The Lonely Island - Robert Michael Ballantyne (free novel 24 .TXT) 📗

but a broken reed to lean on," rejoined Brown, with a shrug of contempt. "If he liked you, he'd favour you; if he didn't, he'd go dead against you. I wouldn't trust myself in _his_ hands whether innocent or guilty. Depend upon it, Mr Young, Fletcher Christian would have been an honour to the service if he had not been driven all but mad by Bligh. I don't justify Mr Christian's act--it cannot be defended,--but I have great sympathy with him. The only man who deserves to be hanged for the mutiny of the _Bounty_, in my opinion, is Mr Bligh himself; but men seldom get their due in this world, either one way or another."

"That's a powerfully radical sentiment," said Young, laughing; "it's to be hoped that men will at all events get their due in the next world, and it is well for you that Pitcairn is a free republic. But come, we must go to work if we would have a kettle of fresh eggs. I see a ledge which seems accessible, and where there must be plenty of eggs, to judge from the row the gulls are making round it. I'll try. See, now, that you don't get yourself into a fix that you can't get out of. You know that the heads of you landsmen are not so steady as those of seamen."

"I know that the heads of landsmen are not stuffed with such conceit as the heads of you sailors," retorted Brown, as he went off to gather eggs.

"Now, Sally, do you stop here and take care of Charlie," said Young, leading the little girl to a soft grassy mound, as far back from the edge of the cliff as possible. "Mind that you don't leave this spot till I return. I know I can trust you, and as for Charlie--"

"Oh, he never moves a'most, 'xcept w'en I lifts 'im. He's _so_ good!" interrupted Sally.

"Well, just keep a sharp eye on him, and we'll soon be back with lots of eggs."

While Edward Young was thus cautioning the child, William Brown was busy making his way down the cliffs to some promising ledges below, and Nehow, the Otaheitan, clambered up the almost perpendicular face of the part that rose above them. [See frontispiece.]

It was interesting to watch the movements of the three men. Each was, in his own way, venturesome, fearless, and more or less practised in cliff climbing. The midshipman ascended the perpendicular face with something of a nautical swagger, but inasmuch as the ledges, crevices, and projections were neither so well adapted to the hands nor so sure as ratlines and ropes, there was a wholesome degree of caution mingled with his confidence. When the wished-for ledge was gained, he gave relief to his feelings in a hearty British cheer that reverberated from cliff to cliff, causing the startled sea-gulls to drive the very echoes mad with their clangour.

The botanist, on the other hand, proceeded with the extreme care of a man who knew that a false step or uncertain grip might send him into the seething mass of foam and rocks below. But he did not hesitate or betray want of courage in attempting any difficulty which he had made up his mind to face.

The proceedings of Nehow, however, seemed little short of miraculous. He appeared to run up perpendicular places like a cat; to leap where the others crept, to scramble where his companions did not dare to venture, and, loosely speaking, to hang on occasionally to nothing by the point of his nose, his eyelids, or his finger-nails! We say that he appeared to do all this, but the gulls who watched and followed him in noisy indignation could have told you, if they had chosen, that his eye was quick, that his feet and hands were sure, and that he never trusted foot or hand for one moment on a doubtful projection or crevice.

For some time all went well. The three men soon returned, each with a few eggs which they laid on the grass in three little heaps, to be watched and guarded by Sally, and to be stared at in grave surprise by Charlie. They carried their eggs in three round baskets without lids, and with handles which folded over on one side, so that the baskets could be fitted into each other when not in use, or slung round the necks of the egg-collectors while they were climbing.

The last to return to the children was William Brown. He brought his basket nearly half full of fine eggs, and set it down beside the two heaps already brought in.

"Ain't they lovely, Sall?" asked Brown, wiping the perspiration from his brow with the sleeve of his coat. That same coat, by the way, was very disreputable--threadbare and worn,--being four years old on the lowest calculation, and having seen much rough service, for Brown had an objection to the tapa cloth, and said he would stick to the old coat as long as it would stick to him. The truth is he felt it, with his worn canvas trousers and Guernsey shirt, to be in some sense a last link to "home," and he was loath to part with them.

"Lovely!" exclaimed Sally, "they's jus' bootiful." Nothing could exceed "bootiful" in Sally's mind--she had paid the eggs the highest possible compliment.

Charlie did them, at the same moment, the greatest possible damage, by sitting down in the basket, unintentionally, with an awful crash.

From the gaze of horror that he cast upwards, it was evident that he was impressed with a strong belief that he had done something wrong, though the result did not seem to him unpleasant. The gaze of horror quickly changed into one of alarm when he observed the shocked countenance of Sally, and he burst into uncontrollable tears.

