A Drake by George! - The Original Classic Edition. Trevena John

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СКАЧАТЬ that the Star had been made to order by his village blacksmith, when the English Duke chimed in, 'And he's wearing one of my cast-off coats!' At this point the manuscript breaks off abruptly.

       "That's the true English history of this old Star, which I purchased for sixpence from a sailor in whose family it had been an heir-loom for the last two hundred years."

       "Ain't that wonderful!" exclaimed a lady.

       "It do seem to make they old kings and Druid volk wonderful clear avore us," murmured the Yellow Leaf.

       The Captain led his guests into the garden, while George, after laboriously collecting a handful of dead flies, followed, ready to support his uncle if necessary, but still more anxious to support himself.

       "My cats are famous," said the Captain, approaching a building which had been once a stable, and was now divided into two compartments; one with a wired front for use in summer; the other closed and kept warm for winter quarters. "I have now succeeded in obtaining a highly scientific animal, combining the sleek beauty of the pure Persian with the aggressive agility of the British species. For the last twenty years I have supplied cats to the ships of the mercantile marine, and by so doing have saved much of the com-merce of this country; for a single rat will destroy five shillings' worth of perishable cargo in one day; while a single cat of my variety will readily account for fifty rats, not to mention mice innumerable, during the same period. If you will reckon sixty cats, let us say, supplied by me annually, each cat accounting for fifty rats, again not reckoning mice innumerable, every day; if you will add a dozen cats supplied, again by me, to dockyards and custom houses swarming with vermin of every description, each rat doing damage to the extent of some shillings daily, with smaller vermin doing the same according to size and jaw power; if you will add sixty ships to

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       twelve dockyards, and add, let us say, twenty cats supplied from my stock to foreign countries, reckoning in such cases in francs or dollars instead of shillings, and making due allowance for the different tonnage of vessels or dimensions of dockyards, if you will remember I have also supplied most of the cats at present commissioned to kill rats and mice upon the ships of the Royal Navy; and if you will include in your estimate the Grimalkins I have sold, or given, to millers, warehousemen, wholesale grocers, and provision merchants...."

       "I reckon, Captain, that will come to about quarter of a million pounds a year, not taking into account shillings and pence," broke in

       Squinting Jack to free the Captain from his obvious difficulty.

       "That is a moderate estimate; still I will accept it. Quarter of a million pounds annually for twenty years, friends and neighbour! Have

       I not done my part in liquidating the national debt?"

       "Cats aren't what you might call nearly extinct animals same as they unicorns. Us ha' got more home than us knows what to do with," remarked a lady timidly.

       "Us drowns 'em mostly," observed a matron who looked capable of doing it.

       "Not cats like these--the latest triumph of scientific inbreeding," the Captain shouted.

       "Oh no, sir! Ours be bred all nohow," said the timid lady.

       "Don't the monkeys tease 'em, Captain?" asked the Gentle Shepherd.

       "The simians have sufficient intelligence to understand that my felidae are famous for the claws. Beneath that tree," continued the Captain, "about three paces from the side of my nephew, you see the giant tortoise, which is the greatest antiquity that I possess-- next, of course, to the Egyptian mummy. That tortoise, my friends, has lived in this world during the last five hundred years."

       "Ain't that wonderful!" gasped a lady.

       "I captured it upon the beach of one of the Galapagos Islands, where it had just succeeded in laying an egg."

       "Him lay eggs! Then all I can say is he'm the funniest old bird I ever did set eyes on," cried a lady who was famous for her poultry.

       "How did you manage to get hold of his birth certificate, Captain?" asked Squinting Jack.

       "Tortoises live for ever, if you let 'em alone--that's a proverbial fact," stammered the Captain, somewhat taken aback. "You can tell his age by--by merely glancing at his shell. This tortoise has his shell covered with tarpaulin to prevent the newspaper cuttings from being washed off by rain; but if it was removed you would see that the shell is yellow. It is a well known scientific fact that the shell of a tortoise is black during the first century of its life; takes on a bluish tinge for the next two hundred years; and becomes mottled with yellow when it approaches the enormous age of five hundred years."

       "Same as me," said the Yellow Leaf sadly. CHAPTER III

       THE CAPTAIN MAKES HISTORY

       One day George entered the churchyard and set his face towards a big sycamore, with the resolution of setting his back against it. He had been tempted by the wide trunk and smooth bark for a long time; but his attempt to reach the tree failed entirely because it stood upon the unfrequented side of the churchyard, and was surrounded by an entanglement of brambles and nettles some yards in depth.

       Determined to reach that sycamore somehow, George complained to his uncle about the abominable condition of the churchyard; and Captain Drake reprimanded the vicar for "allowing the resting places of our historic dead to become a trackless jungle;" and the vicar once more implored the sexton to give up the public-house; and the sexton declared there were no such blackberries in all the parish as could be gathered from those brambles.

       The matter would have ended there had it not been for Captain Drake, who visited the territory, explored to within fifteen feet of

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       the sycamore, then called a meeting of parishioners and, with the aid of diagrams, showed how the foremost line of nettles was advancing so rapidly in a north-westerly direction as to threaten the main approach to the vestry; while a screen of brambles had already reached a nameless altar tomb whereon the youth of the place by traditional right recorded their initials.

       The seriousness of the weed peril had not been realised until then; as the Dumpy Philosopher remarked, they had all been asleep

       and thus had been taken unprepared; but, when the parishioners did realise it, an army of offence was raised quickly; the nettles were eradicated and the brambles uprooted; that portion of the churchyard was thrown open to the public; and George attained his resting place beside the sycamore.

       He had lounged against it several times before his eyes fell upon an inscription which appeared familiar, although obscured by moss and yellow lichen. As the tombstone was not more than three yards away, he was able to reach it without much difficulty. Reclining upon the turf, he summoned up energy to open his pocketknife and to scrape away the lichen until the full meaning of the discovery burst upon him.

       Later in the day the Yellow Leaf met Squinting Jack, and said, "I saw Mr. Drake running like wildfire down the street this forenoon.

       If I hadn't seen 'en wi' my own eyes, I wouldn't ha' believed it."

       "I saw 'en too wi' my own eyes," replied Squinting Jack. "And still I don't believe it."

       Captain Drake would have run too had there been less of him. George had never been a liar--the poor fellow had no imagination and rarely picked up a newspaper--still his story sounded too impossible to be true. They reached the newly discovered tombstone; the Captain read the inscription; and in a voice trembling with emotion murmured, "Amelia Drake, of Black Anchor СКАЧАТЬ