Part 1. My Girlhood - Chapter 9

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_ FIRST PART. MY GIRLHOOD
NINTH CHAPTER

I was never sent back to school, and I heard that Martin, by order of the butcher, was publicly expelled. This was a cause of distress to our mothers, who thought the future of our lives had been permanently darkened, but I cannot say that it ever stood between us and our sunshine. On the contrary it occurred that--Aunt Bridget having washed her hands of me, and Martin's father being unable to make up his mind what to do with him--we found ourselves for some time at large and were nothing loth to take advantage of our liberty, until a day came which brought a great disaster.

One morning I found Martin with old Tommy the Mate in his potting-shed, deep in the discussion of their usual subject--the perils and pains of Arctic exploration, when you have little food in your wallet and not too much in your stomach.

"But you has lots of things when you gets there--hams and flitches and oranges and things--hasn't you?" said Martin.

"Never a ha'p'orth," said Tommy. "Nothing but glory. You just takes your Alping stock and your sleeping sack and your bit o' biscuit and away you go over crevaxes deeper nor Martha's gullet and mountains higher nor Mount Blank and never think o' nothing but doing something that nobody's never done before. My goodness, yes, boy, that's the way of it when you're out asploring. 'Glory's waiting for me' says you, and on you go."

At that great word I saw Martin's blue eyes glisten like the sea when the sun is shining on it; and then, seeing me for the first time, he turned back to old Tommy and said:

"I s'pose you lets women go with you when you're out asploring--women and girls?"

"Never a woman," said Tommy.

"Not never--not if they're stunners?" said Martin.

"Well," says Tommy, glancing down at me, while his starboard eye twinkled, "I won't say never--not if they're stunners."

Next day Martin, attended by William Rufus, arrived at our house with a big corn sack on his shoulder, a long broom-handle in his hand, a lemonade bottle half filled with milk, a large sea biscuit and a small Union Jack which came from the confectioner's on the occasion of his last birthday.

"Glory's waiting for me--come along, shipmate," he said in a mysterious whisper, and without a word of inquiry, I obeyed.

He gave me the biscuit and I put it in the pocket of my frock, and the bottle of milk, and I tied it to my belt, and then off we went, with the dog bounding before us.

I knew he was going to the sea, and my heart was in my mouth, for of all the things I was afraid of I feared the sea most--a terror born with me, perhaps, on the fearful night of my birth. But I had to live up to the character I had given myself when Martin became my brother, and the one dread of my life was that, finding me as timid as other girls, he might want me no more.

We reached the sea by a little bay, called Murphy's Mouth, which had a mud cabin that stood back to the cliff and a small boat that was moored to a post on the shore. Both belonged to Tommy the Mate, who was a "widow man" living alone, and therefore there were none to see us when we launched the boat and set out on our voyage. It was then two o'clock in the afternoon, the sun was shining, and the tide, which was at the turn, was beginning to flow.

I had never been in a boat before, but I dared not say anything about that, and after Martin had fixed the bow oar for me and taken the stroke himself, I spluttered and plunged and made many blunders. I had never been on the sea either, and almost as soon as we shot clear of the shore and were lifted on to the big waves, I began to feel dizzy, and dropped my oar, with the result that it slipped through the rollocks and was washed away. Martin saw what had happened as we swung round to his rowing, but when I expected him to scold me, he only said:

"Never mind, shipmate! I was just thinking we would do better with one," and, shipping his own oar in the stern of the boat, he began to scull.

My throat was hurting me, and partly from shame and partly from fear, I now sat forward, with William Rufus on my lap, and said as little as possible. But Martin was in high spirits, and while his stout little body rolled to the rocking of the boat he whistled and sang and shouted messages to me over his shoulder.

"My gracious! Isn't this what you call ripping?" he cried, and though my teeth were chattering, I answered that it was.

"Some girls--Jimmy Christopher's sister and Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty--would be frightened to come asploring, wouldn't they?"

"Wouldn't they?" I said, and I laughed, though I was trembling down to the soles of my shoes.

