PIPER'S HOLE
Annet, Linnet, and Matthew Henry sat side by side on the granite roller
by the gate and watched their friend Jan eat his mid-morning snack--or
"mungey," as it is called in the Islands. It consisted, as a rule, of a
crust of bread, but Jan had supplemented it to-day with a turnip, which
he cut into slices with his pocket-knife. He had been pulling turnips
since six o'clock. "And I reckon this'll be the last time of askin',"
he commented, letting his eyes wander over the field as he seated
himself on a shaft of the cart, which had been brought to await the
loading.
The children knew that they would soon be quitting Saaron, and that the
prospect distressed their father and mother. They had discussed it, and
agreed together that it was a great shame to be turned out of their
home, and that the Lord Proprietor must be a hard-hearted tyrant; but
secretly they looked forward to the change with a good deal of
excitement, not being of an age to fathom the troubles of grown-up
folk. After all, Brefar lay close at hand and was familiar. Brefar was
populous, and across there they would find many playmates. Brefar, too,
held out great promise of adventure after sea-birds' eggs and
expeditions of discovery; and if ever the home-sickness came upon them
they would cross the sands at low-water and revisit the old haunts and
the deserted house. All these consolations, however, they kept to
themselves. It would never do to abandon the family grievance merely
because it presented a bright side. They felt, as older folks have been
known to feel, that a sense of injury carries with it a sense of
importance.
"I wonder," said Linnet, severely, "that you can have the heart to talk
about it, Jan."
"Jan has no feelings about leaving Saaron," said Annet, more in sorrow
than in anger. "Why should he--coming from the mainland?"
"But Jan was born on the Islands," Matthew Henry objected; "and that
will be a long time ago."
"Silly! As if you could belong to the Islands by being born here! Why,
to belong to them, your father and mother must have been Islanders, and
your grandfathers and grandmothers, and right back into the greats and
great-greats. And then you never want to go away or live anywhere else
in the world."
Matthew Henry pursed up his small mouth dubiously. He himself had
sometimes wished to live in the wilds of America, or on a South Sea
Island; even to visit Australia and have a try at walking upside down.
There must be a flaw in Annet's argument somewhere.
"But if Jan comes from the mainland--" he began.
"Cornwall," said Jan, tranquilly, his mouth full of raw turnip.
"Then you ought to want to go back to it."
"I mean to, one of these fine days."
"I shouldn't put it off too long, if I were you," advised Linnet,
candidly. "You're getting up in years, and the next thing you'll be
dead."
"But didn't your father ever want to go back?" asked Matthew Henry,
sticking to his point.
"No fear."
"Why?"
"Because, if he'd showed his face back in Cornwall, they'd have hanged
him; that's all."
"Oh!" exclaimed the three, almost simultaneously, and sat for a moment
or two gazing on Jan in awed silence.
"But why should they want to hang your father?" asked Annet.
Jan sliced his bread with an air of noble indifference. "Eh? Why,
indeed? He used to say 'twas for being too frolicsome. He never done no
wrong--not what you might call wrong: or so he maintained, an' 'twasn't
for me to disbelieve 'en. Was it, now?"
"You'll tell us about it, Jan dear?" coaxed Annet.
"There's no particular story in it." (The children put this aside; it
was Jan's formula for starting a tale.) "My father, in his young days,
lived at a place in Cornwall called Luxulyan, and arned his wages as a
tinner at a stream-work----"
"What is a stream-work?" asked Matthew Henry.
