"Here's another, uncle."
This was shouted cheerily, and the reply thereto was a low muttering,
ending with a grunt.
It was a glorious day on Dartmoor, high up in the wildest part amongst
the rugged tors, where a bright little river came flashing and sparkling
along, and sending the bright beams of the sun in every direction from
the disturbed water, as an eager-looking boy busily played the trout he
had hooked, one which darted here and there in its wild rush for
freedom, but all in vain, for after its little mad career it was safely
brought to bank, and landed. There was no need to use the light net
which hung diagonally and unnecessarily across its owner's back, for the
glittering little speckled trout was only about the size of a small
dace, though it fought and kicked as hardily as if it had weighed a
pound, and indulged in a series of active leaps as it was slipped
through the hole in the lid of a creel, to drop into companionship with
half-a-score of its fellows, which welcomed the new prisoner with a
number of leaps almost as wild as its own.
The utterer of the grunt, a stoutly-built man who might have been of any
age, though he could not have been very young, judging from his bristly
greyish whiskers, was also busily occupied, but in a calmer, more
deliberate way.
He had no creel slung from his shoulder, but a coarse clean wallet that
was rather bulgy, its appearance suggesting that it was carried because
it contained something to eat, while its owner held in one hand, slung
by a stoutish lanyard, a big, wide-mouthed glass bottle half full of
water, and in the other hand a little yellow canvas net attached to a
brass ring at the end of a stick, the sort of implement that little boys
use when bound upon the chase and capture of the mighty "tittlebat."
And as his younger companion shouted and landed his little mountain
trout, the net was being carefully passed under water, drawn out and
emptied upon the fine lawn-like grass, and what looked like a little
scrap of opalescent jelly was popped into the wide-mouthed bottle.
"You got one too, uncle?" shouted the boy, who was higher up the stream.
"Yes; some very nice specimens down here. Are you getting plenty of
sport, Rodd?"
"Yes, uncle," replied the boy, who was carefully examining his tiny
artificial gnat before beginning to whip the stream again. "They are
rising famously; but they are awfully small. I shall get a dish,
though, for supper."
"Uncle," as he was called, grunted again, and went on searching amongst
the water-weeds with his net, his tendency being with the stream, while
the boy, who did not scruple about stepping into the shallows from time
to time, went on whipping away upward towards where one of the tors rose
in a chaotic mass of broken, lichen-covered, fragmentary granite,
apparently hiding in the distance the source of the little bubbling and
sparkling stream.
Sometimes, as the boy struck in unison with the rise, he missed his
fish, at others he hooked and held it till it broke away, and then again
he transferred another to his creel, as intent upon his sport as his
uncle was upon his pursuit, but still adding and adding to the contents
of the creel for quite an hour. Then, in an interval when the fish had
ceased to rise, the boy began to look downward, finding to his surprise
that he was quite alone and close up to the towering mass of time-worn
granite, many of whose blocks sparkled in the summer sun with crystals
of quartz, and specks of hornblende, and were rendered creamy by the
abundant felspar which held the grains together in a mass.
"I wonder what's become of Uncle Paul," muttered the boy. "Have I lost
him, or has he lost me? What stuff! One's only got to go down the
stream, and he's sure to be there somewhere, dipping for his
what-do-you-call-'ems--hydras and germs and buds, and the rest of them.
But oh, what a jolly morning it is, and what a jolly place Dartmoor is
now the sun shines! Not very jolly yesterday, though, when the wind was
sweeping the rain across in clouds and you couldn't see the tops of the
tors for the mist. Oh, but it is beautiful to-day. I do feel jolly!"
The boy let his light tapering rod fall into the hollow of his arm,
swung round his creel to the front, and, raising the lid, peered down at
his speckled prizes lying upon a bed of newly-picked bracken fronds.
"Why, there must be fifty," he cried. "There, I won't stop to count.
I'll catch a few more, and guess at fifty. That'll be enough for a nice
lot for tea and some more for to-morrow morning's breakfast. Uncle Paul
does enjoy a dish of trout. Humph! So do I. I suppose it's this
beautiful fresh air up among the tors, and the tramping. It was a good
long way up here from the cottage. I suppose it's that makes me feel so
jolly hungry. Oh, look at that now! Uncle would carry the wallet, and
he's got all the sandwiches. Never mind; I'll catch a few more of the
little beauties, and then toddle back to meet him."
But the boy did not begin to fish directly, but stood gazing round at
the glorious prospect of hill and dale and miniature mountain, here grey
and sparkling, there flushed as if with the golden sheen of blossoming
furze, while the lower slopes were of the magnificent purple of the
abundant heath.
