Read Ebook: Captain Mugford: Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors by Kingston William Henry Giles Holloway W Herbert Illustrator

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cked, and after meeting many adventures, finally pressed on board a man-of-war. He saw a good deal of service, , and at last obtaining his discharge, or rather taking it, I suspect, with French leave--ever mindful of his beloved Juno, he returned voluntarily to a state of slavery, that he might enjoy life with her. The navy in those days was not what it now is, and he had not been in the enjoyment of any large amount of freedom. He had, indeed, being a good-natured, simple-hearted fellow, been sadly put upon both in the merchant service and navy. It was always, he used to say, "Clump, you don't want to go on shore, you stay and take care of the ship;" or, "Clump, you stay in the boat while we just take a run along the quay for five minutes;" or, "Clump, leave is no use to you, just let me have it instead of you;" or, "Clump, rum is a bad thing for niggers. I'll drink your grog to-day, and if you just tip me a wink I'll take half of it to-morrow, and let you have the rest, or Bill Noakes'll have the whole of it, and you'll get none." Clump and Juno being intelligent, trustworthy people, my father, as I have said, put them in charge of the farm on the cape, which they in a short time learned to manage with great judgment. Two other negroes he took into his service at Bristol. One of them became his butler, and it would have been difficult to find his equal in that capacity.

Now a lesson may be learned from this history. My father did what he considered right, and prospered; his partners, neglecting to enlighten themselves as they might have done, persisted in holding their black fellow-creatures in abject slavery, refusing one of the great rights of man--a sound education. Emancipation was carried, and they received a large compensation, and rejoiced, spending their money extravagantly; but the half-savage negroes whom they had neglected to educate refused to work. Their estates were left uncultivated for want of labourers, and they were ruined. My father, managing his mercantile affairs wisely, was a prosperous man.

His business on this visit was to see an adjoining property which had once belonged to the family, and which, being in the market, he hoped to repurchase.

The house had been built as long back as 1540-1550. It was of stone-- the rough stone, as it had been taken from the beaches and cliffs, of different shades and kinds. Above the ground floor was only an attic storey; and the main part of the ground floor consisted of four large low rooms, panelled in wood, and with ceiling of dark, heavy beams. Adjoining the rear of these, my grandfather had built a comparatively modern kitchen; but every fireplace in the old house preserved the generous cheerful style of ample spread and fire-dogs. From the great door of the main floor a narrow stairway, like cabin steps, led up, with quaintly carved banisters, to five real old-fashioned bedrooms, rising above to the ridge of the steep-sloping roof and its uncovered but whitewashed rafters. The windows were at least five feet above the floor, and had the many small panes we sometimes yet see in very old houses. No doubt it was a house of pretension in its day. When I was a boy it remained a precious ark of family legends and associations. How splendid it is to possess a house nearly three hundred years old. To-day nothing could induce me to exchange the walls of that dear old house for the handsomest residence in Belgravia. A house can be built in a few months; but to make a home--that is beyond the craft and quickness of masons, carpenters, and architects.

Alone on that bold, sea-beaten cape, so sturdy, dark, and time-worn, it looked out always with shrewd, steady little window-eyes on the great troubled ocean, across which it had watched the Pilgrim Fathers sailing away towards the new home they sought in the Western world, and many a rich argosy in days of yore go forth, never to return. It might have seen, too, the proud Spanish Armada gliding up channel for the purpose of establishing Popery and the Inquisition in Protestant England, to meet from the hands of a merciful Providence utter discomfiture and destruction. With satisfaction and becoming dignity, too, it seemed on fresh sunny mornings to gaze at the hundreds of sails dotting the sea, and bound for all parts of the globe, recalling, perhaps with some mournfulness, the days of its youth and the many other varied scenes of interest which it had witnessed on those same tossing billows from its lofty height.

All through our supper, which was laid in the largest of the first floor rooms, did Juno stand by, repeating the refrain--

"Oh dat nigger, dat Clump,--why he no come? And here's Massa er waitten and er waitten; but Clump, ole mon, he get berry slow--berry, berry slow. Now Massa Bob, vy you laff at ole Juno so?--hi! hi!"

However, Clump came at last; and when he beheld us, great and comical was his surprise. He dropped his basket to the floor, and, with battered hat in hand and both hands on his knees, stood for a moment and stared at us, and then his mouth stretched wide with joy and his sides shook with delight, while the tears trickled down from the wrinkled eyes to the laughing ivory.

