CHAPTER X
ABOARD THE LUGGER
When I woke up, it was still bright day, but the sun was off the cliffs, and the caves seemed dark and uncanny.
"Well," said Marah, "have you had a good sleep?"
"Yes," I said, full of wretchedness; "I must have slept for hours."
"You'll need a good sleep," said Marah, "for it's likely you'll have none to-night. We night-riders, the like of you and me, why, we know what the owls do, don't we? We sleep like cats in the daytime. They'll be getting supper along in about half-an-hour. What d'you say to a wash and that down in the sea—a plunge in the cove and then out and dry yourself? Why, it'd be half your life. Do you all the good in the world. Can't offer you fresh water; there's next to none down below here. But you come down and have a dip in the salt."
He led the way into the next room, and down the stairs to the water. The tide was pretty full, so that I could dive off one ledge and climb out by the ledge at the other side. So I dived in and then climbed back, and dried myself with a piece of an old sail, feeling wonderfully refreshed. Then we went upstairs to the cave again, and supped off the remains of the dinner; and then the men sat about the table talking, telling each other stories of the sea. It was dusk before we finished supper, and the caves were dark, but no lights were allowed. The smugglers always went into the passages to light their pipes. I don't know how they managed in the winter: probably they lived in the passages, where a fire could not be seen from the sea. In summer they could manage very well.
Towards sunset the sky clouded over, and it began to rain. I sat at the cave window, listlessly looking out upon it, feeling very sick at heart. The talk of the smugglers rang in my ears in little snatches.
"So I said, 'You're a liar. There's no man alive ever came away, not ever. They were all drowned, every man Jack.' That's what I said."
"Yes," said another; "so they was. I saw the wreck myself. The lower masts was standing."
I didn't understand half of what they said; but it all seemed to be full of terrible meaning, like the words heard in dreams. Marah was very kind in his rough sailor's way, but I was homesick, achingly homesick, and his jokes only made me more wretched than I was. At last he told me to turn in again and get some sleep, and, after I had tucked myself up, the men were quieter. I slept in a dazed, light-headed fashion (as I had slept in the afternoon) till some time early in the morning (at about one o'clock), when a hand shook my hammock, and Marah's voice bade me rise.
It was dark in the cave, almost pitch-dark. Marah took my arm and led me downstairs to the lower cave, where one or two battle-lanterns made it somewhat lighter. There were nearly twenty men gathered together in the cave, and I could see that the lugger had been half filled with stores, all securely stowed, ready for the sea. A little, brightly-dressed mannikin, in a white, caped overcoat, was directing matters, talking sometimes in English, sometimes in French, but always with a refined accent and in picked phrases. He was clean shaven, as far as I could see, and his eyes glittered in the lantern-light. The English smugglers addressed him as Captain Sharp, but I learnt afterwards that "Captain Sharp" was the name by which all their officers were known, and that there were at least twenty other Captain Sharps scattered along the coast. At the time, I thought that this man was the supreme head, the man who had sent Mrs Cottier her present, the man who had spoken to me that night of the snow-storm.
"Here, Marah," he said, when he saw that I was taking too much notice of him, "stow that lad away in the bows; he will be recognising me by-and-by."
"Come on, Jim," said Marah; "jump into the boat, my son."
"But where are we going?" I asked, dismayed.
"Going?" he answered. "Going? Going to make a man of you. Going to France, my son."
I hung back, frightened and wretched. He swung me lightly off the ledge into the lugger's bows.
"Now, come," he said; "you're not going to cry. I'm going to make a man of you. Here, you must put on this suit of wrap-rascal, and these here knee-boots, or you'll be cold to the bone,'specially if you're sick. Put 'em on, son, before we sail." He didn't give me time to think or to refuse, but forced the clothes upon me; they were a world too big. "There," he said; "now you're quite the sailor." He gave a hail to the little dapper man above him. "We're all ready, Captain Sharp," he cried, "so soon as you like."
"Right," said the Captain. "You know what you got to do. Shove off, boys!"
A dozen more smugglers leaped down upon the lugger; the gaskets were cast off the sails, a few ropes were flung clear. I saw one or two men coiling away the lines which had lashed us to the rocks. The dapper man waved his hands and skipped up the staircase.
"Good-bye, Jim," said some one. "So long—so long," cried the smugglers to their friends. Half-a-dozen strong hands walked along the ledge with the sternfast, helping to drag us from the cave. "Quietly now," said Marah, as the lugger moved out into the night. "Heave, oh, heave," said the seamen, as they thrust her forward to the sea. The sea air beat freshly upon me, a drop or two of rain fell, wetting my skin, the water talked under the keel and along the cliff-edge—we were out of the cave, we were at sea; the cave and the cliff were a few yards from us, we were moving out into the unknown.
"Aft with the boy, out of the way," said some one; a hand led me aft to the stern sheets, and there was Marah at the tiller. "Get sail on her," he said in a low voice.
The men ran to the yards and masts, the masts were stepped and the yards hoisted quietly. There was a little rattle of sheets and blocks, the sails slatted once or twice. Then the lugger passed from the last shelter of the cliff; the wind caught us, and made us heel a little; the men went to the weather side; the noise of talking water deepened. Soon the water creamed into brightness as we drove through it. They set the little main topsail—luggers were never very strictly rigged in those days.
"There's the Start Light, Jim," said Marah. "Bid it good-bye. You'll see it no more for a week."
They were very quiet in the lugger; no one spoke, except when the steersman was relieved, or when the master wished something done among the rigging. The men settled down on the weather side with their pipes and quids, and all through the short summer night we lay there, huddled half asleep together, running to the south like a stag. At dawn the wind breezed up, and the lugger leaped and bounded till I felt giddy; but they shortened no sail, only let her drive and stagger, wasting no ounce of the fair wind. The sun came up, the waves sparkled, and the lugger drove on for France, lashing the sea into foam and lying along on her side. I didn't take much notice of things for I felt giddy and stunned; but the change in my circumstances had been so great—the life in the lugger was so new and strange to me—that I really did not feel keen sorrow for being away from my friends. I just felt stunned and crushed.
