Produced by Al Haines
[Illustration: Cover art]
THE CAPTAIN'S BUNK
A STORY FOR BOYS
BY
M. B. MANWELL
AUTHOR OF 'THE BENTS OF BATTERSBY,' ETC.
WITH COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
4 BOUVERIE STREET AND 65 ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD
1898
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. A PLAGUEY PAIR
II. A NOVEL TRADE
III. 'MISS THEEDORY'
IV. BINKS'S BIT O' TEACHIN'
V. BREAKERS AHEAD
VI. THE LITTLE MOTHER
VII. MUTINY AT THE BUNK
VIII. THEO'S HAVEN
IX. COMING EVENTS
X. UNDER ARREST
XI. A TANGLED WEB
XII. IN THE FAR NORTH
XIII. IN PERIL ON THE SEA
XIV. A DOOR OF ESCAPE
XV. THE BIRD-SCHOOL
XVI. THE SEAMY SIDE OF LIFE
XVII. IN THE MIRE
XVIII. IN MULLINER'S RENTS
XIX. NO PLACE LIKE HOME
THE CAPTAIN'S BUNK
CHAPTER I
A PLAGUEY PAIR
'Do the thing that's nearest,
Though it's dull at whiles.'
If anybody wanted to go down and have a look round Northbourne for
himself, it would be necessary to take a railway journey as far as
Brattlesby town, and then tramp the rest of the road, unless a friendly
chance befell the traveller of a lift in some passing vehicle.
There had never been so much as a talk of extending the railway line to
Northbourne, which was a quaint little fishing village tucked away
under the shelter of a long stretch of downs. It consisted of a few
small thatched cottages that had seated themselves, as it were, in a
semicircle round the tiny bay, to peep out from its shelter at the far,
open ocean, the highway of waters on which the outward-bound liners
loomed like grey ghostly shadows as they passed.
There were but two of what is known as gentry's houses in Northbourne.
Oddly enough, each of them finished off the half-circle of cottages,
and in that way they stared across the bay at one another, face to face.
One of the two, the Bunk, had been for some years inhabited by an
elderly half-pay naval officer, Captain Carnegy, and his motherless
boys and girls. The other house was the Vicarage, the habitation of
Mr. Vesey, the good old vicar, his invalid wife, and a pair of
excitable Yorkshire terriers, Splutters and Shutters, thus curiously
named for the sake of rhyme, it is to be presumed. They were brothers,
and as tricky a pair as one could meet, ever up to their eyes in
mischief from morning until night. Indeed, Splutters and Shutters kept
what would have been a still, staid household in nearly as great a
ferment as did the captain's crew the Bunk across the bay.
'They two dogs, they be summat like a couple o' wild b'ys; they keeps
the passon and the mistress in, not for to say hot water, but bilin'
water, for the livelong day!' constantly declared Binks, who was the
handy-man at the Vicarage, and, in fact, handy-man at the little church
as well, he being both factotum and sexton. Binks was a worthy old
soul whom the terriers led a troubled life by their destructive capers
in the garden and lawn, which he vainly tried to keep trim. Still, on
the whole, Binks, harassed as he was by the dogs, was apt to thank his
stars that Splutters and Shutters were not actually boys; such boys,
for instance, as those of the captain at the Bunk across the bay, who
were a sore handful, as any one could see for themselves, without the
prompt testimony of all Northbourne to that effect.
'You be a plaguey pair, you b'ys!' was the unfailing greeting of Binks,
when he encountered Geoff and Alick Carnegy.
'Come, you shut up, Binks! You surely would not have us a couple of
mincing girls peacocking round in this fashion, would you now?' And
the captain's boys affectedly pirouetted up and down on the shingle
below the low wall of the Vicarage garden, laughing boisterously the
while.
'I dunno, young musters!' rejoined Binks, contemplating the ridiculous
spectacle with much the same gravity as he would have regarded a
funeral. 'P'raps it'd be a sight better if so be as you _was_ gells.
That is, gells after the pattern of your sister, Miss Theedory!'
'Oh, Theo! Well, she's different!' and Geoff sobered down his antics,
and stood still to retort. 'That just reminds me I've brought a note
for Mrs. Vesey from Theo. I'll run up to the house with it. I don't
remember if it wants an answer; but don't you go away, Alick. Wait for
me!'
'All right!' Alick nodded, and swinging himself up on the wall, he
watched Binks, who was patiently pottering over the carrot-beds. The
ceaseless tussel he had to induce these refractory vegetables to make a
fair show was one of the minor crosses of the old man's life.
Of the two Carnegys, Alick was the least reasonable, if the word
reasonable could be applied to either of 'them young limbs,' as
Northbourne privately called the captain's boys. He, however, managed
to sit still for the space of five minutes or so on the wall, whistling
vigorously.
