Cutlass and Cudgel

George Manville Fenn

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• Publié par: thawyer
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 21
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cutlass and Cudgel, by George Manville Fenn
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Title: Cutlass and Cudgel
Author: George Manville Fenn
Illustrator: J Schonberg
Release Date: May 4, 2007 [EBook #21297]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
George Manville Fenn
"Cutlass and Cudgel"
Chapter One.
“Heigh-Ho-Ha-Hum! Oh dear me!”
“What’s matter, sir?”
“Matter, Dirty Dick? Nothing; only, heigh-ho-ha! Oh dear me, how sleepy I am!”
“Well, sir, I wouldn’t open my mouth like that ’ere, ’fore the sun’s up.”
“Why not?”
“No knowing what you might swallow off this here nasty, cold, foggy, stony
coast.”
“There you go again, Dick; not so good as Lincolnshire coast, I suppose?”
“As good, sir? Why, how can it be?” said the broad, sturdy sailor addressed.
“Nothin’ but great high stony rocks, full o’ beds of great flat periwinkles and
whelks; nowhere to land, nothin’ to see. I am surprised at you, sir. Why, there
arn’t a morsel o’ sand.”“For not praising your nasty old flat sandy shore, with its marsh beyond, and its
ague and bogs and fens.”
“Wish I was ’mong ’em now, sir. Wild ducks there, as is fit to eat, not iley fishy
things like these here.”
“Oh, bother! Wish I could have had another hour or two’s sleep. I say, Dirty Dick,
are you sure the watch wasn’t called too soon?”
“Nay, sir, not a bit; and, beggin’ your pardon, sir, if you wouldn’t mind easin’ off
the Dirty—Dick’s much easier to say.”
“Oh, very well, Dick. Don’t be so thin-skinned about a nickname.”
“That’s it, sir. I arn’t a bit thin-skinned. Why, my skin’s as thick as one of our
beasts. I can’t help it lookin’ brown. Washes myself deal more than some o’ my
mates as calls me dirty. Strange and curious how a name o’ that kind sticks.”
“Oh, I say, don’t talk so,” said the lad by the rough sailor’s side; and after
another yawn he began to stride up and down the deck of His Majesty’s cutter
White Hawk, lying about a mile from the Freestone coast of Wessex.
It was soon after daybreak, the sea was perfectly calm and a thick grey mist
hung around, making the deck and cordage wet and the air chilly, while the
coast, with its vast walls of perpendicular rocks, looked weird and distant where a
peep could be obtained amongst the wreaths of vapour.
“Don’t know when I felt so hungry,” muttered the lad, as he thrust his hands into
his breeches pockets, and stopped near the sailor, who smiled in the lad’s frank-
looking, handsome face.
“Ah, you always were a one to yeat, sir, ever since you first came aboard.”
“You’re a noodle, Dick. Who wouldn’t be hungry, fetched out of his cot at this
time of the morning to take the watch. Hang the watch! Bother the watch! Go
and get me a biscuit, Dick, there’s a good fellow.”
The sailor showed his white teeth, and took out a brass box.
“Can’t get no biscuit yet, sir. Have a bit o’ this. Keeps off the gnawin’s
wonderful.”
“Yah! Who’s going to chew tobacco!” cried the lad with a look of disgust, as he
buttoned up his uniform jacket. “Oh, hang it all, I wish the sun would come out!”
“Won’t be long, sir; and then all this sea-haar will go.”
“Why don’t you say mist?” cried the lad contemptuously.
“’Acause it’s sea-haar, and you can’t make nowt else on it, sir!”
“They haven’t seen anything of them in the night, I suppose?”
“No, sir; nowt. It scars me sometimes, the way they dodges us, and gets away.
Don’t think theer’s anything queer about ’em, do you?”
“Queer? Yes, of course. They’re smugglers, and as artful as can be.”
“Nay, sir, bad, I mean—you know, sir.”“No, I don’t, Dick,” cried the young officer pettishly. “How can I know? Speak
out.”
