Grouped with such absorbing concern about the body of the boat, Walter moving slowly from stem to stern, and stern to stem, laying on the magic oil, (unctuous of victory to our noses), with steady sweeps, and the bent figure of black old Clump beside the caldron, from which rose a curling smoke, we must have made a tableau of heathen offering sacrifice, or some other savage mystery.
The all-important job was at length completed, and we left our ark of many hopes to rest until the exciting hour of the morrow.
Clump was a sharer in our great expectations. His heart was set upon our success. He had to fill his pipe again before we left the boat, and pulled at it nervously and wrinkled his black skin into countless puckers as he walked beside us, thinking of the vast interests at stake and listening to our excited conversation. As we left him to go over to the town for a small cannon we had borrowed to fire the signals, he touched Walter on the sleeve, and said in the most slow and earnest manner, as he drew the pipe from his mouth and knocked its ashes on the ground—
“An I’se to be judge an’ udder ting you’se talk of, Massa Walter, eh? An I’se to fire de gun, eh? W–a–all, I’se an ole nigger, an my heart ees shree-veled up like, I s’pose, but my gorry, young massas, ef you don’t beat, old Clump will jist loaden up do musket again an’—an’—an’ but ’is ’ed agin de rock! Yah, fur sure!”
Having delivered himself of that tragical decision in a manner mixed of sadness and frenzy, he hobbled off, amidst our laughter and assurances that we should never allow him to injure the rock in that way, to consult with Juno, and probably load his pipe again.
No noble lord, with his thousands of pounds wagered on the Derby or Saint Leger, or perhaps, rather, I should say on some of the crack yachts of the day, was ever half so excited as was this good old darky about our boat-race.
Under the escort of Walter, Harry, Alfred, and Drake, the cannon arrived in the afternoon, and, by their united efforts and the assistance of the Captain, was mounted before sundown on a heavy piece of timber in the Clear the Track’s bow.
By night the flags, ammunition, and many other necessaries for the morrow’s undertaking were in order and readiness for service.
After the day’s work, and filled with anticipations of the eventful morrow, we felt no desire for our usual outdoor games that evening, but found seats on the great boulder beside our house, where Mr Clare was resting, and the Captain was enjoying his smoke. Old Clump, too, having finished his tea and swept out Juno’s kitchen, loitered toward us with his comforter—the pipe—and edged up respectfully within hearing of our conversation. So we boys leaned on our elbows, looking out at the dimly defined water, sometimes lighted in streaks by gleams of phosphorescence where shoals of fish were jumping; or, stretched on our backs, we watched the shooting-stars hurrying with speed quick as thought from one part of the immeasurable blue to another; while our tutors talked earnestly of former times, and we heard the shrill calls of gulls and other sea birds, the occasional tender bleating of the lambs in the distant sheepfold, and the soft regular splash of a summer sea on the rocks, until the delicate young crescent had dozed slowly down to its bed in the ocean,—and we, profiting by example, sought slumber in the old dreamful attic.
Harry Higginson was the first one up in the morning. He shook us to our senses, and whispered to get out of the house quietly, that we might call our tutors with the cannon’s voice. That was an acceptable proposition, and we were soon stealing down the creaking stairs, shoes in hand. Having put those on, seated by the door-stone, we started on a run for the Clear the Track. It was just light, the soft dawn of a warm summer’s day—not yet half-past four. Walter said he would bet old Sol had already fired a gun in honour of the glorious battle won that day by England and her Allies, but so far off we could not hear it.