  Produced by Al Haines. [image] "Knives glittered, and the two were in deadly embrace." (Page THE SAUCIEST BOY A Story of Pluck and By Author of "In Regions of Perpetual Snow," "The Ivory Hunters," COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS BY HENRY AUSTIN WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED PREFACE Boys' books do not really need a preface. I only write a line or two to say my "Sauciest Boy" is a character drawn from real life. Most of the adventures are from experiences of my own. Scenery all painted from Nature, seascapes, cloudscapes and landscapes, with the glamour of old ocean over all.
TO CONTENTS CHAP. I CHAPTER I THE GLAMOUR OF THE OCEAN There were few things that gave Kep Drummond more real pleasure than the graphic little descriptions of sea-scapes which occurred every here and there in the boys' stories he read. He knew the true from the false, and avoided tales by authors who had probably never been further from shore than one could pitch a biscuit. Oh, if ever the glamour of old ocean had got right round a lad's heart and altered all his life and thoughts, that lad was Kep Drummond. The passages he chiefly delighted in were those that seemed to bring the scene right up before the boy's mind's eye, like pictures from a magic lantern. Though but little over fourteen years of age, he had a wonderful imagination and was full to the brim with the poetry of true feeling. En rapport, in fact, with all that is charming in nature, part and parcel of all the life and love he could see around him on such a sunny summer's day as that on which I now present him for the first time to my readers' notice. Seated he is on the high and grassy top of a rocky cliff that beetles over what he calls his own sea, because the land all around here belongs to his father. Those tremendous rocks are the guardians of his father's Cornish estate. Behind him stretch wild moorlands and rising hills, while down below--peeping over the greenery of elm woods--red rise the turrets of what the boy knows as home. But he leans his back against a hillock of tasseled turf, and opens a book; and as he reads his thoughts, his dreams, fly straight away through space, six thousand miles and over to the sylvan-bound silver sands of the Indian Ocean. And this is what he is reading: "How windless and warm it is! One's shoes take up the pitch and soil the ivory-white quarter-deck. We are only a gun-boat, but there isn't a yard-arm one inch out of the square, a rope's end uncoiled, nor a capstan bar awry; the wood work scintillates, the brass work shines like burnished gold, and our guns have the shimmer of papier machÉ. But our men to-day all look fagged and lazy. They are sun-weary. Yet every Jack amongst them is as neatly dressed as if he were about to take part in a nautical opera. "The water round the ship, which is lying at anchor, is clearer to-day than gum copal. Five fathoms beneath we can see the bottom well; see the coral rocks, see patches of coral sand and the ever waving mysterious-looking seaweed, the home of crustaceans black or blue and grey, and of curious fishes that glide and dart, clad in every colour of the rainbow. "Nearer the surface are scores and scores of splendid medusÆ or jelly-fishes; under their waving limbs glint and radiate rubies, emeralds and sapphires. On this brightest day of tropical sunshine they float lazily along with the tide, but they are perilously near to the shore, and hundreds will be stranded on the beach. Many a little azure nautilus or 'Portuguese man o' war' sails hither and thither on the gently-heaving waves. "Seawards, if we look, the ocean's breast is flecked and patched with tender graze greens and with opal tints, but towards the horizon it is as blue as the sky itself. Landwards, in long white lines, the breakers roll in on the snow-white sands that are at present all but deserted by both negro and Somali, who will sleep in the shadows till the sun sinks lower and lower and kisses the sea good-night. Yonder are the silvery house-blocks of Zanzibar, but the flags on the various consulates droop listlessly roofwards, and our own white ensign is almost trailing in the waters astern." Kep closes the book, closes his eyes, too, but he is not going to sleep, but only just to day-dream, and his long brown fingers keeps the place for him. There is the thunder of waves beneath the cliffs leaping lion-like on the black and weed-trailed rocks; there is the scream of the British sea-mew too, and the long lorn wail of many another sea-bird that floats all day 'twixt sky and sea. They are all the boy's friends and favourites, and when at morn or noon he dashes into the water and breasts the billows far off the shore, they fly friendly around his head, or float so white and near he might almost touch their paddling feet. The glamour of the ocean! Yes, and all things of the ocean that he has ever seen or read about appeal to Kep. Realities, I mean. He thinks himself a man, and would be ashamed to recite "The boy stood on the burning deck." That was sheer nonsense. Why could he not have leapt into the blue bosom of kindly Mother Ocean? That is what Kep would have done. Some of the folk lore of the sea, however, still enamoured him. He wanted to believe, or liked to believe, there were real mermaids and sirens also, that sung by night on the rocks of fairy islands to lure the unsuspecting mariners to their doom. But there were real sea-poems, that night after night in his turret chamber among the elm trees he loved to fall asleep thinking about. Well for