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CHAPTER VII
HARD IT IS TO CLIMB
So many a winter night went by in a hopeful and
pleasant manner, with the hissing of the bright round
bullets, cast into the water, and the spluttering of
the great red apples which Annie was roasting for me.
We always managed our evening's work in the chimney of
the back-kitchen, where there was room to set chairs
and table, in spite of the fire burning. On the
right-hand side was a mighty oven, where Betty
threatened to bake us; and on the left, long sides of
bacon, made of favoured pigs, and growing very brown
and comely. Annie knew the names of all, and ran up
through the wood-smoke, every now and then, when a
gentle memory moved her, and asked them how they were
getting on, and when they would like to be eaten. Then
she came back with foolish tears, at thinking of that
necessity; and I, being soft in a different way, would
make up my mind against bacon.
But, Lord bless you! it was no good. Whenever it came
to breakfast-time, after three hours upon the moors, I
regularly forgot the pigs, but paid good heed to the
rashers. For ours is a hungry county, if such there be
in England; a place, I mean, where men must eat, and
are quick to discharge the duty. The air of the moors
is so shrewd and wholesome, stirring a man's
recollection of the good things which have betided him,
and whetting his hope of something still better in the
future, that by the time he sits down to a cloth, his
heart and stomach are tuned too well to say 'nay' to
one another.
Almost everybody knows, in our part of the world at
least, how pleasant and soft the fall of the land is
round about Plover's Barrows farm. All above it is
strong dark mountain, spread with heath, and desolate,
but near our house the valleys cove, and open warmth
and shelter. Here are trees, and bright green grass,
and orchards full of contentment, and a man may scarce
espy the brook, although he hears it everywhere. And
indeed a stout good piece of it comes through our
farm-yard, and swells sometimes to a rush of waves,
when the clouds are on the hill-tops. But all below,
where the valley bends, and the Lynn stream comes along
with it, pretty meadows slope their breast, and the sun
spreads on the water. And nearly all of this is ours,
till you come to Nicholas Snowe's land.
But about two miles below our farm, the Bagworthy water
runs into the Lynn, and makes a real river of it.
Thence it hurries away, with strength and a force of
wilful waters, under the foot of a barefaced hill, and
so to rocks and woods again, where the stream is
covered over, and dark, heavy pools delay it. There
are plenty of fish all down this way, and the farther
you go the larger they get, having deeper grounds to
feed in; and sometimes in the summer months, when
mother could spare me off the farm, I came down here,
with Annie to help (because it was so lonely), and
caught well-nigh a basketful of little trout and
minnows, with a hook and a bit of worm on it, or a
fern-web, or a blow-fly, hung from a hazel pulse-stick.
For of all the things I learned at Blundell's,
only two abode with me, and one of these was the knack
of fishing, and the other the art of swimming. And
indeed they have a very rude manner of teaching
children to swim there; for the big boys take the
little boys, and put them through a certain process,
which they grimly call 'sheep-washing.' In the third
meadow from the gate of the school, going up the river,
there is a fine pool in the Lowman, where the Taunton
brook comes in, and they call it the Taunton Pool. The
water runs down with a strong sharp stickle, and then
has a sudden elbow in it, where the small brook
trickles in; and on that side the bank is steep, four
or it may be five feet high, overhanging loamily; but
on the other side it is flat, pebbly, and fit to land
upon. Now the large boys take the small boys, crying
sadly for mercy, and thinking mayhap, of their mothers,
with hands laid well at the back of their necks, they
bring them up to the crest of the bank upon the eastern
side, and make them strip their clothes off. Then the
little boys, falling on their naked knees, blubber
upwards piteously; but the large boys know what is good
for them, and will not be entreated. So they cast them
down, one after other into the splash of the water, and
watch them go to the bottom first, and then come up and
fight for it, with a blowing and a bubbling. It is a
very fair sight to watch when you know there is little
danger, because, although the pool is deep, the current
is sure to wash a boy up on the stones, where the end
of the depth is. As for me, they had no need to throw
me more than once, because I jumped of my own accord,
thinking small things of the Lowman, after the violent
Lynn. Nevertheless, I learnt to swim there, as all
the other boys did; for the greatest point in learning
that is to find that you must do it. I loved the water
naturally, and could not long be out of it; but even
the boys who hated it most, came to swim in some
fashion or other, after they had been flung for a year
or two into the Taunton pool.
