“It’s all for bounce,” said Bob Chowne, “so as to be Bigley Uggleston’s landlord. Look out, Big, or Sep ’ll send you and your father packing, and you’ll have to take the lugger somewhere else.”
“I don’t care,” said Bigley. “It don’t matter to me.”
All in good time we got to the Gap Valley, where there was our Sam waiting with the donkey-cart to take mine and Bigley’s boxes, and Bob Chowne went on to Ripplemouth, after promising to join us next day for a grand hunt over the new place.
The next day came, and with it Bob Chowne from Ripplemouth and Bigley Uggleston from the Gap; and we three boys set off over the cliff path for a regular good roam, with the sun beating down on our backs, the grasshoppers fizzling in amongst the grass and ferns, the gulls squealing below us as they flew from rock to rock, and, far overhead now, a hawk wheeling over the brink of the cliff, or a sea-eagle rising from one of the topmost crags to seek another where there were no boys.
Now I’ve got so much to tell you of my old life out there on the wild North Devon coast, that I hardly know where to begin; but I think I ought, before I go any farther, just to tell you a little more about who I was, and add a little about my two school-fellows, who, being very near neighbours, were also my companions when I was at home.
Bob Chowne was the son of an old friend of my father—“captain” Duncan, as people called him, and lived at Ripplemouth, three or four miles away. The people always called him Chowne, which they had shortened from Champernowne, and we boys at school often substituted Chow for Bob, because we said he was such a disagreeable chap.
I do not see the logic of the change even now, but the nickname was given and it stuck. I must own, though, that he was anything but an amiable fellow, and I used to wonder whether it was because his father, the doctor, gave him too much physic; but it couldn’t have been that, for Bob always used to say that if he was ill his father would send him out without any breakfast to swallow the sea air upon the cliffs, and that always made him well.
Bigley Uggleston, my other companion, on the contrary, was about the best-tempered fellow that ever lived. He was the son of old Jonas Uggleston, who lived at the big cottage down in the Gap, on one side of the little stream. Jonas was supposed to be a fisherman, and he certainly used to fish, but he carried on other business as well with his lugger—business which enabled him to send his son to the grammar-school, where he was one of the best-dressed of the boys, and had about as much pocket-money as Bob and I put together, but we always spent it for him and he never seemed to mind.
I have said that he was an amiable fellow, and he had this peculiarity, that if you looked at him you always began to laugh, and then his broad face broke up into a smile, as if he was pleased because you laughed at him, and tease, worry, or do what you liked, he never seemed to mind.
I never saw another boy like him, and I used to wonder why Bob Chowne and I should be a couple of ordinary robust boys of fourteen, while he was five feet ten, broad-shouldered, with a good deal of dark downy whisker and moustache, and looked quite a man.