Devon Boys: A Tale of the North Shore — Text and Context

Stacey was married for the third time, and we burned all the birches."

Then he pushed down his first finger.

"And because that was the year we had an extra week's holiday."

Down went his second finger.

"And because that was the year the Spanish galleon was wrecked on Jagger Rock."

Down went the third finger.

"And because that was the year your father bought the whole of Slatey Gap."

Down went the fourth finger, so that his open hand had become a clenched fist held up, and then in his regular old pugnacious way he looked round the room as if he wanted to hit somebody as he snarled out:

"Now, who says I'm wrong?"

I could have said so, but what's the use of quarrelling with a fellow who can't help being obstinate. It was in his nature, and no end of times I've known that when my old school-fellow was snaggy and nasty and quarrelsome with me, he'd have fought like a Trojan on my side against half the school.

But that fourth finger of Bob Chowne's settled it as to the time, for it was not in 1755 but in 1752, for there's the date on the old parchment, which sets forth how the whole of the Gap from the foreshore right up the little river for five hundred yards inland, and the whole of the steep cliff slope and precipice, each side, to the very top, was conveyed to my father, Arthur John Duncan, of Oak Cottage, Wistabay, lieutenant and commander in the Royal Navy of His Most Gracious Majesty King George the Second.

It doesn't matter in the least when it was, only I may as well say when, any more than it does that everybody who knew my father, including Doctor Chowne of Ripplemouth, said he must be mad to go and buy, at the sale of Squire Allworth's estate, a wild chasm of a place, all slaty rock and limestone crag and rift and hollow, with a patch of scraggy oak-trees here, some furze and heath there, and barely enough grass to feed half a dozen sheep, and that, even if it was cheap, because no one else would buy it, he was throwing good money away.

But I didn't think so that hot midsummer afternoon when I was back home, and had set out to explore the place as I had never explored it before.

That was not saying much, for I pretty well knew the spot by heart, but it was my father's now--"ours."

We three boys had ridden home together the day before, sitting on our boxes in Teggley Grey's cart, for he was the carrier from Ripplemouth to Barnstaple.

I say we rode, though it wasn't much of a ride, for every now and then the red-faced old boy used to draw the corner of his lips nearly out to his ears, and show us how many yellow stumps of teeth he had left, as he stopped his great bony horse, to say:

"I'm sure you young chaps don't want my poor old horse to pull you up a hill like this."

Of course we jumped down and walked up the hill, and as it was nearly all hill from Barnstaple to our homes we were always jumping down, and walked quite half of the twenty miles.

Old Teggley must begin about it too, as he sat with his chin nearly down upon his knees, whisking the flies away from his horse's ears with his whip.

"We'm bit puzzled, Mas' Sep Duncan, what your father bought that place for?"

"It's all for bounce," said Bob Chowne, "so as to be Bigley Uggleston's landlord. Look out, Big, or Sep 'll send you and your father packing, and you'll have to take the lugger somewhere else."

"I don't care," said Bigley. "It don't matter to me."

All in good time we got to the Gap Valley, where there was our Sam waiting with the donkey-cart to take mine and Bigley's boxes, and Bob Chowne went on to Ripplemouth, after promising to join us next day for a grand hunt over the new place.

The next day came, and with it Bob Chowne from Ripplemouth and Bigley Uggleston from the Gap; and we three boys set off over the cliff path for a regular good roam, with the sun beating down on our backs, the grasshoppers fizzling in amongst the grass and ferns, the gulls squealing below us as they flew from rock to rock, and, far overhead now, a hawk wheeling over the brink of the cliff, or a sea-eagle rising from one of the topmost crags to seek another where there were no boys.

Now I've got so much to tell you of my old life out there on the wild North Devon coast, that I hardly know where to begin; but I think I ought, before I go any farther, just to tell you a little more about who I was, and add a little about my two school-fellows, who, being very near neighbours, were also my companions when I was at home.

Bob Chowne was the son of an old friend of my father--"captain" Duncan, as people called him, and lived at Ripplemouth, three or four miles away. The people always called him Chowne, which they had shortened from Champernowne, and we boys at school often substituted Chow for Bob, because we said he was such a disagreeable chap.

I do not see the logic of the change even now, but the nickname was given and it stuck. I must own, though, that he was anything but an amiable fellow, and I used to wonder whether it was because his father, the doctor, gave him too much physic; but it couldn't have been that, for Bob always used to say that if he was ill his father would send him out without any breakfast to swallow the sea air upon the cliffs, and that always made him well.

Bigley Uggleston, my other companion, on the contrary, was about the best-tempered fellow that ever lived. He was the son of old Jonas Uggleston, who lived at the big cottage down in the Gap, on one side of the little stream. Jonas was supposed to be a fisherman, and he certainly used to fish, but he carried on other business as well with his lugger--business which enabled him to send his son to the grammar-school, where he was one of the best-dressed of the boys, and had about as much pocket-money as Bob and I put together, but we always spent it for him and he never seemed to mind.

