Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/666

236 "What's rising out of the waters, steady?" I asked my comrade.

"What?" says he. "The island."

"Oh! The island!" says I turning my eyes toward it. "True. I forgot the island."

"Forgot the port you're going to? That's odd, ain't it?"

"It is odd," says I.

"And odd," he said, slowly considering with himself, "ain't even; is it Gill?"

He had alway a remark, just like that to make, and seldom another. As soon as he had brought a thing round to what it was not, he was satisfied. He was one of the best of men, and in a certain sort of way, one with the least to say for himself. I qualify it, because, besides being able to read and write like a quartermaster, he had always one most excellent idea in his mind. That was duty. Upon my soul, I don't believe, though I admire learning beyond everything, that he could have had got a better idea out of all the books in the world, if he had learned them every word, and been the cleverest of scholars.

My comrade and I had been quartered in Jamaica, and from there we had been drafted off to the British settlement of Belize, lying away west and north of the Musquito coast. At Belize there had been great alarm of one cruel gang of pirates (there were always more pirates than enough in those Carribbean Seas), and as they got the better of our English cruisers by running into out-of-the-way creeks and shallows, and taking the land when they were hotly pressed, the governor of Belize had received orders from home to keep a sharp lookout for them along shore. Now there was an armed sloop came once a year from Port Royal, Jamaica, to the island, ladened with all manner of necessaries to eat and to drink, and to wear, and to use in various ways; and it was aboard of that sloop which had touched at Belize that I was a-standing, leaning over the bulwarks.

The island was occupied by a very small English colony. It had been given the name of Silver-Store. The reason of its being so called was, that the English colony owned and worked a silver mine over on the mainland, on Honduras, and used this island as a safe and convenient place to store their silver in, until it was annually fetched