ripple at my feet, the clinking windlass afar off, or the humming
steam-ship paddles further away yet. These, with the creaking
little jetty on which I sit, and the gaunt high-water marks and
low-water marks in the mud, and the broken causeway, and the broken
bank, and the broken stakes and piles leaning forward as if they
were vain of their personal appearance and looking for their
reflection in the water, will melt into any train of fancy.
Equally adaptable to any purpose or to none, are the posturing
sheep and kine upon the marshes, the gulls that wheel and dip
around me, the crows (well out of gunshot) going home from the rich
harvest-fields, the heron that has been out a-fishing and looks as
melancholy, up there in the sky, as if it hadn’t agreed with him.
Everything within the range of the senses will, by the aid of the
running water, lend itself to everything beyond that range, and
work into a drowsy whole, not unlike a kind of tune, but for which
there is no exact definition.
One of these landing-places is near an old fort (I can see the Nore
Light from it with my pocket-glass), from which fort mysteriously
emerges a boy, to whom I am much indebted for additions to my
scanty stock of knowledge. He is a young boy, with an intelligent
face burnt to a dust colour by the summer sun, and with crisp hair
of the same hue. He is a boy in whom I have perceived nothing
incompatible with habits of studious inquiry and meditation, unless
an evanescent black eye (I was delicate of inquiring how
occasioned) should be so considered. To him am I indebted for
ability to identify a Custom-house boat at any distance, and for
acquaintance with all the forms and ceremonies observed by a
homeward-bound Indiaman coming up the river, when the Custom-house
officers go aboard her. But for him, I might never have heard of
‘the dumb-ague,’ respecting which malady I am now learned. Had I
never sat at his feet, I might have finished my mortal career and
never known that when I see a white horse on a barge’s sail, that
barge is a lime barge. For precious secrets in reference to beer,
am I likewise beholden to him, involving warning against the beer
of a certain establishment, by reason of its having turned sour
through failure in point of demand: though my young sage is not of
opinion that similar deterioration has befallen the ale. He has
also enlightened me touching the mushrooms of the marshes, and has
gently reproved my ignorance in having supposed them to be
impregnated with salt. His manner of imparting information, is
thoughtful, and appropriate to the scene. As he reclines beside
me, he pitches into the river, a little stone or piece of grit, and
then delivers himself oracularly, as though he spoke out of the
centre of the spreading circle that it makes in the water. He
never improves my mind without observing this formula.
With the wise boy – whom I know by no other name than the Spirit of
the Fort – I recently consorted on a breezy day when the river
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leaped about us and was full of life. I had seen the sheaved corn
carrying in the golden fields as I came down to the river; and the
rosy farmer, watching his labouring-men in the saddle on his cob,
had told me how he had reaped his two hundred and sixty acres of
long-strawed corn last week, and how a better week’s work he had
never done in all his days. Peace and abundance were on the
country-side in beautiful forms and beautiful colours, and the
harvest seemed even to be sailing out to grace the never-reaped sea
in the yellow-laden barges that mellowed the distance.
It was on this occasion that the Spirit of the Fort, directing his
remarks to a certain floating iron battery lately lying in that
reach of the river, enriched my mind with his opinions on naval
architecture, and informed me that he would like to be an engineer.