fifty miles; half a mile is my limit at a stretch; Dick can do three-quarters."
"We'd have to use the sail and tack a bit, and we'd have the oars."
"What about food?" asked Prudence.
"We'd sling it in a can on the mast. Water's the trouble; we'd have to distil sea-water, and that takes coal and might be a bit difficult; there isn't a place for coal on board yet."
Mollie remembered the attar of roses and decided not to embark upon that voyage. "We would be pretty thirsty before there was enough water distilled for us all to drink," she thought to herself.
"Well, we'll have to be getting home now," said Prudence, with a sigh. "It will be dark before so very long."
A somewhat silent and subdued party set out on the homeward scramble, the boys in front, Mollie and Prue together, and Grizzel in the rear, being hampered by her bootfuls of periwinkles, which would keep falling out. She stopped at last, and, sitting down, she laced her boots tightly up and tied the tops round with the lace ends. When she looked up from this task she stopped again to admire the gorgeous sunset. The whole sky was ablaze, and the sea had changed from blue to crimson and gold; the wet beach was gleaming like an opal, pale-rose and lavender, with fiery amber lights shimmering on the rippled sand. The brilliant glow of the western sky was reflected in the east, and the cliffs stood out sharply against the light, themselves flushed with pink. Grizzel's keen young gaze ran along the outline, black where it cut the sky.
"There's nothing there," she said to herself, "only that flagstaff hut, and it's as square as square."
As she watched, a door opened in the side of the hut and a man came out, swinging a billy-can in his hand. Suddenly Grizzel caught her breath. Where had she heard someone say that that hut was a tiny refreshment-bar, where a man could go in and get boiling water for his tea—that everlasting tea which the Australian drinks at any and every hour of the day? It was Papa, and he had said they called the hut 'The Nose'—short, Grizzel felt sure, for The Duke's Nose. Her eyes ran quickly down the cliff underneath—yes, she could see the cave quite plainly when she looked hard, though to the casual glance it looked like a deep crevice in the cliff.
She looked after the others. They had scrambled on ahead while she was tying up her periwinkles, and were now too far away to hear anything but a shout. She put her two hands up to her mouth and gave the long shrill "Cooo-eeeee!" of the Australian-born child, which caused five heads to be turned in her direction instantaneously. Prudence started running back, fearing that her sister had fallen and hurt herself. Grizzel's gesticulations made things no plainer to the others—when she pointed to the hut they thought she meant them to get help, so that Hugh and Dick set off towards the cliff, while Jerry came on with Mollie and Prudence in case there should be a broken limb.
Even when they got within hailing distance they did not understand, for what between keeping a foothold on the slippery rocks, hanging on to her periwinkles, and her excitement over her discovery, Grizzel was getting breathless and incoherent, and all she did was to point a small forefinger at the hut and say: "Duke's-nose-you-know-duke's-nose-you-know-your-nose-dukes-know."
"She is delirious with pain," said Mollie, "and she is mixing the Duke's Nose up with 'She sells sea-shells'."
However, it was not very long before they reached her side, and she was able to explain the situation. A few more excited coo-ees brought the boys back, and the question became: What to do next? The sun was getting perilously near the horizon, and once it dropped behind the sea, darkness would fall rapidly and the rocks be really unsafe, especially as the tide was now coming in.
"We must get up frightfully early in the morning," said Dick at last, "and come along before breakfast. Nobody is likely to find that treasure in the next ten hours or so."
With many backward looks they resumed their homeward trek. It was hard luck to have to leave the treasure when, perhaps, they had almost found it, but Mamma's word was law, and if they broke their promise about getting home, or at least meeting Papa, it was quite possible that to-morrow would be spent by the girls in doing French verbs and making buttonholes.
The children slept soundly all night in their funny little bunks. Early in the morning a small figure slipped into the boys' room and shook first one boy and then another by the shoulders. Dick and Jerry woke up after a few grunts; Hugh as usual was a sleepy-head.
