BRAUNTON BURROWS.
The weather was still as fair as could be, with a light wind from the
east-north-east; and as our course lay west by south, and the ebb was
running, we slipped along at the rate of six or seven knots an hour,
though heavily-laden with the Colonel's rocks; and after rounding
Porthcawl Point we came abreast of the old Sker House a little after
sunset. Skipper Jose would never have ventured inside the Sker-weathers,
only that I held the tiller, and knew every vein of sand and rock. And I
kept so close in shore, because one of the things that vexed me most in
all this sudden departure, was to run away without proper ceremony from
Bardie. She was certain to feel it much, and too young to perceive the
necessity; and fried pudding had been promised her at my table come the
very next Sunday.
The windows of the old grey mansion gleamed in the fading western light,
but we descried no smoke or movement, neither any life or variance, only
a dreary pile of loneliness in the middle of yellow sands. Then I rigged
out my perspective glass, and levelled it on the cuddy chimney--for the
ketch was a half-decker--to spy if the little one might so chance to be
making her solitary play, as she was used to do all day, and most of all
ere bedtime. And if she should so happen, I knew how wild her delight
would be to discover a vessel so near the shore; because whenever a sail
went by, even at two or three leagues of distance, there was no
containing her. Out she would rush with her face on fire, and curly hair
all jogging, and up would go two little hands, spread to the sky and the
vast wide sea. "Mammy dear, I 'ants 'a so. Dear papa, I has yaited so
yong. Ickle bother, such a lot of things Bardie's got to tell 'a." And
thus she would run on the brink of the waves with hope and sadness
fluctuating on her unformed countenance, until the sail became a speck.
However, now I saw no token of this little rover, unless it were some
washed clothes flapping on the rushen tufts to dry; and Jose called me
back to my spell at the helm before I had finished gazing. And in less
than half an hour the landmark of the ancient house was fading in the
dew-fog.
Our ship's company amounted to no less than four, all hands told--viz.,
Captain Bethel Jose, _alias_ Fuzzy; Isaac Hutchings, the mate; my humble
self (who found it my duty to supersede Ikey and appoint myself); and a
boy of general incapacity, and of the name of "Bang."
Making fine weather as we did, and with myself at the helm all night,
and taking command (as my skill required), we slanted across Channel
very sweetly; and when the grey of morning broke, Lundy Isle was on our
lee-bow. Hereupon I gave the helm to old Ike, for beyond this was
unknown to me, and Providence had never led me over Barnstaple bar as
yet. So I tumbled in, and turned up no more until we were close on the
bar itself, about ten o'clock of the forenoon. This is a thoroughly
dangerous place, a meeting of treacherous winds and waters, in amongst
uncertain shoaling, and would be worse than our Sker-weathers if it lay
open to south-west gales. We waited for the tide, and then slipped over
very cleverly, with Hartland Point on our starboard beam; and presently
we found ourselves in a fine broad open water, with plenty of grey
stretch going along it, and green hills tufting away from it. Everything
looked so mild and handsome, that I wondered whether these men of
Devonshire might not be such fools for bragging after all, when tested.
Because, when I found no means to escape this degrading voyage to
Devonshire, I had said to myself that at any rate it would enable me to
peg down those people for the future. Not that they boasted, so to
speak, but that they held their tongues at our boasts; as much as to
say, "You may talk if you please; it does you good; and our land is such
that we never need contradict you."
But now when I saw these ins and outs, and ups and downs, and cornering
places, and the wrinkles of the valleys, and the cheeks of the very
rocks, set with green as bright and lively (after a burning summer) as
our own country can show in May, I began to think--though I would not
say it, through patriotic unwillingness--that the people who lived in
such land as this could well afford to hold their tongues, and hearken
our talk with pleasure. Captain Fuzzy said no word, to show that he was
home again; neither did he care to ask my opinion about the look of it.
And old Ike treating me likewise, though he ought to have known much
better, there I found myself compelled by my natural desire to know all
about my fellow-creatures, to carry on what must have been a most highly
flattering patronage towards the boy who did our slop-work, and whose
name was "Bang," because everybody banged him.
This boy, forgetting the respect which is due to the mate of a ship of
commerce--for I now assumed that position legally, over the head of old
Ikey, who acknowledged my rank when announced to him--this ignorant boy
had the insolence to give me a clumsy nudge, and inquire--
"Du 'e knaw thiccy peart over yanner? Them down-plasses, and them zandy
backs?"
"My boy," I replied, "I have not the honour of knowing anything about
them. Very likely you think a good deal of them."
"Whai, thee must be a born vule. Them be Braunton Burrusses!"
