Bevis and Mark went eagerly to bathe by themselves, but immediately left
the direct path. Human beings must be kept taut, or, like a rope, they
will slacken. The very first morning they took a leaping-pole with
them, a slender ash sapling, rather more than twice their own height,
which they picked out from a number in the rick-yard, intending to jump
to and fro the brook on the way. But before they had got half way to
the brook they altered their minds, becoming eager for the water, and
raced to the bathing-place. The pole was now to be an oar, and they
were to swim, supported by an oar, like shipwrecked people.
So soon as he had had a plunge or two, Bevis put one arm over the pole
and struck out with the other, thinking that he should be able in that
way to have a long swim. Directly his weight pressed on the pole it
went under, and did not support him in the least. He put it next
beneath his chest, with both arms over it, but immediately he pushed off
down it went again. Mark took it and got astride, when the pole let his
feet touch the bottom.
“It’s no use,” he said. “What’s the good of people falling overboard
with spars and oars? What stories they must tell.”
“I can’t make it out,” said Bevis; and he tried again, but it was no
good, the pole was an encumbrance instead of a support, for it insisted
upon slipping through the water lengthways, and would not move just as
he wished. In a rage he gave it a push, and sent it ashore, and turned
to swimming to the rail. They did not know it, but the governor, still
anxious about them, had gone round a long distance, so as to have a peep
at them from the hedge on the other side of Fir-Tree Gulf by the Nile.
He could tell by the post and rails that they did not go out of their
depth, and went away without letting them suspect his presence.
When they got out, they had a run in the sunshine, which dried them much
better than towels. The field sloped gently to the right, and their
usual run was on the slope beside a nut-tree hedge towards a group of
elms. All the way there and back the sward was short and soft, almost
like that of the Downs which they could see, and dotted with bird’s-foot
lotus, over whose yellow flowers they raced. But this morning, being no
longer kept taut, after they had returned from the elms with an enormous
mushroom they had found there, they ran to the old quarry, and along the
edge above. The perpendicular sand-cliff fell to an enclosed pool
beneath, in which, on going to the very edge, they could see themselves
reflected. Some hurdles and flakes--a stronger kind of hurdle--had been
placed here that cattle might not wander over, but the cart-horses, who
rub against everything, had rubbed against them and dislodged two or
three. These had rolled down, and the rest hung half over.
While they stood still looking down over the broad waters of their New
Sea, the sun burned their shoulders, making the skin red. Away they ran
back to dress, and taking a short path across a place where the turf had
partly grown over a shallow excavation pricked their feet with thistles,
and had to limp the rest of the way to their clothes. Now, there were
no thistles on their proper racecourse down to the elms and back.
As they returned home they remembered the brook, and went down to it to
jump with the leaping-pole. But the soft ooze at the bottom let the
pole sink in, and Bevis, who of course must take the first leap, was
very near being hung up in the middle of the brook. Under his weight,
as he sprang off, the pole sank deep into the ooze, and had it been a
stiffer mud the pole would have stopped upright, when he must have
stayed on it over the water, or have been jerked off among the flags.
As it was it did let him get over, but he did not land on the firm bank,
only reaching the mud at the side, where he scrambled up by grasping the
stout stalk of a willow-herb. In future he felt with the butt of the
pole till he found a firm spot, where it was sandy, or where the matted
roots of grasses and flags had bound the mud hard. Then he flew over
well up on the grass.
Mark took his turn, and as he put the butt in the water a streak of mud
came up where a small jack fish had shot away. So they went on down the
bank leaping alternately, one carrying the towels while the other flew
over and back.
Sometimes they could not leap because the tripping was bad, undermined
where cowslips in the spring hung over the stream, bored with the holes
of water-rats, which when disused become covered with grass, but give
way beneath the foot or the hoof that presses on them pitching leaper or
rider into the current, or it was rotten from long-decaying roots, or
about to slip. Sometimes the landing was bad, undermined in the same
way, or higher than the tripping, when you have not only to get over,
but to deliver yourself on a higher level; or swampy, where a wet furrow
came to the brook; or too far, where there was nothing but mud to come
on. They had to select their jumping-places, and feel the ground to the
edge first.
“Here’s the raft!” shouted Mark, who was ahead, looking out for a good
place.
“Is it?” said Bevis, running along on the other side. They had so
completely forgotten it, that it came upon them like something new.
