Cormorant Crag Part 15

"If the pigeons keep flying out there must be."

"Well, there they go, and here are some more coming, and they've flown right in somewhere, so I suppose there is. Want to hear any more about the place?"

"No, no. Come up now."

"All right, old chap; then I will, after one more look round and down below. The water is wild, though, and the rocks are grand; but old Joe is as right as can be: it's a terrible place, and unless any one likes to hang at the end of a three-hundred-feet rope he cannot get to the bottom here nor anywhere else along this cliff. It's just three parts of a round, and goes in all of a hollow below, where I am. There-- that's all; and now I'm coming up."

"Hah!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mike, in a tone full of thankfulness; and as Vince shuffled himself a little way--not much, for there was not room--the rope tightened about his chest, giving him so strong a support that he leaned back, pressed his hands down on either side of him to steady himself, and drew up one leg till he could plant his heel on the stone where he had been seated. A steady draw up of the other leg, and it was beside its fellow; then, getting well hold of the nearest projections on either side, he shouted up to his companion to haul hard--shouted, though in the immensity of the place his words, like those which had preceded them, sounded weak and more like whispers.

"Right!" said Mike; and then he uttered a wild cry, for as Vince thrust with feet and hands together, straightening himself out, the rope tightened at the same moment, and then the lad hung motionless against the slope.

The rain and frost had been hard at work upon the edge of that precipice, as its sharply gnawed-off edge showed and the huge stone which the venturous lad had stridden was only waiting for the sharp thrust which it had received, for with a dull crack it was separated from the side, with an enormous ma.s.s beneath it, and went rus.h.i.+ng down, leaving a jagged curve, as if the piece had been bitten out, just below the lad's feet.

Vince did not stir even to feel for a place to plant his hands, but remained motionless for some moments. Then there was a dull splash echoed from the barrier rock which shut-in the cove, and the rus.h.i.+ng sound of wings, as the startled birds rose in clouds from their resting-places all around.

At last the full sense of his perilous position came to the boy, and with it his coolness; and he grasped the rock as well as he could, and called up to his companion.

"Grip hard, Ladle!" he cried. "I'm going to try and turn face to you."

There was no reply; but a thrill seemed to come down the fibres of the rope, and the strain upon the boy's chest to increase.

It was no easy task, for it was hard to find a resting-place on either side of the gap for his feet; but, full of trust in Mike's hold of the rope, and strengthened by the knowledge that it was secured to the granite block as well, Vince gave himself a quick writhe, and turned upon his face. Then, after a scrambling slip or two, his toes found a ledge, as his hands already had, and he climbed steadily up.

That task was not difficult, for the foothold was easy to select, the rope tightening still, and giving him steady help, while the distance, long as it had taken him to descend, was only short.

In another minute he was over the ridge, looking down on Mike, who, instead of hauling in the rope as he came up, had let himself glide down like a counterpoise, and as soon as he saw his companion in safety, he drew himself in a crouching position and stared up with his lips apart.

"It's all right," said Vince huskily. "Why, your face is white as white, and your hair's all wet."

"Yes," gasped Mike hysterically, "and so's yours. Oh, Cinder, old chap, I thought you had gone! Let's get away from this horrid place. Old Joe's right: there is something terrible about it after all."

"Wait a bit," said Vince, rather feebly, as he too crouched down upon a piece of rock. "I don't feel as if I could move much for a bit. I am so stiff and weak, and this rope's cut into my chest. Yes: old Joe's right; there's no getting down there. But it was awfully grand, Ladle, and I should have liked you to see it."

"And do you want to lower me down?" said Mike fiercely.

"No!" cried Vince sharply. "I wouldn't have you feel what I felt when that stone broke off and left me hanging there for all the riches in the world!"

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE PANGS OF COLD PUDDING.

"A burnt child fears the fire." So says the old proverb; and therefore it was quite reasonable for a couple of big lads to feel a certain sensation of shrinking when they talked about their adventure while trying to investigate the mysteries surrounding the portion of Crag, or Cormorant Island, as it was called, known as the Scraw.

For they did talk about it a great deal. Then, too, Vince had some _very_ unpleasant dreams about hanging over a tremendous gulf. One night in particular he was especially bad.

