Читать книгу The Island of Gold: A Sailor's Yarn - Stables Gordon - Страница 6

During the time the memorable visit lasted no one took much notice of Ransey Tansey’s pets. Yet each one of the three of them was interested, and each showed his interest in his own peculiar way.

The Admiral had flown gracefully down from the gibbet-tree, and alighted on the ground not more than a dozen yards from the group.

“Craik – a-raik – a – r-r-r – a – cray – ay!” he said to himself, which being interpreted seemed to signify, “What do they want here, anyhow? That’s about the same gang I saw in the woods. Curr-r-r! Well, they haven’t guns anyhow, like the beastly biped called a keeper, who tried to shoot my hind-legs off because I was a strange bird. I was only tasting some partridge’s eggs, nothing else. Shouldn’t I have liked just to have gouged out his ugly eyes, thrown ’em one by one into the air, caught ’em coming down, and swallowed ’em like eggs.”

All the time the talking was going on the Admiral stood twisting his body about, sometimes crouching low to the ground, his neck stretched straight out towards them, the head on one side and listening, the next moment erect as a bear pole, and seeming to look surprised and angry at what he heard them saying.

Bob had rushed to see about the setter. He lay down at some distance off, with his nose between his paws, and the setter set, and finally sat.

“Not a yard nearer, Mr Sportsman, if you please,” said Bob; “I’m a rough ’un to look at, and a tough ’un to tackle. I suppose you call yourself a gentleman’s dog; you live in marble halls, sleep on skins, and drink from a silver saucer. I’m only a poor man’s doggie; I sleep where I can, eat what I can get, and drink from bucket or brook. But I love my master maybe more than you love yours. Yonder is my home, and yonder is our cat in the door of it; but my humble home is my master’s castle. Just try to come a yard or two nearer, if you’re tired of your silly life.”

But Dash preferred to stay where he was.

Murrams the cat behaved with the utmost dignity and indifference. He sat in the doorway washing his face, with dreamy, half-shut eyes. To have seen him you would have said that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, so cool was he; yet if Mr Dash had come round that way, Murrams would have mounted his back and never ceased clawing the dog till he had ridden him half a mile at least from Hangman’s Hall.

It wasn’t, however, until the visitors had taken their departure that the grand jubilee commenced.

“They’re gone!” said Bob, running up and licking the pussy’s ear. “That’s a jolly good job!”

“They’re gone!” said pussy in reply, as he rubbed shoulders with Bob.

“They’re gone!” cried the crane, hopping madly round the pair of them.

And as she nestled closer in her brother’s arms, Babs sighed and said just the same thing.

“Hurrah!” cried Ransey Tansey; “let’s run off to the woods.”

“Let’s wun off to ze woods at wance,” echoed Babs.

Had little Eedie seen Ransey five minutes after this, I question whether she would have pronounced him the prettiest boy she had ever known.

Ransey was himself again, old shirt, ragged pants, and all.

I think that the children and Bob, not to mention the gallant Admiral, enjoyed themselves that afternoon in the woods as much as ever they had done in their young lives.

Babs insisted on taking her ragged old dolly-bone with her, and leaving the new one at home upside down in a corner.

Well, Ransey fished for just an hour, but had glorious luck and a good string to take to Mrs Farrow. This was enough, so he put away his rod, and read some more horrors to Babs from “Nick o’ the Woods.” The torture scenes and the scalping took her fancy more than anything else.

So Ransey Tansey invented a play on the spot that would have brought down the house in a twopenny theatre if properly put on the stage.

He, Ransey Tansey, was to be a wild Indian, Babs would be the white man, Bob the bear, and the Admiral the spirit of the wild woods and ghost of the haunted cañon.

The play passed off without a hitch. Only Ransey Tansey himself required to dress for his part. This he did to perfection. He retired to a secluded spot by the river’s bank for the purpose. He divested himself of his pants and his solitary suspender. These were but the evidences of an effete civilisation. What could such things as these have to do with the red man of the wild West, the solitary scalp-hunter of the boundless prairie? But a spear and a tomahawk he must have, and these were quickly and easily fashioned from the boughs of the neighbouring trees. He tied a piece of cord around his waist, and in this he stuck his knife, open and ready for every emergency. He fuzzed up his rebellious hair, and stuck rooks’ feathers in it; he thrust his feet into the darkest and grimiest of mud to represent moccasins, and streaked his face with the same.

When enveloped in his blanket (the big shawl) he stalked into the open in all the ghastliness of his wur-paint, and said “Ugh!” He was Ransey Tansey no longer, but Chee-tow, the Red Chief of the Slit-nosed Indians.

On beholding the warrior, Babs’s first impulse was to scream in terror; her next – and this she carried out – was to roll on her back, her two legs pointing skywards, and scream with laughter.

“Oh,” she cried delightedly, “’oo is such a boo’ful wallio! (warrior); be twick and tell somefing.”

For the time being Babs was only the audience. When she became an actor in this great forest drama she would have to behave differently.

And now the red chief went prowling around, and presently out from a bush darted a grizzly bear.

The bear was Bob.

Chee-tow uttered his wildest war-cry, and rushed onwards to the charge.

The grizzly held his ground and scorned to fly.

* * * * *

This fierce fight with the terrible grizzly was so realistic that the audience sat silent and enthralled, with its thumb in its mouth.

But it ended at last in the victory of the red chief. The bear lay dead, and the first Act came to a close.