"Leave him to us," Dick said confidently, "we'll get him up—you'll see."
"Tell him to come by Gobbler's Hollow," ordered Grizzel; "you'll find us there. Don't stop to wash."
When the boys were half-way across the sandhills, they saw a thin column of blue smoke rising from somewhere among the low scrubby trees, and a minute after a delicious smell greeted their unducal noses—a smell of wood-smoke and toast combined.
"It's the girls making grub," Hugh explained to the other two; "they're great on grub." He might have added that he was great on it himself, so far as eating it was concerned. Certainly Dick and Jerry were very pleased to know that they had not to wait until half-past eight for breakfast, for the fresh sea air had given them ravenous appetites. They found the girls in Gobbler's Hollow—appropriately so named by Hugh—bending over a gipsy fire. The inevitable billy-can hung from a tripod, and the steam from it mingled with the smoke of the fire. Mollie was toasting bread, which Prudence buttered with a lavish hand, and Grizzel was shelling hard-boiled eggs.
"I call this top-hole," Dick announced, as he squatted down on the sand and took his tin mug from Mollie, who had begged to be allowed to make the tea as she had seen Grizzel make it before. "It will buck us up no end and make us as sharp as needles."
They were in a hurry to get on; so when breakfast was done they pushed the mugs and knives into the hollow of a bush, which Grizzel explained was their storeroom. Later in the day the girls would come back and tidy up; for the present the great thing was to get to the cave as quickly as possible. They had two clear hours before them in which to make their search.
The tide was at its lowest, and there was a broad stretch of wet sand between the sandhills and the sea. Wide shallow pools of water had been left behind by the receding waves, while here and there lay long heavy drifts of seaweed, shining darkly in the early rays of the morning sunlight. The children splashed their way along, their eyes fixed on the flagstaff hut. As they drew nearer they left the sea and steered for the cave, the entrance to which was plain enough now that they knew where to look for it.
"It's such a conspicuous sort of cave," Hugh said, "I don't see how anyone could miss finding treasure unless it is buried very deep."
Caves have always a certain amount of mystery about them, but this one was undoubtedly as ordinary looking a cave as one could find. It did not burrow very far back into the cliff side, and what there was of it was open to the daylight and contained no lurking dark corners. The walls were rough and rocky but not high; the roof was, as Jerry said, nothing particular, and the floor was of shingle and rather wet, as if the sea, now so far away, had paid it a visit not so very long ago. But, as the rocks and stones before the entrance were dry, it was obviously not the tide which had washed the floor.
"It must be a spring or something," Hugh said; "let's taste and see—" he stooped as he spoke and scooped up a handful of water, which he put to his lips.
"Thought so; it's quite fresh and sweet—that's rather a find—jolly useful for picnics, it will save us carting water about—by jinks!" he exclaimed, looking round at the others with an expression of blank dismay; "do you suppose that's what we were to find to our advantage?"
They all stared hard at the shining wet stones, through which the trickle of water was now plainly discernable. Then they stared round the cave again. There did not seem to be a place where treasure could be hidden. Moreover, there were traces of a not very remote picnic—the dead ashes of a gipsy fire, one or two crumpled-up balls of paper, some broken bottles!
"That's it," said Jerry at last. "It was probably the people who had that picnic—those broken bottles are the same as the one we found. They played cock-shy with them, and then thought it would be a lark to chuck one into the sea. What a jolly old sell!"
"We've had a nice morning anyhow," said Prudence, "and the spring certainly will be an advantage when we've got used to it not being a sewing-machine and bull-dogs and things."
"I somehow don't believe it is the spring," said Mollie thoughtfully, still staring about her. "There is something about the way that paper is written; it doesn't look like the writing of the sort of person who plays that kind of joke—and of course it would be meant for a joke. Let's all stand quite still in a circle back to back, and each stare hard all over the bit of cave that comes in front of us, and see if there isn't a sign of some sort."
