Chapter 4

Chimp mumbled that he did. He was eating with more enjoyment than he ever had eaten in his life. Ambrosia was nothing to bloater paste.

'It is wonderful--our tastes coincide in everything,' said the elderly man as he entered the cave again. He returned with a tin of pears and some marmalade, a jug of water and a glass. Then he sat on a camp stool and observed his guest.

It was not until Chimp was well forward with the pears that his host spoke again. 'I am sorry, Alexander Joseph Chemmle,' he said, 'to have kept you waiting so long, for I take it that this is not your customary appetite--that you were, in fact, unusually, if not painfully, hungry. But I was so interested by the sight of a real boy that I could think of nothing else. You see, I have never met with a boy before.'

Chimp opened his eyes as wide almost as his mouth. 'But,' he began in his astonishment, 'they are as common as dirt, boys are. There's heaps of them--loads.'

'True,' the other made answer, 'true. But when one abandons the world, and, embracing the profession of the eremite, devotes one's life to solitude and reflection, one is deprived of the pleasure of intercourse with so attractive a personality as that of the average boy.'

'Ye-es,' dubiously from Chimp. 'But,' he added, 'you were a boy yourself once.'

'No,' the Hermit made reply. 'Never.'

'Never a boy!' Chimp exclaimed. 'Well, that beats everything.'

'Never,' repeated the recluse. 'You see,' he remarked in explanation, 'I was articled by my parents to a hermit at a very tender age--to the learned man, in fact, who preceded me in the tenancy of this modest cell. We plunged immediately into the fascinating study of metaphysics, and the period of boyhood slipped by unnoticed.'

Chimp whistled,--he had no words adequate to the occasion.

'For many years,' the Hermit continued, 'I did not feel the loss of this experience, being deeply engrossed in other subjects; but now, in the fall of life, I find myself regretting it keenly. Much as I love my studies, much as I am attached to the solitary life, I sometimes think it a finer thing to have been a boy even than to have been a hermit.'

Chimp thought it would be kind of him to say something cheery, yet could hit upon nothing but, 'Oh no, not at all,' just as if the Hermit had apologised for treading on his toe; yet it seemed to please the old man.

'However,' he broke off, 'this is by the way. Come, Alexander Joseph Chemmle, tell me about your adventures; how did you find your way to this island? How is it you are alone? Tell me everything.'

Chimp, wincing a little at the appalling formality of the Hermit's mode of address, began. By the time his story was finished it was evening, for the Hermit asked numberless questions which sent Chimp off on numberless side tracks of narrative. At the end of the recital the bloater paste was produced again, and Chimp again ate heartily.

'Now,' said the Hermit, 'I will show you something of the island.'

So saying, he took his staff and they set forth. First they visited the spring whence the Hermit brought water, and then climbing to a peak of rock, the Hermit described the island as it lay beneath them.

'There,' said he finally, indicating the little creek to which the footpath led, 'that is where the boat lands that once a year brings me my provisions. It puts off from my Aunt Amelia's yacht--_The Tattooed Quaker_. My Aunt Amelia is the only relative that remains to me. It is she who supplies the tinned meats and the pears. She really has admirable taste, although her choice in names may be a little fantastic. In addition to the provisions, it is my aunt's custom to send a letter beseeching me to return in the yacht to England, and declaring that if I do not, that particular supply of food will be the last. For forty years she has done this. She is a noble woman, my Aunt Amelia.'

'When is the boat due?' Chimp asked, thinking more of its possible effect upon himself than upon the Hermit.

'Soon, soon,' the old man replied, with something very like a sigh. 'In a fortnight's time, in fact.'

'What a pity!' said Chimp. 'And I say, sir,' he added, 'how decent to be you. Only there ought to be some niggers.'

The Hermit sighed. They walked back without speaking, and not ten minutes had passed before Chimp was sound asleep in a corner of the cave, while the Hermit lay gazing at the stars.

On awaking, Chimp found that the cave was empty. For a moment he thought himself still dreaming, but the table laid for breakfast recalled him to facts, and he fell to thinking of the Hermit. 'Rum old beggar!' he mused. 'A screw loose somewhere, I guess.' When the Hermit returned, it was plain that the old man had something on his mind, as the saying is. He spoke not at all at breakfast, except, when laying the table, to remark that potted ham and chicken make a pleasing variety upon bloater paste. But after breakfast, placing one seat in the shade for Chimp and one for himself, he talked.

