I believe the sheep began all the creepy paths in our part of the
country--not sheep such as you generally see about farms, or down to
market, but our little handsome sheep with curly horns that feed along
the sides of the cliffs in all sorts of dangerous places where a false
step would send them headlong six or seven hundred feet, perhaps a
thousand, down to the sea. For we have cliff slopes in places as high
as that, where the edge of the moor seems to have been chopped right
off, and if you are up there you can gaze down at the waves foaming over
the rocks, and if you looked right out over the sea, there away to the
north was Taffyland, as we boys called it, with the long rugged Welsh
coast stretching right and left, sometimes dim and hazy, and sometimes
standing out blue and clear with the mountains rising up in the distance
fold behind fold.
I say I think the sheep used to make the cliff paths to begin with, for
they don't feed up or feed down, but always go along sidewise, unless
they want to get lower, and then they make a zigzag, so far one way and
so far another, backwards and forwards, down the slope till they come to
where it goes straight down to the sea with a raw edge at the top, and
the cliff-face, which keeps crumbling away, in some places lavender and
blue where it is slate, and in others all kinds of tints, as red and
grey, where it's limestone or grit.
In the course of time the sheep leave a regular lot of tracks like tiny
shelves up the side of the sloping cliffs, and the lowest of these gets
taken by the people who are going along the coast, and is trampled down
more and more, till it grows into a regular footpath, such as we were
going along this hot midsummer day.
Part of our way lay close to the edge of the cliff, where it was about
four hundred feet straight down, but a dense wood of oak-trees grew
there, and their trunks formed a regular fence and screen between us and
the edge, so that the pathway was quite safe, though it would not have
troubled us much if it had not been, being used to the place; but in a
short time we were through the wood, and out on the open cliff--from
shade to sunshine.
I ought not to leave that wood, though, without saying something about
it, for just there the trees grew very curiously. Of course you know
what an oak-tree is, and how it grows up tall and rugged and strong, but
our oak-trees didn't grow like that. You've seen horses out in a field
on a stormy day, I suppose, when the wind blows, and the rain beats. If
they have no trees, hedges, or wall to get under, they always turn their
backs to the wind, and you can see their tails and manes streaming out
and blown all over them.
Well there's no shelter out there on our coast, only in the caves, and
the oak-trees there do just the same as the horses, for they seem to
turn their backs to the wind; and their boughs look as if they are being
blown close down to the side of the cliff slope and spread out ready to
spring up again as soon as the wind has passed. But they don't, for
they stop in that way growing close down and all on one side, and they
very seldom get at all big.
That was a capital path as soon as we were out of the wood, running up
and down the slope sometimes four, sometimes six or seven hundred feet
above the sea, just as it happened, and with the steep cliff above us
jagged with great masses of rock that looked as if they were always
ready to fall rolling and crashing till they got to the broken edge,
when they would leap right down into the sea. Sometimes they did, but
only when a thaw came after a severe frost. There was none of that sort
of thing though at midsummer, and the overhanging rocks did not trouble
us as we scampered along in the bright elastic air, feeling as if we
were so happy that we must do something mischievous.
The path was no use to us, it was too smooth and plain and safe, so we
went down to the very edge of the precipice, and looked over at the
beautiful clear sea, hundreds of feet below, and made plans to go
prawning in the rock pools, crabbing when the tide was out, and to get
Bigley's father to lend us the boat and trammel net, to set some calm
night and catch all we could.
"Think he'll lend it to us, Bigley?" asked Bob.
"I don't know. I'm afraid he won't."
"Why not?" I said. "He did last holidays."
"Yes," said Bigley; "but your father hadn't got the Gap then, and made
him cross, for he said he was going to buy it, only your father bought
it over his head."
"But had he got the money?" I said.
"Oh, yes. He's got lots of money, though he never spends any hardly."
"He makes it all smuggling," said Bob. "He'll be hung some day, or shot
by some of the king's sailors."
Bigley turned on him quickly, but he did not say a word; and just then a
stone-chat's nest took his attention. After that we had to go round the
end of a combe, as they call the valleys our way, and there we stopped
by the waterfall which came splashing down forming pool after pool in
the sunny rocks.
It was not to be expected that three boys fresh from school could pass
that falling stream without leaping from rock to rock, and penetrating a
hundred yards inland, to see if we could find a dipper's nest, for one
of the little cock-tailed blackbirds gave us a glimpse of his white
collar as he dropped upon a stone, and then walked into a pool, in whose
clear depths we could see him scudding about after the insects at the
bottom, and seeming to fly through the water as he beat his little
rounded wings using them as a fish does fins.