Kep Drummond, I ween, that he had such little sea-poems to call upon, especially during the long dark nights of winter, for he was a somewhat excitable brainful boy. His chamber was an eerie one, but he had chosen it himself chiefly for that very eerieness. After bidding his father good-night and kissing Madge, his sister, and her pet Newfoundland, Bounder, he had to climb high, high up the winding stone stairs. There was said to be a ghost at Martello Castle, as the place was called, and if by any chance you had met the pensive dark-eyed boy, candle in hand, in the narrow stairway, you might have been somewhat startled. The room itself was not large, and it was round. Kep's hammock was slung at one end near to two long narrow windows, and in winter time the leafless fingers of the elm-trees had an uncanny way of tapping on the panes. There were no blinds to these windows, because the boy liked to see out when skies were clear and stars shone, or the moon glinted laughingly through the branches. One night as Kep was going to bed he met old Elspet coming down. A faithful old retainer she, but to-night her eyes were round and glassy, and the very flaps of her mob-cap seemed to have been stiffened with fear. "Go not up, Keppie, darling; there is that in your room no boy should see!" "Oh, if it is the ghost," cried Kep, "here's a boy who does want to see it, badly." She tried to hold him. "It was a white face glaring in through the black, dark window!" she hissed. But Kep was off. She might as well have tried to restrain an eel. The window was dark certainly, and yonder sure enough was the white face. No ghost though, only the wondering eyes of a great white owl that often came to see the boy, for he laid up a little store of meat for this strange visitor, and sometimes a dead mouse or rat. "It's you, is it?" said Kep, throwing open the casement. "Come in, Bob, and have your supper." And Bob did. He ate and seemed thankful, and then spread his great white wings and flew out into the night and the darkness, taking the largest piece of meat with him. As, like a true manly boy, Kep slept with open windows, and didn't put his light out until he had done reading by his small table, great bats often flew in, and did not leave until the candle was extinguished. Then seeing a distant star perhaps, they flew out towards that. In this turret chamber Kep was high above the rookery, and could in February look down into the nests. But the birds all knew Kep. When the boy tired of reading, then he crept into bed. He said his prayers, repeated some Latin hymns to himself, and soon after that--the sea-poems. One after another these sea-poems of his used to spread themselves out before him, and indeed he seemed part and parcel of the poem itself, and is it any wonder that he should go to sleep right in the middle of one of them, the waking thoughts merging into delightful sea, seldom terrifying, dreams, and these into the sweetest, soundest kind of sleep that any young lad e'er enjoyed. Mermaids were not realities. They belonged to the folk-lore of the ocean. Yet there were some nights he used to delight to dwell with them in their diamond-lit caves far down among the brown trailing sea-weed. He would imagine their revels and mingle with sea-fairies in their gladsome dances, or sit on rocks full fifty fathoms deep with strange wee water babies, listening to their stories or telling them stories of his own. Meanwhile there would be music everywhere in those fairy submarine gardens, for even the floating sea-weed emitted sweet sounds; the very sand was musical, and from under rocks or from caves came the songs of the sea-folk and the tinkle of lutes. And down there the mermaid peoples dwelt and would dwell ever and ever and ever, always, always happy and gay. But the scene is changed--it is another sea-poem, but true, and tells its own story of the wonders of the mighty deep. For sailors who had been to the far-off northern seas had told him that oft-times when the ship was becalmed in a lonely expanse of ocean, mayhap a thousand miles wide, a solitary whale would be sighted, rising and falling on the sea's dark bosom, but heading steadily southwards, never varying a single point. What guided the lonesome leviathan? What story had it to tell could it but speak? Had it no friends? Had the great beast been deserted by all it had loved, and was it, with the sorrow of night at its heart, moving, sailing, plunging southwards and southwards, reckless, forsaken, unheeding, to be stranded on a reef and to die? Mother Carey's chickens, the stormy petrels, were another sea-poem to Kep. He could see in his mind's eye the rise and fall of the stern of a big black ship, the quickly obliterated wake, the spume of a wind-tortured ocean, and across and across, darting over, darting under, these mysterious chips of darkness, the petrels, and he could hear their quick sharp shriek--was it a song or was it a wail? Did it portend joy to the crew, or sorrow and a sailor's grave? Bird of mystery! Ah, yes, but what a poem! A shoal of porpoises. They seemed always busy always merry--diving, gambolling around a ship on voyage. Then dashing off again or disappearing over the horizon, followed by blessings from the seamen for the luck they always bring. These are but samples of this strange boy's sea-poems. He would hear many more before he left his teens. But now on the grassy cliff-top, Kep sits up once more and continues his story. Not for very long, however, because over the cliff-top yonder, or from, some part of the precipice itself, he