'I have been thinking deeply, Alexander Joseph Chemmle,' he began. 'During the night I have reviewed my life, and now more than ever I am conscious of the limiting influence exerted upon a philosopher by the loss of boyhood. The suspicion has been with me for years: it is now a certainty. You are not likely, my young friend, to be with me long, for _The Tattooed Quaker_ will, of course, carry you back to England next week. But in the intervening time I want you, so far as is within your power, to make a boy of me. I put myself unreservedly in your hands. Consider me your apprentice. Will you do this?' The Hermit watched Chimp's face anxiously.

Chimp was staggered completely. A screw loose, he had thought; but surely it was the height of madness for a man to wish to be a boy again. Chimp and his companions spent a large part of their time in wishing to be men: the other side was not to be believed. But he pulled himself together with the thought that to humour this old lunatic might be funny, and would last only a week. After all, to find a cracked man on the island was better than to find no man at all, now that Ballantyne had been proved to be so wrong. And just then the boy caught a glimpse of the Hermit's anxious eager eyes. 'All right,' he said quickly, 'I'm game. But it'll be rather difficult, you know.'

'Difficult!' exclaimed the Hermit, with an expression of mingled pain and alarm. 'How? Not seriously, I trust?'

'Oh no!' said Chimp; 'but you're rather old, you see, and boys are not in the habit of wearing beards three feet long; although,' he added encouragingly, noting the look of disappointment on the Hermit's face, 'I don't see why they shouldn't. Why, there was a fellow at our school who had whiskers before he was fourteen, and we shaved them too. Tied him down and cut off one side one day and the other the next. After that he bought a razor.'

'Is--is that action typical of the boy?' the Hermit asked.

'Well, they get up to larks now and then,' Chimp admitted.

'As time is short,' said the Hermit, 'I am disposed to begin this morning--at once. That is not too soon for you, I hope, Alexander Joseph Ch----?'

'Oh, please don't,' Chimp interrupted. 'You know, boys don't call each other by all their names like that; they either stick to the last one or invent a nickname.'

'I am sorry to have hurt your feelings,' said the Hermit. 'If you will tell me your nickname I will call you by it.'

'I think,' replied Chimp, unwilling to explain his own, 'that perhaps we'd better begin now and give each other fresh ones.'

'Very well,' said the Hermit, after a minute's thought, 'I shall call you Simian, or, for the sake of brevity, Sim.'

'Simeon?' cried Chimp. 'Oh, that's not the thing at all! A nickname should describe a fellow, you know--it shouldn't be just another ordinary name.'

'Yes,' replied his apprentice, 'and I mean to call you Sim, an abbreviation of Simian. And what will you call me?'

Chimp pondered awhile. 'I shall call you,' he said at length, 'Billykins, because of your long goat's beard.'

And thus began the Hermit's apprenticeship.

'It is too hot for footer,' said Chimp, after he had collected his thoughts, 'so we will make a start with a little cricket practice. Cricket,' he explained, 'is a game--the best game in the world. You ought to see W. G. and Ranji. But of course you don't know who they are. Oh dear, oh dear, what you are missing out here! W. G., that's W. G. Grace, the champion of the world. Your beard, Billykins, must have been rather like his a few years ago. And Ranji, that's Ranjitsinhji.'

'Yes, yes,' the Hermit remarked feebly, depressed by the weight of his stupendous ignorance.

Chimp went on with fine authority. 'Now, while I am cramming this sock with stuff to make a ball, you be sharpening these sticks for wickets. You've got a knife, I suppose?'

The Hermit admitted that he had not.

'What!' cried Chimp; 'no knife? Why, you'll never be a boy without a knife. Let me look at your pockets?'

The Hermit had but one pocket, and a handkerchief was all it held.

'Awfully clean,' was Chimp's contemptuous comment. 'And nothing else? Oh, this will never do! Look at mine now,' and turning out his pockets, he displayed a double-bladed knife containing several implements, including a corkscrew and an attachment for extracting stones from horses' feet, a piece of string, a watch spring, twenty or thirty shot, a button, a magnet, a cog-wheel, a pencil, a match-box, a case of foreign stamps all stuck together with salt water, a whistle, a halfpenny with a hole in it, and a soaked and swollen cigar which the Captain had given him.

'Are all these things quite necessary?' the Hermit asked humbly.

