HARD IT IS TO CLIMB
[Illustration: 051.jpg Illustrated Capital]
So many a winter night went by in a hopeful and pleasant manner, with
the hissing of the bright round bullets, cast into the water, and the
spluttering of the great red apples which Annie was roasting for me. We
always managed our evening's work in the chimney of the back-kitchen,
where there was room to set chairs and table, in spite of the fire
burning. On the right-hand side was a mighty oven, where Betty
threatened to bake us; and on the left, long sides of bacon, made of
favoured pigs, and growing very brown and comely. Annie knew the names
of all, and ran up through the wood-smoke, every now and then, when a
gentle memory moved her, and asked them how they were getting on, and
when they would like to be eaten. Then she came back with foolish tears,
at thinking of that necessity; and I, being soft in a different way,
would make up my mind against bacon.
But, Lord bless you! it was no good. Whenever it came to breakfast-time,
after three hours upon the moors, I regularly forgot the pigs, but paid
good heed to the rashers. For ours is a hungry county, if such there
be in England; a place, I mean, where men must eat, and are quick to
discharge the duty. The air of the moors is so shrewd and wholesome,
stirring a man's recollection of the good things which have betided him,
and whetting his hope of something still better in the future, that by
the time he sits down to a cloth, his heart and stomach are tuned too
well to say “nay” to one another.
Almost everybody knows, in our part of the world at least, how pleasant
and soft the fall of the land is round about Plover's Barrows farm. All
above it is strong dark mountain, spread with heath, and desolate, but
near our house the valleys cove, and open warmth and shelter. Here are
trees, and bright green grass, and orchards full of contentment, and
a man may scarce espy the brook, although he hears it everywhere. And
indeed a stout good piece of it comes through our farm-yard, and swells
sometimes to a rush of waves, when the clouds are on the hill-tops. But
all below, where the valley bends, and the Lynn stream comes along with
it, pretty meadows slope their breast, and the sun spreads on the water.
And nearly all of this is ours, till you come to Nicholas Snowe's land.
But about two miles below our farm, the Bagworthy water runs into
the Lynn, and makes a real river of it. Thence it hurries away, with
strength and a force of wilful waters, under the foot of a barefaced
hill, and so to rocks and woods again, where the stream is covered over,
and dark, heavy pools delay it. There are plenty of fish all down this
way, and the farther you go the larger they get, having deeper grounds
to feed in; and sometimes in the summer months, when mother could spare
me off the farm, I came down here, with Annie to help (because it was so
lonely), and caught well-nigh a basketful of little trout and minnows,
with a hook and a bit of worm on it, or a fern-web, or a blow-fly, hung
from a hazel pulse-stick. For of all the things I learned at Blundell's,
only two abode with me, and one of these was the knack of fishing, and
the other the art of swimming. And indeed they have a very rude manner
of teaching children to swim there; for the big boys take the little
boys, and put them through a certain process, which they grimly call
“sheep-washing.” In the third meadow from the gate of the school, going
up the river, there is a fine pool in the Lowman, where the Taunton
brook comes in, and they call it the Taunton Pool. The water runs down
with a strong sharp stickle, and then has a sudden elbow in it, where
the small brook trickles in; and on that side the bank is steep, four or
it may be five feet high, overhanging loamily; but on the other side it
is flat, pebbly, and fit to land upon. Now the large boys take the small
boys, crying sadly for mercy, and thinking mayhap, of their mothers,
with hands laid well at the back of their necks, they bring them up to
the crest of the bank upon the eastern side, and make them strip their
clothes off. Then the little boys, falling on their naked knees, blubber
upwards piteously; but the large boys know what is good for them, and
will not be entreated. So they cast them down, one after other into the
splash of the water, and watch them go to the bottom first, and then
come up and fight for it, with a blowing and a bubbling. It is a very
fair sight to watch when you know there is little danger, because,
although the pool is deep, the current is sure to wash a boy up on the
stones, where the end of the depth is. As for me, they had no need to
throw me more than once, because I jumped of my own accord, thinking
small things of the Lowman, after the violent Lynn. Nevertheless, I
learnt to swim there, as all the other boys did; for the greatest point
in learning that is to find that you must do it. I loved the water
naturally, and could not long be out of it; but even the boys who hated
it most, came to swim in some fashion or other, after they had been
flung for a year or two into the Taunton pool.