But now, although my sister Annie came to keep me
company, and was not to be parted from me by the tricks
of the Lynn stream, because I put her on my back and
carried her across, whenever she could not leap it, or
tuck up her things and take the stones; yet so it
happened that neither of us had been up the Bagworthy
water. We knew that it brought a good stream down, as
full of fish as of pebbles; and we thought that it must
be very pretty to make a way where no way was, nor even
a bullock came down to drink. But whether we were
afraid or not, I am sure I cannot tell, because it is
so long ago; but I think that had something to do with
it. For Bagworthy water ran out of Doone valley, a
mile or so from the mouth of it.
But when I was turned fourteen years old, and put into
good small-clothes, buckled at the knee, and strong
blue worsted hosen, knitted by my mother, it happened
to me without choice, I may say, to explore the
Bagworthy water. And it came about in this wise.
My mother had long been ailing, and not well able to
eat much; and there is nothing that frightens us so
much as for people to have no love of their victuals.
Now I chanced to remember that once at the time of the
holidays I had brought dear mother from Tiverton a jar
of pickled loaches, caught by myself in the Lowman
river, and baked in the kitchen oven, with vinegar, a
few leaves of bay, and about a dozen pepper-corns. And
mother had said that in all her life she had never
tasted anything fit to be compared with them. Whether
she said so good a thing out of compliment to my skill
in catching the fish and cooking them, or whether she
really meant it, is more than I can tell, though I
quite believe the latter, and so would most people who
tasted them; at any rate, I now resolved to get some
loaches for her, and do them in the self-same manner,
just to make her eat a bit.
There are many people, even now, who have not come to
the right knowledge what a loach is, and where he
lives, and how to catch and pickle him. And I will not
tell them all about it, because if I did, very likely
there would be no loaches left ten or twenty years
after the appearance of this book. A pickled minnow is
very good if you catch him in a stickle, with the
scarlet fingers upon him; but I count him no more than
the ropes in beer compared with a loach done properly.
Being resolved to catch some loaches, whatever trouble
it cost me, I set forth without a word to any one, in
the forenoon of St. Valentine's day, 1675-6, I think
it must have been. Annie should not come with me,
because the water was too cold; for the winter had been
long, and snow lay here and there in patches in the
hollow of the banks, like a lady's gloves forgotten.
And yet the spring was breaking forth, as it always
does in Devonshire, when the turn of the days is over;
and though there was little to see of it, the air was
full of feeling.
It puzzles me now, that I remember all those young
impressions so, because I took no heed of them at the
time whatever; and yet they come upon me bright, when
nothing else is evident in the gray fog of experience.
I am like an old man gazing at the outside of his
spectacles, and seeing, as he rubs the dust, the image
of his grandson playing at bo-peep with him.
But let me be of any age, I never could forget that
day, and how bitter cold the water was. For I doffed
my shoes and hose, and put them into a bag about my
neck; and left my little coat at home, and tied my
shirt-sleeves back to my shoulders. Then I took a
three-pronged fork firmly bound to a rod with cord, and
a piece of canvas kerchief, with a lump of bread inside
it; and so went into the pebbly water, trying to think
how warm it was. For more than a mile all down the
Lynn stream, scarcely a stone I left unturned, being
thoroughly skilled in the tricks of the loach, and
knowing how he hides himself. For being gray-spotted,
and clear to see through, and something like a
cuttle-fish, only more substantial, he will stay quite
still where a streak of weed is in the rapid water,
hoping to be overlooked, not caring even to wag his
tail. Then being disturbed he flips away, like
whalebone from the finger, and hies to a shelf of
stone, and lies with his sharp head poked in under it;
or sometimes he bellies him into the mud, and only
shows his back-ridge. And that is the time to spear
him nicely, holding the fork very gingerly, and
allowing for the bent of it, which comes to pass, I
know not how, at the tickle of air and water.