In Act Two an Indian maiden has been stolen, and borne away by a white man across the boundless prairie to his wigwam in the golden East. The red chief squats down on the moss with drooping head to bewail the loss of his daughter, during which outburst of grief his streaks of war-paint get rather mixed; but that can’t be helped. Then the spirit of the wild woods appears to him – the ghost of the haunted cañon (that is, between you and me, the Admiral comes hopping up with his neck stretched out, wondering what it is all about) – and whispers to him, and speaks in his ear, and says: —

So Chee-tow gets up, seizes his arms, and follows the spirit, who goes hopping on in front of him in a very weird-like manner indeed.

Meanwhile Babs, knowing her part, has hidden herself in a bush, and in due time is led back in triumph as the white man who stole the maiden. He is tied to a tree, scalped, and tortured. Then a fire is lit, and thither the white man is dragged towards it to be burned alive.

But another bear (Bob again) rushes in to his assistance and enables him to escape.

The same fire built to burn the white man (Babs) is being utilised to roast potatoes for supper; only this is a mere detail.

And the play ends by the spirit of the wild woods bringing the maiden back (Babs again) to the camp fire in the forest, and – and by a supper of baked potatoes with salt.

All’s well that ends well. And shortly after the dénouement there may be seen, wending its way in the calm summer gloaming up the little footpath that leads through the green corn, the following procession. First, Bob solemnly carrying the fishing-rod; then Ransey Tansey with a string of red-finned fish in front of him, and Babs on his back, wrapped in the Indian’s blanket; and last, but not least, the Admiral himself, nodding his head not unlike a camel, and lifting his legs very high indeed, because the dew was beginning to fall.

Babs had gone soundly to sleep by the time they reached the farm, but she was lively enough a few minutes after this.

And Mrs Farrow made them stay to supper, every one of them, including even the Admiral, although he said “Tok – tok – tok” several times, out of politeness, perhaps when first invited in.

The kitchen at the farm was in reality a sitting-room, and a very jolly, cosy one it was; nor did the fire seem a bit out of place to-night.

It took Ransey quite a long time to tell all his adventures, and dilate upon the kindness of his visitors, especially rough but kindly Captain Weathereye.

It was almost dark before they got to the little cot at the foot of the hill that they called their home; and here a fresh surprise awaited them, for a light was shining through the little window, and through the half-open door as well.

Babs herself was the first, I believe, to notice this.

“O ’Ansey,” she cried, struggling with excitement on the boy’s back, “O ’Ansey, look! fazer (father) has tomed! Be twick, ’Ansey, be twick.”

And Ransey quickened his pace now, while Bob ran on in front.

“Wowff, wowff,” he barked, “wowff – wowff – wow!” But it was in a half-hysterical kind of way, as if there were a tear of joy mixed up with it, joy at the hope of seeing a kind old master again.

Even the crane felt it his bounden duty to indulge in an extra hop or two, and to shout, “Scray – scray – scray – ay – ay!”

It was the Admiral’s voice that caused honest Tom Tandy to get up from his chair, lay down his pipe, and hurry to the door.

“Hill – ll – o!” he shouted. “Here we all are, Ransey Tansey, Babs, and Bob, and all. Why, this is a merry meeting. Come, Babs. Hoist away, Ransey. Hee – hoy – ip! and there she is safely landed in harbour. So you missed your old father, little lass, did you? Bless it. But we’re all going on to-morrow, and the Merry Maiden has got a new coat o’ paint, and new furniture for the cuddy, and it’s no end of a jolly time we’ll all have.”

Yes, it was a merry meeting, and a right happy one. I only wish that both Miss Scragley and Captain Weathereye had seen it.

“Why,” the former would have said to herself, “this good fellow could surely never have been a slave to the bottle!”

Mr Tandy had never really been a constant imbiber of that soul-killing curse of our country – drink; but some years gone by, like many another old sailor, he was liable to slide into an occasional “bout,” as it is called, and it was with sorrow he thought of this now. But Miss Scragley and many others have yet to learn that it is often the best-hearted and the brightest that fall most easily into temptation.

As for Weathereye, had he been a witness of this little reunion, he too would have given his opinion about the sturdy old sailor.

“Why!” he would have cried frankly to Mr Tandy, (pronounced Tansey only by the children) “why, my good fellow, Miss Scragley, who is faddy and elderly, and myself, old fool that I am at the best, were considering what best we could do for your children. We were to do all kinds of pretty things. The boy was going to a school, the child to a home, and you – ha, ha, ha – you, with your bold face and your sturdy frame, a man of barely forty, were going to be sent to the house. Ha, ha, no wonder I laugh. But tip us your flipper, Tandy, you’re a man every inch – a man and a sailor.”

That is what Weathereye would have said had he seen Tandy sitting there now.

They are right in saying that those whom animals and children love are possessed of right good hearts of their own.

And here was this old sailor – the word “old” being simply a term of endearment, for none but the sickly are old at forty, and they’ve been old all the time – sitting erect in his chair, Babs on one knee, the great cat on the other; Ransey on the hearth looking smilingly up at father’s bronzed face, silver-sprinkled hair and beard; the Admiral standing on one leg behind the chair; and poor Bob asleep before the fire, with his chin reposing on his old master’s boot.

It was a pretty picture.

“Children,” says Tandy at last, “it is getting late, and – just kneel down. I think we’ll say a bit of a prayer to-night.”