It appeared to be a collection of back lanes, ditches, and little
gardens, and to present the aspect of a rather dull retirement.
Wemmick's house was a little wooden cottage in the midst of plots of
garden, and the top of it was cut out and painted like a battery mounted
with guns.
"My own doing," said Wemmick. "Looks pretty; don't it?"
I highly commended it, I think it was the smallest house I ever saw;
with the queerest gothic windows (by far the greater part of them sham),
and a gothic door almost too small to get in at.
"That's a real flagstaff, you see," said Wemmick, "and on Sundays I
run up a real flag. Then look here. After I have crossed this bridge, I
hoist it up-so--and cut off the communication."
The bridge was a plank, and it crossed a chasm about four feet wide
and two deep. But it was very pleasant to see the pride with which he
hoisted it up and made it fast; smiling as he did so, with a relish and
not merely mechanically.
"At nine o'clock every night, Greenwich time," said Wemmick, "the gun
fires. There he is, you see! And when you hear him go, I think you'll
say he's a Stinger."
The piece of ordnance referred to, was mounted in a separate fortress,
constructed of lattice-work. It was protected from the weather by an
ingenious little tarpaulin contrivance in the nature of an umbrella.
"Then, at the back," said Wemmick, "out of sight, so as not to impede
the idea of fortifications,--for it's a principle with me, if you have
an idea, carry it out and keep it up,--I don't know whether that's your
opinion--"
I said, decidedly.
"--At the back, there's a pig, and there are fowls and rabbits; then,
I knock together my own little frame, you see, and grow cucumbers; and
you'll judge at supper what sort of a salad I can raise. So, sir," said
Wemmick, smiling again, but seriously too, as he shook his head, "if you
can suppose the little place besieged, it would hold out a devil of a
time in point of provisions."
Then, he conducted me to a bower about a dozen yards off, but which was
approached by such ingenious twists of path that it took quite a long
time to get at; and in this retreat our glasses were already set forth.
Our punch was cooling in an ornamental lake, on whose margin the bower
was raised. This piece of water (with an island in the middle which
might have been the salad for supper) was of a circular form, and he had
constructed a fountain in it, which, when you set a little mill going
and took a cork out of a pipe, played to that powerful extent that it
made the back of your hand quite wet.