Cormorant Crag | Page 6

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 hearty laugh.
Vince gave him a heavy punch in the ribs, which was intended to mean: "Now you've done it: he won't let us come!"
But old Daygo did not look round; he only shook his head and shouted:
"Won't do, young Ladle--Ladelle: you're thinking about the tar water, but you can't be so funny as he."
The boys exchanged glances, but did not try to explain; neither speaking till, to their surprise, the man turned suddenly to his right, and made for a huge buttress which ran out some fifty feet from the rugged edge of the cliff and ended in a soft patch of sheep-nibbled, velvet grass, upon which lay, partly buried, a couple of long iron guns, while the remains of a breastwork of stone guarded the edge of the cliff.
"I say! where are you going?" cried Vince.
"Eh? Here," said the man, sitting down astride of one of the old cannon. "Think I was going to pitch you off?"
"No," said Vince coolly, as he went close to the edge and looked down at the deeply-coloured purple, almost black, water at the foot of the cliff, where there was not an inch of strand. "Wouldn't much matter if you did: it's awfully deep there, and no rocks. I could swim."
"Swim? Wheer?" said the man sharply. "No man could swim far there. T'reble currents and deep holes, where the tide runs into and sucks