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Updated: June 16, 2025
I remember even then laughing to myself as I went home one morning after being disappointed in finding Bob Chowne, who had gone on a round with his father, for I asked myself what the French, whom the Ripplemouth people saw in every passing vessel, would gain by making a descent upon our rock-strewn shore.
It doesn't matter in the least when it was, only I may as well say when, any more than it does that everybody who knew my father, including Doctor Chowne of Ripplemouth, said he must be mad to go and buy, at the sale of Squire Allworth's estate, a wild chasm of a place, all slaty rock and limestone crag and rift and hollow, with a patch of scraggy oak-trees here, some furze and heath there, and barely enough grass to feed half a dozen sheep, and that, even if it was cheap, because no one else would buy it, he was throwing good money away.
The rumours about the war seemed to affect us less than ever, and I was growing so accustomed to my busy life that I thought little of my old amusements, save when now and then I went out for an evening's fishing with Bigley, the old boat having been brought over from Ripplemouth, none the worse for its trip.
Seventeen, and grown as big as Bigley, with the consequence that I could not help thinking a good deal of what people said to me when I went in to Ripplemouth or down to the Gap. The salute I generally met was: "Why, Master Sep Duncan, you are growing quite a man." I suppose I was in appearance, but, thank goodness, I was still only a boy at heart. Plenty to see, plenty to hear.
Bob Chowne was the son of an old friend of my father "captain" Duncan, as people called him, and lived at Ripplemouth, three or four miles away. The people always called him Chowne, which they had shortened from Champernowne, and we boys at school often substituted Chow for Bob, because we said he was such a disagreeable chap.
The next day came, and with it Bob Chowne from Ripplemouth and Bigley Uggleston from the Gap; and we three boys set off over the cliff path for a regular good roam, with the sun beating down on our backs, the grasshoppers fizzling in amongst the grass and ferns, the gulls squealing below us as they flew from rock to rock, and, far overhead now, a hawk wheeling over the brink of the cliff, or a sea-eagle rising from one of the topmost crags to seek another where there were no boys.
During the day, after leaving an adequate guard over the prisoners in the lugger, the lieutenant came up the Gap twice, and worked hard with his men to get our poor work-people in a more comfortable state, though now plenty of the Ripplemouth folk had been over, and help and necessaries were freely lent, so that the night was made fairly comfortable for the wounded and their families.
But Bob always came over to the Bay, grumbling and saying that he was sick of Ripplemouth; and then he grumbled at old Sam and Kicksey about the dinner, or the fruit, or the weather, and then he used to grumble at his two old school-fellows as we walked along the cliff path, or went out with him in the boat.
For my father and Doctor Chowne were great friends, having once served for a long time in the same ship together; and so it was that, when my father left the service and settled down to his quiet life at the little bay, Doctor Chowne bought the practice off the last doctor's widow, and settled himself, with his boy, at Ripplemouth.
As Bigley squeezed my hand and started off, my father exclaimed: "Now I must have a messenger to go to Ripplemouth for Doctor Chowne. What man is not wounded?" There was a murmur among the group assembled about the fire, a grim blood-smeared powder-blackened set of beings, several of whom had had their hair scorched away by the explosion.
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