But now, although my sister Annie came to keep me company, and was not
to be parted from me by the tricks of the Lynn stream, because I put her
on my back and carried her across, whenever she could not leap it, or
tuck up her things and take the stones; yet so it happened that neither
of us had been up the Bagworthy water. We knew that it brought a good
stream down, as full of fish as of pebbles; and we thought that it must
be very pretty to make a way where no way was, nor even a bullock came
down to drink. But whether we were afraid or not, I am sure I cannot
tell, because it is so long ago; but I think that had something to do
with it. For Bagworthy water ran out of Doone valley, a mile or so from
the mouth of it.
But when I was turned fourteen years old, and put into good
small-clothes, buckled at the knee, and strong blue worsted hosen,
knitted by my mother, it happened to me without choice, I may say, to
explore the Bagworthy water. And it came about in this wise.
My mother had long been ailing, and not well able to eat much; and there
is nothing that frightens us so much as for people to have no love of
their victuals. Now I chanced to remember that once at the time of
the holidays I had brought dear mother from Tiverton a jar of pickled
loaches, caught by myself in the Lowman river, and baked in the kitchen
oven, with vinegar, a few leaves of bay, and about a dozen pepper-corns.
And mother had said that in all her life she had never tasted anything
fit to be compared with them. Whether she said so good a thing out of
compliment to my skill in catching the fish and cooking them, or whether
she really meant it, is more than I can tell, though I quite believe
the latter, and so would most people who tasted them; at any rate, I
now resolved to get some loaches for her, and do them in the self-same
manner, just to make her eat a bit.
There are many people, even now, who have not come to the right
knowledge what a loach is, and where he lives, and how to catch and
pickle him. And I will not tell them all about it, because if I did,
very likely there would be no loaches left ten or twenty years after the
appearance of this book. A pickled minnow is very good if you catch him
in a stickle, with the scarlet fingers upon him; but I count him no more
than the ropes in beer compared with a loach done properly.
Being resolved to catch some loaches, whatever trouble it cost me, I set
forth without a word to any one, in the forenoon of St. Valentine's
day, 1675-6, I think it must have been. Annie should not come with me,
because the water was too cold; for the winter had been long, and snow
lay here and there in patches in the hollow of the banks, like a lady's
gloves forgotten. And yet the spring was breaking forth, as it always
does in Devonshire, when the turn of the days is over; and though there
was little to see of it, the air was full of feeling.
It puzzles me now, that I remember all those young impressions so,
because I took no heed of them at the time whatever; and yet they
come upon me bright, when nothing else is evident in the gray fog
of experience. I am like an old man gazing at the outside of his
spectacles, and seeing, as he rubs the dust, the image of his grandson
playing at bo-peep with him.
But let me be of any age, I never could forget that day, and how bitter
cold the water was. For I doffed my shoes and hose, and put them into
a bag about my neck; and left my little coat at home, and tied my
shirt-sleeves back to my shoulders. Then I took a three-pronged fork
firmly bound to a rod with cord, and a piece of canvas kerchief, with
a lump of bread inside it; and so went into the pebbly water, trying to
think how warm it was. For more than a mile all down the Lynn stream,
scarcely a stone I left unturned, being thoroughly skilled in the tricks
of the loach, and knowing how he hides himself. For being gray-spotted,
and clear to see through, and something like a cuttle-fish, only more
substantial, he will stay quite still where a streak of weed is in the
rapid water, hoping to be overlooked, not caring even to wag his tail.
Then being disturbed he flips away, like whalebone from the finger, and
hies to a shelf of stone, and lies with his sharp head poked in under
it; or sometimes he bellies him into the mud, and only shows his
back-ridge. And that is the time to spear him nicely, holding the fork
very gingerly, and allowing for the bent of it, which comes to pass, I
know not how, at the tickle of air and water.
