Charlie to the Rescue by R. M. Ballantyne (unputdownable books .txt) 📕

We have no intention of carrying our reader on step by step through all the adventures and deeds of Charlie Brooke. It is necessary to hasten over his boyhood, leaving untold the many battles fought, risks run, and dangers encountered.

He did not cut much of a figure at the village school—though he did his best, and was fairly successful—but in the playground he reigned supreme. At football, cricket, gymnastics, and, ultimately, at swimming, no one could come near him. This was partly owing to his great physical strength, for, as time passed by he shot upwards and outwards in a way that surprised his companions and amazed his mother, who was a distinctly little woman—a neat graceful little woman—with, like her stalwart son, a modest opinion of herself.

As a matter of course, Charlie’s school-fellows almost worshipped him, and he was always so willing to help and lead them in all cases of danger or emergency, that “Charlie to the rescue!” became quite a familiar cry on the playground. Indeed it would have been equally appropriate in the school, for the lad never seemed to be so thoroughly happy as when he was assisting some boy less capable than himself to master his lessons.

About the time that Charlie left school, while yet a stripling, he had the shoulders of Samson, the chest of Hercules, and the limbs of Apollo. He was tall also—over six feet—but his unusual breadth deceived people as to this till they stood close to him. Fair hair, close and curly, with bright blue eyes and a permanent look of grave benignity, completes our description of him.

Rowing, shooting, fishing, boxing, and swimming seemed to come naturally to him, and all of them in a superlative degree. Swimming was, perhaps, his most loved amusement and in this art he soon far outstripped his friend Leather. Some men are endowed with exceptional capacities in regard to water. We have seen men go into the sea warm and come out warmer, even in cold weather. Experience teaches that the reverse is usually true of mankind in northern regions, yet we once saw a man enter the sea to all appearance a white human being, after remaining in it upwards of an hour, and swimming away from shore; like a vessel outward bound, he came back at last the colour of a boiled lobster!

Such exceptional qualities did Charlie Brooke possess. A South Sea Islander might have envied but could not have excelled him.

It was these qualities that decided the course of his career just after he left school.

“Charlie,” said his mother, as they sat eating their mid-day meal alone one day—the mother being, as we have said, a widow, and Charlie an only child—“what do you think of doing, now that you have left school? for you know my income renders it impossible that I should send you to college.”

“I don’t know what to think, mother. Of course I intend to do something. If you had only influence with some one in power who could enable a fellow to get his foot on the first round of any sort of ladder, something might be done, for you know I’m not exactly useless, though I can’t boast of brilliant talents, but—”

“Your talents are brilliant enough, Charlie,” said his mother, interrupting; “besides, you have been sent into this world for a purpose, and you may be sure that you will discover what that purpose is, and receive help to carry it out if you only ask God to guide you. Not otherwise,” she added, after a pause.

“Do you really believe, mother, that every one who is born into the world is sent for a purpose, and with a specific work to do?”

“I do indeed, Charlie.”

“What! all the cripples, invalids, imbeciles, even the very infants who are born to wail out their sad lives in a few weeks, or even days?”

“Yes—all of them, without exception. To suppose the opposite, and imagine that a wise, loving, and almighty Being would create anything for no purpose seems to me the very essence of absurdity. Our only difficulty is that we do not always see the purpose. All things are ours, but we must ask if we would have them.”

“But I have asked, mother,” said the youth, with an earnest flush on his brow. “You know I have done so often, yet a way has not been opened up. I believe in your faith, mother, but I don’t quite believe in my own. There surely must be something wrong—a screw loose somewhere.”

He laid down his knife and fork, and looked out at the window with a wistful, perplexed expression.

“How I wish,” he continued, “that the lines had been laid down for the human race more distinctly, so that we could not err!”

“And yet,” responded his mother, with a peculiar look, “such lines as are obviously laid down we don’t always follow. For instance, it is written, ‘Ask, and it shall be given you,’ and we stop there, but the sentence does not stop: ‘Seek, and ye shall find’ implies care and trouble; ‘Knock, and it shall be opened unto you’ hints at perseverance, does it not?”

