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

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Ebook has 656 lines and 64168 words, and 14 pages

"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."

Presently Juno trudged smiling back, with a hot coal held in the tongs.

"Here, massa! here, Capting, is de berry heart of de fire!" and laying it carefully in the bowl of his pipe--"dat, sar, will keep yer terbacker gwine all day."

"Thank you, marm Juno! We shall try and bring you home some fish for dinner. A ninety-pound halibut, eh?"

The Captain having performed that operation so very necessary to his comfort, we all sallied forth for the long-anticipated sail.

The cape was about three-quarters of a mile wide where our house stood-- it being on high ground, about halfway between the ocean and bay-side. The ground fell gradually in wavelike hillocks in both directions, and its chief growth was a short fine grass on which the sheep throve well. Here and there we saw them in little companies of eight or ten, but before we could get within fifty yards they scampered off in a fright, so unaccustomed were they to strangers.

Soon we descried a boat with pennant flying at moorings just off the bay shore before us. That, the Captain told us, was our "school-ship."

"And now come, boys," said he, "let us see which one of you will be the best hand on watch when we sail a frigate together--let us see which one can first read the boat's name; it is on the pennant."

At that distance we were all baffled.

"Well, try ten yards nearer; there, halt. Now try."

"Yes, that's it. Hurrah for you, Master Harry! I promote you on the spot captain of the maintop."

"Boys, this craft is yours, but I am Commodore until each and all of you have learned to sail her as well as I can. May you prove quick to learn, and I quick to teach. But as I'm an old seadog, my pipe is out already. Give us a light, shipmate?"--I was trying with flint and steel to strike a few sparks into our old tinder-box--"there!--puff--puff-- puff--that will do. I must talk less and smoke more."

As the jolly Captain got up a storm of smoke, slapped me a stinger on the knee, and winked at the pennant, Mr Clare jumped up, and swinging his hat, cried--

And didn't we give them!!!

BATH BAY LESSON--THE MIDNIGHT COUNCIL.

June came before we had made acquaintance with all the corners of our little new world. Every day it grew in interest to us, and, with the increasing fine weather, was the most beautiful spot on earth in our eyes. Once a week one of us was allowed to go over to the town with Clump, in his rowboat, and get letters from the post-office. That opportunity was always improved to purchase stores of groceries and other requisites. Each one's turn to be commissary only came once in five weeks.

Clump enjoyed those trips as much as we did. He would have meat or other things to get for the table, but would always reach the boat first in returning, and when he saw his "young master?"--as he called each of us boys--coming down the wharf loaded with a week's supply of various things, the old darky would commence to grin and slap his sharp knees, the slaps growing quicker and the grin breaking into "yha! yha! yhi!" as we drew near enough to show him our different purchases.

There was always a new pipe or a paper of tobacco for Clump, which he would lay on the seat beside him, and then put out the oars and pull with long, slow sweeps for our neck, each swing accompanied by a grunt, which, however, did not break the conversation he carried on, chiefly telling us stories of my father when he came as a boy, which often lasted till we reached our destination. Many a frolic and adventure would he thus relate with great gusto, and he had generally, too, some remembrance of my grandfather to repeat.

About the twentieth of June, the water was warm enough to allow us to bathe, and then began that exercise, the most useful and most wholesome, and perhaps among the most manly that a boy can practise.

Our time for bathing was between the close of school at half-after one and our dinner-hour, three. All through the season, until early in October, we never lost a bath unless rain was falling heavily, so greatly did we enjoy it under the Captain's care. He would not have bathing-houses for us, as he said that the sun-bath after a swim was almost as good as the salt water itself. The Captain was always near the swimmers, in his punt, that in case of accident his assistance might be immediate.

After our baths and Juno's nice dinners we usually went to sail, and in a few weeks the Captain let some of us take the helm, he sitting by to instruct us, and to remedy, if need be, any mistake of the young sailor who happened to be our skipper at the time. Sometimes, instead of sailing, we would row in an excellent boat which we had for that purpose, and, four of us being at the oars, try how quick time we could make from point to point of the shore. With such practice, we made rapid improvements and by the middle of July could row a mile in twelve minutes; a month before we could only do that in twenty minutes. Sometimes Mr Clare and the captain took oars in our boat; at other times they rowed against us in the Captain's punt. That was glorious fun, and how we fellows did strive to beat our tutors, and often came very near it too--so near that we determined, if there was any merit in TRY, to do it yet.

