Chapter II: “it Was on Just Such a Night as This, Sister.”

“No,” repeated Tommy’s father as he proceeded to refill his pipe; “we mustn’t expect to make much of Tommy.”

“Tommy may be president of America yet,” said Uncle Robert, looking quietly up from his paper. “Stranger things have happened, brother; much stranger.”

“Pigs might fly,” said Tommy’s father, somewhat unfeelingly. “Stranger things have happened, brother; much stranger.”

Tommy’s brothers laughed aloud.

Tommy’s mother smiled faintly.

But the boy slept on, all unconscious that he was being made the butt of a joke.

Tommy was not an over-strong lad to look at. About eleven or twelve years old, perhaps. He had fair silky hair, regular features, and great wondering blue eyes that appeared to look very far away sometimes. For Tommy was a dreamy, thinking boy. To tell the truth, he lived as much in a world of his own as if he were in the moon, and the man of the moon away on a long holiday. He seemed to possess very little in common with his brothers. Their tastes, at all events, were infinitely different from his; in fact they were lads of the usual style or “run” which you find reared on such farms as those of Laird Talisker’s--called laird because he owned all the land he tilled. Dugald, Dick, and John were quite _en rapport_ with all their surroundings. They loved horses and dogs and riding and shooting, and they had to take to farming whether they liked it or not. Dugald was the eldest; he was verging on seventeen, and had long left school. Indeed he was his father’s right hand, both in the office and in the fields. His father and he were seldom seen apart, at church or market, mill or smithy; and as time rolled on and age should compel Mr. Talisker to take things easy, Dugald would naturally step into his father’s shoes.

Dick was sixteen, and Jack or John about fourteen; and neither had as yet left the parish school, which was situated about a mile and a half beyond the hill. All boys in Scotland receive tolerably advanced education if their parents can possibly manage to keep them at their studies, and these two lads were already deeply read in the classics and higher branches of mathematics.

What were they going to be? Well, Dick said he should be a clergyman and nothing else, and Jack had made up his mind to be a cow-boy. He had read somewhere all about cow-boys in the south-western states of America, and the life, he thought, would suit him entirely. How glorious it must feel to go galloping over a ranche, armed with a powerful whip; to bestride a noble horse, with a broad hat on one’s head and revolvers at one’s hip! Then, of course, every other week, if not oftener, there would be wild adventures with Comanche red-skins, or Indians of some other equally warlike tribe; while now and then this jolly life would be enlivened by hunting horse-stealers across the boundless prairie, and perhaps even lynching them if they happened to catch the thieves, and there was a tree handy.

Jack’s classical education might not be of much service to him in the wild West, either in fighting bears or scalping Indians; though it would be easily carried. He determined, however, not to neglect the practical part of the business; and so whenever opportunity favoured him he used to mount the biggest horse in the stable and go swinging across the fields and the moors, leaping fences and ditches, and in every way behaving precisely as he imagined a cow-boy would.

Several times Jack had narrowly escaped having his neck broken in teaching Glancer--that was the big horse’s name--to buck-jump. Glancer was by no means a bad-tempered beast; but when it came to slipping a rough pebble under the saddle, then he buck-jumped to some purpose, and Jack had the worst of it.

Mrs. Talisker herself was a somewhat delicate, gentle English lady, whom the laird had wooed and won among the woodlands of “bonnie Berkshire.” Her daughter Alicia, who was but a year older than Dugald, took very much after the mother, and was in consequence, perhaps, the worthy laird’s darling and favourite.

One thing must be said in favour of this honest farmer-laird: his whole life and soul were bound up in his family, and his constant care was to do well by them and bring them up to the best advantage. But he did not think it right to thwart his boys’ intentions with regard to the choice of a profession. There was admittedly a deal of difference between a clergyman of the good old Scottish Church and a cow-boy. However, as Jack had elected to be a cow-boy, a cow-boy he should be--if he did not break his neck before his father managed to ship him off to the wild West.

