The Island of Gold: A Sailor's Yarn

On and on through the quiet country, by the most silent of all thoroughfares, goes the barge. Babs is getting drowsy; father makes her a bed with a bundle of sacks, shading her face from the sun; and soon she is in the land of forgetfulness.

Were it not for the breeze that blows freshly over the meadows, the day would be a warm and drowsy one. No fear of Sammy falling asleep, however, for as the canal winds in and out he has to tighten or loosen the sheet according to the shift.

Just at present the sounds that are wafted towards the barge are all lulling and dreamy: the far-off singing of birds; the sound of the woodman’s axe in the distant wood; the rattle of a cart or carriage on a road that is nowhere visible; the jangle of church bells from a village that may be in the sky for anything any one can tell; and now the merry laughter of young men and maidens making hay, and these last come in sight just round the next green bend.

It suddenly occurs to Jim that a dance wouldn’t be at all a bad idea. Ransey is some distance behind his horse, when he sees him lower his head and fling his heels high in air. This is merely preparatory; next minute he is off at a gallop, making straight for that meadow of fragrant hay, the wind catching mane and tail and blowing it straight out fore and aft.

When tired of galloping round the field, Jim bears right down upon the haymakers themselves.

“That stuff,” he says, with distended nostrils, “smells uncommonly nice. Give us a tuft.”

He is fed handsomely by both lads and lasses gay. But they get gayer than ever when Jim throws himself down on his back, regardless of the confused entanglement of bridle and traces. But Jim knows better than to roll on the bare ground. He has thrown down a hay-cock for himself, and it is as good as a play to witness the girls bury him up till there is nothing to be seen of him except his four legs kicking skywards.

He gets up at last, and looks very sober and solemn. One girl kisses him on the muzzle; another is busy doing something that Ransey cannot make out, but a minute or two after this, when Jim comes thundering back, there is a huge collar of hay around his neck. Ransey mounts him bareback, and, waving his hand to the haymakers, goes galloping off to overtake the barge, and throw the hay on board. A nice little snack it will make for Jim some time later on!

To-day Mr Tandy has bought a newspaper. He had meant to read it, but he is too fond of country sights and sounds to bother about it now. In the evening, perhaps, over a pipe.

On, ever on. There are locks to get through now, several of them, and lockmen are seldom, if ever, more than half awake; but everybody knows Tandy, and has a kindly word to say to Ransey Tansey, and perhaps a kiss to blow to Babs, who has just awakened, with eyes that shine, and lips and cheeks as red as the dog-roses that trail so sweetly over a hedge near by.

The country here is higher – a bit of Wales in the midlands, one might almost say. And so it continues for some time.

Sammy takes his trick at the wheel, and prefers to steer by lying on his back and touching the tiller with one bare foot. Sammy is always original and funny, and now tells Babs wonderful stories about fairies and water-babies that he met with a long time ago when he used to dwell deep down beneath the sea.

Babs has never seen the real sea, except in pictures, and is rather hazy about it. Nevertheless, Sammy’s stories are very wonderful, and doubtless very graphic. The sail is lowered at last, and the saucy Merry Maiden moored to a green bank.

The dinner is served, and all hands, including Jim, do justice to it.

I said the barge was “moored” here. Literal enough, for a wide, wild moor stretches all around. Sheep are feeding not far off, and some droll-looking ponies that Jim would like to engage in conversation. There are patches of heath also, and stunted but prettily-feathered larch-trees now hung with points of crimson. Great patches of golden gorse hug the ground and scent the air for yards around. Linnets are singing there, and now and then the eye is gladdened by the sight of a wood-lark. Sometimes he runs along the ground, singing more sweetly even than his brother musician who loves to soar as high as the clouds.

Here is a cock-robin, looking very independent and lilting defiance at everybody. Robins do not always live close to civilisation. This robin comes close enough to pick up the crumbs which Ransey throws towards him. He wants Ransey to believe that all the country for miles and miles around belongs to him – Cock-Robin – and that no bird save him has any real business here.

There are pine-trees waving on the hills yonder, and down below, a town much bigger than any they yet have arrived at.

But see, there is a storm coming up astern, so, speedily now, the Merry Maiden is once more under way.