Or if your loach should not be abroad when first you
come to look for him, but keeping snug in his little
home, then you may see him come forth amazed at the
quivering of the shingles, and oar himself and look at
you, and then dart up-stream, like a little grey
streak; and then you must try to mark him in, and
follow very daintily. So after that, in a sandy place,
you steal up behind his tail to him, so that he cannot
set eyes on you, for his head is up-stream always, and
there you see him abiding still, clear, and mild, and
affable. Then, as he looks so innocent, you make full
sure to prog him well, in spite of the wry of the
water, and the sun making elbows to everything, and the
trembling of your fingers. But when you gird at him
lovingly, and have as good as gotten him, lo! in the
go-by of the river he is gone as a shadow goes, and
only a little cloud of mud curls away from the points
of the fork.
A long way down that limpid water, chill and bright as
an iceberg, went my little self that day on man's
choice errand--destruction. All the young fish seemed
to know that I was one who had taken out God's
certificate, and meant to have the value of it; every
one of them was aware that we desolate more than
replenish the earth. For a cow might come and look
into the water, and put her yellow lips down; a
kingfisher, like a blue arrow, might shoot through the
dark alleys over the channel, or sit on a dipping
withy-bough with his beak sunk into his
breast-feathers; even an otter might float downstream
likening himself to a log of wood, with his flat head
flush with the water-top, and his oily eyes peering
quietly; and yet no panic would seize other life, as it
does when a sample of man comes.
Now let not any one suppose that I thought of these
things when I was young, for I knew not the way to do
it. And proud enough in truth I was at the universal
fear I spread in all those lonely places, where I
myself must have been afraid, if anything had come up
to me. It is all very pretty to see the trees big with
their hopes of another year, though dumb as yet on the
subject, and the waters murmuring gaiety, and the banks
spread out with comfort; but a boy takes none of this
to heart; unless he be meant for a poet (which God can
never charge upon me), and he would liefer have a good
apple, or even a bad one, if he stole it.
When I had travelled two miles or so, conquered now and
then with cold, and coming out to rub my legs into a
lively friction, and only fishing here and there,
because of the tumbling water; suddenly, in an open
space, where meadows spread about it, I found a good
stream flowing softly into the body of our brook. And
it brought, so far as I could guess by the sweep of it
under my knee-caps, a larger power of clear water than
the Lynn itself had; only it came more quietly down,
not being troubled with stairs and steps, as the
fortune of the Lynn is, but gliding smoothly and
forcibly, as if upon some set purpose.
Hereupon I drew up and thought, and reason was much
inside me; because the water was bitter cold, and my
little toes were aching. So on the bank I rubbed them
well with a sprout of young sting-nettle, and having
skipped about awhile, was kindly inclined to eat a bit.
Now all the turn of all my life hung upon that moment.
But as I sat there munching a crust of Betty
Muxworthy's sweet brown bread, and a bit of cold bacon
along with it, and kicking my little red heels against
the dry loam to keep them warm, I knew no more than
fish under the fork what was going on over me. It
seemed a sad business to go back now and tell Annie
there were no loaches; and yet it was a frightful
thing, knowing what I did of it, to venture, where no
grown man durst, up the Bagworthy water. And please to
recollect that I was only a boy in those days, fond
enough of anything new, but not like a man to meet it.
However, as I ate more and more, my spirit arose within
me, and I thought of what my father had been, and how
he had told me a hundred times never to be a coward.
And then I grew warm, and my little heart was ashamed
of its pit-a-patting, and I said to myself, 'now if
father looks, he shall see that I obey him.' So I put
the bag round my back again, and buckled my breeches
far up from the knee, expecting deeper water, and
crossing the Lynn, went stoutly up under the branches
which hang so dark on the Bagworthy river.
I found it strongly over-woven, turned, and torn with
thicket-wood, but not so rocky as the Lynn, and more
inclined to go evenly. There were bars of chafed
stakes stretched from the sides half-way across the
current, and light outriders of pithy weed, and blades
of last year's water-grass trembling in the quiet
places, like a spider's threads, on the transparent
stillness, with a tint of olive moving it. And here
and there the sun came in, as if his light was sifted,
making dance upon the waves, and shadowing the pebbles.
