The Captain's Bunk Part 2

'Dark, wonderful things; possibly things that it might hurt us to see or to know. I've heard Mr. Vesey say that when the fever to find the North Pole gets into the blood it never leaves a man until life perishes. That's why so many have been already lost in the attempt.

They will persist, and nature gives out. But here we are at the Vicarage pier. Jump out, dear, and I'll tie "The Theodora" safely up.'

CHAPTER IV

BINKS'S BIT O' TEACHIN'

An uproarious welcome awaited the captain's daughters as they stepped out of their boat on the little pier belonging to the Vicarage.

Splutters and Shutters scrambled to meet the visitors, barking out hospitality in their customary violent fas.h.i.+on. Behind them hobbled Binks, eager to help 'Miss Theedory' fasten up the boat, privately sceptical of the young lady's capacity to do so.

'Oh, Binks! How d'ye do?' politely asked Queenie, who, having disembarked her waxen family, was endeavouring to protect them from the frantic welcome of the terriers, both of which seemed ready to eat up the doll-guests, so glad were they to see them.

'Sadly, missy; I'm but proper sadly!'

'What is it, Binks?' sympathetically asked Theo, shaking out her blue-cotton skirts, and drawing on a pair of gloves, for Mrs. Vesey was peculiarly dainty and sensitive about trifles. Though an invalid herself, the poor lady was always exquisitely dressed, maintaining as a reason that if the human body be the temple of Christ, then it must be the bounden duty of the Christian owner not only to keep it wholesome, but also to adorn it, making it fair without, to match the fairness within. Not only in her own person did this dainty gentlewoman carry out her theory, but she looked for it in the persons of her visitors.

Theo invariably respected her wishes by appearing before her trim and trig.

'Tis jes' they rheumatics, Miss Theedory!' answered Binks cheerfully, for all the world as if his aches and pains were so many honours. 'But there, what's 'ee to expec' at sixty-seven? People's jints bain't made to hold out for ever-'n-ever. Will 'um now?'

'No, they won't!' joined in Queenie comprehendingly. 'Miss m.u.f.fet's jints are giving way, too. Just look, Binks!' She held up for inspection an elaborately dressed lady, whose arms and legs were in such a tremulous condition that their total lapse from the body to which they belonged would have been no surprise.

'I shall ask father for some of that famous liniment of his, Binks,'

said Theo. 'I could send you over some in a little bottle; the boys shall bring it this evening.'

'If you ask me candid, I should say that glue would be the best liniment to patch _them_ jints!' Binks was stolidly contemplating the loose condition of Miss m.u.f.fet's limbs.

'We're at cross purposes!' laughed Theo. 'Come along, Queenie; there's Mrs. Vesey standing at the drawing-room window waving to us. We must not keep her waiting. Can't you leave your doll-people in the boat, dear? Binks will see that the dogs don't worry them to bits.'

'Ay, ay! That I will, missy. Bless 'em both, they're picters, they two, as taut and trig as you please. G.o.d give 'em smooth seas to sail over!' added the old man under his breath, as he watched the captain's daughters cross the lawn above.

Time was, far back in years, when Binks had watched with pride such another maiden as 'Miss Theedory,' the daughter G.o.d had given, or, rather, had lent, for a little while, to the parents who idolised her.

The frosts of death nipped the human flower. Slowly, surely, it faded, until the little home it had gladdened and made fair was empty and dark, like the hearts left sorrowing. Long years ago though it was since the blow had fallen, still not yet was the wound healed over.

Behind the austere front and grim temper of old Binks, the memory of his maid Bessie lived fresh and fragrant as the girl herself had been.

There are some of us who, loyal ever to the love rooted deep in our hearts, thus keep green the memory of those 'faces we have loved long since, and lost awhile!'

'She's rare and sweet, is Miss Theedory,' murmured the weather-beaten old man, when the sisters had disappeared, and he turned to fasten the boat to the pier-head. 'But I make no doubt she've her peck o'

troubles, too, what with them limbs of young brothers, and the captain so uplifted-like that he can't give a hand to help her rule 'em. Yes, Miss Theedory has no easy life of it, though she be a born lady. 'Tis a world o' ups and downs, this is.'

'Hilloa, Binks! Oh, I say!'

The old man wheeled round to find Geoff and Alick had unexpectedly returned.

'Whatever's ado now? What's brought 'ee both back?' snapped the old man crustily. The boys were anything but pleasant interruptions in his eyes.

'Oh, we got tired waiting about for Jerry. He hasn't come yet. And we've just seen our boat come into the pier, and we want it to go for a row,' both boys spoke at once.

'Ye want the boat, do 'ee now? Well, then, ye can't get it, that's all!' Binks faced round upon the boys, who were trying to push past him and jump into the boat. 'Miss Theedory, she says, says she, "Binks, I looks to you to see arter that boat for me!" and with that she stepped up to the house, she and little missy, to see the mistress.

'Tain't likely I'm a-goin' to 'low her to find no boat waitin' for her, bym-bye, when she's ready to go back 'ome. You jes' be off, young musters!'

'That's all nonsense! It's no use of you showing fight. We mean to have the boat. It's our boat, and Theo can walk home; do her good, too.'

Alick spoke sullenly, and pushed past Binks on the slippery little pier. But he reckoned without counting the cost. Binks, though rheumatic and a trifle bent, still retained some of the strength that had made him a byword as an athlete in his young days. With a touch of angry red in his brown, wrinkled cheek, and a spark of wrath in his deep-set eyes, he seized the boy neatly by the back of the collar and the band of his Norfolk tweed jacket. It was useless for Alick to splutter and howl and threaten. Old Binks swung him, as though he were a kitten, over the edge of the pier, while Geoff fairly doubled up in a wild ecstasy of laughter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SWUNG HIM AS THOUGH HE WERE A KITTEN.]