One night--it was about the 2nd of June, if my memory serves me--when we had gone up to our rooms for bed, and got undressed, Walter, who had been very quiet ever since our row in the afternoon when our tutors contended with and beat us as usual, called us to order, that we might organise, he said, as a regular boat club. We answered, "Good!" "Good!" and each boy, putting a pillow on his footboard, took a senatorial seat--each boy arrayed in the flowing cotton nightgown. When silence ensued, Walter addressed us in his energetic, determined way, but lowered his voice that not a whisper of our deliberations might reach the ears of Mr Clare, who was only separated from us by a partition.

"Agreed--agreed! hurrah!" we all shouted.

"For a race, I say, on, let me see, the anniversary of the glorious battle of Waterloo."

"Grand! splendid! hurrah!" were our interruptions again, and Drake expressed his delight by taking the pillow from beneath him, and slinging it with tremendous speed at Alf Higginson's head, who in consequence fell off his perch like a dead squirrel from a pine-tree. Alf fell heavily on his side, and we roared with laughter; but he was up in a moment, and rushed at Drake with a bolster. Walter, our dignified chairman, swooped down from his perch in a second, and catching the incensed Alfred by the extremity of his flying robe, slung him under a bed.

"Order! Order, boys!" he cried. "Pretty fellows you are to hold a meeting. You, Drake! pitch any more pillows, and we'll slide you out of the window. There, stop your racket! Mr Clare is up. Before he comes hurry up and say, all together, `We will beat.'"

"We will beat," was responded as fiercely as if life was at stake, and, as Mr Clare opened the door to ascertain what was the disturbance, five innocent boys were under blankets and apparently sleeping the deepest slumber. Drake had even reached a regular bass snore. The moonlight streaming in the room, and which showed us a smile breaking irresistibly on Mr Clare's face, was not more placid than we. The door had hardly closed behind Mr Clare before Harry Higginson had sprung from his bed, and, almost on the space our tutor had stood a half second before, was enacting a ridiculous and vigorous pantomime of kicking our "fresh tute" from the room. As quickly the door opened again, and before Harry could get a single limb in order, Mr Clare had him by the arm. But the whole affair was too humorous for even Mr Clare's dignity. He could only say "So you are the noisy one, Henry Higginson. You can get in bed now as quickly as you got out of it, and to-morrow, when the afternoon's study is done, recite to me fifty lines of Virgil--from the twentieth to the seventieth line of the first book."

With that, Mr Clare went from the room, and Harry, with a low, long, whistled "phew," sought his bed disconsolately.

The next day after lessons I, as coxswain, by Walter's order, handed copies of the following note to Captain Mugford and Mr Clare:--

"Messrs. Mugford and Clare,

Mr Clare, when he read it, smiled and said he would see about it, and then turned to Henry and asked him if he had learned those fifty lines yet.

Captain Mugford was presented with his copy as he entered the house for dinner. "Hu-um!" he said, as he took the note in the hand with his hat, and wiped his red, wet forehead with an immense silk handkerchief printed with the maritime flags of all nations. "A note! Who writes me notes? Some of your nonsense, boys, eh?" So he hitched up his trousers and sat down on the doorstep, placing the red handkerchief in his hat beside him. "Let's see!"

"Good! good! that's very good. The middies have got their courage up. The idea of such a stiff old seadog racing with you youngsters!"

"But you will though, won't you, Captain, and make Mr Clare, too?" said Harry.

"Perhaps, boys, if Mr Clare will join, and then we will make you smart. And I tell you what, young gentlemen, if you beat I'll give you a splendid Malay race-boat that I have had stored in my ship-loft these three years."

"Hurrah! Captain, we shall win the boat!" we all cried.

"Ha! ha! what boys for warm weather! You talk as brave as a west wind. But I smell Juno's cooking; let's go in and talk it over with Mr Clare and a warm dish of stew."

It was all settled to our satisfaction before dinner was over. Mr Clare enjoyed the thing as much as the Captain, and declared they would have to practise together once a week. As for us, we never missed our two hours' pull every afternoon, rain or shine, blow high or blow low, until the all-important day proposed for the race.

DISSENSIONS IN CAMP.

For every afternoon of those beautiful June and July days we rowed for two hours, from five to seven. Our studies were not relaxed in the morning, and our hours for swimming were regularly enjoyed, but the absorbing topic of thought and conversation was the approaching boat-race. Twice on Saturday afternoons we had seen Captain Mugford and Mr Clare pulling in their boat. They did not condescend to practise oftener, but we noticed that they worked in earnest when they did row. With the confidence of youth we feared not, feeling sanguine that we must beat them.

