'You needn't mind about the things you've lost, Jim,' said the captain; 'I'll rig you out again, and, if you behave yourself to my satisfaction, you shall have a guinea to boot, to sport with while ashore.'
The golden idea roused Jim from his contemplations, and was far too large to be taken in at once; it upset him completely. Whatever his thoughts and emotions may have been as he sat staring into vacuity, they were routed and sent to the gulls by this new gilded intruder. A guinea! He had scarcely ever seen one. Extravagant and romantic ideas had always been conjured up when people talked in his hearing of that precious coin. He pictured it to his mind. He fancied that he felt it in his hand. It seemed as though the universe itself would be purchasable; and, looking up into the captain's face with an animated eye, he said, 'Shall I fetch it, sir?'
'Yes, Jim; come to my house when we get to Northam, and you shall have a guinea sure enough—that is, if you mind and behave yourself.'
The 'prentice did not reply. The prospect of possessing a guinea had gathered all his thoughts into one sentiment, all his sensations into one passion; and his deep-set eyes again settled into an earnest gaze on the swelling sea, as though he had been spellbound.
The captain saw that he had hit the nail on the head, as he expressed it to himself, and, leaving Jim to his dreams, went aft with lighter heart than he expected.
'I wonder, Mogford,' he said, 'where the other poor fellows are;' and then, addressing himself to the fishermen, asked whether anything had been seen of a boat with six men in it. But no one had heard or seen thereof; and, indeed, whilst Stauncy was speaking, a wanderer on Brunton Sands picked up a portion of a boat's stern with Sarah Ann on it: so that the story is soon told. The jolly-boat had been swamped, or stove on the rocks, and the men who were borne away in her from the foundering brig soon followed the fated vessel to a watery grave. No human eye beheld that ocean funeral; no human voice bewailed them as they went to rest. The booming billows rang out their passing bell. The foam-draped waves joined hands to consign them to the deep. The moaning wind sang mournfully their requiem, and said farewell, as though the angry sea knew no remorse, and would never surrender its prey again.
CHAPTER VII.
The village of Clovelly, which looks out from the steep cliff's side on Bideford Bay, has surely a character peculiar to itself. Rising abruptly from an antique pier, its lichen-covered cottages are piled up on an incline so sharp that the traveller has to climb its oblique, pebble-paved street, and is constrained to wonder how human habitations were perched on so precipitous an acclivity, and how the villagers contrive to descend day after day without bodily detriment, or to ascend with fish-filled maunds without perilling their existence. Besides the dwellings which line the slanting thoroughfare, a number of cottages are scattered on the right and left, embosomed in foliage which salutes the waving ocean; and so completely is the cliff graced with fine old trees and with tangled underwood, through which a grey rock here and there protrudes, that the village looks right cosy, despite its perpendicular build, and adds no little to the picturesque appearance of the charming coast.
The only inn of those days, which swung its sign in the main street of that unique fishing hamlet, was the Crown and Anchor, in which Pickard and the 'prentice were quartered for the night. The captain and Mr. Mogford repaired to the outskirts of the village, where a relative of the former resided, a worthy bachelor, who made them welcome to his home and to such Devonshire fare as his larder afforded. Everything was done that evening which Cousin William could do to make the seamen 'snug and comfortable.'