I have said that he was an amiable fellow, and he had this peculiarity, that if you looked at him you always began to laugh, and then his broad face broke up into a smile, as if he was pleased because you laughed at him, and tease, worry, or do what you liked, he never seemed to mind.

I never saw another boy like him, and I used to wonder why Bob Chowne and I should be a couple of ordinary robust boys of fourteen, while he was five feet ten, broad-shouldered, with a good deal of dark downy whisker and moustache, and looked quite a man.

Sometimes Bob and I used to discuss the matter in private, and came to the conclusion that as Bigley was six months older than we were, we should be like him in stature when another six months had passed; but we very soon had to give up that idea, and so it remained that our school-fellow had the aspect of a grown man, but what Bob called his works were just upon a level with our own, for, except in appearance, he was not manly in the slightest degree.

I believe the sheep began all the creepy paths in our part of the country--not sheep such as you generally see about farms, or down to market, but our little handsome sheep with curly horns that feed along the sides of the cliffs in all sorts of dangerous places where a false step would send them headlong six or seven hundred feet, perhaps a thousand, down to the sea. For we have cliff slopes in places as high as that, where the edge of the moor seems to have been chopped right off, and if you are up there you can gaze down at the waves foaming over the rocks, and if you looked right out over the sea, there away to the north was Taffyland, as we boys called it, with the long rugged Welsh coast stretching right and left, sometimes dim and hazy, and sometimes standing out blue and clear with the mountains rising up in the distance fold behind fold.

I say I think the sheep used to make the cliff paths to begin with, for they don't feed up or feed down, but always go along sidewise, unless they want to get lower, and then they make a zigzag, so far one way and so far another, backwards and forwards, down the slope till they come to where it goes straight down to the sea with a raw edge at the top, and the cliff-face, which keeps crumbling away, in some places lavender and blue where it is slate, and in others all kinds of tints, as red and grey, where it's limestone or grit.

In the course of time the sheep leave a regular lot of tracks like tiny shelves up the side of the sloping cliffs, and the lowest of these gets taken by the people who are going along the coast, and is trampled down more and more, till it grows into a regular footpath, such as we were going along this hot midsummer day.

Part of our way lay close to the edge of the cliff, where it was about four hundred feet straight down, but a dense wood of oak-trees grew there, and their trunks formed a regular fence and screen between us and the edge, so that the pathway was quite safe, though it would not have troubled us much if it had not been, being used to the place; but in a short time we were through the wood, and out on the open cliff--from shade to sunshine.

I ought not to leave that wood, though, without saying something about it, for just there the trees grew very curiously. Of course you know what an oak-tree is, and how it grows up tall and rugged and strong, but our oak-trees didn't grow like that. You've seen horses out in a field on a stormy day, I suppose, when the wind blows, and the rain beats. If they have no trees, hedges, or wall to get under, they always turn their backs to the wind, and you can see their tails and manes streaming out and blown all over them.

Well there's no shelter out there on our coast, only in the caves, and the oak-trees there do just the same as the horses, for they seem to turn their backs to the wind; and their boughs look as if they are being blown close down to the side of the cliff slope and spread out ready to spring up again as soon as the wind has passed. But they don't, for they stop in that way growing close down and all on one side, and they very seldom get at all big.

That was a capital path as soon as we were out of the wood, running up and down the slope sometimes four, sometimes six or seven hundred feet above the sea, just as it happened, and with the steep cliff above us jagged with great masses of rock that looked as if they were always ready to fall rolling and crashing till they got to the broken edge, when they would leap right down into the sea. Sometimes they did, but only when a thaw came after a severe frost. There was none of that sort of thing though at midsummer, and the overhanging rocks did not trouble us as we scampered along in the bright elastic air, feeling as if we were so happy that we must do something mischievous.

The path was no use to us, it was too smooth and plain and safe, so we went down to the very edge of the precipice, and looked over at the beautiful clear sea, hundreds of feet below, and made plans to go prawning in the rock pools, crabbing when the tide was out, and to get Bigley's father to lend us the boat and trammel net, to set some calm night and catch all we could.

"Think he'll lend it to us, Bigley?" asked Bob.

"I don't know. I'm afraid he won't."

"Why not?" I said. "He did last holidays."

"Yes," said Bigley; "but your father hadn't got the Gap then, and made him cross, for he said he was going to buy it, only your father bought it over his head."

"But had he got the money?" I said.

"Oh, yes. He's got lots of money, though he never spends any hardly."

"He makes it all smuggling," said Bob. "He'll be hung some day, or shot by some of the king's sailors."

Bigley turned on him quickly, but he did not say a word; and just then a stone-chat's nest took his attention. After that we had to go round the end of a combe, as they call the valleys our way, and there we stopped by the waterfall which came splashing down forming pool after pool in the sunny rocks.