Here, although affrighted often by the deep, dark
places, and feeling that every step I took might never
be taken backward, on the whole I had very comely sport
of loaches, trout, and minnows, forking some, and
tickling some, and driving others to shallow nooks,
whence I could bail them ashore. Now, if you have ever
been fishing, you will not wonder that I was led on,
forgetting all about danger, and taking no heed of the
time, but shouting in a childish way whenever I caught
a 'whacker' (as we called a big fish at Tiverton); and
in sooth there were very fine loaches here, having more
lie and harbourage than in the rough Lynn stream,
though not quite so large as in the Lowman, where I
have even taken them to the weight of half a pound.
But in answer to all my shouts there never was any
sound at all, except of a rocky echo, or a scared bird
hustling away, or the sudden dive of a water-vole; and
the place grew thicker and thicker, and the covert grew
darker above me, until I thought that the fishes might
have good chance of eating me, instead of my eating the
fishes.
For now the day was falling fast behind the brown of
the hill-tops, and the trees, being void of leaf and
hard, seemed giants ready to beat me. And every moment
as the sky was clearing up for a white frost, the cold
of the water got worse and worse, until I was fit to
cry with it. And so, in a sorry plight, I came to an
opening in the bushes, where a great black pool lay in
front of me, whitened with snow (as I thought) at the
sides, till I saw it was only foam-froth.
Now, though I could swim with great ease and comfort,
and feared no depth of water, when I could fairly come
to it, yet I had no desire to go over head and ears
into this great pool, being so cramped and weary, and
cold enough in all conscience, though wet only up to
the middle, not counting my arms and shoulders. And
the look of this black pit was enough to stop one from
diving into it, even on a hot summer's day with
sunshine on the water; I mean, if the sun ever shone
there. As it was, I shuddered and drew back; not alone
at the pool itself and the black air there was about
it, but also at the whirling manner, and wisping of
white threads upon it in stripy circles round and
round; and the centre still as jet.
But soon I saw the reason of the stir and depth of that
great pit, as well as of the roaring sound which long
had made me wonder. For skirting round one side, with
very little comfort, because the rocks were high and
steep, and the ledge at the foot so narrow, I came to a
sudden sight and marvel, such as I never dreamed of.
For, lo! I stood at the foot of a long pale slide of
water, coming smoothly to me, without any break or
hindrance, for a hundred yards or more, and fenced on
either side with cliff, sheer, and straight, and
shining. The water neither ran nor fell, nor leaped
with any spouting, but made one even slope of it, as if
it had been combed or planed, and looking like a plank
of deal laid down a deep black staircase. However,
there was no side-rail, nor any place to walk upon,
only the channel a fathom wide, and the perpendicular
walls of crag shutting out the evening.
The look of this place had a sad effect, scaring me
very greatly, and making me feel that I would give
something only to be at home again, with Annie cooking
my supper, and our dog Watch sniffing upward. But
nothing would come of wishing; that I had long found
out; and it only made one the less inclined to work
without white feather. So I laid the case before me in
a little council; not for loss of time, but only that I
wanted rest, and to see things truly.
Then says I to myself--'John Ridd, these trees, and
pools, and lonesome rocks, and setting of the sunlight
are making a gruesome coward of thee. Shall I go back
to my mother so, and be called her fearless boy?'
Nevertheless, I am free to own that it was not any fine
sense of shame which settled my decision; for indeed
there was nearly as much of danger in going back as in
going on, and perhaps even more of labour, the journey
being so roundabout. But that which saved me from
turning back was a strange inquisitive desire, very
unbecoming in a boy of little years; in a word, I would
risk a great deal to know what made the water come down
like that, and what there was at the top of it.
Therefore, seeing hard strife before me, I girt up my
breeches anew, with each buckle one hole tighter, for
the sodden straps were stretching and giving, and
mayhap my legs were grown smaller from the coldness of
it. Then I bestowed my fish around my neck more
tightly, and not stopping to look much, for fear of
fear, crawled along over the fork of rocks, where the
water had scooped the stone out, and shunning thus the
ledge from whence it rose like the mane of a white
horse into the broad black pool, softly I let my feet
into the dip and rush of the torrent.