It happened in this way: Mike came over to the Doctor's cottage one evening after tea--though this was no novelty, for he was always coming over to the cottage after tea, when Vince was not going over to Sir Francis Ladelle's quaint, semi-fortified house, which had stood there for hundreds of years, being repaired by its various occupants, but very little altered. In fact, when the little island was for sale, many years before this story commences, and the baronet became the purchaser, he was so pleased with the old place that he determined to keep up the traditions of the past, in spite of low ceilings, dark windows, and what Mike described to Vince as "the jolly old ghosts," which, being interpreted, meant rats.

So Mike came over one evening, after Vince had eaten a tremendous meal, and the two lads went out for a stroll to the cliff edge, where there was always something to see, returning after dusk by the light of the moon and glowworms, of which there were abundance. Then Vince had to see Mike up to the gates of the old house; and, to make things straight, Mike said he would walk back a few yards with him, the few yards being so elastic that they stretched out to five hundred, more or less.

At last Vince reached home and had his supper, which had been put out for him, and when he had finished, found that the sea air and exercise had made him ravenous.

"I must have something else to eat," he said to himself, and he was going into the parlour to speak upon this important subject to Mrs Burnet; but as he reached the door he could hear her pleasant voice, and he knew what was going on, though he could not see through the panels.

For the picture rose plainly before his mind's eye of his father lying back in his easy chair, tired out with his round of the island and gardening, while by the light of a pair of mould candles--

_What_? You don't know what mould candles are? The happier you!

People did fifty years ago, and they were largely used by those who could not afford wax or spermaceti; and they did what Vince heard the Doctor do from time to time--took up the old-fas.h.i.+oned, scissor-like snuffers from their plated tray, snuffed the candles, and laid them back with a sharp click. And let me tell you that there was an art in snuffing a candle which required practice and a steady hand. For if you of the present generation of boys who live in the days of gas, electric lights, spirit lamps, and candles ingeniously made after the a.n.a.lytical experiments of chemists on a material very different from the old-fas.h.i.+oned Russian tallow--if you, I say, were to try and snuff an old candle, the chances are that you would either cut the cotton wick too much or too little, if you did not snuff the light out. After a time these sources of light would grow lengthy of black, burnt wick, a curious mushroomy, sooty portion would grow on the top, and the flame of the candle would become dull yellow and smoky. Then, if you cut too little off, the light would not be much improved; if you cut too low down, it was worse; if lower still, you put the light out. But the skilful hand every few minutes cut to the happy medium, as the Doctor did, and the light burned up fairly white and clear; so that, according to the custom at the cottage, Mrs Burnet could see well to continue reading aloud to her weary husband, this being his one great enjoyment in the calm life on the island.

Now, it seems rather hard on Vince to keep him waiting hungrily at the door while the writer of this little history of boy life runs away from his narrative to begin prattling in print about candles; but what has preceded these lines on light, and the allusion to chemistry, does ask for a little explanation, for many of you who read will say, What can chemistry have to do with tallow candles?

A great deal. I daresay you have read a little chemistry, or heard lectures thereon. Many of you may have been bitten by the desire to try a little yourselves, as I was, and tried making hydrogen and oxygen gases, burning phosphorus, watch-spring and sulphur in the latter; and even tried to turn the salts of metals back into the metals themselves.

But that by the way. Let us return to the candle--such a one as Vince had left burning, smoking and smelling unpleasantly, in the flat bra.s.s candlestick upon the little hall table, for it was time he was off to bed. Now, the chemists took the candle, and pulled it to pieces, just as the candle-makers took the loose, fluffy cotton wick metaphorically to pieces, and constructed another by plaiting the cotton strands together and making a thin, light wick, which, as it burned, had a tendency to curl over to the side of the conical flame where the point of the wick touched the air and burned more freely--so freely, in fact, from getting more oxygen from the air than the other part, as to burn all away, and never need snuffing. That is the kind of wick you use in your candles to-day; and the snuffers have gone into curiosity cases in museums along with the clumsy tinder-boxes of the past.

But that is to do with the wick, though I daresay some chemist or student of combustion gave the first hint to the maker about how to contrive the burning away of the unpleasant snuff.

Let us go back to the candle itself, or rather to the tallow of which it was made.

