Bevis: The Story of a Boy

by Richard Jefferies

Mark put up his spear and pushedone off her nest. There was a continual fluttering all round them asthe pigeons came down to, or left their places. Never had they seen somany nests--they walked about under them for a long time, doing nothingbut look up at them, and talk about them.

  "I know," said Bevis, "I know--these savages here think the pigeonssacred, and don't kill them--that's why there are so many."

  Not much looking where they were going, they came out into a space wherethe poles had been cut in the winter, and the stoles bore only youngshoots a few feet high. There was a single waggon track, the rutsoverhung with grasses and bordered with rushes, and at the end of it,where it turned, they saw a cock pheasant. They tried to go throughbetween the stoles, but the thistles were too thick and the brambles andbriars too many; they could flourish here till the ash-poles grew talland kept away the sun. So they followed the waggon track, which ledthem again under the tall poles.

  To avoid the savages they kept a very sharp lookout, and paused if theysaw anything. There was a huge brown crooked monster lying asleep inone place, they could not determine whether an elephant or some unknownbeast, till, creeping nearer from stole to bush and bush to stole, theyfound it to be a thrown oak, from which the bark had been stripped, andthe exposed sap had dried brown in the sun. So the vast iguanodon mayhave looked in primeval days when he laid him down to rest in thebrushwood.

  "When shall we come to the New Sea again?" said Mark presently, as theywere moving more slowly through a thicker growth.

  "I cannot think," said Bevis. "If we get lost in this jungle, we maywalk and walk and walk and never come to anything except banyan-trees,and cobras, and tigers, and savages."

  "Are you sure we have been going straight?"

  "How do I know?"

  "Did you follow the sun?" asked Mark. "No, indeed, I did not; if youwalk towards the sun you will go round and round, because the sunmoves."

  "I forgot. O! I know, where's the compass?"

  "How stupid!" said Bevis. "Of course it was in my pocket all the time."

  He took it out, and as he lifted the brazen lid the white card swung toand fro with the vibration of his hand.

  "Rest your hand against a pole," said Mark. This support steadiedBevis's hand, and the card gently came to a standstill. The north, withthe three feathers, pointed straight at him.

  "Now, which way was the sea?" said Mark, trying to think of thedirection in which they had last seen it. "It was that side," he said,holding out his right hand; he faced Bevis.

  "Yes, it was," said Bevis. "It was on the right hand, now that would beeast," (to Mark), "so if we go east we must be right."

  He started with the compass in his hand, keeping his eye on it, but thenhe could not see the stoles or bushes, and walked against them, and thecard swung so he could not make a course.

  "What a bother it is," he said, stopping, "the card won't keep still.Let me see!" He thought a minute, and as he paused the three featherssettled again. "There's an oak," he said. "The oak is just east. Comeon." He went to the oak, and then stopped again.

  "I see," said Mark, watching the card till it stopped. "The elder bushis east now."

  They went to the elder bush and waited: there was a great thistle eastnext, and afterwards a bough which had fallen. Thus they worked abee-line, very slow but almost quite true. The ash-poles rattled now asthe breeze freshened and knocked them together.

  "What a lot of leaves," said Bevis presently; "I never saw such a lot."

  "And they are so deep," said Mark. They had walked on dead leaves forsome little while before they noticed them, being so eagerly engagedwith the compass. Now they looked the ground was covered with brownbeech leaves, so deep, that although their feet sunk into them, theycould not feel the firm ground, but walked on a yielding substance. Athousand woodcocks might have thrown them over their heads and hiddeneasily had it been their time of year. The compass led them straightover the leaves, till in a minute or two they saw that they were in anarrow deep coombe. It became narrower and with steeper sides till theyapproached the end, when the chalk showed not white but dull as itcrumbled, the flakes hanging at the roots of minute plants.

  "I don't like these leaves," said Mark. "There may be a cobra, and youcan't see him; you may step on him without knowing."

