Cormorant Crag | Page 6

man on the island."
The old man scowled darkly.
"Oh! Sir Francis said that, did he?"
"Yes, I heard him," cried Vince; "and my father said you couldn't help
being well off, for your place was your own, and it didn't cost you
anything to live, so you couldn't help saving."
A great hand came down clap on the lad's shoulder, and it seemed for
the moment as if he were wearing an epaulette made out of a crab,
while the gripping effect was similar, for the boy winced.
"I say, gently, please: my shoulder isn't made of wood."
"No, I won't hurt you, boy," growled the old fellow; "but your father's a
man as talks sense, and I won't forget it. I'll be took bad some day, and
give him a job, just to be neighbourly."
"Ha, ha!" laughed Vince.
"What's the matter?" growled the old man, frowning.
"You talking of having father if you were ill. Why, you'd be obliged

to."
"Nay. If I were bad I dessay I should get better if I curled up and went
to sleep."
"Send for me, Joe Daygo," cried Mike merrily, "and I'll bring Vince
Burnet. We'll give you a mug of water out of a tar-barrel, and make you
dance with the rope's end."
"Nay, nay, nay! don't you try to be funny, young Ladle."
"Ladelle!" shouted the boy angrily.
"Oh, very well, boy. Only don't you try to be funny: young doctor
here's best at that."
All the same, though, the great heavy fellow broke into another fit of
wooden chuckling, nodded to both, and turned to go, but back on the
track by which he had come.
Vince gave Mike a merry look, and they sprang after him, and the man
faced round.
"What now?"
"We're coming out with you, Joe Daygo."
"Nay; I don't want no boys along o' me."
"Oh yes, you do," said Vince. "I say--do take us, and we'll row all the
time."
"I don't want no one to row me. I've got my sail."
"All right, then; we'll manage the sail, and you can steer."
"Nay; I don't want to be capsized."
"Who's going to capsize you? I say, do take us."

The man scowled at them both, and filed his sharp, aquiline nose with a
rough finger as if hesitating; then, swinging himself round, he strode
off in his great boots, which crushed down heather and furze like a pair
of mine stamps. But he uttered the words which sent a thrill through the
boys' hearts--and those words were:
"Come on!"
CHAPTER THREE.
A DAY AT SEA.
Daygo's big boots crushed something beside the heather and little tufts
of fine golden gorse; for as they went along a slope the sweet aromatic
scent of wild thyme floated to the boys' nostrils; and the bees, startled
from their quest for honey, darted to right and left, with a low,
humming noise, which was the treble, in Nature's music, to the soft,
low bass which came in a deep whisper from over the cliff to the right.
And as the boys drew in long, deep draughts of the pure, fresh air
which bathed their island home, their eyes were full of that happy light
which spoke volumes of how they were in the full tide of true
enjoyment of life in their brightest days.
They could not have expressed what they felt--perhaps they were
unconscious of the fact: that knowledge was only to come later on, in
the lookings-back of maturity; but they knew that the moor about them
seemed beautiful, and there was a keen enjoyment of everything upon
which their eyes rested, whether it was the purple and golden-green
slope, or the wondrous lights upon the ever-changing sea.
"Hi! look! There goes a mag," cried Mike, as one of the brilliantly
plumed birds rose suddenly from among some grey crags, and went off
in its peculiar flight, the white of its breast of the purest, and the sun
glancing from the purple, gold and green upon its wings and lengthy
tail.
"Hooray!--another--and another--and another!" cried Vince, who the
next moment passed from the enjoyment of the beautiful in nature to

the grotesque; for he covered his lips with one hand to smother a laugh,
and pointed with the other to a huge square patch of drugget
laboriously stitched upon the back of the solid-looking trousers to
strengthen them for sitting upon the thwart of a boat, a rock, or a bush
of furze, which, when so guarded against, makes a pleasantly elastic
seat.
But Vince's companion did not find it so easy to control his mirth; for,
as he gazed at the gigantic trousers in motion along the slope, their
appearance seemed so comic, in conjunction with Vince's mirthful face,
that he burst into a