Nicky-Nan, Reservist Part 1

Nicky-Nan, Reservist.

by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q).

CHAPTER I.

HOW THE CHILDREN PLAYED.

When news of the War first came to Polpier, Nicholas Nanjivell (commonly known as Nicky-Nan) paid small attention to it, being preoccupied with his own affairs.

Indeed, for some days the children knew more about it than he, being tragically concerned in it--poor mites!--though they took it gaily enough. For Polpier lives by the fishery, and of the fishermen a large number--some scores--had pa.s.sed through the Navy and now belonged to the Reserve. These good fellows had the haziest notion of what newspapers meant by the Balance of Power in Europe, nor perhaps could any one of them have explained why, when Austria declared war on Servia, Germany should be taking a hand. But they had learnt enough on the lower deck to forebode that, when Germany took a hand, the British Navy would pretty soon be clearing for action. Consequently all through the last week of July, when the word "Germany" began to be printed in large type in Press headlines, the drifters putting out nightly on the watch for the pilchard harvest carried each a copy of _The Western Morning News_ or _The Western Daily Mercury_ to be read aloud, discussed, expounded under the cuddy lamp in the long hours between shooting the nets and hauling them.

"When the corn is in the shock, Then the fish is on the rock."

A very little of the corn had been shocked as yet; but the fields, right down to the cliffs' edge, stood ripe for abundant harvest.

I doubt, indeed, if in our time they have ever smiled a fairer promise or reward for husbandry than during this last fortnight of July 1914, when the crews, running back with the southerly breeze for Polpier, would note how the crop stood yellower in to-day's than in yesterday's sunrise, and speculate when Farmer Best or farmer Bate meant to start reaping. As for the fish, the boats had made small catches--dips among the straggling advance-guards of the great armies of pilchards surely drawing in from the Atlantic. "'Tis early days yet, hows'ever--time enough, my sons--plenty time!" promised Un'

Benny Rowett, patriarch of the fis.h.i.+ng-fleet and local preacher on Sundays. Some of the younger men grumbled that "there was no tellin': the season had been tricky from the start." The spider-crabs--that are the curse of insh.o.r.e trammels--had lingered for a good three weeks past the date when by all rights they were due to sheer off. Then a host of spur-dogs had invaded the whiting-grounds, preying so gluttonously on the hooked fish that, haul in as you might, three times out of four the line brought up nothing but a head--all the rest bitten off and swallowed.

"No salmon moving, over to Troy. The sean-boats there hadn't even troubled to take out a licence." As for lobsters, "they were becomin' a winter fish, somehow, and up the harbours you started catchin' 'em at Christmas and lost 'em by Eastertide:" while the ordinary crabbing-grounds appeared to be clean bewitched.

One theorist loudly called for a ma.s.sacre of sea-birds, especially s.h.a.gs and gannets. Others (and these were the majority) demanded protection from steam trawlers, whom they accused of sc.r.a.ping the sea-bottom, to the wholesale sacrifice of immature fish--sole and plaice, brill and turbot.

"Now look 'ee here, my sons," said Un' Benny Rowett: "if I was you, I'd cry to the Lord a little more an' to County Council a little less. What's the full size ye reckon a school o' pilchards, now--one o the big uns? Scores an' scores o' square miles, all movin' in a ma.s.s, an' solid a'most as sardines in a tin; and, as I've heard th'

Old Doctor used to tell, every female capable o' sp.a.w.nin' up to two million. . . . No; your mind can't seize it. But ye might be fitted to grasp that if th' Almighty hadn' ordained other fish an' birds as well as us men to prey upon 'em, in five years' time no boat'd be able to sail th' Atlantic; in ten years ye could walk over from Polpier to Newfoundland stankin' 'pon rotten pilchards all the way.

Don't reckon yourselves wiser than Natur', my billies. . . . As for steam trawlin', simmee, I han't heard so much open grievin' over it since Government started loans for motors. Come to think--hey?-- there ben't no such tearin' difference between motors an' steam--not on principle. And as for reggilations, I've a doo respect for County Council till it sets up to reggilate Providence, when I falls back on th' Lord's text to Noey that, boy an' man, I've never known fail.

_While th' earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest shall not cease._ And again," continued Un' Benny Rowett, "Behold, I say unto you, _Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest_."

If pressed in argument he would entrench himself behind the wonderful plenty of john-doreys: "Which," he would say, "is the mysteriousest fish in the sea and the holiest. Take a john-dorey or two, and the pilchards be never far behind. 'Tis well beknown as the fish St Peter took when Our Lord told 'en to cast a hook; an' be shot if he didn' come to hook with a piece o' silver in his mouth! You can see Peter's thumb-mark upon him to this day: and, if you ask _me_, he's better eatin' than a sole, let alone you can carve en with a spoon--though improved if stuffed, with a shreddin' o' mint.

Iss, baked o' course. . . . Afore August is out--mark my words--the pilchards'll be here."

"But shall _we_ be here to take 'em?"

It was a dark, good-looking, serious youth who put the question: and all the men at the end of the quay turned to stare at him. (For this happened on the evening of Sat.u.r.day, the 25th--St James's Day,--when all the boats were laid up for the week-end.)

The men turned to young Seth Minards because, as a rule, he had a wonderful gift of silence. He was known to be something of a scholar, and religious too: but his religion did Dot declare itself outwardly, save perhaps in a constant gentleness of manner.

The essence of it lay in spiritual withdrawal; the man retiring into his own heart, so to speak, and finding there a Friend with whom to hold sweet and habitual counsel. By consequence, young Seth Minards spoke rarely, but with more than a double weight.

