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Updated: May 14, 2025
But on a calm spring day, the fjord just steals in smooth and shining by ness and bay. And at low water there is a whole wonderland of strange little islands, sand-banks, and weed-fringed rocks left high and dry, with clear pools between, where bare-legged urchins splash about, and tiny flat-fish as big as a halfpenny dart away to every side.
In his hand he swayed a ferule, that sceptre of despotic power; the birch of justice reposed on three nails behind the throne, a constant terror to evil doers, while on the desk before him might be seen sundry contraband articles and prohibited weapons, detected upon the persons of idle urchins, such as half-munched apples, popguns, whirligigs, fly-cages, and whole legions of rampant little paper gamecocks.
Yet somehow the struggle then with all its helplessness and disappointment had not seemed so bitter as today: then failure meant but little, now it seemed to mean everything; then it meant disappointment to a score of ragged urchins, now it meant two hundred boys and girls, the spirits of a thousand gone before and the hopes of thousands to come.
"A few weeks ago," he said, "that boy was running about the streets with greased hair, a butcher's curl, a soiled velveteen suit, a filthy lace collar, dirty hands, torn stockings, playing disreputable games with all the urchins of the neighborhood. He murdered the Queen's English every time he spoke, and spent his pennies on things you suck.
The rope-yarn was tied round her neck; they each shook one of her paws, and pretended to cry. One of the urchins held in his hand a fife into which he poured as much flour as it would hold out of the handkerchief; the other held the end of the rope-yarn: every ceremony was gone through that they could think of. "Are you ready?" said the executioner, or he that held the line.
Pybus's maid, shrank back with a Lor bless us, as Alcide ogled her over the laurel-bush; the Miss Bakers, and their mamma, stared with wonder; and presently a crowd began to follow the interesting foreigner, of ragged urchins and children, who left their dirt-pies in the street to pursue him.
Teasing urchins sometimes shout after the keelman, "Who jumped on the grindstone?" and this query never fails to rouse the worst wrath in the most sedate; for it touches a very sore point. Two men were caught by a heavy freshet and driven over the bar. The legend declares that one of these mariners saw, in the dusk, a hoop floating by.
The old fellow, exasperated beyond endurance, gave frantic chase to the urchins; a group of idlers and news-vendors jostled against him as if by accident, and the pursuer, perspiring freely and wiping his face with his handkerchief, went off in search of an officer. "Fakir, froggie, beggar!" shouted the Orphan derisively at him.
When he arrived, all the hotel bedrooms were reserved for the members of the general council which had been summoned; and I offered him board and lodging: a shakedown in a room overlooking the sea; fare consisting of lampreys, turbot and sea urchins: common enough dishes in that land of Cockayne, but possessing no small attraction for the naturalist, because of their novelty.
So close we squatted, that at one time I had a mighty handsome woman on my knees, two little naked urchins having their feet against my back. There might be a dame in full attire of holoku and hat and flowers; and her next neighbour might the next moment strip some little rag of a shift from her fat shoulders and come out a monument of flesh, painted rather than covered by the hairbreadth ridi.
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