"A stream-work is a moor beside a river, where the mud is full of ore,
washed down from the country above--sometimes from the old mines. The
streamers dig this mud up and wash it through sieves, and so they get
the tin. There was enough of it, my father said, in Luxulyan Couse to
keep a captain and twelve men in good wages and pay for a feast once a
year at the Rising Sun Public House. The supper took place some time in
the week before Christmas, and they called it Pie-crust Night, though I
can't tell you why. Well, one Pie-crust Night, after this yearly
supper--the most enjoyable he had ever known--my father left the Rising
Sun towards midnight, and started to walk to his home in Luxulyan
Churchtown. He had a fair dollop of beer inside of him, but nothing (as
he ever maintained), to excuse what followed, and he got so far as
Tregarden Down without accident. Now, this Tregarden Down, as he always
described it to me, is a lonesome place given over to brackenfern and
strewn about with great granite boulders, and on one of these boulders
my father sat down, because the night was clear and a fancy had come
into his head to count the stars. He sat there staring up and counting
till he reached twenty score, and with that he felt he was getting a
crick in the back of his neck, and brought his eyes down to earth
again. It seemed to him that, even in the dark, a change had come over
the down since he'd been sittin' there, and the whole lie of the ground
had a furrin look. Hows'ever, he hadn't much time to puzzle about this,
for lo and behold! as he stared about him, what should he see under the
lew of the next rock but a party of little people, none of 'em more
than a thumb high, dancing in a ring upon the turf! They broke off and
laughed as soon as my father caught sight of 'em; and, says one little
whipper-snapper, stepping forward and pulling off his cap with a bow,
'Good evening, my man!' 'Sir to you!' says my father. 'There's a good
liquor at the Rising Sun,' says the little man. 'None better,' says my
father. 'I know by a deal better,' says the little man. 'Would you like
to taste it?' 'Would I not?' says my father. 'Well, then,' says the
little man, 'there's a shipfull of wine gone ashore early this night on
Par Sands, and maybe the Par folk haven't had time yet to clear the
cargo. What d'ee say to _Ho! and away for Par Beach!_ Eh?' 'With all
the pleasure in life,' says my father, thinkin' it a joke; so '_Ho! and
away for Par Beach!_' he calls out, mimicking the little man. The words
weren't scarcely out of his mouth before a wind seemed to catch him up,
though gently, from his seat on the boulder, and in two twinklings he
was standin' on Par Sands. There was a strong sea running, and out
beyond the edge of the tide my father spied a ship breaking up. But if
she broke up fast, her cargo was meltin' faster, for a whole crowd of
folk had gathered on the sands, and were rolling the casks of wine up
from the water and carting them away for dear life. My father and the
little people couldn't much as ever lay hands on a solitary one, and,
what was worse they hadn't but fairly broached it before a cry went up
that the Preventive men were coming. Sure enough, my father, pricking
up his ears, could hear horses gallopin' down along the road above the
sands. 'Dear, dear!' says the little man, 'this is a most annoyin'
thing to happen! But luckily I know a place where there's better liquor
still, and no risk of bein' interrupted. So _Ho! and away for Squire
Tremayne's cellar!_'
"'_Ho! and away for Squire Tremayne's cellar!_' called out my father;
and the next thing he knew he found himself in the cellar of Squire
Tremayne's great house at Heligan, knocking around with the small
people among casks of wine and barrels of beer galore. To do him
justice, he never pretended he didn't make use of the occasion. In
fact, he fuddled himself so that when the little gentleman called out
'_Ho! and away!_ for the next randivoo' (whatever that might ha' been),
he missed to take up the catchword, bein' asleep belike. So there the
piskies left him asleep, with his head in a waste saucer and his mouth
under the drip of a spigot; and there the butler found him the next
morning, knocking his shins among the butts and barrels in the
darkness, and calling out to know what the dickens had taken Tregarden
Down and the rocks o't, that they grew so pesky close together. The
butler haled him upstairs to the Squire, and the Squire heard his
story, and not only said he didn't believe a word o't, but (bein' a
magistrate) packed him off to Bodmin Jail for burglary. I don't blame
the man altogether," said Jan, reflectively; "for, come to think of it,
my father's account of himself lay a bit off the ordinary run, and
belike he wasn't in any condition to put it clearly.
"At any rate, to jail he went, and from jail he was delivered up to the
Judges at Assize, and the Judges sentenced my poor father to death,
which was the punishment for burglary in those times, and, for all I
know, it may be the same on the mainland to this day.
