THE FINDING OF THURSTON-WATER.
Now the story leaves those great kings and their wars, to tell of
Thorstein Sweinson, and how he went up the river Crake, and how he
found the great water at the river-head: the same that old folk call
Thurston-water, and we mostly call Coniston lake, from the name of our
village hard by it.
In the year after the ravaging of Scotland, Thorstein was eleven winters
old, and a great lad: sturdy at all games of strength, and skilful enough
in all kinds of work that a lad was set to do. He could catch a nag on
the fell, and ride it home through the heather; make an arrow, and shoot
it to the mark: handle the smith’s tools or the woodwright’s: swim, and
row, wrestle and race with his brothers, and often beat them, and always
beat the thralls’ boys. Most of all he took pleasure in going about with
the herds, to look after the beasts and the sheep on the summer-hills:
and when they were once out and away, he would egg them on to take him
farther, to see the little dells and winding valleys on either side of
the Crake, as if he might find there something of the great world which
he had heard about and longed to wander through.
It was nigh upon seven years since the wild men of the fells had made
their last raid and carried off the thrall’s son: but still Swein would
often warn his boys to keep within sight of home, and bid them stay by
their mother if he himself were abroad. But he might as well have warned
the smoke not to go out of the chimney. For northern blood stirred in the
lads: and Thorstein often looked down the firth to seaward, and wished he
were big enough to go viking in a ship of his own. Orm said he would go
with him if it were trading he meant: and thought that they might make
a deal of money by selling the thralls’ children. Upon which Thorstein
hit him in the face, and said, “Thou shan’t get our little May-queen for
one.” And he spoke no more of his plans to Orm.
Hundi was a better friend to Thorstein, and they talked a deal together
of the travels they should take and the deeds they should do. There were
those great mountains in the far distance, always beckoning to them;
peopled with giants and fairies,—had not their father often told them
of the stone man that kept the road beyond Grasmere? and had they not
the dim remembrance, not easily let die, of the red giant? They knew by
hearsay of wide lakes among the fells, lying all alone for the first
adventurer to take and hold. The beck that flowed through their fields,
and the greater Leven that they could see from the howe or from Legbarrow
winding far away among the hills, came down, so the Welshmen said, out of
wide waters full of fish and haunted by fowl in countless flocks. And as
they sat on the rocks at Crakemouth when the tide was low moulding clay
arrowheads in the rune-shaped clifts and chinks of the smooth rock, they
wondered what troll or fairy had been there with chisel and mallet, and
what more marvellous marvel there might be to find in the unknown wilds
beyond. Crake, Cregiog as their Welsh called it, the rocky river, came
down night and day, sometimes fierce and swollen, sometimes faint and
shrunken, but always singing over its rocks the same song of enticement.
“If we could only track the beck,” they said, “and find the great water,
and take the fish and fowl, and build a house by the shore and make a
boat!”
So at last the wish grew into a plan, and the plan into a purpose. When
nobody was looking they were to slip away: follow the Crake to its mere,
take the land about it, and make a backwood bigging of their own. They
filled a bag with meal, took their knives in their belts, and set off one
morning early, as though they were going for a day with the shepherds.
But where the fields ended, they took the path to the outlying folds:
and when they were near the folds, they turned through the woods to the
river, so that they might not be seen, and scrambled for a great way up
the stony channel. It was only half filled, because, as often happens in
those parts, the spring had been dry, and the rainy weather was yet to
come on, after the days began to shorten.
For a while it was easy work: there is a flat shore on the left hand, and
they could run over the shingle even where the water went swiftly and
fell in eddies and foam over rock-ridges. But soon the hills on either
side close in: the banks are steep: the river foams beneath thick trees
which spread their branches, making the squirrel’s bridge overhead. Thus
it is even nowadays, but in yon old times in many places great firs had
fallen right across the deep channel, or huge oaks had lost their hold of
the rocky bank from very weight of age, and had rolled into the torrent,
to be weirs and dams that held the water and flooded the banks: so that
what with the swamp, wherever there was a bit of flat shore, and what
with the rock walls, or the slippery sodden tufts of moss and fern,
wherever the gill-banks were brant, the lads made but little way. And
whoever has stood upon Spark Brig and looked up-bank and down-bank, and
dreamt over a time when all the mills and houses were unbuilt, and the
land uncleared, and nothing but wild timber, dank and dense, filled the
dale, with the logs that rotted where they fell, and the brambles and
creepers that matted the growing trunks together: and wild bulls and wild
boars, wolves and cats, hag-worms and lizards, and maybe a bear or two,
tenanted the place:—he will know what the adventure of those two boys was
like. And whoever has fought his way up one of our moorland gills where
the land is still rough, will know how they stumbled over the shallows,
and scrambled over the boulders, and waded the mires, and swam the dubs,
as they came through the jaws of Crake, and out into the easier ground
by the eyot beneath Lowick Green, as it is now. There, if the river was
less rough, the trees were still thick and the banks steep: and on the
right hand the fells seemed to come nearer: and standing out through the
black fir-trees high over head, white brows of crag seemed to frown and
nod above them, as they sat on a great stone in mid-stream to take their
breath.
The king-fishers flitted past, blue flashes in the green gloom. Where a
ray of sunshine came in through the vault of trees overhead and pierced
the brown water, they could see, beneath mossy rocks fringed with fern,
little dippers running over the bottom among the trout, and as free as if
they were on dry land, for all the rushing of the water. Now and again a
wild animal ran down to drink, and started back crashing into the wood:
but there was no sign of houses, nor of men dwelling in this uncouth
wilderness.
