"Adieu, adieu; my native land
Fades o'er the waters blue;
The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar,
And shrieks the wild sea-mew.
Yon sun that sets upon the sea
We follow in his flight;
Farewell awhile to him and thee,
My native land, good-night."
Byron.
Scene: Kenneth and Archie still seated in the verandah of the Spaniard's
cottage. The light from the casement window is streaming outwards
through the creepers and climbing plants all around them; the beautiful
bell-like flowers, down-drooping, touch their very faces. But all the
colour up there in the verandah's roof does not belong to these flowers.
No, for birds are sheltering their bright wings from the night dews;
that rich orange spot in the corner is a bird, so is that patch of
crimson and steel, and yonder one of snow-white and blue. If you looked
steadily for a moment at them, you could see round heads turned
downwards and wondering beads of eyes. The birds are considering
whether or not all is safe, or whether they had better fly away out into
the night and the darkness.
Kenneth is waiting for the Senor to come. There is hardly a sound
except a gentle sighing of wind among the trees, now and then the shriek
of a night bird, the constant chirp of cicada, or rap, rap, rap, of
green lizard as he beats to death some unhappy moth he has captured.
"Now, Senor, come and sit you down. Light your great pipe. That is
right. Thanks, yes, both Archie and I will have a little palm-leaf
cigarette. Coffee? Oh! delightful! Archie: old man, there isn't any
one in all the wide world ever made coffee half so well as the Senor
Gasco. Flattery, Senor? No, not a bit of it. The truth cannot be
flattery."
"The coffee," said Archie, "is delicious."
"Heigho!" sighed Kenneth. "I am so happy to-night, dear Archie. I
believe it will really do me good to tell you of some of the troubles I
have come through; it will dilute my joy.
"I don't know, Archie, old man, how ever I became a sailor. I'm not
quite sure, mind you, that I am altogether a sailor yet at heart, though
I dearly love the sea, and a roving life is _the_ life for a man of my
temperament. Senor is smiling; he will never admit I am a man. But I
have come through _so_ much, and the years I have spent since I left the
dear old glen have been indeed eventful, and seem a long, long time.
"But, Archie, lad, when I began my wanderings through the world, I can
tell you my ambition was very great indeed. I determined, you know, to
make my fortune, and I determined to make it in a very short time. The
details of the process of fortune-manufacture, however, didn't present
themselves to me, all at once anyhow. I turned my back on Glen Alva,
and so full was my heart that I put at least ten miles behind me before
I sat down to rest. I got inside a wood at last, and seated myself
beneath a tree, and counted my money, three shillings and
fivepence-halfpenny! Well, many a man has begun the world on less.
"But this money couldn't last long. What then should I do? I'll tell
you what I did do. I fell sound asleep, and the sun was setting when I
awoke, and flooding all the wood with mellow light.
"There was a blackbird came and perched half-way up a neighbouring
spruce tree and began fluting.
"`Oh!' I said half aloud, `two of us can flute.'
"So the blackbird and I piped away there till it got nearly dark. But I
felt hungry now, and music is not very filling, Archie. So I put up my
flute and started to my feet; I felt stiff now, but it soon wore off.
"I went on and on and on, getting hungrier every minute, but there was
no sign of village or house. I drank some water from a rill that came
tumbling down through a bank of ferns, and felt better.
"I was beginning to wonder where I should sleep, when the sound of merry
laughing voices fell upon my ear. The party, whoever it was, came
rapidly on towards me from among the trees.
"`Hullo, lad!' said one; `are ye comin' to the dance?'
"`Dance!' I cried; `why, my feet are all one bag of blisters, and I'm
faint with hunger. Dance, indeed!'
"`It's a puir beggar laddie,' said a girl, whose face I could hardly see
in the uncertain light.
"`Beggar!' I exclaimed. `Who d'ye call a beggar? I've a whole
pocketful of money, only I've lost the road.'
"`Come along, then,' they all cried. `Come along with us.'
