"What can it be?" said the doctor, bracing himself up with an effort, and preparing to walk on.
"Oh, please, sir," cried the boys, "don"t go on! do let us turn back!
Oh dear! oh dear!"
"Foolish boys!" said the doctor; "haven"t you sense enough to know that no such thing as--ah! there it is again!"
Yes, there it was again. A faint beam of the moon broke through the clouds, and lit up the white figure once more where it stood close to the sign-post. And as they watched it seemed to grow, rising higher and higher till its head nearly touched the cross-bars. Then suddenly, and with a groan, it seemed to drop into the earth, and all was darkness once more. The boys clung one on each side to the doctor, who trembled hardly less than themselves. No one dared move, or speak, or utter a sound.
Again the moon sent forth a beam, as the figure once more appeared and slowly rose higher and higher. For a moment it seemed as if it would soar into the air, but again with a dull crash it descended and vanished.
"Boys," said the doctor hoa.r.s.ely, "I confess I--I am puzzled!"
"I--I wonder," said Dell, "if I ever dare go and see what it is. I say, M-m-organ, would you g-g-go with me--for the d-d-doctor"s sake?"
"Oh, Dell! I"m afraid. But--yes, I"ll try."
"Brave boys!" said the doctor, never taking his eyes off the spot where the ghost last vanished.
The two boys stole forward on tiptoe, holding one another"s arms; then suddenly they broke into a rush straight for the sign-post.
There was a loud shriek as the white figure rose up to meet them.
"Bilk, you idiot, cut back for your life! here"s the doctor! We were only having a lark with you. Do cut your sticks, and slip in quietly, and it"ll be all right. Look alive, or we"re all three done for!"
The ill-starred Bilk needed no further invitation. He started to run as fast as his long legs would carry him, his night-gown flapping in the evening breeze, and his two persecutors following him with cries of "Booh!"
"Scat!"
"Shoo!" and other formulae for exorcising evil spirits.
After a hundred yards or so the two heroes gave up the chase, and returned to the slowly-reviving doctor.
"Come along, sir," said Dell; "there"s nothing there; it vanished as soon as we got to it. Let us be quick, sir, in case it comes back."
The remainder of the walk home that evening, I need hardly observe, was brisk; but it was not so brisk as the same journey accomplished by Alexander Magnus Bilk, who had reached the school a full quarter of an hour before his pursuers, and was safe between his blankets by the time that they peeped into his room on their way to bed, and whispered consolingly, "It"s all up with the duke"s daughter now, old man!"
The doctor may have had some dim suspicion of the real state of affairs; but if so, he gave no sign, and the boys, happy in their escape from what might have proved a grave matter, were content to forego all further practical jokes of the kind for the rest of the session.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.
A NIGHT IN THE DREADNOUGHT.
Chapter I. Stowaways.
We were spending the winter of 185--, my young brother Jack and I, with our grandfather at Kingstairs, a quiet little seaside village not a hundred miles from the Nore.
I am not quite clear to this day as to why we were there--whether we were sent for a treat, or for a punishment, or whether I was sent to take care of Jack, or Jack was sent to take care of me. I can"t remember that we had committed any unusually heinous offence at home.
Indeed, since our attempt a week or two previously to emulate history by smothering the twins, after the manner of the princes in the Tower, we had been particularly quiet, not to say dull, at home. For the little accident of the squib that went off in the night nursery in the middle of the night counted for nothing, n.o.body being hurt, and only the head nurse and our aunt having hysterics.
So that when, the day after we had broken up for the holidays, our father told us we were going to spend Christmas at grandfather"s, there was nothing in our past conduct to suggest that the step was to be regarded in the light of a punishment.
All the same, it was no great treat. At least it would have been far more of a treat to spend Christmas at home, and carry out our long- cherished design of digging at the bottom of the garden till we reached the fire in the middle of the earth, an operation which we reckoned would occupy at least a week; to say nothing of the usual Christmas parties, which we did not see the fun of missing, and the visits to the Tower and the Monument, which always seemed to be part of every Christmas holiday.
However, as it was all settled for us, and everybody seemed to think it a great treat for us, and further, as Jack had a boat which wanted sailing, we yielded to the general wish, and reminding everybody that the presents could be sent down in a trunk a day or two before the 25th, we took our leave and repaired to Kingstairs.
Our father came with us, just to see us settled down, and then returned to town. And it was not till after he had gone that we began to think it rather slow to be left alone down there with only grandfather and Jack"s boat for company.
Grandfather was very old. We always used to put him down at a round hundred years, but I believe he was only seventy-five really. However, he was not as young as we were, and being rather infirm and subject to rheumatism, he preferred staying indoors near the fire to coming with us over the rocks and sailing Jack"s boat in mid-December.
He little knew the pleasure he missed, of course! Happily, he did not insist on our staying indoors with him, and the consequence was we managed to do pretty much as we liked, and indeed rather more so than he or any one else interested in our welfare supposed.
