O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas by Gordon Stables (top 10 most read books in the world .txt) 📕

We sailed past the Isle of Wight with a grey chopping sea all around us,

grey clouds above us, a bitter cold wind blowing, and a drizzling rain

borne along on its wings.

Then we entered Portsmouth harbour, and cast anchor among the wooden

walls of England. Finally I landed. Landed, much to my disgust, upon

stones instead of soft sand. Landed, still more to my disgust, among

crowds of people who stared at me as if I had a plurality of heads, or

only one eye right in the middle of my brow. I glanced around me with

all the proud dignity of a savage prince. The crowd laughed, and

Roberts hurried me on.

I daresay a visit to a fashionable tailor and its subsequent results

made me a little more presentable, but I disliked this town of

Portsmouth with a healthy dislike, and was glad when my friend took me

away.

I had to go to London. The railway amused me, and made me wonder, but

used as I was to the quiet of the desert and forest, it deafened me, and

the shaking tired me beyond conception.

My solicitor, a prim white-haired man, said he was _so_ glad to see me,

though I do believe he was a little afraid of me. Probably not without

cause, for at the very moment he was entering into business as he called

it, and arranging preliminaries, I was thinking how quickly Otakooma's

savages would rub all the starch out of this respectable citizen.

_They_ would not take long to arrange preliminaries with the little man,

and as to entering into business, they would do so in a way that would

considerably astonish his nerves.

"Bother business!" I exclaimed at last, in a voice that made the prim

solicitor almost spring off his chair.

"Oh! my dear sir," he pleaded, mildly. "We _must_ go into these little

matters."

He ventured to give me two fingers to shake as I left the office with

Roberts. I feel sure he was afraid to entrust me with all his hand.

"And as soon as you get home you will telegraph to me; won't you, Mr

Radnor?"

"Telegraph!" I said in astonishment. "Telegraph! and you tell me it is

five hundred miles from here to Dunryan. Do you think you can see a

fire at that distance? It must be a precious big one I'll have to

light, and the mountains around Dunryan must be amazingly high."

Both Roberts and the solicitor laughed; they could see that the only

idea I had of telegraphing was the building of fires on hill-tops.

I arrived at Dunryan at last--my small patrimony. If I was pleased with

it at all, it was simply because it was my own; but everything was so

new and so strange and so tame, that as soon as my friend saw me what he

called "settled," and went away to sea and left me, I began, in the most

methodical manner possible, to dislike everything round me.

People called on me, but I'm sure they were merely curious to hear my

history from my own lips, and partly afraid of me at the same time.

They invited me out to tea! Ha! ha! ha! I really cannot help laughing

about it now as I write; but fancy a savage sitting down to tea, of all

treats in the world, with a company of gossiping ladies of both sexes.

Now my neighbours made me out to be a bigger savage than I really was,

because, to do myself justice, I did know a little of the courtesies of

civilised life. There was one lady who expressed a wish to have the

"dreadful creature" to tea with her. I found out before I went that she

had styled me so, though her note of invitation was most politely

worded.

The "dreadful creature" did go to tea, intent on a kind of quiet

revenge. They could not get a word out of me--neither my hostess nor

the three old ladies she had asked to meet me by way of protection. I

did nothing but drink cup after cup of tea, handing in my cup to be

replenished, and drinking it at once. The bread and butter disappeared

in a way that seemed to them little short of miraculous. I saw that

they were getting frightened, so I thought I would make them a little

soothing speech.

"Ahem!" I began, standing up. I never got any further.

One old lady fainted; another "missed stays," as a sailor would say,

when making for the doorway, and tumbled on the floor; a third fell over

the piano-stool. All screamed--all thought I was about to do something

very dreadful.

All I did do was to step gingerly out into the hall, pick up my hat, and

go off.

I lived in Dunryan for a year. The scenery all around was charming in

the extreme. The very name will tell you that Dunryan is in Scotland;

the very word Scotland conjures up before the eye visions both of beauty

and romance.

But one year even of Scotland, the "land of green heath and shaggy

wood," was enough for me then.

There was no sport, no wild adventure; all was tame, tame, tame,

compared to what I had been used to.

But if following game in Scotland seemed tame to me, what could I say of

sport in English fashion? I tried both; grew sick of both. Hunting the

wild gorilla in the jungles of Africa was more in my line.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

One night, soon after the first snow had fallen, a carriage drove up to

my door. It was to bear me away to the distant railway-station. The

moon was shining brightly down upon our little village as we drove

through; here and there in the windows shone a yellow light; but all was

silent, and neither the horses' hoofs nor the carriage wheels could be

heard on the snow-muffled street.

It was a peaceful scene, and I heaved one sigh--well, it might have been

of regret. For many and many a long year to come I never saw Dunryan

again.

"The dismal wreck to view

Struck horror to the crew."

Old Song.

