Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor

by R. D. Blackmore

  CHAPTER VII

  HARD IT IS TO CLIMB

  So many a winter night went by in a hopeful and pleasant manner, withthe hissing of the bright round bullets, cast into the water, and thespluttering of the great red apples which Annie was roasting for me. Wealways managed our evening's work in the chimney of the back-kitchen,where there was room to set chairs and table, in spite of the fireburning. On the right-hand side was a mighty oven, where Bettythreatened to bake us; and on the left, long sides of bacon, made offavoured pigs, and growing very brown and comely. Annie knew the namesof all, and ran up through the wood-smoke, every now and then, when agentle memory moved her, and asked them how they were getting on, andwhen they would like to be eaten. Then she came back with foolish tears,at thinking of that necessity; and I, being soft in a different way,would make up my mind against bacon.

  But, Lord bless you! it was no good. Whenever it came to breakfast-time,after three hours upon the moors, I regularly forgot the pigs, but paidgood heed to the rashers. For ours is a hungry county, if such therebe in England; a place, I mean, where men must eat, and are quick todischarge the duty. The air of the moors is so shrewd and wholesome,stirring a man's recollection of the good things which have betided him,and whetting his hope of something still better in the future, that bythe time he sits down to a cloth, his heart and stomach are tuned toowell to say 'nay' to one another.

  Almost everybody knows, in our part of the world at least, how pleasantand soft the fall of the land is round about Plover's Barrows farm. Allabove it is strong dark mountain, spread with heath, and desolate, butnear our house the valleys cove, and open warmth and shelter. Here aretrees, and bright green grass, and orchards full of contentment, anda man may scarce espy the brook, although he hears it everywhere. Andindeed a stout good piece of it comes through our farm-yard, and swellssometimes to a rush of waves, when the clouds are on the hill-tops. Butall below, where the valley bends, and the Lynn stream comes along withit, pretty meadows slope their breast, and the sun spreads on the water.And nearly all of this is ours, till you come to Nicholas Snowe's land.

  But about two miles below our farm, the Bagworthy water runs intothe Lynn, and makes a real river of it. Thence it hurries away, withstrength and a force of wilful waters, under the foot of a barefacedhill, and so to rocks and woods again, where the stream is covered over,and dark, heavy pools delay it. There are plenty of fish all down thisway, and the farther you go the larger they get, having deeper groundsto feed in; and sometimes in the summer months, when mother could spareme off the farm, I came down here, with Annie to help (because it was solonely), and caught well-nigh a basketful of little trout and minnows,with a hook and a bit of worm on it, or a fern-web, or a blow-fly, hungfrom a hazel pulse-stick. For of all the things I learned at Blundell's,only two abode with me, and one of these was the knack of fishing, andthe other the art of swimming. And indeed they have a very rude mannerof teaching children to swim there; for the big boys take the littleboys, and put them through a certain process, which they grimly call'sheep-washing.' In the third meadow from the gate of the school, goingup the river, there is a fine pool in the Lowman, where the Tauntonbrook comes in, and they call it the Taunton Pool. The water runs downwith a strong sharp stickle, and then has a sudden elbow in it, wherethe small brook trickles in; and on that side the bank is steep, four orit may be five feet high, overhanging loamily; but on the other side itis flat, pebbly, and fit to land upon. Now the large boys take the smallboys, crying sadly for mercy, and thinking mayhap, of their mothers,with hands laid well at the back of their necks, they bring them up tothe crest of the bank upon the eastern side, and make them strip theirclothes off. Then the little boys, falling on their naked knees, blubberupwards piteously; but the large boys know what is good for them, andwill not be entreated. So they cast them down, one after other into thesplash of the water, and watch them go to the bottom first, and thencome up and fight for it, with a blowing and a bubbling. It is a veryfair sight to watch when you know there is little danger, because,although the pool is deep, the current is sure to wash a boy up on thestones, where the end of the depth is. As for me, they had no need tothrow me more than once, because I jumped of my own accord, thinkingsmall things of the Lowman, after the violent Lynn. Nevertheless, Ilearnt to swim there, as all the other boys did; for the greatest pointin learning that is to find that you must do it. I loved the waternaturally, and could not long be out of it; but even the boys who hatedit most, came to swim in some fashion or other, after they had beenflung for a year or two into the Taunton pool.

