SOME men, when crossed or “put out,” take, like Sir Richard Lisgard, to whistling melodies—surely a very mild and harmless form of irritation. Others rap out a thunder-clap of an oath or two, which leaves their firmament as serene as ever. Nothing, again, can calm the wrath of some folks but pedestrian exercise; ghost-wise, they take to “walking,” and gradually their angry passions exude. This last was the case with Mr Ralph Derrick, Mariner and Gold-digger.

When deeply annoyed, and some exceptional barrier existed to his throwing the weightiest substance that happened to be at hand at the head of his enemy, or burying some lethal weapon in his vitals, Ralph took to walking like the Wandering Jew. With the first stage or two, his thoughts were busy with the insult, real or imaginary, which had been put upon him; his teeth were set, his fingers clenched, his brows were corrugated; then he began to swing his loaded stick, not viciously, but after the manner of an Irishman at a fair; and eventually that calisthenic exercise, combined with the healthy influence of fresh air, restored him to that normal state of devil-may-care, which persons of charity go so far as to term, in folks of the like description, good-humour. Of course, one cannot help pitying this poor fellow, for he is one of those persons who always look much better on paper than in real life, just the reverse of which is the case with the Walter Lisgards; but as a matter of fact, he is not only a “rough customer,” but a very dangerous and reckless man. Because we have seen him behave towards that graceless captain of dragoons in a very generous and high-flown manner, it is not to be supposed that he was always capable of magnanimous actions. That young gentleman had been his pet, and it had suited his mood to spoil him. A man may not only be agreeable to an individual or two, but an excellent father, or a pattern husband, and yet be a most offensive fellow-creature to you and to me. But it was certainly hard upon Ralph that the only man for whom he entertained a genuine affection, should have turned out such an ungrateful scamp. The treatment he had lately received at that young man's hands, the knavery of Mr Jack Withers, and the more than suspected collusion of his late comrade, Mr Blanquette, united to put him out of humour with the world. His previous opinions, as imported from Cariboo, before he met with Walter, that everybody was more or less of a scoundrel, had met with the amplest confirmation. He was more determined to take his own way than ever, and let them look to it that crossed him. Bitter, indeed, had been his thoughts as he had been borne along with that rabble rout on foot from Epsom Downs. Deceived by those whom he had trusted, insulted by him whom he had loved, and robbed of three-fourths of that wealth, to which he now ascribed a greater importance than ever, as the summum bonum, and indeed the only good thing that was worth gaining, he had but stopped in London a sufficient time to pack up his scanty wardrobe, then started off again on foot once more, as we have seen. Disgusted with the Turf, as with all else he had recently had to do with, he was now more than ever bent upon leading a new life—not, indeed, in a penitential sense (although some are so audacious as to aver that it is a kind of mortification), but, in other words, to marry. Mistress Forest was as fond of him, he thought, and with some justice, as any woman was ever likely to be; and he was resolved not to be balked of her by the machinations of Sir Richard Lisgard, or the cajolments of his mother. After the payment of all his bets, he would yet have left a sum that to one in Mary's position would seem considerable; for he could sell Many Laws, after his recent performance, for a great deal of money, to the half of which he rather suspected Mr Blanquette would never venture to lay claim. Yes; he would go down to the place where she had told him her father still dwelt, and would dazzle him with such offers as could scarcely fail to induce him to add the weight of his authority to his own proposals; and there being no particular hurry about the matter, and, as I have said, walking being consonant to his feelings when in wrath, Ralph Derrick had taken the road to Coveton on foot.

It was a long distance, and would have involved several days of such travel, under any circumstances, and he did not hurry himself at all. At many a wayside inn, where he stopped to drink, and found the landlord given that way, and to be good company, he stayed for the day and night, and even longer. And often he left the high-road, and took those short-cuts across country which, like “raw haste,” are generally “half-sisters to delay.” This was especially the case when he began to draw near the sea. Those who have passed much of their time upon that element (voluntarily), the roar of ocean attracts as the trumpet-blast the quondam charger, and mile after mile did Derrick stride along the cliff-top wherever it was practicable, and by the shore, notwithstanding that his indulgence in that fancy doubled his journey. When we are out of humour with our fellow-creatures, the external aspects of nature, even though we be no Poets, have often a special attraction for us; the winds of Spring—since as much has been said of those of Winter—are certainly not so unkind as man's ingratitude, and we bid them blow with a sort of soothing scorn; nor does the blue spring sky bite half so nigh as benefits forgot. It pleased Ralph Derrick to let it do its worst, and, rain or shine, he never sought shelter save when he needed drink or rest; and during this last part of his travel, he obtained them as often at some humble farmhouse as at an inn. The simple folks, who stared at his great beard, and wondered why he did not shew them what goods he had in his knapsack, like any other pedler, pleased him hugely; and when some newly-soaped and carefully-brushed bashful child would steal into his humble dining-chamber—which was the guidwife's, invariable plan of getting her dues settled, since we cannot charge for things, you know (and especially brandy), without a licence—he would take the little creature upon his knee, and give him or her his newest shilling, in addition to what was always a liberal settlement of the account. Perhaps he was practising that rÔle of Paterfamilias which he hoped to be soon called upon to play. At all events, Ralph was by this time in high spirits; and when he was told that Coveton lay not above a dozen miles ahead of him even by the coast-line, he threw his cudgel into the air, and shouted a wild fragment of a diggers' song, to the consternation of his rustic informant.

