Read Ebook: Tales from a Famished Land Including The White Island—A Story of the Dardanelles by Hunt Edward E Edward Eyre

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Ebook has 616 lines and 33031 words, and 13 pages

"But no, madame!" I exclaimed. "Go quickly and help!" At the moment I believed in her supernatural powers as firmly as any peasant of the Campine.

She lifted her head. A sad light had come into her eyes. "It is too late. The avenger of Belgium is not to come from this house," she muttered.

"But yes! Hurry!"

The madness of my words did not occur to me until days afterward: the lunacy of thinking either that she could heal, or that the child of these poor peasant-folk when healed would avenge his nation on her enemies. God knows what wild thoughts were in my mind that night! God knows, and Saint Dympna!

"I will go in then," she said, rising, giving her hand with a queenly gesture, and stepping from the car. "Thank you, monsieur. You need not wait; indeed you must not wait. I am here with friends. Adieu!"

She clutched my arm in a sudden spasm of fright.

"Listen!" she whispered.

A piercing wail rose from the quiet cottage; a dull lamp flared as it was borne hastily past a window; a man's deep voice groaned horribly. Children in the loft, wakened by the outcry, began to scream, and a startled dog far away howled in terror.

Madame released my arm and walked slowly toward the house of death. At the door she turned and looked back at us as if she feared to go in. Her left hand fumbled for the latch; her right waved our dismissal. "Adieu, monsieur, adieu," she called in a strained, unhappy tone. And we drove quietly away and left her under the placid moon.

LOVE IN A BARGE

"Hay, skipper," I shouted, "where are you? Call off your dog!"

A gigantic shock of red hair appeared from the cabin, followed by a long face, prodigiously wrinkled, and a thin body in blue shirt and nondescript trousers, from which protruded broad red hands and naked feet. Like the babies, the captain stared at me in silence and made no move to come nearer.

"Are you the skipper?" I demanded, losing patience.

"Call off your dog. I'm the American delegate of the Relief Committee."

"What, mynheer?"

It seemed no time for the French or Flemish languages. In an emotional crisis, such as a deathbed repentance or losing one's heart or one's temper, the tongue turns to the speech of youth, and I fell to cursing in most excellent and idiomatic English. The shock-head stared. "For God's sake, sir," he exclaimed at last, in English like my own, "are you a British spy?"

"A spy, you idiot? I'm the American delegate of the Commission for Relief in Belgium. What do you mean by staring at me like that and letting your crazy dog bark his head off at me? I'm the consignee of this cargo, and I've come to inspect it."

The bargeman leaped to the peak of the vessel and came forward, his bare toes clutching the ridge of the deck, smacked the nearest infant into silence, swore at the dog, and came down to me. He drew an old cap from his pocket and began to clean my clothes, using the cap as a dust cloth. "I'm sorry, sir," he said meekly, "but you see, sir, I has to be careful, wot with the Germans and all."

"With that accent I should think you would have to be careful," I retorted grimly.

"Ow no, sir," he returned, "I'm a Belgian all right-o, but I 'ave served my time in the British navy."

"And now you're skipper of a barge!"

He smiled and scratched his head. "There was a woman, sir, as done me into doing it--leaving the navy, I mean. O' course she wasn't the first woman I ever see, but when I saw her I thort she was."

"Well, you're a funny one!" I exclaimed heartily, feeling a sudden kinship with the lanky red-crowned scarecrow before me--a kinship which would have been impossible without our common language. "Is this Queen of Sheba still travelling with you?"

"Beg pardon, sir?"

"Is your wife on board?"

"Yes, indeed, sir, and here are two of my little shavers." He pointed with extraordinary pride at the half-naked youngsters clinging to their precarious seats on the sloping deck. "Fine little fellers, aren't they, sir? I've got three children, and there is going to be a fourth. These is twins--both boys," he said.

"So I see," I retorted. The jest was lost on him. "Well, open up hatches and let's look at your cargo."