  But now, although my sister Annie came to keep me company, and was notto be parted from me by the tricks of the Lynn stream, because I put heron my back and carried her across, whenever she could not leap it, ortuck up her things and take the stones; yet so it happened that neitherof us had been up the Bagworthy water. We knew that it brought a goodstream down, as full of fish as of pebbles; and we thought that it mustbe very pretty to make a way where no way was, nor even a bullock camedown to drink. But whether we were afraid or not, I am sure I cannottell, because it is so long ago; but I think that had something to dowith it. For Bagworthy water ran out of Doone valley, a mile or so fromthe mouth of it.

  But when I was turned fourteen years old, and put into goodsmall-clothes, buckled at the knee, and strong blue worsted hosen,knitted by my mother, it happened to me without choice, I may say, toexplore the Bagworthy water. And it came about in this wise.

  My mother had long been ailing, and not well able to eat much; and thereis nothing that frightens us so much as for people to have no love oftheir victuals. Now I chanced to remember that once at the time ofthe holidays I had brought dear mother from Tiverton a jar of pickledloaches, caught by myself in the Lowman river, and baked in the kitchenoven, with vinegar, a few leaves of bay, and about a dozen pepper-corns.And mother had said that in all her life she had never tasted anythingfit to be compared with them. Whether she said so good a thing out ofcompliment to my skill in catching the fish and cooking them, or whethershe really meant it, is more than I can tell, though I quite believethe latter, and so would most people who tasted them; at any rate, Inow resolved to get some loaches for her, and do them in the self-samemanner, just to make her eat a bit.

  There are many people, even now, who have not come to the rightknowledge what a loach is, and where he lives, and how to catch andpickle him. And I will not tell them all about it, because if I did,very likely there would be no loaches left ten or twenty years after theappearance of this book. A pickled minnow is very good if you catch himin a stickle, with the scarlet fingers upon him; but I count him no morethan the ropes in beer compared with a loach done properly.

  Being resolved to catch some loaches, whatever trouble it cost me, I setforth without a word to any one, in the forenoon of St. Valentine'sday, 1675-6, I think it must have been. Annie should not come with me,because the water was too cold; for the winter had been long, and snowlay here and there in patches in the hollow of the banks, like a lady'sgloves forgotten. And yet the spring was breaking forth, as it alwaysdoes in Devonshire, when the turn of the days is over; and though therewas little to see of it, the air was full of feeling.

  It puzzles me now, that I remember all those young impressions so,because I took no heed of them at the time whatever; and yet theycome upon me bright, when nothing else is evident in the gray fogof experience. I am like an old man gazing at the outside of hisspectacles, and seeing, as he rubs the dust, the image of his grandsonplaying at bo-peep with him.

  But let me be of any age, I never could forget that day, and how bittercold the water was. For I doffed my shoes and hose, and put them intoa bag about my neck; and left my little coat at home, and tied myshirt-sleeves back to my shoulders. Then I took a three-pronged forkfirmly bound to a rod with cord, and a piece of canvas kerchief, witha lump of bread inside it; and so went into the pebbly water, trying tothink how warm it was. For more than a mile all down the Lynn stream,scarcely a stone I left unturned, b
eing thoroughly skilled in the tricksof the loach, and knowing how he hides himself. For being gray-spotted,and clear to see through, and something like a cuttle-fish, only moresubstantial, he will stay quite still where a streak of weed is in therapid water, hoping to be overlooked, not caring even to wag his tail.Then being disturbed he flips away, like whalebone from the finger, andhies to a shelf of stone, and lies with his sharp head poked in underit; or sometimes he bellies him into the mud, and only shows hisback-ridge. And that is the time to spear him nicely, holding the forkvery gingerly, and allowing for the bent of it, which comes to pass, Iknow not how, at the tickle of air and water.

