Chapter Six.
On the Beach.
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” cried Bob presently, stopping on their way homewards at a nice-looking pastry-cook’s shop hard by the dockyard-gates, whose wide green windows framed an appetising display of cakes and buns which appealed strangely to his gastronomic feelings; while a fragrant odour, as of hot mutton-pies, the speciality of the establishment, a renowned one in its way amongst middies and such like small fry who frequented the neighbourhood, oozed out from its hospitably-open door, perfuming lusciously the air around—“I am so hungry!”
“By Jove, my boy, so am I, too, now I think of it,” said the Captain, likewise coming to a halt and proceeding to enter the shop, followed by his eager companions. “Let us pipe down to lunch at once. This is a famous place for pies; and you may rely on having mutton in ’em and not puppies!”
The old Captain ‘stood treat,’ of course, and the boys had such a glorious ‘tuck out’ that they were behind time when they got back to Mrs Gilmour’s house on the south parade.
“Aunt Polly” and Nellie were both ready and waiting for them outside, dressed in walking attire; while Rover was frisking round the ladies, though he darted up to his young master the moment he caught sight of him, forgetting, with all a good dog’s magnanimity, the ill-treatment he had received in not being allowed to accompany him to the dockyard.
“Sure, you’re very late, Captain dear,” began Mrs Gilmour when the old sailor came near, with Dick following in his wake; but, suddenly noticing the latter’s wonderful transformation of appearance, she stopped her laughing reproaches anent the Captain’s dilatoriness, exclaiming in admiring tones—“My good gracious! Dear me! Who is this young gentleman?”
Bob was in ecstasies.
“We were sure you wouldn’t know him, auntie!” he cried, as little Miss Nellie joined him in a gleesome dance of triumph round the blushing, new-fledged Dick, and Rover gambolled behind the pair, barking loudly, in sympathetic accord. “We were sure you wouldn’t know him!”
“Sure, you’re right, me dears, I wouldn’t really have recognised him for the same boy at all, at all!” cheerfully agreed Mrs Gilmour, as she turned towards the ex-runaway and scrutinising his altered guise in detail, critically but kindly. “Are ye, really, Dick, now?”
“Yes, mum, I bees the same b’y, surely,” replied Dick, with a broad grin that spread over his face from ear to ear. “It’s the Cap’en, God bless him, mum, as made me for to look so foine that my own mother wouldn’t know me, leastways nobody else—thanks be to the Cap’en, mum.”
“Pooh, pooh, there’s nothing to make a fuss about,” interposed the old sailor, anxious to let these personalities be dropped, being very shy of any of his good actions being noticed. “The boy’s all right. He has only changed his rig, that’s all, the same as you put on a new dress on going out walking, ma’am.”
“That’s a nice thing to say of an economical person like me, sir!” said Mrs Gilmour, shaking her parasol at him in jocular anger. “One would think I was one of those fine ladies who have a new dress every day in the week, and milliners’ bills as long as your old malacca cane.”
“Well, well, I apologise, ma’am, for I know better than that, as you are far too sensible a woman to spend all your money on finery,” said the Captain, with a low bow. “But where are we going to now, for I see you are dressed for walking?”
“Down to the sea, of course,” she replied. “Nell and I went up to Landport this morning, while you and Bob were ‘transmogrifying’ that boy, as my old father used to say. We paid a visit to the old lady whose eggs were broken yesterday by Master Rover’s gambols. You may remember, Captain, I promised her some from my own fowls in place of those she lost. Don’t you recollect how anxious the poor creature was about them?”
“Yes, yes, I remember,” said the old sailor, his face beaming with good-humour. “You’re always kind and thoughtful.”
“Whish!” cried Mrs Gilmour playfully. “None of your blarney!”
“Oh, Bob!” exclaimed Nellie, interposing at this juncture, while they still all stood talking together in front of the house, neither Mrs Gilmour nor the ‘old commodore’ having yet given the signal for sailing, “she has got such a dear little place of her own.”
