The blue water had lost its glitter, for they were now between it and the sun, and the freshening breeze, as it swept over, darkened the surface. They were too far to see the waves, but that they were rising was evident since the water no longer reflected the sky like a mirror. The sky was cloudless, but the water seemed in shadow, rough and hard. It was full half a mile or more down to where the wood touched the shore of the New Sea and shut out their view, so that they could not tell how far it extended. Serendib and the Unknown Island were opposite, and they could see the sea all round them from the height where they sat.
“We left the sea behind us,” said Mark. “The compass took us right away from it.”
“We began wrong somehow,” said Bevis. In fact they had walked in a long curve, so that when they thought the New Sea was on Mark’s right, it was really on his left hand. “I must put down on the map that people must go west, not east, or they will never get round.”
“It must be thousands of miles round,” said Mark; “thousands and thousands.”
“So it is,” said Bevis, “and only to think nobody ever saw it before you and me.”
“What a long way we can see,” said Mark, pointing to where the horizon and the blue wooded plain below, beyond the sea, became hazy together. “What country is that?”
“I do not know; no one has ever been there.”
“Which way is England?” asked Mark.
“How can I tell when I don’t know where we are?”
The ash sprays touching each other formed a green surface beneath them, extending to the right and left—a green surface into which every now and then a wood-pigeon plunged, closing his wings as the sea-birds dive into the sea. They sat in the shadow of the great beech, and the wind, coming up over the wood, blew cool against their faces. The swallows had left the sky, to go down and glide over the rising waves below.
“Come on,” said Bevis, incapable of rest unless he was dreaming. “If we keep along the top of the hill we shall know where we are going, and perhaps see a way round presently.”
They followed the edge of the low cliff as nearly as they could, walking under the beeches where it was cool and shady, and the wind blow through. Twice they saw squirrels, but they were too quick, and Bevis could not get a shot with his bow.
“We ought to take home something,” said Mark. “Something wonderful. There ought to be some pieces of gold about, or a butterfly as big as a plate. Can’t you see something?”
“There’s a dragonfly,” said Bevis. “If we can’t catch him, we can say we saw one made of emerald, and here’s a feather.”
He picked up a pheasant’s feather. The dragonfly refused to be caught, he rushed up into the air nearly perpendicularly; and seeing another squirrel some way ahead, they left the dragonfly and crept from beech trunk to beech trunk towards him.
“It’s a red squirrel,” whispered Mark. “That’s a different sort.” In summer the squirrels are thought to have redder fur than in winter. Mark stopped now, and Bevis went on by himself; but the squirrel saw Pan, who had run along and came out beyond him. Bevis shot as the squirrel rushed up a tree, and his arrow struck the bark, quivered a moment, and stuck there.
“The savages will see some one has been hunting,” said Mark. “They are sure to see that arrow.”
In a few minutes they came to some hazel bushes, and pushing through these there was a lane under them in a hollow ten feet deep. They scrambled down and followed it, and came to a boulder-stone, on which some specks sparkled in the sunshine, so that they had no doubt it was silver ore. Round a curve of the lane they emerged on the brow of a green hill, very steep; they had left the wood behind them. The trees from here hid the New Sea, and in front, not far off, rose the Downs.
“What are those mountains?” asked Mark.
“The Himalayas, of course,” said Bevis. “Let’s go to them.”
They went along the brow, it was delicious walking there, for the sun was now much lower, and the breeze cool, and beneath them were meadows, and a brook winding through. But suddenly they came to a deep coombe—a nullah.
“Look!” said Mark, pointing to a chimney just under them. The square top, blackened by soot, stood in the midst of apple-trees, on whose boughs the young green apples showed. The thatch of the cottage was concealed by the trees.
“A hut!” said Bevis.
“Savages!” said Mark, “I know, I’ll pitch a stone down the chimney, and you get your bow ready, and shoot them as they rush out.”
“Capital!” said Bevis. Mark picked up a flint, and “chucked” it—it fell very near the chimney, they heard it strike the thatch and roll down. Mark got another, and most likely, having found the range, would have dropped it into the chimney this time, when Bevis stopped him.
“It may be a witch,” he said. “Don’t you know what John told us? if you pitch a stone down a witch’s chimney it goes off bang! and the stone shoots up into the air like a cannon-ball.”