Babs is bundled down below, and Bob goes with her.

Presently the air is chilly enough to make one shiver. A puff of high wind, a squall we may call it, brings up an army of clouds and darkness. Thunder rolls, and the swift lightning flashes – red, bright, intense – then down come the rain and the big white hailstones. These rattle so loudly on the poop deck, and on the great tarpaulin that covers the cargo, that for a time the thunder itself can scarcely be heard.

But in twenty minutes’ time the sun is once more shining, the clouds have rolled far to leeward, the deck is dry, and but for the pools of water that lie in the hollows of the hard tarpaulin, no evidence is left that a summer storm had been raging.

But away with the storm has gone the wind itself, and Jim is once more called into requisition. Then onwards floats the barge.

Through many a bridge and lock, past many a hamlet, past woodlands and orchards, and fields of waving wheat, stopping only now and then at a village, till at last, and just as the sun is westering, the distant town is reached.

Oh, a most unsavoury sort of a place, a most objectionable kind of a wharf, at which to pass a night.

Tandy sends Babs and Bob below again; for a language is spoken here he does not wish the child to listen to, sights may be seen he would not that her eyes should dwell upon. Yonder is an ugly public-house with broken windows in it, and a bloated-faced, bare-armed woman, the landlady, standing with arms akimbo defiantly in the doorway. Ah! there was a time when Tandy used to spend hours in that very house. He shudders to think of it now.

There is one dead tree at the gable of this inn, which – half a century ago, perhaps – may have been a country hostelry surrounded by meadows and hedges. That tree would then be green, the air fresh and sweet around it, the mavis singing in its leafy shade. Now the sky is lurid, the air is tainted, and there is smoke everywhere. Not even the bark is left on the ghastly tree. It looks as if it had died of leprosy.

But the work is hurried through, and in a comparatively short time the Merry Maiden is away out in the green quiet country.

What a blessed change from the awful town they have just left!

The sun has already gone down in such a glory of crimson, bronze, and orange, as we in this country seldom see.

This soon fades away, however, as everything that is beautiful to behold must fade.

The stars come out now in the east, and just as gloaming is merging into night the boat draws near to a little canal-side inn, and Jim, the horse, who is wiser far than many a professed Christian, stops of his own accord.

For Ransey had gone to sleep – oh, he often rode thus and never fell. He awakes now, however, with a start, and gazes wonderingly around him. His eyes fall upon the sign. And there, in large white letters, the boy can read easily enough though the light is fading – the “Bargee’s Chorus.”

And not only could he read, but he could remember: it was here they lay that sad, sad night – what a long time ago it seemed – when mother died.

Here was the landlord himself with his big apron on, a burly fellow with a kindly face, and as Tandy stepped on shore he was welcomed with a hearty handshake.

“Ah: Cap’en Tandy, and ’ow’s you. And here is Ransey Tansey, bright and bobbish, and little Babs, and Bob, and everybody. How nice you all look! But la!” he added, “it do seem such a long, long time since you were here before.”

“I’ve not had the heart to come much this way, Mr Shirley. I’ve been trading at the southern end o’ the canal.”

“And ye’ve never been here once since you put up the bit of marble slab to mark the spot where she lies?”

Ransey knew his mother was referred to, and turned aside to hide the tears.

“Never since,” says Tandy.

“Ah, cap’en, many’s the one as asks me about that slab. And the old squire himself stopped here one day and got all the story from me. And when I’d finished, never a word he said. He just heaved a biggish sort of a sigh, and went trotting on.

“But come in, Ransey, Babs, and Bob, and all. The night’s going to be chilly, and an air of the fire will do the children good.

“Sammy, just take the horse round to the stable. We’ll have a bit o’ frost to-night, I thinks.”

Ransey runs on board for a few minutes to touch up the fire, put on the guard, and make down the beds; then he joins the group around the cosy parlour fire.

The kindly landlady, as plump and rosy as her husband, makes very much of the children, and the supper she places before them is a right hearty one, nor is Bob himself forgotten.

A very quiet and pleasant evening is spent, then good-nights are said, and the seafaring folks, as they humorously call themselves, go on board to bed.

Sammy is already sound asleep beneath the tarpaulin, and Ransey takes his little sister below to bed at once.