"Tank de Lord! tank de Lord! Clump lib to see his ole Massa agin; and dat young gemmen,--vy, lem'me see! vy, sure as I'm dat nigger Clump, ef dat ain't--Massa Drake?--no,--Massa Walter?--no,--vy Juno, ole woman! dat are Massa Bob!" He took my hands and shook and squeezed them, saying over and over again, "Massa Bob am cum ter see de ole cradle. Oh! hi hi!"

THE DREAM CONFIRMED BY REALITY.

Three years elapsed before I saw the cape again. Indeed the remembrance of that visit there, of a few days only, began to assume indistinctness as a dream, and sometimes as I thought of it, recalling the events of the journey there and back in the chaise, the wild scenery and the strange sound of the surf, the old dark house and the devoted black servants--sometimes, I say, as I thought of all these, as I loved to do when I settled myself in bed for the night, or when in summer I lay on my back in the grass looking up at the flying clouds, I would have to stop and fix my attention sharp, to be sure whether it ever had been a reality, or whether it might not be, after all, only a dream. I think my father was afraid of the fascination of the cape for us boys--afraid its charms, if we once partook of them freely, might distract our attention from the order and duties of school life. To be sure, we always went to the country with our parents for a month or six weeks, and enjoyed it exceedingly, laying up a stock of trout, squirrel, and badger stories to last us through the winter. But there was no other country, we imagined, like the cape; and as our father and mother never lived there, and rarely spent even a single night on the whole property, they thought it best, I suppose, that we should not run wild there and get a relish for what all boys seem to have, in some degree, by nature. I mean the spirit of adventure, and love of the sea.

However, the good time came at last, or a reliable promise of it first, just fifty years ago this very February. We older boys--Walter, sixteen years of age, Drake, fourteen, and I, Robert, twelve--were attending school at Bristol, and were, as usual too in the winter evenings, at work over our lessons at the library table, when, on one never-to-be-forgotten evening, our father, who was sitting in an easy chair by the fire, suddenly asked, "Boys, how would you like to pass next summer on the cape?" Ah! didn't we three give a terrific chorus of assent? "Jolly! magnificent! splendid!" we cried, while Walter just quietly vaulted over half a dozen chairs, two or three at a time, backwards and forwards, till he had expended some of the animal vivacity stored up in abundance within him. Drake, as usual when extremely pleased, tried to accomplish the rubbing of his stomach and the patting of his head both at the same time; and I climbed into the chair with my father, and patted his cheeks and thanked him with a fierce shake of the hands.

"Shall we all be there together, father, and for the whole summer, and without any school? How delightful!"

"Not too fast, Drake. Without school? What an idea! Why, in six months you would be as wild and ignorant as the sheep there. No; you shall have a strict tutor, who will keep you in harness, and help Walter to prepare for going up next year to Cambridge. But only you three will be there. I have some business in London, and I shall take your mother and Aggie and Charley with me."

During those February evenings there were many more conversations on the same subject, full of interest to us boys, and finally it was fully decided by our father and mother that we should go in May, and stay there until autumn; that a certain Mr Clare should be our tutor, and that Clump and Juno should be our housekeepers and victuallers.

Never did a springtime appear longer and more wearisome. We counted every day, and were disgusted with March for having thirty-one of them. What greatly increased our impatience and the splendour of our anticipation was that, some time in March, our father told us that a brig had been cast away in a curious manner on the shore of the cape, and that he had purchased the wreck as it lay, well preserved and firmly held in the rocks above ordinary high-tide. He proposed, at some future time, to make use of it as a sort of storehouse, or perhaps dwelling for labourers. A shipwreck! a real wreck! and on our cape! stranded on the very shore of our Robinson Crusoe-like paradise! Just imagine our excitement.

The particulars of the wreck were as follows:--A brig of 300 tons burden, on a voyage from South America to the Thames, having lost her reckoning in consequence of several days' heavy gale and thick weather, suddenly made the light on the Lizard, and as quickly lost it again in the fog which surrounded her. The captain, mistaking the light he had seen for some other well-known beacon, set his course accordingly. That was near nine o'clock in the evening. The wind and tide helped him on the course steered, and a little after midnight the misguided brig struck on a rock three-quarters of a mile south-west of our point of land. The wind had then increased to a gale, and was gathering new strength with every moment. In less than an hour the thumping and grating of the vessel's keel ceased, and then the captain knew that the rising tide had set him off the rock; but, alas! his good brig was leaking badly, and the fierce wind was driving her--whither the captain knew not; and in five minutes more, by the force of the wind and suction of the shore current, she was thrown high up on a rocky projection of our cape. One sailor was washed overboard by the breakers as she passed through them, and was dashed to death, probably in an instant, by the fierce waves. The next day, when the storm had abated, the body was found far above where the brig lay fastened immovably in the vice-like fissure of enormous rocks. Twenty sovereigns, which perhaps the poor fellow had saved to bring home to his old mother, were found in a belt around his waist.