can hear a young voice hailing him. Then two great black paws, like those of a bear, claw at the cliff-brink. There is a serious black face with a long pink tongue and flashing ivory teeth between these paws, and, dropping his book, Kep dashes forward and at some risk to himself seizes Bounder's collar and brings the noble fellow to bank. Then, facing the sea, the dog stands up to bark at Kep and towards the cliff. "Poor Madge is down yonder," he seems to say. "Aren't you going to help her up also?" But wild Madge needs no help. Next minute, with her lustrous black eyes a-sparkle, her cheeks aglow with exercise and pleasure, she stands beside her brother. "It was a feat of rare daring, I suppose," she said, laughing, "and father will scold when I tell him. But Bounder is a poor cragsman, and I had to help him half the way." Tall for her age--sixteen--hair and eyes as dark as night, an Italian night, and she was half Italian, ripe parted lips that showed even teeth as white as Bounder's, Madge Drummond was really a beautiful girl. Slender, though round in features, and with garments that draped naturally to her shapely limbs. Kep saw little of all this. He only saw his big sister Madge and Bounder. And he felt but like a baby beside her. "So you ran away from us, Kep," she said. "Ran away to read, Madge." "Well, come back from the cliff and sit down. I've had enough of that, and so has Bounder. And what have you been reading? Oh, a sea-story. Well, I like those, too, but I love a school-story with a somewhat naughty girl in it better." It was the most natural thing in the world that Kep should slip his hand into Madge's and be led back to his seat. "Well," she said a little later on, in answer to a remark of Kep's, "we are both of us sailors already. Haven't we been everywhere in father's yacht? Haven't we lived in sunny Italy, more on its waters than on shore? Have we not lived in France and Spain, and in Algiers itself? Father would let you go anywhere in his yacht, Kep, but you don't want to leave our father's Cornish home. Oh, I should miss you so. There would be nobody but me and Bounder and old nurse Elspet. Bounder is sympathetic, and sits and listens to my stories and licks my cheek or ear now and then, to show he understands. Ah! Kep, if you run away from home as you want to, I'd miss our mother more and more. I'd want to go back and sit and sing on her grave to keep her company." Kep was silent for a short spell. His eyes were turned towards the horizon, his thoughts were far beyond it. Oh, that glamour of the ocean! When he spoke again it was more to himself than to his sister Madge. "Yes, I must go to sea. Father will not send me. But they call me!" "Who calls you?" "The spirits that ride on the clouds, spirits of the wind and the waves. The sea itself is calling me now--listen to its friendly boom. It is the waves that speak. 'You are son of ours,' they are crying. 'Come to us. Come to us.' And the wild mews; Madge, hear you not their voices? 'Come--come--away--away--away--ay!'" * * * * * Slowly down the glen, hand in hand, sister and brother, to Martello Castle, and across the Martello lawns, but the lad's mind is made up. Kep will be a sailor. CHAPTER II KEP WAS GONE Far round the point yonder, though it could not be seen even from the cliff top, was a town, an old-fashioned seaport, into which even big ships often came for shelter, such times as the sea-birds flew far inland. A town of narrow streets and quaintly gabled houses, a town that smelt of tar from end to end, and a beach with boats and broad-beamed fishermen who wore jerseys or baggy breeches and braces only, sou'-westers, and the everlasting short pipes that they leaned against post or pillar to smoke. These seafaring folk looked lazy, dreamy and very quiet in manner, yet never were they afraid to face the stormiest billows on the stormiest of nights if danger or duty called. There was the might of Old England and its daring and pride of pluck in their half-shut eyes, and this only wanted waking. In the season, a signal from a hill would set them all astir like a swarming hive of bees. The mackerel or pilchards had been spotted in silvery millions, and if the French themselves had been threatening a landing, the stir and commotion could scarce have been more. Kep Drummond loved that old town. There was the odour of brine about it. Sometimes, I must admit, even the odour of unburied fish that might have been better out of the way; but still a run over to Marshton to yarn with the fisher-folk was always a most pleasant trip for the boy. The fishermen idolized him, so did their honest, rough and witty wives, because Kep possessed the power of making them laugh at will. That is at his will, they had to laugh whether they willed it or not. There was not much about a ship of any kind that Kep wasn't up to long before he was fourteen. One might therefore have dubbed him a sailor born, and not been very far wrong. But Kep had another reason for visiting Marshton, and that lay in the fact that here he met men of many various nations, and delighted in talking to them in their own languages. Apart from his marvellous musical powers, he had one great gift, namely, that of language. To say nothing of English, French, Italian and Spanish, he could converse in several other tongues, and could pick up almost any language in an incredibly short time. My own opinion is that music and the gift of tongues go hand in hand, and that they are far more common in foreign European countries than they are in Britain. Iverach Drummond, the