Marah was at the taffrail looking out over the water with one hand on the rail. He grinned at me whenever the sprays rose up and crashed down upon us. "Ha," he would say, "there she sprays; that beats your shower-baths," and he would laugh to see me duck whenever a very heavy spray flung itself into the boat. We were tearing along at a great pace and there were two men at the tiller: Marah was driving his boat in order to "make a passage." We leaped and shook, and lay down and rushed, like a thing possessed; our sails were dark with the spray; nearly every man on board was wet through.
By-and-by Marah called me to him and took me by the scruff of the neck with one hand. "See here," he said, putting his mouth against my ear; "look just as though nothing was happening. You see that old Gateo at the lee tiller? Well, watch him for a moment. Now look beyond his red cap at the sea. What's that? Your eyes are younger—I use tobacco too much to have good eyes. What's that on the sea there?"
I looked hard whenever the lugger rose up in a swell. "It's a sail," I said, in a low voice; "a small sail. A cutter by the look of her."
"Yes," he said, "she's a cutter. Now turn to windward. What d'ye make of that?"
He jerked himself around to stare to windward and ahead of us. Very far away, I could not say how far, I saw, or thought I saw, several ships; but the sprays drove into my face and the wind blew the tears out of my eyes. "Ships," I answered him. "A lot of ships—a whole convoy of ships."
"Ah," he answered, "that's no convoy. That's the fleet blockading Brest, my son. That cutter's a revenue cruiser, and she's new from home; her bottom's clean, otherwise we'd dropped her. She's going to head us off into the fleet, and then there will be James M'Kenna."
"Who was he?" I asked.
"Who? James M'Kenna?" he answered lightly. "He stole the admiral's pig. He was hanged at the yardarm until he was dead. You thank your stars we have not got far to go. There's France fair to leeward; but that cutter's between us and there, so we shall have a close call to get home. P'raps we shall not get home—it depends, my son."
CHAPTER XI
THE FRIGATE "LAOCOON"
By this time the other smugglers had become alarmed. The longboat gun, which worked on a slide abaft all, was cleared, and the two little cohorns, or hand-swivel guns, which pointed over the sides, were trained and loaded. A man swarmed up the mainmast to look around. "The cutter's bearing up to close," he called out. "I see she's the Salcombe boat."
"That shows they have information," said Marah grimly, "otherwise they'd not be looking for us here. Some one had been talking to his wife." He hailed the masthead again. "Have the frigates seen us yet?"
For answer, the man took a hurried glance to windward, turned visibly white to the lips, and slid down a rope to the deck. "Bearing down fast, under stunsails," he reported. "The cutter's signalled them with her topsail. There's three frigates coming down," he added.
"Right," said Marah. "I'll go up and see for myself."
He went up, and came down again looking very ugly. He evidently thought that he was in a hole. "As she goes," he called to the helmsman, "get all you can on the sheets, boys. Now Jim, you're up a tree; you're within an hour of being pressed into the Navy. How'd ye like to be a ship's boy, hey, and get tickled up by a bo'sun's rope-end?"
"I shouldn't like it at all," I answered.
"You'll like it a jolly sight less than that," said he, "and it's what you'll probably be. We're ten miles from home. The cutter's in the road. The frigates will be on us in half-an-hour. It will be a mighty close call, my son; we shall have to fight to get clear."
At that instant of time something went overhead with a curious whanging whine.
"That's a three-pound ball," said Marah, pointing to a spurt upon a wave. "The cutter wants us to stop and have breakfast with 'em."
"Whang," went another shot, flying far overhead. "Fire away," said Marah. "You're more than a mile away; you will not hit us at that range."
He shifted his course a little, edging more towards the shore, so as to cut transversely across the cutter's bows. We ran for twenty minutes in the course of the frigates; by that time the cutter was within half a mile and the frigates within three miles of us. All the cutter's guns were peppering at us; a shot or two went through our sails, one shot knocked a splinter from our fiferail.
"They shoot a treat, don't they?" said Marah. "Another minute and they will be knocking away a spar."
Just as he spoke, there came another shot from the cutter; something aloft went "crack"; a rope unreeved from its pulley and rattled on to the deck; the mizen came down in a heap: the halliards had been cut clean through. The men leaped to repair the damage; it took but a minute or two, but we had lost way; the next shot took us square amidships and tore off a yard of our lee side.
"We must give them one in return," he said. "Aft to the gun, boys."
The men trained the long gun on the cutter. "Oh, Marah," I said, "don't fire on Englishmen."
"Who began the firing?" he answered. "I'm going to knock away some of their sails. Stand clear of the breech," he shouted, as he pulled the trigger-spring. The gun roared and recoiled; a hole appeared as if by magic in the swelling square foresail of the cutter. "Load with bar-shot and chain," said Marah. "Another like that and we shall rip the whole sail off. Mind your eye. There goes her gun again."
This time the shot struck the sea beside us, sending a spout of water over our rail. Again Marah pulled his trigger-spring, the gun fell over on its side, and the cutter's mast seemed to collapse into itself as though it were wrapping itself up in its own canvas. A huge loose clue of sail—the foresail's starboard leach—flew up into the air; the boom swung after it; the gaff toppled over from above; we saw the topmast dive like a lunging rapier into the sea. We had torn the foresail in two, and the shot passing on had smashed the foremast just below the cap. All her sails lay in a confused heap just forward of the mast.
"That's done her," said one of the smugglers. "She can't even use her gun now."
"Hooray!" cried another. "We're the boys for a lark."
"Are you?" said Marah. "We got the frigates to clear yet, my son. They'll be in range in two minutes or less. Look at them."
Tearing after us, in chase, under all sail, came the frigates. Their bows were burrowing into white heaps of foam; we could see the red port-lids and the shining gun-muzzles; we could see the scarlet coats of the marines, and the glint of brass on the poops. A flame spurted from the bows of the leader. She was firing a shot over us to bid us heave to. The smugglers looked at each other; they felt that the game was up. Bang! Another shot splashed into the sea beside us, and bounded on from wave to wave, sending up huge splashes at each bound. A third shot came from the second frigate, but this also missed. Marah was leaning over our lee rail, looking at the coast of France, still several miles away. "White water," he cried suddenly. "Here's the Green Stones. We shall do them yet."