The nest was too cleverly hidden for us to find, so, tiring of the
little stream, and knowing that there was one waiting for us in the Gap
where we could capture trout, we went on along the cliff path, gossiping
as boys will, till we reached the great buttress of rock that formed one
side of the entrance to the little ravine, and there perched ourselves
upon the great fragments of rock to look down at where the little stream
came rushing and sparkling from the inland hills till it nearly reached
the sea at the mouth of the Gap, and then came to a sudden end.
It looked curious, but it was a familiar object to us, who thought
nothing of the way in which the sea had rolled up a bank of boulders and
large pebbles right across the little river, forming a broad path when
the tide was down, and as the little river reached it the bright clear
stream ended, for its waters sank down through the pebbles and passed
invisibly for the next thirty or forty yards beneath the beach and into
the sea.
But when the tide was up this pebble ridge formed a bar, over which
there was just room for Uggleston's lugger to pass at high-water; and
there it was now in the little river, kept from turning down on its side
by a couple of props, while the water rippled about its keel.
From where we were perched it looked no bigger than a row-boat, and the
house that formed our school-fellow's home--a long, low, stone-built
place thatched with reeds--seemed as if it had been built for dolls,
while the fisherman's cottage on the other side, where an old sailor
friend lived, was apparently about as big as a box.
The scene was beautiful, but to us boys its beauty lay in what it
offered us in the way of amusement.
We were not long in deciding upon a ride down one of the clatter
streams--a ride that, though it is very bad for the breeches and worse
for the boots, while it sometimes interferes with the skin of the
knuckles, and may result in injury to the nose, is thoroughly enjoyable
and full of excitement while it lasts.
You don't know what a clatter stream is? Then I'll tell you.
Every here and there, where the slate cliffs run down in steep slopes to
the valleys, you can see from the very top to the bottom, that is to say
on a slope of some nine hundred feet, what look like little streams that
are perhaps a foot wide at the top and ten or a dozen at the bottom
where they open out. These are not streams of water, though in wet
weather the water does trickle down through them, and makes them its
bed, but streams of flat, rounded-edge pieces of slate and shale that
have been split off the face of the rock and fallen, to go slowly
gliding down one over the other, perhaps taking years in their journey.
Some of the pieces are as small as the scraps put in the bottom of a
flower-pot, others are as large as house slates and tiles, perhaps
larger; but as they go grinding over one another they are tolerably
smooth, and form a capital arrangement for a slide.
This thing determined upon we each selected a good broad piece big
enough to sit or kneel on, and then began the laborious ascent, which, I
may at once tell you, is the drawback to the enjoyment, for, though the
coming down is delightful, the drag up the steep precipitous slope, with
feet frequently slipping, is so toilsome a task that two or three slides
down used to be always considered what Dr Stacey at Barnstaple School
called _quantum sufficit_.
As a matter of course we were soon tired, but we managed three, starting
from right up at the top, and close after one another, with the stones
beneath us rattling, and sometimes gliding down swiftly, sometimes
coming to a standstill; but if it was the foremost, those behind
generally started him again.
In this case Bob went first, I followed, and Bigley came last, and
though we two stuck more than once, he never did, his weight overcoming
the friction of the stones to such an extent that, towards the last, he
charged down upon us and we all rolled over together into a heap.
We tried again, but the fall had made Bob disagreeable. I don't think
he was much hurt, but he pretended to be, and said that Bigley had done
it on purpose.
It was of no use for Bigley to protest. Once Bob had made up his mind
to a thing he would not give in, so after about half a slide down we
stopped short without being driven on again by our companion, and the
game was voted a bore.
"'Tisn't as if there were a couple of sailors at the top with a capstan,
to haul you up again when you've slid down," said Bob.
"Ah, I wish there were!" cried Bigley, "I get so tired."
"No rope would pull you up; you're too heavy," sneered Bob. "Never
mind, Sep, let's do something else. The clatter streams ain't half so
slippery as they used to be. I s'pose we may do something else here
though it is your father's place?"
"Don't be so disagreeable," I cried.
"Who's disagreeable?" he retorted. "I didn't make the stones stick and
old Bigley come down squelch on us, did I?"