children's father, was a true type of the wealthy Scotsman, and of the wandering Scot. One of the best yachtsmen who ever trod on the weather side of a quarter-deck, his devotion to travel took him everywhere, and when he got married to a noble Italian lady, for her sweet sake he bought the estates of Martello, so that she might be as near to the Mediterranean as possible. Madge and Kep had been born here, but hitherto had been educated by worthy priests at their grandfather's home on the shores of the blue Levant. When his wife died Drummond was inconsolable. He seemed to care no more for yachting, because at sea everything spoke to him of that gentle lady and mother of his children who had always been by his side in fair weather or in foul. He was, at the commencement of this story, as handsome a specimen of the true Highlander as one could wish to see. But honourable, strict, and sternly religious. He had, moreover, that pride of birth and lineage which we find clings to the scions of Scottish chiefs, be they ever so poor. The result, therefore, of an interview that Kep had with his sturdy father, some days after Madge's adventure on the cliff, is not to be wondered at. "Father," said Kep, peeping round the edge of the library door, "may I come?" "Certainly, my dear boy." "Sure you are not too much pre-occupied to listen to what I have to say?" "Unbend, my boy, unbend," cried Drummond, laughing, "that is hardly conversational English. What do you want? A new pony? Or have you taken the motor-car fever?" "Oh no, my handsome and dearest father. I should smash a motor-car to pieces in a week. A steam-launch would be more in my way." "And that shall be yours, Keppel, if you really think you can't live without it." "I can live without it, father, and mean to. But I am a man now--fourteen last month--and so I want to go down to the sea in ships and see the Lord's wonders in the mighty deep." "Well, my yacht is as taut and trim as she was on the day she was launched. Ah, lad, it was my--it was your dear mother who provided and baptized her." "But----" The boy hesitated, as well he might. "I want to go farther afloat than any yacht could ever take me. I wish to go and see wild places such as my best authors speak of, to kill wild beasts, to fight with savages, and snakes, and sharks, and tigers." "Pile it up, boy. You're not at all ambitious, are you? But, Kep, I'm not rich enough to buy you a ship, and I have other views for you. You are my only son, and heir to all my property. I want to take you into London society. I want you to have a career, to become member for the county, and probably eventually Leader of the House." "Father, you are not at all ambitious, are you? But I hate society, I hate London, I hate M.P.s, and I hate the Leader of the House. I'd rather," he added determinedly, "go to sea before the stick, and if you do not send me to sea, I fear I'll run away." Iverach Drummond was trying to keep down his prideful wrath. He sat silent and stern now, so stern that Kep was frightened. "Oh father, oh daddy, you're not angry at little Kep?" He was kneeling by the chief's side, passionately holding his father's hand and weeping. "Your anger would kill me, dearest and best." "Then you won't speak of sea to me again." The boy let go his father's hand. There was a flash of Italian pride in his eyes. But he speedily turned them downwards, then glided away and closed the door. And something at that moment told Drummond he should not see his boy more. * * * * * Martello Castle was really a fine old place, and historical also. Drummond--what will not love do--was as patriotic a Celt as ever drew blood in the Stuart cause, but for his wife's sake he had expatriated himself and come to live here, far away from his own mountain wilds. And yet he had the satisfaction of remembering that Cornwall itself had been a land of Celts, and, to some extent, the same blood that burned so fiercely in the bosoms of the ancient inhabitants was still alive in the people around him. Drummond had shooting on this estate all the year round, and was lord of the manor, and yet, like Walter Scott, he would have died had he been prevented from seeing the heather that blooms on the Highland hills at least once a year. He had, up to the time of his dear wife's death, mingled cheerfully with the landed gentry and best families of the county, but at present and lately he had been somewhat more of a recluse. He was feeling old now, he avowed, though he was but little over forty. And all his hopes and fears centred in his boy Keppel and his daughter Madge. For their sakes he was at home to all who did him the honour of calling. And Madge was as contented and cheerful as ever a girl needs to be, and had more than the average girl's opportunities of living an ideal life in her own grand gardens, or in woods and wilds. Though not so romantic and poetic at soul as her brother Kep, and with none of his extraordinary longings to see foreign life and seek for adventures abroad, she was nevertheless one of nature's children. On the same day upon which Kep had held that meeting with his father, he picked up his little rifle, kissed his sister, and told her he was going for shooting practice over the hills. There was something in his face that told Madge he was not happy, and but for the fact that her governess was with her she would have accompanied him. Kep went to the hill to practise making bull's eyes at boulders, as he phrased it, but his heart was not in the sport to-day, and presently he threw down the gun, and lay down himself to