There was a vein of discord, however, in our little colony. Alfred Higginson and my brother Drake, who only differed by a few months in age, in other respects differed greatly, and had never been able, since our first acquaintance, to get along together. Alfred Higginson was of a nervous, sensitive disposition, quick in temper, and easily provoked. His tastes were fastidious. He was an excellent scholar, , and very fond of reading. He entered fully into all our sports, but preferred fishing, sailing, and swimming to our rougher harder amusements. He drew excellently, landscape and marine views and figures. He was a healthy, active boy, and could beat us all in running. I have said his was a quick temper, but it was a forgiving one. If he laughed not as loud and often as many of us, he caused us to laugh oftener than any, for he had a quick dry humour and witty tongue. When it came to chaffing, he was always conqueror.

My brother Drake was entirely unlike Alfred Higginson. He was a hardy, rough, jolly boy, overflowing with fun and animal life, what is called a "regular boy." Never quiet--laughing, singing, whistling all the time, heels over head in everything, pitching into his studies as irrepressibly as into his games, but with more success in the latter, though he was a fair student; better in his mathematics and other English studies than in the languages. The only reading he cared for was that of travel and adventure, voyages of whalemen and discoveries, histories of pirates, Indian scenes, hunting stories, war histories, Walter Scott's novels, "Gulliver's Travels," and the unequalled "Robinson Crusoe." Everything he could find about the Crusaders he revelled in, and even went at Latin with a rush when, Caesar and Nepos being put aside, the dramatic narrative of Virgil opened to him, and the adventures of the Trojan heroes became his daily lesson. But that he had to feed his interest, crumb by crumb, painfully gathered by dictionary and grammar, made him chafe. He enjoyed it, though, with all of us, when, after each day's recitation--after we boys had marred and blurred the elegance and spirit of Virgil's eloquence with all sorts of laboured, limping translations, that made Mr Clare fairly writhe in his chair--our tutor would drop a word of commendation for Walter's better rendering of the poem, and then read the lesson himself, and go over in advance the one for the next day. Then the ribs and decks of our schoolroom in the wrecked brig melted away as the scenes of the Aeneid surrounded us. The dash of the waves we heard was on the Trojan shore, or the coast of Latium, as we wandered with storm-tossed Aeneas. Or we walked the splendid court of Dido, or were contending in battle with the warlike Turnus for our settlement in Latium. Turnus and the fierce Mezentius were Drake's favourites. He never liked Aeneas, who was always Alfred Higginson's hero. Those readings were often disturbed by Drake's exclamations. His overflowing, outspoken disposition could not be restrained when his interest was powerfully enlisted; and as Mr Clare read, in his clear, impassioned manner, some exciting passage, Drake would shout out an exclamation of encouragement or satisfaction with a favourite warrior, and bring down his fist on the desk, as another favourite was discomfited or came to grief. I remember very well how often Drake was reproved for such unseasonable enthusiasm, which always caused an after sarcasm or witticism from Alfred Higginson; and I distinctly recall how, notwithstanding the formality of school-hours, when we came to the single combat between Aeneas and Turnus, and the death of the latter, Drake flung his book from the table, and shouted out in an angry voice, "I'll bet anything Virgil tells fibs!"

Those readings were treats to all of us. Drake having told Captain Mugford of them, and discussed the incidents that vexed him with the Captain, got him so interested that he asked Mr Clare to allow him to come in at the close of our recitations. Of course that favour was readily granted, and after that time the Captain always made one of the auditors. He used to laugh and shake over Drake's excitement, and yet entered into it himself, and I have seen salt drops running down his cheeks and Mr Clare's, as the latter rendered in a voice slightly trembling some of the pathetic passages in which Virgil is so exquisitely beautiful.

I am glad to write of those lessons in the old brig's carcass, for they are remembered so pleasantly. Moreover, it came naturally in drawing my dear brother Drake's character, and the effect of those heroical classics influenced, in a manner very quixotic, the crisis of the continued quarrel between Drake and Alfred Higginson, to which we are coming. The great dissimilarity in the characters of the two was a reason for their want of sympathy and agreement, one with the other, but the causes of the open warfare which existed between them were the faults of each--the irritability, slight conceit, and stinging tongue of Alfred Higginson; the teasing practices, want of toleration for the feelings and peculiarities of others, and a certain recklessness of Drake's. And yet they were both noble boys, with nothing false or ungenerous or underhanded about either of them.