"What mean ye, my son?" demanded Un' Benny. "Tell us--you that don't speak, as a rule, out of your turn."

"I think," answered Seth Minards slowly, "there is going to be War for certain--a great War--and in a few days."

Three days later the postmistress, Mrs Pengelly (who kept a general shop), put out two newspaper placards which set all the children at the Council Schools, up the valley, playing at a game they called "English and Germans"--an adaptation of the old "Prisoners' Base."

No one wanted to be a German: but, seeing that you cannot well conduct warfare without an enemy, the weaker boys represented the Teutonic cause under conscription, and afterwards joined in the cheers when it was vanquished.

The Schools broke up on the last day of July; and the contest next day became a naval one, among the row-boats lying inside the old pier. This was ten times better fun; for a good half of the boys meant to enter the Navy when they grew up. They knew what it meant, too. The great battles.h.i.+ps from Plymouth ran their speed-trials off Polpier: the westward mile-mark stood on the Peak, right over the little haven; and the smallest child has learnt to tell a Dreadnought in the offing, or discern the difference between a first-cla.s.s and a second-cla.s.s cruiser. The older boys knew most of the s.h.i.+ps by name.

Throughout Sat.u.r.day the children were--as their mother agreed--"fair out of hand." But this may have been because the mothers themselves were gossiping whilst their men slumbered. All Polpier women--even the laziest--knit while they talk: and from nine o'clock onwards the alley-ways that pa.s.s for streets were filled with women knitting hard and talking at the top of their voices. The men and the cats dozed.

Down by the boats, up to noon the boys had things all their own way, vying in feats of valour. But soon after the dinner-hour the girls a.s.serted themselves by starting an Ambulance Corps, and with details so realistic that not a few of the male combatants hauled out of battle on pretence of wounds and in search of better fun.

Nicholas Nanjivell, "mooning" by the bridge twelve paces from his door, sharpening his jack-knife upon a soft parapet-stone that was reported to bring cutlery to an incomparable edge and had paid for its reputation, being half worn away--Nicholas Nanjivell, leaning his weight on the parapet, to ease the pain in his leg--Nicholas Nanjivell, gloomily contemplating his knife and wis.h.i.+ng he could plunge it into the heart of a man who stood behind a counter behind a door which stood in view beyond the bridge-end--Nicholas Nanjivell, nursing his own injury to the exclusion of any that might threaten Europe--glanced up and beheld his neighbour Penhaligon's children, Young 'Bert and 'Beida (Zobeida), approach by the street from the Quay bearing between them a stretcher, composed of two broken paddles and part of an old fis.h.i.+ng-net, and on the stretcher, covered by a tattered pilot-jack, a small form--their brother 'Biades (Alcibiades), aged four. It gave him a scare.

"Lor sake!" said he, hastily shutting and pocketing his knife.

"What you got there?"

"'Biades," answered 'Beida, with a tragical face.

"Han't I heard your mother warn 'ee a score o' times, against lettin'

that cheeld play loose on the Quay! . . . What's happened to 'en?

Broke his tender neck, I shouldn' wonder. . . . Here, let me have a look--"

"Broke his tender fiddle-stick!" 'Beida retorted. "He's bleedin' for his country, is 'Biades, if you really want to know; and if you was helpful you'd lend us that knife o' yours."

"What for, missy?"

"Why, to take off the injured limb. 'Bert's knife's no good since the fore-part o' the week, when he broke the blade prizin' up limpets an' never guessing how soon this War'd be upon us."

"I did," maintained 'Bert. "I was gettin' in food supplies."

"If I was you, my dears, I'd leave such unholy games alone,"

Nicky-Nan advised them. "No, and I'll not lend 'ee my knife, neither. You don't know what War is, children: an' please G.o.d you never will. War's not declared yet--not by England, anyway.

Don't 'ee go to seek it out until it seeks _you_."

"But 'tis comin'," 'Beida persisted. "Father was talkin' with Mother last night--he didn' go out with the boats: and 'Bert and I both heard him say--didn' we, 'Bert?--'twas safe as to-morrow's sun.

The way we heard was that Mother'd forgot to order us to bed; which hasn't happened not since Coronation Night an' the bonfire. When she came up to blow out the light she'd been cryin'. . . . That's because Father'll have to fight, o' course."

"I wish they'd put it off till I was a man," said 'Bert stoutly.

At this point the wounded hero behaved as he always did on discovering life duller than his hopes. He let out a piercing yell and cried that he wanted his tea. 'Beida dropped her end of the ambulance, seized him as he slid to the ground, shook him up, and told him to behave.

"You can't have your tea for another hour: and what's more, if you're not careful there won't be no amputation till afterwards, when Mother's not lookin' an' we can get a knife off the table. You bad boy!"

'Biades howled afresh.

"If you don't stop it,"--'Bert took a hand in threatening,-- "you won't get cut open till Monday; because 'tis Sunday to-morrow.

And by that time you'll be festerin', I shouldn't wonder."

"--And mortification will have set in," promised his sister.

"When that happens, you may turn up your toes. An' 'tis only a question between oak an' elum."

'Biades ceased yelling as abruptly as he had started. "What's 'fester'?" he demanded.

"You'll know fast enough, when you find yourself one solid scab,"

began 'Bert. But Nicky-Nan interrupted.

"There, there, children! Run along an' don't ee play at trouble.

There's misery enough, the Lord knows--" He broke off on a twinge of pain, and stared down-stream at the congregated masts in the little harbour.