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قراءة كتاب Cutlass and Cudgel
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
The dog, a sturdy-looking deerhound, growled, and closed up to his mistress.
“D’ye hear? Give’s your paw. What yer growling about?”
The dog didn’t say, but growled more fiercely.
“Grip, down! Give him your paw,” cried the girl.
The dog turned his muzzle up to his mistress, and uttered a low whine.
“Says he don’t like to shake hands with a lad like me,” said Ram, laughing.
“But I say he is to, sir,” cried the girl haughtily. “Give him your paw, Grip.”
She took the dog by the ear and led him unwillingly toward the boy, whose eyes sparkled with delight while the hound whimpered and whined and protested, as if he had an unconquerable dislike to the act he was called upon to perform.
“Now,” cried the girl, “directly, sir. Give him your paw.”
What followed seemed ludicrous in the extreme to the boy, for, in obedience to his mistress’s orders, the dog lifted his left paw and turned his head away to gaze up at his mistress.
“The wrong paw, sir,” she cried. “Now, again.”
“Pow how!” howled the dog, raising his paw now to have it seized by the boy, squeezed and then loosened, a termination which seemed to give the animal the most profound satisfaction. For now it was over, he barked madly and rushed round and round the boy in the most friendly way.
“There, miss,” said Ram with a grin; “we shall be friends now. Nex’ rats we ketch down home, I’ll bring up here for him to kill. Hey, Grip! Rats! Rats!”
The dog bounded up to the boy, rose on his hind legs and placed his forepaws on the lad’s chest, barking loudly.
“Good dog, then. Good-bye, miss; I must get back.”
“Oh!”
“You call, miss?” cried the boy, turning as he went whistling away.
“Yes, yes, Ram,” said the girl hesitatingly, and glancing behind her, then up at the house where all was perfectly still. “Do you remember coming up and bringing a basket about a month ago?”
“Yes, miss, I r’member. That all, miss?”
“No,” said the girl, still hesitating. “Ram, are the men coming up to the house in the middle of the night?”
“Dunno what you mean, miss.”
“You do, sir, for you were with them. I saw you and ever so many more come up with little barrels slung over their shoulders.”
Ram’s face was a study in the comic line as he shook his head.
“Yes you were, sir, and it was wicked smuggling. I order you to tell me directly. Are they coming up to-night?”
“Mustn’t tell,” said the boy slowly.
“Then they are,” cried the girl, with her handsome young face puckering up with the trouble which oppressed her, and after standing looking thoughtful and anxious for a few moments, she went away toward the front of the house, while Ram went round to the side and delivered his basket.
“Course we are,” he said to himself, as he went down the hill again. “But I warn’t going to blab. What a fuss people do make about a bit o’ smuggling! How pretty she looks!” and he stopped short to admire her—the she being the White Hawk, which lay motionless on the calm sea. “Wish I could sail aboard a boat like that, and be dressed like that young chap with his sword. I would like to wear a sword. I told father so, and he said I was a fool.”
He threw himself down on the short turf, which was dotted with black and grey, as the rooks, jackdaws, and gulls marched about feeding together in the most friendly way, where the tiny striped snails hung upon the strands of grass by millions.
“It’ll be a fog again to-night,” he said thoughtfully, “and she’s sure to come. Ha, ha, ha!” he laughed, as he made a derisive gesture towards the cutter; “watch away. You may wear your gold lace and cocked hats and swords, but you won’t catch us, my lads; we’re too sharp for that.”
Chapter Five.
Shackle was quite right; the fog did begin to gather over the sea soon after sundown, and the depressing weather seemed to have a curious effect on Farmer Shackle, who kept getting up from his supper to go and look out through the open door, and come back smiling and rubbing his hands.
Mrs Shackle was very quiet and grave-looking and silent for a time, but at last she ventured a question.
“Did you see her at sundown?”
“Ay, my lass. ’Bout eight mile out.”
“But the cutter?”
“Well, what about the cutter?”
“Will it be safe?”
“Safe? Tchah! I know what I’m ’bout.”
That being so, Mrs Shackle made no remark, but went on cutting chunks of bread and butter for her son, to which the boy added pieces of cold salt pork, and then turned himself into a mill which went on slowly grinding up material for the making of a man, this raw material being duly manipulated by nature, and apportioned by her for the future making of the human mill.
“Now, Ram,” said his father, “ready?”
“Yes, father,” said the boy, after getting his mouth into talking trim.
“Lanthorns! Off with you.”
“Lanthorns won’t be no good in the fog.”
“Don’t you be so mighty clever,” growled Shackle. “How do you know that the fog reaches up far?”
“Did you signal s’afternoon, father?”
“Lanthorns! And look sharp, sir.”
The boy went into the back kitchen, took down from a shelf three horn-lanthorns, which had the peculiarity of being painted black save in one narrow part. Into these he glanced to see that they were all fitted with thick candles before passing a piece of rope through the rings at the top.
This done he took down a much smaller lanthorn, painted black all round, lit the candle within, and, taking this one in his hand, he hung the others over his shoulder, and prepared to start.
“Mind and don’t you slip over the cliff, Ram,” said his mother.
“Tchah! Don’t scare the boy with that nonsense,” said the farmer angrily; “why should he want to slip over the cliff? Put ’em well back, boy. Stop ’bout half an hour, and then come down.”
Ram nodded and went off whistling down along the hollow for some hundred yards toward the sea, and then, turning short off to the right, he began to climb a zigzag path which led higher and higher and more and more away to his left till it skirted the cliff, and he was climbing slowly up through the fog.
The lad’s task was robbed of the appearance of peril by the darkness; but the danger never occurred to Ram, who had been up these cliff-paths too often for his pleasure to heed the breakneck nature of the rough sheep-track up and up the face of the cliff, leading to where it became a steep slope, which ran in and on some four hundred feet, forming one of the highest points in the neighbourhood.
“It’s plaguey dark,” said Ram to himself. “Wonder what they’re going to bring to-night?”
He whistled softly as he climbed slowly on.
“Fog’s thicker than it was last night. They won’t see no lanthorns, I know.”
“Dunno, though,” he muttered a little higher up. “Not quite so thick up here. How old Grip growled! But he had to do it. Aren’t afraid of a dog like him. Look at that!”
He had climbed up the zigzag track another fifty feet, and stopped short to gaze away at the bright stars of the clear night with the great layer of fog all below him now.
“Father was right, but I dunno whether they’ll be able to see from the lugger. Don’t matter. They know the way, and they’d see the signal s’afternoon.”
He whistled softly as he went on higher, laughing all at once at an idea which struck him.
“Suppose they were to row right on to the cutter! Wouldn’t it ’stonish them all? I know what I should do. Shove off directly into the fog. They wouldn’t be able to see, and I wouldn’t use the sweeps till I was out of hearing, and