But as to Tommy, why the laird hardly cared to trouble. Tommy was Uncle Robert’s boy. Uncle Robert, an old bachelor, who had spent his younger days at sea, had constituted himself Tommy’s tutor, and had taught the boy all he knew as yet. Uncle Robert ruled the lad by love alone, or love and common sense combined. He did not attempt to put a new disposition into him, but he did try to make the very best of that which he possessed. In this he showed his great wisdom. In fact, in training Tommy he followed the same tactics precisely as those that successful bird and beast-trainers make such good use of. And what I am going to say is well worth remembering by all boys who wish to teach tricks to pets, and make them appear to be supernaturally wise. Do not try to inculcate anything, in the shape of either motion or sound, which the creature does not evince an inclination or aptitude to learn. Take a white rat for example, and after it is thoroughly tame and used to running about anywhere, loving you, and having therefore no fear, begin your lessons by placing the cage on the table with the door open. It will run out and presently show its one wondrous peculiarity of appropriation. In very wantonness it will pick up article after article and run into its house with it--coins, thimbles, apples, cards, &c. Now, I hinge its education in a great measure on this, and in a few months I can teach it to tell fortunes with cards, and spell words even. A rat has two other strange motions; one is standing like a bear, another is climbing poles. By educating it from each of these stand-points you can make the creature either a soldier or a sailor, or even both, and teach it tricks and actions the glory of which will be reflected on you, the teacher.

Tommy was exceedingly fond of Uncle Robert, to begin with, and never tired listening of an evening to his wonderful stories of travel and adventure.

Uncle lived in a little cottage not very far from the farm; and if he was not at the laird’s fireside of a winter evening he would generally be found at his own, and Tommy would not be far away. They used to sit without any light except that reflected from the fire. Stories told thus, Tommy thought, were ever so much nicer, especially if they were tales of mystery and adventure. For there were the long shadows flickering and dancing on the wall, the darkness of the room behind them, and the fitful gleams in the fire itself, in which the lad sometimes thought he could actually see the scenery and figures his uncle was describing; and all combined to produce effects that were really and truly dramatic.

Well, if by day Dugald was his father’s constant companion, Tommy was his uncle’s; and the one hardly ever went anywhere without the other.

School hours were from nine till one o’clock; and uncle was a strict teacher, though by no means a hard task-master. Then the two of them had all the rest of the long day to read books, to wander about and study the great book of nature itself, to fish, or do whatsoever they pleased. It must be said here that Uncle Robert was almost quite as much a boy at heart as his little nephew. He was a good old-fashioned sailor, this uncle of Tommy, and a man who never could grow old; because he loved nature so, and nature never grows old: it is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.

Uncle Robert was quite as good-natured as the big horse Glancer. But Glancer drew the line at pebbles under his saddle. The best-tempered horse in the world will draw the line at something or other. And uncle was the same. If anyone wanted to annoy him they had only to mention Tommy in a disparaging sort of way; then, like Glancer, Uncle Robert buck-jumped at once.

So, on that particular evening--a wild and stormy one it was in the latter end of April--when Tommy’s father talked about the improbability of pigs flying, and Tommy’s brothers had all laughed, Uncle Robert had felt a little nettled.

“Ah, you may laugh, lads,” he said, putting his paper down on his knee and thrusting his spectacles up over his bald brow--“you may laugh, lads, and you may talk, brother, but I tell you that there is more in that boy than any of you are aware of; and mark my words, he is not going to remain a child all his life. Boys will be men, and Tommy will be Tom some day.”

Mrs. Talisker looked fondly over at her brother, and she really felt grateful to him for taking her boy’s part.

Whoo--oo--oo! howled the wind round the chimney, and doors and windows rattled as if rough hands were trying their fastenings. Every now and then the snow and the fine hail were driven against the panes, with a sound like that produced by the spray of an angry sea against frozen canvas.

At this very time, away down in the midlands of England, spring winds were softly blowing and the buds appearing on the trees; but on the west coast of Scotland, where the farm of Craigielea was situated, winter still held all the land, the moors, the lakes, and woods, firm in his icy grasp.