Kingstairs, as any one who has been there knows, is not a very exciting place at the best of times. In summer, however, it is a pleasant enough retreat, where family parties come down from town for a week or so, and spend their days boating in the pretty bay, or else basking on the sands under the chalk cliffs, where the children construct fearful and wonderful pits and castles, and arm-chairs for their mothers to sit in, or ca.n.a.ls and ponds in which to sail their craft. In fine weather nothing is so enjoyable as a day on the rocks, hunting for crabs and groping for "pungars," or else strolling about on the jetty to watch the packet-boat go out to meet the steamer, or see the luggers coming in after a week"s fishing cruise in the German Ocean.
All this is pleasant enough. But Kingstairs in July and Kingstairs in December are two different places.
The lodging-houses were all desolate and deserted. The boats were all drawn high and dry up on the jetty. The bathing-machines stood dismally in the field behind the town. Not a soul sat in an arm-chair on the sands from morning to night. No one walked along the cliffs except the coastguardsmen. The London steamer had given up running, and no one was to be seen on the jetty but an occasional sailor, pipe in mouth and hands in pockets, looking the picture of dismalness.
You may fancy Jack and I, under these depressing circ.u.mstances, soon got tired of sailing the boat. And when one day, after we had waited a week for the water to calm down, we started it, with all sail crowded, before half a gale of wind, from the jetty steps, and watched it heel over on to one side and next moment disappear under the foam of a great wave which nearly carried us off our feet where we stood, we decided there was not much fun to be had out of Kingstairs in December.
It was often so rough and stormy that it was impossible to get to the end of the jetty; and on these occasions we were well enough pleased to take shelter in the "look-out," a big room over the net-house, reached by a ladder, where there was generally a fire burning, and in which the sailors and boatmen of the place always congregated when they had nothing else to do.
We struck up acquaintance with one or two of these rough tars, who, seeing perhaps that we were in rather a dismal way, or else glad of anything in the way of a variety, used to invite us up to warm ourselves at the fire. We very soon got to feel at home in the "look-out," and found plenty of entertainment in the yarns and songs with which the men whiled away the time.
A great deal of what we heard, now I remember it, was not very improving; the songs, many of them, were coa.r.s.e, and as for the yarns, though we swallowed them all at the time, I fancy they were spun mostly out of the fancy of the narrators. Wonderful stories they were, of shipwreck, and battle, and peril, over which we got so excited that we lay awake at night and shuddered, or else dreamed about them, which was even worse.
One man, I remember, told us how he fought with a shark under water in the South Seas, and stabbed it with the knife in his right hand, just as the monster"s teeth were closing on his other arm. And to make his story more vivid he bared his great s.h.a.ggy arm, and showed us an ugly white scar among the tattoo marks above the elbow. Another man told us how he had stood beside Nelson on the "Victory," just as the admiral received his death-wound; and it never occurred to us to wonder how a man of not more than thirty-five could have been present at that famous battle, which took place fifty years ago! But the yarn that pleased us most was the one about the wreck of the "Wolf King," when the Kingstairs lifeboat, the "Dreadnought," put out in a tremendous gale, and reached her just as she was going down, and rescued sixteen of her crew. This story we called for over and over again, till we knew it by heart. And many a time, as we lay awake at night, and heard the wind whistling round the house, we wondered if it was a storm like this when the "Wolf King" went down, or whether any ship would be getting on to the Sands to-night.
It was Christmas Eve--a wild, bl.u.s.tering night. It had been blowing up hard for several days now, and we were used to the howling of the wind and the roar of the waves on the beach. We had gone to bed tired and excited, for the promised hamper had arrived that afternoon, and we had been unpacking it. What a wonderful hamper it was! A turkey to begin with, and a _Swiss Family Robinson_, and a tool-box, and a telescope, and a pair of home-made socks for grandfather. We were fain to take possession of our treasures at once, but the old gentleman forbade it, and made us put them all back in the hamper and wait till the morning.
So we went to bed early, hoping thereby, I suppose, to hasten the morning. But instead of that, the hours dragged past as though the night would never go. We heard nine o"clock strike, and ten, and eleven. We weren"t in the humour for sleeping, and told one another all the stories we knew--finishing up, of course, with the wreck of the "Wolf King." Then we lay for a long time listening to the storm outside, which seemed to get wilder and wilder as the night dragged on.
The tide, which had been only just turned when we went to bed, sounded now close under the house, and the thunder of the great waves as they broke on the sand seemed to make the very earth vibrate.
Surely it must have been a night like this when the "Wolf King"--
"Tom!"
"What?"
"Are you awake?"
"Yes."
"It"s a storm, isn"t it?"
There was a silence for some time, and I supposed Jack had dozed off, but he began again presently. "Tom!"