They agreed that there would be no harm in trying this plan, though the boys' hopes were small. Dick and Jerry were uneasily conscious that they were "the sort of person" who would have thought that bottled message an excellent joke—to play on someone else!
So they stared. They even circled slowly round so that each part of the cave was examined with meticulous care by six pairs of eyes in turn. But it was all in vain; the cave only seemed to become more and more ordinary the longer they looked at it.
"There's not a place where you could hide a thimble," Prue said sadly, "let alone a treasure."
"What's that?" Grizzel called out suddenly, pointing to the broken bottles in the corner.
After all there had been a dark spot, and with the brightening daylight that dark spot had all at once lighted up, and there lay a bottle, the very twin of the one they had found in the sea, red sealing-wax and all. The boys made a dive for it, but Dick stopped abruptly and held back the others: "Grizzel saw it first, let her open it too," he said.
Grizzel advanced, and picking up the bottle held it to the light—yes, there was a message plainly to be seen.
"I think one of you had better break it open," she said; "I'd probably cut my fingers."
Hugh solemnly knocked off its head and drew out the paper. It was written in the same round, clear handwriting:
IF THE PERSON WHO FINDS THIS BOTTLE WILL ASK FOR MR. BROWN AT THE DUKE'S NOSE, HE WILL HEAR OF SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE.
"Why the dickens couldn't they have said that first shot?" Jerry exclaimed.
"I expect Mr. Brown will tell us to go to the Duchess's Toes and hear of something to our dis-advantage," said Hugh sarcastically.
"If we are going to look for Mr. Brown we will have to hurry," said Prudence, who had gone to the entrance of the cave and was scrutinizing the beach; "by the look of the shadows I should say it was a good bit after seven. In not much more than an hour we must be sitting down at breakfast tidy and brushed."
They found when they came out that there was a footpath up to the Duke's Nose—a very steep and boulder-strewn path, but quite a possible one for them all; so they went for it manfully and womanfully and were soon at top. But alas! the door of the hut was closed and locked; no one answered their repeated knocks, and they came to the unwilling conclusion that the place was empty.
"Blow!" said Dick at last. "Why couldn't the old treasure-hider put his old treasure in an easier place?"
"If he had, someone else would have found it," Mollie remarked sensibly, "and anyhow it is a lark searching for it."
At that moment a man's figure could be seen coming towards the hut; he was swinging a billy-can by the handle.
"That's the man I saw last night," exclaimed Grizzel; "I expect he is Mr. Brown."
The man was rather surprised to see six children congregated before his hut door at that hour of the morning. Prudence was pushed forward as spokeswoman. "Please, are you Mr. Brown?" she asked, in her most polite voice.
"I am, miss. Anything I can do for you?"
"We found this piece of paper," she said, showing the latest message to him, "and we brought it to you like it says."
The man grinned broadly—he had a nice grin, the children thought—"You've found it, have you? Well, that beats me! That's darned clever of you. Our little Missie will be no end bucked to hear that bit o' news; she was mighty taken up with her messages, she was. You'll have to wait a bit, though. I can't leave this place before twelve noon. You be on the beach above where that big hump o' seaweed is at twelve-thirty to-day, an' you'll see—" the man broke off and grinned again.
"What?" asked several excited people at once.
"That's tellin'," said Mr. Brown; "just you wait an' you'll see somethin' to your advantage, same as it says here."
It was terribly hard to have to leave the treasure at this thrilling stage, but there was nothing else to be done, especially as it was getting late, and they would have to hasten their steps as it was, if they were to reach home in time for a proper tidy-up before breakfast. Mamma was very particular about many things, but she was particularly particular about coming to table with clean hands and freshly brushed hair.
* * * * *
They were at the trysting-place long before half-past twelve. Nobody had a watch, but the Australian children had a device of their own for telling the time.
