Cutlass and Cudgel

In some ways this book is reminiscent of "The Lost Middy", by the same author, but I suppose that with a similar theme, a nosey midshipman taken prisoner by a gang of smugglers, there are bound to be other points of similarity. Anyway, it is a good fast-moving story, with lots of well-drawn human interest.

It starts off with a comic scene, where the Excise patrol vessel is cruising near an area suspected of being heavily involved with smuggling. Suddenly a large object is seen swimming in the water, and it turns out to be a cow. Then there's all the business of milking the cow on the deck of a sailing-vessel. Pretty soon, however it gets serious, and we meet various characters living nearby. Soon the inquisitive midshipman is taken prisoner, and it falls to another teenager, the son of one of the chief rogues, to bring him food. Both boys become friendly with each other, but the midshipman can only express it by appearing to hate the farm-fisher boy, whom he considers to be socially far beneath him. The farm-boy tries so hard to be kind to the midshipman, who is so rude in return.

Eventually the midshipman escapes, the smugglers are caught, and the farm-boy becomes a seaman on the Excise vessel. NH _______________________________________________________________________

CUTLASS AND CUDGEL, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.

CHAPTER ONE.

"Heigh-Ho-Ha-Hum! Oh dear me!"

"What's matter, sir?"

"Matter, Dirty Dick? Nothing; only, heigh-ho-ha! Oh dear me, how sleepy I am!"

"Well, sir, I wouldn't open my mouth like that 'ere, 'fore the sun's up."

"Why not?"

"No knowing what you might swallow off this here nasty, cold, foggy, stony coast."

"There you go again, Dick; not so good as Lincolnshire coast, I suppose?"

"As good, sir? Why, how can it be?" said the broad, sturdy sailor addressed. "Nothin' but great high stony rocks, full o' beds of great flat periwinkles and whelks; nowhere to land, nothin' to see. I am surprised at you, sir. Why, there arn't a morsel o' sand."

"For not praising your nasty old flat sandy shore, with its marsh beyond, and its ague and bogs and fens."

"Wish I was 'mong 'em now, sir. Wild ducks there, as is fit to eat, not iley fishy things like these here."

"Oh, bother! Wish I could have had another hour or two's sleep. I say, Dirty Dick, are you sure the watch wasn't called too soon?"

"Nay, sir, not a bit; and, beggin' your pardon, sir, if you wouldn't mind easin' off the Dirty--Dick's much easier to say."

"Oh, very well, Dick. Don't be so thin-skinned about a nickname."

"That's it, sir. I arn't a bit thin-skinned. Why, my skin's as thick as one of our beasts. I can't help it lookin' brown. Washes myself deal more than some o' my mates as calls me dirty. Strange and curious how a name o' that kind sticks."

"Oh, I say, don't talk so," said the lad by the rough sailor's side; and after another yawn he began to stride up and down the deck of His Majesty's cutter White Hawk, lying about a mile from the Freestone coast of Wessex.

It was soon after daybreak, the sea was perfectly calm and a thick grey mist hung around, making the deck and cordage wet and the air chilly, while the coast, with its vast walls of perpendicular rocks, looked weird and distant where a peep could be obtained amongst the wreaths of vapour.