Cormorant Crag

Cormorant Crag a Tale of the Smuggling Days
by George Manville Fenn.
CHAPTER ONE.
A HOME AT SEA.
"Here, you, Vince!" cried Doctor Burnet, pausing in his surgery with a
bottle in each hand--one large and the other small, the latter about to be
filled for the benefit of a patient who believed himself to be very ill and
felt aggrieved when his medical adviser told him that he would be quite
well if he did not eat so much.
"Yes, father."
The boy walked up to the surgery door at the end of the long, low
granite house.
"Upon my word!" cried the Doctor; "it's lucky we have nobody here to
see you. No one would ever take you for a gentleman's son."
"Why not, father?"
"Why not, sir! Look at your trousers and your boots."
Vincent Burnet looked down, and then up in his father's face.
"Trousers a bit tight across the knee," he said deprecatingly. "The cloth
gave way."
"And were your boots too tight at the toes, sir? Look at them."
"They always wear out there," said Vincent; and he once more looked
down, beyond the great tear across the right knee of his trousers, to his
boots, whose toes seemed each to have developed a wide mouth, within

which appeared something which looked like a great grey tongue.
"I don't think this pair were very good leather, father," he said
apologetically.
"Good leather, sir! You'd wear them out it they were cast iron.--Ah, my
dear!"
A pleasant, soft face appeared at the door, and looked anxiously from
father to son.
"Is anything the matter, Robert?"
"Matter? Look at this fellow's clothes and boots!"
"Oh, Vince, my dear, how you have torn your trousers again!"
"Torn them again!--the boy's a regular scarecrow!" cried the Doctor. "I
will not pay for good things for him to go cliff-climbing and wading
and burrowing in caves.--Here: what are you going to do?"
"Take him indoors to sew up that slit."
"No!" cried the Doctor, filling up the bottle; and then, making a small
cork squeak as he screwed it in, "Take your scissors and cut the legs off
four inches above the knees."
"Robert!" cried Mrs Burnet, in a tone of protest.
"And look here, Vince: you can give up wearing shoes and stockings;
they are for civilised beings, not for young savages."
"My dear Robert, you are not in earnest?"
"Ah, but I am. Let him chip and tear his skin: that will grow up again:
clothes will not."
"All right, father; I shan't mind," said the boy, smiling. "Save taking
shoes and stockings off for wading."

"Vincent, my dear!" cried his mother, "how absurd! You would look
nice the next time Michael Ladelle came for you."
"He'd do the same, mother. He always imitates me."
"Yes; you're a nice pair," said the Doctor. "I never saw such young
savages."
"You're too hard upon them, Robert," said Mrs Burnet, laying her arm
on her son's shoulder. "It does not matter out in this wild place, where
there is no one to see him but the fishing people; and see what a healthy,
natural life it is for them."
"Healthy! natural!" cried the Doctor sharply. "So you want to see him
grow up into a sort of Peter the Wild Boy, madam?"
"No," said Mrs Burnet, exchanging an affectionate glance with her
sun-tanned son. "Peter the Wild Boy did not have a college tutor to
teach him the classics, did he, Vince?"
"No, mother; he must have been a lucky fellow," said the boy,
laughing.
"For shame, Vincent!" cried Mrs Burnet, shaking her head at the boy
reprovingly. "You do not mean that."
"I believe he does," said the Doctor angrily. "I won't have any more of
it. He neglects his studies shamefully."
"No, no, indeed, dear," cried Mrs Burnet. "You don't know how hard he
works."
"Oh yes, I do: at egging, climbing, fishing, and swimming. I'll have no
more of it; he shall go over to some big school in Germany, where
they'll bring him to his senses."
"I do everything Mr Deane sets me to do, father," said the boy; "and I
do try hard."

"Yes--to break your neck or drown yourself. Look here, sir, when are
you going to pay me my bill?"
"Your bill, father? I don't know what you mean."
"Surgical attendance in mending your broken leg. That's been owing
two years."
"When my ship comes in, father," cried Vince, laughing.
"But, I say, don't send me to a big school, father. I like being here so
much."
"Yes: to waste the golden moments of boyhood, sir."
"But I don't, father," cried Vince. "I really do work hard at everything
Mr Deane sets me, and get it all done before I go out. He never finds