Ever since we had come to the cape, their skirmishes of words and disagreement had been continual, and several more tangible collisions, where blows had been exchanged between them, were nipped in the bud by Walter and the others of us, and once by the Captain, who, wrought up by their quarrelsomeness, separated them pretty fiercely, and, holding each at arm's length, told them that, if there was any fighting to be done among his crew, he must have a hand in it. Then he laughed one of his bars of rollicking "ha-has," and dropped the boys with the injunction that if they had another "mill," he should certainly let their fathers know. "Now, boys, try if you cannot get along better, and when you have a quarrel again, bring it to Mr Clare or to me, and we will settle it better than your blows and frowns can do."

You remember how Drake knocked Alfred from the footboard of his bed on the occasion of our night meeting to get up the boat-race. That was a good example of Drake's reckless rudeness, proceeding merely from his boisterous disposition, but somehow those outbreaks were always directed to Alfred, just as the rough points of Alfred's disposition were sure to be turned to Drake. That fall had hurt Alfred, and from the date of the commencement of our boat-practice, the war between the two had waxed hotter and hotter. The contest seemed only to amuse Harry Higginson, but Walter--our mentor, my conscientious, tender-hearted brother, who led us all in games as well as in lessons--worried over it, and each day he exhorted the two to govern their tempers, and, with great tact and decision, whenever he saw a storm brewing, managed to throw oil upon the waters. However, his influence did not heal up the difference, and in about a fortnight, a few days before the intended race, there occurred during our afternoon boat-practice a little row between the two antagonists, which proved a final skirmish before the severe but ludicrous battle which crowned the civil war.

We were rowing in Bath Bay as usual, Walter pulling the stroke oar, and Harry Higginson the bow, whilst Drake and Alfred held the intermediate positions, Drake sitting behind Alfred--that is, nearer the bow. I had my place at the tiller.

Alfred Higginson had made a very ridiculous blunder in a French translation that morning. Such a thing was unusual for him, and was such a comical one that it set the others of the class in a roar of laughter. Drake was so extravagantly affected by Alf's blunder that Mr Clare had to stop his laughter, which was half genuine and half pretence, by ordering him out of the room. Even then we heard him ha-ha-ing outside. Poor Alfred was terribly mortified, and did not recover his composure even when the school-hours were over, and the first greeting he received, on emerging from the house, was from Drake, who immediately mimicked Alfred's mistake, and performed a variety of antics supposed to proceed from convulsions of mirth. On the way to the boat, Drake continued to tease Alfred. Walter reproved him continually, and even took hold of him once to compel him to stop; but he was in one of his most boisterous moods, and was so very funny that he kept every one but Alfred in shouts of laughter. But Alfred lashed him with the bitterest satire, and, as they say, sometimes "made him laugh on the other side of his mouth," until by the time we had reached the bay Drake had subsided into silence, and the tight closing of his lips, and quick walk, proved that Alfred's sharp wit was more fatal than Drake's broad fun. Both of the boys rowed sullenly, and we all felt that a storm was brewing. In the final round, when we made the course at our best and timed the performance, so as to notice what improvement we were making, Alfred caught a crab with his oar, in consequence of which the head of Drake's oar hit him sharply in the back. The mortification of a miss stroke is enough to anger a boatman, but coming as it did after the morning's blunder in class, and made, too, a pain of the flesh by Drake's blow, it was too much for Alfred's temper, and as Drake increased the irritation by calling him an "awkward lout," and then mimicking the blunder of translation with the accompaniment of a shout of laughter, Alfred turned quickly, and hit his opponent a stinging blow in the face.

In a moment the two boys grappled each other, and in a shorter period than it takes my pen to write it, the boat was upset, and we were all in the water. The combatants still clung to one another, and disappeared together. The adage, however, that "discretion is the better part of valour," enforced by such a deep, cold plunge, bore proof; for the irate youths came to the surface apart, and we all struck out for the rocks, distant about eighty yards. We climbed like half-drowned rats up the shore, where the fight was not resumed. Its very strange continuation was postponed until the Saturday after the boat-race, which must be reserved for another chapter. We, however, read then, in the faces of the discomfited antagonists, as plainly as you read here--

"To be continued."

BEFORE THE BOAT-RACE--CLUMP'S STORY.

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