Martin Hyde | Page 4

(far out of the
world it seemed) for ruffs or wild duck. I was a hardy boy, much older
than my years, like so many only children. I used to go away,
sometimes, for two or three days together, with my friend John Halmer,
Captain Halmer's son, taking some bread, with a blanket or two, as my
ship's stores. We used to paddle far up the Waveney to an island hidden
in reeds. We were the only persons who knew of that island. We were
like little kings there. We built a rough sort of tent-hut there every
summer. Then we would pass the time there deliciously, now bathing,
now fishing, but always living on what we caught. John, who was a
wild lad, much older than I, used to go among the gipsies in their great
winter camp at Oulton. He learned many strange tricks from them. He
was a good camp-companion. I think that the last two years of my life
at Oulton were the happiest years of my life. I have never cared for dry
or hilly countries since. Wherever I have been in the world, I have
always longed for the Broads, where the rivers wander among reeds for
miles, losing themselves in thickets of reeds. I have always thought
tenderly of the flat land, where windmills or churches are the only
landmarks, standing up above the mist, in the loneliness of the fens.
But when I was nearly thirteen years old (just after the death of Charles
the Second) my father died, leaving me an orphan. My uncle, Gabriel
Hyde, a man about town, was my only relative. The vicar of Lowestoft
wrote to him, on my behalf. A fortnight later (the ways were always
very foul in the winter) my uncle's man came to fetch me to London.
There was a sale of my father's furniture. His books were sent off to his
college at Cambridge by the Lowestoft carrier. Then the valet took me

by wherry to Norwich, where we caught a weekly coach to town. That
was the last time I ever sailed on the Waveney as a boy, that journey to
Norwich. When I next saw the Broads, I was a man of thirty-five. I
remember how strangely small the country seemed to me when I saw it
after my wanderings. But this is away from my tale. All that I
remember of the coach-ride was my arrival late at night at the London
inn, a dark house full of smells, from which the valet led me to my
uncle's house.
I lay awake, that first night, much puzzled by the noise, fearing that
London would be all streets, a dismal place. When I fell asleep, I was
waked continually by chiming bells. In the morning, early, I was roused
by the musical calling made by milkmen on their rounds, with that
morning's milk for sale. At breakfast my uncle told me not to go into
the street without Ephraim, his man; for without a guide, he said, I
should get lost. He warned me that there were people in London who
made a living by seizing children ("kidnapping" or "trepanning" them,
as it was called) to sell to merchant-captains bound for the plantations.
"So be very careful, Martin," he said. "Do not talk to strangers." He
went for his morning walk after this, telling me that I might run out to
play in the garden.
I went out of doors feeling that London must be a very terrible place, if
the folk there went about counting all who met them as possible
enemies. I was homesick for the Broads, where everybody, even bad
men, like the worst of the smugglers, was friendly to me. I hated all this
noisy city, so full of dirty jumbled houses. I longed to be in my coracle
on the Waveney, paddling along among the reeds, chucking pebbles at
the water-rats. But when I went out into the garden I found that even
London held something for me, not so good as the Broads, perhaps, but
pleasant in its way.
Now before I go further, I must tell you that my uncle's house was one
of the old houses in Billingsgate. It stood in a narrow, crowded lane, at
the western end of Thames Street, close to the river. Few of the houses
thereabouts were old; for the fire of London had nearly destroyed that
part of the city, but my uncle's house, with a few more in the same lane,

being built of brick, had escaped. The bricks of some of the houses
were scorched black. I remember, also, at the corner house, three doors
from my uncle's house, the melted end of a water pipe, hanging from
the roof like a long leaden icicle, just