“Who’s ‘she’—the cat’s mother, Nell?”
Nellie laughed.
“I mean the old lady who had the broken eggs.”
“Aye,” put in the Captain, “and who nearly had broken legs likewise!”
This made Nellie laugh again.
“Oh, you know who I mean very well, Bob,” said she, when she had ceased to giggle. “She has got the dearest little cottage, you ever saw. It is fitted up just like the cabin of a ship inside; her husband, who was a ship’s carpenter, having done it all. Why, the walls are covered with Chinese pictures and shells and curios which he picked up in all sorts of outlandish places, bringing them home after his various voyages. Oh, Bob, you never saw such funny things.”
“Didn’t the woman say something of having an invalid daughter?” inquired the Captain. “I think I heard her speak of one yesterday at the station.”
“Yes, poor thing,” said Mrs Gilmour. “She’s got spinal complaint, and we saw her lying on the sofa in the queer little parlour crammed with curiosities that Nell took such a fancy to. She seems a very nice girl, so happy and contented although in such a helpless state! Her old mother, whom I know you thought fussy and selfish, is quite devoted to her.”
“Humph!” ejaculated the Captain, taking no notice of Mrs Gilmour’s allusions to his original impression of the stout personage with whom Rover had, so to speak, entangled them into an acquaintance. “Perhaps some of that old port wine of mine would do the girl good, eh, ma’am?”
“Not a doubt of it, she looks so pale and delicate,” replied Mrs Gilmour. “But there will be plenty of time to think about that to-morrow. Let us go on now to the beach, or it will be too late for us to do so before dinner.”
“Come on then, I’m yours obediently,” said the Captain with his usual chirpy chuckle. “By Jove, though, I think I’ve had pretty nearly walking enough for one day for an old fellow turned sixty.”
This time they steered clear of the castle, the exciting memories of the previous evening being too vivid in Mrs Gilmour’s mind to allow the boys to go near the treacherous footing of the rampart again.
Instead of going thither, they turned their footsteps rather to the eastern portion of the shore; where a shelving, shingly beach sloped gradually down to the water, and thus no danger to be feared of Master Bob or any one else plunging in suddenly without warning, as happened unfortunately before.
Here, everything was new to the young people; the wet pebbles glistening like jewels after a last polish from the receding tide; the masses of many-hued seaweed; the quaint shells; and the rippling waves, laughing in the sunshine, and sportively throwing up in their joyous play little balls of foam or spindrift, which the buoyant south-westerly breeze, equally inclined for fun and frolic, tossed about here and there high in the air, until they were lost to sight in the distance beyond the esplanade.
One or two silver-grey gulls, with white waistcoats on, as if going to some nautical dinner-party, were hovering above and occasionally making dashes down in their swooping curvilinear flight to pick up stray tit-bits from the tideway, to assuage their hunger until the grander repast to which they were invited was ready; while a whole colony of their kindred, the black, brown, and dusky-coloured gulls, not so fortunate in being asked out to the festive banquet, were anon floating about in groups on the water close inshore, anon suddenly taking wing and flying off, only to settle down again on the surface further out.
Even more impressive, however, than all these evidences of moving life around, there was the sea, that touched their feet almost, and yet stretched out in its illimitable expanse away and away—to where?
It was Nellie to whom these thoughts occurred; as for Bob, he was engaged in chasing little green crabs as they scuttled over the shingle, busily collecting as many as he could get hold of in a little pond he had scooped in the sand.
This pond would now be filled as some venturesome wavelet broke over its brink; and then be drained as the tide fell back, leaving the poor little crabs left high and dry ashore to repeat their scrambling attempts at escape, only to tumble over on top of each other as they tried to climb the precipitous sides of Bob’s reservoir.
“Isn’t it jolly!” cried that young gentleman, looking up at the Captain, who, leaning on his stick, stood near, watching his futile endeavours to restrain the vivacious, side-walking, unwieldy little animals that seemed gifted with such indomitable energy, and equal perseverance to that of Bruce’s spider. “Isn’t it jolly, sir?”
