It was sad to find the gentleman was not a Higher Life after all, but only mad. And I was more sorry than ever for poor Miss Sandal. As Oswald pointed out to the girls they are much more blessed in their brothers than Miss Sandal is, and they ought to be more grateful than they are.
_THE SMUGGLER"S REVENGE_
THE days went on and Miss Sandal did not return. We went on being very sorry about Miss Sandal being so poor, and it was not our fault that when we tried to let the house in lodgings, the first lodger proved to be a lunatic of the deepest dye. Miss Sandal must have been a fairly decent sort, because she seems not to have written to Father about it.
At any rate he didn"t give it us in any of our letters, about our good intentions and their ending in a maniac.
Oswald does not like giving up a thing just because it has once been m.u.f.fed. The m.u.f.f.a.ge of a plan is a thing that often happens at first to heroes--like Bruce and the spider, and other great characters. Beside, grown-ups always say--
"If at first you don"t succeed, Try, try, try again!"
And if this is the rule for Euclid and rule-of-three and all the things you would rather not do, think how much more it must be the rule when what you are after is your own idea, and not just the rotten notion of that beast Euclid, or the unknown but equally unnecessary author who composed the multiplication table. So we often talked about what we could do to make Miss Sandal rich. It gave us something to jaw about when we happened to want to sit down for a bit, in between all the glorious wet sandy games that happen by the sea.
Of course if we wanted real improving conversation we used to go up to the boat-house and talk to the coastguards. I do think coastguards are A1. They are just the same as sailors, having been so in their youth, and you can get at them to talk to, which is not the case with sailors who are at sea (or even in harbours) on ships. Even if you had the luck to get on to a man-of-war, you would very likely not be able to climb to the top-gallants to talk to the man there. Though in books the young hero always seems able to climb to the mast-head the moment he is told to. The coastguards told us tales of Southern ports, and of shipwrecks, and officers they had _not_ cottoned to, and messmates that they _had_, but when we asked them about smuggling they said there wasn"t any to speak of nowadays.
"I expect they think they oughtn"t to talk about such dark crimes before innocent kids like us," said d.i.c.ky afterwards, and he grinned as he said it.
"Yes," said Alice; "they don"t know how much we know about smugglers, and bandits, and highwaymen, and burglars, and coiners," and she sighed, and we all felt sad to think that we had not now any chance to play at being these things.
"We might play smugglers," said Oswald.
But he did not speak hopefully. The worst of growing up is that you seem to want more and more to have a bit of the real thing in your games.
Oswald could not now be content to play at bandits and just capture Albert next door, as once, in happier days, he was pleased and proud to do.
It was not a coastguard that told us about the smugglers. It was a very old man that we met two or three miles along the beach. He was leaning against a boat that was wrong way up on the shingle, and smoking the strongest tobacco Oswald"s young nose has ever met. I think it must have been Black Jack. We said, "How do you do?" and Alice said, "Do you mind if we sit down near you?"
"Not me," replied the aged seafarer. We could see directly that he was this by his jersey and his sea-boots.
The girls sat down on the beach, but we boys leaned against the boat like the seafaring one. We hoped he would join in conversation, but at first he seemed too proud. And there was something dignified about him, bearded and like a Viking, that made it hard for us to begin.
At last he took his pipe out of his mouth and said--
"Here"s a precious Quakers" meeting! You didn"t set down here just for to look at me?"
"I"m sure you look very nice," Dora said.
"Same to you, miss, I"m sure," was the polite reply.
"We want to talk to you awfully," said Alice, "if you don"t mind?"
"Talk away," said he.
And then, as so often happens, no one could think of anything to say.
Suddenly Noel said, "_I_ think you look nice too, but I think you look as though you had a secret history. Have you?"
"Not me," replied the Viking-looking stranger. "I ain"t got no history, nor jog-graphy neither. They didn"t give us that much schooling when I was a lad."
"Oh!" replied Noel; "but what I really meant was, were you ever a pirate or anything?"
"Never in all my born," replied the stranger, now thoroughly roused; "I"d scorn the haction. I was in the navy, I was, till I lost the sight of my eye, looking too close at gunpowder. Pirates is snakes, and they ought to be killed as such."
We felt rather sorry, for though of course it is very wrong to be a pirate, it is very interesting too. Things are often like this. That is one of the reasons why it is so hard to be truly good.
Dora was the only one who was pleased. She said--
"Yes, pirates _are_ very wrong. And so are highwaymen and smugglers."
"I don"t know about highwaymen," the old man replied; "they went out afore my time, worse luck; but my father"s great-uncle by the mother"s side, he see one hanged once. A fine upstanding fellow he was, and made a speech while they was a-fitting of the rope. All the women was snivelling and sniffing and throwing bokays at him."
"Did any of the bouquets reach him?" asked the interested Alice.
"Not likely," said the old man. "Women can"t never shy straight. But I shouldn"t wonder but what them posies heartened the chap up a bit. An afterwards they was all a-fightin" to get a bit of the rope he was hung with, for luck."
"Do tell us some more about him," said all of us but Dora.
"I don"t know no more about him. He was just hung--that"s all. They was precious fond o" hangin" in them old far-away times."
"Did you ever know a smuggler?" asked H.O.--"to speak to, I mean?"
"Ah, that"s tellings," said the old man, and he winked at us all.
So then we instantly knew that the coastguards had been mistaken when they said there were no more smugglers now, and that this brave old man would not betray his comrades, even to friendly strangers like us. But of course he could not know exactly how friendly we were. So we told him.
Oswald said--
"We _love_ smugglers. We wouldn"t even tell a word about it if you would only tell us."
"There used to be lots of smuggling on these here coasts when my father was a boy," he said; "my own father"s cousin, his father took to the smuggling, and he was a doin" so well at it, that what does he do, but goes and gets married, and the Preventives they goes and nabs him on his wedding-day, and walks him straight off from the church door, and claps him in Dover Jail."
"Oh, his poor wife," said Alice, "whatever did she do?"
"_She_ didn"t do nothing," said the old man. "It"s a woman"s place not to do nothing till she"s told to. He"d done so well at the smuggling, he"d saved enough by his honest toil to take a little public. So she sets there awaitin" and attendin" to customers--for well she knowed him, as he wasn"t the chap to let a bit of a jail stand in the way of his station in life. Well, it was three weeks to a day after the wedding, there comes a dusty chap to the "Peal of Bells" door. That was the sign over the public, you understand."
We said we did, and breathlessly added, "Go on!"
"A dusty chap he was; got a beard and a patch over one eye, and he come of a afternoon when there was no one about the place but her.
""Hullo, missis," says he; "got a room for a quiet chap?"
""I don"t take in no men-folks," says she; "can"t be bothered with "em."
""You"ll be bothered with _me_, if I"m not mistaken," says he.
""Bothered if I will," says she.