A man once said to me that our brains are very much like a bee's
honeycomb, all neat little cells, in which all our old recollections are
stored up ready for use when we want them. There lie all our adventures
and the results of all our studies, everything we have acquired in our
lives.
Perhaps he was right--I don't know--I never saw my brains; but, if he
is, some of us have got the cells so tightly packed together, and in so
disorderly a way, that when we want some special thing which we learned,
we cannot find it; it is so covered up, so buried, that it is quite
hopeless to try and get at it. This is generally the case with me, and,
consequently, there are no end of school adventures during my long stay
at "Old Browne's" that I cannot set down here, for the simple reason
that I cannot get at them, or, if I do, I find that the cell is crushed
and the memory mixed up all in a muddle with wax.
I suppose I did not pack them into the comb properly. Oddly enough, my
recollections are clearest about the part of my days which preceded the
trouble over the watch.
After that, life seemed to go on at such a rapid rate that there was not
time to put all the events away so that they could be found when wanted
for further use.
Still, I recall a few things which preceded my leaving the school for
Woolwich.
There was that hot June day down by the river--little stream it really
was--that ran through a copse about half a mile from the school. It was
on Farmer Dawson's land, down in the hollow of the valley, up one side
of which lay his big range of hop-gardens.
The Doctor paid him a certain rent for the right of the boys going down
to this place, where a great dam had been built up of clay and clinkers.
It was not all new, but done up afresh after lying a couple of hundred
years or so untouched. All round it, Farmer Dawson used to send his men
in the winter to cut down the coppice, trimming the ash and eating
chestnut trees down to the stumps to make the young growth into
hop-poles; but when the Doctor offered to take it and repair the dam,
the hop-poles were left to grow and form a beautiful screen round this
dell.
I remember what interest we boys took in it during one winter, when the
Doctor had set a lot of men who were out of work to dig and wheel the
clinkers and clay, a barrowful of one, and then a barrowful of the
other, along the dam; and with old Lomax to give orders, we all marched
and counter-marched in our thickest boots over the top of the dam, to
trample it all down strong and firm.
You will think, perhaps, that it was easy enough to get clay, and so it
was, for a thick bed lay only a few yards from the stream; but what
about the clinkers?
I'll tell you. There was quite a mine of them, hard, shiny fragments,
some of which had run just like so much black or brown glass.
How did they get there, looking like so much volcanic slag? Why, they
were the refuse from a huge iron furnace that used to be in full blast
in the days of Queen Elizabeth or King James, and the dam we were
repairing, after it had been grown over with trees, and the water
reduced to a little stream, belonged to one of the old hammer ponds
whose waters were banked up to keep a sufficiency to turn the big wheel
that worked the tilt-hammers and perhaps blew the iron furnace till it
roared.
For that peaceful rural part of Sussex was in those days a big forest,
whose wood was cut down and made into charcoal. The forest is gone, and
only represented now by patches of copsewood saved for cutting down
every ten years or so for poles; but the iron lies there still in great
veins or beds, though it is no longer dug out, the iron of to-day being
found and smelted north and west, where coal-pits are handy; and the
ironmasters of Sussex, whose culverins and big guns were famous all the
world round, have given place to farmers and hop-growers, where grimy
men used to tend the glowing metal and send it running into form and
mould.
I have mentioned before how there used to be a furnace by Sir
Hawkhurst's penstock pond, where the embankment was still firm, but
there had been a far more extensive one here, and the refuse went, as I
have said, to repair the dam.
When this was done, the Doctor had a long low shed built and thatched
and supplied with form-like seats, and a diving-board arranged, beside
steps down in the shallow part for the younger boys, and the whole when
finished made a glorious long pool of about an acre in extent, very deep
by the dam, and sloping gradually up to a few inches only of water where
the stream trickled in. And there, on the hot sunny afternoons,
beautifully shut in by green waving trees, and with the water when we
came to bathe so clear that you could see every stone on the gravelly
bottom, we boys used to collect for a regular water frolic. But, as you
may suppose, the water was not so clean when we had done, the paddling
of the little fellows in the shallows discolouring it from end to end.
That special hot June afternoon cricket had been voted too tiring, and
we had all gone down to the bathing-place, the non-swimmers having
strict injunctions not to pass a couple of posts about half-way between
the stream and the dam.
It was always Lomax's duty to come down with us at bathing times, and,
with his walking cane under his arm, he used to stride to and fro along
the bank, barking out orders to the lesser boys, who were constantly
breaking the rules, and getting toward the deeper water.
By that time I was a pretty fair swimmer, and had got over my natural
nervousness to the extent that I was ready to dive off the board into
the deepest part, and go anywhere with ease. Mercer was better than I,
and Hodson better still; Burr major, from being so long, bony, and thin,
was anything, as Mercer used to say, but eely in the water,--puffing and
working hard to keep himself afloat; while Dicksee, though naturally
able to swim easily from his plumpness, was, I think, the greatest
coward we had there.
The water was delightfully warm that afternoon, but it soon got to be
very thick, though that did not trouble us in the least, and we were in
the full tide of our enjoyment, swimming races, diving, and playing one
another tricks, while all the time, sharp and short from the bank,
Lomax's orders would be snapped out.
"You, young Jenkins, what did I tell you? Phibbs, you're the wrong side
of the posts. Mullins, if I have to speak to you again, I shall report
you. Wilson, if you don't go up into the shallows, I shall fetch you
out."
"Can't," cried the impudent young dog.
"Then I'll send a big boy to fetch you, sah. How dare you, sah! What
do you mean, sah?"
Then there would be the pad, pad, pad, pad of naked feet, as a boy ran
along the diving-board, sprang out, and then splash he would be into the
water.
And so it went on, with some tiring, and going and sitting in the sun,
which played the part of warm towel, till they would come in again, for
it was declared to be the most delightful day we had had.
Then Mr Rebble and Mr Hasnip came down to see how we were getting on,
and stood cheering and encouraging the timid ones, who were loth to get
duckings by learning to swim.
I had been trying for some time, right out in the middle, to float
without moving, while Mercer and Hodson in turn had their tries. Burr
major was swimming from side to side, blowing like a grampus, and other
boys were about us unnoticed, for we were too much occupied over our own
efforts to heed them, when all at once, as I lay back with the water
nearly all over my face, and my hands right down paddling softly, a wave
turned me a little on one side; I raised my head, and a horrible yell
sent a cold chill through me.
"What is it? the matter?" cried Mercer.
"Help! help!" shrieked Burr major, who was only a few yards away,
splashing the water heavily as he swam with all his might for the side.
But he only shrieked out, "Help! help!" in a horror-stricken voice, and
we all swam toward him as he made for the shore, all the lesser boys
splashing out as fast as they could, to congregate shivering on the
bank.
"What is it? What's the matter?" cried Mr Rebble, hurrying along the
path, while Lomax came running round from the other side, for he had
crossed the dam to act the part of water shepherd over some of his wet
lambs.