The Captain's Bunk Part 11

Jerry Blunt set forth, with his batch of performers, to London, where he got a fairly good price for his well-trained songsters. His birds sold off rapidly, each of them going off to be the pride and joy of some girl or boy's heart with the tuneful old melody--

'O where and O where has my Hieland laddie gane?'

and Jerry returned home with orders for many more bullfinches as he could procure.

These orders, however, he was doubtful of executing; the finches were getting too advanced in age to prove docile pupils. Still, Jerry would do his best, and he set off to trap some young birds that had already left the parent-nests. The work of training these advanced birds was quite as difficult. However, Jerry was a persevering individual, gifted with wondrous patience, an untiring teacher. He succeeded beyond his hopes, and as time went on was enabled to earn what he called a 'tidy' sum.

''Tis wonderful strange, Jerry, my son, that ye can train the morsels o' critters to sing what we may call human tunes! n.o.body, of course, could do it but yer own self, I'm sure,' grudgingly admitted his mother, when success became sure.

'The idea! That's so like you, mother!' laughed Jerry, as he softly tickled the head of the bullfinch he had retained as a gift for Miss Theedory out of the first and best batch. 'You're that conceited, you think that your own son can do all things better than other folk. But I could tell you a true story, now, of what others have done.'

And in his own words Jerry related, while his mother knitted in the firelight, how a great musician had, as a youth, trained a young bullfinch to pipe 'G.o.d save the King.' The musician was much attached to the bird, and the bird to him. Love begets love, with the animal creation at least, which is, undoubtedly, the simple secret of the strange power possessed by some human beings over birds and beasts. If you desire to be their masters, you must, first of all, love the dumb creatures. Where love is, all things are possible. Bull-finches, in particular, have a strongly developed faculty for attaching themselves.

And the simple logic is easy to follow out. In the training already described, music and pleasure--that is, the food and sunlight, which const.i.tute Bully's pleasure--are inseparably connected. Hence it follows soon, that the bird, to show his joy at the sight of his owner, learns to greet him with the one tune his little life has been spent in learning.

The musician, having cause to go abroad, left his petted bird in charge of his sister. On his return to this country, his first visit was to that lady, who told him, sorrowfully, that Bully had pined himself into a serious illness, evidently in the grief he felt at his master's absence. The grieved owner went hastily into the room where the cage was, and spoke gently to the ailing bird, which stood huddled up into what looked like a ball of feathers on his perch. Instantly, at the sound of the loved master's voice, the dim, closed eyes were opened wide. There was a feeble flutter of the faded plumage; the drooping head was raised. Half creeping, half staggering, the little creature attained the outstretched finger, on which he had barely strength to steady himself. With a supreme effort, as it seemed, he piped out feebly, in low, half-m.u.f.fled notes, 'G.o.d save the King.' And then--Bully fell dead!

Jerry's voice had a slight choke in it as he finished his pathetic little story. As for his old mother, she had thrown her ap.r.o.n over her head, and was quietly sobbing under its shelter.

'Well, my lad,' she said, by and by, when her tears were dried, 'I've aye said that you were the best son mother ever had, and for the same a blessing will, no doubt, rest upon your head. And as for the bits o'

birds an' beasts well, I've heard the old pa.s.son--Mr. Vesey himself--say, an' I never forget the words, as--

'"He prayeth best who loveth best All men and bird and beast;"

so, to my thinkin', that's how 'tis wi' you. Ye love the mites, and ye can do all things wi' them. That's yer secret!'

And undoubtedly Jerry's old mother was right.

CHAPTER XVI

THE SEAMY SIDE OF LIFE

It was a still, dark night when two short figures, each carrying a bundle, stole away from Northbourne, skirting Brattlesby Woods, and making for the old London road.

The fugitives were Alick Carnegy and Ned Dempster, and each was trying his hardest to prevent his companion from hearing the choking sobs that could not be kept down.

All boys, of course, secretly believe that it is a fine, manly thing to run away to sea. From time immemorial it has sounded so well--in fiction. Is there a boy breathing who has not pictured himself, free as a bird on the wing, shaking off the trammels of home in this fas.h.i.+on? But the grim reality was an altogether different matter to the couple of friends who were setting forth under cover of darkness.

For one thing, Alick, who hated anything underhand, was thoroughly ashamed of sneaking away in the night. That in itself distinctly took away from the dash and glory of the affair.

In addition, he felt himself groping in a fog of misery. Nevermore, he felt convinced, would he see his gentle, loving sister in this life; and he s.h.i.+vered uncontrollably as he thought that, but for his absence in her hour of peril, Theo would be as well and strong as anybody--as, for instance, little Queenie, upon whom the accident had left no evil effects.

