ON A MUD-BANK
“Halloa! Ferry, ho!”
“Here you are, sir.”
“Who is that singing out?”
“It is I--Kate Quarm.”
“What--Kitty Alone? Is that what is to be? Over the water
together--Kitty Alone and I?”
On the strand, in the gloom, stood a sturdy figure encumbered with a
hat-box and a large parcel, so that both hands were engaged.
“Are you John Pooke?”
“To be sure I am.”
In another moment the young fellow was beside the boat.
“Here, Kitty Alone! Lend a hand. I’m crippled with these precious
parcels. This blessed box-hat has given me trouble. The string came
undone, and down it went. I have to carry the concern tucked under my
arm; and the parcel’s bursting. It’s my new suit dying to show itself,
and so is getting out of this brown-paper envelope as fast as it may.”
“We are very late,” said Kate anxiously. “The tide is running out hard,
and it is a chance if we get over.”
“Right, Kitty. I’ll settle the hat-box and the new suit--brass
buttons--what d’ye think of that? And straps to my trousers. I shall be
fine--a blazer, Kitty--a blazer!”
“Do sit down, John; it is but a chance if we get across. You are so
late.”
“The Atmospheric did it, for one--my hat for the other, tumbling in the
darkness out of the box, and in the tunnel too. Fancy if the train had
gone over it! I’d have wept tears of blood.”
“Do, John Pooke, do sit down and take an oar.”
“I’ll sit down in a minute, when I’ve put my box-hat where I nor you can
kick it about, and the new suit where the water can’t stain it.”
“John, you must take an oar.”
“Right I am. We’ll make her fly--pist!--faster than the blessed
Atmospheric, and no sticking half-way.”
“I’m not so sure of that.”
Kate thrust off. She had altered the pegs, and now she gave John an oar.
“Pull for dear life!” she said; “not a moment is to be lost.”
“Yoicks away!” shouted Pooke. “So we swim--Kitty Alone and I.”
Kate, more easy now that the boat was started, said, “You asked me my
name. I said Kate Quarm.”
“Well, but everyone knows you as Kitty Alone.”
“And every one knows you as Jan Tottle, but I shouldn’t have the face to
so call you; and I don’t see why you should give me any name than what
properly belongs to me.”
“Your father always so calls you.”
“You are not my father, and have no right to take liberties. My father
may call me what he pleases, because he is my father. He is my
father--you my penny fare.”
“And the penny fare has no rights?”
“He has right to be ferried over, not to be impudent.”
Pooke whistled through his teeth.
The girl laboured hard at the oar; Pooke worked more easily. He had not
realised at first how uncertain was the passage. The tide went swirling
down to the sea with the wind behind it, driving it as a besom.
“I say, Kate Quarm--no, Miss Catherine Quarm. Hang it! how stiff and
grand we be! Do you know why I have been to Exeter?”
“I do not, Jan.”
“There, you called me Jan. You’ll be ’titling me Tottle, next. That
gives me a right to call you Kitty.”
“Once, but no more; and Kitty only.”
“I’ve been to Exeter to be rigged out for sister Sue’s weddin’. My word!
it has cost four guineas to make a gentleman of me.”
“Can they do that for four guineas?”
“Now don’t sneer. Listen. They’d took my measure afore, and they put me
in my new suit, brass buttons and everything complete, and a new tie and
collars standing to my ears--and a box-hat curling at the sides like the
waves of the ocean--and then they told me to walk this way, please sir!
So I walked, and what should I see but a gentleman stately as a dook
coming towards me, and I took off my hat and said, Your servant, sir!
and would have stepped aside. Will you believe me, Kate! it was just
myself in a great cheval glass, as they call it. You’ll be at the
wedding, won’t you?--if only to see me in my new suit. I do believe
you’ll fall down and worship me, and I shall smile down at you and say,
Holloa! is that my good friend Kitty Alone? And you’ll say, Your very
humble servant, sir!”
“That I shall never do, Mr. Pennyfare,” laughed Kate, and then, becoming
grave, immediately said, “Do pull instead of talking nonsense. We are
drifting; look over your shoulder.”
“So we are. There is Coombe Cellars light, right away up stream.”
“The wind and stream are against us. Pull hard.”
Jan Pooke now recognised that he must use his best exertions.
“Hang it!” said he, watching the light; “I don’t want to be carried out
to sea.”
“Nor do I. That would be a dear penn’orth.”