I could see no green stones, but a quarter of a mile away, on our port-hand, the sea was all a cream of foam above reefs and sands just covered by the tide. If they were to help us, it was none too soon, for by this time the leading frigate was only a hundred yards from us. Her vast masts towered over us. I could look into her open bow ports; I could see the men at the bow guns waiting for the word to fire. I have often seen ships since then, but I never saw any ship so splendid and so terrible as that one. She was the Laocoon, and her figurehead was twined with serpents. The line of her ports was of a dull yellow colour, and as all her ports were open, the port-lids made scarlet marks all along it. Her great lower studdingsail swept out from her side for all the world like a butterfly-net, raking the top of the sea for us. An officer stood on the forecastle with a speaking-trumpet in his hand.
"Stand by!" cried Marah. "They're going to hail us."
"Ahoy, the lugger there!" yelled the officer. "Heave to at once or I sink you. Heave to."
"Answer him in French," said Marah to one of the men.
A man made some answer in French; I think he said he didn't understand. The officer told a marine to fire at us. The bullet whipped through the mizen. "Bang" went one of the main-deck guns just over our heads. We felt a rush and shock, and our mizen mast and sail went over the side.
Marah stood up and raised his hand. "We surrender, sir!" he shouted; "we surrender! Down helm, boys."
We swung round on our keel, and came to the wind. We saw the officer nod approval and speak a word to the sailing-master, and then the great ship lashed past us, a mighty, straining, heaving fabric of beauty, whose lower studding-sails were wet half-way to their irons.
"Now for it!" said Marah. He hauled his wind, and the lugger shot off towards the broken water. "If we get among those shoals," he said, "we're safe as houses. The frigate's done. She's going at such a pace they will never stop her. Not till she's gone a mile. Not without they rip the masts out of her. That officer ought to have known that trick. That will be a lesson to you, Mr Jim. If ever you're in a little ship, and you get chased by a big ship, you keep on till she's right on top of you, and then luff hard all you know, and the chances are you'll get a mile start before they come round to go after you."
We had, in fact, doubled like a hare, and the frigate, like a greyhound, had torn on ahead, unable to turn. We saw her lower stunsail boom carry away as they took in the sail, and we could see her seamen running to their quarters ready to brace the yards and bring the ship to her new course. The lugger soon gathered way and tore on, but it was now blowing very fresh indeed, and the sea before us was one lashing smother of breakers. Marah seemed to think nothing of that; he was watching the frigates. One, a slower sailer than the other, was sailing back to the fleet; the second had hove to about a mile away, with her longboat lowered to pursue us. The boat was just clear of her shadow; crowding all sail in order to get to us. The third ship, the ship which we had tricked, was hauling to the wind, with her light canvas clued up for furling. In a few moments she was braced up and standing towards us, but distant about a mile.
Suddenly both frigates opened fire, and the great cannon-balls ripped up the sea all round us.
"They'll sink us, sure," said one of the smugglers with a grin.
The men all laughed, and I laughed too; we were all so very much interested in what was going to happen. The guns fired steadily one after the other in a long rolling roar. The men laughed at each shot.
"They couldn't hit the sea," they said derisively. "The navy gunners are no use at all."
"No," said Marah, "they're not. But if they keep their course another half-minute they'll be on the sunk reef, and a lot of 'em'll be drowned. I wonder will the old Laocoon take a hint."
"Give 'em the pennant," said Gateo.
"Ay, give it 'em," said half-a-dozen others. "Don't let 'em wreck."
Marah opened the flag-locker, and took out a blue pennant (it had a white ball in the middle of it), which he hoisted to his main truck. "Let her go off," he cried to the helmsman.
For just a moment we lay broadside on to the frigate, a fair target for her guns, so that she could see the pennant blowing out clear.
"You see, Jim?" asked Marah. "That pennant means 'You are standing in to danger.' Now we will luff again."
"I don't think they saw it, guv'nor," said one of the sailors as another shot flew over us. "They'll have to send below to get their glasses, those blind navy jokers."
"Off," said Marah, quickly; and again we lay broadside on, tumbling in the swell, shipping heavy sprays.
This time they saw it, for the Laocoon's helm was put down, her great sails shivered and threshed, and she stood off on the other tack. As she stood away we saw an officer leap on to the taffrail, holding on by the mizen backstays. "Tar my wig," said Marah, "if he isn't bowing to us!"
Sure enough the officer took off his hat to us and bowed gracefully.
"Polite young man," said Marah. "We will give them the other pennant." Another flag, a red pennant, was hoisted in place of the blue. "Wishing you a pleasant voyage," said Marah. "Now luff, my sons. That longboat will be on to us."
Indeed, the longboat had crept to within six hundred yards of us; it was time we were moving, though the guns were no longer firing on us from the ships.
"Mind your helm, boys," said Marah as he went forward to the bows. "I've got to con you through a lot of bad rocks. You'll have to steer small or die."
CHAPTER XII
BLACK POOL BAY
I shall not describe our passage through the Green Stones to Kermorvan, but in nightmares it comes back to me. We seemed to wander in blind avenues, hedged in by seas, and broken water, awful with the menace of death. For five or six hours we dodged among rocks and reefs, wet with the spray that broke upon them and sick at heart at the sight of the whirlpools and eddies. I think that they are called the Green Stones because the seas break over them in bright green heaps. Here and there among them the tide seized us and swept us along, and in the races where this happened there were sucking whirlpools, strong enough to twist us round. How often we were near our deaths I cannot think, but time and time again the backwash of a breaker came over our rail in a green mass. When we sailed into Kermorvan I was only half conscious from the cold and wet. I just remember some one helping me up some steps with seaweed on them.
We stayed in Kermorvan for a week or more, waiting for our cargo of brandy, silk, and tobacco, and for letters and papers addressed to the French war-prisoners in the huge prison on Dartmoor.