The earlier history of a human being's life is engraved upon his mind as

with a pen of steel. After one comes to what are termed years of

discretion, the soul is not so impressionable, and events must be of

more than usual interest to be very long remembered. The story, then,

of a chequered life cannot be told with even a hopeful attempt at

minuteness, unless a log has been kept day after day and year after

year; and my opinion is, that although diaries are often most

religiously commenced, especially about New Year's time, they are seldom

if ever kept up very long.

My own adventures, and the scenes I passed through in the first stages

of my existence, were not, as the reader already knows, of a kind to be

very easily forgotten, even had my mind never been very impressionable.

It was easy enough, therefore, to record them in some kind of

chronological form.

The few adventures I and my friend Ben Roberts tell in the pages that

follow, and our sketches of life, are given as they occur to our memory;

often brought back to our minds by the incidents of our present everyday

life.

But I do not think that even if Ben and I live as long as Old Parr, we

shall either tire of spinning our yarns, or fall short of subject

matter.

Let me say a word or two about the place I live in now, and where Ben so

often pays me a visit.

We call it Rowan Tree Villa.

It stands mid-way up a well-wooded hill, about two and a half miles from

a dreamy, drowsy old village, in one of the dreamiest, drowsiest nooks

of bonnie, tree-clad Berkshire.

The top of the hill is covered by tall-stemmed pine trees, and from this

eminence you can see, stretching far away below, all the undulating

country, the fertile valley of the Thames, and the river itself winding

for many and many a mile through it--a silver thread amidst the green.

From the top of this hill, too, if you take the trouble to climb it, you

can have a bird's-eye view of Rowan Tree Villa.

There it is, a pretty, many-gabled cottage, with a comfortable-looking

kitchen garden and orchard behind it, and a long, wide lawn in front.

Now this lawn has one peculiarity. From the gate on each side up to the

terrace in front of the house sweeps a broad carriage drive, bounded on

both its sides, first by a belt of green grass, carefully trimmed and

dotted here and there with patches of flowers, and secondly by two rows

of rowan trees (the mountain ash), trained on wires, and forming the

prettiest bit of hedge-work you could easily imagine.

If you were Scotch, and looked at that hedge even for a moment, the

words, and maybe the air as well, of the Baroness Nairne's beautiful

song would rise in your mind--

"Thy leaves were aye the first in spring,

     Thy flowers the summer's pride;

There was nae sic a bonnie tree

     In a' the country side.

And fair wert thou in summer time,

     Wi' a' thy clusters white,

And rich and gay thy autumn dress

     Of berries red and bright.

                 Oh, rowan tree!"

Well, it is June to-day--an afternoon in June; a day to make one feel

life in every limb--a day when but to exist is a luxury. The roses are

bending their heads in the sweet sunshine, for there is not a cloud in

Heaven's blue. The butterflies are chasing each other among the flowers

on the lawn, where we recline among the daisies, and the big velvety

bees go droning and humming from clover blossom to clover blossom.

"Strange, is it not, my dear Ben," I said, "that on such a day as this,

and in the midst of sunshine, I should bethink me of some night-scenes

at sea and on land?

"I remember well my first experience of a storm by night in the Northern

Ocean. We were going to the Arctic regions, cruising in a sturdy and,

on the whole, not badly fitted, nor badly found ship.

"The anchor was weighed, the sails were set, and spread their wings to

the breeze; the crew had given their farewell cheer, and the rough old

pilot, having seen us safely out of Brassy Sound, had shaken the captain

roughly by the hand, and wishing us `God-speed and safely home,' had

disappeared in his boat round a point.

"We were once more on the deep and dark blue ocean. Then the night

began to fall, and soon the only sound heard was the tramp, tramp on

deck, or the steady wash of the water, as our vessel ever and anon

dipped her bows or waist in the waves.

"The captain had given his last orders on deck, and came below to our

little saloon, the only occupants of which were myself and the ship's

cat.

"Poor Pussy was endeavouring, rather ineffectually, to steady herself on

the sofa, and looked very much from home, while I myself was trebly

engaged: namely, in placing such articles as were constantly tumbling

down into a safer and steadier position, in keeping the fire brightly

burning, and in reading a nautical book.

"There was a shade of uneasiness on the captain's face as he looked at

the barometer; and when he entered his state-room, and presently after

emerged dressed in oilskins and a sou'-wester hat, I felt as sure we

were going to have a dirty night as though he had rigged himself out in

sackcloth and ashes.

"He sat down, and, calling for some coffee, invited me to join in a

social cup.

"`Is there plenty of sea-room?' I inquired.

"`Very little sea-room,' he replied; `but she must take her chance.'

"Then we relapsed into silence.

"About an hour or two after this it became a difficult matter to sit on

a chair at all, so much did the vessel pitch and roll.

"The captain had gone on deck, and as I