Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands by R. M. Ballantyne (the reading list .txt) 📖
- Author: R. M. Ballantyne
Book online «The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands by R. M. Ballantyne (the reading list .txt) 📖». Author R. M. Ballantyne
“No, we’ve only got scent of if once or twice.”
“Well, well,” exclaimed Queeker, turning up his eyes, “I declare we have had as good fun as if we had been after the fox in full sight all the time!”
“Here is a somewhat peculiar leap,” said Stoutheart, reining up as they approached a fence, on the other side of which was a high-road, “I’ll go first, to show you the way.”
The peculiarity of the leap lay in the fact that it was a drop of about four feet into the road, which was lower, to that extent, than the field, and that the side of the road into which the riders had to drop was covered with scrubby bushes. To men accustomed to it this was a trifle. Most of the field had already taken it, though a few cautious riders had gone round by a gate.
When Queeker came to try it he felt uneasy—sitting as he did so high, and looking down such a precipice as it seemed to him. However, he shut his eyes, and courageously gave the accustomed chirp, and Slapover plunged down. Queeker held tight to the saddle, and although much shaken, would have come out of the ordeal all right, had not Slapover taken it into his head to make a second spring over a low bush which stood in front of him. On the other side of this bush there was an old pump. Queeker lost his balance, threw out his arms, fell off, was hurled violently against the old pump, and his right leg was broken!
A cart was quickly procured, and on trusses of straw the poor huntsman was driven sadly and slowly, back to Jenkinsjoy, where he was tenderly put to bed and carefully nursed for several weeks by his hospitable and sympathising friends.
Queeker bore his misfortune like a Stoic, chiefly because it developed the great fact that Fanny Hennings wept a whole night and a day after its occurrence, insomuch that her fair face became so swollen as to have lost much of its identity and all its beauty—a fact which filled Queeker with hopes so high that his recovery was greatly hastened by the contented, almost joyous, manner in which he submitted to his fate.
Of course Queeker’s secret mission was, for the time being, at an end;—and thus it came to pass that an old pump, as we said at the beginning of this chapter, was the cause of the failure of several deep-laid plans, and of much bodily anguish and mental felicity to the youthful Nimrod.
Queeker’s last observation before falling into a feverish slumber on the first night after his accident, was to the effect that fox-hunting was splendid sport—magnificent sport,—but that it appeared to him there was no occasion whatever for a fox. And ever after that he was wont to boast that his first and last day of fox-hunting, which was an unusually exciting one, had been got though charmingly without any fox at all. It is even said that Queeker, descending from poetry,—his proper sphere,—to prose, wrote an elaborate and interesting paper on that subject, which was refused by all the sporting papers and journals to which he sent it;—but, this not being certified, we do not record it as a fact.
We turn now to a very different scene—the pier and harbour of Ramsgate. The storm-fiend is abroad. Thick clouds of a dark leaden hue drive athwart a sky of dingy grey, ever varying their edges, and rolling out limbs and branches in random fashion, as if they were fleeing before the wind in abject terror. The wind, however, is chiefly in the sky as yet. Down below there are only fitful puffs now and then, telling of something else in store. The sea is black, with sufficient swell on it to cause a few crested waves here and there to gleam intensely white by contrast. It is early in the day, nevertheless there is a peculiar darkness in the atmosphere which suggests the approach of night. Numerous vessels in the offing are making with all speed for Ramsgate harbour, which is truly and deservedly named a “harbour of refuge,” for already some two dozen ships of considerable size, and a large fleet of small craft, have sought and found shelter on a coast which in certain conditions of the wind is fraught with danger. About the stores near the piers, Trinity men are busy with buoys, anchors, and cables; elsewhere labourers are toiling, idlers are loafing, and lifeboat—men are lounging about, leaning on the parapets, looking wistfully out to sea, with and without telescopes, from the sheer force of habit, and commenting on the weather. The broad, bronzed, storm-battered coxswain of the celebrated Ramsgate lifeboat, who seems to possess the power of feeding and growing strong on hardship and exposure, is walking about at the end of the east pier, contemplating the horizon in the direction of the Goodwin Sands with the serious air of a man who expects ere long to be called into action.
The harbour-master—who is, and certainly had need be, a man of brain as well as muscle and energy, to keep the conflicting elements around him in order—moves about actively, making preparation for the expected gale.
Early on the morning of the day referred to, Nora Jones threaded her way among the stalls of the marketplace under the town-hall, as if she were in search of some one. Not succeeding in her search, she walked briskly along one of the main thoroughfares of the town, and diverged into a narrow street, which appeared to have retired modestly into a corner in order to escape observation. At the farther end of this little street, she knocked at the door of a house, the cleanly appearance of which attested the fact that its owner was well-doing and orderly.
Nora knocked gently; she did everything gently!
“Is Mrs Moy at home?” she asked, as a very bright little girl’s head appeared.