I was very unhappy in Kermorvan, thinking of home. It would have been less dismal had I had more to do, but I was unoccupied and a prisoner, in charge of an old French woman, who spoke little English, so that time passed slowly indeed. At last we set sail up the coast, hugging the French shore, touching at little ports for more cargo till we came to Cartaret. Here a French gentleman (he was a military spy) came aboard us, and then we waited two or three days for a fair wind. At last the wind drew to the east, and we spread all sail for home on a wild morning when the fishermen were unable to keep the sea.
At dusk we were so near to home that I could see the Start and the whole well-known coast from Salcombe to Dartmoor. In fact I had plenty of time to see it, for we doused our sails several miles out to sea, and lay tossing in the storm to a sea-anchor, waiting for the short summer night to fall. When it grew dark enough (of course, in that time of year, it is never very dark even in a storm) we stole in, mile by mile, to somewhere off Flushing, where we showed a light. We showed it three times from the bow, and at the last showing a red light gleamed from Flushing Church. That was the signal to tell us that all was safe, so then we sailed into Black Pool Bay, where the breakers were beating fiercely in trampling ranks.
There were about a dozen men gathered together on the beach. We sailed right in, till we were within ten yards of the sands, and there we moored the lugger by the head and stern, so that her freight could be discharged. The men on the beach waded out through the surf (though it took them up to the armpits), and the men in the lugger passed the kegs and boxes to them. Waves which were unusually big would knock down the men in the water, burden and all, and then there would be laughter from all hands, and grumbles from the victim. I never saw men work harder. The freight was all flung out and landed and packed in half an hour. It passed out in a continual stream from both sides of the boat; everybody working like a person possessed. And when the lugger was nearly free of cargo, and the string of workers in the water was broken on the port side, it occurred to me that I had a chance of escape. It flashed into my mind that it was dark, that no one in the lugger was watching me, that the set of the tide would drive me ashore (I was not a good swimmer, but I knew that in five yards I should be able to touch bottom), and that in another two hours, or less, I should be in bed at home, with all my troubles at an end.
When I thought of escaping, I was standing alone at the stern. A lot of the boat's crew were in the water, going ashore to "run" the cargo, on horseback, to the wilds of Dartmoor. The others were crowded at the bow, watching them go, or watching the men upon the beach, moving here and there by torchlight, packing the kegs on the horses' backs. It was a wild scene. The wind blew the torches into great red fiery banners; the waves hissed and spumed, and glimmered into brightness; you could see the horses shying, and the men hurrying to and fro; and now and then some one would cry out, and then a horse would whinny. All the time there was a good deal of unnecessary talk and babble; the voices and laughter of the seamen came in bursts as the wind lulled. Every now and then a wave would burst with a smashing noise, and the smugglers would laugh at those wetted by the spray. I saw that I had a better chance of landing unobserved on the port side; so I stole to that side, crawled over the gunwale, and slid into the sea without a splash.
The water made me gasp at first; but that only lasted a second. I made a gentle stroke or two towards the shore, trying not to raise my head much, and really I felt quite safe before I had made three strokes. When you swim in the sea at night, you see so little that you feel that you, in your turn, cannot be seen either. All that I could see was a confused mass of shore with torchlights. Every now and then that would be hidden from me by the comb of a wave; and then a following wave would souse into my face and go clean over me; but as my one thought was to be hidden from the lugger, I rather welcomed a buffet of that sort. I very soon touched bottom, for the water near the beach is shallow. I stood up and bent over, so as not to be seen, and began to stumble towards the shelter of the rocks. The business of lading the horses was going steadily forward, with the same noisy hurry. I climbed out of the backwash of the last breaker, and dipped down behind a rock, high and dry on the sands. I was safe, I thought, safe at last, and I was too glad at heart to think of my sopping clothes, and of the cold which already made me shiver like an aspen. Suddenly, from up the hill, not more than a hundred yards from me, came the "Hoo-hoo" of an owl, the smuggler's danger signal. The noise upon the beach ceased at once; the torches plunged into the sand and went out: I heard the lugger's crew cut their cables and hoist sail.
A voice said, "Carry on, boys. The preventives are safe at Bolt Tail," and at that the noise broke out as before.
Some one cried "Sh," and "Still," and in the silence which followed, the "Hoo-hoo" of the owl called again, with a little flourishing note at the end of the call.
A man cried out, "Mount and scatter."
Some one else cried, "Where's Marah?" and as I lay crouched, some one bent over me and touched me.
"Sorry, Jim," said Marah's voice. "I knew you'd try it. You only got your clothes wet. Come on, now."
"Hoo-hoo" went the owl again, and at this, the third summons, we distinctly heard many horses' hoofs coming at a gallop towards us, though at a considerable distance.
"Marah! Come on, man!" cried several voices.
"Come on," said Marah, dragging me to the horses. "Off, boys," he called. "Scatter as you ride," Many horses moved off at a smart trot up the hill to Stoke Fleming. Their horses' feet were muffled with felt, so that they made little noise, although they were many.
Marah swung me up into the saddle of one of the three horses in his care. He himself rode the middle horse. I was on his off side. The horse I mounted had a keg of spirits lashed to the saddle behind me; the horse beyond Marah was laden like a pack-mule.
"We're the rearguard," said Marah to me. "We must bring them clear off. Ride, boys—Strete road," he called; and the smugglers of the rearguard clattered off by the back road, or broken disused lane, which leads to Allington. Still Marah waited, the only smuggler now left on the beach. The preventive officers were clattering down the hill to us, less than a quarter of a mile away. "It's the preventives right enough," he said, as a gust of wind brought the clatter of sabres to us, above the clatter of the hoofs. "We're in for a run to-night. Some one's been blabbing. I think I know who. Well, I pity him. That's what. I pity him. Here, boy. You ought not to ha' tried to cut. You'll be half frozen with the wet. Drink some of this."
He handed me a flask, and forced me to take a gulp of something hot; it made me gasp, but it certainly warmed me, and gave me heart after my disappointment. I was too cold and too broken with misery to be frightened of the preventives. I only prayed that they might catch me and take me home.
