A COASTING VOYAGE—MUSK ISLAND—LINNET FLASH—MR. ROWE AN OLD TAR—THE
DOG-FANCIER AT HOME.
It was a delightful feature of our first voyage—and one which we
could not hope to enjoy so often in voyages to come—that we were
always close to land, and this on both sides. We could touch either
coast without difficulty, and as the barge stopped several times
during the day to rest the horse, Fred and I had more than one chance
of going ashore.
I hope to have many a voyage yet, and to see stranger people and
places than I saw then, but I hardly hope ever to enjoy myself so much
again. I have long ago found out that Fred's stories of the captain's
adventures were not true stories, and as I have read and learned more
about the world than I knew at that time, I know now that there are
only certain things which one can meet with by land or by sea. But
when Fred and I made our first voyage in emulation of his grandfather
there was no limit to my expectations, or to what we were prepared to
see or experience at every fresh bend of the London and Lancingford
Canal.
I remember one of Fred's stories about the captain was of his spending
a year and a day on an island called Musk Island, in the Pacific. He
had left the ship, Fred said, to do a little exploring alone in his
gig. Not knowing at that time that the captain's gig is a boat, I was
a good deal puzzled, I remember, to think of Mrs. Johnson's red-faced
father crossing the sea in a gig like the one Mr. Bustard used to go
his professional "rounds" in. And when Fred spoke of his "pulling
himself" I was yet more bewildered by the unavoidable conclusion that
they had no horse on board, and that the gallant and ever-ready
captain went himself between the shafts. The wonder of his getting to
Musk Island in that fashion was, however, eclipsed by the wonders he
found when he did get there. Musk-hedges and bowers ten feet high,
with flowers as large as bindweed blossoms, and ladies with pale gold
hair all dressed in straw-coloured satin, and with such lovely faces
that the captain vowed that no power on earth should move him till he
had learned enough of the language to propose the health of the Musk
Island beauties in a suitable speech after dinner. "And there he would
have lived and died, I believe," Fred would say, "if that first mate,
who saved his life before, had not rescued him by main force, and
taken him back to his ship."
I am reminded of this story when I think of the island in Linnet Lake,
for we were so deeply charmed by it that we very nearly broke our
voyage, as the captain broke his, to settle on it.
Mr. Rowe called the lake Linnet Flash. Wherever the canal seemed to
spread out, and then go on again narrow and like a river, the
barge-master called these lakes "flashes" of the canal. There is no
other flash on that canal so large or so beautiful as Linnet Lake, and
in the middle of the lake lies the island.
It was about three o'clock, the hottest part of a summer's day, and
Fred and I, rather faint with the heat, were sitting on a coil of rope
holding a clean sheet, which Mr. Rowe had brought up from the cabin to
protect our heads and backs from sunstroke. We had refused to take
shelter below, and sat watching the fields and hedges, which seemed to
palpitate in the heat as they went giddily by, and Mr. Rowe, who stood
quite steady, conversing coolly with the driver. The driver had been
on board for the last hour, the way being clear, and the old horse
quite able to take care of itself and us, and he and the barge-master
had pocket-handkerchiefs under their hats like the sou'-wester flaps
of the captain's sea-friends. Fred had dropped his end of the sheet
to fall asleep, and I was protecting us both, when the driver bawled
some directions to the horse in their common language, and the
barge-master said, "Here's a bit of shade for you, Master Fred;" and
we roused up and found ourselves gliding under the lee of an island
covered with trees.
"Oh, _do_ stop here!" we both cried.
"Well, I don't mind," said Mr. Rowe, removing his hat, and mopping
himself with his very useful pocket-handkerchief. "Jem, there's a bit
of grass there, let her have a mouthful."
"I thought you'd like this," he continued; "there ain't a prettier bit
between here and Pyebridge."
It was so lovely, that the same idea seized both Fred and me: Why not
settle here, at least for a time? It was an uninhabited island, only
waiting to be claimed by some adventurous navigator, and obviously
fertile. The prospect of blackberries on the mainland was particularly
fine, and how they would ripen in this blazing sun! Birds sang in the
trees above; fish leaping after flies broke the still surface of the
water with a musical splash below; and beyond a doubt there must be
the largest and the sweetest of earth-nuts on the island, easy to get
out of the deep beds of untouched leaf-mould. And when Mr. Rowe cried
"Look!" and we saw a water-fowl scud across the lake, leaving a sharp
trail like a line of light behind her, we felt that we might spend all
our savings in getting to the Pacific Ocean, and not find when we got
there a place which offered more natural resources to the desert
islander.