"Be them indeed? Take this, my boy, for such valuable information." And
I gave him a cuff of an earnest nature, such as he rarely obtained,
perhaps, and well calculated to be of timely service to him. He howled a
good bit, and attempted to kick; whereupon I raised him from his natural
level, and made his head acquainted with the nature of the foremast,
preserving my temper quite admirably, but bearing in mind the great
importance of impressing discipline at an early age. And I reaped a
well-deserved reward in his lifelong gratitude and respect.
While Bang went below to complete his weeping, and to find some plaster,
I began to take accurate observation of these Braunton Burrows, of which
I had often heard before from the Devonshire men, who frequent our coast
for the purpose of stealing coal or limestone. An up-and-down sort of a
place it appeared, as I made it out with my spy-glass; and I could not
perceive that it beat our sands, as those good people declared of it.
Only I noticed that these sandhills were of a different hue from ours.
Not so bare and yellow-faced, not so swept by western winds, neither
with their tops thrown up like the peak of a new volcano. Rushes,
spurge, and goose-foot grasses, and the rib-leafed iris, and in hollow
places cat's-mint, loose-strife, and low eye-bright--these and a
thousand other plants seemed to hold the flaky surface so as not to fly
like ours. Ike broke silence, which to him was worse than breaking his
own windows, and said that all for leagues around was full of giants and
great spectres. Moreover, that all of it long had been found an unkid
and unholy place, bad for a man to walk in, and swarming with great
creatures, striped the contrary way to all good-luck, and having eight
legs every side, and a great horn crawling after them. And their food
all night was known to be travellers' skulls and sailors' bones. Having
seen a good deal of land-crabs, I scarcely dared to deny the story, and
yet I could hardly make it out. Therefore, without giving vent to
opinions of things which might turn out otherwise, I levelled my
spy-glass again at the region of which I had heard such a strange
account. And suddenly here I beheld a man of no common appearance,
wandering in and out the hollows, as if he never meant to stop; a tall
man with a long grey beard, and wearing a cocked-hat like a colonel.
There was something about him that startled me, and drew my whole
attention. Therefore, with my perspective glass not long ago cleaned,
and set ship-shape by a man who understood the bearings--after that
rogue of a Hezekiah had done his best to spoil it--with this honest
magnifier (the only one that tells no lies) I carefully followed up and
down the figure, some three cables'-lengths away, of this strange walker
among the sandhills. We were in smooth water now, gliding gently up the
river, with the mainsail paying over just enough for steerage-way; and
so I got my level truly, and could follow every step.
It was a fine old-fashioned man, tall and very upright, with a broad
ribbon upon his breast, and something of metal shining; and his Hessian
boots flashed now and then as he passed along with a stately stride. His
beard was like a streak of silver, and his forehead broad and white; but
all the rest of his face was dark, as if from foreign service. His dress
seemed to be of a rich black velvet, very choice and costly, and a long
sword hung at his side, although so many gentlemen now have ceased to
carry even a rapier. I like to see them carry their swords--it shows
that they can command themselves; but what touched me most with feeling
was his manner of going on. He seemed to be searching, ever searching,
up the hills and down the hollows, through the troughs and on the
breastlands, in the shadow and the sunlight, seeking for some precious
loss.
After watching this figure some little time, it was natural that I
should grow desirous to know something more about him; especially as I
obtained an idea, in spite of the distance and different dress, that I
had seen some one like this gentleman not such a very long time ago. But
I could not recall to my mind who it was that was hovering on the skirts
of it; therefore I looked around for help. Ike Hutchings, my under-mate,
was at the tiller, but I durst not lend him my glass, because he knew
not one end from the other; so I shouted aloud for Captain Jose, and
begged him to take a good look, and tell me everything that he knew or
thought. He just set his eye, and then shut up the glass, and handed it
to me without a word and walked off, as if I were nobody! This vexed me,
so that I holloaed out: "Are all of you gone downright mad on this side
of the Channel? Can't a man ask a civil question, and get a civil
answer?"
"When he axeth what consarneth him," was the only answer Captain Fuzzy
vouchsafed me over his shoulder.
I could not find it worth my while to quarrel with this ignorant man for
the sake of a foolish word or two, considering how morose he was, and
kept the keys of everything. For the moment, I could not help regretting
my wholesome chastisement of the boy Bang; for he would have told me at
least all he knew, if I could have taught him to take a good look. And
as for Ike, when I went and tried him, whether it was that he failed of
my meaning, or that he chose to pretend to do so (on account of my
having deposed him), or that he truly knew nothing at all--at any rate,
I got nothing from him. This was, indeed, a heavy trial. It is
acknowleged that we have such hearts, and strength of goodwill to the
universe, and power of entering into things, that not a Welshman of us
is there but yearns to know all that can be said about every one he has
ever seen, or heard, or even thought of. And this kind will, instead of
being at all repressed by discouragement, increases tenfold in
proportion as others manifest any unkind desire to keep themselves out
of the way of it. My certy, no low curiosity is this, but lofty
sympathy.