We moved slowly to the meeting of the roads, and there Marah halted for a moment. Our horses stamped, and then whinnied. A horse on the road above us whinnied.
One of the clattering troop cried, "There they are. We have them. Come along, boys."
Some one—I knew the voice—it was Captain Barmoor, of the Yeomanry—cried out, "Stand and surrender." And then I saw the sabres gleam under the trees, and heard the horses' hoofs grow furious upon the stones. Marah stood up in his stirrups, and put his fingers in his mouth, and whistled a long, wailing, shrill whistle. Then he kicked his horses and we started, at a rattling pace, up the wretched twisting lane which led to Allington.
Now, the preventives, coming downhill at a tearing gallop, could not take the sharp turn of the lane without pulling up; they got mixed in some confusion at the turning, and a horse and rider went into the ditch. We were up the steep rise, and stretching out at full tilt for safety, before they had cleared the corner. Our horses were fresh; theirs had trotted hard for some miles under heavy men, so that at the first sight the advantage lay with us; but their horses were better than ours, and in better trim for a gallop. Marah checked the three horses, and let them take it easy, till we turned into the well-remembered high road which leads from Strete to my home. Here, on the level, he urged them on, and the pursuit swept after us; and here in the open, I felt for the first time the excitement of the hunt. I wanted to be caught; I kept praying that my horse would come down, or that the preventives would catch us; and at the same time the hurry of our rush through the night set my blood leaping, made me cry aloud as we galloped, made me call to the horses to gallop faster. There was nothing on the road; no one was travelling; we had the highway to ourselves. Near the farm at the bend we saw men by the roadside, and an owl called to us from among them, with that little flourish at the end of the call which I had heard once before that evening. We dashed past them; but as Marah passed, he cried out, "Yes. Be quick." And behind us, as we sped along, we heard something dragged across the road. The crossways lay just beyond.
To my surprise, Marah never hesitated. He did not take the Allington road, but spurred uphill towards the "Snail's Castle," and the road to Kingsbridge. As we galloped, we heard a crash behind us, and the cry of a hurt horse, and the clatter of a sword upon the road. Then more cries sounded; we could hear our pursuers pulling up.
"They're into a tree-trunk," said Marah. "Some friends put a tree across, and one of them's gone into it. We shall probably lose them now," he added. "They will go on for Allington. Still, we mustn't wait yet."
Indeed, the delay was only momentary. The noise of the horses soon re-commenced behind us; and though they paused at the cross-roads, it was only for a few seconds. Some of the troopers took the Allington road. Another party took the road which we had taken; and a third party stopped (I believe) to beat the farm buildings for the men who had laid the tree in the road.
We did not stop to see what they were doing, you may be sure; for when Marah saw that his trick had not shaken them off, he began to hurry his horses, and we were soon slipping and sliding down the steep zigzag road which leads past "Snail's Castle." I had some half-formed notion of flinging myself off my horse as we passed the door, or of checking the horse I rode, and shouting for help. For there, beyond the corner, was the house where I had been so happy, and the light from the window lying in a yellow patch across the road; and there was Hoolie's bark to welcome us. Perhaps if I had not been wet and cold I might have made an attempt to get away; and I knew the preventives were too close to us for Marah to have lingered, had I done so.
But you must remember that we were riding very fast, that I was very young, and very much afraid of Marah, and that the cold and the fear of the preventives (for in a way I was horribly frightened by them) had numbed my brain.
"Don't you try it," said Marah, grimly, as we came within sight of the house. "Don't you try it." He snatched my rein, bending forward on his horse's neck, calling a wild, queer cry. It was one of the gipsy horse-calls, and at the sound of it the horses seemed to lose their wits, for they dashed forward past the house, as though they were running away. It was as much as I could do to keep in the saddle. What made it so bitter to me was the opening of the window behind me. At the sound of the cry, and of those charging horses, some one—some one whom I knew so well, and loved so—ran to the window to look out. I heard the latch rattling and the jarring of the thrown-back sash, and I knew that some one—I would have given the world to have known who—looked out, and saw us as we swept round the corner and away downhill.
CHAPTER XIII
IN THE VALLEY
We turned down the valley, along the coast-track, splashing through the little stream that makes it so boggy by the gate, and soon we were on the coach-road galloping along the straight two miles towards Tor Cross.
Our horses were beginning to give way, for we had done four miles at good speed, and now the preventives began to gain upon us. Looking back as we galloped we could see them on the straight road, about two hundred yards away. Every time we looked back they seemed to be nearer, and at last Marah leant across and told me to keep low in my saddle, as he thought they were going to fire on us. A carbine shot cracked behind us, and I heard the "zip" of the bullet over me.
A man ran out suddenly from one of the furze-bushes by the road, and a voice cried, "Stop them, boys!" The road seemed suddenly full of people, who snatched at our reins, and hit us with sticks. I got a shrewd blow over the knee, and I heard Marah say something as he sent one man spinning to the ground. "Crack, crack!" went the carbines behind us. Some one had hold of my horse's reins, shouting, "I've got you, anyway!" Then Marah fired a pistol—it all happened in a second—the bullet missed, but the flash scorched my horse's nose; the horse reared, and knocked the man down, and then we were clear, and rattling along to Tor Cross.
Looking back, we saw one or two men getting up from the road, and then half-a-dozen guns and pistols flashed, and Marah's horse screamed and staggered. There was a quarter of a mile to go to Tor Cross, and that quarter-mile was done at such a speed as I have never seen since. Marah's horse took the bit in his teeth, and something of his terror was in our horses too.
In a moment, as it seemed, we were past the houses, and over the rocks by the brook-mouth; and there, with a groan, Marah's horse came down. Marah was evidently expecting it, for he had hold of my rein at the time, and as his horse fell he cleared the body. "Get down, Jim," he said. "We're done. The horses are cooked. They have had six miles; another mile would kill them. Poor beast's heart's burst. Down with you." He lifted me off the saddle, and lashed the two living horses over the quarters with a strip of seaweed. He patted the dead horse, with a "Poor boy," and dragged me down behind one of the black rocks, which crop up there above the shingle.