But father stops on deck a little while, to think and muse.

How still the night is! Not a breath of wind now; not a sound save the distant melancholy hooting of an owl as he flies low across the fields, the champ-champing of the horse in the stable, and an occasional plash in the canal as some great frog leaps off the bank.

Nothing more.

But high above shine God’s holy stars. There may be melancholy in the old sailor’s heart as he gazes skywards, but there is hope as well, for these little points of dazzling light bear his thoughts away to better worlds than this.

It is early morning again, and soon the barge is well on its way.

But when it is stopped in the middle of a somewhat lonesome moor, and Tandy takes his children on shore, the boy knows right well where they are going, though innocent little Babs doesn’t.

“Father,” he says presently, as they are near to a clump of tall trees, “isn’t it just here where mother was laid?”

The rough weather-beaten old sailor uncovers his head.

He points to a spot of the canal that is gleaming bright in the rays of the morning sun.

“Just down there, dear boy,” he says. “The coffin was leaded; it could never rise.”

The last words are spoken apparently to himself, as he turns sadly away towards the trees.

Still holding Ransey’s hand, and with Babs in his arms, he points to the tallest, strongest tree of all. It is a beautiful beech.

And there, about eight feet from the ground, and evidently let deeply into the tree, is a small and lettered slab of marble.

The bark has begun to curl in a rough lip over its edge all round as if to hold it more firmly in its place.

POOR MARY.

She has gone on.

Feby. 19th – 82.

The letters were not over-well formed. Perhaps they were cut by Tandy’s own hand. What mattered it? The little tablet was meant but for his eyes. Simplicity is best.

“Poor Mary! She has gone on.”

And the words are written not only there upon the marble, but upon the honest sailor’s heart.

End of Book One

Book Two – Chapter One.

“Just Three Years Since Ransey Went to Sea.”

“O father,” said Babs one autumn evening, “aren’t you frightened at the roaring of the sea?”

Tandy and his child were sitting together, that autumn evening, in the best parlour. They were waiting for the postman to come round the corner; and as the waves were making a clean breach over the black, smooth rocks down yonder, and the spray was dashing high over the road and rattling like hail upon the panes of glass in the little cottage window, the postman would be wearing his waterproof cape to-night to keep the letters dry.

Babs had been watching for a man in a glittering oilskin, very anxiously, too, with her little face close to the glass, when a bigger wave than any she had yet seen rolled green and spumy and swiftly across the boulders, till meeting the resistance offered by the cliff it rose into the air for twenty feet at least, then broke like a waterfall on the asphalt path which was dignified by the name of esplanade.

No wonder she rushed back from the window, and now stood trembling by her father’s side.

He took her gently on his knee.

Though five years have elapsed since the night they had visited mother’s tree, and she is now eight years of age, she is but a little thing. Ay, and fragile.

As she sits there, with one arm about his neck, he looks at her, and talks to her tenderly. She has her mother’s eyes.

But how lonely he would be, he cannot help thinking, if anything happened to his little Nelda – to Babs. The thought causes him to shiver as he sits there in his easy-chair by the fire, for chill is the breeze that blows from off the sea to-night.

“Daddy!”

“Yes, dear.”

“To-morrow, when it comes, will make it just three years since Ransey went to sea.”

“Three years? Yes, Babs, so it will. Oh, how quickly the time has flown! And how good your memory is, darling!”

“Flown quickly, father? Oh, I think every one of those years has been much, much longer than the other. And I think,” she added, “lazy postie will never come to-night. But I dreamt, daddy, we would have a letter from Ransey, and it is sure to come.”

Three years. Yes, and years do fly fast away when men or women get elderly.

Those years though – ay, and the whole five – had been very busy ones with Ransey Tansey, very eventful, I might almost say.

Old Captain Weathereye had proved a right good friend to Ransey. Nor did he take the least degree of credit to himself for being so.

“The boy has got the grit in him,” he told Miss Scragley, “and just a spice of the devil; and without that, I can assure you, madam, no boy is going to get well on in this world.”

Miss Scragley didn’t care to swallow this doctrine quite; but Eedie, whom Ransey looked upon as a kind of fairy, or goddess, immeasurably better than himself, took the captain’s view of the matter.

