At length, towards evening, he found himself on the borders of the lake of Derwent, and seeing a boat fastened close to the land, he got into it; partly with the idea of hiding himself, and partly with a vague recollection of having often wished to be a sailor-boy, when begging about with his mother in sea-port towns. He rolled himself up in an old cloak which lay under one of the benches, where, exhausted by pain, hunger, and fatigue, he fell asleep.
Shortly after our poor wanderer had chosen this refuge, in stepped Master Henry St. Aubin, whose pleasure-boat it was, to take a sail alone, contrary to reiterated commands, and for no other reason, but because, for fear of accidents, he had been desired never to go without a servant. He pushed from the land, and began to arrange his canvass. He put up his main-sail, which filling immediately, bent his little bark on one side, almost level with the water, and made it fly across the lake in great style. When, however, it got under shade of the high mountains on the Borrowdale coast, the breeze slackened, and he determined to add his mizen and jib; but what was his surprise, when, on attempting to remove the old cloak which lay near them, he discovered within its folds the sleeping boy. Supposing him to be a spy placed there to watch his movements, and report his disobedience, he began to curse and swear, kicked at him under the bench, and ordered him to pack out of his boat instantly. The poor child, but half awake, gazed all round him, got up as well as his bruises would permit, and was about to obey in silence; but, when, he saw how far they were from land, he hesitated; upon which Henry took up a rope’s end, and lashed at him in the manner that sailors call starting, repeating at each stroke, “Jump, spy! jump!”
Driven almost wild with the pain of the blows, the child at last did jump; but, at the same moment, caught instinctively at the side of the boat, to which he hung with both hands, and so kept his head above water. Henry set up a loud laugh, and rowed out, towing him after him. Then, willing to make sport for himself, by terrifying the beggar brat, he attempted to push his fingers off the edge of the boat, but they clung to it with all the tenacity of self preservation; when the one hand was forced for a moment from its hold, the grasp of the other became but the more convulsively strong; and when the second was assailed by the united efforts of both of Henry’s, the first returned to its former position.
At length, tired of the jest himself, Master St. Aubin turned into shallow water, leaped ashore, and suffering the half-drowned child to land as he might, bade him scamper, ere he had well got footing. Then, intent on pursuing his sweet, because forbidden amusement, he stepped back into his boat, which with its white sails, contrasted with the dark woods of the coast it glided silently beneath, soon became as picturesque an object as though the urchin that guided it had been the most noble and adventurous of romantic heroes.
[CHAPTER II.]
—“And I tremble amid the night.”
About the centre of the entrance of the vale of Borrowdale, conspicuously situated, stands that curious rock, called, by the native Cumbrians, Borrowdale-stane. In form and position it is much like a dismasted and stranded vessel, laying on its keel and leaning a little to one side. On the highest point of this rock, a station well known to the lovers of the sublime, stood a lady wrapped in a warm fur lined cloak. Her air, however, was much too fashionable and modern to harmonize in any degree with the wild desolation of the surrounding region, which, when viewed from the elevated position she thus occupied, as far as the eye could reach, resembled a stormy ocean: its gigantic billows formed by the congregated tops of mountains.
The evening was cold, approaching to frost; and the sun, though still much above the natural horizon, was just sinking from view behind the lofty chain of western hills: his last rays lingered a while on the most prominent parts of each stupendous height, then, gradually retiring, left point after point, which, like so many beacon lights extinguished by an invisible hand, successively disappeared, till all became shrouded alike in cheerless gloom and volumes of mist rolling down the sides of the mountains, a dense fog settled in the valley like a white and waveless lake.