Page:The Dark Frigate (Hawes).djvu/45

scored. Why, now, as for farming,”—he spread his hands and lifted his brows,—“come with us. There ’s a certain vessel to sail from Bideford on a certain day, and for any such tall lad as thou I ’ll warrant there ’ll be a berth.”

Leaning back against a little hill, the lad looked from the red, impudent face of the fat man to the amused, lean, daring face of his companion and away at the hills and meadows, the green trees and ploughed fields, and the long brown road that would lead the man who followed its windings and turnings, however far afield they might wander, all the way across England from the Channel to the Severn. He had made port, once upon a time, in Bristol and he remembered lifting Lundy’s Island through the fog. A fair countryside lay before him, with the faint scent of flowered meadows and the fragrance of blossoming fruit-trees on the wind, but the sea was his home and the half-witted creature with the book and the ranting talk of ploughing and planting had made the lad feel the more his ignorance of country matters, a suspicion of which had been growing on him since first he left the town and port behind him. These were not men he would have chosen, but he had known as bad and he was lost in a wilderness of roads and lanes and never-ending hills and meadows and woods, with villages one after another. Any port in a storm—any pilot who knew his bearings! And for the matter of that, he had seen rough company before. Though his grandparents were gentlefolk, his father had led a rough life and the son had learned from childhood to bear with low humour and harsh talk.

The lean man still smiled, and though Martin was angry still, neither the lad nor the man heeded him.