Captain Mugford | Page 2

my father say,
"Robert, that man lost his leg while fighting under the great Duke in the
Peninsula." I thrust my head far out of the chaise to look well at my
first live hero. That sight was romance enough for an hour. Then the
first glimpse of the top of the high cape, and my father's telling me that
where I saw the haze beyond was the ocean, were sources of further
reverie and mystery, dispelled, however, very suddenly when directly
afterwards a wheel came off the chaise and pitched me into the road,
with my father's small valise on my stomach. I remember the walk to
the nearest house, which happened to be an inn, and how my father
took off a large tumbler of ale, and gave me some biscuits and a glass

of water. It occurred to me, I recollect, whether, when I became a man,
I should be able to drink a full glass of ale and not be a drunkard, and
whether my son would take biscuits and water and I not be conscious
that he wanted to taste the ale. A thousand things more I
remember--mere trifles in reality, but abounding in great interest to me
on my first journey, which really then seemed of as much importance
as Captain Cook's voyage around the world or Mungo Park's travels in
Africa. It was a delightful day, the most interesting chapter in my life
up to that time--brimful of novelty, thought, and excitement--but I shall
not write its events in detail. What I have already mentioned will do as
a sample. Late in the afternoon--it was the afternoon of a September
day, the first fine one after a three days' storm--we reached the cape,
just as the short sombre twilight of an autumn day settled down on land
and sea. As the horse trudged laboriously along through the heavy
piece of sand connecting the cape and the mainland, I was almost
terrified by the great sound of waves, whose spray tossed up in vast
spouts from every rocky head before us. The rush of waters, the
rumbling of great stones receding with the current, the booming as of
ships' broadsides--all these united to awe a little boy making his first
acquaintance with the ocean.
When we drove up to the house, which was the only habitation on the
point, not a light was to be seen, and the dark stone walls were blacker
than the night that had settled down so quickly on the land. My father
said there was no use to knock, for that old Juno lived in the back part
of the house and was too deaf to hear us. So he led the horse round, and
we went to the back windows. Through them we saw our old black
castellan nodding, pipe in mouth, over the fireplace. She had not heard
the noise of our wheels, and it required a vigorous pounding on the
heavy back-door before old Juno, in much trembling, opened it to us.
"Oh my, Massa Tregellins, is dat you dis dark night! And Clump, de
ole nigger, gone to willage. Lor, massa, how you did frighten me--and,
oh my! thar's young Massa Bob!"
Juno had often come up to Bristol to see us, and felt an engrossing
interest in all of the family. She now led me into the house, and went as

briskly to work as her rheumatic old limbs would allow, to make a
good fire--piling on logs, blowing with the bellows, and talking all the
while with the volubility of a kind old soul of fully sixty years of age.
My father had gone to tie up the horse under the shed until Clump
should return and take care of him. Clump was Juno's husband, and her
senior by many years. The exact age of negroes is always of unreliable
tradition. The two had charge of the house, and were, indeed, rulers of
the entire cape. Clump cultivated vegetables sufficient for his wife and
himself, and was also a skilful fisherman. His duties were to look after
the copses and fences and gates, and to tend the numerous sheep that
found a living on the cape; in which tasks Juno helped him, besides
keeping the old house free from ghosts and desolation--indeed, a model
of neatness and coziness.
I must now pause for a minute and describe how it happened that the
two old negroes were living on that out-of-the-way farm in Cornwall.
My father had been a West Indian proprietor, and had resided out in the
West Indies for many years. It was in the days when Wilberforce and
true and noble philanthropists who fought the battle of emancipation
with him first began to promulgate their doctrines. My father, like most
other proprietors, was