look at the sea, and to think. What was he going to do? he asked himself. Going to run away from his parent, his sister, his home? There was only one word to answer the question, and that was "Yes." But the morale of these questions was what puzzled his most, for he had been strictly religious trained. Was he about to commit deliberately a sin for which he might never be forgiven? This was a question that took him a long time to argue. There were many sides to it. He was going to sea in obedience to an impulse. Nothing was there to prevent him. There are fathers and fathers, some of these would send forth a hue and cry and bring a boy back nolens volens. His father, Kep knew well enough, was not one of these. He would be too proud to search for his lost boy, and he knew also the nature of that boy, knew that restraint and compulsion could only tend to harden him, and that the disgrace of being brought back a prisoner would break his brave heart. No, there was little, if any, fear of pursuit, and he had some money of his own, enough at any rate to purchase his kit and rig-out. Yes, the world was all before him. Yet the "sin" attached to his flight--ah! that was the word he could not keep from ringing in his ears. His father's priest was Kep's best friend, and his tutor besides. Should he go and tell him? Perhaps he should, but he would not. You may get pardon for sins you have done--if you are genuinely penitent--but not for those you have it in your heart to commit. He would not see his priest. What, never again? The lad's heart gave an uneasy throb. That "never" is a long, long saddening word. So he told himself that he was not running away for good and all, only just for a few years, then if his father forgave him and asked him to return he would. But his sister Madge--ah! how she would cry, and how bitter and hot and blinding would be those tears, for they loved each other, those two mitherless bairns, as only young sister and brother can. Kep was all the world to Madge. No boy ever so kind and gentle, so brave. None ever so pleasant and so wildly mirthfully, gleesome and humorous. As he thought of this he took from his side pocket a tiny little black orchestra flute or piccolo. Not much bigger nor thicker was it than a fountain pen, but oh, the marvellous music he was wont to elicit from it. Mostly all Italian and German, chiefly operatic, yet the birds that perched on the golden scented furze in spring used to stop their songs to listen when Kep played, and little anxious creatures in fur used to peep wonderingly out of their holes. He took his pipe from his pocket, I say, and began to play--merrily at first, but soon mournfully and sadly. The music that he breathed into it or that welled out of it was such as he himself had never heard before. It seemed to come from his very soul, to be the very own voice of that soul; and what more sweet, if pure, than the soul of a boy of his still tender years? This did not, could not, last long. He dropped the magic pipe, and threw himself on his face to weep. "Oh, Madge, oh, Madge," he sobbed, "I am going away, away--I am following destiny--and you--you--how I love you, sister! but distance can never, never divide nor sunder us. Never, Madge, never." He spoke through his tears, as if his sister were close at his elbow. "I'll write often and often, and you shall write to me. I may not always get your letters, but you shall always have mine. What is this?" he added, speaking more to himself now. He picked something off a bush of ling. It was one of wild Madge's hair-ribbons--they often sat down to rest, the brother and sister, in this very spot. He looked at it. He held the bonnie blue silk to his lips, and sighed a sigh which gave him comfort. Then he attached the ribbon to his wee flute and tied it to a button hole. He would never part from either ribbon or flute, go where he might, over sea or land. The ribbon would be his mascot and charm danger away, the tie that would knit him to his sister and to home. Don't laugh at poor Kep, if I tell you that he must now kneel down by the bush and pray. He marched off down the glen after this, but no farther than the house of Duncan Rae, one of his father's keepers. Duncan was at home and glad to see Kep. Would he not step inside and have a bowl of milk, his wife would be so pleased. "And there," continued Duncan, "comes Colie to bid you welcome and my two little lassies evermore. But has our good laird's boy been crying? But see, Keppie, my lad, go to the brook and wash your face, and it is myself that will run for a towel for you." Kep always felt easy at that homely fireside, and in five minutes' time he was sitting with a child girl on his knee and two more curly-haired tots listening to and laughing at his strange stories. "But you'll play a bit to us, Keppie, and sure the bairns will dance, for it is you that is the grand whistler. Never could scream of plover in the mist equal the shrill sweet music of your flute." And Kep did play, and forgot his sorrow for the time. Then he got up to go, and handed Duncan Rae his little rifle to keep until he called for it. "But eh! boy, there is the big sorrow in your heart this moment, and there is something there you won't tell your poor Duncan." "No sorrow, Duncan. Only joy to come." And he forced a smile as he waved his hand. And Duncan stood looking after him till the hazel copse hid him from view. Then he sighed and went in doors. * * * * * Bob, the great white owl, came that night to stare in at the window of the little turret chamber, but all was dark. And