Or if your loach should not be abroad when first you come to look for
him, but keeping snug in his little home, then you may see him come
forth amazed at the quivering of the shingles, and oar himself and look
at you, and then dart up-stream, like a little grey streak; and then you
must try to mark him in, and follow very daintily. So after that, in a
sandy place, you steal up behind his tail to him, so that he cannot set
eyes on you, for his head is up-stream always, and there you see him
abiding still, clear, and mild, and affable. Then, as he looks so
innocent, you make full sure to prog him well, in spite of the wry of
the water, and the sun making elbows to everything, and the trembling
of your fingers. But when you gird at him lovingly, and have as good as
gotten him, lo! in the go-by of the river he is gone as a shadow goes,
and only a little cloud of mud curls away from the points of the fork.
A long way down that limpid water, chill and bright as an iceberg, went
my little self that day on man's choice errand--destruction. All
the young fish seemed to know that I was one who had taken out God's
certificate, and meant to have the value of it; every one of them was
aware that we desolate more than replenish the earth. For a cow
might come and look into the water, and put her yellow lips down; a
kingfisher, like a blue arrow, might shoot through the dark alleys over
the channel, or sit on a dipping withy-bough with his beak sunk into his
breast-feathers; even an otter might float downstream likening himself
to a log of wood, with his flat head flush with the water-top, and his
oily eyes peering quietly; and yet no panic would seize other life, as
it does when a sample of man comes.
Now let not any one suppose that I thought of these things when I was
young, for I knew not the way to do it. And proud enough in truth I
was at the universal fear I spread in all those lonely places, where I
myself must have been afraid, if anything had come up to me. It is
all very pretty to see the trees big with their hopes of another year,
though dumb as yet on the subject, and the waters murmuring gaiety,
and the banks spread out with comfort; but a boy takes none of this to
heart; unless he be meant for a poet (which God can never charge upon
me), and he would liefer have a good apple, or even a bad one, if he
stole it.
When I had travelled two miles or so, conquered now and then with cold,
and coming out to rub my legs into a lively friction, and only fishing
here and there, because of the tumbling water; suddenly, in an open
space, where meadows spread about it, I found a good stream flowing
softly into the body of our brook. And it brought, so far as I could
guess by the sweep of it under my knee-caps, a larger power of clear
water than the Lynn itself had; only it came more quietly down, not
being troubled with stairs and steps, as the fortune of the Lynn is, but
gliding smoothly and forcibly, as if upon some set purpose.
Hereupon I drew up and thought, and reason was much inside me; because
the water was bitter cold, and my little toes were aching. So on the
bank I rubbed them well with a sprout of young sting-nettle, and having
skipped about awhile, was kindly inclined to eat a bit.
Now all the turn of all my life hung upon that moment. But as I sat
there munching a crust of Betty Muxworthy's sweet brown bread, and a bit
of cold bacon along with it, and kicking my little red heels against the
dry loam to keep them warm, I knew no more than fish under the fork what
was going on over me. It seemed a sad business to go back now and tell
Annie there were no loaches; and yet it was a frightful thing, knowing
what I did of it, to venture, where no grown man durst, up the Bagworthy
water. And please to recollect that I was only a boy in those days, fond
enough of anything new, but not like a man to meet it.
However, as I ate more and more, my spirit arose within me, and I
thought of what my father had been, and how he had told me a hundred
times never to be a coward. And then I grew warm, and my little heart
was ashamed of its pit-a-patting, and I said to myself, “now if father
looks, he shall see that I obey him.” So I put the bag round my back
again, and buckled my breeches far up from the knee, expecting deeper
water, and crossing the Lynn, went stoutly up under the branches which
hang so dark on the Bagworthy river.
I found it strongly over-woven, turned, and torn with thicket-wood, but
not so rocky as the Lynn, and more inclined to go evenly. There were
bars of chafed stakes stretched from the sides half-way across the
current, and light outriders of pithy weed, and blades of last year's
water-grass trembling in the quiet places, like a spider's threads, on
the transparent stillness, with a tint of olive moving it. And here and
there the sun came in, as if his light was sifted, making dance upon the
waves, and shadowing the pebbles.