"Beautiful!" cried the boy ecstatically. "I am glad that we came up
here to stay. So is dear old uncle. He's revelling in the specimens he
gets, and we shall have another jolly night with the microscope. He'll
give me a lecture upon all the little Latin beggars he pops into his
bottle, and another for being so stupid in not recollecting all their
cranky names. Never mind; it is jolly. Pity it isn't later, for then
there'd be plenty of blackberries and whorts. I dare say there'd be
lots of the little tiny button mushrooms, too, in the lower parts among
the soft grass. But what's the use of grumbling? Uncle says that I am
never satisfied, and that I am always restless, and I suppose it's
because I am a boy. Well, I can't help being a boy," he mused
thoughtfully. "I might have been a girl. Well, girls are restless too.
I say, what's that?"
He shaded his eyes again and gazed at a speck of something that looked
bright scarlet in the distance, and then not very far away he made out
another, and again another speck or blotch of bright red. "Now, I
wonder what's growing there," muttered the boy. "I don't remember
anything scarlet growing and blowing. Poppies? No, I don't think they
are poppies. They are at the edges of the cornfields, and there are no
cornfields up here."
He fixed his eyes more intently upon the scarlet specks, and then burst
out laughing.
"Well, they are not poppies," he said aloud. "Poppies don't move, and
those are moving, sure enough. There, one of them has gone behind that
block of stone. Pooh, how stupid! Why, of course!"
He jerked himself round to look in another direction, so sharply that
his creel swung out for a moment from the strap, and came back against
his hip with a bang, as he stood with his back to the sun, gazing at a
distant grey, gloomy-looking pile of stone building, and then nodded his
head with satisfaction.
"Poppies, indeed! My grandmother! That's what they are. Soldiers from
over yonder. Part of the guard from the great prison, I suppose. Oh,
poor beggars! How miserable, when you come to think of it--shut up
yonder in that great gloomy place, for I don't suppose they let them
come out much without soldiers to watch them--and all for doing nothing.
Doing nothing! Mustn't say that, though, before Uncle Paul, or he'll
go into a rage and begin preaching about Bony and the war, and going on
about the French. Hullo!"
The boy started, for there was a dull thud, apparently from the prison,
miles away, followed by a loud echo which seemed to come from close at
hand, making him turn again as if to look for the spot from which it
came, and seeing it too, for the report of the gun had as it were struck
against the face of the tor above him, and then glanced off to strike
elsewhere.
"How queer echoes are!" he muttered. "Yes, and how queer I feel--all
hollow. That's made me think about it. I suppose that means twelve or
one o'clock dinner-time. Oh, how stupid to go right away from uncle
like this! I wish he'd come. But I won't go till I have made my fifty
trout."
Turning his attention now to the stream, he began whipping away again,
and finding that the little trout were rising as well as ever, with the
result that Rodney Harding once more forgot everything else in his
pursuit and went on up-stream nearer and nearer to the great tor, till
at last he found himself in a little hollow amongst the rocks where the
river had widened into a pool, hollowed out as it were at the base of a
great cliff.
"Why, this is the end of it," he said, pausing to look round and upward
at the towering pile of rocks. "No, it isn't. It must be the
beginning--the source, I suppose they call it. Yes, the stream begins
here, comes right from under that cliff. Why, it's like a little cave
out of which the water streams."
He stopped short and threw his fly once or twice without effect, and
then, moved by curiosity, waded into the shallow rippling water, which
rose a little way above his boots, but as it began to invade his
trousers he rolled them up to his knees, before wading onward till he
was stopped by the piled-up cliff face where the water came gliding out
and rippled about his legs.
"Why, it ought to be quite cold," he muttered, "instead of which it is
warm."
Then, standing up his rod so that the top rested among the stones, he
stooped down, bending nearly double before he could pass in beneath a
rough stony natural arch and slowly force his way along a narrow passage
for a few feet, before stopping short where the water nearly reached his
knees.
"Oh, I say! I am not going to break my back short off at the hips by
squeezing in here," he grumbled. "Besides, it's all dark; and what's
the good? Here, I know! This isn't the source. This tor is only a
piled-up heap of stones, and I dare say if I go round I shall find the
little river coming in on the other side, and this is where it comes
out. Well, let it. Here, I want my lunch."
He made his way back into the sunshine where all was bright and clear
again, and, taking his rod, stepped out to the edge of the pool, where
the dry sand felt pleasant and comfortable to his feet, and there he
went on fishing again with more or less success, till he passed out of
the little amphitheatre to where the rocks fell away on either side,
half hidden by the heath and furze.
"Must have got fifty by this time," muttered the boy. "Now just one
more to make sure, and then I'll be off, and--Ugh! Who are you? How
you made me jump!"