To-night the moon had sunk early in a purple-blue haze--a new moon it was, and looked through the mist like a Turkish scimitar wet with blood. The stars had been bright for a short time afterwards. But the wind rose roaring from the east, driving great dark clouds before it, that soon swallowed everything else up. Then it was night in earnest.

Whoo--oo--oo! What a mournful sound it was, to be sure! You might have imagined that wild wolves were howling round the house, and stranger voices still rising high over the din of the raging storm.

Whoo--oo--oo!

“What a fearful night!” said Mrs. Talisker.

“Ay, sister,” said Uncle Robert; “it is blowing half a gale outside to-night, I’ll warrant, and may be more.”

By “outside” he did not mean out of doors simply. It is a sailor’s expression, and refers to the sea away beyond the harbour-mouth.

“It was on just such a night as this, sister, though not on such a cold sea as that which is sweeping over our beach to-night, that the _Southern Hope_ was lost on the shores of Ecuador. Heigho-ho! My dear friend Captain Herbert has never been the same man since.

“And do you know, my dear, it happened exactly six years ago this very night.”

“How very strange!” said Tommy’s mother.

“Strange, my dear? Not a bit of it. What is strange, and how should it be strange--eh?”

“Oh, I meant, brother, that you should think of it. I believe that was what I meant.”

“You’re not very sure. But let me tell you this, that there never does pass a single 25th of February that I do not think of that fearful shipwreck. Ay, girl, and pray too. I’ve been praying as I sat here--praying with my eyes on the newspaper, when you all thought I was reading it. You look at me, sister; and Tommy has woke up, and he is looking at me too. Well, you little know how often old sailors like me pray, and what strange things we do pray for, and how our prayers are often heard. You see, sister, those who go down to the sea in ships, and see the wonders of the Lord in the mighty deep, get a kind of used to thinking more than shore-folks do. In many a dark black middle watch, we are alone with the ocean, one might say, and that is like being in the presence of the great Maker of all. Verily, sister, I think the waves on such nights seem to talk to us, and tell us things that the ear of landsman never listened to. No one could long lead the life of a sailor and not be a believer. Do you mind, sister, that New Testament story of our Saviour being at sea one night with some of his disciples, when a great storm arose, and the craft was about to founder? How he was asleep in the stern-sheets, how in an agony of terror they awoke him, how his words ‘Peace, be still’ fell like oil on the troubled waters, and how they all marvelled, saying, ‘What manner of man is this, that even the wind and sea obey him?’

“Well, sister, I never knew nor felt the full meaning of those words until I became a sailor. But sometimes on dreamy midnights, when darkness and danger were all around us, I have in my thoughts accused the ocean of remorselessness, the winds of cruelty; and, as I did so, seemed to hear that answer come to me up from the black vastness, ‘We obey Him.’ The winds sang it as they went shrieking through the rigging, the waves sang it as they went toiling past: ‘We obey Him,’ ‘We obey Him.’ Then have I turned my thoughts heavenward and been comforted, knowing in whose good hands we all were.

“A sailor’s prayer, sister, on a night like this, while he sits comfortably by the fireside, is for those in danger far at sea or on some surf-tormented lee shore. But on this particular evening, on this 25th of February, I always add a prayer for my good old shipmate, Captain Herbert--and may heaven give him peace.”

“Captain Herbert is still at sea, brother?”

“Ay, sister, and will be, if spared, for many a year. He seems unable to rest on shore, although he is rich enough to retire. You see, he never had but the one boy, Bernard; and, foolish as it may appear, he cherishes the notion that he still lives, and that some day he will meet him again.

“And never a strange sailor does he meet in any part of the world, or any port of the world, but he questions concerning all his life and adventures. More than once has my friend been thus led astray, and has sailed to distant shores where he had heard some English lad was held prisoner by Indians or savages. But all in vain.

“It was a sad story, you say, sister? Indeed, lass, it was. Shall I repeat it?

“Well, stir the fire, Tommy, and make it blaze and crackle. How the storm roars, to be sure.”

Whoo--oo--oo! Whoo--oo--oo! howled the wind again; but the fire only burned the brighter, and the fireside looked the cheerier for the sound.