the cawing of the rooks to greet the rising sun brought no young face to the window next morning. Kep was gone. CHAPTER III "ANY SPOT ON EARTH is A HOME FOR THE BRAVE." About a week after this, rather a crack little cruiser was lying with steam up, or fires alit anyhow, in Plymouth Sound. Long, low, rakish she was, and looked just the craft to go anywhere and do anything, howsoever daring. Kep Drummond stood gazing at her from the Hoe. There was a sailor sitting on the end of a bench near by, and him Kep addressed. "What ship is that, mate?" he said. "That is the Breezy, my son. She sails to-morrow." "Do you belong to her?" "Not I. Just come from China station." "I think I should like to sail in that craft. There is a bit of romance about her, lying with her bowsprit pointing to the breakwater. I like her looks, and what a lot of boats are passing to and fro. How had I best get on board?" "Why, with a shore-boat, of course. You don't imagine, do you, that they would call away the first whaler for a kinchin like you, though you do look pretty fit." "Well, anyhow, I'm going to join that ship and sail in her." The seaman laughed aloud. "As what?" he asked. "Second lieutenant, paymaster, or what? Mebbe you'd like to take command of her. I'm sure you have only to wire the Admiralty to get appointed right away." Kep's eyes were riveted on the Breezy, and he was all a-quiver with a new-born excitement. "How old are you, sonny?" The man now laid a kindly hand on his shoulder. "Fourteen and begun again." "Run away from your parents, haven't you?" "That's my business, matey." "Well, but take a man-o'-war sailor's advice. Don't go on board the Breezy; if you do, you'll get copped and sent home again. And it is there you should be. If I did my duty now----" "Come and have a pint, Jack." "Oh, I'm nothing loath," said Jack. "Then we can yarn about it," said Kep. They were soon seated in the parlour of an inn, where Jack seemed to be well known. There was a foaming tankard in front of the sailor and one by Kep, which he pretended to sip, but fought shy of. Kep told Jack little bits about himself, but no more than Jack could conveniently swallow. "Have you been much abroad, sir?" said Kep. The "sir" almost stuck in the boy's throat, but then, this man had many stripes on his sleeve, and Kep thought it as well to err on the safe side. "Been kicked about a lot, sonny, if that's what you mean. I'm eight and twenty, and next commission may be my last--" "Why, you think you'll be drowned then?" "No, no, lad, only if I do two years more, my time will be about up, but I'll join on again, 'cause I dearly love the sea. I say, young fellow, you're not drinking yours." "Never meant to. Ordered it for company's sake." "Thought so. There's a pal o' mine in the bar, he could let daylight inside that tankard if your lordship will allow me to call him in." "Certainly--delighted." The pal, a young man, clean-shaven and very baggy about the lower garments, did let daylight into the tankard after nodding frankly to Kep. The boy had heard of boozing kens, and he wondered if he was in one now. Anyhow, he believed he could take care of himself. A buxom middle-aged landlady presently came in, and Jack said something to her in an undertone. She smiled most pleasantly, and patted Kep's hand. "Poor boy!" she said, "nothing must come over him then." Kep called for more stout all round, and threw down a sovereign. But this fresh supply stood for some time untouched, for the lads of the Royal Navy are not now what they were in the days of Dibdin. "I'll call Katie, my daughter," said the landlady, "as I must attend to duty. Katie dear, come this way." Kep thought he had never seen so winsome a girl before and he asked her to have something, but she took positively no notice. Only a minute after, she pulled Kep on to her knee. "The sweet little lamb," she said, "and oh, the black eyes of him. Jack, he is his mother's wopsy-popsy, I'll bet." "What--how--why," the boy cried, wriggling away from her. "Can't you see I'm a man? Fourteen and began again?" But Katie soothed him. "I'm sure you'd like a cup of tea," she said. Kep would. Yet he had some suspicions that if this were in reality a boozing den, the tea might be drugged, and that being hocussed, he might be robbed. But one look at sweet Katie convinced him that his suspicions were really unmanly. "You'll sleep here to-night, won't you?" she said. "Yes, if they don't keep me on board the Breezy." Jack roared with laughter and Katie couldn't help joining in. "I think," said Jack, "that even the first lieutenant has been appointed, and they will have to dispense with your services, sonny. Why didn't you 'phone to the Port Admiral, and say you were coming?" "You funny boy!" said Katie. "But how much money is in that purse of yours, that makes your trousers pocket bulge out so?" "Oh, enough to pay for the tea, twenty times over." "Why dear, I don't mean that," and the girl reddened a little. "Well," she added, "you'll count all your gold out there on the table, and give it to my mother except just a handful of silver. She'll give you a receipt for it, and you'll come back here to sleep." Kep looked at Jack, and Jack nodded. Then the boy counted his gold and notes out as innocently as a boy of nine might have done, and Mrs. Monck, the landlady of the Blue Ensign, took it in charge. Jack told him he would meet him here again that evening, told him also where to charter a shore-boat. "Hillo you, what's the fare to the Breezy?" "Three bob to you, cap'n." "Take ye for 'arf," cried another. "Jump