Part 1 (1/2)
Michael Penguyne.
by William H. G. Kingston.
CHAPTER ONE.
As the sun rose over the Lizard, the southernmost point of old England, his rays fell on the tanned sails of a fleet of boats bounding lightly across the heaving waves before a fresh westerly breeze. The distant sh.o.r.e, presenting a line of tall cliffs, towards which the boats were steering, still lay in the deepest shade.
Each boat was laden with a large heap of nets and several baskets filled with brightly-s.h.i.+ning fish.
In the stern of one, tiller in hand, sat a strongly-built man, whose deeply-furrowed countenance and grizzled hair showed that he had been for many a year a toiler on the ocean. By his side was a boy of about twelve years of age, dressed in flus.h.i.+ng coat and sou'wester, busily employed with a marline-spike, in splicing an eye to a rope's-end.
The elder fisherman, now looking up at his sails, now stooping down to get a glance beneath them at the sh.o.r.e, and then turning his head towards the south-west, where heavy clouds were gathering fast, meanwhile cast an approving look at the boy.
”Ye are turning in that eye smartly and well, Michael,” he said.
”Whatever you do, try and do it in that fas.h.i.+on. It has been my wish to teach you what is right as well as I know it. Try not only to please man, my boy, but to love and serve G.o.d, whose eye is always on you.
Don't forget the golden rule either: 'Do to others as you would they should do to you.'”
”I have always wished to understand what you have told me, and tried to obey you, father,” said the boy.
”You have been a good lad, Michael, and have more than repaid me for any trouble you may have caused me. You are getting a big boy now, though, and it's time that you should know certain matters about yourself which no one else is so well able to tell you as I am.”
The boy looked up from his work, wondering what Paul Trefusis was going to say.
”You know, lad, that you are called Michael Penguyne, and that my name is Paul Trefusis. Has it never crossed your mind that though I have always treated you as a son--and you have ever behaved towards me as a good and dutiful son should behave--that you were not really my own child?”
”To say the truth, I have never thought about it, father,” answered the boy, looking up frankly in the old man's face. ”I am oftener called Trefusis than Penguyne, so I fancied that Penguyne was another name tacked on to Michael, and that Trefusis was just as much my name as yours. And oh! father, I would rather be your child than the son of anybody else.”
”There is no harm in wis.h.i.+ng that, Michael; but it's as well that you should know the real state of the case, and as I cannot say what may happen to me, I do not wish to put off telling you any longer. I am not as strong and young as I once was, and maybe G.o.d will think fit to take me away before I have reached the threescore years and ten which He allows some to live. We should not put off doing to another time what can be done now, and so you see I wish to say what has been on my mind to tell you for many a day past, though I have not liked to say it, lest it should in any way grieve you. You promise me, Michael, you won't let it do that? You know how much I and granny and Nelly love you, and will go on loving you as much as ever.”
”I know you do, father, and so do granny and Nelly; I am sure they love me,” said the boy gazing earnestly into Paul's face, with wonder and a shade of sorrow depicted on his own countenance.
”That's true,” said Paul. ”But about what I was going to say to you.
”My wife, who is gone to heaven, Nelly's mother, and I, never had another child but her. Your father, Michael, as true-hearted a seaman as ever stepped, had been my friend and s.h.i.+pmate for many a long year.
We were bred together, and had belonged to the same boat fis.h.i.+ng off this coast till we were grown men, when at last we took it into our heads to wish to visit foreign climes, and so we went to sea together.
After knocking about for some years, and going to all parts of the world, we returned home, and both fell in love, and married. Your mother was an orphan, without kith or kin, that your father could hear of--a good, pretty girl she was, and worthy of him.
”We made up our minds that we would stay on sh.o.r.e and follow our old calling and look after our wives and families. We had saved some money, but it did not go as far as we thought it would, and we agreed that if we could make just one more trip to sea, we should gain enough for what we wanted.
”You were about two years old, and my Nelly was just born.
”We went to Falmouth, where s.h.i.+ps often put in, wanting hands, and masters are ready to pay good wages to obtain them. We hadn't been there a day, when we engaged on board a s.h.i.+p bound out to the West Indies. As she was not likely to be long absent, this just suited us.
Your father got a berth as third mate, for he was the best scholar, and I s.h.i.+pped as boatswain.
”We made the voyage out, and had just reached the chops of the Channel, coming back, bound for Bristol, and hoping in a few days to be home again with our wives, when thick weather came on, and a heavy gale of wind sprang up. It blew harder and harder. Whether or not the captain was out of his reckoning I cannot say, but I suspect he was. Before long, our sails were blown away, and our foremast went by the board. We did our best to keep the s.h.i.+p off the sh.o.r.e, for all know well that it is about as dangerous a one as is to be found round England.
”The night was dark as pitch, the gale still increasing.