We must have been half an hour out, and the shore seemed so far away that Murphy's Mouth and Tommy's cabin and even the trees of the Big House looked like something I had seen through the wrong end of a telescope, when he turned his head, with a wild light in his eyes, and said:

"See the North Pole out yonder?"

"Don't I?" I answered, though I was such a practical little person, and had not an ounce of "dream" in me.

I knew quite well where he was going to. He was going to St. Mary's Rock, and of all the places on land or sea, it was the place I was most afraid of, being so big and frowning, an ugly black mass, standing twenty to thirty feet out of the water, draped like a coffin in a pall, with long fronds of sea-weed, and covered, save at high water, by a multitude of hungry sea-fowl.

A white cloud of the birds rose from their sleep as we approached, and wheeled and whistled and screamed and beat their wings over our heads. I wanted to scream too, but Martin said:

"My gracious, isn't this splendiferous?"

"Isn't it?" I answered, and, little hypocrite that I was, I began to sing.

I remember that I sang one of Tommy's sailor-songs, "Sally," because its jolly doggerel was set to such a jaunty tune--

"Oh Sally's the gel for me,
Our Sally's the gel for me,
I'll marry the gel that I love best
When I come back from sea."

My pretence of happiness was shortlived, for at the next moment I made another mistake. Drawing up his boat to a ledge of the rock, and laying hold of our painter, Martin leapt ashore, and then held out his hand to me to follow him, but in fear of a big wave I held back when I ought to have jumped, and he was drenched from head to foot. I was ashamed, and thought he would have scolded me, but he only shook himself and said:

"That's nothing! We don't mind a bit of wet when we're out asploring."

My throat was hurting me again and I could not speak, but without waiting for me to answer he coiled the rope about my right arm, and told me to stay where I was, and hold fast to the boat, while he climbed the rock and took possession of it in the name of the king.

"Do or die we allus does that when we're out asploring," he said, and with his sack over his shoulder, his broom-handle in his hand and his little Union Jack sticking out of the hole in the crown of his hat, he clambered up the crag and disappeared over the top of it.

Being left alone, for the dog had followed him, my nervousness increased tenfold, and thinking at last that the rising tide was about to submerge the ledge on which I stood, I tried in my fright to climb the cliff. But hardly had I taken three steps when my foot slipped and I clutched the seaweed to save myself from falling, with the result that the boat's rope slid from my arm, and went rip-rip-ripping down the rock until it fell with a splash into the sea.

I saw what I had done, and I screamed, and then Martin's head appeared after a moment on the ledge above me. But it was too late for him to do anything, for the boat had already drifted six yards away, and just when I thought he would have shrieked at me for cutting off our only connection with the shore, he said:

"Never mind, shipmate! We allus expecs to lose a boat or two when we're out asploring."

I was silent from shame, but Martin, having hauled me up the rock by help of the broom handle, rattled away as if nothing had happened--pointing proudly to a rust-eaten triangle with a bell suspended inside of it and his little flag floating on top.

"But, oh dear, what are we to do now?" I whimpered.

"Don't you worrit about that," he said. "We'll just signal back to the next base--we call them bases when we're out asploring."

I understood from this that he was going to ring the bell which, being heard on the land, would bring somebody to our relief. But the bell was big, only meant to be put in motion on stormy nights by the shock and surging of an angry sea, and when Martin had tied a string to its tongue it was a feeble sound he struck from it.

Half an hour passed, an hour, two hours, and still I saw nothing on the water but our own empty boat rocking its way back to the shore.

"Will they ever come?" I faltered.

"Ra--ther! Just you wait and you'll see them coming. And when they take us ashore there'll be crowds and crowds with bugles and bands and things to take us home. My goodness, yes," he said, with the same wild look, "hundreds and tons of them!"

But the sun set over the sea behind us, the land in front grew dim, the moaning tide rose around the quaking rock and even the screaming sea-fowl deserted us, and still there was no sign of relief. My heart was quivering through my clothes by this time, but Martin, who had whistled and sung, began to talk about being hungry.

