The Book of Ebenezer le Page by G.B. Edwards Page A

looked smart. He looked better on the farm in his dirty boots and dung on his leggings and his shirt open at the neck and his old hat on the back of his head. They made him a lance-jack; but it was only because they wanted somebody tall at the end of the front rank to fix bayonets by. I was glad he was never in my platoon. I couldn’t have brought myself to make him jump to it, as I did the others.
    It must have been round about then we went to Jersey to see the Muratti. I don’t know which year it was, but I know they hadn’t been having it long. Football was getting more popular, and our Cycling Track was become a football ground. I wasn’t all that struck on Beautiful Jersey, as they liked to call it; and I have never wanted to go again. I was glad it was us won. The Jerseys came down to the harbour after the match to see us off on the boat. It was loaded with people, what with the team and supporters. Jack Priaulx, who was the captain of our team, was standing high up on the deck, waving the cup about. It’s true he’d had a few drinks and was perhaps looking too pleased with himself. One of the bright Jersey boys shouted out ‘Guernsey donkeys!’ The others laughed and we laughed too; but then a whole crowd of the sods started calling out ‘Guernsey donkeys! Guernsey donkeys!’ Our boys wasn’t having that. They started shouting ‘Crapauds! Crapauds! Jersey crapauds!’ There would have been fights if we could have got ashore, but the gangway was up. As it was, the boat went out the harbour with the Jerseys on the quay shouting ‘Guernsey donkeys! Guernsey donkeys!’ and all of us bawling out ‘Crapauds! Crapauds! Jersey crapauds!’ and Jack waving the cup. They came over to Guernsey the next year and got it back. I am glad I am not a Jerseyman. I would rather be a black man than a Jerseyman. A black man is a black man but a Jerseyman is a Jerseyman.
    Jim and me wasn’t much more than kids when we got ourselves stranded on Lihou Island. I remember I’d only just got my first bike. It was an old bone-shaker and didn’t have neither a free wheel, nor a three-speed gear, and went grinding up the hills; and Jim’s wasn’t much better. It was on our bikes we explored Guernsey; though the visitors nowadays have seen more of it than I have. There are plenty of parts I haven’t been to; and places like Jerbourg and Petit Bôt and the Gouffre I haven’t been to since I went with Jim. Though it was more often along the west coast we went for our rides because it was flat; and the day we went to Lihou we had been right to Pleinmont. There wasn’t so many houses round there those days: only a farm here and there inland, and a few cottages by the sea, and the old Imperial Hotel. That day we went up by the side of the Imperial and along the top by the haunted house and then full-pelt down the zig-zag with our feet off the pedals. On the way back round Rocquaine, Jim said, ‘Let’s go on Lihou.’
    It was Sunday and nearly evening by then. I said, ‘We’ll have to see first if the tide is down far enough.’ When we got to L’Érée we turned up by Fort Saumarez, and there wasn’t a soul about. The stone causeway for horses and carts to go vraicing wasn’t covered by the sea yet. Jim said, ‘It’s all right, the sea is going down.’ I said, ‘The sea isn’t going down, it’s on the turn.’ He said, ‘Come on, I’ll go by myself, if you won’t.’ I said, ‘All right, I’ll come,’ and we dumped our bikes against a hedge and I went across with him. There wasn’t much to see. There was a few old walls and a house with nobody living in it. There was some sort of big pans, I didn’t know what they was for; but Jim said once upon a time they was used to boil vraic to make iodine. There was thousands of rabbits on the island. It didn’t