No sooner was Nora’s voice heard than the door was flung wide open, and the little girl exclaimed, “Yes, she’s at ’ome, and daddy too.” She followed up this assurance with a laugh of glee, and, seizing the visitor’s hand, dragged her into the house by main force.
“Hallo, Nora, ’ow are ’ee, gal?” cried a deep bass voice from the neighbourhood of the floor, where its owner appeared to be smothered with children, for he was not to be seen.
Nora looked down and beheld the legs and boots of a big man, but his body and head were invisible, being completely covered and held down by four daughters and five sons, one of the former being a baby, and one of the latter an infant.
Dick Moy, who was enjoying his month on shore, rose as a man might rise from a long dive, flung out his great right arm, scattered the children like flecks of foam, and sat up with a beaming countenance, holding the infant tenderly in his left arm. The baby had been cast under the table, where it lay, helpless apparently, and howling. It had passed the most tender period of life, and had entered on that stage when knocks, cuts, yells, and bruises are the order of the day.
“Glad to see you, Nora,” said the man of the floating light, extending his huge hand, which the girl grasped and shook warmly. “You’ll excuse me not bein’ more purlite. I’m oppressed with child’n, as you see. It seems to me as if I’d gone an’ got spliced to that there ’ooman in the story-book wot lived in the shoe, an’ had so many child’n she didn’t know wot to do. If so, she knows wot to do now. She’s only got to hand ’em over to poor Dick Moy, an’ leave him to suffer the consickences.—Ah, ’ere she comes.”
Dick rose as he spoke, and handed a chair to Nora at the moment that his better, but lesser, half entered.
It must not be supposed that Dick said all this without interruption. On the contrary, he bawled it out in the voice of a bo’s’n’s mate, while the four daughters and five sons, including the baby and the infant, crawled up his legs and clung to his pockets, and enacted Babel on a small scale.
Mrs Moy was a very pretty, tidy, cheerful little woman, of the fat, fair, and forty description, save that she was nearer thirty-five than forty. It was clear at a glance that she and Dick had been made for each other, and that, had either married anybody else, each would have done irreparable damage to the other.
“Sit down, Nora. I’m so glad to see you. Come to breakfast, I hope? we’re just going to have it.”
Mrs Moy said this as if she really meant it, and would be terribly disappointed if she met with a refusal. Nora tried to speak, but Babel was too much for her.
“Silence!” burst from Dick, as if a small cannon had gone off in the room.
Babel was hushed.
“Mum’s the word for three minutes,” said Dick, pointing to a huge Yankee clock which stood on the chimney-piece, with a model frigate in a glass case, and a painted sea and sky on one side of it, and a model light-vessel in a glass case, and a painted sea and sky on the other.
There was profound wisdom in this arrangement. If Dick had ordered silence for an indefinite space of time, there would have been discontent, approximating to despair, in Babel’s bosom, and, therefore, strong temptation to rebellion. But three minutes embraced a fixed and known period of time. The result was a desperate effort at restraint, mingled with gleeful anticipation. The elder children who could read the clock stared eagerly at the Yankee time-piece; the younger ones who couldn’t read the clock, but who knew that the others could, stared intently at their seniors, and awaited the signal. With the exception of hard breathing, the silence was complete; the baby being spell-bound by example, and the feeble remarks of the infant—which had been transferred to the arms of the eldest girl—making no impression worth speaking of.
“You are very kind,” said Nora, “I’ll stay for breakfast with pleasure. Grandmother won’t be up for an hour yet, and father’s not at home just now.”
“Werry good,” said Dick, taking a short black pipe out of his coat-pocket, “that’s all right. And ’ow do ’ee like Ramsgate, Nora, now you’ve had a fair trial of it?”
“I think I like it better than Yarmouth; but perhaps that is because we live in a more airy and cheerful street. I would not have troubled you so early, Mr Moy”—(“’Tain’t no trouble at all, Nora; werry much the reverse”)—“but that I am anxious to hear how you got on with poor Billy—”
At this point Babel burst forth with redoubled fury. Dick was attacked and carried by storm; the short black pipe was seized, and an old hat was clapped on his head and thrust down over his eyes! He gave in at once, and submitted with resignation. He struck his colours, so to speak, without firing a shot, and for full five minutes breasted the billows of a sea of children manfully, while smart Mrs Moy spread the breakfast-table as quietly as if nothing were going on, and Nora sat and smiled at them.
Suddenly Dick rose for the second time from his dive, flung off the foam, tossed aside the baby, rescued the infant from impending destruction, and thundered “Silence! mum’s the word for three minutes more.”
“That’s six, daddy!” cried the eldest boy, whose spirit of opposition was growing so strong that he could not help indulging it, even against his own interests.
“No,” said Dick sternly.
“It was three minutes last time,” urged the boy; “an’ you said three minutes more this time; three minutes more than three minutes is six minutes, ain’t it?”
“Three minutes,” repeated
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