Now, your a.n.a.lytical chemist is about the most inquisitive person under the sun. Bluebeard's wife was a baby to him. Why, your A C would have pulled the Blue Chamber all to bits, and the key too, so as to see what they were made of. He is always taking something to pieces. For instance, quite lately gas tar was gas tar, and we knew that it was black and sticky, good for palings and horribly bad for our clothes, when, on hot, sunny days, we climbed over the said palings. But, all at once, the A C took gas tar in hand to see what it was made of, and the result is--what? I must not keep Vince and you waiting to tell all--in fact, I don't know, but may suggest a little. Gas tar now means brilliant aniline dyes, and sweet scents, and flavours that we cannot tell from pears and almonds, and ammonia and carbolic preparations good for the destruction of disease germs. But when the A C attacked the tallow of the candle he astonished us more.

For, so to speak, he took the tallow, and he said to himself, Now, here's tallow--an unpleasant animal fat: let's see what it is made of.

Years ago I should have at once told him that it was grease, obtained by melting down the soft parts of an animal. But the A C would have said to me: Exactly; but what is the grease made of?

Then he began making tests and a.n.a.lysing, with the result that out of candle fat he distilled a beautifully clear white, intensely sweet fluid, and made a name for it: glycerine, from the Greek for "sweet,"

for which, as Captain Cuttle would have said, consult your lexicon.

Then our friend the chemist tested the glycerine, and tried if it would burn; but it would not burn in the least, and he naturally enough said, Well, that stuff is no good for candles, so it may be extracted from the tallow. To make a long dissertation short, that was done at once, and the result was that, instead of the new tallow candles being soft, they were found to be hard, and to burn more clearly. Then chemicals were added, and they became harder still, and were called composites.

That was the beginning of the improvements, which subject I must carry no further, but return to our hungry lad, who, hearing the reading going on, would not interrupt his mother, but took up his candle and went to the larder to investigate for himself.

There was bread and b.u.t.ter, and bread and cheese, and a small piece of mutton--but this last was raw; and Vince was about to turn to the bread and cheese when his eyes lighted upon a wedge of cold apple dumpling, which he seized upon as the very thing, bore off to his bedroom, after putting his head in at the parlour door to say good-night, ate with the greatest of gusto, and then, thoroughly drowsy, tumbled into bed.

The next minute, as it seemed most vividly to Vince, the new rope that Mike took with them to the tempest-torn ridge above the Scraw was cutting into his chest and compressing it so that he could hardly breathe. But he would not complain, for fear his companion should think it was because he was too cowardly to go on down that steep slope of thirty or forty feet to look over the edge of the precipice. So he went on lower and lower, suffering horribly, but more and more determined to go on; and as he went the rope stretched out, and the slope lengthened, till he seemed to have descended for hours. Flocks of ravens came down, flapping their wings about him and making dashes with their great beaks at his eyes; while stones were loosened, rattled down into the gulf and startled clouds upon clouds of birds, which came circling up, their wings beating the air, till there was a noise like thunder.

Down to the stone at last; and upon this he sat astride, gazing at the vast gulf below, where the cove spread out farther than eye could reach, while the waters rushed by him like many cataracts of Niagara rolled into one. At last Mike's voice came to him, in imploring tones, sounding distant, strange and familiar, begging him to come up; and he drew himself up once more, and, with the rope tightening, gave that great thrust with his heels which sent the block upon which he had ridden falling down and down, as if for ever, into s.p.a.ce, while he hung motionless, with the line compressing his chest so that he could not breathe. He could not struggle, he could not even stir--only hang there suffocating, till his senses were leaving him fast, and a burning light flashed into his eyes. Then the rope parted, the terrible tension about his chest was relieved, and he began falling more and more swiftly, with a pleasant feeling of restfulness, till a voice said loudly:

"Vince, Vince! What is it, boy? Wake up!"

Vince not only woke up, but sat up, staring at his father and mother, who were standing in their dressing-gowns on either side of his bed.

"He must have something coming on," said Mrs Burnet anxiously.

"Coming on!" said the Doctor, feeling the boy's temples and then his wrist; next, transferring his hand to where he could feel the pulsation of the heart, "Nightmare!" he cried.

"What's the matter?" said Vince confusedly. "Fire?"

"Any one would have thought so, and that you were being scorched, making all that groaning and outcry. What's the matter with you?"