'I 'opes as you be a-gittin' on brisk with your book-larnin', Muster
Alick?' Binks lifted his head, after the prolonged silence, to regard,
with a critical air, the boy who sat dangling his feet above. Binks
had a fashion peculiar to himself of staring at most people in a
reproving manner, as though he had just found them out in some dark
transgression. It was possibly a habit due to a lifelong experience of
the faults and the failings of human nature, and it was one which stood
Binks in good stead, giving him an austere and awe-inspiring
appearance. Especially on Sundays did this detective air prove
helpful, when he did duty as parish clerk in the quaint, old-time
church on the shore, where it served to keep the small fisher-folk in
proper order.
'Oh, bother!' said Alick shortly. 'We have enough of that sort of talk
from old Price. He pegs away at us to get on, get on, until I'm sick
of the sight of books, and pen and ink!'
'Ay?' Binks leaned on his spade, and, resting, stared fixedly up into
the face of the boy-speaker. 'Sick of it, be you? And what be you
supposin' as Muster Price feels? A deal sicker, I make no doubt,
toiling and moiling every week-day as the sun rises on, a-tryin' to
till sich unprofitable ground as your b'y-brains! I dunnot 'spose as
you ever looked at it from his pint of view, did ye?'
Certainly Alick never had. It was a new idea to him to wonder how poor
Philip Price, the tutor, liked walking every day, rain or shine, over
from Brattlesby, the little inland town some three miles off, in order
to teach Geoff and himself just so much and no more as either of the
unruly brothers chose to learn; for the Carnegy boys were 'kittle
cattle,' as the North-country folk say, to deal with. Their father,
though he had been, in the old days, skilled at commanding men, knew
little or nothing of managing children. When his wife died and he
retired from the service, he found his hands full, with the most unruly
crew that he had ever encountered in his long naval career. Not gifted
with much patience, he soon gave up trying to guide the helm of that
unmanageable ship, his own home. Betaking himself to his special
hobby, which was the compiling an epitome of all the naval engagements
that have taken place within the memory of man, he left his boys and
girls to grow up anyhow or, to put it more exactly, just as they
pleased. His conscience was satisfied when he had placed his young
folk in the hands of one whom he knew to be a genuinely upright
Christian gentleman, Philip Price, the tutor from Brattlesby town.
The boys themselves were no fools. They knew in their hearts that it
was but a slack rein that guided them. There was a good deal of
forcibly put justice in the suggestive question of Binks, and for a few
seconds Alick, nonplussed, kept silence, swinging his feet a little
faster under the fire of the sharp, light eyes that glinted from
beneath the old man's bushy eyebrows.
'But--but, I say, it's Price's business to teach. That's what he has
got to do, you know!' he stammered out at last, rather uneasily.
'P'raps you was a-goin' to say as it was what he was made for,
purpose-like!' observed Binks ironically. 'Well, maybe so! And, maybe
also, who can tell, it's what the Lord has made you for likewise,
Muster Alick. Time may come as you'll be tramping every day, wet or
dry, to teach ongrateful, onruly b'ys according to their station.'
What d'ye mean?' A furious red flush rose on Alick's cheeks, and he
glared back into the face of the bent old man, who stood still so
fixedly regarding himself.
'Mean? Why, just what I'm a-sayin' of!' was the calm rejoinder. 'I've
heard tell,' went on Binks, undisturbed by Alick's wrathful looks, 'as
Muster Price is the son of a reverend genelman as was pretty high up in
the Church. When the poor soul was took off, suddent, his fam'ly had
to help theirselves in the world, and this one, bein' the youngest, and
enjying terrible poor health, ain't fit for nothin' but teachin' b'ys.
That's how he keeps the old lady and hisself in bread I've heard say.
And if so be'--Binks straightened himself, and drew out his spade from
the earth--'as I was him, I'd a deal rather break stones, or else try
to grow them plaguey carrits in damp clay! But,' he added
sardonically, as his outburst calmed down, 'in course if, as you think,
it's what he was made a-purpose for---- Well, I say no more. I never
was one to hinterfere with, or so much as even to question, the will of
the Almighty in aught. I'm not like some in that.'
'How you do run on, Binks!' sulkily put in Alick. He felt rather
cornered by the old man's plain speaking. 'And it's all very fine for
you to talk; you and Theo say the same things. But if you'd to grind
away, when the sun's shining and the sea dancing before your eyes, at
rubbishy old Latin grammars and arithmetic, and all the rest of it,
you'd be the first to grumble. Oh, I wish a hundred times in the day
that I was only Ned Dempster, who's out all hours, free as any lark!'
ended Alick, with a sudden burst of energy that nearly sent him
toppling off the sea-wall.
'Ned Dempster!' echoed Binks in amaze. Then, after turning over a few
spadefuls of earth, he looked up to say epigrammatically, 'Well, young
muster, what Ned is, I was. And what I am, Ned will be! There! D'ye
take my meaning? 'Cos I, when a b'y, was like Ned, free as any lark in
the air, so when I came to be a man without no book-larnin' in the
pockets o' my brain, I had to grope my way about in the world. Many's
the time it's bin all dark, round and round, 'cept in the faces of
other folk where I seed the light o' understanding shinin' about them
things as I couldn't make out. 'Tain't so to say comforable for a
grown man to feel that; but it's what you'll come to, young muster, if
you gits your will to go free as free!' and Binks set to work on his
refractory carrots with renewed energy.