  Hastily he and Bevis scrambled a few feet up the chalky side; the dangerwas so obvious they rushed to escape it before discussing. When theyhad got over this alarm, they found the compass still told them to goon, which they could not do without scaling the coombe. They got up agood way without much trouble, holding to hazel boughs, for the hazelgrows on the steepest chalk cliffs, but then the chalk was bare of allbut brambles, whose creepers came down towards them; why do bramblecreepers, like water, always come down hill? Under these the chalk wasall crumbled, and gave way under the foot, so that if they put one footup higher it slipped with their weight, and returned them to the samelevel.

  Two rabbits rushed away, and were lost beneath the brambles. Withoutconscious thinking they walked aslant, and so gained a few feet everyten yards, and then came to a spot where the crust of the top hung over,and from it the roots of beech-trees came curving down into the hollowspace in search of earth. To one of these they clung by turns, some ofthe loose chalky clods fell on them, but they hauled themselves up overthe projecting edge. Bevis went first, and took all the weapons fromMark; Pan went a long way round.

  At the summit there was a beautiful beech-tree, with an immense roundtrunk rising straight up, and they sat down on the moss, which alwaysgrows at the foot of the beech, to rest after the struggle up. As theysat down they turned round facing the cliff, and both shouted atonce,--"The New Sea!"

  Volume One, Chapter VIII.

  THE WITCH.

  The blue water had lost its glitter, for they were now between it andthe sun, and the freshening breeze, as it swept over, darkened thesurface. They were too far to see the waves, but that they were risingwas evident since the water no longer reflected the sky like a mirror.The sky was cloudless, but the water seemed in shadow, rough and hard.It was full half a mile or more down to where the wood touched the shoreof the New Sea and shut out their view, so that they could not tell howfar it extended. Serendib and the Unknown Island were opposite, andthey could see the sea all round them from the height where they sat.

  "We left the sea behind us," said Mark. "The compass took us right awayfrom it."

  "We began wrong somehow," said Bevis. In fact they had walked in a longcurve, so that when they thought the New Sea was on Mark's right, it wasreally on his left hand. "I must put down on the map that people mustgo west, not east, or they will never get round."

  "It must be thousands of miles round," said Mark; "thousands andthousands."

  "So it is," said Bevis, "and only to think nobody ever saw it before youand me."

  "What a long way we can see," said Mark, pointing to where the horizonand the blue wooded plain below, beyond the sea, became hazy together."What country is that?"

  "I do not know; no one has ever been there."

  "Which way is England?" asked Mark.

  "How can I tell when I don't know where we are?"

  The ash sprays touching each other formed a green surface beneath them,extending to the right and left--a green surface into which every nowand then a wood-pigeon plunged, closing his wings as the sea-birds diveinto the sea. They sat in the shadow of the great beech, and the wind,coming up over the wood, blew cool against their faces. The swallowshad left the sky, to go down and glide over the rising waves below.

  "Come on," said Bevis, incapable of rest unless he was dreaming. "If wekeep along the top of the hill we shall know where we are going, andperhaps see a way round presently."

  They followed the edge of the low cliff as nearly as they could, walkingunder the beeches where it was cool and shady, and the wind blowthrough. Twice they saw squirrels, but they were too quick, and Beviscould not get a shot with his bow.

>   "We ought to take home something," said Mark. "Something wonderful.There ought to be some pieces of gold about, or a butterfly as big as aplate. Can't you see something?"

  "There's a dragonfly," said Bevis. "If we can't catch him, we can saywe saw one made of emerald, and here's a feather."

  He picked up a pheasant's feather. The dragonfly refused to be caught,he rushed up into the air nearly perpendicularly; and seeing anothersquirrel some way ahead, they left the dragonfly and crept from beechtrunk to beech trunk towards him.

  "It's a red squirrel," whispered Mark. "That's a different