And here I had reckoned without my host, although (as I
thought) so clever; and it was much but that I went
down into the great black pool, and had never been
heard of more; and this must have been the end of me,
except for my trusty loach-fork. For the green wave
came down like great bottles upon me, and my legs were
gone off in a moment, and I had not time to cry out
with wonder, only to think of my mother and Annie, and
knock my head very sadly, which made it go round so
that brains were no good, even if I had any. But all
in a moment, before I knew aught, except that I must
die out of the way, with a roar of water upon me, my
fork, praise God stuck fast in the rock, and I was
borne up upon it. I felt nothing except that here was
another matter to begin upon; and it might be worth
while, or again it might not, to have another fight for
it. But presently the dash of the water upon my face
revived me, and my mind grew used to the roar of it,
and meseemed I had been worse off than this, when first
flung into the Lowman.
Therefore I gathered my legs back slowly, as if they
were fish to be landed, stopping whenever the water
flew too strongly off my shin-bones, and coming along
without sticking out to let the wave get hold of me.
And in this manner I won a footing, leaning well
forward like a draught-horse, and balancing on my
strength as it were, with the ashen stake set behind
me. Then I said to my self, 'John Ridd, the sooner you
get yourself out by the way you came, the better it
will be for you.' But to my great dismay and affright,
I saw that no choice was left me now, except that I
must climb somehow up that hill of water, or else be
washed down into the pool and whirl around it till it
drowned me. For there was no chance of fetching back
by the way I had gone down into it, and further up was
a hedge of rock on either side of the waterway, rising
a hundred yards in height, and for all I could tell
five hundred, and no place to set a foot in.
Having said the Lord's Prayer (which was all I knew),
and made a very bad job of it, I grasped the good
loach-stick under a knot, and steadied me with my left
hand, and so with a sigh of despair began my course up
the fearful torrent-way. To me it seemed half a mile
at least of sliding water above me, but in truth it was
little more than a furlong, as I came to know
afterwards. It would have been a hard ascent even
without the slippery slime and the force of the river
over it, and I had scanty hope indeed of ever winning
the summit. Nevertheless, my terror left me, now I was
face to face with it, and had to meet the worst; and I
set myself to do my best with a vigour and sort of
hardness which did not then surprise me, but have done
so ever since.
The water was only six inches deep, or from that to
nine at the utmost, and all the way up I could see my
feet looking white in the gloom of the hollow, and here
and there I found resting-place, to hold on by the
cliff and pant awhile. And gradually as I went on, a
warmth of courage breathed in me, to think that perhaps
no other had dared to try that pass before me, and to
wonder what mother would say to it. And then came
thought of my father also, and the pain of my feet
abated.
How I went carefully, step by step, keeping my arms in
front of me, and never daring to straighten my knees is
more than I can tell clearly, or even like now to think
of, because it makes me dream of it. Only I must
acknowledge that the greatest danger of all was just
where I saw no jeopardy, but ran up a patch of black
ooze-weed in a very boastful manner, being now not far
from the summit.
Here I fell very piteously, and was like to have broken
my knee-cap, and the torrent got hold of my other leg
while I was indulging the bruised one. And then a vile
knotting of cramp disabled me, and for awhile I could
only roar, till my mouth was full of water, and all of
my body was sliding. But the fright of that brought me
to again, and my elbow caught in a rock-hole; and so I
managed to start again, with the help of more humility.
Now being in the most dreadful fright, because I was so
near the top, and hope was beating within me, I
laboured hard with both legs and arms, going like a
mill and grunting. At last the rush of forked water,
where first it came over the lips of the fall, drove me
into the middle, and I stuck awhile with my toe-balls
on the slippery links of the pop-weed, and the world
was green and gliddery, and I durst not look behind me.
Then I made up my mind to die at last; for so my legs
would ache no more, and my breath not pain my heart so;
only it did seem such a pity after fighting so long to
give in, and the light was coming upon me, and again I
fought towards it; then suddenly I felt fresh air, and
fell into it headlong.
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