Here, although affrighted often by the deep, dark places, and feeling
that every step I took might never be taken backward, on the whole I
had very comely sport of loaches, trout, and minnows, forking some, and
tickling some, and driving others to shallow nooks, whence I could bail
them ashore. Now, if you have ever been fishing, you will not wonder
that I was led on, forgetting all about danger, and taking no heed of
the time, but shouting in a childish way whenever I caught a “whacker”
(as we called a big fish at Tiverton); and in sooth there were very
fine loaches here, having more lie and harbourage than in the rough Lynn
stream, though not quite so large as in the Lowman, where I have even
taken them to the weight of half a pound.
But in answer to all my shouts there never was any sound at all, except
of a rocky echo, or a scared bird hustling away, or the sudden dive of a
water-vole; and the place grew thicker and thicker, and the covert grew
darker above me, until I thought that the fishes might have good chance
of eating me, instead of my eating the fishes.
For now the day was falling fast behind the brown of the hill-tops, and
the trees, being void of leaf and hard, seemed giants ready to beat me.
And every moment as the sky was clearing up for a white frost, the cold
of the water got worse and worse, until I was fit to cry with it. And
so, in a sorry plight, I came to an opening in the bushes, where a great
black pool lay in front of me, whitened with snow (as I thought) at the
sides, till I saw it was only foam-froth.
Now, though I could swim with great ease and comfort, and feared no
depth of water, when I could fairly come to it, yet I had no desire to
go over head and ears into this great pool, being so cramped and weary,
and cold enough in all conscience, though wet only up to the middle,
not counting my arms and shoulders. And the look of this black pit was
enough to stop one from diving into it, even on a hot summer's day with
sunshine on the water; I mean, if the sun ever shone there. As it was, I
shuddered and drew back; not alone at the pool itself and the black
air there was about it, but also at the whirling manner, and wisping of
white threads upon it in stripy circles round and round; and the centre
still as jet.
But soon I saw the reason of the stir and depth of that great pit, as
well as of the roaring sound which long had made me wonder. For skirting
round one side, with very little comfort, because the rocks were high
and steep, and the ledge at the foot so narrow, I came to a sudden sight
and marvel, such as I never dreamed of. For, lo! I stood at the foot of
a long pale slide of water, coming smoothly to me, without any break or
hindrance, for a hundred yards or more, and fenced on either side with
cliff, sheer, and straight, and shining. The water neither ran nor fell,
nor leaped with any spouting, but made one even slope of it, as if it
had been combed or planed, and looking like a plank of deal laid down a
deep black staircase. However, there was no side-rail, nor any place to
walk upon, only the channel a fathom wide, and the perpendicular walls
of crag shutting out the evening.
[Illustration: 058.jpg A long pale slide of water]
The look of this place had a sad effect, scaring me very greatly, and
making me feel that I would give something only to be at home again,
with Annie cooking my supper, and our dog Watch sniffing upward. But
nothing would come of wishing; that I had long found out; and it only
made one the less inclined to work without white feather. So I laid the
case before me in a little council; not for loss of time, but only that
I wanted rest, and to see things truly.
Then says I to myself--“John Ridd, these trees, and pools, and lonesome
rocks, and setting of the sunlight are making a gruesome coward of thee.
Shall I go back to my mother so, and be called her fearless boy?”
Nevertheless, I am free to own that it was not any fine sense of shame
which settled my decision; for indeed there was nearly as much of danger
in going back as in going on, and perhaps even more of labour, the
journey being so roundabout. But that which saved me from turning back
was a strange inquisitive desire, very unbecoming in a boy of little
years; in a word, I would risk a great deal to know what made the water
come down like that, and what there was at the top of it.
Therefore, seeing hard strife before me, I girt up my breeches anew,
with each buckle one hole tighter, for the sodden straps were stretching
and giving, and mayhap my legs were grown smaller from the coldness
of it. Then I bestowed my fish around my neck more tightly, and not
stopping to look much, for fear of fear, crawled along over the fork of
rocks, where the water had scooped the stone out, and shunning thus the
ledge from whence it rose like the mane of a white horse into the broad
black pool, softly I let my feet into the dip and rush of the torrent.
