The Wind in the Willows
adventures they had gone to seek or found unseeking—out there,
beyond—beyond!
Footsteps fell on his ear, and the figure of one that walked somewhat
wearily came into view; and he saw that it was a Rat, and a very dusty
one. The wayfarer, as he reached him, saluted with a gesture of
courtesy that had something foreign about it—hesitated a moment—then
with a pleasant smile turned from the track and sat down by his side in
the cool herbage. He seemed tired, and the Rat let him rest
unquestioned, understanding something of what was in his thoughts;
knowing, too, the value all animals attach at times to mere silent
companionship, when the weary muscles slacken and the mind marks time.
The wayfarer was lean and keen-featured, and somewhat bowed at the
shoulders; his paws were thin and long, his eyes much wrinkled at the
corners, and he wore small gold ear rings in his neatly-set well-shaped
ears. His knitted jersey was of a faded blue, his breeches, patched and
stained, were based on a blue foundation, and his small belongings that
he carried were tied up in a blue cotton handkerchief.
When he had rested awhile the stranger sighed, snuffed the air, and
looked about him.
“That was clover, that warm whiff on the breeze,” he remarked; “and
those are cows we hear cropping the grass behind us and blowing softly
between mouthfuls. There is a sound of distant reapers, and yonder
rises a blue line of cottage smoke against the woodland. The river runs
somewhere close by, for I hear the call of a moorhen, and I see by your
build that you’re a freshwater mariner. Everything seems asleep, and
yet going on all the time. It is a goodly life that you lead, friend;
no doubt the best in the world, if only you are strong enough to lead
it!”
“Yes, it’s _the_ life, the only life, to live,” responded the Water Rat
dreamily, and without his usual whole-hearted conviction.
“I did not say exactly that,” replied the stranger cautiously; “but no
doubt it’s the best. I’ve tried it, and I know. And because I’ve just
tried it—six months of it—and know it’s the best, here am I, footsore
and hungry, tramping away from it, tramping southward, following the
old call, back to the old life, _the_ life which is mine and which will
not let me go.”
“Is this, then, yet another of them?” mused the Rat. “And where have
you just come from?” he asked. He hardly dared to ask where he was
bound for; he seemed to know the answer only too well.
“Nice little farm,” replied the wayfarer, briefly. “Upalong in that
direction”—he nodded northwards. “Never mind about it. I had everything
I could want—everything I had any right to expect of life, and more;
and here I am! Glad to be here all the same, though, glad to be here!
So many miles further on the road, so many hours nearer to my heart’s
desire!”
His shining eyes held fast to the horizon, and he seemed to be
listening for some sound that was wanting from that inland acreage,
vocal as it was with the cheerful music of pasturage and farmyard.
“You are not one of _us_,” said the Water Rat, “nor yet a farmer; nor
even, I should judge, of this country.”
“Right,” replied the stranger. “I’m a seafaring rat, I am, and the port
I originally hail from is Constantinople, though I’m a sort of a
foreigner there too, in a manner of speaking. You will have heard of
Constantinople, friend? A fair city, and an ancient and glorious one.
And you may have heard, too, of Sigurd, King of Norway, and how he
sailed thither with sixty ships, and how he and his men rode up through
streets all canopied in their honour with purple and gold; and how the
Emperor and Empress came down and banqueted with him on board his ship.
When Sigurd returned home, many of his Northmen remained behind and
entered the Emperor’s body-guard, and my ancestor, a Norwegian born,
stayed behind too, with the ships that Sigurd gave the Emperor.
Seafarers we have ever been, and no wonder; as for me, the city of my
birth is no more my home than any pleasant port between there and the
London River. I know them all, and they know me. Set me down on any of
their quays or foreshores, and I am home again.”
“I suppose you go great voyages,” said the Water Rat with growing
interest. “Months and months out of sight of land, and provisions
running short, and allowanced as to water, and your mind communing with
the mighty ocean, and all that sort of thing?”
“By no means,” said the Sea Rat frankly. “Such a life as you describe
would not suit me at all. I’m in the coasting trade, and rarely out of
sight of land. It’s the jolly times on shore that appeal to me, as much
as any seafaring. O, those southern seaports! The smell of them, the
riding-lights at night, the glamour!”
“Well, perhaps you have chosen the better way,” said the Water Rat, but
rather doubtfully. “Tell me something of your coasting, then, if you
have a mind to, and what sort of harvest an animal of spirit might hope
to bring home from it to warm his latter days with gallant memories by
the fireside; for my life, I confess to you, feels to me to-day
somewhat narrow and circumscribed.”
“My last voyage,” began the Sea Rat, “that landed me eventually in this
country, bound with high hopes for my inland farm, will serve as a good
example of any of them, and, indeed, as an epitome of my
highly-coloured life. Family troubles, as usual, began it. The domestic
storm-cone was hoisted, and I shipped myself on board a small trading
vessel bound from Constantinople, by classic seas whose every wave
throbs with a deathless memory, to the Grecian Islands and the Levant.
