Michael Penguyne

Michael Penguyne, by William H.
G. Kingston

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Title: Michael Penguyne Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast
Author: William H. G. Kingston
Release Date: October 25, 2007 [EBook #23188]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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PENGUYNE ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Michael Penguyne
Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast
by William H G Kingston.

CHAPTER ONE.
As the sun rose over the Lizard, the southernmost point of old England,
his rays fell on the tanned sails of a fleet of boats bounding lightly
across the heaving waves before a fresh westerly breeze. The distant
shore, presenting a line of tall cliffs, towards which the boats were
steering, still lay in the deepest shade.
Each boat was laden with a large heap of nets and several baskets filled
with brightly-shining fish.
In the stern of one, tiller in hand, sat a strongly-built man, whose
deeply-furrowed countenance and grizzled hair showed that he had
been for many a year a toiler on the ocean. By his side was a boy of
about twelve years of age, dressed in flushing coat and sou'wester,
busily employed with a marline-spike, in splicing an eye to a
rope's-end.
The elder fisherman, now looking up at his sails, now stooping down to
get a glance beneath them at the shore, and then turning his head
towards the south-west, where heavy clouds were gathering fast,
meanwhile cast an approving look at the boy.
"Ye are turning in that eye smartly and well, Michael," he said.
"Whatever you do, try and do it in that fashion. It has been my wish to
teach you what is right as well as I know it. Try not only to please man,
my boy, but to love and serve God, whose eye is always on you. Don't
forget the golden rule either: `Do to others as you would they should do
to you.'"
"I have always wished to understand what you have told me, and tried
to obey you, father," said the boy.
"You have been a good lad, Michael, and have more than repaid me for
any trouble you may have caused me. You are getting a big boy now,
though, and it's time that you should know certain matters about
yourself which no one else is so well able to tell you as I am."

The boy looked up from his work, wondering what Paul Trefusis was
going to say.
"You know, lad, that you are called Michael Penguyne, and that my
name is Paul Trefusis. Has it never crossed your mind that though I
have always treated you as a son--and you have ever behaved towards
me as a good and dutiful son should behave--that you were not really
my own child?"
"To say the truth, I have never thought about it, father," answered the
boy, looking up frankly in the old man's face. "I am oftener called
Trefusis than Penguyne, so I fancied that Penguyne was another name
tacked on to Michael, and that Trefusis was just as much my name as
yours. And oh! father, I would rather be your child than the son of
anybody else."
"There is no harm in wishing that, Michael; but it's as well that you
should know the real state of the case, and as I cannot say what may
happen to me, I do not wish to put off telling you any longer. I am not
as strong and young as I once was, and maybe God will think fit to take
me away before I have reached the threescore years and ten which He
allows some to live. We should not put off doing to another time what
can be done now, and so you see I wish to say what has been on my
mind to tell you for many a day past, though I have not liked to say it,
lest it should in any way grieve you. You promise me, Michael, you
won't let it do that? You know how much I and granny and Nelly love
you, and will go on loving you as much as ever."
"I know you do, father, and so do granny and Nelly; I am sure they love
me," said the boy gazing earnestly into Paul's face, with wonder and a
shade of sorrow depicted on his own countenance.
"That's true," said Paul. "But about what I was going to say to you.