“I remember,” said Mark. “But John is a dreadful story. I don’t believe it.”
“No, no more do I. Still we ought to be careful. Let’s creep down and look first.”
They got down the hillside with difficulty, it was so steep and slippery—the grass being dried by the sun. At the bottom there was a streamlet running along deep in a gully, a little pool of the clearest water to dip from, and a green sparred wicket-gate in a hawthorn hedge about the garden. Peering cautiously through the gate they saw an old woman sitting under the porch beside the open door, with a black teapot on the window-ledge close by, and a blue teacup, in which she was soaking a piece of bread, in one hand.
“It’s a witch,” whispered Mark. “There’s a black cat by the wall-flowers—that’s a certain sign.”
“And two sticks with crutch-handles,” said Bevis. “But just look there.” He pointed to some gooseberry bushes loaded with the swelling fruit, than which there is nothing so pleasant on a warm, thirsty day. They looked at the gooseberries, and thirsted for them; then they looked at the witch.
“Let’s run in and pick some, and run out quick,” whispered Mark.
“You stupid; she’d turn us into anything in a minute.”
“Well—shoot her first,” said Mark. “Take steady aim; John says if you draw their blood they can’t do anything. Don’t you remember, they stuck the last one with a prong.”
“Horrid cruel,” said Bevis.
“So it was,” said Mark; “but when you want gooseberries.”
“I wish we had some moly,” said Bevis; “you know, the plant Ulysses had. Mind before we start next time we must find some. Who knows what fearful magic people we might meet?”
“It was stupid not to think of it,” said Mark. “Do you know, I believe she’s a mummy.”
“Why?”
“She hasn’t moved; and I can’t see her draw her breath.”
“No more she does. This is a terrible place.”
“Can we get away without her seeing?”
“I believe she knows we’re here now, and very likely all we have been saying.”
“Did she make that curious thunder we heard?”
“No; a witch isn’t strong enough; it wants an enchanter to do that.”
“But she knows who did it?”
“Of course she does. There, she’s moved her arm; she’s alive. Aren’t those splendid gooseberries?”
“I’ll go in,” said Bevis; “you hold the gate open, so that I can run out.”
“So I will; don’t go very near.”
Bevis fitted an arrow to the string, and went up the garden path. But as he came near, and saw how peaceful the old lady looked, he removed the arrow from the string again. She took off her spectacles as he came up; he stopped about ten yards from her.
“Mrs Old Woman, are you a witch?”
“No, I bean’t a witch,” said the old lady; “I wishes I was; I’d soon charm a crock o’ gold.”
“Then, if you are not a witch, will you let us have some gooseberries? here’s sixpence.”
“You med have some if you want’s ’em; I shan’t take yer money.”
“What country is this?” said Bevis, going closer, as Mark came up beside him.
“This be Calais.”
“Granny, don’t you know who they be?” said a girl, coming round the corner of the cottage. She was about seventeen, and very pretty, with the bloom which comes on sweet faces at that age. Though they were but boys they were tall, and both handsome; so she had put a rose in her bosom. “They be Measter Bevis and Measter Mark. You know, as lives at Longcot.”
“Aw, to be sure.” The old lady got up and curtseyed. “You’ll come in, won’t ’ee?”
They went in and sat down on chairs on the stone floor. The girl brought them a plate of the gooseberries and a jug of spring-water. Bevis had not eaten two before he was up and looking at an old gun in the corner; the barrel was rusty, the brass guard tarnished, the ramrod gone, still it was a gun.
“Will it go off?” he said.
“Feyther used to make un,” said the girl.
Next he found a big black book, and lifted up the covers, and saw a rude engraving of a plant.
“Is that a magic book?” said he.
“I dunno,” she replied. “Mebbe. Granny used to read un.”
It was an old herbal.
“Can’t you read?” said Bevis.
The girl blushed and turned away.
“A’ be a lazy wench,” said the old woman. “A’ can’t read a mossel.”
“I bean’t lazy.”
“You be.”
Bevis, quite indifferent to that question, was peering into every nook and corner, but found nothing more.
“Let’s go,” said he directly.
Mark would not stir till he had finished the gooseberries.
