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Page 3
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,
scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty
free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution
you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg
Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
This etext was prepared from the 1894 Chapman and Hall "Christmas Stories"
edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
CHAPTER I--THE ISLAND OF SILVER-STORE
It was in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and forty-
four, that I, Gill Davis to command, His Mark, having then the
honour to be a private in the Royal Marines, stood a-leaning over
the bulwarks of the armed sloop Christopher Columbus, in the South
American waters off the Mosquito shore.
My lady remarks to me, before I go any further, that there is no
such christian-name as Gill, and that her confident opinion is, that
the name given to me in the baptism wherein I was made, &c., was
Gilbert. She is certain to be right, but I never heard of it. I
was a foundling child, picked up somewhere or another, and I always
understood my christian-name to be Gill. It is true that I was
called Gills when employed at Snorridge Bottom betwixt Chatham and
Maidstone to frighten birds; but that had nothing to do with the
Baptism wherein I was made, &c., and wherein a number of things were
promised for me by somebody, who let me alone ever afterwards as to
performing any of them, and who, I consider, must have been the
Beadle. Such name of Gills was entirely owing to my cheeks, or
gills, which at that time of my life were of a raspy description.
My lady stops me again, before I go any further, by laughing exactly
in her old way and waving the feather of her pen at me. That action
on her part, calls to my mind as I look at her hand with the rings
on it--Well! I won't! To be sure it will come in, in its own
place. But it's always strange to me, noticing the quiet hand, and
noticing it (as I have done, you know, so many times) a-fondling
children and grandchildren asleep, to think that when blood and
honour were up--there! I won't! not at present!--Scratch it out.
She won't scratch it out, and quite honourable; because we have made
an understanding that everything is to be taken down, and that
nothing that is once taken down shall be scratched out. I have the
great misfortune not to be able to read and write, and I am speaking
my true and faithful account of those Adventures, and my lady is
writing it, word for word.
I say, there I was, a-leaning over the bulwarks of the sloop
Christopher Columbus in the South American waters off the Mosquito
shore: a subject of his Gracious Majesty King George of England,
and a private in the Royal Marines.
In those climates, you don't want to do much. I was doing nothing.
I was thinking of the shepherd (my father, I wonder?) on the
hillsides by Snorridge Bottom, with a long staff, and with a rough
white coat in all weathers all the year round, who used to let me
lie in a corner of his hut by night, and who used to let me go about
with him and his sheep by day when I could get nothing else to do,
and who used to give me so little of his victuals and so much of his
staff, that I ran away from him--which was what he wanted all along,
I expect--to be knocked about the world in preference to Snorridge
Bottom. I had been knocked about the world for nine-and-twenty
years in all, when I stood looking along those bright blue South
American Waters. Looking after the shepherd, I may say. Watching
him in a half-waking dream, with my eyes half-shut, as he, and his
flock of sheep, and his two dogs, seemed to move away from the
ship's side, far away over the blue water, and go right down into
the sky.
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