"The morning came when he was to be put out of the world; and, as I
needn't tell you, it gathered a great crowd together, to have a look at
the last of a man that had so little sense of wickedness as to take
liberties with a gentleman's wine and spirits. There my poor father
stood under the gallows-tree with none to befriend 'en, when all of a
sudden he heard a shouting up the street, and down along it, through
the crowd, came a strange little lady, holding up her hand and a paper
in it. The folk opened way respectful-like, seein' by the better-most
air of her that she belonged to one of the gentry, and along she came
to the scaffold. 'Good mornin', ma'am, and what can I do for you?' says
the Sheriff, steppin' forward, with a lift of his hat. He held out a
hand for the paper; but the little lady turns to my father, and pipes
out in a little voice, very clear and sweet, '_Ho! and away for the
Islands!_' Glad enough was my father to hear the sound of it. '_Ho! and
away for the Islands!_' he answers, pat; and in two twinks he and the
little lady were off in the sky like a puff of smoke, and the crowd
left miles below. The next thing he knew he was sittin' on a rock, over
yonder in Inniscaw, by the mouth of Piper's Hole, and starin' at the
sea. So he picks himself together and walks up to North Inniscaw Farm
(as 'twas called in those days), and there he took service and married
and lived steady ever after. Leastways----"
"Leastways," said a voice at the gate, "he gave over drinking except
when his master ran a cargo of brandy, and he never gave his wife
trouble but once, when he took home a mermaid and made the good soul
jealous."
"Aunt Vazzy!" cried the children. "Why, how long have you been standin'
there?"
"Long enough to hear the end of the story, and how Jan's father came to
the Islands through Piper's Hole."
"But," Linnet objected, "Jan didn't say that his father came through
Piper's Hole; only that he found himself on the rocks in front of it.
They came through the air, he and the little lady, didn't they, Jan?"
Jan shook his head. "They started to come through the air," he answered
cautiously.
"Everybody knows that the fairies always pass to and fro through
Piper's Hole," said Annet, in a positive voice. "The mermaids, too. The
cave there goes right through Inniscaw and under the sea, and comes up
again in the mainland. Nobody living has ever gone that way; but Farmer
Santo had an uncle once that owned a sheep-dog that wandered into
Piper's Hole and was lost, and a month later it turned up on the
mainland with all its hair off."
"It do go in a terrible long way, to be sure," Jan admitted; "for I
made a trial of it myself, one time, at low water. First of all you
come to a pool, and, then, about fifty yards further, to another pool,
and into that I went plump, coming upon it sudden, in the darkness. I
swallowed a bellyful of it, too, and the water--if you'll believe
me--was quite fresh. I didn't try no further, because, in the first
place, the tide was rising, and because, when I pulled myself out, I
heard a sound on t'other side of the pool like as if some creature was
breathin' hard there in the darkness. It properly raised my hair, and I
turned tail."
"Fie, Jan! Ran away from a mermaid!" said Vashti, laughing. "You should
have brought her home and married her."
"I don't want to marry no woman with a tail like a fish, nor no woman
that makes thikky noise with her breathin'," maintained Jan. "That's to
say, if merrymaid it were, which I doubts. But you're wrong about my
father, Miss Vazzy. He see'd a merrymaid sure 'nough; but he never took
her home. No, he was too much of a gentleman, besides bein' afeard o'
my mother. If you want the story, he was down in Piper's Hole one day
warping ashore some few kegs of brandy that had been sunk thereabouts
by a Rosco trader. Mr. Pope's father, that was agent to th' old Duke,
used to employ my father regular on this business, knowing him for a
silent man, and one to be trusted; and my father had made a very pretty
catchet some way back-along in the cave, big enough to hold two score
of kegs, and well above reach of the sea-water. But, o' course, while
he was at this kind of work, Mr. Pope had to wink an eye now and then
if one o' the kegs leaked a bit. Well, my father had finished his job
that day in a sweatin' hurry, the tide bein' nearabouts on the top of
the flood, and at the end, all the kegs bein' stowed, he spiled one
'for the good of the house,' as he put it, and drew off a tot in a tin
panikin he kept handy. With this and his pipe he settled himself down
'pon a dry ledge and waited for the tide to run back.
"Out beyond the mouth of the hole he could see a patch of blue sky, and
the little waves under it glancin' in the sunshine; and belike the
dazzle of it, or else the tot of brandy, made him feel drowsy-like.
Anyhow, he woke up to see that the tide had run out a bravish lot,
leavin' the sands high and dry. But, as you know, there's a pool o'
water close inside the entrance, and what should my father see in the
pool but a woman's head and shoulders!
