A Labrador Doctor | Page 4

no dog, I swam out for bird after bird as they fell to my gun--shooting
some before I had even time to put on my shirt again; and my

consequent blue-black shoulder, which had to be carefully hidden next
day. There were wild ducks, too, to be surprised in the pools of the big
salt marshes.
From daylight to dark I would wander, quite alone, over endless miles,
entirely satisfied to come back with a single bird, and not in the least
disheartened if I got none. All sense of time used to be lost, and often
enough the sandwich and biscuit for lunch forgotten, so that I would be
forced occasionally to resort to a solitary public house near a colliery
on our side of the water, for "tea-biscuits," all that they offered, except
endless beer for the miners. I can even remember, when very hard
driven, crossing to the Welsh side for bread and cheese.
These expeditions were made barefoot as long as the cold was not too
great. A diary that I assayed to keep in my eighth year reminds me that
on my birthday, five miles from home in the marshes, I fell head over
heels into a deep hole, while wading out, gun in hand, after some
oyster-catchers which I had shot. The snow was still deep on the
countryside, and the long trot home has never been quite forgotten. My
grief, however, was all for the gun. There was always the joy of venture
in those dear old Sands. The channels cut in them by the flowing tides
ran deep, and often intersected. Moreover, they changed with the
varying storms. The rapidly rising tide, which sent a bore up the main
channel as far as Chester, twelve miles above us, filled first of all these
treacherous waterways, quite silently, and often unobserved. To us,
taught to be as much at home in the water as on the land, they only
added spice to our wanderings. They were nowhere very wide, so by
keeping one's head, and being able to swim, only our clothes suffered
by it, and they, being built for that purpose, did not complain.
One day, however, I remember great excitement. The tide had risen
rapidly in the channel along the parade front, and the shrimp fishermen,
who used push-nets in the channels at low tide, had returned without
noticing that one of their number was missing. Word got about just too
late, and already there was half a mile of water, beyond which, through
our telescopes, we could see the poor fellow making frantic signals to
the shore. There was no boat out there, and a big bank intervening,

there seemed no way to get to him. Watching through our glasses, we
saw him drive the long handle of his net deep into the sand, and cling to
it, while the tide rose speedily around him. Meanwhile a whole bevy of
his mates had rowed out to the bank, and were literally carrying over its
treacherous surface one of their clumsy and heavy fishing punts. It was
a veritable race for life; and never have I watched one with keener
excitement. We actually saw his post give way, and wash downstream
with him clinging to it, just before his friends got near. Fortunately,
drifting with the spar, he again found bottom, and was eventually
rescued, half full of salt water. I remember how he fell in my estimation
as a seaman--though I was only a boy at the time.
There were four of us boys in all, of whom I was the second. My next
brother Maurice died when he was only seven, and the fourth, Cecil,
being five years younger than I, left my brother Algernon and myself as
the only real companions for each other. Moreover, an untoward
accident, of which I was the unwitting cause, left my younger brother
unable to share our play for many years. Having no sisters, and scarcely
any boy friends, in the holidays, when all the boys in the school went
home, it might be supposed that my elder brother and I were much
thrown together. But as a matter of fact such was not the case, for our
temperaments being entirely different, and neither of us having any
idea of giving way to the other, we seldom or ever found our pleasures
together. And yet most of the worst scrapes into which we fell were
coöperative affairs. Though I am only anxious to shoulder my share of
the responsibility in the escapades, as well as in every other line of life,
my brother Algernon possessed any genius to which the family could
lay claim, in that as in every other line. He was my father over again,
while I was a second edition of