'No,' said Chimp, 'not quite all. The knife is, and the string is, and a fellow likes his smoke, you know. Collecting stamps is rather decent, but you needn't unless you want to. There's butterflies and birds' eggs, if you like. The other things are useful: the more you have the better for you.'

'String,' said the Hermit, 'I possess--but no pocket-knife. But if you permit it, I will carry my table-knife in future. 'Tis a simple weapon, I know: but on the other hand you see that on this island the opportunities of extracting stones from horses' hoofs are rare.'

'I suppose it must do,' said Chimp doubtfully. 'But you must add a few other things, or we shan't have anything to swap. Boys are great at swapping, you know.'

'Swapping?' the Hermit asked.

'Yes: when you want one thing, giving another for it. For instance, if you had a white rat' (the Hermit shuddered) 'and I gave you a brass cannon for it, that would be a swap.'

'Very well,' the Hermit replied seriously, 'I will add a few things; but, if you don't mind, not rats of any colour, nor in fact any live stock.'

'Just as you like,' said the magnanimous Chimp. 'You wouldn't do for Billy Lincolne though: he usually carries half a dozen frogs in his trousers' pockets.'

When the cricket gear was complete, Chimp stepped out twenty-two yards and pitched the stumps. 'You go in first,' he said.

The Hermit seized the bat.

'Now all you have to do at first,' Chimp continued, 'is to keep the ball out of the wicket. Hit it any way you like, and hold your bat straight.'

The Hermit obeyed to the letter. To Chimp's intense astonishment he punished the bowling all round, pulling off balls to square leg in a shameless fashion.

Chimp was kept busy, and at last he grew almost vexed. 'Well, you mayn't have much science,' he cried, as, nearly out of breath, he flung himself down after some miles of running, 'but you've got a gorgeous eye. Why, you hit everything. You've played before, haven't you?' he added suspiciously.

The Hermit smiled again. 'A little,' he admitted. 'Yes, my late instructor, the sage to whom I was confided by my parents many, many years ago, he and I occasionally had a game together. It was our only recreation. I thought it hardly worth while to mention it, expecting that all skill had left me.'

'By jingo! though, it hasn't,' Chimp exclaimed. 'You're a regular W. G. in your way. But, I say, another time you know how to do a thing you might let a fellow know first.'

'This is too silly,' was Chimp's persistent thought during the next few days, but he kept up the game of make-believe like a hero. As a matter of fact, it was sound amusement to explore the island and plunge on sudden impulses into a score of high-spirited enterprises, although the presence of the old man panting at his side touched him rather sadly now and then. The Hermit, however, endured stolidly and pluckily, and neither of them ever let the time appear to drag.

Chimp and his apprentice bathed together, and hunted for anemones among the rocks; they gave chase to butterflies and lizards; they told stories; they even pretended to be Robinson Crusoe and Friday, the part of Friday falling to the Hermit.

'You see, Billykins,' Chimp said, 'you are better suited to the part: you can make such a whacking footprint.'

'I think I am progressing well, Simian,' remarked Chimp's apprentice at breakfast one morning, 'although I must admit that many impulses and movements that come naturally to you are acquired by me with difficulty. Last evening's attempt at leap-frog, for example, has left me so stiff that I can hardly move, and I assure you that it has never before occurred to me to climb that tree all the years I have known it. Perhaps in a week or so, when my hands are healed, I may try again. But I can see, Sim, that it must be very good to be a boy--very, very good.'

'Why yes, Billykins,' Chimp broke in, 'but you don't know really anything about it yet. And I'm afraid you can't know on this island. There isn't the company and there isn't the means. I can't even make you an apple-pie bed, when you sleep in a single blanket; and a booby-trap needs a door. And when there are only two people, and no one else to laugh, it's no fun to stick a cactus in a fellow's chair. Tuck, too! What do you know about tuck? What can you know about tuck when there's no shop for chocolate and Turkish Delight and things like that? Tinned stuff is all very well, but it gets jolly tedious. And birds'-nesting, and ratting, and setting night lines, and dodging game-keepers, and breaking into orchards! You haven't even elastic to make a catty with, or so simple a contrivance as a fish-hook. Still we might rig up a bow and arrow.'

'But,' the Hermit objected, 'there is nothing to shoot.'

'Oh yes!' said Chimp, 'sea-gulls.'

'We can't eat sea-gulls,' his apprentice replied. Then anxiously, 'Boys don't eat sea-gulls, do they?'