'Tis this way I'll serve 'ee, if so be as you wants to, interfere wi'

me doin' of my dooty, young sir!' croaked out the st.u.r.dy old veteran.

'Let me down, I say, let me down! Oh, I'll pay you out!' screamed Alick, maddened more by a sense of humiliation than of terror, for none of the Carnegy name dreaded a ducking in the sea.

'There ye be, then!' Binks at last deposited his wriggling burden flat on the pier. 'Now, p'raps ye'll understand the way an honest man dispoges of obstructions in the path o' dooty! You're an obstruction, you are, muster; and if so be as you lay the lesson to heart, the bit o' teachin' on my part will be wuth while.'

'I'll pay you out. See if I don't!' repeated Alick, sidling hurriedly off, with a parting shot in the shape of the coward's favourite threat.

'Oh, come!'--Geoff was at his heels,--'the old chap is very game. You must allow, too, that he was in the right, Alick, and we were wrong.'

Clear-sighted Geoff never hesitated to render justice to others. But Alick was different. Baffled and furious, he slouched away, hatching secret revenge upon the old man who had so determinedly baulked his will.

CHAPTER V

BREAKERS AHEAD

Ned Dempster was certainly the sharpest of all the boys in Northbourne.

Naturally sharp, that is to say, for he, in common with Alick Carnegy, was incorrigibly idle, and Ned's talent of ability was therefore allowed to rust from disuse.

The Carnegy boys and Ned were in the same cla.s.s at Sunday school, a cla.s.s taught by Theo. The rest of the boys comprising it being dull and lumpish, it was only to be expected that a sharp-witted lad like Ned stood out brilliantly from his neighbours, attracting by his intelligence the attention of his teacher as well as her young brothers.

Ned Dempster was an orphan who had been brought up by his grandmother, Goody Dempster, the oldest inhabitant of the little fis.h.i.+ng-village, an aged woman whose skin was baked brown by the sun and the salt sea-breezes until she had more the appearance of a New Zealander than an Englishwoman. Pitying the boy, as well as being considerably interested in his intelligent answers in cla.s.s, Theo began to have him a good deal at the Bunk. She found many little offices there for him, such as to look after and keep tidy 'The Theodora,' the family boat, and to help in the obstinately unproductive garden. In this way the acquaintance between the three boys became a week-day as well as a Sunday one. Alick and Ned, in particular, rapidly found themselves to be kindred spirits. In each was ingrained a powerful love of adventure. Alick, a great reader, who had devoured already his father's little library, which was made up for the most part of books on seafaring subjects, found in Ned Dempster a listener who hungered for as much of that exciting fare as Alick could manage to retail second-hand.

For a long time the darling topic that absorbed their individual attention was pirates. The boys were never weary of rehearsing all the thrilling scenes of pirate-life which Alick had either read or heard of. In these lively pastimes Geoff willingly shared, lending a hand and a stentorian throat to the exciting work, though his tastes did not lie in that direction to the same extent as did those of his brother and Ned Dempster. Still, to be dressed in fierce red sashes, to wear elaborately corked moustaches, to be armed with clumsy, antique weapons which represented cutla.s.ses, and to board, with ringing shouts, the beached-up fis.h.i.+ng-boats in search of slaves, was a delightsome diversion. And perhaps to Geoff its greatest charm was that there was plenty of noise about it.

In course of time the joys of pirate-life palled. Next, there set in an extended course of terrible s.h.i.+pwrecks to order; these catastrophes being altogether independent of the weather. Into this game, which was not so exclusively manly, the many dolls belonging to Queenie were pressed. Time after time, these waxen ladies were bravely rescued and ceremoniously restored, dripping from the waves, to their anxious little owner, who, truth to tell, caught more colds than one in tending the s.h.i.+pwrecked doll-people.

But, in after days, Alick and Ned struck out quite a new line. Late and early they were found poring over atlases; drawing charts upon everything and anything, promiscuously, in the Northbourne landscape.

Their daily conversation consisted of mysterious whispers about marching Polewards; about dangerous floes, and about camping out on the ice. At this juncture Geoff threw up his partners.h.i.+p in the games, which had become over-serious for his light-hearted, fun-loving nature.

Not for him was there any attraction in the great mystery of the North Pole.

The imagination of Ned Dempster, on the other hand, took fire over the marvellous adventures, the awe-inspiring dangers and hards.h.i.+ps of those explorers who, hitherto, have failed to attain the great object. This, in truth, was an aim to live for, to perish for, if need be; and as time went on, the boys became closer intimates than ever, particularly as n.o.body else took any interest in the one topic that had seized, with iron grip, their youthful imaginations. Perhaps the fact of the indifference of others bound the two closer together.

Alick grew worse and worse over the preparation of his lessons for the tutor. The routine and discipline of the schoolroom became too irksome to be borne. Consequently, punishments and detentions and complaints were the order of the day at the Bunk, to the despair of their tutor, Philip Price, a quiet, not over robust-looking young man, who had qualified for the Church, but as yet had failed in getting a living.

Meantime he taught the young Carnegys every morning, and made up a slender income by giving afternoon lessons elsewhere.

The young man and his widowed mother, after their home was broken up by death, had sought a hiding-place far from the summer-friends, who fell away so quickly in the 'day of trouble.'