in," said Kep. The men jumped in and off they pulled. There was a rudder, and Kep took the tiller. "Been at this game before, young sir?" "I know what a boat is." "Be ye a-goin' to join, sir?" "Don't know yet. Going to see the first officer." "Humph! well, that means the commander or first luff. The Breezy is a warship." The way Kep steered that boat along-side the Breezy--sta'board side mind you--was a source of great fun to some middies. "Admiral's sweep, by Jove! Why, he thinks himself quite a little toff. Wonder who the devil he is?" "Couldn't say, I'm sure. May as well have sideboys, anyhow." And down the steps the side-boys rattled and handed Kep the pipe-clayed ropes. He was half-way up, when the man hailed, "Am I to wait, sir?" "Er--um--you may as well, I think." The side-boys were caught on the giggle and Kep frowned at them. He saluted the quarter-deck as if to the manner born. "What--er--can I do you for, youngster?" This from the midshipman of the after watch. "I want to see the commander or Captain." "Neither on board. Here comes the second lieutenant. "Hullo, my lad"--he wasn't much more than a lad himself--"have you friends on board?" "Soon will have, I hope, sir. I want to join the service, and this ship. Rather like the looks of her." The middies pulled their handkerchiefs out, and seemed strangely convulsed. The officer raised his eye-brows, but appeared much amused. "Come down to the ward-room, my boy," he said. "There is really nobody on board, yet. Sit down. You are smartly dressed, is your father a gentleman?" "Yes, and all my forefathers, and I'm a gentleman myself." "Undoubtedly, but you've run away from home, haven't you? What is your father's name?" "Not over anxious to divulge, sir," replied Kep. "Well, what name do you sail under?" "Not particular. Call me Mr. Bowser." "Well, Master Bowser, you say you are desirous of doing us the honour of sailing with us. May I presume to ask in what capacity?" Kep jumped up. "You are making fun of me, poking fun at me," he cried, now furiously red in the face. "Sit down, you spitfire, and don't be a little fool, else, but there! now calm yourself and answer my question. What use do you think you'd be on H.M.S. Breezy?" "Oh, I'm so willing, sir! I can be anything, or do anything. Could take charge of a watch or my turn at the wheel, or help the cook, or clean the boots. I can reef and steer, and box the compass, splice the main-brace, or work out the reckoning or----" "Suppose, now, our captain were taken ill?" "Oh, sir. I could soon learn to do the simple duties of a Naval Captain." "Is there any other capacity in which you could serve?" "Oh yes, I can speak six or seven languages fluently, and I could play on this little pipe while the sailor men danced." The lieutentant was more amused than ever. He wanted a little fun, anyhow. "Play something to me." "What shall it be? Nocturne, Sonata, Valse, or, just name your opera. Come, here is a little bit of Wagner." The officer leaned back in his chair, really or truly delighted. "Why," he said, "you are--why you are a juvenile freak. Come on deck with me." "Quartermaster, just take this lad forward, and he'll play you a hornpipe." He did. Kep played, and didn't the men dance too. It was half an hour of the best fun ever seen on board a man-o'-war. Then the young lieutentant gave the boy ginger wine, grapes, and much good advice, and bade him be sure to go home to his parents. No, Kep had not succeeded in joining the Breezy, but he really had made an impression on board, and those who met him would not soon forget him. The boy did not go directly back to the Blue Ensign. The day was very beautiful and though already far spent there was plenty of time of stroll around and see things. Now Plymouth down by the docks is always a busy place. It was ten times more so just at present, for complications had once more arisen betwixt this country and Russia. Since the close of the terrible war against the Japs, the Russians appeared to be intriguing very much in European politics. She desired a war with Britain, she longed to invade India, but the trouble was that unless supported by another power there was little chance of her being able to regain her lost prestige. Be that as it may, orders had only a few days before Kep's arrival been received at Plymouth dockyards that make things hum, as the saying is, and the lad wondered a good deal at all he saw in the dockyards. A swarm of bees about to swarm could not have been more busy and bustling. The tall policemen who guarded the gates eyed everyone who sought entrance with considerable suspicion unless wearing the king's uniform, and even Kep came in for his share of this. "Are you a young officer, sir?" said one, as the lad essayed to pass in, just as coolly as if the place were all his own. "Halt! Are you a young gentleman, sir?" Kep smiled his blandest, though with a slight air of hauteur in his manner. "I hope so," he replied emphatically. The policeman touched his hat. And an Irish marine who was doing sentry-go, seeing this, shouldered arms as he passed, and Kep returned the salute with a flourish of his hand capwards as he had seen real officers do on the street, when the blue-jackets saluted. "This is all very sweet," thought Kep, though the fact was that he was sailing under false colours, for the policeman's "young gentleman," really meant "junior officer," although it ought to have struck him as strange that even a naval cadet, if appointed, should be marching through the dockyard in mufti. And this incident, trifling though it