'Why, no, Billykins; but that isn't the thing. Bringing them down is the thing. It's sport.'

That evening after tea, Chimp approached his apprentice with a troubled expression.

'I think I ought to tell you, Billykins,' he goaded himself to say, 'that some boys fall in love. Not all, mind. I never did it myself--I think it's footle--but lots and lots do. I suppose you'd like to try it, you're so thorough; though I don't see how you're going to manage exactly.'

'You mean,' said the Hermit, 'on an island so poor in opportunities? Yes, it would be difficult. Still, give me the outline.'

'Well, Billykins, it isn't very clear,' said Chimp. 'I believe though, that the fellow feels sort of jolly inside while it's going on. But it never lasts long.'

'And it's not compulsory?' the Hermit asked in some trepidation.

'Oh no, Billy, not at all.'

'Then we will dismiss love along with sport,' was the Hermit's decision.

Thus, in games and rambles and conversation, the time passed by, until it was the evening before the day that would bring _The Tattooed Quaker_, and Chimp and his apprentice were sitting before the cave, watching the sinking sun.

'Well,' said the Hermit, 'only a few more hours, Sim, and you will be on the way home again. Then I must to work once more. My great work on Man and his place in Society, scientifically considered, awaits me. But I shall miss you, Sim,' the old man added; 'you have been a very pleasant chapter in my life. Don't forget me altogether, will you; and you'll pay my Aunt Amelia a visit, won't you, and tell her about me?'

Chimp had a little difficulty in replying. He felt girlish, that is to say, gulpy and tearful. At last, 'Why don't you come back too?' he asked.

'I?' said the Hermit. 'Oh no, there is no place for Hermits in your country.'

'I don't know about that,' said Chimp, speaking more naturally again. 'You might make a lot of money showing yourself in caravans at fairs. People would go miles to see a hermit. I paid a penny once to see a fat woman, and there was no end of a squash in the tent. You must come. I'll take you to my uncle's, where I live in the vacs. and Jim--that's my cousin--Jim and me'll give you a ripping time.'

The Hermit smiled sadly. 'No, no,' he said. After a short silence he spoke again. 'Tell me, Sim--I ask merely out of curiosity--are boys always contented with their surroundings?'

'Not by a long chalk,' Chimp answered. 'They're always running away.'

'Ah!' said the Hermit. 'How often have you run away?'

'Well, not at all, so far,' said Chimp, 'although Goring minor and I did get all ready to bunk once, only Mother Porker copped us on the landing. But we meant it, I can tell you. We were going to walk to Portsmouth, sleeping under hay ricks, and hide ourselves as stowaways on board a man-of-war, and show up when we got to sea, and do something heroic to please the Captain, and after that win loads of prize-money and come back covered with glory. Boys often do that in books. But old Mother Porker copped us on the landing.'

'Bed-time,' said the Hermit.

When they rose the next morning, there, in the offing, heading straight for the island, was _The Tattooed Quaker_. They hurried to the peak, and the Hermit waved his handkerchief. The signal was seen on deck, and an answering flag scurried up to the mast-head. After breakfast Chimp and his apprentice walked down to the creek to welcome the yacht's boat.

The Captain looked at Chimp in amazement. 'What, Master Augustus!' he said when he had shaken hands with the Hermit and delivered Aunt Amelia's letter, 'what! have you got a pupil, then?'

'No,' replied the Hermit, 'he's not my pupil, he's your passenger'; and so saying, he introduced Chimp, and then stood aside to see what his aunt had to say; while the crew waited for the Captain's orders to move the stores from the boat to the cave.

When the Hermit had finished reading, he returned the letter to its envelope and slipped it into his pocket.

'Well, Master Augustus, are you coming back with us?' said the Captain, exactly as he had asked the question for the past forty years.

The Hermit laughed in negative reply, exactly as he had laughed once a year for the past forty years.

'Now then, my men, be quick,' said the Captain.

In the boat was a large hamper in which to convey the stores over the rocks to the cave. Two of the sailors held it at each end, and the Hermit accompanied them, while Chimp and the Captain strolled away together. Three times the hamper was borne from the boat to the cell. There then remained only a dozen or so of parcels, which the men might easily carry in their hands. This time the Hermit did not accompany them.