Bevis took a leap and came over, and they set to work at once to launch
it. The raft slipped gradually down the shelving shore of the
drinking-place, and they thrust it into the stream. Bevis put his foot
on board, but immediately withdrew it, for the water rushed through
twenty leaks, spurting up along the joins. Left on the sand in the
sun’s rays the wood of the raft shrank a little, opening the planking,
while the clay they had daubed on to caulk the crevices had cracked, and
the moss had dried up and was ready to crumble. The water came through
every where, and the raft was half-full even when left to itself without
any pressure.
“We ought to have thatched it,” said Mark. “We ought to have made a
roof over it. Let’s stop the leaks.”
“O! come on,” said Bevis, “don’t let’s bother. Rafts are no good, no
more than poles or oars when you fall overboard. We shall have a ship
soon.”
The raft was an old story, and he did not care about it. He went on
with the leaping-pole, but Mark stayed a minute and hauled the raft on
shore as far as his strength would permit. He got about a quarter of it
on the ground, so that it could not float away, and then ran after
Bevis.
They went into the Peninsula, and looked at all the fir-trees, to see if
any would do for a mast for the blue boat they were to have. As it had
no name, they called it the blue boat to distinguish it from the punt.
Mark thought an ash-pole would do for the mast, as ash-poles were so
straight and could be easily shaved to the right size; but Bevis would
not hear of it, for masts were never made of ash, but always of pine,
and they must have their ship proper. He selected a tree presently, a
young fir, straight as an arrow, and started Mark for the axe, but
before he had gone ten yards Mark came back, saying that the tree would
be of no use unless they liked to wait till next year, because it would
be green, and the mast ought, to be made of seasoned wood.
“So it ought,” said Bevis. “What a lot of trouble it is to make a
ship.”
But as they sat on the railing across the isthmus swinging their legs,
Mark remembered that there were some fir-poles which had been cut a long
time since behind the great wood-pile, between it and the walnut-trees,
out of sight. Without a word away they ran, chose one of these and
carried it into the shed where Bevis usually worked. They had got the
dead bark off and were shaving away when it was dinner-time, which they
thought a bore, but which wise old Pan, who was never chained now,
considered the main object of life.
Next morning as they went through the meadow, where the dew still
lingered in the shade, on the way to the bathing-place, taking Pan with
them this time, they hung about the path picking clover-heads and
sucking the petals, pulling them out and putting the lesser ends in
their lips, looking at the white and pink bramble flowers, noting where
the young nuts began to show, pulling down the woodbine, and doing
everything but hasten on to their work of swimming. They stopped at the
gate by the New Sea, over whose smooth surface slight breaths of mist
were curling, and stood kicking the ground and the stones as flighty
horses paw.
“We ought to be something,” said Mark discontentedly.
“Of course we ought,” said Bevis. “Things are very stupid unless you
are something.”
“Lions and tigers,” said Mark, growling, and showing his teeth.
“Pooh!”
“Shipwrecked people on an island.”
“Fiddle! They have plenty to do and are always happy, and we are not.”
“No; very unhappy. Let’s try escaping--prisoners running away.”
“Hum! Hateful!”
“Everything’s hateful.”
“So it is.”
“This is a very stupid sea.”
“There’s nothing in it.”
“Nothing anywhere.”
“Let’s be hermits.”
“There’s always only one hermit.”
“Well, you live that side,” (pointing across), “and I’ll live this.”
“Hermits eat pulse and drink water.”
“What’s pulse?”
“I suppose it’s barley water.”
“Horrid.”
“Awful.”
“You say what we shall be then.”
“Pan, you old donk,” said Bevis, rolling Pan over with his foot. Lazy
Pan lay on his back, and let Bevis bend his ribs with his foot.
“Caw, caw!” a crow went over down to the shore, where he hoped to find a
mussel surprised by the dawn in shallow water.
Bang! “Hoi! Hoo! Yah!” The discharge was half a mile away, but the
crow altered his mind, and flew over the water as near the surface as he
could without touching. Why do birds always cross the water in that
way?
“That’s Tom,” said Mark. Tom was the bird-keeper. He shot first, and
shouted after. He potted a hare in the corn with bits of flint, a
button, three tin tacks, and a horse-stub, which scraped the old barrel
inside, but slew the game. That was for himself. Then he shouted his
loudest to do his duty--for other people. The sparrows had flown out of
the corn at the noise of the gun, and settled on the hedge; when Tom
shouted they were frightened from the hedge, and went back into the
wheat. From which learn this, shoot first and shout after.