The two horses bolted off along the strand, scattering the pebbles, and then, while the clash of their hoofs was still loud upon the stones, the preventives came pounding up, their horses all badly blown and much distressed. Their leader was Captain Barmoor. I knew him by his voice.
"Here's a dead horse!" he cried. "Sergeant, we have one of their horses. Get down and see if there's any contraband upon him. After them, you others. We shall get them now. Ride on, I tell you! What are you pulling up for?"
The other preventives crashed on over the shingle. Captain Barmoor and the sergeant remained by the dead horse. Marah and I lay close under the rock, hardly daring to breathe, and wondering very much whether we made any visible mark to the tall man on his horse. Shots rang out from the preventives' carbines, and the gallopers made a great clash upon the stones. We heard the sergeant's saddle creak, only a few yards away, and then his boots crunched on the beach as he walked up to the dead horse.
"No. There be no tubs here, sir," he said, after a short examination. "Her be dead enough. Stone dead, sir. There's an empty pistol-case, master."
"Oh," said Captain Barmoor. "Any saddlebag, or anything of that kind?"
The man fumbled about in the gear. "No, there was nothing of that kind—nothing at all."
"Bring on the saddle," said the captain. "There may be papers stitched in it." We heard the sergeant unbuckling the girth. "By the way," said the captain, "you're sure the third horse was led?"
"Yes," said the sergeant. "Two and a led horse there was, sir."
"H'm," said the captain. "I wonder if they have dismounted. They might have. Look about among the rocks there."
I saw Marah's right hand raise his horse-pistol, as the sergeant stepped nearer. In another moment he must have seen us. If he had even looked down, he could not have failed to see us: but he stood within six feet of us, looking all round him—looking anywhere but at his feet. Then he walked away from us, and looked at the rocks near the brook.
"D'ye see them?" snapped the captain.
"No, sir. Nothin' of 'em. They ben't about here, sir. I think they've ridden on. Shall I look in the furze there, sir, afore we go?"
"No," said the captain. "Well, yes. Just take a squint through it."
But as the sergeant waddled uneasily in his sea-boots across the shingle, the carbines of the preventives cracked out in a volley about a quarter of a mile away. A shot or two followed the volley.
"A shotgun that last, sir," said the sergeant.
"Yes," said the captain. "Come along. There's another. Come, mount, man. They're engaged."
We heard the sergeant's horse squirming about as the sergeant tried to mount, and then the two galloped off. Voices sounded close beside us, and feet moved upon the sand. "Still!" growled Marah in my ear. Some one cried out, "Further on. They're fighting further on. Hurry up, and we shall see it."
About a dozen Tor Cross men were hurrying up, in the chance of seeing a skirmish. The wife of one of them—old Mrs. Rivers—followed after them, calling to her man to come back. "I'll give it to 'ee, if 'ee don't come back. Come back, I tell 'ee." They passed on rapidly, pursued by the angry woman, while more shots banged and cracked further and further along the shore.
We waited till they passed out of hearing, and then Marah got up. "Come on, son," he said. "We must be going. Lucky your teeth didn't chatter, or they'd have heard us."
"I wish they had heard us," I cried, hotly. "Then I'd have gone home to-night. Let me go, Marah. Let me go home."
"Next trip, Jim," he said kindly. "Not this. I want you to learn about life. You will get mewed up with them ladies else, and then you will never do anything."
"Ah," I said. "But if you don't let me go I'll scream. Now then. I'll scream."
"Scream away, son," said Marah, calmly. "There's not many to hear you. But you'll not get home after what you have seen to-night. Come on, now."
He took me by the collar, and walked me swiftly to a little cove, where one or two of the Tor Cross fishers kept their boats. I heard a gun or two away in the distance, and then a great clatter of shingle, as the coastguards' horses trotted back towards us, with the led horse between two of them, as the prize of the night. They did not hear us, and could not see us, and Marah took good care not to let me cry out to them. He just turned my face up to his, and muttered, "You just try it. You try it, son, and I'll hold you in the sea till you choke."
The wind was blowing from the direction of the coastguards towards us, and even if I had cried out, perhaps, they would never have heard me. You may think me a great coward to have given in in this way; but few boys of my age would have made much outcry against a man like Marah. He made the heart die within you; and to me, cold and wet from my ducking, terrified of capture in spite of my innocence (for I was not at all sure that the smugglers would not swear that I had joined them, and had helped them in their fights and escapades), the outlook seemed so hopeless and full of misery that I could do nothing. My one little moment of mutiny was gone, my one little opportunity was lost. Had I made a dash for it—But it is useless to think in that way.
Marah got into the one boat which floated in the little artificial creek, and thrust me down into the stern sheets. Then he shoved her off with a stretcher (the oars had been carried to the fisher's house, there were none in the boat), and as soon as we were clear of the rocks, in the rather choppy sea, he stepped the stretcher in the mast-crutch as a mast, and hoisted his coat as a sail. He made rough sheets by tying a few yards of spun-yarn to the coat-skirts, and then, shipping the rudder, he bore away before the wind towards the cave by Black Pool.
We had not gone far (certainly not fifty yards), when we saw the horses of the coastguards galloping down to the sea, one of the horses shying at the whiteness of the breaking water.
A voice hailed us. "Boat ahoy!" it shouted; "what are you doing in the boat there?"
And then all the horsemen drew up in a clump among the rocks.
"Us be drifting, master," shouted Marah, speaking in the broad dialect of the Devon men; "us be drifting."
"Come in till I have a look at you," cried the voice again. "Row in to the rocks here."
"Us a-got no o-ars," shouted Marah, letting the boat slip on. "Lie down, son," he said; "they will fire in another minute."
Indeed, we heard the ramrods in the carbines and the loud click of the gun-cocks.
"Boat ahoy!" cried the voice again. "Row in at once! D'ye hear? Row in at once, or I shall fire on you."
Marah did not answer.
"Present arms!" cried the voice again after a pause; and at that Marah bowed down in the stern sheets under the gunwale.
"Fire!" said the voice; and a volley ripped up the sea all round us, knocking off splinters from the plank and flattening out against the transom.