  Or if your loach should not be abroad when first you come to look forhim, but keeping snug in his little home, then you may see him comeforth amazed at the quivering of the shingles, and oar himself and lookat you, and then dart up-stream, like a little grey streak; and then youmust try to mark him in, and follow very daintily. So after that, in asandy place, you steal up behind his tail to him, so that he cannot seteyes on you, for his head is up-stream always, and there you see himabiding still, clear, and mild, and affable. Then, as he looks soinnocent, you make full sure to prog him well, in spite of the wry ofthe water, and the sun making elbows to everything, and the tremblingof your fingers. But when you gird at him lovingly, and have as good asgotten him, lo! in the go-by of the river he is gone as a shadow goes,and only a little cloud of mud curls away from the points of the fork.

  A long way down that limpid water, chill and bright as an iceberg, wentmy little self that day on man's choice errand--destruction. Allthe young fish seemed to know that I was one who had taken out God'scertificate, and meant to have the value of it; every one of them wasaware that we desolate more than replenish the earth. For a cowmight come and look into the water, and put her yellow lips down; akingfisher, like a blue arrow, might shoot through the dark alleys overthe channel, or sit on a dipping withy-bough with his beak sunk into hisbreast-feathers; even an otter might float downstream likening himselfto a log of wood, with his flat head flush with the water-top, and hisoily eyes peering quietly; and yet no panic would seize other life, asit does when a sample of man comes.

  Now let not any one suppose that I thought of these things when I wasyoung, for I knew not the way to do it. And proud enough in truth Iwas at the universal fear I spread in all those lonely places, where Imyself must have been afraid, if anything had come up to me. It isall very pretty to see the trees big with their hopes of another year,though dumb as yet on the subject, and the waters murmuring gaiety,and the banks spread out with comfort; but a boy takes none of this toheart; unless he be meant for a poet (which God can never charge uponme), and he would liefer have a good apple, or even a bad one, if hestole it.

  When I had travelled two miles or so, conquered now and then with cold,and coming out to rub my legs into a lively friction, and only fishinghere and there, because of the tumbling water; suddenly, in an openspace, where meadows spread about it, I found a good stream flowingsoftly into the body of our brook. And it brought, so far as I couldguess by the sweep of it under my knee-caps, a larger power of clearwater than the Lynn itself had; only it came more quietly down, notbeing troubled with stairs and steps, as the fortune of the Lynn is, butgliding smoothly and forcibly, as if upon some set purpose.

  Hereupon I drew up and thought, and reason was much inside me; becausethe water was bitter cold, and my little toes were aching. So on thebank I rubbed them well with a sprout of young sting-nettle, and havingskipped about awhile, was kindly inclined to eat a bit.

  Now all the turn of all my life hung upon that moment. But as I satthere munching a crust of Betty Muxworthy's sweet brown bread, and a bitof cold bacon along with it, and kicking my little red heels against thedry loam to keep them warm, I knew no more than fish under the fork whatwas going on over me. It seemed a sad business to go back now and tellAnnie there were no loaches; and yet it was a frightful thing, knowingwhat I did of it, to venture, where no grown man durst, up the Bagworthywater. And please to recollect that I was only a boy in those days, fondenough of anything new, but not like a man to meet it.

  However, as I ate more and more, my spirit arose within me, and Ithought of what my father had been, and how he had told me a hundredtimes never to be a coward. And then I grew warm, and my little heartwas ashamed of its pit-a-patting, and I said to myself, 'now if fatherlooks, he shall see that I obey him.' So I put the bag round my backagain, and buckled my breeches far up from the knee, expecting deeperwater, and crossing the Lynn, went stoutly up under the branches whichhang so dark on the Bagworthy river.

  I found it strongly over-woven, turned, and torn with thicket-wood, butnot so rocky as the Lynn, and more inclined to go evenly. There werebars of chafed stakes stretched from the sides half-way across thecurrent, and light outriders of pithy weed, and blades of last year'swater-grass trembling in the quiet places, like a spider's threads, onthe transparent stillness, with a tint of olive moving it. And here andthere the sun came in, as if his light was sifted, making dance upon thewaves, and shadowing the pebbles.