“Tell me the way round the—the—” he was going to say sea, but recollected that they would not be able to understand how he and Mark were on an expedition, nor would he say pond—“round the water,” he said.
“The Longpond?” said the girl. “You can’t go round, there’s the marsh—not unless you goes back to Wood Lane, and nigh handy your place.”
“Which way did ’ee come?” asked the old woman.
“They come through the wood,” said the girl. “I seen um; and they had the spannul.”
She was stroking Pan, who loved her, as she had fed him with a bone. She knew the enormity of taking a strange dog through a wood in the breeding-season.
“How be um going to get whoam?” said the old woman.
“We’re going to walk, of course,” said Bevis.
“It’s four miles.”
“Pooh! We’ve come thousands. Come on, Mark; we’ll get round somehow.”
But the girl convinced him after a time that it was not possible, because of the marsh and the brook, and showed him too how the shadows of the elms were lengthening in the meadow outside the garden at the foot of the hill. Bevis reluctantly decided that they must abandon the expedition for that day, and return home. The girl offered to show them the way into the road. She led them by a narrow path beside the streamlet in the gully, and then along the steep side of the hill, where there were three or four more cottages, all built on the slope, steep as it was. The path in front of the doors had a kind of breastwork, that folk might not inadvertently tumble over and roll—if not quite sober—into the gully beneath. Yet there were small gardens behind, which almost stood up on end, the vegetables appearing over the roofs.
Upon the breastwork or mound they had planted a few flowers, all yellow, or yellow-tinged, marigolds, sunflowers, wall-flowers, a stray tulip, the gaudiest they knew. These specks of brightness by the dingy walls and grey thatch and whitened turf, for the chalk was but an inch under, came of instinct on that southern slope, as hot Spain flaunts a yellow flag.
Six or eight children were about. One sat crying in the midst of the path, so unconscious under the wrong he had endured as not to see them, and they had to step right over his red head. Some stared at them with unchecked rudeness; one or two curtseyed or tugged at their forelocks. The happiest of all was sitting on the breastwork (of dry earth) eating a small turnip from which he had cut the dirt and rind with a rusty table-knife. As they passed he grinned and pushed the turnip in their faces, as much as to say, “Have a bite.” Two or three women looked out after they had gone by, and then some one cried, “Baa!” making a noise like a sheep, at which the girl who led them flushed up, and walked very quickly, with scorn and rage, and hatred flashing in her eye. It was a taunt. Her father was in gaol for lamb-stealing. Her name was Aholibah, and they taunted her by dwelling on the last syllable.
The path went to the top of the hill, and round under a red barn, and now they could see the village, of which these detached cottages were an outpost, scattered over the slope, and on the plain on the other side of the coombe, a quarter of a mile distant.
“There’s the windmill,” said the girl, pointing to the tower-like building. “You go tow-ward he. He be on the road. Then you turn to the right till you comes to the handing-post. Then you go to the left, and that’ll take ’ee straight whoam.”
“Thank you,” said Bevis. “I know now; it’s not far to Big Jack’s house. Please have this sixpence,” and he gave her the coin, which he had unconsciously held in his hand ever since he had taken it out to pay for the gooseberries. It was all he had; he could not keep his money.
She took it, but her eyes were on him, and not on the money; she would have liked to have kissed him. She watched them till she saw they had got into the straight road, and then went back, but not past the cottages.
They found the road very long, very long and dull, and dusty and empty, except that there was a young labourer—a huge fellow—lying across a flint heap asleep, his mouth open and the flies thick on his forehead. Bevis pulled a spray from the hedge and laid it gently across his face. Except for the sleeping labourer, the road was vacant, and every step they took they went slower and slower. There were no lions here, or monstrous pythons, or anything magic.
“We shall never get home,” said Mark.
“I don’t believe we ever shall,” said Bevis; “I hate this road.”
While they yawned and kicked at stray flints, or pelted the sparrows on the hedge, a dog-cart came swiftly up behind them. It ran swift and smooth and even balanced, the slender shafts bending slightly like the spars of a yacht.
It was drawn by a beautiful chestnut mare, too powerful by far for many, which struck out with her fore-feet as if measuring space and carrying the car of a god in the sky, throwing her feet as if there were no road but elastic air beneath them. The man was very tall and broad and sat upright—a wonderful thing in a countryman. His head was broad like himself, his eyes blue, and he had a long thick yellowy beard. The reins were strained taut like a yacht’s cordage, but the mare was in the hollow of his strong hand.
