Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman

by R. M. Ballantyne

Of course it must not be supposed that Rose Millet understood what had happened. She was fully aware, indeed, that something unusual had occurred within her inexperienced breast, but she quietly set it down to hero-worship. She had read Carlyle on that subject. She had seen occasional reference in newspapers and magazines to lifeboat work, and she had been thrilled by the record of noble deeds done by heroic seamen and coastguardsmen. At last it was her lot to come athwart one of those heroes. He quite came up to her conception—nay, more than came up to it! She regarded Jeff with feelings approaching to awe. The idea of love in connection with a damp, dirty, wounded, nose-plastered, hair-ravelled giant, with beard enough to make an average hearth-broom, never entered her fair head. If suggested to her she would have laughed it to scorn—had it been possible for one so bright and “funny” to become scornful.

As for Jeff—he more than suspected what had happened in regard to himself. His experience of life had been varied and extensive for his years—at least in a nautical direction—and that is saying a great deal.

“Done for!” he remarked to himself that evening, as he left the residence of Miss Millet and sauntered slowly homeward, divesting his fingers of the wrappings in an absent manner as he went along; but he forgot the plastered nose, and was taken to task about it by his comrades.

“Why, wherever did you get the stickin’-plaster?” asked David Bowers, an Anglo-Saxon much like himself in form and size, only that his locks and beard were yellow instead of dark brown.

“From a friend,” replied Jeff.

“A female friend?” asked Bowers, with a sly glance.

“Yes,” replied Jeff, so promptly, and with a look of such benignity, that the Anglo-Saxon felt constrained to give up his intended badinage.

That night curiously enough, Rose and Jeff were beset by dreams exactly similar in kind, though slightly modified in form. Both were in the midst of howling blasts and raging billows; but while the one was saving a fair and slender girl in circumstances of great but scorned risk, the other was being rescued by a young giant with a brown beard, in a style the most heroic, and in the midst of dangers the most appalling.

Next day, when Jeff—having got rid of the nose-plaster, and removed the mud, and brushed the dishevelled hair, and put on dry garments—paid another visit to Miss Millet, the Rosebud formed a more correct estimate of her condition, became alarmed, and shrank like a sensitive plant before the gaze of the coastguardsman; insomuch that she drove him to the conclusion that he had no hope whatever in that quarter, and that he was foolish to think of her seriously. What was she, after all? A mere chit of a school girl! It was ridiculous. He would heave her overboard forthwith, and trouble his head no more about her. He would not, however, give up visiting his old confidante on her account—oh dear, no!

It was wonderful what an amount of guarding seemed to be required by the coast in the vicinity of Miss Millet’s cottage during the following week! Any one observing the frequency of Jeff’s visits to it, and his prolonged earnest gazing at the sea, would have imagined that the ancient smuggling days had revived, or that the old tendency of the French to suddenly come o’er and find the Britons awaiting them on shore, was not yet extinct.