Those were golden days and balmy nights! In and out of harbour all the
time—old friends everywhere—sleeping in some cool temple or ruined
cistern during the heat of the day—feasting and song after sundown,
under great stars set in a velvet sky! Thence we turned and coasted up
the Adriatic, its shores swimming in an atmosphere of amber, rose, and
aquamarine; we lay in wide land-locked harbours, we roamed through
ancient and noble cities, until at last one morning, as the sun rose
royally behind us, we rode into Venice down a path of gold. O, Venice
is a fine city, wherein a rat can wander at his ease and take his
pleasure! Or, when weary of wandering, can sit at the edge of the Grand
Canal at night, feasting with his friends, when the air is full of
music and the sky full of stars, and the lights flash and shimmer on
the polished steel prows of the swaying gondolas, packed so that you
could walk across the canal on them from side to side! And then the
food—do you like shellfish? Well, well, we won’t linger over that now.”
He was silent for a time; and the Water Rat, silent too and enthralled,
floated on dream-canals and heard a phantom song pealing high between
vaporous grey wave-lapped walls.
“Southwards we sailed again at last,” continued the Sea Rat, “coasting
down the Italian shore, till finally we made Palermo, and there I
quitted for a long, happy spell on shore. I never stick too long to one
ship; one gets narrow-minded and prejudiced. Besides, Sicily is one of
my happy hunting-grounds. I know everybody there, and their ways just
suit me. I spent many jolly weeks in the island, staying with friends
up country. When I grew restless again I took advantage of a ship that
was trading to Sardinia and Corsica; and very glad I was to feel the
fresh breeze and the sea-spray in my face once more.”
“But isn’t it very hot and stuffy, down in the—hold, I think you call
it?” asked the Water Rat.
The seafarer looked at him with the suspicion of a wink. “I’m an old
hand,” he remarked with much simplicity. “The captain’s cabin’s good
enough for me.”
“It’s a hard life, by all accounts,” murmured the Rat, sunk in deep
thought.
“For the crew it is,” replied the seafarer gravely, again with the
ghost of a wink.
“From Corsica,” he went on, “I made use of a ship that was taking wine
to the mainland. We made Alassio in the evening, lay to, hauled up our
wine-casks, and hove them overboard, tied one to the other by a long
line. Then the crew took to the boats and rowed shorewards, singing as
they went, and drawing after them the long bobbing procession of casks,
like a mile of porpoises. On the sands they had horses waiting, which
dragged the casks up the steep street of the little town with a fine
rush and clatter and scramble. When the last cask was in, we went and
refreshed and rested, and sat late into the night, drinking with our
friends, and next morning I took to the great olive-woods for a spell
and a rest. For now I had done with islands for the time, and ports and
shipping were plentiful; so I led a lazy life among the peasants, lying
and watching them work, or stretched high on the hillside with the blue
Mediterranean far below me. And so at length, by easy stages, and
partly on foot, partly by sea, to Marseilles, and the meeting of old
shipmates, and the visiting of great ocean-bound vessels, and feasting
once more. Talk of shell-fish! Why, sometimes I dream of the shell-fish
of Marseilles, and wake up crying!”
“That reminds me,” said the polite Water Rat; “you happened to mention
that you were hungry, and I ought to have spoken earlier. Of course,
you will stop and take your midday meal with me? My hole is close by;
it is some time past noon, and you are very welcome to whatever there
is.”
“Now I call that kind and brotherly of you,” said the Sea Rat. “I was
indeed hungry when I sat down, and ever since I inadvertently happened
to mention shell-fish, my pangs have been extreme. But couldn’t you
fetch it along out here? I am none too fond of going under hatches,
unless I’m obliged to; and then, while we eat, I could tell you more
concerning my voyages and the pleasant life I lead—at least, it is very
pleasant to me, and by your attention I judge it commends itself to
you; whereas if we go indoors it is a hundred to one that I shall
presently fall asleep.”
“That is indeed an excellent suggestion,” said the Water Rat, and
hurried off home. There he got out the luncheon-basket and packed a
simple meal, in which, remembering the stranger’s origin and
preferences, he took care to include a yard of long French bread, a
sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down and
cried, and a long-necked straw-covered flask wherein lay bottled
sunshine shed and garnered on far Southern slopes. Thus laden, he
returned with all speed, and blushed for pleasure at the old seaman’s
commendations of his taste and judgment, as together they unpacked the
basket and laid out the contents on the grass by the roadside.
The Sea Rat, as soon as his hunger was somewhat assuaged, continued the
history of his latest voyage, conducting his simple hearer from port to
port of Spain, landing him at Lisbon, Oporto, and Bordeaux, introducing
him to the pleasant harbours of Cornwall and Devon, and so up the
Channel to that final quayside, where, landing after winds long
contrary, storm-driven and weather-beaten, he had caught the first
magical hints and heraldings of another Spring, and, fired by these,
had sped on a long tramp inland, hungry for the experiment of life on
some quiet farmstead, very far from the weary beating of any sea.
Spell-bound and quivering with excitement, the Water Rat followed the
Adventurer league by league, over stormy bays, through crowded
roadsteads, across harbour bars on a racing tide, up winding rivers
that hid their busy little towns round a sudden turn; and left him with
a regretful sigh planted at his dull inland farm, about which he
desired to hear nothing.
By this time their meal was over, and the Seafarer, refreshed and
strengthened, his voice more vibrant, his eye lit with a brightness
that seemed caught from some far-away sea-beacon, filled his glass with