The damaged cargo was removed, and the wreck sold at auction, my father being the purchaser.

There was an old church situated on the summit of a neighbouring point of land, and to its now seldom used churchyard the body of the poor sailor was conveyed. His grave was one of the first points of interest to us when our visit to the cape commenced; and many a time that season did I sit and watch the brown headstone topping the bleakest part of the sea-bluff, and as the great voice of the sea, dashing and foaming on the stony beach beneath, sang in its eternal melancholy grandeur, I fancied long, long histories of what might have been that sailor's life; and I wondered sadly if the poor mother knew where her son's grave was, and whether she would ever come to look at it. On the stone was written:--

HARRY BREESE LIES HERE, NEAR WHERE A CRUEL SHIPWRECK CAST HIM, MARCH 23RD, 1814: AGED 24 YEARS, 2 MONTHS, AND 17 DAYS. REST IN PEACE, POOR BODY; THY SHIPMATE, SOUL, HAS GONE ALOFT, WHERE THY DEAR CAPTAIN, JESUS, IS.

After tea, Drake and I got very close to our mother on the sofa, but Walter lounged nervously about, trying to appear, I think, as if such an affair--a parting for six months--were nothing to such a big fellow as he. Aggie came and held my hand. When our father had taken his usual seat, he and our mother commenced to give us careful instructions how we were to regulate our time and conduct during our separation from them; we were directed about our lessons, clothes, language, and play; to be kind and patient with Clump and Juno; and very particular were our orders about the new tutor, Mr Clare, to whom we had been formally introduced a few days before, and we were required to promise solemnly that we would obey him implicitly in every respect. Besides which our father delighted us very much by the information that he had engaged an old seaman, Mugford by name, once boatswain of an Indiaman, who had taken up his abode at the fishing town across the bay from our cape, to be with us often through the summer in our out-of-school hours; that he would be, as it were, our skipper--perhaps reside with us--and that he was to have full command in all our water amusements; he would teach us to swim, to row, and to sail. That last subject cheered us up a bit, and when I saw Walter, who was still walking up and down the room, going through a pantomimic swim, striking out his arms in big circles, right and left, I commenced to smile, and Drake to laugh outright. So our conference ended in good spirits. And then we all kneeled in family prayer, and that evening before the parting, as we kneeled and heard my father's earnest words, I realised fully, perhaps for the first time, how, more than parents or friends, God was our Father; how, though we were going away from home and its securities, yet God was to be with us, stronger and kinder than any on earth, to guard and care for us.

During the few days we had known Mr Clare, he had been with us constantly, but we had not decided whether to like him or not. He seemed pleasant, and was easy enough, both in his manners and conversation, but yet he had a calm and decided way that was rather provoking; as if to say, "I have read you through and through, boys, and can govern you as easily as possible." Now we had no idea of resisting him; we intended to behave well, and therefore his manner rather nettled us. However, there was not much to object to. His appearance was certainly all right--a large, bright, manly face and hearty smile, and a strong, agile figure. We five boys had talked him over, and at the last balloting our votes were a tie, for Walter declined to express an opinion yet whether Mr Clare was a "screw" or a "good fellow." Harry Higginson and Drake voted "screw," whilst Alfred and I said "good fellow."

INTRODUCTION TO OUR SALT TUTOR AND THE WRECK.

It was on Wednesday night that we became the guests of Clump and Juno, and commenced our cape life. The next morning at breakfast--and what a breakfast! eggs and bacon, lard cakes, clotted cream, honey preserves, and as much fresh milk as we wanted--Mr Clare told us that we need not commence our studies until the next week; that we could have the remainder of this week as holidays in which to make a thorough acquaintance with our new world.

Our first wishes were to see the wreck and old Mr Mugford, whom we agreed to dub Captain Mugford; and so, immediately after breakfast, we started out with Mr Clare to find those items of principal interest. When we had got beyond a hillock and an immense boulder of pudding-stone, which stood up to shut out the beach view from the west side of the house, we saw the wreck, only about half a mile off, and hurried down to it. Mr Clare joined in the race and beat us, although Walter pushed him pretty hard.