“Shall we say that was a gun at sea?” continued Mark.
“They are always heard at night,” said Bevis. “Pitch black, you know.”
“Everything is somehow else,” said Mark. Pan closed his idle old eyes,
and grunted with delight as Bevis rubbed his ribs with his foot. Bevis
put his hands in his pockets and sighed deeply. The sun looked down on
these sons of care, and all the morning beamed.
“Savages!” shouted Mark kicking the gate to with a slam that startled
Pan up. “Savages, of course!”
“Why?”
“They swim, donk: don’t they? They’re always in the water, and they
have catamarans and ride the waves and dance on the shore, and blow
shells--”
“Trumpets?”
“Yes.”
“Canoes?”
“Yes.”
“No clothes?”
“No.”
“All jolly?”
“Everything.”
“Hurrah!”
Away they ran towards the bathing-place to be savages, but Mark stopped
suddenly, and asked what sort they were? They decided that they were
the South Sea sort, and raced on again, Pan keeping pace with a kind of
shamble; he was too idle to run properly. They dashed into the water,
each with a wood-pigeon’s feather, which they had found under the
sycamore-trees above the quarry, stuck in his hair. At the first dive
the feathers floated away. Upon the other side of the rails there was a
large aspen-tree whose lowest bough reached out over the water, which
was shallow there.
Though they made such a splashing when Bevis looked over the railings a
moment, he saw some little roach moving to and fro under the bough. The
wavelets from his splashing rolled on to the sandy shore, rippling under
the aspen. As he looked, a fly fell on its back out of the tree, and
struggled in vain to get up. Bevis climbed over the rails, picked an
aspen leaf, and put it under the fly, which thus on a raft, and tossed
up and down as Mark dived, was floated slowly by the undulations to the
strand. As he got over the rails a kingfisher shot out from the mouth
of the Nile opposite, and crossed aslant the gulf, whistling as he flew.
“Look!” said Mark. “Don’t you know that’s a ‘sign.’ Savages read
‘signs,’ and those birds mean that there are heaps of fish.”
“Yes, but we ought to have a proper language.”
“Kalabala-blong!” said Mark.
“Hududu-blow-fluz!” replied Bevis, taking a header from the top of the
rail on which he had been sitting, and on which he just contrived to
balance himself a moment without falling backwards.
“Umplumum!” he shouted, coming up again.
“Ikiklikah,” and Mark disappeared.
“Noklikah,” said Bevis, giving him a shove under as he came up to
breathe.
“That’s not fair,” said Mark, scrambling up.
Bevis was swimming, and Mark seized his feet. More splashing and
shouting, and the rocks resound. The echo of their voices returned from
the quarry and the high bank under the firs.
They raced presently down to the elms along the sweet soft turf,
sprinkling the dry grass with the sparkling drops from their limbs, and
the sunlight shone on their white shoulders. The wind blew and stroked
their gleaming backs. They rolled and tumbled on the grass, and the
earth was under them. From the water to the sun and the wind and the
grass.
They played round the huge sycamore trunks above the quarry, and the
massive boughs stretched over--from a distance they would have seemed
mere specks beneath the immense trees. They raced across to a round
hollow in the field and sat down at the bottom, so that they could see
nothing but the sky overhead, and the clouds drifting. They lay at full
length, and for a moment were still and silent; the sunbeam and the
wind, the soft touch of the grass, the gliding cloud, the eye-loved blue
gave them the delicious sense of growing strong in drowsy luxury.
Then with a shout, renewed, they ran, and Pan who had been waiting by
their clothes was startled into a bark of excitement at their sudden
onslaught. As they went homewards they walked round to the little
sheltered bay where the boats were kept, to look at the blue boat and
measure for the mast. It was beside the punt, half drawn up on the
sand, and fastened to a willow root. She was an ill-built craft with a
straight gunwale, so that when afloat she seemed lower at stem and stern
than abeam, as if she would thrust her nose into a wave instead of
riding it. The planks were thick and heavy and looked as if they had
not been bent enough to form the true buoyant curve.
