The Perils of Certain English Prisoners | Page 3

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This etext was prepared from the 1894 Chapman and Hall "Christmas
Stories" edition by David Price, email [email protected]


CHAPTER I

--THE ISLAND OF SILVER-STORE

It was in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and forty-
four, that I, Gill Davis to command, His Mark, having then the honour
to be a private in the Royal Marines, stood a-leaning over the bulwarks
of the armed sloop Christopher Columbus, in the South American
waters off the Mosquito shore.
My lady remarks to me, before I go any further, that there is no such
christian-name as Gill, and that her confident opinion is, that the name
given to me in the baptism wherein I was made, &c., was Gilbert. She
is certain to be right, but I never heard of it. I was a foundling child,
picked up somewhere or another, and I always understood my
christian-name to be Gill. It is true that I was called Gills when
employed at Snorridge Bottom betwixt Chatham and Maidstone to
frighten birds; but that had nothing to do with the Baptism wherein I
was made, &c., and wherein a number of things were promised for me
by somebody, who let me alone ever afterwards as to performing any of
them, and who, I consider, must have been the Beadle. Such name of
Gills was entirely owing to my cheeks, or gills, which at that time of
my life were of a raspy description.
My lady stops me again, before I go any further, by laughing exactly in
her old way and waving the feather of her pen at me. That action on her
part, calls to my mind as I look at her hand with the rings on it--Well! I
won't! To be sure it will come in, in its own place. But it's always
strange to me, noticing the quiet hand, and noticing it (as I have done,
you know, so many times) a-fondling children and grandchildren asleep,
to think that when blood and honour were up--there! I won't! not at
present!--Scratch it out.
She won't scratch it out, and quite honourable; because we have made
an understanding that everything is to be taken down, and that nothing
that is once taken down shall be scratched out. I have the great
misfortune not to be able to read and write, and I am speaking my true
and faithful account of those Adventures, and my lady is writing it,
word for word.
I say, there I was, a-leaning over the bulwarks of the sloop Christopher
Columbus in the South American waters off the Mosquito shore: a
subject of his Gracious Majesty King George of England, and a private

in the Royal Marines.
In those climates, you don't want to do much. I was doing nothing. I
was thinking of the shepherd (my father, I wonder?) on the hillsides by
Snorridge Bottom, with a long staff, and with a rough white coat in all
weathers all the year round, who used to let me lie in a corner of his hut
by night, and who used to let me go about with him and his sheep by
day when I could get nothing else to do, and who used to give me so
little of his victuals and so much of his staff, that I ran away from
him--which was what he wanted all along, I expect--to be knocked
about the world in preference to Snorridge Bottom. I had been knocked
about the world for nine-and-twenty years in all, when I stood looking
along those bright blue South