"She had raised herself out of the water with her hands restin' on a
slab of rock, and over the rock she stared at my father, like as if she
wanted help, and again like as if she felt too timid to ask. And when I
called her a woman I said wrong; for she was more like a child, and a
frightened one, with terrible pretty eyes, and her long hair shed down
over her shoulders, drippin' wet, and in colour between gold and
sea-green. 'Hullo!' said my father, 'and who might you be, makin' so
bold?' At the sound of his speech she gave a little scritch at first,
and bobbed down face-under, so that her hair lay afloat and spread
itself all over the water like sea-weed. My father walked up closer.
'Nonsense, my dear,' says he, in his coaxin' voice, 'there's nothin' to
be afeard of. I'm a respectable married man, and old enough to be your
father. So put up your face--come now!--and tell me all about it.'
After a bit she lifted her face, very pitiful, and says she in a small
voice, 'I was afeard you had been drinkin', sir.' 'A little--a very
little,' answers my father; 'we'll say no more about it.' 'And I was
afeard,' says she, 'you would want to carry me home and marry me
against my will!' 'Lord,' says my father, 'trust a woman for putting
notions into a man's head. No, no, my dear; I can get all the
temperance talk I want without committin' bigamy for it.' 'An' you
couldn' marry me,' says the merrymaid, with a kind o' sob, 'because I'm
married already, an' the mother of two as pretty children as ever you
wished to see. I can hear 'em callin' for me,' she said, 'down there,
beyond the bar,' and she went on to tell him (but the tale was all
mixed up with sobbin') how she and the children had been swimmin' along
shore that afternoon, and liftin' their heads above water to glimpse
the sea-pinks and catch a smell of the thyme on the cliffs; and how she
had left 'em to play while she swam into the cave to sit for a while
and comb out her pretty hair. But the tide had run back while she was
busy, and she couldn't crawl back to the sea over the bar, because on
dry sand all her strength left her. 'And if I wait for the flood,' she
said, 'my husband'll half murder me; for he's jealous as fire.'
"My father listened, and, sure enough, he seemed to hear the children's
voices callin' to her out beyond the water's edge. With that, bein'
always a tender-hearted man, he knelt down and lifted her out o' the
pool. Now, if he'd had more sense at the time he'd have struck a
bargain with her; for the merrymaids, they say, can tell where gold is
hidden, and charm a man against sickness, and make all his wishes come
true. But in the tenderness of his heart he thought 'pon none o' these
things. He just let her put her arms round his neck, and lifted her
over the sands, and waded out with her, till he stood three feet deep
in water in his sea-boots; and then she gave him a kiss and slid away
with a flip of her tail. 'Twas only when he stood staring that it
crossed his mind what a fool he had been and what a chance he had
missed. Then he remembered that she had dropped her comb by the edge of
the pool--he had heard it fall when he lifted her, and back he went to
search for it: for the sayin' is that with a merrymaid's comb you can
comb out your hair in handfuls of guineas. But all he found was a
broken bit of shark's jaw, and though he combed for half-an-hour and
wished for all kind o' good luck, not a farthin' could he fetch out."
"Is that all?" asked Matthew Henry, as Jan arose from the cart-shaft,
dusting the crumbs of bread from his breeches.
"It's enough, I should think," said Linnet, the sceptical, "seeing that
it's nothing but a story from beginning to end."
Vashti looked from one child to the other with a twinkle of fun. "We
will pay Piper's Hole a visit one of these days," she promised, "and
perhaps Linnet will see a real mermaid and be convinced."
"I don't care for mermaids," announced Matthew Henry. "It's the cave I
want to explore, to see if it really does lead through to the mainland.
And I won't be afraid, like Jan here, and run away from a little
noise."
"You wait till you get there before you boast," advised Linnet.
But Vashti's eyes, resting on the boy, grew tender of a sudden. "The
way through to the mainland?" she said, musingly. "Matthew Henry is
right. It all depends on the heart that tries it; but there is nothing
can do him harm if he keeps up his courage; and the end of the road is
worth all the journey, for a man."
"Why, Aunt Vazzy, you talk as if you had been there!" cried Annet.
"And so I have, my dear; there and back again."
The three children stared at her. "Aunt Vazzy is joking," said Linnet,
severely. Annet was not too sure, and her brow puckered with a frown as
she searched for the meaning beneath her aunt's words. But Matthew
Henry believed them literally.
"Then," he exclaimed joyfully, "it's all nonsense about Farmer Santo's
uncle's sheep-dog. For Aunt Vazzy has beautiful hair!"