"Oh, if you want to quarrel, Bob, we may as well go home," I said.
"There, just hark at him, Big! Quarrel! Just as if I wanted to
quarrel. There, I shall go."
"No, no, don't go, Bob," I cried.
"No, no, don't go, Bob," chimed in Big. "It's holidays now, and we can
get up a row when we're at school."
The force of this, and its being waste of time now the long-expected
holidays had come, made an impression on Bob, who sat down and began
sending rounded pieces of slate skimming through the air towards the
little stream.
"Didn't I tell you I didn't want to quarrel," he grumbled out. "I ain't
so fond of--there, you chaps couldn't do that."
"Ha! Ha! Couldn't we?" I cried, as a stone he threw went plash into
the stream, and I jerked a piece of slate so far that it went right
over.
This made Bob jump up, and, as there was plenty of ammunition, the old
contention was forgotten in the new, Bigley Uggleston joining in and
helping us throw stones till we grew tired, when we looked round for
something fresh to do.
"Let's climb right to the top of Bogle's Beacon," I said, as my eyes lit
upon the highest crags at our side of the ravine.
"Oh, what's the good?" said Bigley. "It'll make us so hot."
"Get out, you great lazy fellow," cried Bob, whose lips had been apart
to oppose my plan; but as soon as Bigley took the other side he was all
eagerness to go.
"Oh, all right then," said Bigley. "I don't mind. If you're going I
shall come too; but wait a minute."
As he spoke he set off at a trot down the slope, and as we two threw
ourselves down to watch him, we saw him run on and on till he reached
the smuggler's cottage, and go round to the long low slate-roofed shed
where his father kept his odds and ends of boat gear, and then he dived
in out of sight.
"What's he gone for?" said Bob.
"Dunno," I said lazily as I turned over on my chest and kicked the loose
slates with my toes. "Yes, I do."
"No, you don't," said Bob sourly.
"Yes, I do; he's gone to get a bit of rope. Don't you remember when we
climbed up last year we didn't get quite to the top, and you said that
if we'd had a bit of rope to throw over the big stone, one of us might
have held the end while the other climbed up?"
"No, I don't remember, and don't believe I ever said so."
"Why, that you did, Bob. What's the good of contradicting?"
"What's that to you, Sep Duncan?" he retorted. "You arn't everybody. I
shall contradict if I like."
"But you did say so."
"I didn't."
"You did. Now, just you wait till old Big comes and see if he don't say
so too."
"Yah! He'd say anything. What does he know about it?"
"Well, here he comes," I said.
"Let him come; I don't care."
"And he has got a coil of rope over his shoulder."
"Well, what do I care? Any fool might get a ring of rope over his
shoulder."
"Yes, but what for?"
"Oh, I dunno; don't bother!" said Bob surlily.
Meanwhile Bigley Uggleston was coming along at a lumbering trot, and as
soon as he was within hearing I shouted to him:
"What are you going to do with that rope?" And now for the first time I
noticed that he was carrying a long iron bar balanced in his right hand.
Big did not answer, but came panting on.
"There, I told you so!" cried Bob; "didn't I say so?"
"I don't care if you did," I retorted; and just then our companion
panted up to us and threw himself down, breathless with his exertions.
"What did you fetch the rope for?" I cried eagerly.
"To"--puff--"throw it over"--puff--"the big stone"--puff--"up atop,
same"--puff--"as Bob Chowne said"--puff--"last year."
"There!" I cried triumphantly, turning on Bob.
I was sorry I had spoken directly after, for Bob tightened his lips and
half shut his eyes as he rose slowly to his feet, thrust his hands in
his pockets, and began to move off.
"Here, what are you going to do?" I cried.
"Going home."
"What for?"
"What for? Where's the use o' stopping? You keep on trying to pick a
quarrel with a fellow."
"Why, I don't, Bob. I say, don't go. We're just going to have no end
of fun."
"Yes," cried Big; "and I've brought one of my father's net bars to drive
in the rock and fasten the rope to, and then no one need hold it."
"No, I sha'n't stop," grumbled Bob sourly. "Where's the use o' stopping
with chaps as always want to quarrel?"
"I don't want to quarrel," I said.
"And I'm sure I don't," said Big. "I hate it."
"More don't I," growled Bob. "It's Sep Duncan; he's always trying to
have a row with somebody."
"Here, come on," cried Big. "I've got the rope and the bar."