  Here, although affrighted often by the deep, dark places, and feelingthat every step I took might never be taken backward, on the whole Ihad very comely sport of loaches, trout, and minnows, forking some, andtickling some, and driving others to shallow nooks, whence I could bailthem ashore. Now, if you have ever been fishing, you will not wonderthat I was led on, forgetting all about danger, and taking no heed ofthe time, but shouting in a childish way whenever I caught a 'whacker'(as we called a big fish at Tiverton); and in sooth there were veryfine loaches here, having more lie and harbourage than in the rough Lynnstream, though not quite so large as in the Lowman, where I have eventaken them to the weight of half a pound.

  But in answer to all my shouts there never was any sound at all, exceptof a rocky echo, or a scared bird hustling away, or the sudden dive of awater-vole; and the place grew thicker and thicker, and the covert grewdarker above me, until I thought that the fishes might have good chanceof eating me, instead of my eating the fishes.

  For now the day was falling fast behind the brown of the hill-tops, andthe trees, being void of leaf and hard, seemed giants ready to beat me.And every moment as the sky was clearing up for a white frost, the coldof the water got worse and worse, until I was fit to cry with it. Andso, in a sorry plight, I came to an opening in the bushes, where a greatblack pool lay in front of me, whitened with snow (as I thought) at thesides, till I saw it was only foam-froth.

  Now, though I could swim with great ease and comfort, and feared nodepth of water, when I could fairly come to it, yet I had no desire togo over head and ears into this great pool, being so cramped and weary,and cold enough in all conscience, though wet only up to the middle,not counting my arms and shoulders. And the look of this black pit wasenough to stop one from diving into it, even on a hot summer's day withsunshine on the water; I mean, if the sun ever shone there. As it was, Ishuddered and drew back; not alone at the pool itself and the blackair there was about it, but also at the whirling manner, and wisping ofwhite threads upon it in stripy circles round and round; and the centrestill as jet.

  But soon I saw the reason of the stir and depth of that great pit, aswell as of the roaring sound which long had made me wonder. For skirtinground one side, with very little comfort, because the rocks were highand steep, and the ledge at the foot so narrow, I came to a sudden sightand marvel, such as I never dreamed of. For, lo! I stood at the foot ofa long pale slide of water, coming smoothly to me, without any break orhindrance, for a hundred yards or more, and fenced on either side withcliff, sheer, and straight, and shining. The water neither ran nor fell,nor leaped with any spouting, but made one even slope of it, as if ithad been combed or planed, and looking like a plank of deal laid down adeep black staircase. However, there was no side-rail, nor any place towalk upon, only the channel a fathom wide, and the perpendicular wallsof crag shutting out the evening.

  The look of this place had a sad effect, scar
ing me very greatly, andmaking me feel that I would give something only to be at home again,with Annie cooking my supper, and our dog Watch sniffing upward. Butnothing would come of wishing; that I had long found out; and it onlymade one the less inclined to work without white feather. So I laid thecase before me in a little council; not for loss of time, but only thatI wanted rest, and to see things truly.

  Then says I to myself--'John Ridd, these trees, and pools, and lonesomerocks, and setting of the sunlight are making a gruesome coward of thee.Shall I go back to my mother so, and be called her fearless boy?'

  Nevertheless, I am free to own that it was not any fine sense of shamewhich settled my decision for indeed there was nearly as much of dangerin going back as in going on, and perhaps even more of labour, thejourney being so roundabout. But that which saved me from turning backwas a strange inquisitive desire, very unbecoming in a boy of littleyears; in a word, I would risk a great deal to know what made the watercome down like that, and what there was at the top of it.

  Therefore, seeing hard strife before me, I girt up my breeches anew,with each buckle one hole tighter, for the sodden straps were stretchingand giving, and mayhap my legs were grown smaller from the coldnessof it. Then I bestowed my fish around my neck more tightly, and notstopping to look much, for fear of fear, crawled along over the fork ofrocks, where the water had scooped the stone out, and shunning thus theledge from whence it rose like the mane of a white horse into the broadblack pool, softly I let my feet into the dip and rush of the torrent.