“Not very jolly for the crabs, though,” observed the old sailor smiling. “I don’t think they would say so if you asked them the question!”
“I’m not hurting them,” said Bob in excuse. “I only want to see them closely.”
“I suppose you think they are all alike and belong to the same species, eh?” asked the Captain. “Don’t you?”
“Well, I don’t see much difference in them,” replied Bob hesitatingly. “Do you, Captain Dresser?”
“Humph! yes. I can see in that little pond of yours, now under my eyes, no less than three distinct varieties of the crab family.”
“Never!” exclaimed Bob incredulously. “Why, they all look to me the same queer little green-backed things, with legs all over them that they do not know how to use properly.”
“While you think, no doubt, that you could teach them better, eh?” said the Captain chuckling; but, the next moment, raising his hat and a graver expression stealing over his face as he looked upward towards the blue vault overhead, he added earnestly—“Ah, my boy, remember they have a wiser teacher than you or I! However, you’re wrong about their being all similar. The majority of those you’ve caught are certainly of the ordinary species of green crab and uneatable, if even they had been of any tolerable size; but, that little fellow there is a young ‘velvet fiddler’ or ‘swimming crab.’ If you notice, his hind legs are flattened, so as to serve him for oars, with which he can propel himself at a very good rate through the water if you give him a chance. Look now!”
“I see,” cried Bob eagerly. “He’s quite different to this other chap here with the long legs.”
“Oh that is a ‘spider crab.’ He is of very similar proclivities to his cousin though he lives ashore. The cunning fellow uses his sprawling long limbs in lieu of a web, and will lie in wait in some hole between the rocks, artfully poking his claws out to catch unwary animals—often those of his own or kindred species—as they pass by his den.”
“What is this queer little chap?” asked Nellie, pointing to another, which was partly concealed in an old whelk-shell. “He seems to want to get out and can’t.”
“Why, my dear, that is the ‘hermit crab.’ He does not want, though, to leave that comfortable lodging he has secured for himself, as you think. He’s an ‘old soldier,’ and knows when he’s well off! He belongs to what is called the ‘soft-tailed’ family, and being defenceless astern he has to seek an artificial protection against his enemies, in place of natural armour.”
“How funny!” said Nellie, watching the little animal more closely. “What a queer fellow!”
“Yes,” continued the Captain, “and, that is the reason why he goes prowling about for empty shells. Often, too, really he’s such a pugnacious fellow, he will turn the rightful tenant out, taking forcible possession. Just look at his tail and see how it is provided with a pair of pincers at the end. He is enabled by this means to hold on firmly to any shell, no matter how badly it may fit him, which he chooses for his temporary habitation.”
As he spoke, the Captain extracted with some little difficulty the buccaneer crab from the whelk-shell, showing its peculiar formation, quite unlike that of the others. A young shrimp who had lost his latitude was also found in Bob’s pond, and the discovery led the old sailor to speak of these animals that form such a pleasant relish to bread-and-butter; and he told them that one of the best fishing-grounds for them was off the Woolsner Shoal, some four miles further along the beach to the eastwards, while another good place was Selsea Bill, more eastward still.
While the Captain was giving this little lecture about the crabs and their congeners, Rover was prancing around and barking for some one to pitch in a stick or something for him to fetch out of the sea.
Presently, in bringing back a piece of wood which Bob had thrown into the water, Rover dragged ashore a mass of seaweed, a portion of which was shaped somewhat like a lettuce and coloured a greenish purple.
The Captain pounced on this at once.
“Hullo!” he exclaimed—“why, it is laver.”
“Isn’t that good to eat?” asked Mrs Gilmour. “I fancy I’ve heard people speak of it in London, or somewhere.”
“I should rather think it was!” he replied. “It is, too, one of the best sorts, the purple laver, a variety of some value, I believe, in the London market.”
