The Willows and Beyond by Kenneth Grahame, William Horwood, Patrick Benson Read Free Book Online Page A

plain enough, but who?”
    He turned suddenly to the Mole and was about to say something when the young rat, silent still, pointed to the twine once more, about part of which was wrapped some of that oiled paper used by seafarers to keep their shag in good order.
    The Water Rat opened it up and then, seeking to find the best light he could, he read aloud the strangest, and the most moving letter he was ever likely to receive.

    “Dear Mr Water Rat,
    “I hope I may make so bold as to trust you remember me after all these long years and that time we spent upon the roadside near your home, when you made me as sailor-like a repast as ever I’ve had before or since. I am that same —“

    “Why, Mole,” cried Ratty, his suspicions now confirmed, “it’s from the Sea Rat. The one I met so many years ago. You remember!”
    The Mole did indeed remember, only too well. It was a story he had told Nephew a good many times as a warning against yielding too impulsively to those restless yearnings for travel that beset so many animals of a wandering nature at autumn time. He had told him of how that stranger had appeared along the River Bank, and held the Rat spellbound with many alluring tales of far distant places; of how the Mole had come along just in time to restrain the Rat from following in the stranger’s footsteps and leaving the River Bank for ever, to end up one day in a watery grave at the bottom of some foreign dock (as the Mole imagined such wandering seafarers too often ended their days).
    The Rat resumed his reading of the letter:

    “I am that same Sea Rat to whom you were so hospitable, and I have never forgotten your kindness or the River Bank where you had your home.
    “Well, fellow mariner the game’s up with me now and I have not many days to live, mayhap only hours. By the time you read this; shipmate, I’ll be down below in Davy Jones’s locker.”
     
    For the first time since they had entered the cage the young rat responded in some way: he nodded sadly It was evident that the Sea Rat had indeed passed on, just as he had predicted.

    “Now, here’s the point. I remember you to be a practical kind of fellow, as most nautical rats are, so I’ll not beat about the bush. After I left you those many years ago, fate and good fortune took me to the creeks of Malaya where I gave up the sea-faring life for a time and made a stab at rubber plantation work. But I lost what money I had, and I lost as well the only pearl I ever possessed in all my life—
    — the mother of that youngster you see before you now.”
     
    ‘The poor youth!” cried the Mole, much moved by the Sea Rat’s testimony.

    “I decided to work my passage home but was diverted up the Nile, where they have need of a good hand upon a deck, which I was, and which my boy had by then become. But lady luck went against me once more, and not a fortnight since I contracted a fever, what we would call the ‘Gruesome’ in our lingo.
    “I said before that the boy’s mother was the brightest pearl in my life, but not far behind is the boy himself He’s good about the water, so you’ll have a use for him and he’ll work his passage without you needing to train him up. He can speak five languages fluently, and two more passably, though you may not have much use for Malayan lingo and its dialects along the River Bank, nor Chinese for all I know.
    “I’ve racked my brain as to what to do with him, for this place is filled with villains and low types; so once I’m gone he’ll be lucky not to be sold into slavery and bondage. Anyway, the sea’s no life for a rat these days; for now the sailing ships have all but gone there’s no joy left in it. Come to that, the roaming life’s not all it’s cracked up to be. That was why I had been trying to get him back home and apprentice him to land-lubbing work of some kind; but I’ll not be able to now.
    “All in all, and when I count the little money I have left, which isn’t much, the best