“There’s something in that, mother,” said Charlie, casting another wistful glance out of the window. “Come, I will go out and ‘seek’! I see Shank Leather waiting for me. We agreed to go to the shore together, for we both like to watch the waves roaring in on a breezy day like this.”

The youth rose and began to encase his bulky frame in a great pilot-cloth coat, each button of which might have done duty as an afternoon tea-saucer.

“I wish you would choose any companion to walk with but young Leather,” said the widow, with a sigh. “He’s far too like his father to do you any good.”

“Mother, would you have me give up an old playmate and school-fellow because he is not perfect?” asked the youth in grave tones as he tied on a sou’-wester.

“Well, no—not exactly, but—”

Not having a good reason ready, the worthy woman only smiled a remonstrance. The stalwart son stooped, kissed her and was soon outside, battling with the storm—for what he styled a breezy day was in reality a wild and stormy one.

Long before the period we have now reached Mrs Brooke had changed her residence to the sea-coast in the small town of Sealford. Her cottage stood in the centre of the village, about half-a-mile from the shore, and close to that of her bosom friend, Mrs Leather, who had migrated along with her, partly to be near her and partly for the sake of her son Shank, who was anxious to retain the companionship of his friend Brooke. Partly, also, to get her tippling husband away from old comrades and scenes, in the faint hope that she might rescue him from the great curse of his life.

When Charlie went out, as we have said, he found that Shank had brought his sister May with him. This troubled our hero a good deal, for he had purposed having a confidential talk with his old comrade upon future plans and prospects, to the accompaniment of the roaring sea, and a third party was destructive of such intention. Besides, poor May, although exceedingly unselfish and sweet and good, was at that transition period of life when girlhood is least attractive—at least to young men: when bones are obtrusive, and angles too conspicuous, and the form generally is too suggestive of flatness and longitude; while shyness marks the manners, and inexperience dwarfs the mind. We would not, however, suggest for a moment that May was ugly. By no means, but she had indeed reached what may be styled a plain period of life—a period in which some girls become silently sheepish, and others tomboyish; May was among the former, and therefore a drag upon conversation. But, after all, it mattered little, for the rapidly increasing gale rendered speech nearly impossible.

“It’s too wild a day for you, May,” said Brooke, as he shook hands with her; “I wonder you care to be out.”

“She doesn’t care to be out, but I wanted her to come, and she’s a good obliging girl, so she came,” said Shank, drawing her arm through his as they pressed forward against the blast in the direction of the shore.

Shank Leather had become a sturdy young fellow by that time, but was much shorter than his friend. There was about him, however, an unmistakable look of dissipation—or, rather, the beginning of it—which accounted for Mrs Brooke’s objection to him as a companion for her son.

We have said that the cottage lay about half-a-mile from the shore, which could be reached by a winding lane between high banks. These effectually shut out the view of the sea until one was close to it, though, at certain times, the roar of the waves could be heard even in Sealford itself.

Such a time was the present, for the gale had lashed the sea into wildest fury, and not only did the three friends hear it, as, with bent heads, they forced their way against the wind, but they felt the foam of ocean on their faces as it was carried inland sometimes in lumps and flakes. At last they came to the end of the lane, and the sea, lashed to its wildest condition, lay before them like a sheet of tortured foam.

“Grand! isn’t it?” said Brooke, stopping and drawing himself up for a moment, as if with a desire to combat the opposing elements.

If May Leather could not speak, she could at all events gaze, for she had superb brown eyes, and they glittered, just then, like glowing coals, while a wealth of rippling brown hair was blown from its fastenings, and flew straight out behind her.

“Look! look there!” shouted her brother with a wild expression, as he pointed to a part of the rocky shore where a vessel was dimly seen through the drift.

“She’s trying to weather the point,” exclaimed Brooke, clearing the moisture from his eyes, and endeavouring to look steadily.

“She’ll never weather it. See! the fishermen are following her along-shore,” cried young Leather, dropping his sister’s arm, and bounding away.

“Oh! don’t leave me behind, Shank,” pleaded May.

Shank was beyond recall, but our hero, who had also sprung forward, heard the pleading voice