The “first case” Lambert had attended to was a twenty-stone “drooning” baker, who gripped him tight to his breast, and nearly succeeded in drowning him. Lambert was then a youth of about fourteen. Another was of a poor old washerwoman who had overbalanced herself in the water, and who when saved wanted to go and pawn her tub that she might reward him. Instead of which her rescuer “clappit a shellin’” in her hand, and promised to repeat the kindness each Saturday from his own meagre wages.
When Mr. Reade had provided the poor old man with a little refreshment, he told the following episode in his life.
“Aweel, sirr, ye’ve heerd o’ the callant they wadna let me save—Hech, sirr, yon was a wean wastit[72]—noo, I’ll make ye the joodge whether I could na hae saved that ane, and twarree mair. There’s a beck they ca’ ‘the Plumb’ rins doon fra’ the horsebrae into the Clyde near Stockwell Brigg. The bairns were aye for sporting in the beck, because it was shallow by ordinar, and ye’ll see them the color o’ vilets, and no’ hauf sae sweet, wi’ the dye that rins to the beck. Aweel, ae day there was a band o’ them there; and a high spate[73] had come doon and catched them, and the reesolt was I saw ane o’ th’ assembly in the Clyde. I had warned the neer-do-weels, ye ken, mony’s the time. By good luck I was na far away, and went in for him and took him by the ear. ‘C’way, ye little deevil,’ says I. I had na made three strokes when I am catched round the neck wi’ another callan.”
“Where on earth did he spring from?”
“I dinna ken. I was attending to number ane, when number twa poppit up, just to tak’ leave o’ Glasgee. I tell’t them to stick into me, and carried the pair ashore. Directly there’s a skirl on the bank, and up comes number three, far ahint me in the Clyde, and sinks before I can win[74] to him. Dives for this one, and has a wark to find him at the bottom. Brings him ashore in a kind o’ a dwam; but I had na fear for his life; he hadna been doon lang; my lord had a deal more mischief to do, ye ken. By the same token he came to vara sune, and d’ye ken the first word he said to me? he said: ‘Dinna tell my feyther. Lord’s sake, man, dinna tell my feyther!’ ”
“I never,” remarks Mr. Reade, “saw a man more tickled by a straw, than James Lambert was at this. By contemplating him I was enabled in the course of time to lose my own gravity, for his whole face was puckered with mirth, and every inch of it seemed to laugh.”
“But,” said he, “wad ye believe it, some officious pairson tell’t his feyther, in spite o’ us baith. He was just a labouring man. He called on me, and thank’t me vara hairtily, and gied me a refreshment. And I thoucht mair o’t than I hae thoucht o’ a hantle siller on the like occasions.”
After one or two other savings, that entitled him to a medal or two, Lambert admitted that, “By this time, sirr, I was aye prowling about day and night for vectims!” Mr. Reade suggested that he had the pride of an artist, and wanted them to fall in, that he might pull them out and show his dexterity. Lambert answered that in those days swimming was not an accomplishment so common as now; and if such a thing as drowning was to be, he would like to be there and save them. “Ech,” said he, “the sweetness o’t! the sweetness o’t!”
He next told a funny story of rescuing a boy, and running up to the house to have him properly cared for. “Then,” said he, “I’m going oot, when a’ of a sooden I find I haena a steek on me, and twa hundred folk about the doore. Wad ye believe it, wi’ the great excitement I never knew I wa’ nakit till I saw the folk and bethought me.” At the [pg 270]foot of the stairs he found a bundle of linen, and he was not long in helping himself, coming back to the room in the wife’s apron and a sheet. “The sight o’ me made the lasses skairt and skirl;[75] for I was like a corp just poppit oot of the grave.” When he went for his clothes they had disappeared, but at last he discovered that a young lady had carefully kept them for him behind a hedge, fearing that some one might steal them.
“I come now,” says Mr. Reade, “to the crowning feat of this philanthropic and adventurous life, and I doubt my power to describe it. I halt before it like one that feels weak and a mountain to climb, for such a feat, I believe, was never done in the water by mortal man, nor never will again while earth shall last.