The Lost Middy | Page 3

the boat."
"Please, uncle, I'd rather not. I don't like them, and they don't like me."
"Of course you don't like the young scoundrels, sir; but they can manage a boat."
"I'd rather not go now, uncle," said the boy, sadly.
"And I'd rather you did. There, go at once, while the weather's fine, and make that old man-o'-war's man help you to come back?"
"Tom Bodger, uncle? But how's he to get back?"
"I'll give him some shillings, and he can pay one of the smugglers to give him a lift home."
"Thank you, uncle," cried the boy, in an eager way, which showed plainly enough how well satisfied he was with the arrangement.
"Don't worry me. Be off!" said the old man, bending over his writing again.
Aleck needed no further orders, and hurried out into the well-kept garden, where everything looked healthy and flourishing, sheltered as it was from the fierce winds of all quarters by the fact that it lay in a depression formed by the sinking of some two or three acres of land, possibly from the undermining of the sea in far distant ages, at the end of a narrow rift or chasm in the cliffs which guarded the shores, the result being that, save in one spot nearest the sea, the grounds possessed a natural cliff-like wall some fifty or sixty feet high, full of rift and shelf, the nesting-place of innumerable birds. Here all was wild and beautiful; great curtains of ivy draped the natural walls, oak and sycamore flourished gloriously in the shelter as far as the top of the cliff, and there the trees ceased to grow upward and branched horizontally instead, so that from the level land outside it seemed as if Nature had cut all the tops off level, as indeed she had, by means of the sharp cutting winds.
Aleck followed the garden path without looking back at the vine and creeper-clad house in its shelter, and made for one corner of the garden where the walls overlapped, and, passing round one angle, he was directly after in a zigzag rift, shut in by more lofty, natural walls, but with the path sloping downward, with the consequence that the walls grew higher, till at the end of about three hundred yards from the garden they were fully a couple of hundred feet from base to summit, the base being nearly level with the sea. This latter was hidden till the lad had passed round another angle of cliff, when he obtained a glimpse of the deep blue water, flecked here and there with silvery foam, but hidden again directly as he followed the zigzag rift over a flooring of rough stones which had fallen from the towering perpendicular sides, and which were here only some thirty or forty feet apart, and completely shut out the sunshine and a good deal of the light.
Another angle of the zigzag rift was passed, and then the rugged stony flooring gave place to dark, deep water, beautifully transparent--so clear that the many-tinted fronds of bladder-wrack and other weeds could be seen swaying to and fro under the influence of the tide which rose and fell.
Here, in a natural harbour, sheltered from all dangers, lay the boat the boy sought. It was moored in a nook by a rope attached to a great ring; the staple had been sunk in a crack and sealed fast with molten lead, and no matter what storms raged outside, the boat was safely sheltered, and swung in a natural basin at ordinary tides, while at the very lowest it grounded gently in a bed of white sand.
It was well afloat upon this occasion, and skirting round it along a laboriously chipped-out ledge about a foot wide, the boy entered a crack in the rock face, for it could hardly be called a cavern. But it was big enough for its purpose, which was to shelter from the rain and rock drippings a quantity of boat gear, mast, sails, ropes, and tackle generally, which leaned or hung snugly enough about the rock, in company with a small seine, a trammel-net, a spare grapnel or two, some lobster-pots, and buoys with corks and lines.
Aleck was not long about carrying mast, yard, and sail to the boat and shipping them. Then, in obedience to an idea, he placed a couple of fishing-lines, a gaff-hook, a landing-net, and some spare hooks aboard; then, taking a little bucket, he half filled it with the crystal water of the pool, and after placing it aboard took hold of a thin line, one end of which was secured to a ring-bolt in a block of wreck lumber, while the other ran down into the pool.
A pull at the line brought a large closely-worked, spindle-shaped basket to the surface, when a commotion inside announced