"You stand on one foot," Hugh explained, "and twirl round with your other big toe in the sand—like this. That makes a circle to fit your own shadow. Then you stand in the middle and see where the shadow hits the circle. And then you guess the time near enough for all practical purposes. It's quite simple."
"Did you invent that sort of clock yourself?" Mollie asked deferentially.
"There wasn't much to invent," Hugh replied modestly; "it's on the same principle as a sundial. I only applied my legs."
"God invented Hugh's legs and the sun," Grizzel said; "Hugh only put in the squiggly toe."
"But that's just it," Jerry argued; "like Newton and the apple. The simple things are there all the time, and no one sees them till the right person comes along. I think that's a jolly ingenious idea. You'd have to know exactly where due north was, of course, and you'd have to have the sun. That's the trouble in London; the sun just slops about the sky, and half the time you can't see him at all."
The children now twirled round and round like dervishes, making shadow-clocks till there were hardly any shadows left, as the sun rose higher and higher in the heavens. It also became warmer and warmer; so they decided to sit in a row with their backs to the sea and their eyes firmly fixed upon the hut, determined not to miss the sight of the treasure for a single moment.
"Let's play 'I went to market with a green umbrella'," Prue suggested, "and we can think of all the things the treasure might be." The green umbrella had been to market about twenty times when a voice behind them made them all start.
"Well, now—to be sure!"
And there was Mr. Brown, with nothing in his hands—no sack upon his back.
"How did you come, Mr. Brown?" Mollie asked. "We looked and looked."
"Grand sentries you'd make—all lookin' one way," said Mr. Brown. "Suppose you look at the sea for a change."
Six pairs of eyes turned to gaze at the sea—and six pairs of feet instantly began to run, for there, drawn up on the beach, was a boat!
"How's that for a tidy craft?" asked Mr. Brown. "Is she pretty shaped? How do you like her paint? Look at her nice little oars. Eight, she holds—nice-sized party eight is, sort o' cosy an' cheerful."
The children looked from the boat to Mr. Brown and back again. Nobody thought any more of stilts or sewing-machines, or even of bull-dogs; the only thing on earth worth having at that moment was the wonderful boat around which they were standing. Her outer dress was of bright, dark green, with a scarlet line round the rim; inside she was pure white. A little railing of delicate iron scroll-work ran round her stern, and across it curved a board, with the boat's name in scarlet and gold: The Belle of Canada.
"Do you mean—" Hugh began, but he was too overpowered to finish, because it was all very well to talk about cameras and things in the abstract, but that such a thing as a real, life-sized boat—and such a beautiful boat too—should fall into their hands in this casual way was too wildly improbable to be true.
But it was true, nevertheless. That lovely little boat was really theirs!
The way it happened was this, Mr. Brown explained: the year before—while the Campbells were in the hills—a little Canadian girl, visiting her Australian relations, had come with them to stay in the very cottage the Campbells were in now. She was very ill when she arrived. The doctors feared consumption, and said that open air all day long was the best medicine she could have. So the boat was bought—"and a fine price they paid for her too," Mr. Brown remarked—and the little girl was half her time on the sea, and got so sun-burnt and sturdy that before she left she was rowing the boat herself—"an' you'd never know she'd had a mite the matter with her," Mr. Brown said. When the time came for her to leave she took a fancy to give her boat to some other children, so that they might have as happy a summer with it as she had had. But it wasn't enough to give it in the usual way of giving—she made up the plan of the message in the bottle, which she left with Mr. Brown.
"But I wasn't in no hurry," he said. "I kep' my eye on the cottage children. The last lot were a rampagin' set o' young ruffians, smashin' everything they set hands on. I soon saw that this chap was a different sort altogether, hammerin' an' tinkerin' away at his raft, and careful of her as if she was a lady—he's the sort for little Missie an' me, I said to myself, so in the bottle went, only an hour or two before you found it."
"And suppose no one had found it, or the other bottle?" Dick suggested.