"Poor thing," said Brown, lifting him out of the mess and setting him on his legs. "Never mind, old man, I'll fetch you a better basketful soon. You clean him up, Sall, and I'll be back in a jiffy."

So saying, Brown took up his basket, emptied out the mess, wiped it with a bunch of grass, and descended the short slope to the cliff edge, laughing as he went.

Poor Sally's shocked expression had not yet passed off when Charlie came to a sudden stop, shut his mouth tightly and opened his eyes, as though to say, "Well, how do you take it now?"

"Oh, Challie, but you _is_ bad to-day."

This was enough. The shades of darkest night settled down on Charlie's miserable soul. Re-shutting his eyes and reopening his mouth, he poured forth the woe of his inconsolable heart in prolonged and passionate howling.

"No, no; O _don't_!" cried the repentant Sally, her arms round his neck and fondling him. "I didn't mean it. I'm _so_ sorry. It's me that's bad--badder than you ever was."

But Charlie refused to be comforted. He flung himself on the grass in agony of spirit, to the alarm and grief of his poor nurse.

"Me's dood?" he cried, pausing suddenly, with a blaze of inquiry in his wet visage.

"Yes, yes, good as gold--gooder, far gooder!"

Sally did not possess an enlightened conscience at that time. She would have said anything to quiet him, but he would not be quieted.

"Me's dood--O _dood_! ah-o-ee-aw-ee!"

The noise was bad enough, but the way he flung himself about was worse. There was no occasion for Sally to clean him up. Rolling thus on the green turf made him as pure, if not bright, as a new pin; but it had another effect, which gave Sally a fright such as she had never up to that time conceived of, and never afterwards forgot.

In his rollings Charlie came to the edge of the knoll where a thick but soft bush concealed a ledge, or drop, of about two feet. Through this bush he passed in a moment. Sally leaped up and sprang to the spot, just in time to see her charge rolling helplessly down the slope to what appeared to be certain death.

There was but a short slope between the bush and the cliff. Rotund little Charlie "fetched way" as he advanced, despite one or two feeble clutches at the rocks.

If Sally had been a few years older she would have bounded after him like a goat, but she had only reached that period of life which rendered petrifaction possible. She stood ridged for a few moments with heart, head, and eyes apparently about to burst. At last her voice found vent in a shriek so awful that it made the heart of Young, high on the cliffs above, stand still. It had quite the contrary effect on the legs of Brown. That cautious man chanced to be climbing the cliff slowly with a fresh basketful of eggs. Hearing the shriek, and knowing full well that it meant imminent danger, he leaped up the last few steps of the precipice with a degree of heedless agility that equalled that of Nehow himself. He was just in time to see Charlie coming straight at him like a cannon shot. It was really an awful situation. To have received the shock while his footing was still precarious would have insured his own destruction as well as that of the child. Feeling this, he made a kangaroo-like bound over the edge of the cliff, and succeeded in planting both feet and knees firmly on a grassy foundation, just in time. Letting go his burden, he spread out both arms. Charlie came into his bosom with extreme violence, but he remained firm, while the basket of eggs went wildly downward to destruction.

Meanwhile, Sally stood there with clasped hands and glazed eyes, sending up shriek after shriek, which sent successive stabs to the heart of Edward Young, as he scurried and tumbled, rather than ran, down from the upper cliffs towards her.

In a few minutes he came in pale and panting. A minute later and Nehow ran round a neighbouring point like a greyhound.

"All right?" gasped Young.

"All right," replied Brown.

"Wheeaow-ho!" exclaimed Nehow, expanding his cavernous mouth with a grin of satisfaction.

It is worthy of record that little Sally did not revisit these particular cliffs for several years after that exciting and eventful day, and that she returned to the settlement with a beating and grateful heart.

It must not be supposed that Charlie Christian remained for any great length of time "the babby" of that infant colony. By no means. In a short time after the event which we have just described, there came to Pitcairn a little sister to Charlie. She was named Mary, despite the earnest suggestion of Isaac Martin, that as she was "born of a Wednesday," she ought to be called by that name.

Of course Otaheitan Sally at once devoted herself to the newcomer, but she did not on that account forsake her first love. No; her little brown heart remained true to Charlie, though she necessarily gave him less of her society than before.

Then Mrs Quintal gave her husband the additional burden, as he styled it, of a daughter, whom he named Sarah, for no other reason, that any one could make out, than the fact that his wife did not like it, and his