It was not to be expected that three boys fresh from school could pass that falling stream without leaping from rock to rock, and penetrating a hundred yards inland, to see if we could find a dipper's nest, for one of the little cock-tailed blackbirds gave us a glimpse of his white collar as he dropped upon a stone, and then walked into a pool, in whose clear depths we could see him scudding about after the insects at the bottom, and seeming to fly through the water as he beat his little rounded wings using them as a fish does fins.

The nest was too cleverly hidden for us to find, so, tiring of the little stream, and knowing that there was one waiting for us in the Gap where we could capture trout, we went on along the cliff path, gossiping as boys will, till we reached the great buttress of rock that formed one side of the entrance to the little ravine, and there perched ourselves upon the great fragments of rock to look down at where the little stream came rushing and sparkling from the inland hills till it nearly reached the sea at the mouth of the Gap, and then came to a sudden end.

It looked curious, but it was a familiar object to us, who thought nothing of the way in which the sea had rolled up a bank of boulders and large pebbles right across the little river, forming a broad path when the tide was down, and as the little river reached it the bright clear stream ended, for its waters sank down through the pebbles and passed invisibly for the next thirty or forty yards beneath the beach and into the sea.

But when the tide was up this pebble ridge formed a bar, over which there was just room for Uggleston's lugger to pass at high-water; and there it was now in the little river, kept from turning down on its side by a couple of props, while the water rippled about its keel.

From where we were perched it looked no bigger than a row-boat, and the house that formed our school-fellow's home--a long, low, stone-built place thatched with reeds--seemed as if it had been built for dolls, while the fisherman's cottage on the other side, where an old sailor friend lived, was apparently about as big as a box.

The scene was beautiful, but to us boys its beauty lay in what it offered us in the way of amusement.

We were not long in deciding upon a ride down one of the clatter streams--a ride that, though it is very bad for the breeches and worse for the boots, while it sometimes interferes with the skin of the knuckles, and may result in injury to the nose, is thoroughly enjoyable and full of excitement while it lasts.

You don't know what a clatter stream is? Then I'll tell you.

Every here and there, where the slate cliffs run down in steep slopes to the valleys, you can see from the very top to the bottom, that is to say on a slope of some nine hundred feet, what look like little streams that are perhaps a foot wide at the top and ten or a dozen at the bottom where they open out. These are not streams of water, though in wet weather the water does trickle down through them, and makes them its bed, but streams of flat, rounded-edge pieces of slate and shale that have been split off the face of the rock and fallen, to go slowly gliding down one over the other, perhaps taking years in their journey. Some of the pieces are as small as the scraps put in the bottom of a flower-pot, others are as large as house slates and tiles, perhaps larger; but as they go grinding over one another they are tolerably smooth, and form a capital arrangement for a slide.

This thing determined upon we each selected a good broad piece big enough to sit or kneel on, and then began the laborious ascent, which, I may at once tell you, is the drawback to the enjoyment, for, though the coming down is delightful, the drag up the steep precipitous slope, with feet frequently slipping, is so toilsome a task that two or three slides down used to be always considered what Dr Stacey at Barnstaple School called _quantum sufficit_.

As a matter of course we were soon tired, but we managed three, starting from right up at the top, and close after one another, with the stones beneath us rattling, and sometimes gliding down swiftly, sometimes coming to a standstill; but if it was the foremost, those behind generally started him again.

In this case Bob went first, I followed, and Bigley came last, and though we two stuck more than once, he never did, his weight overcoming the friction of the stones to such an extent that, towards the last, he charged down upon us and we all rolled over together into a heap.

We tried again, but the fall had made Bob disagreeable. I don't think he was much hurt, but he pretended to be, and said that Bigley had done it on purpose.

It was of no use for Bigley to protest. Once Bob had made up his mind to a thing he would not give in, so after about half a slide down we stopped short without being driven on again by our companion, and the game was voted a bore.

"'Tisn't as if there were a couple of sailors at the top with a capstan, to haul you up again when you've slid down," said Bob.

"Ah, I wish there were!" cried Bigley, "I get so tired."

"No rope would pull you up; you're too heavy," sneered Bob. "Never mind, Sep, let's do something else. The clatter streams ain't half so slippery as they used to be. I s'pose we may do something else here though it is your father's place?"

"Don't be so disagreeable," I cried.

"Who's disagreeable?" he retorted. "I didn't make the stones stick and old Bigley come down squelch on us, did I?"

"Oh, if you want to quarrel, Bob, we may as well go home," I said.

"There, just hark at him, Big! Quarrel! Just as if I wanted to quarrel. There, I shall go."

"No, no, don't go, Bob," I cried.

"No, no, don't go, Bob," chimed in Big. "It's holidays now, and we can get up a row when we're at school."

The force of this, and its being waste of time now the long-expected holidays had come, made an impression on Bob, who sat down and began sending rounded pieces of slate skimming through the air towards the little stream.

"Didn't I tell you I didn't want to quarrel," he grumbled out. "I ain't so fond of--there, you chaps couldn't do that."

"Ha! Ha! Couldn't we?" I cried, as a stone he threw went plash into the stream, and I jerked a piece of slate so far that it went right over.