"Not much danger o' that, with six pair o' sharp eyes an' inquisitive headpieces around," Mr. Brown answered, with a laugh. "The only bit I wasn't sure about was the Duke's Nose, for not many knows it by that name; but little Missie would have it—said it was more romantic like, though what's romantic about a duke's nose it beats me to see—just like any other nose, I don't mind bettin'."
"Hugh says Jerry's nose is like a duke's," Grizzel said, so that all eyes were immediately fixed upon poor Jerry's nose.
"Jolly romantic, especially when I have a cold in the head!" he exclaimed.
"Well now, jump in, the lot o' you, an' I'll row you along to your Pa," said Mr. Brown.
"Do you know Papa?" asked Grizzel, whose round blue eyes had never left Mr. Brown's face since he began his story.
"Yes, I know your Pa. There ain't many round here that don't. Now then——"
As Mr. Brown talked he had pushed the boat out, with some help from the boys, and had lifted the girls in. Now he took the oars, and, with a few powerful strokes, he sent the boat skimming over the sparkling blue sea.
All the children could row, more or less, but Mr. Brown gave them some useful hints. "An' you mustn't ever go far out to sea by yourselves," he said, "nor yet too near the rocks except it be a calm day like to-day. Remember that a good sailor won't ever run his ship into danger unless he can't help himself, no more than he would his wife. If you want to go a regular excursion to the Port or such, you can always get one of us to go with you, unless, of course, your Pa can take you. But you'll get plenty of fun, an' learn a lot too, playin' round here—you'll learn the feel o' the sea, which is something quite different from rowin' on a river. An' don't you be givin' the raft the go-by," he added, addressing himself to Hugh; "there's a lot goes to a raft an' you never know when your knowledge o' handlin' one may come in useful. That's a tidy one you've made, but it wants a bit o' tar. I'll bring some along one o' these days an' show you how to use it—there's your Pa wavin' to you."
An excited party of children landed on the beach and told their story to Papa, whose consent had to be won before the lovely boat was really theirs. He was as delighted as they were themselves, and an expedition was planned for that very evening, to include Mamma and her guitar.
"If you will give me the little girl's address I will write and tell her all about how we found the bottle," Prudence said to Mr. Brown, "and we will all write and say 'Thank you' for her beautiful idea."
"She's back in Canada now," Mr. Brown answered. "She'd be mighty pleased to hear from you."
It was difficult to sit down soberly to boiled mutton and batter pudding after these exhilarating adventures, but it had to be done, and after dinner the girls had to "sit quietly with their needles" for an hour; but at last tea-time came, and evening followed, and the whole family except Baby embarked upon the first voyage in The Belle of Canada. It was delightful to float about on the moonlit water and listen to Mamma's lovely voice. She sang a Canadian boat-song, in honour of the little hostess in far-away Canada:
"From the lone sheiling of the misty island Mountains divide us, and the waste of seas— Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland, And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.
"Fair these broad meads—these hoary woods are grand; But we are exiles from our father's land."
Silence fell upon them all after that. Mamma's white hands dropped from the guitar and slipped under Papa's arm; Prudence thought in her dreamy way of the little Canadian; Mollie remembered the American soldiers and their song; Hugh's mind was full to the brim of boats and rafts and ships.
"Look here!" cried Jerry suddenly; "we're a good slice of our jolly old Empire to-night—Great Britain, Australia, India, sailing in a Canadian boat—there's another song we ought to sing——" he jumped to his feet as he spoke, making the boat rock in the silvery water. "Come on!" he sang:
"Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves!"
* * * * *
"Oh, Jerry! Why did you go and do that?" Mollie called out, as she sat up and rubbed her eyes. "It isn't nearly time to wake up yet!"
"Indeed it is, you little lazy bones," Aunt Mary said, with a laugh. "Goodness, child! You are beginning to look quite rosy and sunburnt! Spraining your ankle seems to suit you. I think I'll sprain mine and see if I can raise a complexion like that. It's as good as a visit to the seaside."