"Keep down, Jim; you're all right," said Marah. "We will be out of range in another minute."
Bang! came a second volley, and then single guns cracked and banged at intervals as we drew away.
For the next half-hour we were just within extreme range of the carbines and musketoons. During that half-hour we were slowly slipping by the long two miles of Slapton sands. We could not go fast, for our only sail was a coat, and, though the wind was pretty fresh, the set of the tide was against us. So for half an hour we crouched below that rowboat's gunwale, just peeping up now and then to see the white line of the breakers on the sand, and beyond that the black outlines of the horsemen, who slowly followed us, firing steadily, but with no very clear view of what they fired at. I thought that the two miles would never end. Sometimes the guns would stop for a minute, and I would think, "Ah! now we are out of range," or, "Now they have given us up." And then, in another second, another volley would rattle at us, and perhaps a bullet would go whining overhead, or a heavy chewed slug would come "plob" into the boat's side within six inches of me.
Marah didn't seem to mind their firing. He was too pleased at having led the preventives away from the main body of the night-riders to mind a few bullets. "Ah, Jim," he said, "there's three thousand pounds in lace, brandy, and tobacco gone to Dartmoor this night. And all them redcoat fellers got was a dead horse and a horse with a water-breaker on him. And the dead horse was their own, and the one they took. I stole 'em out of the barrack stables myself."
"But horse-stealing is a capital offence," I cried. "They could hang you."
"Yes," he said; "so they would if they could." Bang! came another volley of bullets all round us. "They'd shoot us, too, if they could, so far as that goes; but so far, they haven't been able. Never cross any rivers till you come to the water, Jim. Let that be a lesson to you."
I have often thought of it since as sound advice, and I have always tried to act upon it; but at the time it didn't give much comfort.
At the end of half an hour we were clear of Slapton sands, and coming near to Strete, and here even Marah began to be uneasy. He was watching the horsemen on the beach very narrowly, for as soon as they had passed the Lea they had stopped firing on us, and had gone at a gallop to the beach boathouse to get out a boat.
"What are they doing, Marah?" I asked.
"Getting out a boat to come after us," he answered. "Silly fools! If they'd done that at once they'd have got us. They may do it now. There goes the boat."
We heard the cries of the men as the boat ground over the shingle. Then we heard shouts and cries, and saw a light in the boathouse.
"Looking for oars and sails," said Marah, "and there are none. Good, there are none."
Happily for us, there were none. But we heard a couple of horses go clattering up the road to O'Farrell's cottage to get them.
"We shall get away now," said Marah.
In a few minutes we were out of sight of the beach. Then one of the strange coast currents caught us, and swept us along finely for a few minutes. Soon our boat was in the cave, snugly lashed to the ring-bolts, and Marah had lifted me up the stairs to the room where a few smugglers lay in their hammocks, sleeping heavily. Marah made me drink something and eat some pigeon pie; and then, stripping my clothes from me, he rubbed me down with a blanket, wrapped me in a pile of blankets, and laid me to sleep in a corner on an old sail.
CHAPTER XIV
A TRAITOR
The next day, when I woke, a number of smugglers had come back from their ride. They were sitting about the cave, in their muddy clothes, in high good spirits. They had been chased by a few preventives as far as Allington, and there they had had a brisk skirmish with the Allington police, roused by the preventives' carbine fire. They had beaten off their opponents, and had reached Dartmoor in safety.
"Yes," said Marah; "all very well. But we have been blabbed on. We had the cutter on us on our way out, and here we were surprised coming home. It was the Salcombe cutter chased us, and it was the Salcombe boys gave the preventives the tip last night. Otherwise they'd have been in Salcombe all last night, watching Bolt Tail, no less. 'Stead of that, they came lumbering here, and jolly near nabbed us. Now, it's one of us. There's no one outside knows anything: and only half-a-dozen in Salcombe knew our plans. Salcombe district supplies North Devon; we supply to the east more. Who could it be, boys?"
Some said one thing, some another. And then a man suggested "the parson"; and when he said that it flashed across my mind that he meant Mr Cottier, for I knew that sailors always called a schoolmaster a parson, and I remembered how Mrs Cottier had heard his voice among the night-riders on the night of the snow-storm just before Christmas.
"No; it couldn't be the parson," said some one. "No one trusts the parson."
"I don't know as it couldn't be," said the man whom they called Hankie. "He is a proper cunning one to pry out."
"Ah!" said another smuggler. "And, come to think of it, we passed him the afternoon afore we sailed. I was driving with the Captain. I was driving the Captain here from Kingsbridge."
"He knows the Captain," said Marah grimly. "He might have guessed—seeing him with you—that you were coming to arrange a run. Now, how would he know where we were bound?"
"Guessed it," said Hankie. "He's been on a run or two with the Salcombe fellers. Besides, he couldn't be far out."
"No," said Marah, musingly; "he couldn't. And a hint would have been enough to send the cutter after us."
"But how did he put them on us last night?" said another smuggler. "We had drawed them out proper to Bolt Tail to look for a cargo there. Properly we had drawed them. Us had a boat and all, showing lights."
"Well, if it was the parson who done it, he'd easily find a way," said Marah. "We had better go over and see about it"
Before they went they left me in charge of the old Italian man, who taught me how to point a rope, which is one of the prettiest kinds of plaiting ever invented. The day passed slowly—oh! so slowly; for a day like that, so near home, yet so far away, and with so much misery in prospect, was agonising. I wondered what they would do to Mr Cottier; I wondered if ever I should get home again; I wondered whether the coastguards would have sufficient sense to arrest Marah if they saw him on the roads. In wondering like this, the day slowly dragged to an end; and at the end of the day, just before a watery sunset, Marah and the others returned, leading Mr Cottier as their prisoner.
It shows you what power the night-riders had in those days. They had gone to Salcombe to Mr Cottier's lodgings; they had questioned him, perhaps with threats, till he had confessed that he had betrayed them to the preventives; then they had gagged him, hustled him downstairs to a waiting closed carriage, and then they had quietly driven him on, undisturbed, to their fastness in the cliff. It was sad to see a man fallen so low, a man who had been at the University, and master of a school. It was sad to see him, his flabby face all fallen in and white from excess of fear, and to see his eyes lolling about from one to another man, trying to find a little hope in the look of the faces in the fast-darkening cave.