"And off we all went singing. We struck off the road down across the
fields, and soon I heard the music of a fiddle and saw bright lights. A
young man came out of a farmhouse to welcome us. He told us dolefully
that only one fiddler had come, and plaintively asked what could be
done.
"`I've a flute,' I cried.
"`Hurrah!' they answered. `Come in, my boy.'
"`The laddie maun eat first,' said the girl who had called me a beggar.
"I blessed her with all my heart, though not in words.
"What a supper they gave me! And didn't I eat just! I could play now,
and we spent such a joyful night, and dawn was breaking and the
blackbirds up and fluting again long before the merry party broke up.
"I got a bed and slept far into the day; then, after a good dinner from
these kind-hearted farm folks, I began my journey in search of fortune
once more.
"By evening I saw great grey clouds lying in the hollows before me. It
was smoke. I was nearing Glasgow, and in two hours more I was walking
along the Broomielaw.
"I had never seen so many people before in my life, but hardly anybody
looked at the shepherd lad in Highland garb. I determined they should,
though. I put my flute together, and standing near the bridge,
commenced to play `The Flowers of the Forest.'
"Was it the singular plaintiveness of this beautiful air, I wonder, or
was it that my thoughts were away back again in the glen I had left, and
with those I loved so dearly? I do not know, but I seemed to become
oblivious to everything. My very soul was breathed into the music; I
was speaking and appealing to the crowd through the instrument.
"The crowd! Yes, there was a crowd. I became aware of that as soon as
I had finished, and money, piece after piece, was forced into my hand.
I took the money. I felt ashamed of it next moment, but to have gone
off then would have seemed ungrateful. I played still another air.
Again I paused.
"`No more money,' I cried aloud as I fled away.
"They must have thought the Highland boy was mad.
"Some time afterwards I found myself standing at a book-seller's window
looking at a picture, a ship, a gallant ship in a gale of wind.
"How I longed to be at sea then! How I hated the bustle and stir and
talking and noise all round me! That splendid ship--the sea was wild
and rough all around her, the spray dashing over her bows; there would
be the roar of the wind through rigging and shroud, and the wild scream
of sea bird rising high over the dash of the waves. She bore it well;
the sheets were taut; the sails were rounded out and full. How I longed
to be at sea!
"A hand was laid on my shoulder. I started and looked up. No need to
start.
"A kindly face looked down into mine.
"`You are in grief of some kind, my boy,' he said, this white-haired old
gentleman. `Nay, don't be too proud to admit it. Pride has been the
downfall of the Highland race.'
"`If you please, sir,' I replied, boldly enough now, `the Highlanders
are not a downfallen race.'
"`I did not mean it in that way,' he said, smiling at my vehemence.
`But come with me, boy; I know we will be friendly.'
"Where he took me, or what he said to me, I need not tell you.
"Suffice it to say that next day we left Scotland and journeyed south by
rail, and I wept--yes, I do not now think it shame to say so, though I
struggled then to hide my tears--I wept to cross the border.
"`It will be such a pleasant change for you, my dear boy,' said good old
Major Walton--for that was the gentleman's name, and he had quite taken
to me after hearing all my story--`a delightful change indeed after your
own bleak, cold, wild hills. We have a very pretty home in Hampshire.
You'll soon forget you were ever anywhere else.'
"The Major's home was indeed a very nice one; close to the borders of
the New Forest it was, and not a great way from the sea.
"But ah! Archie, lad, everything was very foreign to me; the very trees
looked strange and uncouth, especially the docked pollards, that stood
by the banks of the sluggish streams. The style of the houses was
strange to me, and the lingo and talk of the people, who, in my opinion,
were terribly ignorant.
"The Major was kindness itself, and so were his wife, her sister, and
two children. The major had but one hobby--music. He played the violin
himself, and he told me honestly that his chief reason for `taking me'--
these are his very words--was because I played with such feeling.