They toiled on again, mounting the stream where it breaks over long-drawn
ledges, around a rocky eyot at a sharp bend, and through a swampy tarn
(as it was then) till they came to the spot where Lowick bridge now
stands. It was high noon. They sat down on the steep bank above the
swamp; and taking handfuls of the meal from their bag, soaked it with
the clear fresh water and made their dinner. When it was done, said
Hundi, “Well, old forge-ahead, how much farther? For my part I call the
shepherds’ tales all Welsh lies. There is no great water that we can see,
only this dirty puddle: and we shall have work enough to get home before
supper-time, down the screes we have climbed and this waste of rubbish.”
“Nay,” said Thorstein, “the beck must come from somewhere, and I mean to
see the end of it.”
“What, and sleep in a tree like a squirrel?”
“Why not, if I must, thou slug-a-bed? The nights are short and warm
enough.”
“Well then,” said Hundi, “I will sit on the howe over there, and wait
until the conquering hero comes back. I’ll count a hundred, and then.”
“And then go home like a wise lad to thy mother, and say Thorstein is
coming to-morrow with news, and a great fish out of Thorstein’s mere; for
it will be none of Hundi’s.”
“Hundi’s howe is here, Thorstein’s mere is nowhere.” And indeed
afterwards the story says that Hundi lived hard by, and was in the end
buried on that howe: but that is still to tell.—Said he, “A wilful beast
must gang his own gate, and I’ll not mar sport, nor splash thy mere to
frighten thy whales. Come, Thorstein, don’t be a fool. Turn back with me
now, or rue it!”
“Neither, dear lad: and don’t anger me, but hie thy ways home, and bid
them not worry. Happen I’ll light on my journey’s end sooner than we
think for.”
“Happen thou’ll light on mischief sooner than thou think’st for. Come
along, I say.”
“Go along, I say. We can’t miss the road, for its down-bank for thee and
up-bank for me to the end.”
“Nay, that’s an ill speech,” said Hundi, “for parting.”
“Well then, home for thee, and away in the wide world for me, for
evermore. Will that suit?”
“Nor that either. I wish thee luck, and thy big fish: and I’ll foreset
the scolding that awaits thee: and have thy breakfast kept warm: for yon
bag of meal will be gone before to-morrow, if I know aught.”
“Good lad, then; we part friends:” and Hundi turned and slid down the
bank and splashed down stream: for he was always an easy-going lad.
But Thorstein toiled on as before, and found his work no less, at first:
for he had to win his way up Lowick force and through the swamps at its
head. But then he saw, at last, rising above the trees, a crest and a
cone, of high rugged fells, distant indeed, but not a mere blue line as
he had seen them from the heights of Greenodd. The afternoon sun threw
its lights and shadows on the great scars of Dowcrags, and the rocks of
the Coniston Old Man stood out bold in the blue air.
The lad’s heart leapt up, and he shouted as he plunged again in the
rapids that swirled beneath the wild steeps on his right, and the long
dark slopes of Blawith, the Blue-wood, on the other hand. By and by he
was lost again in the crooked ravine where the Nibthwaite Mills now
stand, where the water narrowed to half its former breadth, and slid
over ranks of rock, sloping downwards like carven tables, or a giant’s
stairway, sunken and aslew. But at the head of every force, there were
the great fells again in sight, and every time nearer and clearer,
grander and more wonderful. At last he came to a sweet round tarn. It was
bedded in the woods, and the likeness of every several branch lay upon
the water. Thorstein shouted: but then he stayed. Was this the mere he
had come so far to seek? and no more than this?
He pressed forward, round the miry edges of the tarn, and stumbled
through the narrows of Arklid. Hitherto the stream had been ever
narrower, and, but for a few ledges and flats, ever steeper: but here
it suddenly became both still and deep, and opened out into breadth.
Thorstein’s heart beat hard when the wood thinned, and the waterway
broadened, and the world grew brighter, and lo, beyond, a great gleam of
blue, and a blaze of golden sky.
Close beside him, seal-bushes fringed the shilloe beds, bulrushes stood
in their ranks right out into the shallows, and purple flags and white
and yellow water-lilies lay along the edges of the lake. On either hand,
seaming the deep forest that clothed the sides of the valley, sharp
craggy spurs came down, as it were gateposts to the hall of hills; and
broke at their bases into long nabs, rounded here and rocky there,
running far out into the mere and tufted to the water-edge with dark oaks
and dark firs. And between, there were blue nooks of ripple reflecting
the evening sky, and the wild ducks and teal swam through the ripple, and
the gulls floated above it: and in lound spots a hundred rings showed how
the fish were rising.
Thorstein climbed a howe on the left: and as he climbed, the lake opened
up before him. Beyond the nearer woods there was the deep of blue, and
the lonely island in the midst of it: and from his feet, away into the
uttermost distance, the huge fells, tossing like the breakers on a stormy
beach, and rolling away and afar like the heaving waves of the sea. And
over them late sunset brooded in the North, with bars of level cloud,
purple and gold, and fading rose-flecks overhead.
Unwearied in his exultation, the lad ran down to the shore again, and
stripping off hood and kirtle, hose and shoes, all stained and ragged
with scrambling through brake and briar, he waded out into deep water,
plunged beneath, and swam sturdily through the calmness. Then he flagged
at last, and crept ashore, and donned his clothes, and looked about
him for a safe night-lair; smiling as he thought of Hundi’s horror at
sleeping like a squirrel. He crept into the boughs of a great spreading
oak, and its thick leaves sheltered him like a thatched roof and hid
him like the hangings of a shut-bed. The level clouds drew together;
the purple colour darkened into black; and a line of dusky light alone
lingered in the North over Helvellyn, while he slept, dreamless.