If the barge-master would have gone ashore on the mainland out of the
way, and if we could have got ashore on the island without help, we
should not have confided our plans to so doubtful a friend. As it was,
we were obliged to tell Mr. Rowe that we proposed to found a
settlement in Linnet Lake, and he was completely opposed to the idea.
It was only when he said (with that air of reserved and funded
knowledge which gave such unfathomable depth to his irony, and made
his sayings so oracular)—"There's very different places in the world
to Linnet Flash"—that we began to be ashamed of our hasty enthusiasm,
and to think that it would be a pity to stop so short in our
adventurous career.
So we decided to go on; but the masterly way in which Mr. Rowe spoke
of the world made me think he must have seen a good deal of it, and
when we had looked our last upon the island, and had crept with
lowered mast under an old brick bridge where young ferns hung down
from the archway, and when we were once more travelling between flat
banks and coppices that gave us no shelter, I said to the
barge-master—"Have you ever been at sea, Mr. Rowe?"
"Seven_teen_ year in the Royal Navy," said Mr. Rowe, with a strong
emphasis upon _teen_, as if he feared we might do him the injustice of
thinking he had only served his Queen and country for seven.
For the next two hours Fred and I sat, indifferent alike to the
sunshine and the shore, in rapt attention to Mr. Rowe's narrative of
his experiences at sea under the flag that has
"Braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze."
I believe Fred enjoyed them simply as stories, but they fanned in my
heart that restless fever for which sea-breezes are the only cure. I
think Mr. Rowe got excited himself as he recalled old times. And when
he began to bawl sea-songs with a voice like an Atlantic gale, and
when he vowed in cadence
"A sailor's life is the life for me,"
I felt that it was the life for me also, and expressed myself so
strongly to that effect that Mr. Rowe became alarmed for the
consequences of his indiscretion, and thenceforward told us
sea-stories with the obvious and quite futile intention of disgusting
me with what I already looked upon as my profession.
But the barge-master's rapid change of tactics convinced me more and
more that we could not safely rely on him to help us in our plans.
About five o'clock he made tea on board, and boiled the water on the
little stove in the cabin. I was very anxious to help, and it was I
who literally made the tea, whilst Mr. Rowe's steadier hand cut thick
slices of bread-and-butter from a large loaf. There was only one cup
and saucer. Fred and I shared the cup, and the barge-master took the
saucer. By preference, he said, as the tea cooled quicker.
The driver had tea after we returned to the deck and could attend to
the horse and boat.
Except the island in Linnet Lake, the most entertaining events of the
first day of our voyage were our passing villages or detached houses
on the canal banks.
Of the latter by far the most interesting was that of a dog-fancier,
from whose residence melodious howls, in the dog-dialect of every
tribe deserving to be represented in so choice a company, were wafted
up the stream, and met our ears before our eyes beheld the
landing-stage of the establishment, where the dog-fancier and some of
his dogs were lounging in the cool of the evening, and glad to see the
barge.
The fancier knew Mr. Rowe, and refreshed him (and us) with shandy-gaff
in horn tumblers. Some of the dogs who did not, barked incessantly at
us, wagging their tails at the same time, however, as if they had some
doubts of the correctness of their judgment in the matter. One very
small, very white, and very fluffy toy-dog, with a dove-coloured
ribbon, was—no doubt—incurably ill-tempered and inhospitable; but a
large brindled bull-dog, trying politely but vainly to hide his teeth
and tongue, wagged what the fancier had left him of a tail, and
dribbled with the pleasure of making our acquaintance, after the wont
of his benevolent and much-maligned family. I have since felt pretty
certain that Mr. Rowe gave his friend a sketch of our prospects and
intentions in the same spirit in which he had written to Mr. Johnson,
and I distinctly overheard the dog-fancier make some reply, in which
the words "hoffer a reward" were audible. But the barge-master shook
his head at suggestions probably drawn from his friend's professional
traditions, though the fancier told him some very good story about the
ill-tempered toy-dog, to which he referred with such violent jerks of
the head as threatened to throw his fur cap on to that of the brindled
gentleman who sat dripping and smiling at his feet.
When Mr. Rowe began to tell him something good in return, and in spite
of my utmost endeavours not to hear anything, the words "Linnet Flash"
became audible, I blushed to hear the fancier choking over his
shandy-gaff with laughter, and I feared at our project for settling on
the island.
The interview was now at an end, but as Mr. Rowe stepped briskly on
board, the fur cap nodded to the forehatch, where Fred and I were
sitting on coiled ropes, and the fancier said very knowingly, "The
better the breed the gamier the beast."
He patted the bull-dog as he said it, and the bull-dog kissed his
dirty hand.
"Hup to hanythink," were Mr. Rowe's parting words, as he went aft, and
the driver called to his horse.
He may have referred to the bull-dog, but I had some doubts about it,
even then.