The blue paint had scaled and faded, the rowlocks were mended with a
piece cut from an old rake-handle, there was a small pool of bilge water
in the sternsheets from the last shower, fall of dead insects, and
yellow willow leaves. A clumsy vessel put together years ago in some
by-water of the far distant Thames above Oxford, and not good enough
even for that unknown creek. She had drifted somehow into this
landlocked pond and remained unused, hauled on the strand beneath the
willows; she could carry five or six, and if they bumped her well on the
stones it mattered little to so stout a frame.
Still she was a boat, with keel and curve, and like lovers they saw no
defect. Bevis looked at the hole in the seat or thwart, where the mast
would have to be stepped, and measured it (not having a rule with him)
by cutting a twig just to the length of the diameter. Mark examined the
rudder and found that the lines were rotten, having hung dangling over
the stern in the water for so long. Next they stepped her length,
stepping on the sand outside, to decide on the height of the mast, and
where were the ropes to be fastened? for they meant to have some
standing rigging.
At home afterwards in the shed, while Bevis shaved the fir-pole for the
mast, Mark was set to carve the leaping-pole, for the South Sea savages
have everything carved. He could hardly cut the hard dried bark of the
ash, which had shrunk on and become like wood. He made a spiral notch
round it, and then searched till he found his old spear, which had to be
ornamented and altered into a bone harpoon. A bone from the kitchen was
sawn off while in the vice, and then half through two inches from the
largest end. Tapping a broad chisel gently, Mark split the bone down to
the sawn part, and then gradually filed it sharp. He also filed three
barbs to it, and then fitted the staff of the spear into the hollow end.
While he was engraving lines and rings on the spear with his
pocket-knife, the dinner interrupted his work.
Bevis, wearying of the mast, got some flints, and hammered them to split
off flakes for arrowheads, but though he bruised his fingers, he could
not chip the splinters into shape. The fracture always ran too far, or
not far enough. John Young, the labourer, came by as he was doing this
sitting on the stool in the shed, and watched him.
“I see a man do that once,” said John.
“How did he do it? tell me? what’s the trick?” said Bevis, impatient to
know.
“Aw, I dunno; I see him at it. A’ had a gate-hinge snopping um.”
The iron hinge of a gate, if removed from the post, forms a fairly good
hammer, the handle of iron as well as the head.
“Where was it? what did he do it for?”
“Aw, up in the Downs. Course he did it to soil um.”
The prehistoric art of chipping flints lingered among the shepherds on
the Downs, till the percussion-cap came in, and no longer having to get
flakes for the flintlock guns they slowly let it disappear. Young had
seen it done, but could not describe how.
Bevis battered his flints till he was tired; then he took up the last
and hurled it away in a rage with all his might. The flint whirled over
and over and hummed along the ground till it struck a small sarsen or
boulder by the wood-pile, put there as a spur-stone to force the
careless carters to drive straight. Then it flew into splinters with
the jerk of the stoppage.
“Here’s a sharp ’un,” said John Young, picking up a flake, “and here’s
another.”
Altogether there were three pointed flakes which Bevis thought would do.
Mark had to bring some reeds next day from the place where they grew
half a mile below his house in a by-water of the brook. They were
green, but Bevis could not wait to dry them. He cut them off a little
above the knot or joint, split the part above, and put the flint flake
in, and bound it round and round with horsehair from the carter’s store
in the stable. But when they were finished, they were not shot off,
lest they should break; they were carried indoors into the room upstairs
where there was a bench, and which they made their armoury.
They made four or five darts next of deal shaved to the thickness of a
thin walking-stick, and not quite so long. One end was split in four--
once down and across that--and two pieces of cardboard doubled up thrust
in, answering the purpose of feathering. There was a slight notch
two-thirds up the shaft, and the way was to twist a piece of twine round
it there crossed over a knot so as just to hold, the other end of the
twine firmly coiled about the wrist, so that in throwing the string was
taut and the point of the dart between the fingers. Hurling it the
string imparted a second force, and the dart, twirling like an arrow,
flew fifty or sixty yards.
Slings they made with a square of leather from the sides of old shoes, a
small hole out out in the centre that the stone might not slip, but
these they could never do much with, except hurl pebbles from the
rick-yard, rattling up into the boughs of the oak, on the other side of
the field. The real arrows to shoot with--not the reed arrows to look
at--were tipped with iron nails filed to a sharp point. They had much
trouble in feathering them; they had plenty of goose-feathers (saved
from the Christmas plucking), but to glue them on properly was not easy.
Volume One, Chapter XI.