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Updated: June 4, 2025
Dr Hellyer was "an ignorant, uncultivated brute," Tom averred, and his degree of "Doctor" was only derived from the fact of his having paid ten dollars to an American university to air this specious prefix to his scholastic name!
"I will," said he, seating himself with alacrity; and turning to the coastguardsman, he added "I suppose, Hellyer, you could pick a bit too, eh?" "Yes, sir, saving your presence.
I only wish he had been here to tell you the story of the `Devil's bit, for he would have narrated it in a much better fashion than I did, I'm sure." "The divvle a bit of it, ma'am!" exclaimed the old sailor, bursting into a jovial laugh at his joke, wherein even the staid Hellyer joined. "But, a truce to your blarney, ma'am; or, you'll make me blush.
"Why, he'd turn me off if I did it; and, he's that kind to me as I wouldn't like to vex him, no not for nothing!" "He wouldn't mind me though," argued Bob. "Didn't he say the other day why, you heard him tell Hellyer yourself that he'd back you and me to manage a boat against any two boys in Portsmouth, aye, or any port on the south coast?"
It was now nearly the middle of December, six weeks having passed by since the memorable Sunday on which I and Tom had made a Guy Fawkes of Dr Hellyer, and run away from school the intervening time having slipped by quickly enough while on board the coal brig at Newcastle, and during our voyage down the coast again but the weather, I recollect, was wonderfully mild for the time of year; and, as we walked past the terraces fronting the Hoe, the sun shone down on us, and over the blue sea beyond in Plymouth Sound below, as if it had been a summer day.
At sharp eleven, a large clock over the fireplace, with a round face like that of our podgy preceptor, telling the time, Dr Hellyer pushed back his chair as a sign that our morning studies were over; and the boys then all trooped out into the playground for an hour, coming back again punctually at twelve to dinner in the re-transformed room, at the summons of the inveterate gong.
When Dr Hellyer awoke to the knowledge of the fact that the Fifth of November fell this year on a Sunday, had he generously made allowance for the patriotic feelings of his pupils, and allowed them to have their usual annual firework demonstration on the Saturday prior, which happened to be a half-holiday, the matter might have been harmoniously arranged, and Tom and I been persuaded at the last moment to abandon our daring enterprise possibly, that is, though I doubt it much.
Glancing slily down under the table, I could see him in the distance stoop beneath it and apply a match to the end of the fuse, which being a dry one at once ignited, the spluttering flame running along like a streak of lightning along the floor and up the leg of the chair on which Dr Hellyer was sitting too instantaneously to be detected by any one not specially looking out for it, like myself.
In a short space, although to the anxious onlookers it seemed hours, the efforts of the Captain and coastguardsmen were rewarded by Bob drawing a deep breath, which, it must be confessed, was sadly impregnated with the odour of tobacco from the air which Hellyer had puffed into his lungs to induce respiration!
Sometimes, too, Tom said, when Dr Hellyer could get no credit with the butcher, they lived on Australian tinned mutton, which he got wholesale from the importers, as long as three months at a stretch; and once, he pledged me his word, when the baker likewise failed to supply any more bread by reason of that long-suffering man's bill not having been paid for a year, Dr Hellyer, not to be beaten, went off to Portsmouth and bought a lot of condemned ship biscuits at a Government sale in the victualling yard, returning with this in triumph to the school, and serving it out to the pupils in rations, the same as if they had been at sea!
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