They did not hear the hoofs till he was close, for they were on a flint heap, searching for the best to throw.
“It’s Jack,” said Mark.
Jack looked them very hard in the face, but it did not seem to dawn upon him who they were till he had gone past a hundred yards, and then he pulled up and beckoned. He said nothing but tapped the seat beside him. Bevis climbed up in front, Mark knelt on the seat behind—so as to look in the direction they were going. They drove two miles and Jack said nothing, then he spoke:—
“Where have you been?”
“To Calais.”
“Bad—bad,” said Jack. “Don’t go there again.” At the turnpike it took him three minutes to find enough to pay the toll. He had a divine mare, his harness, his cart were each perfect. Yet for all his broad shoulders he could barely muster up a groat. He pulled up presently when there were but two fields between them and the house at Longcot; he wanted to go down the lane, and they alighted to walk across the fields. After they had got down and were just turning to mount the gate, and the mare obeying the reins had likewise half turned. Jack said,—
“Hum!”
“Yes,” said Mark from the top bar.
“How are they all at home?” i.e. at Mark’s.
“Quito well,” said Mark.
“All?” said Jack again.
“Frances bruised her arm—”
“Much?” anxiously.
“You can’t see it—her skin’s like a plum,” said Mark; “if you just pinch it it shows.”
“Hum!” and Jack was gone.
Late in the evening they tried hard to catch the donkey, that Mark might ride home. It was not far, but now the day was over he was very tired, so too was Bevis. Tired as they were, they chased the donkey up and down—six times as far as it was to Mark’s house—but in vain, the moke knew them of old, and was not to be charmed or cowed. He showed them his heels, and they failed. So Mark stopped and slept with Bevis, as he had done so many times before. As they lay awake in the bedroom, looking out of the window opposite at a star, half awake and half asleep, suddenly Bevis started up on his arm.
“Let’s have a war,” he said.
“That would be first-rate,” said Mark, “and have a great battle.”
“An awful battle,” said Bevis, “the biggest and most awful ever known.”
“Like Waterloo?” said Mark.
“Pooh!”
“Agincourt?”
“Pooh!”
“Mal—Mal,” said Mark, trying to think of Malplaquet.
“Oh! more than anything,” said Bevis; “somebody will have to write a history about it.”
“Shall we wear armour?”
“That would be bow and arrow time. Bows and arrows don’t make any banging.”
“No more they do. It wants lots of banging and smoke—else its nothing.”
“No; only chopping and sticking.”
“And smashing and yelling.”
“No—and that’s nothing.”
“Only if we have rifles,” said Mark thoughtfully; “you see, people don’t see one another; they are so far off, and nobody stands on a bridge and keeps back all the enemy all by himself.”
“And nobody has a triumph afterwards with elephants and chariots, and paints his face vermilion.”
“Let’s have bow and arrow time,” said Mark; “it’s much nicer—and you sell the prisoners for slaves and get heaps of money, and do just as you like, and plough up the cities that don’t please you.”
“Much nicer,” said Bevis; “you very often kill all the lot and there’s nothing silly. I shall be King Richard and have a battle-axe—no, let’s be the Normans.”
“Wouldn’t King Arthur do?”
“No; he was killed, that would be stupid. I’ve a great mind to be Charlemagne.”
“Then I shall be Roland.”
“No; you must be a traitor.”
“But I want to fight your side,” said Mark.
“How many are there we can get to make the war?”
They consulted, and soon reckoned up fourteen or fifteen.
“It will be jolly awful,” said Mark; “there will be heaps of slain.”
“Let’s have Troy,” said Bevis.
“That’s too slow,” said Mark; “it lasted ten years.”
“Alexander the Great—let’s see; whom did he fight?”
“I don’t know; people nobody ever heard of—nobody particular, Indians and Persians and all that sort.”
“I know,” said Bevis; “of course! I know. Of course I shall be Julius Caesar!”
“And I shall be Mark Antony.”
“And we will fight Pompey.”
“But who shall be Pompey?” said Mark.
“Pooh! there’s Bill, and Wat, and Ted; anybody will do for Pompey.”