The Captain, as we will henceforth call him, however, just then fixed our attention more than the strangely fitted--up wreck. He was short, only about five feet four in height, with very heavy, broad, straight shoulders, immense chest, long arms, very narrow, compact hips, and short, sturdy legs, much bowed. His features were large, straight, and determined, and with something of the bulldog in them, yet stamped with kindness, intelligence, and humour--a face that might be a terror to an enemy, as it was a surety to a friend. It was well bronzed by many a storm and tropical sun, and a dark beard grew on it, as the wild moss on the sea-rocks, in a luxuriant, disorderly manner. His hair was very thick, black, and glossy, only here and there flecked with the grey of age, and hung in curls that almost made his rough and powerful head even handsome. Walter said that night that he was sure Samson and Neptune were relatives, for without doubt the Captain was descended from both of them. With the jawbone of an ass he might put to flight a thousand Philistines, and with a trident drive a four-in-hand of porpoises.

We told that to the Captain afterwards, when we got to know him well, and it tickled him greatly. He declared it was the finest compliment he had ever received, and took Walter high in his favour from that moment.

Our new friend never wore either collar or vest. When not "on duty," as he expressed it, he went about in his shirt-sleeves. His breeches were of the ample sailor-cut, and hung from suspenders as intricate as a ship's rigging. His shirts were spotlessly white, and of very fine linen. A short black pipe was always in his mouth, or sticking its clay stem from a waist-band pocket.

Such, my dear boys, was Captain Mugford, whom we fellows dubbed "our salt tute," in contradistinction to Mr Clare, who was afterwards known as "our fresh tutor."

As Mr Clare came over the brig's side, he said, with a bow, "Captain Mugford, I believe. These boys are to be both your crew and my scholars. I am their tutor, Richard Clare."

"I am happy to see you, Mr Clare. Give me your hand, sir. I hope our different commands will not clash."

As the skipper shook hands, he looked Mr Clare all over at a glance, and smiled as if pleased with the inspection.

"Come here, boys; if I'm not out in my calculation, these boys will do to sail any craft on land or water! Well, my hearties, we are often to be shipmates, so let's be friends to start with. I don't know your different names, boys, only that three of you are sons of my old and respected friend and owner--that's good enough--and you all look as if you hated lies and kept above-board."

"These," said Mr Clare, laying his hands on Harry's and Alfred's shoulders, "are Higginsons!"

"Higginsons? Fancy I knew your father, young gentlemen--an honest man, and a kind man, and a true man, and a brave man, if he was John Higginson; and brother of David Higginson, under whom I once served, and a better sailor never stepped. As he died unmarried, I take you to be John Higginson's sons. And if all you boys act as honest as you look, you need not care for shipwrecks of any kind--love or money, lands or goods, by land or by water."

Well, we thought the Captain a brick. So he was. So he proved.

We passed all the morning on the wreck. Each one of its details was a new delight. The Captain talked about the brig as if she were a human being in misfortune. An old invalid, he said--a veteran old salt laid up in a sailor's snug harbour; laid up and pensioned for the remainder of life, where it was able to overlook, by the side and in the very spray of its well-loved brine, the billows it had often gloried in.

We went below to the Captain's cabin and stateroom. There everything bore the marks of a sea habitation, and when hearing the dash of the waves on the shore and listening to the Captain's talk, I could not help fancying myself on a voyage. Not a nook or hole of that vessel but we explored, and numberless questions had each one of us to ask. Mr Clare seemed as much pleased and interested as we were. When at play, indeed, he was as heartily a boy as any of us.

There was a long table and there were globes and maps, shelves of books, and a blackboard. That schoolroom had, I am sure, none of the dulness and repulsiveness of other schoolrooms to us. No; it rather seemed a delightful place--an Arabian Nights' sort of study, with a romantic salty influence pervading it to comfort us at our tasks. We could take hold there of geography and history. Mathematics in a vessel's hold, what was it but a foreshadowing of navigation? We felt no hostility to Latin and Greek, for we were but reading of foreign lands and strange people across the ocean in old times, the occurrences of which were but storm-cast hulks like our old brig.

So low was our roof, the deck, that the crown of Walter's cap touched it, and Mr Clare had to bend his neck when he moved about. The square, dwarf windows looked out on nothing but jagged rocks and rolling blue waves.