He bent to the fastenings and slipped off the round lead seals. "Funny thing about these Germans, sir, 'ow careful they are. That Johnny standing sentry-go over there"--he pointed to the lonely watch in the distance--, "'e always comes up and asks me for them little bits of lead. I gives 'em to 'im, sir. 'E gets paid for 'em and they don't do me no good, so I gives 'em to him." He lifted the first hatch, still chatting affably. "It's a good lot o' flour, sir, as I sees it. Only up at Rotterdam sometimes they has to unload too fast, and they piles it into the lighters in all kinds o' weather. I've got forty-eight bags of bad flour in 'ere myself--spoilt by the rain in Rotterdam."

"We can use it here for making dog bread."

"They uses 'ooks on the bags, too, sir, and that ain't right. Ortn't to use no 'ooks. They always break the bags. Still, they're a good sort up there, and they treat me right so far.... Now this flour, sir, it's first rate--better than the Belgians is used to, if I do say it, and well stowed, ain't it?" He dusted the white meal from his hands and replaced the hatches. "It ain't bad, is it, sir?"

"Pretty good," I answered.

"No, I don't regret being skipper on a canal boat 'stead of hordinary seaman banging 'round in a cruiser's forecastle and target-practising at the 'Uns. It's an awful life, sea-faring is, sir. A man wot is a man owes it to himself to marry and settle down."

"You certainly are a domestic animal, skipper."

He grinned. "Yes, sir. Why, the first time I sawr 'er she was a-standing behind the till in a sweets-shop, in Flushing, and a-crying 'er pretty eyes out."

"Who was?"

"Blimey! my wife! I thort I 'ad told you, sir."

"You've told me nothing."

"You've told me that already, but what about your wife?"

"Ow, yes, sir. She was a-standing behind the counter in a sweets-shop and a-crying 'er pretty eyes out, and I come in just off the ship with a 'unger for sweets so strong my tongue was fair 'anging out of my mouth.

"'Good-day juffrouw, and what's the matter with you, my pretty dear?' I says back at her. 'I'll 'ave a kiss,' I says.

"'You'll 'ave nothing of the sort, you bad man,' she says, wiping her eyes and glaring at me.

"'Juffrouw,' I says, free and easy, 'I'm just off ship and I'm 'ungry--so 'ungry I could fair eat you--and I never see a pretty maid crying but I kiss 'er tears away. I ain't been drinking either. I ain't a drinking man.'

"I was serious for all my glib talk, sir. I was that serious as I'd never been in my life before; and, between ourselves, sir, though I 'ate to admit it, I didn't kiss no tears away that day. She wouldn't 'ave it.

"Wot was she weeping for? She'd just lorst 'er sweetheart, sir, that was wot for! 'E was a sheep-faced Dutchman--I sawr 'im afterward, I did, and he 'adn't a merit to 'im. She didn't really love 'im, but she thort she did, and that's where I come in a-asking for a kiss!

"'Oom Jan,' she yells to the back of the shop. 'Come 'ere and throw out this drunken sailor-man.'

"Lucky for me 'er uncle didn't 'ear 'er, so I leans across the counter and I says very serious, 'Juffrouw, I love you. Tell me, wot's the tears about?'"...

"I tell you, sir," he interrupted his story to observe, "in dealing with women tell 'em the truth first pop. If you love 'em, tell 'em so. Lies is all right in dealing man to man, but with the wimmen, tell 'em the truth.

"So it wasn't long till we was fair intimate. I 'ung 'round 'er shop for three days, I did, and then I thort as 'ow I might take a few liberties with 'er.

"'No,' she says, 'nothing of that, George. I want to make you a good wife,' she says.

"'Wife,' I says to myself. I was sitting in the potaties all right-o, with a quid a month and no 'ome ner nothing. Wife! Wot 'ave I let myself in for?' But she was that simple 'earted I couldn't say no to 'er and I loved her fair to distraction.

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