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Read Ebook: Cormorant Crag: A Tale of the Smuggling Days by Fenn George Manville Rainey W William Illustrator
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Ebook has 4160 lines and 123196 words, and 84 pages
Illustrator: W. Rainey
Cormorant Crag, a Tale of the Smuggling Days, by George Manville Fenn.
In this excellent book of smuggling life on the south coast of England, dating about 1830, from some of the passing comments made by the author, we read of the adventures of two boys living on a small off-shore island. One is the son of the local doctor, the other the son of the squire, or owner of the land round about. The boys are friendly with an old fisherman called Daygo. It is thought that he is of Spanish descent, from the Armada, but despite his name and appearance, he denies it. He likes taking the boys out fishing, but feeds then a load of yarns about the safety of a particular part of the cliffs, saying that vessels getting too close to it have been known to disappear. This is actually quite true in a way because there is a huge cave, quite big enough to accommodate a small vessel.
The boys borrow Daygo's boat, without his leave, and explore the forbidden cave. Of course they discover all the recently smuggled goods. But a few days later they are in there, having discovered another way in by land, and are captured by the smugglers, who are French, and kidnapped. After that there are all sorts of exciting and perilous situations, and it looks likely that the boys will not come out of it alive.
CORMORANT CRAG, A TALE OF THE SMUGGLING DAYS, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.
A HOME AT SEA.
"Here, you, Vince!" cried Doctor Burnet, pausing in his surgery with a bottle in each hand--one large and the other small, the latter about to be filled for the benefit of a patient who believed himself to be very ill and felt aggrieved when his medical adviser told him that he would be quite well if he did not eat so much.
"Yes, father."
The boy walked up to the surgery door at the end of the long, low granite house.
"Upon my word!" cried the Doctor; "it's lucky we have nobody here to see you. No one would ever take you for a gentleman's son."
"Why not, father?"
"Why not, sir! Look at your trousers and your boots."
Vincent Burnet looked down, and then up in his father's face.
"Trousers a bit tight across the knee," he said deprecatingly. "The cloth gave way."
"And were your boots too tight at the toes, sir? Look at them."
"They always wear out there," said Vincent; and he once more looked down, beyond the great tear across the right knee of his trousers, to his boots, whose toes seemed each to have developed a wide mouth, within which appeared something which looked like a great grey tongue.
"I don't think this pair were very good leather, father," he said apologetically.
"Good leather, sir! You'd wear them out it they were cast iron.--Ah, my dear!"
A pleasant, soft face appeared at the door, and looked anxiously from father to son.
"Is anything the matter, Robert?"
"Matter? Look at this fellow's clothes and boots!"
"Oh, Vince, my dear, how you have torn your trousers again!"
"Torn them again!--the boy's a regular scarecrow!" cried the Doctor. "I will not pay for good things for him to go cliff-climbing and wading and burrowing in caves.--Here: what are you going to do?"
"Take him indoors to sew up that slit."
"No!" cried the Doctor, filling up the bottle; and then, making a small cork squeak as he screwed it in, "Take your scissors and cut the legs off four inches above the knees."
"Robert!" cried Mrs Burnet, in a tone of protest.
"And look here, Vince: you can give up wearing shoes and stockings; they are for civilised beings, not for young savages."
"My dear Robert, you are not in earnest?"
"Ah, but I am. Let him chip and tear his skin: that will grow up again: clothes will not."
"All right, father; I shan't mind," said the boy, smiling. "Save taking shoes and stockings off for wading."
"Vincent, my dear!" cried his mother, "how absurd! You would look nice the next time Michael Ladelle came for you."
"He'd do the same, mother. He always imitates me."
"Yes; you're a nice pair," said the Doctor. "I never saw such young savages."
"You're too hard upon them, Robert," said Mrs Burnet, laying her arm on her son's shoulder. "It does not matter out in this wild place, where there is no one to see him but the fishing people; and see what a healthy, natural life it is for them."
"Healthy! natural!" cried the Doctor sharply. "So you want to see him grow up into a sort of Peter the Wild Boy, madam?"
"No," said Mrs Burnet, exchanging an affectionate glance with her sun-tanned son. "Peter the Wild Boy did not have a college tutor to teach him the classics, did he, Vince?"
"No, mother; he must have been a lucky fellow," said the boy, laughing.
"For shame, Vincent!" cried Mrs Burnet, shaking her head at the boy reprovingly. "You do not mean that."
"I believe he does," said the Doctor angrily. "I won't have any more of it. He neglects his studies shamefully."
"No, no, indeed, dear," cried Mrs Burnet. "You don't know how hard he works."
"Oh yes, I do: at egging, climbing, fishing, and swimming. I'll have no more of it; he shall go over to some big school in Germany, where they'll bring him to his senses."
"I do everything Mr Deane sets me to do, father," said the boy; "and I do try hard."
"Yes--to break your neck or drown yourself. Look here, sir, when are you going to pay me my bill?"
"Your bill, father? I don't know what you mean."
"Surgical attendance in mending your broken leg. That's been owing two years."
"When my ship comes in, father," cried Vince, laughing.
"But, I say, don't send me to a big school, father. I like being here so much."
"Yes: to waste the golden moments of boyhood, sir."
"But I don't, father," cried Vince. "I really do work hard at everything Mr Deane sets me, and get it all done before I go out. He never finds fault."
"Bah! You're getting too big to think of going out to play with Mike Ladelle."
"But you said, father, that you liked to see a fellow work hard at play as well as study, and that `all work and no play made Jack a dull boy.'"
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