"Out there--under the sycamores."
Kit recalled the voice humming the hymn that had welcomed him.
CHAPTER x.x.xVII
THE SAINT
They pa.s.sed out of the cottage.
A heavy-browed jasmine, the flowers fading now, hung about the door.
The greensward ran smoothly away to a shingle bank that rose, long- backed and brown, some three hundred yards away. The bank crossed the horizon like a low breast-work, sweeping away eastward in long roan curve. On the right it ran into a little blunt hill, green-brown and bare. Beyond the bank the sea leapt to the eye.
The Parson was walking reverently.
There was about him something of the subdued air of the schoolboy going to interview a respected master.
"Step quietly," he murmured. "We are going into the presence of a saint."
In front of the cottage, about two hundred yards from it, a little knoll, shaded with sycamores, humped up out of the greensward.
At the foot of it, in the shadow of a tree, a tall old man was sitting bolt upright in a wooden chair with wheels. A brown book had fallen open beside him; and a musket, propped against the chair, threw a black shadow across the page.
"Loaded!" muttered the Parson, pointing. "He can draw a cork from a bottle at a hundred yards."
"More than most saints could," whispered the boy.
"He"s a common-sense saint, not the ordinary run," replied the Parson with a grin.
The old man"s back was towards them. He was gazing intently through a long gla.s.s at the privateer. Kit could see nothing but a straight back and moon-silvered head.
"Piper, I"ve brought a young gentleman of your Service to see you," said the Parson in the quiet tone in which a man addresses a woman or a superior.
The old sailor dropped the gla.s.s. His great hands fumbled with the wheels of his chair, and he slewed himself about.
Kit"s heart gave a jerk.
The old man ended abruptly at the thighs!
Irresistibly the boy recalled a doll of Gwen"s whose china legs he had once plucked off in pa.s.sion, leaving saw-dust stumps.
The Parson saw the look on the boy"s face.
"Ah, I should have told you. Lost both legs in the action with the _Ca Ira_, wasn"t it, Piper?"
The doll spoke.
"Not lost, sir--gone before."
Kit glanced at him sharply.
Was he joking?
No; in that grave face lurked no laughter. The old man had said the thing that he believed in simplest faith. And what a face it was!
n.o.bly large, worn as the earth, and as full of quiet dignity. Pale, too, but not with the pallor of ill-health. Indeed the old man looked hard and wholesome as a forest tree. Rather the boy was reminded of a cathedral seen in February sunshine.
The great upper lip was bare and stiff as clay. The wide mouth curled up at the corners, as though it often smiled. Friendly eyes, the colour of forget-me-nots, dwelt on the boy. A stiff white fringe framed all.
And the note of the whole was calm--calm invincible.
Then the boy"s eyes fell on those blue bags thrusting out over the edge of the chair. A question leapt to his lips. It was out before he could stop it.
"Dud--dud--does it hurt?"
The old man"s face broke up and shone. He chuckled.
A saint could laugh, then! the boy felt himself relieved.
"No, sir, thank you, ne"er a bit. And not nigh as much at the time as you might fancy--a tidy jar like to be sure.... One thing, I don"t suffer from no bunions." He went off again into his deep chuckle; and again the boy felt comfort at heart.
The saint could joke!
"Tell him about it, Piper," said the Parson; "you and Nelson."
"Why, sir," said the old man, frank as a child, "the Captain were standin by my gun in the waist, where he"d no business to ha been reelly by rights. Flop I goes on the broad o my back, when it took me.
He was down on his knees beside me in a second, dabbin with his little handkercher. "Don"t kneel in that, sir," says I, "your white breeches and all." "Ah, dear fellow!" says he, taking my hand, "dear fellow!
dear fellow!..." Then they carried me off to the c.o.c.k-pit."
That was the whole story, but it was so simply told that the boy saw and felt it all.
"Yes, sir. There warn"t a man aboard the _Agamemnon_ but"d ha died for Captain Nelson and proud too."
He put the spy-gla.s.s to his eye to hide the fact that he was blinking.
"She"s had a rare mauling, surely. I"d just like to know her story."
"Here"s the young gentleman can tell you, Piper," chimed in the Parson.
There was a faint glow in the hollow of the old man"s cheeks as he listened to the boy"s tale, and he was rubbing his huge hands together slowly.
"Seems the powder"s laid, but the match lies yet in the pocket of this here Gentleman," he said, as Kit concluded. "One thing"s clear, sir!
We want that boat!... Now if so be I might make so bold, if you and the young gentleman"d take the gla.s.s, and step across to the Wish there, you could see all along the sh.o.r.e past Cow Gap to the Head, and make out what they"re up to."
"That"s a good notion for a sailor!" cried the Parson briskly. "Come on, Kit."