“I can’t say I should like to eat it,” said Nellie, squeezing up her nose like a rabbit and making a wry face. “It looks too nasty!”
“Wouldn’t you?” retorted the Captain. “I can tell you, missy, it is very good when well boiled, with the addition of a little lemon-juice. It tastes then better than spinach.”
“Do all these sorts of seaweed grow in the sea, Captain Dresser?” asked Bob. “I mean in the same way as plants do in a garden?”
“No, my boy,” replied the other. “They attach themselves to the rocks at the bottom of the sea, not to draw their sustenance from them in the same way as plants ashore derive their nourishment from the earth through their roots; but, simply to anchor themselves in a secure haven out of reach of the waves, getting all their nutriment from the water, which is the atmosphere of the sea in the same way as air is that of the land. Of course, some of these weeds of the ocean drift from their moorings, like that bladder wrack there with the berries.”
“Don’t they pop jolly!” observed Master Bob, popping away as he delivered himself of this opinion. “Pop! There goes one!”
“You are not the only boy who has found that out, or girl either,” said the Captain with a smile to Nellie, who was industriously following her brother’s example. “But, look here, children, I can now see something stranger than anything we’ve noticed yet.”
“What?” exclaimed Bob and Nellie together, stooping down to where the Captain was poking about with the end of his malacca cane in the sandy shingle. “What is it, sir?”
“A pholas,” he answered. “It is one of the most curious burrowing animals known, and has been a puzzle to naturalists for years, until Gosse discovered its secret, as to how it succeeded with its soft and tender shell in penetrating into the hardest rocks, within whose substance it is frequently found completely buried, so that, like the ‘Fly in Amber,’ one wonders how it ever got there!”
“What did you say it was?” asked Mrs Gilmour. “A ‘fowl,’ sure? Faith it’s a quare-looken’ bird, Cap’en dear!”
The Captain smiled, but he was not to be tempted away from his hobby.
“The pholas, I said, ma’am,” he replied. “The ‘pholas dactylus,’ as scientific people call it, which, until Gosse, as I said, discovered its mode of action, was quite a puzzle to every one; although, now that the mystery is out, all wonder it was not cleared up before! If you look at the head of the shell, you’ll see it is provided with a regular series of little pointed spines at the end of the upper portion. These spines are of a much harder material than the main part of the shell, and are fixed into it, as you could notice better with a microscope, just in the same way as the steel points for the notes of any air are attached to the barrel of a common musical-box, projecting like so many teeth.”
“Yes, I can see them,” observed Bob, who was listening attentively. “Look, Nell!”
“Well, then,” the Captain went on, “besides this toothed head of his, the animal is provided with a sucker at his mouth, by which he can hold on to any wooden pile or stonework he may wish to perforate so as to make his nest inside; and, gripping this firmly with his sucker and working the head of his shell slowly backwards and forwards with a sort of circular rocking motion, he gradually bores his way into the object of his affections, getting rid of the refuse he excavates by the aid of a natural siphon that runs through his body, and by means of which he blows all his waste borings away—curious, isn’t it?”
“Very,” said Mrs Gilmour; while the children, equally interested, wanted to learn not only all the Captain could tell them of this peculiar little animal, but also everything he knew of the other wonders of the shore. “Sure I wish I knew all you do, Captain!”
But, if the Captain was learned and good-natured, the children taxed his patience, Miss Nellie especially.
She had not lost any time in setting about making that collection of shells which she had mentioned to him in confidence when coming down in the train it was her intention to begin as soon as she got to the sea; and, all the time he had been speaking of the little crabs and other things, she had been busily gathering together all sorts of razor shells, pieces of cuttle-fish bone, cast-off lobsters’ claws, and bits of seaweed, which she now proudly drew his attention to, expecting the old sailor’s admiration.
He was, on the contrary, however, extremely ungallant.
