“So much the better, my dear boy. There, good-bye. Mind—two small flags on your signal-halyards after the first heavy rain upon the moor, and you may expect us at dusk. If the rascals don’t come we’ll have another try; but you’ll know whether they’ll be there by the fish in the pool. They’ll know too—trust ’em. Look, there’s your father watching us—” and he waved his hand. “Good-bye, Nic, my dear boy. Good-bye!”
He shook hands very warmly. Two of his men who were ashore joined hands to make what children call a “dandy-chair,” the Captain placed his hands upon their shoulders, and they waded through the shallow water to the boat, pausing to give her a shove off before climbing in; and then, as the oars made the water flash in the evening light, Nic climbed the long hill again, to stand with his father, watching the boat till she reached the side of the ship.
“Now then, my boy,” said the old man, “we’re going to give those fellows such a lesson as they have never had before.”
He little knew how truly he was speaking.
“I hope so, father,” said Nic; and he was delighted to find how pleased the old officer seemed.
The next morning, when Nic opened his bedroom window, the king’s ship was not in sight; and for a week Captain Revel was fidgeting and watching the sky, for no rain came, and there was not water enough in the river for fresh salmon to come as far as the pool.
“Did you ever see anything like it, Nic, my boy?” the Captain said again and again; “that’s always the way: if I didn’t want it to rain, there’d be a big storm up in the hills, and the fall would be roaring like a sou’-wester off the Land’s End; but now I want just enough water to fill the river, not a drop will come. How long did Jack Lawrence say that he was going to stop about Plymouth?”
“He didn’t say, father, that I remember,” replied Nic. “Then he’ll soon be off; and just in the miserable, cantankerous way in which things happen, the very day he sets sail there’ll be a storm on Dartmoor, and the next morning the pool will be full of salmon, and those scoundrels will come to set me at defiance, and clear off every fish.”
“I say, father,” said Nic merrily, “isn’t that making troubles, and fancying storms before they come?”
“What, sir? How dare you speak to me like that?” cried the Captain.—“And you, Solly, you mutinous scoundrel, how dare you laugh?” he roared, turning to his body-servant, who happened to be in the hail.