Sappers and Miners The Flood beneath the Sea

Excerpt

Bass for Breakfast.

“Have some more bass, Gwyn?”

“Please, father.”

“You should not speak with your mouth full, my dear,” said Mrs Pendarve, quietly.

“No, mother; but I didn’t like to keep father waiting.”

“And between the two stools you came to the ground, eh?” said Colonel Pendarve, smiling. “Never mind; hold your plate. Lucky for us, my dear, that we have only one boy. This fellow eats enough for three.”

“Well, but, father, we were down by the boat at daybreak, and the sea air makes one so hungry.”

“Say ravenous or wolfish, my boy. But go on. It certainly is a delicious fish, and Dolly has cooked it to a turn. They were rising fairly, then?”

“Yes, father; we rowed right out to the race, off the point, and for ever so long we didn’t see a fish and sat there with our rods ready.”

Gwyn talked away, but with his mouth rather full of fried bass and freshly-baked bread all the same.

“And of course it was of no use to try till a shoal began to feed.”

“Not a bit, father,—and Joe said we might as well come back; but when the sun rose they were breaking all round us, and for half-an-hour we kept hooking them at nearly every throw. Come and see the rest of my catch; they’re such beauties, as bright as salmon.”

“That’s right, but don’t let any of them be wasted. Keep what you want, mamma, dear, and give the others away. What did you use—a big fly?”

“No, father, those tiny spoon-baits. They come at them with a rush. Then they left off biting all at once, and—some more coffee, please, mother—and we rowed back home, and met Captain Hardock on the pier.”

“Ah, did you?”

“Yes, father; and we gave him two pairs of fine ones, and he said they looked as bright as newly-run tin.”

“Humph! Yes, that man thinks of nothing else but tin.”

“And he began about it again this morning, father,” said Gwyn, eagerly.

“Indeed!” said Colonel Pendarve; and Gwyn’s mother looked up inquiringly from behind the silver coffee-urn.

“Yes, father,” said Gwyn, helping himself to more fresh, yellow Cornish butter and honey. “He said what a pity it was that you did not adventure over the old Ydoll mine and make yourself a rich man, instead of letting it lie wasting on your estate.”

“My estate!” said the Colonel, smiling at his wife—“a few score acres of moorland and rock on the Cornish coast!”

“But he says, father, he is sure that the old mine is very rich.”

“And that I am very poor, Gwyn, and that it would be nice for me to make a place for a mining captain out of work.”

“But you will not attempt anything of the kind, my dear,” said Mrs Pendarve, anxiously.

“I don’t think, so, my dear. We have no money to spare for speculating, and I don’t think an old Indian cavalry officer on half-pay is quite the man to attempt such a thing.”

“But old Hardock said you were, father, and that you and Major Jollivet ought to form a little company of your own, and that he knows he could make the mine pay wonderfully.”

“Yes,” said the Colonel, drily, “that’s exactly what he would say, but I don’t think much of his judgment....