“Oh, yes,” she astonished Miss Scragley by exclaiming, “the devil is everywhere, auntie. Mr Smith himself said so in the church. He is in roaring lions and in lambs when they lie down together, and in little boys, and then they are best and funniest.”

Miss Scragley sighed.

“It is a world of sin and sorrow,” she murmured.

“A world of fiddlesticks, madam!” cried Weathereye. “I tell you, it is a splendid world, a grand old world; but you’ve got to learn how to take your own part in it. Take my word for it, Miss Scragley, the world wasn’t made for fools. Fools have got to take a back seat, and just look on, while men of grit do the work and enjoy the reward. Ahem!”

“I’ve got to make a man of that lad,” he went on, “and, what’s more, I’m doing it. He needs holy-stoning – I’m holy-stoning him. He may want a little polishing after, but rubbing against the world will do that.”

“You’re very good, Captain Weathereye; you will be rewarded, if not in this world, in the next – ”

“Tut – tut – tut,” cried the old sailor impatiently, and it must be admitted somewhat brusquely, “women folks will talk, especially when they don’t know what to say; but pray keep such sentiments and platitudes as these for your next Dorcas meeting, madam. Reward, indeed! Next world, forsooth! I tell you that I’m having it in this. I live my own early days over again in the boy’s youth. It is moral meat and drink for the old – well, the middle-aged, like myself, ahem! – to mingle with the young and get interested, not so much in their pursuits, because one’s joints are too stiff for that, but in their hopes and aspirations for the future which is all before them. Ever hear these lines, Miss Scragley?

“‘In the lexicon of youthThat fate reserves for a bright manhood,There is no such word as fail.’

“I’d have them printed on the front page of every copybook laid before a child in school, and I’d have him to learn them as soon as he can lisp.”

Well, right happy years these had been for Ransey Tansey, and little Babs as well, to say nothing of gentle Eedie. As the world began to smile upon Tandy himself, he tried to do all he could for his children’s comfort. Even the little cottage at the foot of the hill was made more ship-shape, and furnished with many a comfort it had previously lacked.

Tandy was a man of a speculative turn of mind, and moreover inventive. His speculations, however, did not succeed so well as he could have wished. I am never sorry for the downfall of speculators; for, after all, what is speculation but a species of gambling – gambling for high stakes? And supposing that a man wins, which once in a way he may; supposing even that he is strong enough in pocket to establish a “corner,” as it is called in Yankee-land, to buy up the whole of some great commodity, and shut it up until the people are starving for it and glad to pay for it at three times the original value, well, the corner knight becomes a millionaire. Yes; and very often a miser, and miserable at that. Can a millionaire enjoy sport or play any better than you or I, reader? No, nor so much.

Has he a better appetite from the fact that he can afford to coax it with every costly dainty that cash can purchase? More likely a worse.

Is he more healthy? That were impossible.

Is he more happy? Ah, here we come to the test question. Well, he can have a larger and a finer house than most people, and it may be furnished like a palace. Pictures of the old masters may adorn its walls; musical instruments of rare value, works of art and vertu, may meet the eye at every turn; the gardens, and rose lawns, and conservatories may be more gorgeous than the dream of an Eastern prince. But can he live in more than one room at a time, or enjoy anything around him a bit better than the friends do whom he invites to his home that they may admire everything and envy him?

But even the millionaire tires of home. He is satiated with the good things his gold has brought him; and if he travels abroad he will not find half the enjoyment in those beauties of nature – which even the millionaire’s gold cannot deprive the poorest man of – that the poet or the naturalist does.

I think there is one thing that most of us have to be thankful for – namely, that we are not over-ambitious, and have no desire to become millionaires.

Yes, but Tandy’s ambition was not a morbid one; it was not selfish. He felt that he could die contentedly enough, could he make as sure as any one can be sure that his boy and girl would not become waifs and strays on the great highway of life.

How to make sure? That had been the question he had tried to answer many and many a time as he lay on the poop of his little craft and sailed slowly through the meadows and moors.