Pooke pulled vigorously; looked over his shoulder again and said, “Kate,
give up your place to me. I’m worth more than you and me together with
one oar apiece.”
She moved the rowlock pins, and Jan took her place with two oars; but
the time occupied in effecting the change entailed loss of way, and the
boat swept fast down the estuary.
“This is more than a joke,” said Pooke; “we are down opposite Shaldon. I
can see the Teignmouth lights. We shall never get across like this.”
“We must.”
“The tide tears between the end of the Den and the farther shore like a
mill-race.”
“We must cross or run aground.”
“Kate, can you see the breakers over the bar?”
“No, but I can hear them. They are nothing now, as wind and tide are
running off shore. When the tide turns then there will be a roar.”
“I believe we are being carried out. Thunder! I’m not going to be swept
into Kingdom Come without having put on box-hat and new suit, and cut a
figure here.”
The wind poured down the trough of the Teign valley with such force,
that in one blast it seemed to catch the boat and drive it, as it might
take up a leaf and send it flying over the surface of a hard road.
The waves were dancing, foaming, uttering their voices about the rocks
of the Ness, mumbling and muttering on the bar. If the boat in the
darkness were to get into the throat of the current, it would be sucked
and carried into the turbulent sea; it might, however, get on the bar
and be buffeted and broken by the waves.
“Take an oar,” said Pooke; “we must bring her head round. If we can run
behind the Den, we shall be in still water.”
“Or mud,” said Kate, seating herself to pull. “Anything but to be
carried out to sea.”
The two young people struggled desperately. They were straining against
wind and tide, heading about to get into shallow water, and out of the
tearing current.
After a while Kate gasped, “I’m finished!”
Her hair was blown round her head in the gale; with the rapidity of her
pulsation, lights flashed before her eyes and waves roared in her ears.
“Don’t give up. Pull away!”
Mechanically she obeyed. In another minute the strain was less, and
then--the boat was aground.
“If this be the Den, all right,” said Pooke. “We can get ashore and walk
to Teignmouth.” He felt with the oar, standing up in the boat. It sank
in mud. “Here’s a pretty pass,” said he. “I thought it bad enough to be
stuck in the tunnel when the Atmospheric broke down, but it is worse to
be fast in the mud. From the tunnel we could extricate ourselves at
once, but here--in this mud, we are fast till flow of tide. Kitty,--I
mean Kate,--make up your mind to accept my company for some hours. I
can’t help you out, and I can’t get out myself. What is more, no one on
shore, even if we could call to them, would be able to assist us. Till
the tide turns, we are held as tight as rats in a gin.”
“I wonder,” said the girl, recovering her breath, “what makes the tides
ebb and flow.”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” said John Pooke; “it is enough for me
that they have lodged us here on a mud bank in a March night with an icy
east wind blowing. By George! I’ve a mind to have out a summons against
the Atmospheric Company.”
“Why so?”
“For putting us in this blessed fix. The train came to a standstill in
the tunnel by the Parson and Clerk rock, between Dawlish and Teignmouth.
We had to tumble out of the carriages and shove her along into daylight.
That is how my band-box got loose; as I got out of the carriage the
string gave way and down went the box in the tunnel, and opened, and the
hat came out. There was an east wind blowing like the blast of a
blacksmith’s bellows through the tunnel, and it caught my new hat and
carried it along, as if it were the atmospheric train it had to propel.
I had to run after it and catch it, all in the half-dark, and all the
while the guard and passengers were yelling at me to help and shove
along the train; but I wasn’t going to do that till I had recovered my
hat. I must think of sister Sue’s wedding, and the figure I shall cut
there, before I consider how to get the train out of a tunnel.”
In spite of discomfort and cold, Kate was constrained to laugh.
“If you or I am the worse for this night in the cold, and if my box-hat
has had the nap scratched off, and my new suit gets stained with
sea-water, I’ll summons the company, I will. What have you got to keep
you warm, Kate?”
“A shawl.”
“Let me feel it.”
Pooke groped in the dark and caught hold of what the girl had cast over
her head and shoulders.
“It’s thin enough for a June evening,” said he. “It may keep off dews,
but it will not keep out frost. Please goodness, we shall have neither
hail nor rain; that would be putting an edge on to our misery.”
Both lapsed into silence. The prospect was cheerless. After about five
minutes Kate said, “I wonder why there are twelve hours and a half
between tides, and not twelve hours.”