  And here I had reckoned without my host, although (as I thought) soclever; and it was much but that I went down into the great black pool,and had never been heard of more; and this must have been the end of me,except for my trusty loach-fork. For the green wave came down like greatbottles upon me, and my legs were gone off in a moment, and I had nottime to cry out with wonder, only to think of my mother and Annie, andknock my head very sadly, which made it go round so that brains wereno good, even if I had any. But all in a moment, before I knew aught,except that I must die out of the way, with a roar of water upon me, myfork, praise God stuck fast in the rock, and I was borne up upon it. Ifelt nothing except that here was another matter to begin upon and itmight be worth while, or again it might not, to have another fight forit. But presently the dash of the water upon my face revived me, and mymind grew used to the roar of it, and meseemed I had been worse off thanthis, when first flung into the Lowman.

  Therefore I gathered my legs back slowly, as if they were fish to belanded, stopping whenever the water flew too strongly off my shin-bones,and coming along without sticking out to let the wave get hold ofme. And in this manner I won a footing, leaning well forward like adraught-horse, and balancing on my strength as it were, with the ashenstake set behind me. Then I said to my self, 'John Ridd, the sooner youget yourself out by the way you came, the better it will be for you.'But to my great dismay and affright, I saw that no choice was left menow, except that I must climb somehow up that hill of water, or else bewashed down into the pool and whirl around it till it drowned me. Forthere was no chance of fetching back by the way I had gone down intoit, and further up was a hedge of rock on either side of the waterway,rising a hundred yards in height, and for all I could tell five hundred,and no place to set a foot in.

  Having said the Lord's Prayer (which was all I knew), and made a verybad job of it, I grasped the good loach-stick under a knot, and steadiedme with my left hand, and so with a sigh of despair began my course upthe fearful torrent-way. To me it seemed half a mile at least of slidingwater above me, but in truth it was little more than a furlong, as Icame to know afterwards. It would have been a hard ascent even withoutthe slippery slime and the force of the river over it, and I had scantyhope indeed of ever winning the summit. Nevertheless, my terror leftme, now I was face to face with it, and had to meet the worst; and I setmyself to do my best with a vigour and sort of hardness which did notthen surprise me, but have done so ever since.

  The water was only six inches deep, or from that to nine at the utmost,and all the way up I could see my feet looking white in the gloom ofthe hollow, and here and there I found resting-place, to hold on by thecliff and pant awhile. And gradually as I went on, a warmth of couragebreathed in me, to think that perhaps no other had dared to try thatpass before me, and to wonder what mother would say to it. And then camethought of my father also, and the pain of my feet abated.

  How I went carefully, step by step, keeping my arms in front of me, andnever daring to straighten my knees is more than I can tell clearly, oreven like now to think of, because it makes me dream of it. Only I mustacknowledge that the greatest danger of all was just where I saw nojeopardy, but ran up a patch of black ooze-weed in a very boastfulmanner, being now not far from the summit.

  Here I fell very piteously, and was like to have broken my knee-cap, andthe torrent got hold of my other leg while I was indulging the bruisedone. And then a vile knotting of cramp disabled me, and for awhile Icould only roar, till my mouth was full of water, and all of my body wassliding. But the fright of that brought me to again, and my elbow caughtin a rock-hole; and so I managed to start again, with the help of morehumility.

  Now being in the most dreadful fright, because I was so near the top,and hope was beating within me, I laboured hard with both legs and arms,going like a mill and grunting. At last the rush of forked water, wherefirst it came over the lips of the fall, drove me into the middle, andI stuck awhile with my toe-balls on the slippery links of the pop-weed,and the world was green and gliddery, and I durst not look behind me.Then I made up my mind to die at last; for so my legs would ache nomore, and my breath not pain my heart so; only it did seem such a pityafter fighting so long to give in, and the light was coming upon me, andagain I fought towards it; then suddenly I felt fresh air, and fell intoit headlong.