I have said he was inventive. His inventive faculties, however, took him far too high at first, like a badly ballasted balloon. He thought of ministering to governments of nations – of putting into their hands instruments for the destruction of his fellow mortals that should render war impossible, and many other equally airy speculations.

He failed, and had to come down a piece. There is no use in soaring too high above the clouds if one would be a useful inventor and a benefactor to mankind. Darning-needles are of more service to the general public than dynamite guns, and they are more easily manufactured. So Tandy failed in all his big things. That balloon of his was still soaring too high.

“I guess,” he said to himself, “I’ll have to come a little lower still before I find out just what the world wants, and what all the world wants.”

Food? Physic? Fire?

Ha! he had it. Fire, of course. How many a poor wretch starves to death in a garret just because coals are too dear to purchase. “And why?” he asked himself; and the answer came fast enough, “Because coals are wasted by the rich.”

Then Tandy set his brains on to simmer, and invented one of the simplest contrivances in the world for saving waste.

Yes, he had it at last, and in two years’ time he began to gain a competence, which was gradually increasing.

This little cottage down by the sad, sad sea, as sentimental old maids call it, was his own. He and Babs – or little Nelda, as we may now call her – had only been here for six months. The place was by no means a fashionable one, although many people came here in summer to seek for health on the glorious sands and rocks, and among the fields and woods that stretched northwards into the interior.

As for Ransey Tansey, Captain Weathereye had really done his best to secure the welfare of this half-wild lad, just as Miss Scragley tried to assist his wee sister.

Impressionable children learn very quickly, and in a year’s time Ransey was so much improved in manners that Miss Scragley rather encouraged his visits to the Hall than otherwise, especially when the Admiral and Bob came along with him.

Grand old lawns and shrubberies surrounded the Hall, and these ended in woods. There were artificial lakes and islands in them too. These islands were the especial property of many beautiful ducks; but one was so large, and surrounded by such a big stretch of water, that the only thing to make it perfect – so Ransey thought – was a boat or skiff. Eedie was of the same opinion; so was Babs and Bob.

“Isn’t it possible to build one?” thought Ransey. He felt sure it was; so did Eedie.

Before two months had passed, that skiff, with the assistance of Weathereye, was a fait accompli; and the old captain was just as proud of it as the children themselves.

The ducks didn’t have it all their own way now on the island. For here a wigwam was built, and almost every fine day – that is, when Ransey was not at his lessons – the children played at Crusoes and wild Indians, and I don’t know what all.

There was no end to Tansey’s imagination, no end to his daring, no end to his tricks, and in these last, I fear, Eedie encouraged him.

She was but two years younger than Ransey, but she was four years older as far as worldly wisdom was concerned; and with her assistance the dramas, or theatrical performances, carried out on the island were at times startling in the extreme.

When Eedie brought children friends of hers to see these plays, Ransey would have felt very shy indeed had he not had, figuratively speaking, Eedie’s wing to shelter under. Encouraged by her, he soon found out that real talent can make its own way, and be appreciated, however humble its possessor may be.

When Tandy first met Captain Weathereye, he wanted to be profuse in his thanks to this kindly staff-commander. But the latter would have none of this.

“Tandy,” he said, “I know by your every action that you are a true sailor, like – ahem! – myself. Perhaps what you call kindness to your boy is only a fad of mine, and therefore selfishness after all.”

“No, no.”

“But I can say ‘Yo, yo,’ to your ‘No, no.’ Besides, we are all of us sailing over the sea of life for goodness knows where, and we are in duty bound to help even little boats we may sight, if we see they’re in distress.”

Tandy and Weathereye had soon became good friends, and smoked many a pipe together; nor did Tandy hesitate to tell the navy sailor about all his inventions and little speculations, to which account the latter listened delightedly enough.

“I say,” he said to Tandy one day, “your lad is now over ten, and we should send him right away to sea. I tell you straight, Tandy, I’d get him into the Royal Navy if it were worth while. But he’d never be a sailor, never learn seamanship.”

“Confound their old tin-kettles,” he added, bringing his fist down on the table with a force that made the glasses jingle, “there isn’t a sailor on board one of them; only gunners and greasers. (Greaser, a disparaging name for an engineer in the Royal Navy.) Let Ransey rough it, Mr Tandy, and you’ll make a man of him.”