"No," said Bob, sticking his hands farther into his pockets and sidling
off; "I'm going home."
"Oh, I say, don't spoil our fun, Bob," I cried.
"'Taint me; it's you," he said. "I sha'n't stay."
"Oh, if it's me I'm very sorry," I said, "I didn't mean to be
disagreeable."
"Oh, well, if you're sorry and didn't mean to be disagreeable I'll
stay," he said. "Only don't you do it again."
"Say you won't," whispered Big.
"Well, I won't do it again," I cried, though I felt all the time as if I
wanted to laugh outright.
"Then I sha'n't say any more about it," said Bob, relenting all at once.
"I say, Big, is that rope strong?"
"Strong enough to hold all of us," he replied. "Here, come along.
It'll soon be dinner-time. I'm getting hungry now."
"Why, you're always hungry, Big," cried Bob as we began to climb the
steep slope diagonally.
"Yes, I am," he assented. "I do eat such a lot, and then I always feel
as if I wanted to eat a lot more."
It was a stiff climb over the loose slates and in and out among the
rough masses of stone that projected every here and there; but the air
grew fresher and cooler as we made our way from sheep-track to
sheep-track, where the little brown butterflies kept darting up in our
path; and as we stopped again and again, it was to get a wider view of
the sail-dotted sea all rippling and sparkling like silver in the sun,
while as we climbed higher still we began to get glimpses of the high
hills along the coast to the west, and the great moor into which the Gap
seemed to run like a rugged trough.
At last after many halts we reached the piled-up mass of rocks known as
the Beacon--a huge heap of moss-grown grey fragments that stood on the
very crest of the ridge.
It was a favourite place with us, and many an expedition had been made
here to sit under the shelter of the great lump of rock that crowned the
heap, a mass about fifteen feet high, and as many long and broad, the
whole forming just such a cube as you find in the sugar basin, and whose
sides were so perpendicular that we had never reached the top.
But this time, provided with rope, and, by Bigley Uggleston's
forethought, with the iron bar, the ascent seemed easy, and we set about
it at once.
Big soon found a place on the shoulder of our little mountain where
blocks of a ton-weight and less lay around, some of them so weakened and
overhanging that they looked as if a touch would send them thundering
down into the gorge.
Between two of these Big drove in the long iron bar, the rope was thrown
right over the rock, one end tied securely to the bar, the other held by
Bigley on the other side, the great heavy fellow hanging on to it, and
the question arose as to whether Bob or I was to make the first attempt.
I wanted to go, but I felt that if I did, Bob would be affronted, so I
gave way and let him lead, giving him a hoist or two as he seized the
rope, and climbed, and scratched, and kicked, and got up half-way and
then slid down again.
"Here, Big," he shouted, "what's the good of bringing such a stupid
little thin rope? It's no good."
"Can't you get up?" cried Big.
"No, nor anyone else. It's no use. Let's get back."
"No, no; let me try," I cried eagerly.
"Don't I tell you it's of no use," he said angrily. "Here, I'll go
again and show you. Hold on tight, Big."
"Yes, I'm holding," came from deep down in Bigley's chest, and Bob made
another attempt, scrambling up over my back and on to my shoulders, and
ending in his struggles by giving me so severe a kick on the head that I
leaped away, leaving him hanging by his hands, so that when he relaxed
his hold he came down in a sitting position, with so hard a bump upon
the stones that he seemed to bounce up again in a fit of fury to begin
stamping about with rage and pain.
"Oh--oh--oh!" he gasped. "You did that on purpose."
"Oh, I say, you do make me laugh," spluttered out Bigley, who held on
tightly to the rope to keep it strained.
"Yes, I'll make you laugh," cried Bob, flying at him and punching away,
while Bigley held on by the rope, and the more Bob punched the more he
laughed.
"Oh, I say, don't," he panted. "You hurt."
"I mean to hurt," cried Bob. "You and Sep Duncan got that up between
you, and he did it to make you laugh."
"I didn't say you kicked me on the ear on purpose," I grumbled. "Oh, I
say, Bob, your boot-toe is hard."
"Wish it had been ten times harder," he snarled.
"Oh, never mind," said Bigley, "I'm getting tired of holding the rope.
Why don't you climb up? Make haste!"
"I'm going home," grumbled Bob. "If I had known you were two such
fellows I wouldn't have come."
"Here, you get up, Sep," cried Bigley. "I'll stand close up to the
rock, and you can climb up me, and then lay hold of the rope."
