Authors -- Fiction; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Martians -- Fiction; Paris (France) -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
He was devoted to her, and a splendid little chap, and in the
holidays he and she and I were inseparable, and of course
Chucker-out, who went with us wherever it was--Hâvre, Dieppe,
Dinard, the Highlands, Whitby, etc.
Once we were privileged to settle ourselves for two months in Castle
Rohan, through the kindness of Lord Whitby; and that was the best
holiday of all--for the young people especially. And more especially
for Barty himself, who had such delightful boyish recollections of
that delightful place, and found many old friends among the sailors
and fisher people--who remembered him as a boy.
Chips and Marty and I and the faithful Chucker-out were never
happier than on those staiths where there is always such an ancient
and fishlike smell; we never tired of watching the miraculous
draughts of silver herring being disentangled from the nets and
counted into baskets, which were carried on the heads of the
stalwart, scaly fishwomen, and packed with salt and ice in
innumerable barrels for Billingsgate and other great markets; or
else the sales by auction of huge cod and dark-gray dog-fish as they
lay helpless all of a row on the wet flags amid a crowd of sturdy
mariners looking on, with their hands in their pockets and their
pipes in their mouths.
Then over that restless little bridge to the picturesque old town,
and through its long, narrow street, and up the many stone steps to
the ruined abbey and the old church on the East Cliff; and the old
churchyard, where there are so many stones in memory of those who
were lost at sea.
It was good to be there, in such good company, on a sunny August
morning, and look around and about and down below: the miles and
miles of purple moor, the woods of Castle Rohan, the wide North Sea,
which turns such a heavenly blue beneath a cloudless sky; the two
stone piers, with each its lighthouse, and little people patiently
looking across the waves for Heaven knows what! the busy harbor full
of life and animation; under our feet the red roofs of the old town
and the little clock tower of the market-place; across the stream
the long quay with its ale-houses and emporiums and jet shops and
lively traffic; its old gabled dwellings and their rotting wooden
balconies. And rising out of all this, tier upon tier, up the
opposite cliff, the Whitby of the visitors, dominated by a gigantic
windmill that is--or was--almost as important a landmark as the old
abbey itself.
To the south the shining river ebbs and flows, between its big
ship-building yards and the railway to York, under endless moving
craft and a forest of masts, now straight on end, now slanting
helplessly on one side when there's not water enough to float their
keels; and the long row of Cornish fishing-smacks, two or three
deep.
How the blue smoke of their cooking wreathes upward in savory whiffs
and whirls! They are good cooks, these rovers from Penzance, and do
themselves well, and remind us that it is time to go and get lunch
at the hotel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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