CHAPTER II
KEP WAS GONE
Far round the point yonder, though it could not be seen even from the cliff top, was a town, an old-fashioned seaport, into which even big ships often came for shelter, such times as the sea-birds flew far inland. A town of narrow streets and quaintly gabled houses, a town that smelt of tar from end to end, and a beach with boats and broad-beamed fishermen who wore jerseys or baggy breeches and braces only, sou'-westers, and the everlasting short pipes that they leaned against post or pillar to smoke.
These seafaring folk looked lazy, dreamy and very quiet in manner, yet never were they afraid to face the stormiest billows on the stormiest of nights if danger or duty called. There was the might of Old England and its daring and pride of pluck in their half-shut eyes, and this only wanted waking. In the season, a signal from a hill would set them all astir like a swarming hive of bees. The mackerel or pilchards had been spotted in silvery millions, and if the French themselves had been threatening a landing, the stir and commotion could scarce have been more.
Kep Drummond loved that old town. There was the odour of brine about it. Sometimes, I must admit, even the odour of unburied fish that might have been better out of the way; but still a run over to Marshton to yarn with the fisher-folk was always a most pleasant trip for the boy.
The fishermen idolized him, so did their honest, rough and witty wives, because Kep possessed the power of making them laugh at will. That is at his will, they had to laugh whether they willed it or not. There was not much about a ship of any kind that Kep wasn't up to long before he was fourteen. One might therefore have dubbed him a sailor born, and not been very far wrong.
But Kep had another reason for visiting Marshton, and that lay in the fact that here he met men of many various nations, and delighted in talking to them in their own languages.
Apart from his marvellous musical powers, he had one great gift, namely, that of language. To say nothing of English, French, Italian and Spanish, he could converse in several other tongues, and could pick up almost any language in an incredibly short time.
My own opinion is that music and the gift of tongues go hand in hand, and that they are far more common in foreign European countries than they are in Britain. Iverach Drummond, the children's father, was a true type of the wealthy Scotsman, and of the wandering Scot. One of the best yachtsmen who ever trod on the weather side of a quarter-deck, his devotion to travel took him everywhere, and when he got married to a noble Italian lady, for her sweet sake he bought the estates of Martello, so that she might be as near to the Mediterranean as possible.
Madge and Kep had been born here, but hitherto had been educated by worthy priests at their grandfather's home on the shores of the blue Levant.