And here I had reckoned without my host, although (as I thought) so
clever; and it was much but that I went down into the great black pool,
and had never been heard of more; and this must have been the end of me,
except for my trusty loach-fork. For the green wave came down like great
bottles upon me, and my legs were gone off in a moment, and I had not
time to cry out with wonder, only to think of my mother and Annie, and
knock my head very sadly, which made it go round so that brains were
no good, even if I had any. But all in a moment, before I knew aught,
except that I must die out of the way, with a roar of water upon me, my
fork, praise God stuck fast in the rock, and I was borne up upon it. I
felt nothing except that here was another matter to begin upon; and it
might be worth while, or again it might not, to have another fight for
it. But presently the dash of the water upon my face revived me, and my
mind grew used to the roar of it, and meseemed I had been worse off than
this, when first flung into the Lowman.
Therefore I gathered my legs back slowly, as if they were fish to be
landed, stopping whenever the water flew too strongly off my shin-bones,
and coming along without sticking out to let the wave get hold of
me. And in this manner I won a footing, leaning well forward like a
draught-horse, and balancing on my strength as it were, with the ashen
stake set behind me. Then I said to my self, “John Ridd, the sooner you
get yourself out by the way you came, the better it will be for you.”
But to my great dismay and affright, I saw that no choice was left me
now, except that I must climb somehow up that hill of water, or else be
washed down into the pool and whirl around it till it drowned me. For
there was no chance of fetching back by the way I had gone down into
it, and further up was a hedge of rock on either side of the waterway,
rising a hundred yards in height, and for all I could tell five hundred,
and no place to set a foot in.
Having said the Lord's Prayer (which was all I knew), and made a very
bad job of it, I grasped the good loach-stick under a knot, and steadied
me with my left hand, and so with a sigh of despair began my course up
the fearful torrent-way. To me it seemed half a mile at least of sliding
water above me, but in truth it was little more than a furlong, as I
came to know afterwards. It would have been a hard ascent even without
the slippery slime and the force of the river over it, and I had scanty
hope indeed of ever winning the summit. Nevertheless, my terror left
me, now I was face to face with it, and had to meet the worst; and I set
myself to do my best with a vigour and sort of hardness which did not
then surprise me, but have done so ever since.
The water was only six inches deep, or from that to nine at the utmost,
and all the way up I could see my feet looking white in the gloom of
the hollow, and here and there I found resting-place, to hold on by the
cliff and pant awhile. And gradually as I went on, a warmth of courage
breathed in me, to think that perhaps no other had dared to try that
pass before me, and to wonder what mother would say to it. And then came
thought of my father also, and the pain of my feet abated.
How I went carefully, step by step, keeping my arms in front of me, and
never daring to straighten my knees is more than I can tell clearly, or
even like now to think of, because it makes me dream of it. Only I must
acknowledge that the greatest danger of all was just where I saw no
jeopardy, but ran up a patch of black ooze-weed in a very boastful
manner, being now not far from the summit.
Here I fell very piteously, and was like to have broken my knee-cap, and
the torrent got hold of my other leg while I was indulging the bruised
one. And then a vile knotting of cramp disabled me, and for awhile I
could only roar, till my mouth was full of water, and all of my body was
sliding. But the fright of that brought me to again, and my elbow caught
in a rock-hole; and so I managed to start again, with the help of more
humility.
Now being in the most dreadful fright, because I was so near the top,
and hope was beating within me, I laboured hard with both legs and arms,
going like a mill and grunting. At last the rush of forked water, where
first it came over the lips of the fall, drove me into the middle, and
I stuck awhile with my toe-balls on the slippery links of the pop-weed,
and the world was green and gliddery, and I durst not look behind me.
Then I made up my mind to die at last; for so my legs would ache no
more, and my breath not pain my heart so; only it did seem such a pity
after fighting so long to give in, and the light was coming upon me, and
again I fought towards it; then suddenly I felt fresh air, and fell into
it headlong.