“Yah! It’s Daygo—Joe Daygo—and not James at all. He’s thinking about Jemmy Carnach.”
“And he says he feels sure your people came over with the Spanish Armada, and you’re descended from some sailor, named Diego, who was wrecked.”
“You tell your father to mix his physic,” grumbled the man sourly.—“Here, are you two going to stop here talking all day?”
“No,” cried Mike, springing up, his example being followed by Vince, who was riding on the breech of the other gun.
“Then come on,” growled the man, who made off now at a tremendous rate. Away over furze, and up and down over sunny slopes, where the fallow-chats rose, showing their white tail coverts; in and out among bare patches of granite, which rose above the great clumps of gorse; and still on, till all before them was sea. Then he began to rapidly descend a gully, where everything that was green was left behind, and they were between two vast walls of rock, almost shut-in by a natural breakwater stretching across, half covered by the sea and sand. Below them, in a natural pool, lay a boat which might have been built and launched to sail upon the tiny dock of stone; for there was apparently no communication with the sea, so well was it shut off from where, as the bare and worn masses of grey rock showed, the waves must come thundering in when the west wind blew.
Old Daygo went clumping down in his heavy boots, and the boys followed, soon to reach where stones as big as cheeses lay in a long slope, whither they had been hurled by the storms, and were rolled over till they were smooth and roughly round as the pebbles in a stream. Next they had to mount a great barrier, which now hid the boat, and then descended to its side, where it lay in the pool, only about twice as big as itself, but which proved now to be the widening out of a huge crack in the granite rocks, and zigzagged along to the sea, full of clear water at all times, and forming a sheltered canal to the tiny dock.
“Some on ’em ’d like to have that bit o’ harbour,” said the man, with a grin which showed his great white teeth; “but it’s mine, and always will be. Jump in.”
The boys obeyed, and the man fetched a boat-hook with a very sharp, keen point, from where it hung, in company with some well-tarred ropes, nets, and other fishing-gear, in a sheltered nook amongst the rocks, and then joined them, and began to push the boat along the narrow waterway.
At the first wave sent rippling outward by the movement of the boat, there was a rush and splash a dozen yards in front, as a shoal of good-sized fish darted seaward, some in their hurry leaping right out of the water, to fall in again with a plunge, which scared the rest in their flight.
The boys sprang up excitedly, and Daygo nodded.