CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

"HOW YOU HAVE GROWED, LADS; HOW YOU HAVE GROWED!"

It seems a long time to look forward to, but when it has gone how everyone finds out what a sc.r.a.p of our lives three years appear to be.

I am going to jump over three years now, and come to an exciting time when we lads were leaving school at midsummer for good.

Those were exciting times, and we all were as much infected as the rest of English folk, for we were at war with France, and there was drumming, and fifing, and enlisting, and men marching off to join their regiments, and we boys were fully determined to arrange with our respected fathers as soon as we got home to get us all commissions in cavalry regiments, and failing commissions, we meant to pet.i.tion for leave to enlist to fight for our country.

Bob Chowne and I of course knew better, but in spite of this knowledge we were constantly feeling that there was something wrong with our companion Bigley.

He was just the same easy-going fellow as of old; ready to submit to any amount of bullying and impertinence from us, except in times of emergency, when he would quietly step to the front in the place Bob and I shirked, and do what there was to be done, and as soon as it was over go back patiently into the second rank, leaving us in the front.

But as I say, though we knew better, it always seemed to us as if something particular had taken place in Bigley, he who used to tower above us, a big fellow with whiskers, a deep voice, and broad shoulders, had now shrunk, so that he was no longer like a man and we both like small boys, for he seemed to have come down so that he was only a trifle taller than we were, and very little broader across the chest. It was the whiskers and the thick down upon his chin which made nearly all the difference.

We used to laugh about it together, and Bigley would say that it was rum, and only because he had started two years sooner than we did--that was all.

Of course the fact was that Bigley had not shrunk in the least. He had not come down, but Bob Chowne and I had levelled matters by growing up, so that at seventeen we were as big as Devon lads of that age know how to be.

While we had changed, old Teggley Grey had not. He always seemed to have been the same ever since we could remember, and his horse too, but he shook his head at us.

"Mortal hard work for a horse to carry such big chaps as you. How you have growed, lads; how you have growed!"

I looked at him as he spoke, and it seemed to me that it was he who had changed. But it did not matter; we were full of plans for the future.

Big as we were, we could take plenty of interest in fishing and such other sport as came in our way, and we were talking eagerly about what was to be done first, and how we were to contrive it without having some mishap, when old Teggley summoned us to get down and walk.

"Wouldn't be acting like a Christian to ask a horse to drag you three big lads up a hill like this. I did think," he grumbled, "that with all this talk about making good roads, something would have been done to level ourn. Mortal bad they be for a horse sewer_ly_."

"Why, what could you do to the roads?" I said, as I stood on the step looking at the quaint old fellow. "Do, lad? Why, there's plenty of stuff ar'n't there? Cutoff all the tops of the hills, and lay in the bottoms, and there you are, level road all the way."

We seemed to have only been away a few days, as, after parting from Bigley, Bob and I reached the cottage, where, just as of old, were my father and the doctor.

I remember thinking that they both looked a little older and greyer, but that was all. But that was soon forgotten in the interest and excitement of what was going on around me, for I had, I found, gradually been growing older, and ready to take an interest in matters more important than hunting prawns and groping for crabs down on the rocky sh.o.r.e.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

OLD SAM IS UNHAPPY.

Seventeen, and grown as big as Bigley, with the consequence that I could not help thinking a good deal of what people said to me when I went in to Ripplemouth or down to the Gap.

The salute I generally met was:

"Why, Master Sep Duncan, you are growing quite a man."

I suppose I was in appearance, but, thank goodness, I was still only a boy at heart.

Plenty to see, plenty to hear.

The fishermen and people at the tiny port were always looking out to sea, and shutting their eyes and shaking their heads.

"Ay, and we need look out, master," they would say. "Strange doings now. Who knows how soon they Frenchies will come down upon us and try to take the town. But we're going to fight 'em to a man."

I remember even then laughing to myself as I went home one morning after being disappointed in finding Bob Chowne, who had gone on a round with his father, for I asked myself what the French, whom the Ripplemouth people saw in every pa.s.sing vessel, would gain by making a descent upon our rock-strewn sh.o.r.e.

But when I ventured to hint at their being more likely to attack Plymouth or Portsmouth, old Teggley Grey, who was down on the pier loading up with coal that had come over in a sloop from Monmouth, shook his head.

"Ay, it be well for you, lad, with all they big cannon guns in front o'

your house ready to sink the Frenchy ships; but we ar'n't no guns here, on'y the one in the look-out, and she be rusted through."

Oddly enough, when I reached home there was no one in the house. My father had gone down to the mine, and I was thinking about going after him, but being hot with my walk, I strolled down first into the garden on the cliff, but only to stop short, for there was a curious hissing sound in the air.

"What, a snake!" I said to myself. And then, "No, it's too loud."

I stood listening, and I learned directly what caused the hissing, which gave place directly to a peculiar humming, and then after more hissing a familiar raspy voice roared out, its owner imagining he was singing:

"For we be st.u.r.dy English lads, And this here be our land; And ne'er a furren furreneer Shall ever in it stand."

Then came a great deal of hissing before the strain was taken up again, and accompanied by a good deal of scuffling on the beach-strewn path.

"They say they'll have the English soil, These overbearing French; So if they come they'll find it here In six-foot two o' trench."

"Why, Sam," I said, "what are you doing?"

"Ah, Mas' Sep: can't you see? Washing out the bull-dogs' throats to make 'em bite the Peccavis when they come."

I laughed as I looked at the old man, who was busy at work with a mop and pail cleaning out the old cannons on my father's sham fort.

"Why, Sam, what's the good of that?"

"Good, my lad?" he cried, ramming the wet mop down one of the guns and making the water spurt out of the touch-hole like a little fountain, "Good! Why, we'll blow the Frenchy ships out of the water if they come anigh us."

"Why, there's no powder," I said.

"Powder! Eh, but there is: lots, my lad."

"But there are no cannon-b.a.l.l.s."

Old Sam stopped short with the mop right in the gun, and loosening one hand, he tilted his old sou'-wester hat that he wore summer and winter with no difference, only that he kept cabbage-leaves in it in summer, and stood scratching his head.

"No cannon-b.a.l.l.s!" he said. "No cannon-b.a.l.l.s!"

"Not one," I said; "only the big one indoors we use for a door-weight, and that would not go in."

"Well, now, that be a rum un, Master Sep, that be a rum un. I never thought o' that. Never mind, it don't matter. They Frenchies 'll hear the guns go off and see the smoke, and that's enough for them. They'll go back again."