appears, pleased Kep. It proved that he looked a little gentleman, and not a second-class boy, nor shop-keeper's apprentice out for a day. But everybody was not quite so polite to our little hero, for during his peregrination he happened to stumble against a red-faced pompous looking old officer, and made bold to salute. This officer was in uniform and stopped to eye Kep for a moment. "Hillo! young fellow, who are you, and what are you doing here?" "Just having a look around, sir." "Cool. You don't belong to the service?" "No, sir. That is not yet." The officer laughed. "Here is sixpence for you," he said. "I rather like a cheeky boy. Yonder is a gate, they'll let you out and they shouldn't have let you in. Go and buy buns." Poor Kep reddened to the roots of the hair. He took the coin, though it seemed to burn his fingers and marched on towards the gate. A bo's'n'smate accosted him next. "What ho! younk, whither away? What's your tally?" "I'm only just a little boy going to buy buns," said Kep, and they parted. The first thing he did, when he emerged, was to give that sixpence to a small gutter-snipe girl. She examined it wonderingly. "'Taint a reel un, is it boss?" "Yes, quite, go and buy buns for yourself." "Well, you be a softy, anyhow," she cried and darted off, shrieking with delight. And, next moment, Kep ran right up against Jack himself. "Come to bring you back home, sonny," said the kindly fellow. "Make sure, you know, that you don't fall into mischief." About two hours after this, Kep might have been seen in the tap-room of the Blue Ensign piping to a lot of jolly young sailors, as he stood on the top of a table. A position, which I must admit was a trifle infra dignitate--beneath the dignity--of Keppel Drummond, only son of a lord of a manor. But Kep enjoyed it and so did the blue-jackets. Well, Kep had supper with the landlady, Katie and Jack, in the cosy bar parlour, quite a private party, be assured, and a very merry one as well. This happened after ten o'clock, when the house was shut up for the night. To have seen Kep now, and heard his ringing laughter, as Jack spun his droll service yarns, you could scarce have believed that he had any sorrow at all at his heart. He did have though, and it is not easy to forget so happy a home as that which he had just forsaken, only care lies lightly on the shoulders of a lad of fourteen. He compounded with his conscience, moreover, by promising to write nice letters home the very next morning. He bade his friends good-night at last, and was shown up to his little room, a bit rough, perhaps, but everything as sweet and clean as new silver. Never a dream, and it was far into the morning before the sun shimmering in through the window awoke him, and soon he was down to breakfast. There came word now that the Breezy was off, and so she was. Jack and Kep started for the Hoe to see her sail past. And Kep sighed. How he would have liked to be on board that low long craft. Not perhaps so poetic-looking was she as a ship under sail with every inch of canvas set to woo the wind, but her build and shape, and clean cut bows suggested terrific force, terrible possibilities. The variegated flutter of her signal flags as she flew through the blue water, her great white ensign floating astern, and the sweet music of her band playing, "Good-bye, sweetheart, good-bye," everything about her in fact, thrilled poor Kep till the tears filled his eyes. They watched her getting smaller and smaller as she went stretching seawards. Yes, and many more than they were watching her, for when our sailors leave their native bonnie British shores, they leave many a tearful face and many a breaking heart behind them. There was more of sadness in Kep's breast as he walked back to the Blue Ensign than he had ever felt since the day his mother died. He would work some of that off, however, by writing to his sister, and his father, to say nothing of the good old priest and Duncan Rae. He had much to write about to Madge, and, indeed, he felt somehow as if years had elapsed since he had sat beside her on the green cliff-top. The landlady of the inn vouchsafed to Kep some very good advice. He must, she said, go back to his parents--Kep had not told her his story--there was nothing else for it. Kep patted her white podgy hand, and thanked her. "Your advice, mammy," he said, "is very excellent in its way, but it is advice of the feminine gender, and I shall go to sea, whatever happens. I shall not return home until I can do so with honour. My proud father shall never have to say that his son is unworthy of his grand old name." "And you really will go," said Katie mournfully. "I must, Katie, but cheer up, my dear. O'er many seas and lands I'll roam. Yet the heart of your sailor shall ever be true, and when my wanderings are over, I'll return to Merrie England and marry my Katie." This wasn't bad for a boy of fourteen, was it? "Well, go if you must," said the landlady, "where are you bound to?" "Yes," said Jack, "what is your next port, sonny?" "I shall consider. Have you a Bradshaw, Katie?" He opened the book at random, at the place where it tells one of steamers that sail away to every part of the known world. It opened at Southampton. He closed his eyes now fast and hard, and stuck a pin into one of the pages. It struck the West Indies. Even Jack, old sailor though he was, was taken aback at the boy's boldness. "I shall go there!" he said. "My dear and charming Katie," he added heroically, "Any spot on earth is a home for the brave." |
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