To some people a walk of two miles through the fen in the stormy darkness of the wintry night would have seemed fraught with danger, the more so that it was along no high-road, but merely a rugged track made by the horses and tumbrils in use at the Toft and at Tallington’s Fen farm, Grimsey, a track often quite impassable after heavy rains. There was neither hedge nor ditch to act as guide, no hard white or drab road; nothing but old usage and instinctive habit kept those who traversed the way from going off it to right or left into the oozy fen with its black soft peat, amber-coloured bog water, and patches of bog-moss, green in summer, creamy white and pink in winter; while here and there amongst the harder portions, where heath and broom and furze, whose roots were matted with green and grey coral moss, found congenial soil, were long holes full of deep clear water—some a few yards across, others long zigzag channels like water-filled cracks in the earth, and others forming lanes and ponds and lakes that were of sizes varying from a quarter of a mile to two or three in circumference.
Woe betide the stranger who attempted the journey in the dark, the track once missed there was death threatening him on every hand; while his cries for help would have been unheard as he struggled in the deep black mire, or swam for life in the clear water to find no hold at the side but the whispering reeds, from which, with splashings and whistling of wings, the wild-fowl would rise up, to speed quacking and shrieking away.
But no thoughts of danger troubled the lads as they trudged on slowly and moodily, the deep murmur of their elders’ voices being heard from the darkness far ahead.
“Wonder what old Dave said about his powder-flask?” said Tom, suddenly breaking the silence.
“Don’t know and don’t care,” said Dick gruffly.
There was a pause.
“I should like to have been there and heard Old Hicky,” said Tom, again breaking the silence.
“Yah! He’d only laugh,” said Dick. “He likes a bit of fun as well as we do.”
“I should have liked to see the fire fly about.”
“So should I, if he’d thought it was Jacob, and given him what he calls a blob,” said Dick; “but it wasn’t half a bang.”