When the last of the stores were safely within the cave the boatswain blew his whistle as a signal that all was ready, and Chimp and the Captain of _The Tattooed Quaker_ hurried back to the creek.

'Where is Master Augustus?' the Captain inquired. 'The young gentleman wants to say good-bye to him.'

'He must be in the cave,' said Chimp. 'I'll run and see.'

But the cave was empty. Chimp climbed the rock before the entrance and called, 'Bi-i-illykins, Bi-i-illykins!' No answer. 'I must have missed him on his way back to the creek,' he thought, and hurried to the shore again.

'Be quick!' cried the Captain. 'Time's up!'

'But I can't find him,' Chimp called, floundering from boulder to boulder.

'Can't find him?' echoed the Captain. 'That's very rum. I suppose he wants to avoid the pain of parting. Come along; we can't stay any longer now.'

So with a heavy heart Chimp took his place in the boat and watched how with every stroke of the oars the distance widened between himself and the island.

'Weigh the anchor!' cried the Captain, the moment they were on board.

_The Tattooed Quaker_ was a superb yacht, and in the ardour of exploration Chimp forgot the Hermit and everything else. He examined the cabin and the berths, he made friends with the steward, he descended into the lazarette, where peering into the refrigerator, he found half a game pie, and forthwith devoured it. He conversed learnedly with the engineers about the size of the cylinders; he decided which hammock would best minister to his own comfort; he overhauled the Captain's stock of books, and by the time these duties were accomplished _The Tattooed Quaker_ was well out to sea, and the island was only a thin line on the horizon. And then a feeling of sadness for the loss of poor old Billykins, left there all alone again, took hold of the boy, and he retired dismally to his hammock to mope.

After dinner, however, at which meal he revived marvellously, he was in gay enough spirits to tell the story of the Hermit's apprenticeship. The Captain was in ecstasies. 'What a yarn for the old lady!' he remarked again and again. 'What a yarn!'

Suddenly, as they sat in the darkling cabin, there appeared in the doorway a figure which seemed in the gloom to resemble an elderly man with a long grey beard.

'Mercy! What's that?' the Captain shouted, leaping from his chair and drawing back. 'Who are you? What do you want?'

The figure took a step into the room. 'Simian,' it said, 'don't you recognise me?'

'Why, it's Billykins!' cried Chimp, running forward and seizing the Hermit's hand.

'Great Heavens! Master Augustus!' exclaimed the Captain. 'Where did you spring from?'

'From the hamper!' said the Hermit.

Chimp and the Captain stared at each other for a moment, and then--'What!' roared the Captain, 'a stowaway! Well, you're something like an apprentice, you are!' And he smote the table till the ship trembled, and laughed like the north wind.

The Hermit waited patiently till the storm abated, while Chimp gazed at him in wonderment and admiration.

Then, in the lulls of the Captain's merriment, he explained. 'You see,' he said, 'this boy has changed me considerably. I see things with new eyes. And when I was standing there by the boat, the desire to run away and be for ever quit of the island and solitude came strongly upon me.'

'Oh, what a model apprentice!' the Captain exclaimed.

'So,' continued the Hermit, a little abashed, 'well--so I crawled into the hamper.'

'Hooray!' cried Chimp; it's splendid. But aren't you hungry?'

'Hungry?' said the Captain, 'I should think he is. Steward!' he called, 'bring some supper for Master Augustus.'

The steward came running into the cabin and stood transfixed--all eyes. His appearance set the Captain off again; 'Don't be scared,' he said; 'he's alive, right enough.'

'I didn't see the gentleman come aboard,' the steward found words to say.

'No,' said the Captain, 'no more didn't I. No more didn't no one. Master Augustus has his own way of coming aboard.'

At this the Hermit laughed too, and the spell being broken, the steward brought supper as to a man of flesh and blood.

'So I'm a runaway, Sim,' the Hermit said cheerily when he had finished; 'and there was no Mother Porker to catch me on the landing.'

'Catch you? No! You're A1 at it!' Chimp replied.

'Yes,' resumed the Hermit, stretching his limbs, 'we're going to be comrades again. But when we're in England, mind, no fairs, Sim, no caravans.'

Chimp laughed.

'And we'll go and see Ranji,' said the Hermit.

THE END

The Dumpy Books for Children.

Selected by E. V. LUCAS.

I. THE FLAMP, THE AMELIORATOR, AND THE SCHOOLBOY'S APPRENTICE, _by E. V. LUCAS_