"My evenings were happy enough in this English home of mine; my days I
spent in the garden, where I was allowed to work, or in the great
forest. You must not imagine, Archie, the New Forest is anything like a
deer forest in our own land. There are in it no wild mountains, no deep
dark dells, no beetling crags and cliffs, no cataracts, no foaming
torrents; the red deer does not toss his wide antlers here and fly
proudly away at your approach, nor far above you in the sky do you see
the bird of Jove circling upwards round the sun.
"Wilson would never have said about the New Forest,--
"`What lovely magnificence stretches around!
Each sight how sublime, how awful each sound;
All hushed and serene, like a region of dreams,
The mountains repose 'mid the roar of the streams.'
"But many a long day I spent roaming about in this forest, nevertheless.
"I was charmed with the solitary grandeur of the place. I had no idea
it was so extensive either, or so varied in its beauties. Why, here one
might wander about for weeks and never weary, for he would always be
coming to something new. Is this the reason, I wonder, that it is
called the _New_ Forest? New in point of time it certainly cannot be
termed, for everything in it and about it is old, extremely old. The
oaks are gnarled and wrinkled, and grey with age; its elms and its ash
trees, its limes and its alders, are bent and distorted by the touch of
time, and the lichens that cling to their stems only add to their
general appearance a look of hoariness that is far from unpleasing to
the eye.
"Then the heather which covers the large sweeps of moorland that you see
here and there is very sturdy and strong, while from the furze or whins
boats' masts could be made.
"The creatures, too, that one sees while walking through this forest,
seem birds and beasts of some bygone time, and look as if they hardly,
if ever, saw a human being from one year's end to the other.
"The hares or rabbits, instead of scurrying away at your approach, sit
leisurely on one end while they wash their faces and study you. The
blackbirds and the mavises hardly trouble themselves to cease their song
even when you walk close by the trees on which they are perched. The
great beetles and other members of the coleoptera tribe are far too busy
to take the slightest notice of your presence, and the great velvety
bees go on working and humming just as if there were no such creature as
you within a thousand miles of them.
"Then the voles or water rats that live in the depths of this truly
English forest are not the least curious specimens of animal life to be
found therein. If you happen to be reclining anywhere near a pool that
by long-established custom belongs to them alone, before many minutes
one, if not two of them, will come out to stare and wonder at you; they,
like the hares, sit up on one end to conduct their scrutiny; and they
gaze and gaze and gaze again, digging their finger joints or knuckles
into their eyes, in a half-human kind of a way, to squeeze out the
water, and clear their sight for one more wondering look."
[My country readers, who love nature, must have noticed the voles at
this queer performance.]
"What is he at all? Where did he come from? What is he going to do?
These are the questions those voles seem trying in vain to solve.
"Here in this New Forest is a silence seldom broken save by the song of
bird or cry of some wild creature in pain, while all around you is a
wealth of floral beauty and verdure that is charming in the extreme.
"Yes, Archie, I came ere autumn was over to love that forest well. I
was not selfish enough, though, to keep all the pleasures of it quite to
myself, and the Major's children often accompanied me in my rambles. I
used to read Burns and Ossian to them. They liked that, but they liked
the flute far better. It appealed straight to their senses.
"But when autumn passed away, when the leaves fell, and the fields were
bleak and bare, at night, when the wind moaned around the house which I
now called home, then, Archie, I used to dream I heard the surf beating
in on the rugged shores of my native land. I would start and listen,
and long to be once more in Scotland.
"I went, one day, to the forest all alone; I went to think.
"`What are you staying here for?' perhaps said one little thought.
`Major Walton may leave you money when he dies.'
"I smothered that thought at its birth, and crushed many more like it.
"Kind good old Major Walton! I must tear myself away; I must be
independent; I must push my own way in the world.
"`Heaven help me to do so,' I prayed. Then I took out the little old
Bible Nancy had given me, Archie, and I found some comfort there.
"I was putting it back again in my bosom when a little card dropped out;
I picked it up. On it were pressed these, Archie."
Kenneth took the Book from his breast as he spoke, and opening it,
handed the card to Archie.
