Shifting Winds: A Tough Yarn by R. M. Ballantyne (freenovel24 .txt) 📗

One beautiful evening in autumn, many years ago, a sailor was observed to approach an English village which lay embosomed among trees, near the margin of a small stream whose waters gleamed in the rays of the setting sun.

The village was an inland one, far removed alike from the roar and the influences of the briny ocean. It must have cost the sailor some pain to reach it; for he walked with a crutch, and one of his bare feet was bandaged, and scarcely touched the ground at each step. He looked dusty and fatigued, yet he was a stout, well-favoured, robust young fellow, so that his hapless condition was evidently the result of recent misfortune and accident—not of prolonged sickness or want. He wore the picturesque blue jacket, wide trousers, and straw hat of a man-of-war’s man; and exposed a large amount of brown chest beneath his blue flannel shirt, the broad collar of which was turned well over.

Going straight to the inn of the village, he begged for a night’s food and lodging. Told a sad story, in off-hand fashion, of how he had been shipwrecked on the western isles of Scotland, where he had lost all he possessed, and had well-nigh lost his life too; but a brave fisherman had pulled him out of the surf by the hair of the head, and so he was saved alive, though with a broken leg, which took many weeks to mend. When he was able to travel, he had set out with his crutch, and had walked two hundred miles on his way to Liverpool, where his poor wife and two helpless children were living in painful ignorance of his sad fate!

Of course this was enough to arouse all the sympathies of the villagers, few of whom had ever seen a real sailor of any kind in their lives—much less a shipwrecked one. So the poor fellow was received with open arms, entreated hospitably, lodged and fed at the public expense, and in the morning sent on his way rejoicing.

All the forenoon of that day the shipwrecked sailor limped on his way through a populous district of old England in the midst of picturesque scenery, gathering pence and victuals, ay, and silver and even gold too, from the pitying inhabitants as he went along. Towards the afternoon he came to a more thinly peopled district, and after leaving a small hamlet in which he had reaped a rich harvest he limped to the brow of the hill at the foot of which it lay, and gazed for a few minutes at the prospect before him.

It was a wide stretch of moorland, across which the road went in almost a straight line. There were slight undulations in the land, but no houses or signs of the presence of man.

Having limped on until the village was quite hidden from view, the sailor quietly put his crutch across his broad shoulder, and brightening up wonderfully, walked across the moor at the rate of full five miles an hour, whistling gaily in concert with the larks as he sped along.

An hour and a half of such walking brought him to a small patch of scrubby underwood, from the neighbourhood of which a large town could be seen looming against the evening sky in the far distance. The sailor entered the underwood with the air of a man who had aimed at the spot as a goal, and who meant to rest there a while. He reached an open space, in the centre of which grew a stunted tree. Here he sat down, and taking off his wallet, ate a hearty supper of scraps of excellent bread, cheese, and meat, which he washed down with a draught of gin. Afterwards he lit his pipe, and, while enjoying himself thus, reclining at the foot of the tree, proceeded to increase his enjoyment by counting out his gains.

While thus agreeably engaged, a rustling of the bushes caused him to bundle the gains hastily up in a handkerchief, which he thrust into his pocket, while he leaped nimbly to his feet, and seized his crutch.

“Oh, it’s only you, Bill! why, I declare I thought it was—well, well, never mind. How have ye got on?”

The individual addressed entered the enclosure, and sat down at the foot of the tree with a sigh, which might, without much exaggeration, have been termed a growl. Bill was also, strange to say, a sailor, and a wounded one, (doubtless a shipwrecked one), because his left arm was in a sling.

“It’s tough work, Jim, an’ little pay,” said the newcomer. “Why, I’ve walked twenty mile good, an’ only realised two pun’ ten. If it don’t improve, I’ll take to a better trade.”

“You’re a discontented dog,” replied Jim, spreading out his treasures. “Here have I limped the same distance, an’ bin an’ got five pun’ two.”

“Whew!” whistled the other. “You don’t say that? Well—we go ’alves, so I’m better—’ere pass that bottle. I’ll drink to your good ’ealth. ’Ow did you ever come by it, Bill?”

To this Bill replied that he had fallen in with several ladies, whose hearts were so touched by his pitiful tale that most of them gave him crown pieces, while two, who actually shed tears while he spoke, gave him half a sovereign each!

“I drink to them ’ere two ladies,” exclaimed Bill, applying the gin bottle to his mouth, which was already full of bread and beef.

“So does I,” said Jim, snatching the bottle from his comrade, “not so much for the sake of them there ladies, ’owever, as to get my fair share o’ the tipple afore you.”

The remainder of the sentence was drowned by gin; and after they had finished the bottle, which was only a pint one however, these two men sat down together to count their ill-gotten gains; for both of them were vile impostors, who had never been on the salt water in the whole course of their worthless lives.

“Now, madam,” said I, pointedly addressing Miss Flouncer, who had listened with rapt attention, “this circumstance happened before the existence of the Shipwrecked Mariners’ Society, and similar cases happened frequently. In fact, the interior of our land was at that time constantly visited by shipwrecked sailors of this kind.”

“Indeed!” said Miss Flouncer, undulating to me, with a benignant smile.

“Yes, madam,” said I. “Now observe another side of this picture.”

Hereupon I resumed my address, the substance of which was as follows:

It chanced that when impostor Jim started away over the moor at the slapping pace I have already referred to, he was observed by two of the village boys, who were lying in a hollow by the road-side amusing themselves. These urchins immediately ran home, and told what they had seen. The gossips of the place congregated round the inn door, and commented on the conduct of the pretended seaman in no measured terms—at the same time expressing a wish that they only had him there, and they would let him smell the peculiar odour of their horse-pond. At this point the courage and the ire of three stout young ploughmen, who had been drinking deeply, was stirred up so much that they vowed to be revenged, and set off in pursuit of the offender. As they ran nearly all the way, they soon came to the spot where Jim and Bill had been enjoying themselves, and met these villains just as they were issuing from the underwood to continue their journey.

A fight immediately ensued, but Jim made such play with his crutch that the ploughmen were driven back. Bill, too, who had been a London prize-fighter, unslung his left arm, and used it so vigorously that the rustics, after having had all their eyes blackened and all their noses bled, were fain to turn round and fly!

This event, as you may suppose, made a considerable sensation in the neighbourhood; travellers and carriers conveyed the news of it along the road from village to village; and the thing was thoroughly canvassed, and the impostors duly condemned.

Well, about three weeks afterwards a great storm arose; a ship was wrecked on the coast, and all the crew and passengers drowned except one man—a powerful seaman, who chanced to be a good swimmer, and who nearly lost his own life in his gallant efforts to save the life of the only female who was on board. This man swam to the shore with one arm, while with the other he supported the woman.

He could barely crawl up the beach through the heavy surf, dragging his burden after him. But he succeeded, and then lay for some time insensible. When he recovered, he found that the woman appeared to be dead. Anxious, however, to do all in his power to restore her, he tried to chafe her limbs; but seeing that he could make no impression, he hastened away to search for human dwellings and send help. Four miles did he stagger along before he came to a fishing village.

Here he told his tale; the men of the place hurried away to the scene of the wreck, but arrived too late to be of any use.

The sailor remained some days with the fishermen, who received him kindly, and gave him a few pence to help him on his way to the nearest town, where he received a few shillings from some charitable persons, and then set off to walk on foot to his native place, which happened to be on the opposite coast