His way lay now over a great waste of moorland, elastic to the tread, and over which the wind swept almost as unresisted as on the ocean from whence it came. Here and there, it whistled through a hare thorn, but what few trees there were had hidden themselves in sunken hollows, and stood therein huddled together, with only their shivering tops above the surface. Nothing was to be seen inland save “a level waste of rounded gray,” broken now and again by a church spire or a scattered hamlet; but the seaward view was very fine. From that moorland height, you looked upon two fair islands spread like a raised map, beneath, with every hut and quarry distinctly plain, and the small white light-house standing out on its little hill like a child's toy upon its pedestal. How picturesque and sequestered they looked: how like two miniature but independent worlds, to either of which a man who had had enough and to spare of the turmoil of life might retire with some fitting mate, and peacefully end his days. Surely, thought Ralph, he had somewhere seen those two same islands before! As he stood at gaze, his thoughts went wandering over archipelagoes of garden-ground in tropic seas; over rocky islets sawn from iron-bound coasts by the jagged waves; and over mounds of sand, which the ocean had thrust back into the jaws of rivers, and suffered man to call them Land, and dwell there. But these were none of those. As he went on more slowly, searching through the long gallery of his mind for the picture which he knew was there, and half bewildered by the shifting scenes, he was startled by a noise like distant thunder. The sky was almost without a cloud, and the sea, although running high, and dashing with pettish screech against the cliffs, was not so rough but that the fishing-smacks, of which there was quite a fleet in motion, carried all sail; moreover, the thunderous sound was not upon the seaward side, but inland. A few score rapid strides in that direction made its source apparent. An enormous hole, like half-a-dozen gravel-pits in one, but deep as a mine, was gaping there; and at the bottom, whether it had tunnelled through years of patient unremitting toil, lay the churning sea. It was a gruesome sight to mark the solid earth—just where a peaceful cornfield met the moorland—thus invaded by its insidious foe, whose horrid pÆan seemed to have something of malicious greed as well as exultation in it, as though it lusted to eat the heart of the round world itself away, after the same manner. “The Devil's Cauldron!” exclaimed Ralph excitedly, and then looked round him with a half-shudder, as though he had repeated the statement out of deference to a Great Local Authority, rather than initiated it of his own free-will. Yes, such was the name by which the place was known; he felt certain of that fact; but unless in sober seriousness H. S. M. himself had whispered the information, how did he ever come to be aware of it? He had certainly never been there before, in all his life; it was impossible, having once seen it, to have forgotten so abnormal as well as tremendous a scene. True, there are pits and holes in many cliffs a few yards from their edge which reach like shafts in a tunnel down to the sea; but the distance of this place from the shore might be measured by furlongs, and the pit was so large that it almost resembled a land-locked bay. A Cauldron it might well be called, where the black waters were seething and boiling even now, while in storm-time there would be such wild work as no mere witches could raise, but only the Fiend himself, their master.

Did the mad waves, finding themselves thus imprisoned, ever leap up? Yes: now he remembered all. Thirty years ago, last autumn, he had seen those islands once before from shipboard, and had had them in view for a whole day. The wind, which was dead against the vessel, had kept her off and on that dangerous coast, and eventually risen to storm, and sunk her with all on board save him alone. The last time he had seen that little light-house, it had flashed in vain its fiery warning through sheets of blinding foam. The captain had told him, hours before, what sort of shore awaited them, if ever the North Star should be driven upon those pitiless cliffs, on which Derrick himself was now standing; and, in particular, he had mentioned the Devil's Cauldron, which was spouting foam yonder, he said, like Leviathan, a quarter of a mile inland over the standing corn. Ralph lay down at full length upon the thymy moor, and peered over the brink of the abyss with earnest gaze, as though he could fathom its dark depths, and mark what lay beneath them. Then rising, with a sigh, he wandered on, no longer with springy tread, until presently the cliff-top became dotted with white verandaed houses, looking down upon a little bay, that ran up into the land between steep banks, well clothed with trees and shrubs; whereby he knew that he had come to his journey's end, and that this must needs be Coveton.