Sappers and Miners Part 1

Sappers and Miners.

by George Manville Fenn.

CHAPTER ONE.

Ba.s.s FOR BREAKFAST.

"Have some more ba.s.s, Gwyn?"

"Please, father."

"You should not speak with your mouth full, my dear," said Mrs Pendarve, quietly.

"No, mother; but I didn't like to keep father waiting."

"And between the two stools you came to the ground, eh?" said Colonel Pendarve, smiling. "Never mind; hold your plate. Lucky for us, my dear, that we have only one boy. This fellow eats enough for three."

"Well, but, father, we were down by the boat at daybreak, and the sea air makes one so hungry."

"Say ravenous or wolfish, my boy. But go on. It certainly is a delicious fish, and Dolly has cooked it to a turn. They were rising fairly, then?"

"Yes, father; we rowed right out to the race, off the point, and for ever so long we didn't see a fish and sat there with our rods ready."

Gwyn talked away, but with his mouth rather full of fried ba.s.s and freshly-baked bread all the same.

"And of course it was of no use to try till a shoal began to feed."

"Not a bit, father,--and Joe said we might as well come back; but when the sun rose they were breaking all round us, and for half-an-hour we kept hooking them at nearly every throw. Come and see the rest of my catch; they're such beauties, as bright as salmon."

"That's right, but don't let any of them be wasted. Keep what you want, mamma, dear, and give the others away. What did you use--a big fly?"

"No, father, those tiny spoon-baits. They come at them with a rush.

Then they left off biting all at once, and--some more coffee, please, mother--and we rowed back home, and met Captain Hardock on the pier."

"Ah, did you?"

"Yes, father; and we gave him two pairs of fine ones, and he said they looked as bright as newly-run tin."

"Humph! Yes, that man thinks of nothing else but tin."

"And he began about it again this morning, father," said Gwyn, eagerly.

"Indeed!" said Colonel Pendarve; and Gwyn's mother looked up inquiringly from behind the silver coffee-urn.

"Yes, father," said Gwyn, helping himself to more fresh, yellow Cornish b.u.t.ter and honey. "He said what a pity it was that you did not adventure over the old Ydoll mine and make yourself a rich man, instead of letting it lie wasting on your estate."

"My estate!" said the Colonel, smiling at his wife--"a few score acres of moorland and rock on the Cornish coast!"

"But he says, father, he is sure that the old mine is very rich."

"And that I am very poor, Gwyn, and that it would be nice for me to make a place for a mining captain out of work."

"But you will not attempt anything of the kind, my dear," said Mrs Pendarve, anxiously.

"I don't think, so, my dear. We have no money to spare for speculating, and I don't think an old Indian cavalry officer on half-pay is quite the man to attempt such a thing."

"But old Hardock said you were, father, and that you and Major Jollivet ought to form a little company of your own, and that he knows he could make the mine pay wonderfully."

"Yes," said the Colonel, drily, "that's exactly what he would say, but I don't think much of his judgment. I should be bad enough, but Jollivet, with his wound breaking out when he is not down with touches of his old jungle fever, would be ten times worse. All the same, though, I have no doubt that the old mine is rich."

"But Arthur, my dear," protested Mrs Pendarve, "think of how much money has been--"

"Thrown down mines, my dear?" said the Colonel, smiling. "Yes I do, and I don't think our peaceful retired life is going to be disturbed by anything a mining adventurer may say."

"But it would be interesting, father," said Gwyn.

"Very, my boy," said his father, smiling. "It would give you and Joe Jollivet--"

"Old Joe Jolly-wet," said Gwyn to himself.

"A fine opportunity for trying to break your necks--"

"Oh, my dear!" cried Mrs Pendarve.

"Getting drowned in some unfathomable hole full of water."

"Arthur!" protested Mrs Pendarve.

"Losing yourself in some of the mazy recesses of the ancient workings."

"Really, my dear!" began Mrs Pendarve; but the Colonel went on--

"Or getting crushed to death by some fall of the mine roofing that has been tottering ready to fall perhaps for hundreds of years."

"Pray don't talk like that, my dear," said Mrs Pendarve, piteously.

"He doesn't mean it, mother," said Gwyn, laughing. "Father's only saying it to frighten me. But really, father, do you think the mine is so very old?"

"I have no doubt of it, my boy. It is certainly as old as the Roman occupation, and I should not be surprised if it proved to be as early as the time when the Phoenicians traded here for tin."

"But I thought it was only stream tin that they got. I read it somewhere."

"No doubt, my boy, they searched the surface for tin; but suppose you had been a st.u.r.dy fellow from Tyre or Sidon, instead of a tiresome, idle, mischievous young nuisance of an English boy--"

"Not quite so bad as that, am I, mother?" said Gwyn, laughing.

"That you are not, my dear," said Mrs Pendarve, "though I must own that you do worry me a great deal sometimes by being so daring with your boating, climbing and swimming."