My grandfather nine generations back, Yorath the celebrated bard, begins
perhaps his most immortal ode to a gentleman who had given him a quart
of beer with this noble moral precept: "Lift up your eyes to the castle
gates and behold on how small a hinge they move! The iron is an inch and
a quarter thick, the gates are an hundred and fifty feet wide!" And
though the gates of my history are not quite so wide as that, they often
move on a hinge even less than an inch and a quarter in thickness;
though I must not be too sure, of course, as to the substance of Bang's
head. However, allow even two inches for it, and it seems but a very
trifling matter to tell as it did upon great adventures. The boy was as
sound as a boy need be in a couple of hours afterwards, except that he
had, or pretended to have, a kind of a buzzing in one ear; and I found
him so grateful for my correction, that I could not bear to urge his
head with inquiries for the moment.
To Captain Fuzzy I said no more. If he could not see the advantage of
attending to his own business, but must needs go out of his way to
administer public reproof to me, I could only be sorry for him. To Ikey,
however, I put some questions of a general tendency; but from his
barbarous broken English--if this jargon could be called English at
all--the only thing I could gather was, that none but true Devonshire
folk had a right to ask about Devonshire families. This might be true
to a certain extent, though I never have seen such a law laid down. The
answer, however, is perfectly simple. If these people carry on in a
manner that cannot fail to draw public attention, they attack us at once
on our tenderest point, and tenfold so if they are our betters; for what
man of common-sense could admit the idea of anybody setting up to be
nobody? Therefore I felt myself quite ready to give a week's pay and
victuals, in that state of life to which God alone could have seen fit
to call me--as mate of that Devonshire ketch, or hoy, or tub, or
whatever it might be--four shillings and a bag of suet-dumplings, twice
a-day, I would have given, to understand upon the spot all about that
elderly gentleman.
It helped me very little, indeed, that I kept on saying to myself, "This
matters not; 'tis a few hours only. The moment we get to Barnstaple, I
shall find some women;--the women can never help telling everything, and
for the most part ten times that. Only contradict them bravely, and they
have no silence left." However, it helped me not a little when Captain
Fuzzy, with a duck of his head, tumbled up from the cuddy, brimful, as
we saw, of the dinner-time. A man of my experience, who has lived for
six weeks on the horns of sea-snails, which the officers found too hard
for them, that time we were wrecked in the Palamede--what can a man of
this kind feel when a trumpery coaster dares to pipe all hands to
dinner?
However, it so happened for the moment that what I felt was appetite:
and Fuzzy, who was a first-rate cook, and knew seasoning without
counting, had brought an iron ladle up, so as to save his words, and yet
to give us some idea. Soup it was of a sort, that set us thinking of all
the meat under it. I blew upon it, and tasted a drop, and found that
other people's business would keep till at least after dinner. In the
midst of dinner we came to the meeting of two fine rivers, called Tawe
and Torridge, and with the tide still making strong we slanted up the
former. The channel was given to twists and turns, but the fine open
valley made up for it, and the wealth of land on either side, sloping
with green meadows gently, and winding in and out with trees. Here were
cattle, as red as chesnuts, running about with tails like spankers, such
as I never saw before; but Ikey gave me to understand that the colour of
the earth was the cause of it, and that if I lived long upon corned beef
made of them (whose quality no other land could create), I should be
turned to that hue myself. At this I laughed, as a sailor's yarn; but
after regarding him steadfastly, and then gazing again at the bullocks,
I thought there might be some truth in it.
One thing I will say of these sons of Devon: rough they may be, and
short of grain, and fond of their own opinions, and not well up in
points of law--which is our very nature--queer, moreover, in thought and
word, and obstinate as hedgehogs,--yet they show, and truly have, a kind
desire to feed one well. Money they have no great love of spending round
the corner, neither will they go surety freely for any man who is free
to run; but "vittels," as they call them, "vittels!"--before you have
been in a house two minutes out come these, and eat you must! Happily,
upon this point I was able to afford them large and increasing
satisfaction, having rarely enjoyed so fine a means of pleasing myself
and others also. For the things are good, and the people too; and it
takes a bad man to gainsay either.