Cornwall (England : County) -- Fiction; Short stories, English
The creek was just the same lonesome place that it is to-day, the
only difference being that the pallace at the entrance had a roof on
it then, and was rented by Sam Trewhella--the same that followed old
Hockaday's coffin, as I've told you. But above the pallace the woods
grew close to the water's edge, and lined both shores with never a
clearing till you reached the end, where the cottage stands now and
the stream comes down beside it: in those days there wasn't any
cottage, only a piece of swampy ground. I don't know that Bligh saw
much in the scenery, but it may have helped to soothe his mind: for
by and by he settled himself on the bottom-boards, lit another pipe,
pulled his hat over his nose, and lay there blinking at the sky,
while the boat drifted up, hitching sometimes in a bough and
sometimes floating broadside-on to the current, until she reached
this bit of marsh and took the mud very gently.
After a while, finding she didn't move, Bligh lifted his head for a
look about him and found that he'd come to the end of the creek.
He put out a hand and felt the water, that was almost luke-warm with
running over the mud. The trees shut him in; not a living soul was
in sight; and by the quietness he might have been a hundred miles
from anywhere. So what does my gentleman do but strip himself for a
comfortable bathe.
He folded his clothes very neatly in the stern-sheets, waded out
across the shallows as naked as a babe, and took to the water with so
much delight that after a minute or so he must needs lie on his back
and kick. He splashed away, one leg after the other, with his face
turned towards the shore, and was just on the point of rolling over
for another swim, when, as he lifted a leg for one last kick, his
eyes fell on the boat. And there on the top of his clothes, in the
stern of her, sat my grandfather sucking a pipe.
Bligh let down his legs and stood up, touching bottom, but neck-deep
in water.
"Hi, you there!" he sings out.
"Wee, wee, parleyvou!" my grandfather answers, making use of pretty
well all the French he knew.
"Confound you, Sir, for an impident dirty dog! What in the name of
jiminy"--I can't give you, Sir, the exact words, for my grandfather
could never be got to repeat 'em--"What in the name of jiminy d'ee
mean by sitting on my clothes!"
"Wee, wee," my grandfather took him up, calm as you please.
"You shocked me dreadful yesterday with your blasphemious talk: but
now, seeing 'tis French, I don't mind so much. Take your time: but
when you come out you go to prison. Wee, wee--preeson," says my
grandfather.
"Are you drunk?" yells Bligh. "Get off my clothes this instant, you
hobnailed son of a something-or-other!" And he began striding for
shore.
"In the name of His Majesty King George the Third I charge you to
come along quiet," says my grandfather, picking up a stretcher.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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