Dick o' the Fens Part 52

"Nay, nay; thou'rt not big enew to handle a goon, lad. Wait a bit for that."

"Come along, Tom!" cried d.i.c.k. "And I say, Hicky, bring the forge-bellows with you, so as we can blow out the will's light if he comes after us."

"Haw--haw--haw--haw!" rang out like the bray of a donkey with a bad cold; and Jacob, Hickathrift's lad, threw back his head, and roared till his master gave him a sounding slap on the back, and made him close his mouth with a snap, look serious, and go on with his work.

"Jacob laughs just like our old Solemn-un, sometimes," said d.i.c.k merrily. "Come along!"

The morning was hot, but there was a fine brisk breeze from off the sea, and the lads trudged on, talking of the progress of the drain, and the way in which people grumbled.

"Father says that if he had known he wouldn't have joined the adventure," said Tom.

"And my father says, the more opposition there is, the more he shall go on, for if people don't know what's good for them they've got to be taught. There's a beauty!"

d.i.c.k went off in chase of a swallow-tail b.u.t.terfly--one of the beautiful insects whose home was in the fens; but after letting him come very close two or three times, the brightly-marked creature fluttered off over the treacherous bog, a place of danger for followers, of safety for the insect.

"That's the way they always serve you," said d.i.c.k.

"Well, you don't want it."

"No, I don't want it. Yes I do. Mr Marston said he should like a few more to put in his case. I say, they are getting on with the drain,"

d.i.c.k continued, as he shaded his eyes and gazed at where, a mile away, the engineer's men were wheeling peat up planks, and forming a long embankment on either side of the cutting through the fen.

"Can you see Mr Marston from here?"

"Why, of course not! Come along! I say, Tom, you didn't think what old Hicky said was true, did you?"

"N-n-no. Of course not."

"Why, you did. Ha--ha--ha! That's what father and Mr Marston call superst.i.tion. I shall tell Mr Marston that you believe in will-o'-the-wisps."

"Well, so do you. Who can help believing in them, when you see them going along over the fen on the soft dark nights!"

"Oh, I believe in the lights," said d.i.c.k, "but that's all I don't believe they shot Mr Marston and old Hicky; that's all stuff!"

"Well, somebody shot them, and my father says it ought to be found out and stopped."

"So does mine; but how are you going to find it out? He thinks sometimes it's one and sometimes another; and if we wait long enough, my gentleman is sure to be caught."

"Ah, but is it a man?"

"Why, you don't think it's a woman, do you?"

"No, of course not; but mightn't it be something--I mean one of the-- well, you know what I mean."

"Yes, I know what you mean," cried d.i.c.k--"a ghost--a big tall white ghost, who goes out every night shooting, and has a will-o'-the-wisp on each side with a lantern to show him a light."

"Ah, it's all very well for you to laugh now out in the suns.h.i.+ne; but if it was quite dark you wouldn't talk like that."

"Oh yes, I should!"

"I don't believe it," said Tom; "and I'll be bound you were awfully frightened when Hicky was shot. Come, tell the truth now--weren't you?"

"There goes a big hawk, Tom. Look!" cried d.i.c.k, suddenly becoming interested in a broad-winged bird skimming along just over the surface of the fen; and this bird sufficed to change the conversation, which was getting unpleasant for d.i.c.k, till they came to the place where the men were hard at work on the huge ditch, the boggy earth from which, piled up as it was, serving to consolidate the sides and keep them from flooding the fen when the drain was full, and the high-tide prevented the water from coming out by the flood-gates at the end.

Mr Marston welcomed the lads warmly.

"I've got a surprise for you," he said.

"What is it--anything good?" cried d.i.c.k.

"That depends on taste, my boy. Come and see."

He led the way along the black ridge of juicy peat, to where, in an oblique cutting running out from the main drain, a dozen men were at work, with their sharp spades cutting out great square bricks of peat, and clearing away the acc.u.mulations of hundreds of years from the sides of what at first appeared to be an enormous trunk of a tree, but which, upon closer inspection, drew forth from d.i.c.k a loud e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.

"Why, it's an old boat!" cried Tom.

"That it is, my lad."

"But how did it come there?" cried d.i.c.k, gazing wonderingly at the black timber of the ancient craft.

"Who can tell, d.i.c.k? Perhaps it floated out of the river at some time when there was a flood, and it was too big to move back again, and the people in the days when it was used did not care to dig a ca.n.a.l from here to the river."

"Half a mile," said d.i.c.k.

"No, no. Not more than a quarter."

"But it doesn't look like a fis.h.i.+ng-boat," said d.i.c.k.

"No, my lad. As far as I can make out, it is the remains of an old war galley."

"Then it must have belonged to the Danes."

"Danes or Saxons, d.i.c.k."

"But the wood's sound," cried Tom. "It can't be so old as that."

"Why not, Tom? Your people dig out pine-roots, don't they, perfectly sound, and full of turpentine? This is pine wood, and full of turpentine too."

"But it's such a while since the Danes and Saxons were here, Mr Marston," said Tom.

"A mere yesterday, my lad, compared to the time when the country about here was a great pine and birch forest, before this peat began to form."

"Before the peat began to form!"

"To be sure! Pine and birch don't grow in peaty swamps, but in sandy ground with plenty of gravel. Look all about you at the scores of great pine-roots my men have dug out. They are all pine, and there must have been quite a large forest here once."

"And was that farther back?"

"Perhaps thousands of years before the Danes first landed. The peat preserves the wood, Tom. Bog is not rotten mud, but the decayed ma.s.ses that have grown in the watery expanse. Well, d.i.c.k, what do you think of it?"