“All rubbish!” he exclaimed on her asking him if he did not think her pile of curiosities nice. “But, those corallines, young lady, are good. They were long supposed to belong to the animal world, like the zoophytes; instead of which they are plants the same as any other seaweed. When that little branch you have there is dry, if you put the end of it to a lighted candle, it will burn with an intense white flame, similar to the lime-light, or that produced by electricity.”
“We’ll try it to-night!” said Bob emphatically. “We’ll try it to-night!”
“But, the Captain says it must be quite dry,” interposed his sister, somewhat appeased by the praise bestowed on her corallines for the wholesale condemnation her collection had received. “Isn’t that so, Captain?”
“Right you are, my deary,” said he. “They would not burn unless they’re just like tinder.”
Dick, who had meanwhile been listening to all that was being said, without intruding on the conversation, busying himself in picking up shells for Miss Nell, and, occasionally, diverting Rover’s attention by throwing a stick for him into the sea, happened to come across, just at this juncture, a queer-looking dark-coloured object that resembled an india-rubber tobacco-pouch more than anything else.
“What be this, sir?” said he, holding up the article for inspection. “Be he good for aught, sir?”
“Why, it’s only a piece of seaweed, of course!” declared Master Bob, settling the question in his own way. “Any one can see that.”
“You’re wrong,” said the Captain. “You’re quite wrong, Master Sharp!”
“It’s a fairy’s pillow-case,” cried Nellie. “Isn’t it?”
“Your guess is the nearer of the two, missy,” decided Captain Dresser, thumping his malacca cane down to give greater effect to his words. “Strange to say, you’ve almost hit upon the very name; for, the fisher-folk hereabouts and down the coast call the things ‘mermaids’ purses.’ They once contained the egg of some young skate or shark, who, when he was old enough, hatched himself, leaving his shell behind; and this being elastic, like gutta-percha, closed up again, so that it cannot be told how he got out.”
“Dear me!” exclaimed Mrs Gilmour. “I’ve often wondered what those things were, and never knew before.”
“It’s never too late, ma’am, to learn,” said the Captain. “I myself only took up natural history, gathering the little knowledge I possess, after I was put on half-pay. Indeed, it was all owing to poor Ted, your husband and my old shipmate, that I ever thought of reading at all. He said it would be something for me to fall back upon for occupation when the Admiralty shoved me on the shelf; and, by Jove, he was right!”
“Poor Ted!” sighed Mrs Gilmour somewhat sadly. “Poor old Ted!”
“Not ‘poor,’ ma’am,” said the Captain reverently, taking off his hat and looking upwards as he had done before when calling the children’s attention to Him who taught the insects. “He’s ‘rich’ Ted, now; and better off in his snug moorings aloft than you and I here below!”
“Yes, I know that, but it is hard to be content,” replied the other, appearing lost in thought for some moments; until presently, recovering herself, she looked at her watch, when, seeing what time it was, she said they must start back for home at once. “Come along, children, time’s up!”
“O-o-o-oh!” exclaimed Bob and Nellie in great consternation. “Why, we’ve only just come!”
“O-o-o-oh!” mimicked their aunt, amused at their woebegone faces. “Do you know that we’ve been down here nearly four hours! If we stop much longer, you’ll be ‘oh-ing’ for your dinner, when it will be too late to get any, and how would you like that?”
“Humph! I thought I was feeling a bit peckish,” said the Captain, wheeling about and preparing to head the return procession home, accepting Mrs Gilmour’s remarks as a command. “Come on, children, we’ve got our sailing directions; so let us up anchor at once, for you’ll have plenty of the beach before you see the last of it. I tell you what, though, I’ll do for you if you are good.”
“What, Captain?” cried Bob and Nellie, hanging on to his coat-tails as he stumped over the shingle by the side of their aunt, the faces of all now set homeward. “What?”
“Ah, you must wait till to-morrow!” was all that they could get out of him, however, in spite of their wheedlings and coaxings as they crossed the Common, with Dick and Rover following behind; the latter being too hungry even to bark, and only able to give a faint wag of his tail now and then when especially addressed by name. “Wait till to-morrow!”