Chapter Forty Seven.
Last Memories.
I heard all about it afterwards; how they had hauled up quickly as I did not rise to the surface, in the belief that I might be clinging still to the basket; but though the last chest was there, that was all.
Bigley seized the handles and went down, staying so long that everybody grew cold with horror, and when they hauled up he was helpless, and with one hand holding fast to the side of the basket.
It was our foreman who went down next, and managed to get his arm round me, where I was entangled in a tremendous growth of sea-weed, and with one of my legs hooked, as it were, between and round a piece of rock. By great good fortune he was able to drag me out, and rise with me to the surface, but so overcome that he could hardly take a stroke; and as for me, Doctor Chowne had a long battle before he could bring me back as it were to life.
I have little more to tell of my early life there on the North Devon coast, for after that time rolled on very peacefully. We had no more visits from the French, not even from Captain Gualtière, and we saw no more of old Jonas Uggleston. He had settled in Dunquerque, he told his son in his letters, and these always contained the advice that he was on no account to leave the service of Captain Duncan, but to do his duty by him as an honest man.
And truly Bigley Uggleston did do his duty by my father and by me, for year by year we grew closer friends, the more so that Bob Chowne drifted away after his course of training in London, and finally became a ship’s surgeon.
As for us, we led a very uneventful life, going steadily on with the management of the mine, which never was productive enough to make a huge fortune, but quite sufficient to keep my father fairly wealthy, and give employment and bread to quite a little village which grew up in the Gap.
For the recovery of the silver was the turning-point in my father’s mining career. After that all went well.
As I said, Jonas Uggleston never came back, but one day a bronzed white-headed old sailor was seated at the door of the smuggler’s cottage when I went to call on Bigley, and this old fellow rose with quite a broad grin on his face.