Before and behind, life was grim and stripped of hope for both the boy-adventurers as they plunged along the high road. They were too intensely miserable to look forward to the future. All they were intent on was to escape from the dreaded consequences of their misdoings.

It is hard work travelling with a heart of lead in one's bosom--

'A merry heart goes all the day, Your sad tires in a mile-a.'

Still, the two trudged on, mile after mile, until when the dawn stole up the sky they found themselves on the outskirts of a country town at a considerable distance from Northbourne. Having but a few s.h.i.+llings, belonging to Alick, they had decided to walk every step of the road to London Docks. In the dim grey light from the east they saw, to their astonishment, large looming vans and many blurred forms, all in busy motion. There seemed to be, as it were, a commotion of shadows.

'What on earth is it, Ned? They look like ghosts flitting about!'

Alick said, half fearfully.

'No! They ain't ghosts!' slowly rejoined Ned, after a prolonged stare.

'I'll tell you what it means. Tis a circus, or mayhap a wild-beast show, or somethin' of that sort. They're carryvans, leastways, and they're makin' an early start. Depend on it, that's what 'tis, Muster Alick!'

Alick whistled.

'I shouldn't wonder, Ned. You've just hit it. It's a circus! Let's go closer. Who knows but they might give us a lift on the road to London!'

Ned shook his head; he was extremely doubtful as to that. Such civility was not by any means the rule of the road.

As the boys drew nearer, they felt sure it must be a wild-beast show, from the rumble of subdued roars, as if from pent-up animals, and the chatter of birds that resounded from the depths of the caravans in which the inmates were, evidently, disturbed from their slumbers by the early move. Horses were being put to, and men were running to and fro, but Alick and Ned felt shy of accosting any one of them.

They hung back and watched eagerly.

'Hilloa, you two shavers! Whatever do you want loafing round here at this time o' morning? Say, can't yer?'

The shrill, loud voice came from the window of a house-caravan, and a woman's head, stuck all over with curl-papers, was thrust out to stare intently at the new-comers.

'We are going up to London--on business,' said Alick, mustering up courage, and speaking as manfully as he could. 'And,' he moved up closer to say, 'we thought that, perhaps, you would give us a lift as far as you could. I'll give you a s.h.i.+lling!'

The boy spoke with the air as though s.h.i.+llings were plentiful enough.

But, in truth, he had only two half-crowns of his own in the world; they were the entire amount of his savings, which he had brought on setting forth in life.

The woman with the curl-papers stared hard down at the two young strangers before she answered, not so ill-naturedly--

'Well, I don't much mind, if so be as one of you gits on these yer steps, and has a ride along of us. The t'other can git on to one of the beasteses' vans at the back. 'Twon't break no bones if you do, as I can see.' With a rea.s.suring nod, she then withdrew her curl-papers into the interior of her moving home.

'You'd best go aside her, I suppose, Muster Alick,' whispered Ned.

'I'll hang on to that van yonder;' and he took himself off in the direction to which the woman had seemed to point.

'The missus said as I might have a ride on the back of this van,' said he, meekly enough, to a man in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, who was too busy with the bars of the van to look up at the speaker.

'All right! If so be as she says so, it's got to be, I reckon!' he growled; and Ned swung himself up behind, trying hard to make out, as the procession moved off slowly and ponderously at last, what sort of beasts were on the other side of the boards he was leaning against.

Suppose they were lions, or suppose the boards got loose? The fisher-lad, whom storm and tempest on the deep could not dismay, felt a bit creepy. Setting his ear close to the wood, he could distinctly hear hideous growls, as if some savage creature, maddened by hunger, were ready to break out and leap upon him. What would granny say if she could dream of his situation? But das.h.i.+ng his hand across his sleepy eyes, Ned hastily told himself there must be no harking back, no thinking of what granny or anybody else at Northbourne would say or do.

It must be good-bye, for ever, to the old life. The motion of the van, the rest after the long tramp, alike caused the country-bred boy to nod sleepily as he clung to his perch.

Presently, he was back again in Northbourne. It was Sunday afternoon, and, dressed in his best, the fisher-boy stood up straight in cla.s.s to repeat his hymn to his earnest-eyed, sweet-faced teacher, 'Miss Theedory.' And the words he fought sleepily to remember must have been born of his nearness to the growling monsters within the caravan--

'Christian, dost thou see them On the holy ground, How the troops of Midian Prowl and prowl around?'

CHAPTER XVII