The Argosy — page 69: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

55 THE BLACK BUOY. By ARTHUR W., REApy. “ C*WIM?” said my grandmother, as we sat around the crackling logs one Christmas Eve. ‘‘ Every boy and girl should learn to swim. I could swim like a duck when I was a girl, and there came a time when it served me in good stead !” My grandmother sat bolt upright in her high-backed chair, resting her elbows on the arms, and smiled across at the General, who sat on the other side of the hearth. There was a conscious look in her bright old eyes. My grandfather, pausing in the act of raising his tumbler to his lips, nodded and smiled back again. They were both white-haired, bright-eyed, and fresh-coloured: each saw the other through an effacing medium, which smoothed out wrinkles, restored hyacinthine locks, and blotted out the fifty years that lay between them and youth. We, the diverse-aged descendants of this stately pair, were grouped in lazy attitudes around the vast, roaring hearth, with its tall, carved chimney-piece ; and as we saw the meaning looks that were exchanged between our respected progenitors, we scented a story. My grandmother hesitated for a moment at our many-voiced ap- peal, and shook her head; then looked across at the General, who nodded again ; and after a little pressing, thus began: “You know, young people, that you are of good family only on your grandfather’s side, and not on mine: for he came of an old and honourable stock, whilst my father was only the master of a vessel that traded between England and the West Indies. He was killed in a sea-fight when I was a child; and I was brought up by | my grandfather, who, ostensibly a boat-builder and fisherman, was : in reality a smuggler. In those days smuggling meant great risks and enormous profits. It was not only a profitable trade, but it was reputable in a peculiar sort of way. It required great skill and courage. England was always at war in those days, and the smug- gler had to run the risk of being snapped up by an enemy’s cruiser as well as the chance of falling into the clutches of a revenue cutter. In addition there were the inevitable risks of the sea. “Thus a smuggler must possess a knowledge of navigation. He had to work into harbour on the darkest nights with the utmost secrecy and despatch. ‘To do that, he must know every inch of his way ; be able to distinguish landmarks and buoys in what would seem to the uninitiated to be blank darkness ; and to know to a nicety at what times the tide turned, the twists of sandbanks, and the position of sunken rocks. Gomicbooks