“I am sure I cannot tell,” answered Pooke listlessly; he had his head in
his hand.
“You see,” remarked Kate, “if the tides were twelve hours exactly apart,
there would always be flow at the same hour.”
“I suppose so.” Pooke spoke languidly, as if going to sleep.
“But that extra half-hour, or something like it, throws them out and
makes them shift. Why is it?”
“How can I say? Accident.”
“It cannot be accident, for people can calculate and put in the
almanacks when the tides are to be.”
“I suppose so.”
“And then--why are some tides much bigger than others? We are having
high tides now.”
Pooke half rose, seated himself again, and said in a tone of
desperation, “Look here, Kitty! I ain’t going to be catechised. Rather
than that, I’ll jump into the mud and smother. It is bad enough having
to sit here in the wind half the night, without having one’s head split
with thinking to answer questions. If we are to talk, let it be about
something sensible. Shall you be at sister Sue’s wedding?”
“I do not know. That depends on whether aunt will let me go.”
“I want you to see and worship me in my new suit.”
“I may see--I shan’t worship you.”
“I almost bowed down to myself in the cheval glass, I looked so
tremendous fine; and if I did that--what will you do?”
“Many a man worships himself whom others don’t think much of.”
“There you are at me again. Fancy--Kate--ducks”--
“And green peas?”
“No--bottle-green. Ducks is what I am going to wear, with straps under
my boots--lily-white, and a yellow nankeen waistcoat, and a bottle-green
coat with brass buttons,--all here in this parcel,--and the hat. My
honour! I never was so fine before. Four guineas--with the hat.”
“Do you call this ‘talking sensible’?” asked Kate.
Again they subsided into silence. It was hard, in the piercing wind, in
the darkness, to keep up an interest in any topic.
The cold cut like a razor. The wind moaned over the bulwarks of the
ferry-boat. The mud exhaled a dead and unpleasant odour. Gulls fluttered
near and screamed. The clouds overhead parted, and for a while exposed
tracts of sky, thick strewn with stars that glittered frostily.
Presently the young man said, “Hang it! you will catch cold. Lie in the
bottom of the boat, and I will throw my coat over you.”
“But you will yourself be chilled.”
“I--I am tough as nails. But stay. I know something better. I have my
new bottle-green coat, splendid as the day. You shall have that over
you.”
“But it may become crumpled.”
“Sister Sue shall iron it again.”
“Or stained.”
“You shan’t die of cold just to save my bottle-green. Lie down. I wish
the hat could be made to serve some purpose. There’s no water in the
boat?”
“None.”
“And I am glad. It would have gone to my heart like a knife to have had
to bale it out with my box-hat.”
Kate was now very chilled. After the exertion, and the consequent heat
in which she had been, the reaction had set in, and the blood curdled in
her veins. The wind pierced the thin shawl as though it were a cobweb.
Pooke folded up his garments to make a pillow for her head, insisted on
her lying down, so that the side of the boat might in some measure
screen her from the wind, and then he spread his new coat over her.
“There, Kitty. Hang it! we are comrades in ill-luck; so there is a
brotherhood of misery between us. Let me call you Kitty, and let me be
Jan to you--Tottle if you will.”
“Only when you begin to boast about your new suit”--
“There, Kitty, don’t be hard on me. I must think of something to keep me
warm, and what else so warming as the thoughts of the ducks, and
nankeen, and bottle-green, and the box-hat. I don’t believe anything
else could make me keep up my spirits. Go to sleep, and when I feel the
boat lift, I will sing out.”
Kate was touched by the kindness of the soft-headed lad. As she lay in
the bottom of the boat without speaking, and he thought she was dozing,
he put down his hand and touched the clothes about her. He wished to
assure himself that she was well covered.
Kate was not asleep; she was thinking. She had not met with much
consideration in the short span of her life. Lying in the boat with her
eyes fixed on the stars, her restless mind was working.
Presently, moved by an uncontrollable impulse, she asked, “John, why do
some of the stars twinkle and others do not?”
“How should I know? I suppose they were out on a spree when they ought
to ha’ been in bed, and now can’t keep their eyes from winking.”
“Some, however, burn quite steadily.”
“Them’s the good stars, that keep regular hours, and go to bed when they
ought. Your eyes’ll be winking no end to-morrow.”
“John, what becomes of the stars by day?”
“Kitty--Kate, don’t ask any more questions, or I shall jump overboard. I
can’t bear it; I can’t indeed. It makes my head ache.”