Cockle Tom was born at Northcotes-on-the-Sands, a slender, straggling village, bleakly situate on the Lincolnshire sea-coast, and at no great distance from the mouth of the Humber. His father was a simple fisherman, who rented the "cockle sands," as they were called,—an extent of something more than a mile, belonging to the parish of Northcotes, and possessed in fee-simple by the principal landholder in the neighbourhood. Having married young, and being early the head of a numerous small family, Tom's father, from the penury of his condition, was constrained to introduce every one of his male children, at least, to the rough and painful labour of gathering cockles on the sea-beach by the time they had reached the tender age of five years. And at that age was Tom first taken, by his elder brothers, without shoes or stockings, with a bundle of rags rather than clothes around him, and a red flannel night-cap tied fast round his head, to gather the shell-fish, by scraping them out of the sand with his little hands, and putting them into a small hempen bag tied round his loins. Little Tom was very eager to go;—for "the sea! the sea!" was his unvarying song (chanted in a wild, untaught melody which perhaps even Neükomm himself would have thought beautiful, could he have listened to it) from the day when he was three years old, the first day on which his father bore him on shoulder to gaze upon the ships riding in the German Ocean. But poor little Tom cried bitterly with frozen hands, and cold, and hunger, before the day was over, and it was time to return to his mother's aproned knee, and the soothing heaven of sympathy that dwelt on her tongue and in her eyes.
Yet, on the morrow, little Tom would go again. The father would have left him at home till the Spring strengthened and the sun came nearer, for it was but early March as yet; but the little adventurer was too true to his nature to accept the boon. And from that day, summer and winter, except when even the father himself was compelled to stay at home by reason of an unusual storm, Tom continued to mount his little red night-cap, like the rest, and make one among the picturesque line of industrious stragglers on the sea-beach. To school Tom never went in his life: though his lot would not have been more highly favoured in that respect, had he been the child of a peasant in the interior, or even the son of a decent mechanic in Lincolnshire, at that period,—for we are speaking of events of seventy years' date, from their commencement to our own time,—and at that far-back period the idea of sending a poor man's child to school was regarded as a piece of over-weening pride that deserved no gentle rebuke from "the better sort of people." But what though he could never read? he could make boats; and indeed his earliest error was a display of that kind of ingenuity, for he bored a hole in the bottom of his mother's bread-tin when but four years' old, stuck a wooden mast in it, fitted on a sail, and set it afloat on the surface of a brook that ran by the end of his father's little garden; and, while he clapped his little hands in ecstasy, away dashed his ship to the sea! He was severely chidden for this, but not flogged: that was not his mother's way; she happened to have too much good sense to brutify her offspring: and the lecture served to shew him that he had done foolishly,—but it did not annihilate that passion for ships and the sea which his first sight of them had created within him. He could make boats—did we say? ay, and he made a ship, too,—such a ship!—though this was when he was ten years old, and had seen the magnificent merchant-vessels from the Mediterranean and the West Indies go by in full sail for the Humber and the port of Hull,—such a ship, with masts, and yards, and rigging, and portholes, and even miniature sailors,—it was so wondrous a piece of art as the oldest villager in Northcotes had never seen, and rendered little Tom the every-day talk of all its inhabitants. Such talk did not render little Tom vain, however, for his yearning mind had influenced his hands to form the ship from no principle of praise-seeking: it was a type that signified he meant to sail in such an ocean-vehicle—if the simple people could so have read it.
Unmindful of praise, and true to the energy that was growing within him, little Tom learnt to swim, and dive, and play with the huge ocean as familiarly as with his elder brothers. More especially if a vessel chanced to anchor near the shore, either to wait for a change of wind, or to barter for fish, that was a temptation so powerful with Tom, that he seldom waited for his father's return, if at a distance with the boat,—but into the wave he would plunge, and speedily gain the vessel, becoming, in a few minutes, a favourite with every one on board, for his sense and activity. Tom's brothers shared the pleasure, or at least the benefits, of these ventures, though they were neither skilful nor courageous enough to share the peril; for little Tom usually returned, bearing by the strings in his mouth, like a water dog, his cockle-bag filled with precious scraps of sea-biscuit, and sometimes a bit or two of boiled salt beef,—a priceless luxury for the brothers, to whom noble little Tom invariably gave up the bag, as soon as he reached the shore.
By the time that Tom was regularly entered as one of his poor father's labouring band, the strongest of his three elder brothers was taken by the father, into the little boat, taught to assist in managing the bladdered nets, and so advanced from a mere cockle-gatherer to an embryo fisherman. The two next brothers were neither sufficiently strong, active, or enterprising, ever to rival the oldest; but when Tom was ten years old, though Jack was fifteen, his father preferred taking him in the boat. The little hero not only gained greater knowledge, but rapidly grew in courage, presence of mind, and plan for adventure, by the change. In fact, the father's circumstances were speedily bettered by his child's intelligence and energy.
One day, while his father was "dealing" the largest net out of the boat, so as to prevent its getting "foul," and little Tom was riding upon the old horse which the father was necessitated to keep for his daily use, towing the end of the net by a line to the required distance into the water, he perceived that he was among an unusually large shoal of fine fish,—and so swam the horse out, considerably, with the intent to have a full sweep of the treasure. Much to the lad's chagrin, however, the father hallooed, and motioned, and menaced, for him to come back; and so Tom, who was too true a lad to disobey when his father seemed so angry, was constrained to give up his prize, and the result was that the father had to meet his usual chapman for the Louth market with only a very pitiful take of fish for the day. Tom was then but twelve years old, but his shrewdness discerned how greatly these timid acts of his father served to gird in the hungry family with straitness. He had never disobeyed on a large scale before; but his spirit prompted him to what, according to his unschooled casuistry, he conceived to be a virtuous disobedience, now—and yet it was a venturous and perilous deed for a child that he undertook. And thus he went about it.
He drew his mother aside, as soon as they returned home in the evening, and dazzled her imagination with his brilliant and excited account of the value and fineness of the shoal he had seen, and told her he was resolved to have them before the next morning.
"The Lord help thee, bairn!" exclaimed the mother; "what art thou talking of?"
"Talking sense, mother," said Tom; "and you'll see it: for you must sit up till Jack and I come back with the old horse: we'll set off as soon as my fayther has gone to bed and fallen fast asleep."
"Jack!" cried the mother, "why, it'll make him tremble to talk o' such a thing!"