"No, no," I whispered; "it would only make Bob savage."
"Never mind; he'll come round again. He won't go--he's only
pretending."
I glanced at our school-fellow, who was slowly shuffling away some
twenty or thirty yards down the slope, and limping as he went as if one
leg was very painful.
"Here, Bob!" I cried, "come and have another try."
He did not turn his head, and I shouted to him again.
"Here, Bob, mate, come and have another try."
He paid no heed; but while I was speaking Bigley placed himself close to
the great rock, reaching up as high as he could, and holding on by the
rope with outstretched arms.
"Now, then, are you ready?" he cried.
The opportunity was too tempting to be resisted, and making a run and a
jump, I sprang upon his broad back, climbed up to his shoulders, got
hold of the rope, and steadied myself as I drew myself into a standing
position, and then reaching up the rope as high as I could, I managed to
get my toes on first one projection, then upon another, and in a few
seconds was right at the top.
Bigley burst into a hoarse cheer, and began to jump about and wave his
cap, with the effect of making Bob stop short and turn, and then come
hurrying back more angry than ever.
"There: you are a pair of sneaks," he cried. "What did you go and do
that for?"
"I helped him," said Bigley. "Hoo--rayah!"
"Yes, and I'll pay you for it," he snarled; but Bigley was too much
excited to notice what he said; and, taking hold of the rope again, he
planted himself against the rock to turn his great body into a ladder.
"Go on up, Bob, and then you two chaps can pull me up to you."
The temptation was too great for Bob, who began to climb directly, and
had nearly reached where I stood, when I bent down and held out my hand.
"Catch hold, Bob!" I cried, "and I'll help you."
"I can get up by myself, thank you," he cried very haughtily, and he
loosed his hold with one hand to strike mine aside.
It was a foolish act, for if I had not snatched at him he would have
gone backwards, but this time he clung to me tightly, and the next
minute was by my side.
"Oh, it's easy enough," he said, forgetting directly the ugly fall he
had escaped.
"Here, now, you two lay hold of the rope and pull me up!" shouted
Bigley. "I want to come too."
We took hold of the rope and tightened it, and there was a severe course
of tugging for a few minutes before we slackened our efforts, and sat
down and laughed, for we might as well have tried to drag up any of the
ton-weight stones as Bigley.
"Oh, I say," he cried; "you don't half pull. I want to come up."
"Then you must climb as we pull," I said, and in obedience to my advice
he fastened the rope round his waist, and tried to climb as we hauled,
with the result that after a few minutes' scuffling and rasping on the
rock poor Bigley was sitting down rubbing himself softly, and looking up
at us with a very doleful expression of countenance.
"You can't get up, Big; you're too heavy," cried Bob, who was now in the
best of tempers. "Here, let's look round, Sep."
That did not take long, for there were only a few square feet of surface
to traverse. We were up at the top, and could see a long way round; but
then so we could fifteen or twenty feet below, and at the end of five
minutes we both were of the same way of thinking--that the principal
satisfaction in getting up to the summit of a rock or mountain was in
being able to say that you had mastered a difficulty.
Bob thoroughly expressed my feelings when, after amusing himself for a
few minutes by throwing dry cushions of moss down at Bigley, he
exclaimed:
"Well, what's the good of stopping here? Come on down again!"
"I'm ready," I said, "only I wish old Big had come up too."
"I don't," said Bob; "what's the good of wishing. I'm not going to make
my hands sore with tugging. He had no business to grow so fat."
"I should like to come up," cried Bigley dolefully.
"Ah, well, you can't!" shouted back Bob. "Serves you right pretending
to be a man when you're only a boy."
"I can't help it," replied Bigley with a sigh.
"Let's have one more try to have him up," I cried.
"Sha'n't. What's the good? I don't see any fun in trying to do what
you can't."
"Never mind: old Big will like it," I said. "Come on."
Bob reluctantly took hold of the rope, and after giving a bit of advice
to our companion, he made another desperate struggle while we pulled,
but the only result was that we all grew exceedingly hot and sticky, and
as Bigley stood below, red-faced and panting with his efforts, Bob put
an end to the project by sliding down the rope to his side, so there was
nothing left for me to do but to follow.
This I did, but not till I had had a good long look round from my high
perch at the deeply-cut ravine with its rugged piled-up masses of cliff,
and tiny river, to which it seemed to me I was now the heir.