"Well," he said surlily at last; "you have got me. What are you going to do to me?"
"What d'ye think you deserve?" said Marah. "Eh? You'd have had us all hanged and glad, too. You'll see soon enough what we're going to do to you." He struck a light for his pipe, and lit a candle in a corner of the cave near where I lay. "You'll soon know your fate," he added. "Meanwhile, here's a friend of yours one—you might like to talk to. You'll not get another chance."
At this the man grovelled on the cave floor, crying out to them to let him live, that he would give them all his money, and so on.
"Get up," said Marah; "get up. Try and act like a man, even if you aren't one."
The man went on wailing, "What are you going to do to me?—what are you going to do to me?"
"Spike your guns," said Marah, curtly. "There's your friend in the corner. Talk to him."
He left us together in the cave; an armed smuggler sat at the cave entrance, turning his quid meditatively.
"Mr Cottier," I said, "do you remember Jim—Jim Davis?"
"Jim!" cried Mr Cottier; "Jim, how did you come here?"
"By accident," I said; "and now I'm a prisoner here, like you."
"Oh, Jim," he cried, "what are they going to do to me? You must have heard them. What are they going to do to me? Will they kill me, Jim?"
I thought of the two coastguards snugly shut up in France, in one of the inns near Brest, living at free-quarters, till the smugglers thought they could be sure of them. When I thought of those two men I felt that the traitor would not be killed; and yet I was not sure. I believe they would have killed him if I had not been there. They were a very rough lot, living rough lives, and a traitor put them all in peril of the gallows. Smugglers were not merciful to traitors (it is said that they once tied a traitor to a post at low-water mark, and let the tide drown him), and Marah's words made me feel that Mr Cottier would suffer some punishment: not death, perhaps, but something terrible.
I tried to reassure the man, but I could say very little. And I was angry with him, for he never asked after his wife, nor after Hugh, his son: and he asked me nothing of my prospects. The thought of his possible death by violence within the next few hours kept him from all thought of other people. Do not blame him. We who have not been tried do not know how we should behave in similar circumstances.
By-and-by the men came back to us. We were led downstairs, and put aboard the lugger. Then the boat pushed off silently, sail was hoisted, and a course was set down channel, under a press of canvas. Mr Cottier cheered up when we had passed out of the sight of the lights of the shore, for he knew then that his life was to be spared. His natural bullying vein came back to him. He sang and joked, and even threatened his captors. So all that night we sailed, and all the next day and night—a wild two or three days' sailing, with spray flying over us, and no really dry or warm place to sleep in, save a little half-deck which they rigged in the bows.
I should have been very miserable had not Marah made me work with the men, hauling the ropes, swabbing down the decks, scrubbing the paintwork, and even bearing a hand at the tiller. The work kept me from thinking. The watches (four hours on, four hours off), which I had to keep like the other men, made the time pass rapidly; for the days slid into each other, and the nights, broken into as they were by the night-watches, seemed all too short for a sleepy head like mine.
Towards the end of the passage, when the weather had grown brighter and hotter, I began to wonder how much further we were going. Then, one morning, I woke up to find the lugger at anchor in one of the ports of Northern Spain, with dawn just breaking over the olive-trees, and one or two large, queer-looking, lateen-rigged boats, xebecs from Africa, lying close to us. One of them was flying a red flag, and I noticed that our own boat was alongside of her. I thought nothing of it, but drew a little water from the scuttle-butt, and washed my face and hands in one of the buckets. One or two of the men were talking at my side.
"Ah!" said one of them, "that's nine he did that way—nine, counting him."
"A good job, too," said another man. "It's us or them. I'd rather it was them."
"Yes," said another fellow; "and I guess they repent."
The others laughed a harsh laugh, turning to the African boat with curious faces, to watch our boat pulling back, with Marah at her steering oar.
I noticed, at breakfast (which we all ate together on the deck), that Mr Cottier was no longer aboard the lugger. I had some queer misgivings, but said nothing till afterwards, when I found Marah alone.
"Marah," I said, "where is Mr Cottier? What have you done to him?"
He grinned at me grimly, as though he were going to refuse to tell me. Then he beckoned me to the side of the boat. "Here," he said, pointing to the lateen-rigged xebec; "you see that felucca-boat?"
"Yes," I said.
"Well, then," Marah continued, "he's aboard her—down in her hold: tied somewhere on the ballast. That's where Mr Cottier is. Now you want to know what we have done to him? Hey? Well, we've enlisted him in the Spanish Navy. That felucca-boat is what they call a tender. They carry recruits to the Navy in them boats. He will be in a Spanish man-of-war by this time next week. They give him twenty dollars to buy a uniform. He's about ripe for the Spanish Navy."
"But, Marah," I cried, "he may have to fight against our ships."
"All the better for us," he answered. "I wish all our enemies were as easy jobs."
I could not answer for a moment; then I asked if he would ever get free again.
"I could get free again," said Marah; "but that man isn't like me. He's enlisted for three years. I doubt the war will last so long. The free trade will be done by the time he's discharged. You see, Jim, we free-traders can only make a little while the nations are fighting. By this time three years Mr Cottier can talk all he's a mind."
I had never liked Mr Cottier, but I felt a sort of pity for him. Then I felt that perhaps the discipline would be the making of him, and that, if he kept steady, he might even rise in the Spanish Navy, since he was a man of education. Then I thought of poor Mrs Cottier at home, and I felt that her husband must be saved at all costs.
"Oh, Marah," I cried, "don't let him go like that. Go and buy him back. He doesn't deserve to end like that."
"Rot!" said Marah, turning on his heel. "Hands up anchor! Forward to the windlass, Jim. You know your duty."
The men ran to their places. Very soon we were under sail again, out at sea, with the Spanish coast in the distance astern, a line of bluish hills, almost like clouds.