Merry-Garden and Other StoriesQuiller-Couch, Arthur
General
Merry-Garden and Other Stories
Quiller-Couch, Arthur
Cornwall (England : County) -- Fiction; France -- Fiction; Short stories
"If you'd told me this a month ago," said he, "I might have pulled a long
face about it; but now the man's strong enough to bear moving. You, Mr.
Sleep, must lend me a suit of clothes, with that old wideawake of yours.
There's not the fellow to it in this parish. After that, all you can do
at present is to keep watch here while I get Dan'l down to the sea.
You, Mr. Tummels, by hook or crook, must beg, borrow, or steal a boat in
St. Ives, and one that will keep the sea for three or four days at a
push."
"If the fellow comes sneaking round the Folly here, William Sleep and I
can knock him on the head and tie him up. And then what's to prevent my
making use of the _Fly_ hersel'?"
"That's not a bad notion, though we'll avoid violence if we can.
The point is, you must bring along a boat, and as soon after nightfall as
may be."
"You may count on it," Tummels promised. "Next question is, where be I to
take the poor chap aboard? There's good landing, and quiet too, at Cawse
Ogo, a little this side of Treryn Dinas." Tummels suggested it because he
knew the depths there close in-shore, the spot being a favourite one with
the Cove boys for a straight run of goods.
"Cawse Ogo be it," said the doctor. "I know the place, and I think the
patient can walk the distance. Unless I'm mistaken it has a nice handy
cave, too; though I may think twice about using it. I don't like hiding
with only one bolt-hole."
"You haven't found any part for me in your little plans," put in Bessie
Bussow. "Now, I'm thinkin' that when he finds himself on the high seas
and wants to speak a foreign-bound ship, this here may come in handy."
She pulled out a bag from her under-pocket and passed it over to Tummels.
"Gold?" said he. "Gold an' notes? 'Tis you have a head on your shoulders,
missus."
"Thank 'ee," said she. "There's twenty pound, if you'll count it.
An' 'tis only a first instalment; for the lad shall have the rest in time,
if I live to alter my will."
From the farmhouse Dr. Martyn walked boldly up to Stack's Folly with the
bundle under his arm: and in twenty minutes had Dan'l rigged up in William
Sleep's clothes. The day was turning bright and clear, and away over the
waste land towards Zennor you could see for miles. Tis the desolatest
land almost in all Cornwall, and by keeping to the furze-brakes and spying
from one to the next, he steered his patient down for the coast and
brought him safe to the cliffs over Cawse Ogo. There in a lew place in
the middle of the bracken-fern they seated themselves, and the doctor
pulled out his pocket spyglass and searched the coast to left and right.
By and by he lowered the glass with a start, seemed to consider for a
moment, and looked again.
"See here," said he, passing over the spyglass, "if you can keep
comfortable I've a notion that a bathe would do me good."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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