Away forward and aft our schoolroom was dark, and the distance between decks so narrowed that we could only explore those extremes of the hold by going on hands and knees--with the chance, too, of starting some big rat, an old grey navigator, perhaps, who, believing firmly in "Don't give up the ship!" could not get over his surprise at seeing his once rolling and well-stored residence now stationary, and furnishing no better victuals than book-leaves, chalk, and sometimes the crumbs of a boy's lunch. I imagined the crew of old rats assembling beneath the globes at night, when a moon streamed through the small windows; and the captain, a surly grey fellow, with long whiskers and brown, broken grinders, taking his place on a Greek lexicon, and then the speeches of inquiry and indignation shrilly uttered in the mass meeting. "Long tails!"--would commence some orator with a fierce squeak--"long tails, long tails, I say! what in the name of all that's marine does this mean? Cheese and spices! how things are changed. Will this craft never sail, and our parents waiting for us in the New World over the sea! Where is our `life on the ocean wave'? where is, I say, where `a home in the rolling deep'? Can it be that our young are no longer to be nourished on sago, rice, or maize? Alas! if it has come to that, I myself will gnaw the beard from the old curmudgeon who thinks he sleeps here safely. Is the degradation of effeminate land rats, cheese-eaters, wharf robbers, stable vermin, to come upon us? Fates forbid it! Soon, perhaps, some fierce tabby may come to make our once brave hearts tremble. Then, then,"--but I imagined the eloquence broken off there and giving place to a furious scamper, as perhaps old Captain Mugford, arrayed in a long nightshirt and red bandanna nightcap, would fling open his stateroom door and send a boot-jack flying amid the noisy, noxious animals.

To think that our schoolhouse was on such a wild seashore--in a wrecked vessel, the same craft in which poor Harry Breese, who rested in the churchyard near by, had voyaged and been lost from--to have the smell of tar, and be surrounded by a thousand other sailor-like associations. What a glorious school-house, that old wreck by the ocean! What boy ever had a finer one!

The afternoon of that first day of novelty on the cape I remember with minute distinctness. We strolled about the beaches and climbed the rocks, everything being marvellous and delightful to us. In the evening Captain Mugford came in, and Mr Clare and he talked whilst we boys listened. After the Captain had gone, Mr Clare read the evening prayers to us, and that grand Psalm, the one hundred and seventh. The words reached us with the noise of the waves they sang of:--

CAPTAIN MUGFORD'S SATURDAY LESSON.

With a new week commenced our studies--order in tasks and play taking the place of the licence and excitement of the first days of novelty.

Mr Clare was from the north of England. His parents being poor, he had obtained his education under difficulties, and did not enter college until he was twenty-three years of age. His parents had emigrated when he was a child to Canada, where he had seen a good deal of wild life among the Indians. For some cause his father returned--to take possession of a small property, I believe--and brought him with him. After the common country schooling he could pick up in winter, he began to prepare himself for college in the hours he was off work on his father's farm, or had to take from sleep. So he had a life of some difficulty and adventure; and now, in his own hours, he was studying to become a clergyman. Notwithstanding such a boyhood of labour, his manners were good and agreeable, and no one would ever have guessed that his training until he went to college had been little above that of a farm servant.

It was some time before we made acquaintance with the sailing-boat which had been provided by our father, for the first weeks of our new life were stormy and cold. What whetted our desire for a sail was that Captain Mugford would not even show us the boat. We would tease him, and guess at every mast we saw in the bay; but the Captain only laughed, and put us off with such remarks as "Keep your powder dry, my young hearties!" "Avast heaving! the skipper is dumb."

However, one fine morning the Captain steered into our breakfast-room before all the fresh brown bread and clotted cream and eggs and bacon had been quite stowed away. "At it, ain't you, boys, with forecastle appetites? Pitch in, old fellows; make the butter fly!" He had wished Mr Clare a good morning, sat down on a corner of a side-table, wiped his forehead with a great red silk handkerchief, and got his elbows well akimbo, before he directed the remark to us. There he sat shaking with a pleasant little interior rumble of laughter at our earnestness in the meal, and expressing his appreciation every few moments with, "Well! that's jolly!" which remark each time portended another series of sub-waistcoat convulsions. He got through laughing as we finished breakfast, and then each of us went up for a shake of his hand.

"Your cargoes are in. When do you sail?"

"O Captain! can we sail to-day?" we all cried, for the joke and his unusually radiant face signified something better to come.

"I have a fancy that way, if Mr Clare says yes. That's my business here this fine Saturday. Yes, Mr Clare? Thank you! the youngsters are mad for a trip under canvas. You will go with us, sir, I hope? Thank you again!--Scamper, boys, for your caps! Ha! ha! ha!--With your permission, Mr Clare, I will fill my pipe.--Juno! Juno! Ah! there you are. Do, like a good old woman, get me a coal out of your wood-fire-- just such a red, round piece of oak as Clump always chooses."

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