“Nay, I wean’t say a word, sir; I don’t want to get more scarred than I am
sometimes now.”
“Get out! What do you mean? That old Bogey helps them to run their cargoes?”
“Nay, sir, I wean’t say a word. It’s all werry well for you to laugh, now it’s
daylight, and the sun coming out. It’s when it’s all black as pitch, as it takes howd
on you worst.”
“You’re a great baby, Dick,” cried the midshipman, as he went to the side of the
cutter and looked over the low bulwark toward the east. “Hah! Here comes the
sun.”
His eyes brightened as he welcomed the coming of the bright orb, invisible yet
from where he stood; but the cold grey mist that hung around was becoming
here and there, in patches, shot with a soft delicious rosy hue, which made the
grey around turn opalescent rapidly, beginning to flash out pale yellow, which, as
the middy watched, deepened into orange and gold.
“Lovely!” he said aloud, as he forgot in the glory of the scene the discomfort he
had felt.
“Tidy, sir, pooty tidy,” said the sailor, who had come slowly up to where he stood.
“And you should see the morning come over our coast, sir. Call this lovely? Why,
if you’d sin the sun rise there, it would mak’ you stand on your head.”
“Rather see this on my feet, Dick,” cried the lad. “Look at that! Hurrah! Up she
comes!”
Up “she”—otherwise the sun—did come, rolling slowly above the mist-covered
sea, red, swollen, huge, and sending blood-tinted rays through and through the
haze to glorify the hull, sails, and rigging of the smart cutter, and make the faces
of the man at the helm and the other watchers glow as with new health.
The effect was magical. Just before all was cold and grey, and the clinging mist
sent a shiver through those on deck; now, their eyes brightened with pleasure, as
the very sight of the glowing orb seemed to have a warming—as it certainly had
an enlivening—effect.
The great wreaths of mist yielded rapidly as the sun rose higher, the rays
shooting through and through, making clear roads which flashed with light, and,
as the clouds rolled away like the grey smoke of the sun’s fire, the distant cliffs,
which towered up steep and straight, like some titanic wall, came peering out
now in patches bright with green and golden grey.
Archibald Raystoke—midshipman aboard His Majesty the king’s cutter, stationed
off the Freestone coast, to put a stop to the doings of a smuggler whose career
the Government had thought it high time to notice—drew in a long breath, and
forgot all about hunger and cold in the promise of a glorious day.
It was impossible to think of such trifling things in the full burst of so much
beauty, for, as the sun rose higher, the sea, which had been blood-red and
golden, began to turn of a vivid blue deeper than the clear sky overhead; the
mist wreaths grew thinner and more transparent, and the pearly glistening foam,
which followed the breaking of each wave at the foot of the mighty cliffs, added
fresh beauty to the glorious scene.“Look here, Dirty Dick,” began the middy, who burst out into a hearty fit of
laughter as he saw the broad-shouldered sailor give his face a rub with the back
of his hands, and look at them one after the other.
“Does it come off, Dick?” he said.
“Nay, sir; nothin’ comes off,” said the man dolefully. “’Tis my natur too, but it
seems werry hard to be called dirty, when you arn’t.”
“There, I beg pardon, Dick, and I will not call you so any more.”
“Thankye, sir; I s’pose you mean it, but you’ll let it out again soon as you forget.”
“No, I will not, Dick. But, I say, look here: you are a cheat, though, are you not?”
“Me, sir? No!” cried the man excitedly.
“I mean about the Lincolnshire coast. Confess it isn’t half so beautiful as this.”
“Oh, yes it is, sir. It’s so much flatter. Why, you can’t hardly find a place to land
here, without getting your boat stove in.”
“If all’s true, the smugglers know how to land things,” said Archibald, as he gazed
thoughtfully at the cliffs.
“Oh, them! O’ course, sir, they can go up the cliffs, and over ’em like flies in
sugar basins. They get a spar over the edge, with a reg’lar pulley, and lets down
over the boats, and then up the kegs and bales