The net result of this escapade was distinctly advantageous – it gave me a sort of status in the school and enabled me to shake off finally my sense of inferiority.
My life still remained sufficiently exciting, and I had my little adventures frequently enough to save me from a feeling of stagnation.
One of these was perhaps serious enough to merit being placed on record. Among my many rambles in forbidden places my favourite haunt was the quarries where men were at work blasting the rocks.
I soon found out where they stored their blasting powder (black) and also found how to get at the store and help myself to the precious substance unobserved. With this I used to carry out very interesting experiments in small blasting operations on my own.
Somehow or another – I cannot remember how – I became possessed of some fine grain black sporting powder. This I proceeded to use in the same way as my blasting powder, but of course it burnt much more rapidly; in fact, with the short trail I laid, the explosion was almost instantaneous. I hadn’t time to jump out of the way before the charge went off practically in my face.
It is an extraordinary thing how quickly one’s nerves move by instinct. In the fiftieth part of a second, I suppose, I must have shut my eyes and so saved my sight. But my eyebrows and eyelashes were burnt off, and my face was as black as a nigger’s. It hurt a good deal, but it hurt much more having to wash the black off my scorched skin in salt water on the beach. But it had to be done. To have returned to school with that face would have been to confess my sins.
I had to be treated in hospital, but was soon all right again. In explaining the extraordinary condition of my face I invented some plausible tale in connection with the burning of a newspaper while drawing up the fire in one of the class-rooms. It went down all right. At any rate they kindly accepted that version of the affair and said no more about it.
I had some conscience even at that early age and I tried to persuade that censorious part of my make-up that I had not really told a proper lie because the damage had been caused by fire – in a sort of way – and my skin was really burnt – in a manner of speaking.
CHAPTER III
‘STALKY & CO.’
I CANNOT remember exactly when Kipling or Beresford came to the school, but I suppose it was in my third year, which would be about 1878.
We eventually shared a study together, but must have formed our first alliance long before that time. The greater part of our ‘study’ period was passed together, but not all. There were changes in the combination at one time or another, the details of which I cannot recall.
From the details I have given of my life up to this point, it will be realized that I had gained some considerable experience, and had probably a good deal of skill in manoeuvre, coupled with other traits that might give promising results when combined with the precociously mature mentality of Kipling and the subtle ingenuity of Beresford.
I am sure we were not posing, and we were not setting out merely to defy authority, but almost unconsciously I am afraid that was our attitude. We must have been heartily disliked by both masters and senior boys – and with entire justification.
The first effect the combination had on me was to improve my taste in literature. The period of Ned Kelly and Jack Harkaway was succeeded by Ruskin, Carlyle, and Walt Whitman.
We did a good deal of reading, hidden away in our hut in the middle of the densest patch of furze-bushes, or in a tiny room we hired from one of the cottagers. Our various huts were mostly ‘out of bounds’, but the secret entrance to them was sometimes in bounds, in which case one ran no risk of capture on entering or leaving. And capture in the hut itself was practically impossible. The furze-thicket was on a steep slope, the tunnel of approach between the prickly stems of the bushes was only just wide enough to admit a boy. A grown-up endeavouring to approach from above could only do so (as we did) by pushing through the furze-bushes and moving down backwards. Progress in this way was slow, and grunts and exclamations when contact was obtained with healthy furze-prickles gave notice long before the danger could be at all acute.
Approached from below, things were easier, but for that reason we never made our main road in that direction; the little track there was only an emergency exit and quite impossible for a full-sized man to negotiate.
The joy of a hut was manifold. It was out of bounds; it was one spot in the world out of reach of grown-ups. Then there was the joy of construction. Finally, there was the joy of smoking, often ending in the misery of being sick. Reading to ourselves or out loud was our only recreation, and the hatching of plots against people who had ‘incurred our odium’. The Confessions of a Thug was one of the books we read aloud, and Walt Whitman we thoroughly enjoyed in the same way. You can’t get the real effect out of W. W. in any other way. Fors Clavigera and Sartor Resartus and other works we absorbed in silence, broken only by occasional comments.
I can’t remember why on earth we hired that little room from ‘Rabbit’s-eggs’, but I suppose it was in the winter and our outdoor haunts were damp and uncomfortable. I call it a room, but I fancy it must really have been something more in the nature of a pigsty. But whatever it was, we cleaned it up and had the same joy in its occupancy as we had in our hut – the feeling of security and escape from tyranny. We did some cooking over a methylated spirit-lamp – the usual brews of cocoa and tea, and occasional odds and ends that a kindly fate had put in our way on our travels.
Old Gregory, from whom we hired this room, was a rather dull-witted peasant who was frequently under the influence of drink. His nickname of ‘Rabbit’s-eggs’ was due to his having offered for sale six partridge eggs which he stoutly maintained were ‘rabbut’s aigs’. He genuinely believed them to be so. He was passing a clump of bushes when a rabbit ran out of them, and for some reason or another he peered into the bushes, and there, sure enough, were the six eggs, obviously the produce of the rabbit!
He was inclined to be quarrelsome in his cups and possessed a dreadful vocabulary of the very worst expletives, which gave rise to his secondary nickname of ‘Scoffer’. These were traits that could obviously be used to advantage if handled judiciously.
We were given the privilege of a study about 1880. It was conceded to us rather reluctantly, though, as a matter of fact, we were just the sort of people who could get the greatest advantage out of such a privilege.
We took great pains over the æsthetic adornment of our study, the scheme being based on olive-green, and some grey-blue paint with which we did some remarkable stencilling. Curio shops at Bideford furnished us with quaint fragments of old oak-carving, ancient prints, and some good, but damaged, pieces of old china.
Finance was difficult. We were none of us very plentifully supplied with funds, and after the first month of term bankruptcy generally stared us in the face. On emergency the sale of a suit of clothes filled the gap, and we devised many similar expedients to tide us over a bad time.
At our most severe crisis, when the larder was quite empty, I made a useful discovery. In playing about with the fire I found by chance that used tea-leaves placed on a hot shovel crinkle back into their original shapes and look as if they had never been used. It was easy to turn this discovery to our immediate advantage. I did up about half a pound of tea-leaves in this way and put them back into their original package. Then I visited the study below and exchanged them for about half the proper tea-value of cocoa.
They returned the tea with threats on the following day, but in the meantime we had swallowed the cocoa. Peace was restored by our confession and an offer to regard the cocoa as a loan to be repaid when funds were available.
We did not spend much of our money on tobacco, because our smoking was really more bravado than pleasure. A clay pipe and an ounce of shag last a very long time. During one term we revelled in big cigars, or they revelled in us.