The Boys of Grand Pré School / Illustrated

by James De Mille

Down they all went, therefore, to where the Antelope lay; and the procession, although not quite so grotesque as on a former occasion, was still sufficiently striking to attract considerable attention from the villagers. First of all went Mr. Long, alone; for Mr. Simmops did not feel inclined to go. He was busy preparing his lessons for the boys. After the leader followed the elder boys, who had been on the expedition; then came a confused crowd of small boys. They didn’t walk in military order exactly; in fact, they had no order at all, and if it must be confessed, they were somewhat disorderly; at any rate, they beguiled that inarch by playing at leap-frog, or riding on one another’s backs, or doing something else equally striking to the village mind, all the way down.

At last they arrived at the scene of action. Mr. Long put Bruce and Jiggins, who were the largest boys in the school, into the hold of the schooner, to lift out the stones, and then ranged a double line of boys, of all sizes, between the schooner and the place where the stone wall had formerly been.

He then took Arthur, Billymack, Pat, and Bart as his assistants, and stood by the wall to build it up again with the stones from the Antelope. He himself worked with his own hands in building up the wall, and directed his assistants. There were a great many stones; but, then, there were a great many hands at work; and so, at last, after violent labor, which, however, was all the time cheered and alleviated by the prospect of additional holidays, the work was completed. Once more the stone wall arose, quite as good as it had been before, and, in fact, even better, on the spot whence it had been taken; and so vigorously had the nimble hands worked, and so skilfully had Mr. Long and his assistants piled up the stones, that they were able to go back to the hills to take their dinner, with the happy consciousness,—first, that they had earned holidays for the remainder of the week; and secondly, that the stone wall was a far better one, as they had built it, than it had been when it was taken away. So Mr. Long said, as he expressed his thanks for their labors, and his deep gratification at the fair result; and so they all felt as they looked at that wall, which, though built by the hands of amateurs, was still far better in every respect than the older portions, the work of other hands, that stood beside it.

For the remainder of the day the boys were all too wearied to engage in any play. The “B. O. W. C.,” in particular, were exhausted from their double toil. They spent the afternoon together in Bart’s room, talking over the events of that memorable evening when they had dug for money. Solomon, since then, had kept out of sight. They themselves did not feel at all inclined to reproach him. Their thoughts did not refer at all to him, nor to Captain Corbet, but rather to that unearthly noise which had driven them to a disgraceful flight. Most of them thought that it was a trick of the Gaspereaugians. Bruce alone rejected this theory, and plainly stated his belief that it was something supernatural. If it had been the Gaspereaugians, he argued, would they have left us unmolested after we went back? No. It was because we did not dig that we were let alone. If we had begun to dig again, and if we had struck that metallic box again, then we should have heard that roar, and something a good deal worse.

But this was only Bruce’s opinion; none of the others held it. They were convinced that it was the trick of the Gaspereaugians, and were eager to find ont some way of retaliating on their enemies; but they could not imagine any way in which to do it.

The hours of the day passed on, and late in the afternoon they went out for a walk. Not having any particular route in view, they strolled down through the village, and very naturally directed their steps towards Mud Creek, so as to take another look at the Antelope, and particularly at that stone fence which had cost them so much labor, and blistered all the hands in the school.

On reaching the spot a startling sight met their eyes. There, perched upon the very stone wall which they had assisted to build, with his arms folded round his knees, and his chin pressed upon the same, with his whole figure drawn up into the smallest compass into which it is possible for the human frame to gather itself, they saw a familiar shape, the sight of which, as they saw it in such an attitude, startled them extremely.

It was no other than Captain Corbet. Drawn up thus, folding thus his knees with his arms, leaning thus his chin upon his knees, he came before their startled vision; but he himself was quite unconscious of their presence. His face was turned to the scene which presented itself before him, and his eyes were fixed upon that scene to the exclusion of all other things; and they, as they came up behind him, saw gradually what that scene was.

Since they had been there last, the tide had reached its height, and had fallen. Mud Creek now lay before them perfectly empty of water, and presenting to their view an expanse of nothing else except soft, slimy, slippery, oleaginous mud, which now spread away in an impassable gulf, and showed the justice and the truth of that uneuphonious name. But the vast abyss of soft, slimy, and oleaginous mud, and the wide impassable valley composed thereof, and the rise and the fall of these extraordinary tides, were not the attractions which riveted the gaze of Captain Corbet, and the eyes of the boys of the “B. O. W. C.,” as they drew nearer. It was something far different—something, in fact, which touched them all, in common, with a deep feeling of sorrow,—a feeling which was strong enough to make Captain Corbet unconscious of the presence of any except himself, and to make the boys stop short in their advance, and look on in deep but mournful silence.

For there, just before them, and just before the entranced gaze of Captain Corbet, lay the Antelope. She was lying on her side, down the steep slope of mud, as though with the falling tide she had rolled over to her ruin and destruction. There she lay, with her side buried deep in the soft mud, her masts pointing downwards; buried there, and so firmly fixed in that burial-place, that the next rising tide would only seem to complete her hopeless ruin. There she lay, doomed and devoted to destruction,—the dear old Antelope, which had carried them safely through all their late adventures, and around which so many imperishable memories had fastened themselves. To these boys of the “B. O. W. C.,” who thus saw it in the peril of its last agonies, the Antelope was not a common schooner. It had carried them safely through adventures which were never to be forgotten. In it they had cruised over Minas Basin, they had visited the Five Islands, they had landed at Pratt’s Cove: in it they had drifted over the wide seas, they had run ashore, they had encountered perils without number; in it they had known joy and sorrow, plenty and famine, hope and despair; and this was the end—to see the dear old tub upset on the wrong side, and lying buried in Mud Creek before their eyes, awaiting its inevitable fate.