"My goodness yes, I'm that hungry I could eat. . . . I could eat a dog--we allus eats our dogs when we're out asploring."

This reminded me of the biscuit, but putting my hand to the pocket of my frock I found to my dismay that it was gone, having fallen out, perhaps, when I slipped in my climbing. My lip fell and I looked up at him with eyes of fear, but he only said:

"No matter! We never minds a bit of hungry when we're out asploring."

I did not know then, what now I know, that my little boy who could not learn his lessons and had always been in disgrace, was a born gentleman, but my throat was thick and my eyes were swimming and to hide my emotion I pretended to be ill.

"I know," said Martin. "Dizzingtory! [dysentery]. We allus has dizzingtory when we're out asploring."

There was one infallible cure for that, though--milk!

"I allus drinks a drink of milk, and away goes the dizzingtory in a jiffy."

This recalled the bottle, but when I twisted it round on my belt, hoping to make amends for the lost biscuit, I found to my confusion that it had suffered from the same misadventure, being cracked in the bottom, and every drop of the contents gone.

That was the last straw, and the tears leapt to my eyes, but Martin went on whistling and singing and ringing the big bell as if nothing had happened.

The darkness deepened, the breath of night came sweeping over the sea, the boom of the billows on the rock became still more terrible, and I began to shiver.

"The sack!" cried Martin. "We allus sleeps in sacks when we're out asploring."

I let him do what he liked with me now, but when he had packed me up in the sack, and put me to lie at the foot of the triangle, telling me I was as right as ninepence, I began to think of something I had read in a storybook, and half choking with sobs I said:

"Martin!"

"What now, shipmate?"

"It's all my fault . . . and I'm just as frightened as Jimmy Christopher's sister and Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty . . . and I'm not a stunner . . . and you'll have to give me up . . . and leave me here and save yourself and . . ."

But Martin stopped me with a shout and a crack of laughter.

"Not _me_! Not much! We never leaves a pal when we're out asploring. Long as we lives we never does it. Not never!"

That finished me. I blubbered like a baby, and William Rufus, who was sitting by my side, lifted his nose and joined in my howling.

What happened next I never rightly knew. I was only aware, though my back was to him, that Martin, impatient of his string, had leapt up to the bell and was swinging his little body from the tongue to make a louder clamour. One loud clang I heard, and then came a crash and a crack, and then silence.

"What is it?" I cried, but at first there was no answer.

"Have you hurt yourself?"

And then through the thunderous boom of the rising sea on the rock, came the breaking voice of my boy (he had broken his right arm) mingled with the sobs which his unconquered and unconquerable little soul was struggling to suppress--

"We never minds a bit of hurt . . . we never minds _nothing_ when we're out asploring!"

Meantime on shore there was a great commotion. My father was railing at Aunt Bridget, who was upbraiding my mother, who was crying for Father Dan, who was flying off for Doctor Conrad, who was putting his horse into his gig and scouring the parish in search of the two lost children.

But Tommy the Mate, who remembered the conversation in the potting-shed and thought he heard the tinkle of a bell at sea, hurried off to the shore, where he found his boat bobbing on the beach, and thereby came to his own conclusions.

By the light of a lantern he pulled out to St. Mary's Rock, and there, guided by the howling of the dog, he came upon the great little explorers, hardly more than three feet above high water, lying together in the corn sack, locked in each other's arms and fast asleep.

There were no crowds and bands of music waiting for us when Tommy brought us ashore, and after leaving Martin with his broken limb in his mother's arms at the gate of Sunny Lodge, he took me over to the Presbytery in order that Father Dan might carry me home and so stand between me and my father's wrath and Aunt Bridget's birch.

Unhappily there was no need for this precaution. The Big House, when we reached it, was in great confusion. My mother had broken a blood vessel. _

Read next: Part 1. My Girlhood: Chapter 10

Read previous: Part 1. My Girlhood: Chapter 8

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