Menhardoc | Page 9

get into a fresh rig with you."
Here he winked and frowned tremendously at Will, giving one of his hands a tremendous squeeze, and the lad ran upstairs.
The lugger was not to put out again till evening, when the soft breeze would be blowing, and the last rays of the sun be ready to glorify sea, sky, and the sails and cordage of the fishing-boats as they stole softly out to the fishing-ground for the night, so that as Mrs Marion had gone up to lie down after dinner, according to custom, and the old purser was in the little summer-house having his after-dinner pipe, as he called it, one which he invariably enjoyed without lighting the tobacco and with a handkerchief over his head, Will was at liberty to go out unquestioned. Accordingly he hurried down to the harbour, where the tide was out, the gulls were squealing and wailing, and apparently playing a miniature game of King of the Castle upon a little bit of black rock which appeared above the sea a couple of hundred yards out.
In the harbour the water was so low that the Pretty Ruth, Abram Marion's lugger--named, for some reason that no one could see, after the old man's wife--was lying over nearly on her beam-ends, so that, as Josh Helston, who was on board, went to and fro along the deck with a swab in his hands it was impossible to help thinking that if nature had made his legs like his arms, one very much shorter than the other, he would have found locomotion far easier.
As it was, he had to walk with one knee very much, bent, so greatly was the deck inclined; but it did not trouble him, his feet being bare and his toes spreading out widely and sticking to the clean narrow planks as if they were, like the cuttle-fish, provided with suckers.
Josh was swabbing away at the clinging fish-scales and singing in a sweet musical voice an old west-country ditty in which a lady was upbraiding someone for trying "to persuade a maiden to forsake the jacket blue," of course the blue jacket containing some smart young sailor.
"Hi, Josh!"
"Oh, it's you, is it?" said Josh, rubbing his nose with the mop handle. "No, I'm busy. I sha'n't come."
"Yes, do come, Josh," said Will, crossing three or four luggers and sitting on the rail of the Pretty Ruth.
"What's the good, lad?"
"Good, Josh? Why, I've told you before. I can't bear this life."
"Fisherman's a good honest life," said Josh sententiously.
"Not when a lad feels that he's a dependant and a burden on his friends," cried Will excitedly. "I want to get on, Josh. I want to succeed, and--there, I knew you'd come."
For Josh had thrown away the mop with an angry movement, and then dragging on a pair of great blue stockings he put on shoes and followed Will without a word.
Out along the beach and away from the village, and in and out among the rocks for quite two miles, till they were where the cliff went sheer up like a vast wall of rugged granite, at a part of which, where a mass of broken stone had either fallen or been thrown down, Will stopped and looked round to see if they were observed. As they were alone with no other watchers than a swarthy-looking cormorant sitting on a sunny lodge drying his wings, and a shag or two perched with outstretched neck, narrowly observing them, Will climbed up, followed by Josh, till they were upon a broad shelf a hundred and fifty feet above the sea--a wild solitary place, where the heap of debris, lichened and wave-beaten, was explained, for mining operations had once gone on hero, and a great square hole yawned black and awful at their feet.
They had evidently been there before, for Will stepped close to a spot where the rock overhung, and reaching in, drew out some pieces of granite, and then from where it was hidden a large coil of stout rope, and threw it on the broken fragments around.
"It's your doing, mind, you know," said Josh. "I don't like the gashly job at all."
"Yes, it's my doing," said Will.
"And you mean to go down?"
"I do, Josh, for certain."
"It be a gashly unked hole, and you'd best give it up. Look here."
As he spoke he stooped and picked up a piece of rock weighing quite a hundredweight, poised it in his hands for a moment or two, and then, with a wonderful display of strength, tossed it from him right over the middle of the disused mine-shaft. The mica flashed in the sun for a moment, and then the great piece plunged down into the darkness, Josh and Will involuntarily darting to the side and craning over the awesome place to