"I know," said the latter: "the primrose and the bit of heather."
"Yes, dear boy, foolish of me, I know; but I have never parted with
them, and if I go to Davy Jones's locker--as we sailors say--if I am
drowned, Archie, these flowers will sink with me.
"But on that winter's day in the forest, Archie, these flowers seemed to
speak to me, or rather the golden-haired child spoke to me through these
flowers. I was back again on the hills above Glen Alva walking by her
side; the sky above us was blue and clear, the clouds on the horizon
looking like snow-white feathers, and the bees making drowsy music among
the pinky heath.
"I started up, and the vision fled, and around me were only the bare
bleak forest trees and the fading heather. The vision fled, but it left
in my breast the desire stronger now than ever to make my own way in the
world, by the blessing of Providence; and Providence has never deserted
me yet, Archie, lad.
"I went straight home. I saw Major Walton, and talked to him, and told
him all.
"He seemed sorry. The last words he said to me when I went away--and
there was moisture in the old man's eyes as he spoke--were these:--
"`Mind, I'm not tired of you, and I hope to live to meet you once
again.'
"I went to Southampton next day. I thought I had nothing to do but
march on board some outward-bound ship, that they would be glad to have
me.
"Alas! I was disappointed."
[The author hopes some boy who meditates running away to sea may read
these lines.]
"I was rudely jostled and laughed at, I was called a Scot, a Sawnie, a
Johnny-raw, but work was never once offered me.
"I wandered about the streets, not knowing what to do. The few coins I
had in my possession did not last many days.
"I felt sad and unhappy. I felt almost sorry I had left the good people
who had done so much for me. The `bairnies' had been in tears when I
went away; even the black-and-tan terrier had followed me a long way
down the road, and looked very `wae and wistfu'' at me with his brown
beseeching eyes when I said he must go back.
"For two whole days I had hardly anything to eat. My flute, that I was
fain to fall back upon, failed to support me, for the English, Archie,
have not so much music and romance in their souls as the Scotch have.
But one thing the English have is this, Archie, sound common-sense and a
love of derring-do.
"I was standing one day on the pier at Plymouth. I had played my way
with my flute all this distance in the hopes of getting a ship. I was
no more successful than before.
"On this particular day, Archie, the drum was up [the storm signal], the
wind blew cold and high, and the seas tossed their white manes as they
rushed each other up the bay. I was feeling very sad and disconsolate,
when all at once I heard a voice say to a man beside me,--
"`I'll give a guinea to be taken out to yonder ship.'
"`I don't care to win no guinea,' said the fellow addressed, a hulking
boatman in a rough blue jersey. `I don't care to win no guinea on a day
like this. 'Sides, sir, I hain't got no mate.'
"`I'll go,' I cried.
"`You!' said the gentleman; `why, you're but a child.'
"`I'm a Scotch boy,' I replied, `and I know boating well.'
"`All right, my lad; jump in.'
"It took us nearly an hour, but we did it.
"I was very wet, and the gentleman kindly took me below, and gave me
warm coffee.
"`Now,' he said, `I'm going to give you half a guinea, and the man half,
for if he has to change the gold, he will cheat you.'
"`Are you captain of this ship, sir?' I asked.
"`I am, lad; I'm all that is for the captain.'
"`Well, sir,' I said, `give the man all the guinea, and take me with you
as a boy.'
"I then told him all my story.
"`We don't sail for a week,' he said, `and if in that time you get your
mother's consent, I'll be glad to have so plucky a youngster on board my
craft.'
"My dear mother gave her consent, as you know, Archie; and so I became a
sailor and a wanderer."
I have but epitomised Kenneth's story. He took much longer time to tell
it than I, the author of this little book, am doing, and besides, there
was much conversation interspersed with it betwixt him and his old
friend Archie.
The moon was high up above the forest trees before he finished, shedding
a flood of golden light over mountain and sea, so, promising to resume
his narrative next evening, Kenneth arose, and soon after all was silent
and dark inside this peaceful cottage.