The last buccaneer

There was no help for it. The poor, guileless clerk must take the road and chase the formidable old captain of buccaneers; and where was the use of such an enterprise, was more than he knew. But, as he may have indicated once or twice in the course of these memoirs, what Mistress Morgan Leroux commanded had to be done. Of course, if Mr Murch won this singular race, and came aboard his ship before Brandon Pomfrett in the Willing Mind could make Morte Bay, our game was lost. Murch would fight the ship or sink her, rather than yield; a single lucky shot would disable the unarmed schooner, and her boats would be helpless under fire of small-arms. Moreover, in a place where none knew him, Mr Murch would have the civil power at his back; his papers were in order; to all appearance, the ship was his; he was the honest shipmaster, and Captain Pomfrett the picaroon. Pomfrett might sheer off, it is true, and invoke the law himself, or appeal for help to a ship of Her Majesty’s, if he could find one. But his chances of either succour on the desolate coast of North Devon were small; moreover, if he came within range of Mr Murch’s artillery, he was like to leave his bones in Morte Bay—a name in itself of unpleasant import—and, in Mr Murch’s favourite phrase, the longest liver would take all. Pomfrett might, again, return as a last resource to Bristol, if he found Mr Murch in possession, and contrived to escape from him. But, by the time he had made the voyage, and his uncle had taken measures to recover the Blessed Endeavour, it was hard but Mr Murch would have found a way to put to sea again; and, once on blue water, it was long odds, indeed, if any of our company ever again saw so much as the lift of his topsails. No: there was little room for doubt that the issue lay with the winner of the race between mounted man and sailing ship. But, even so, how was Henry Winter to help? He was no Milanion, goddess-favoured; he had no golden apples to strew in Mr Murch’s path. Indeed, ’tis doubtful if a whole orchard of such fruit would have given pause to this desperate Atalanta. Besides, Murch knew of my presence in Bristol, and he would be on his guard against any surprisal. Altogether, I had as lief give chase unarmed to a bear robbed of her whelps.

I should be better employed (I said) in laying the case before Mr Brandon Pomfrett the elder. It was hard if that magnate, with all Bristol city at his back, could not devise a scheme to reinforce his luckless nephew. But Morgan Leroux scorned the notion.

“What!” says she. “Go whining to that pot-bellied burgess, asking for help for his poor little nephew? I had thought better of your understanding, Henry. I thought you knew Brandon better than that!”

“I know him so well,” said I, “that I know he would forfeit all in the world rather than a scruple of childish vanity.”

Morgan struck her fist upon the table, and I was sorry I had spoken. “Vanity or not,” says she, very angry, “he’s set himself to play a match, and it’s not you shall spoil the sport, Mr Henry Winter, I can tell you. And vanity or none, there’s courage as well, at any rate. And that’s a quality useful at a pinch, Mr Winter,” says Morgan, with great meaning.

“You think I don’t want to go?” I said.

“La, Mr Winter,” Morgan interrupted, looking at me with a highly disagreeable expression, “you are so quick, you quite take my breath away. However could you guess that, now?”

“It’s kind of you, at any rate, to make the parting easier,” I said.

For I saw that I must go; although it did not stand in my code of honourable obligation to fling myself, without sufficient reason, adrift in mid-winter on the wild hills of Somerset and Devon, at the risk of being shot by a bloody and reckless pirate. But, after all, there was a faint possibility that I might prove of service; although, unless I shot Mr Murch from behind a hedge—which was unfortunately impossible, even for a gentleman of fortune—I could not for the life of me see what I should be doing.

“Do you think I would not go myself, if I had not promised to stay here?” demanded Morgan.

“God forbid!” I said. “Only absolve me of the same promise, and you shall be rid of me at once!”

“Bless you, Harry, I don’t want to be rid of you!” cried this singular lady, changing from wrath to kindness in a moment. “I’m short of temper, I know. You must forget what I said. Only it went to my heart to see you stand there prating like a sea-lawyer, and Murch doing his eight knots over the hills.”

The sun was rising behind Dundry Hill, with the old tower a-top that keeps vigil over Bristol city, as horse and man ploughed through the melting snow; the sky was clearing to seaward, and a space of blue was lifting about the horizon. Murch was out of sight, and the schooner was hidden in the deep gorge of the river behind me. No more solitary atom in all the bleak world than Henry Winter, riding on a fool’s errand, to meet a fool’s end very likely. In the thawing drift and the deep mire the going was very heavy; at present the odds were in favour of the ship, despite the contrary wind. It was noon before a black spot appeared far in front, crawling up the hillside all ribbed with brown amid the white.

We were climbing the spurs of the Mendips by this time; and when the road began to descend on the farther side into the flat country of the Brent Marshes, I let Mr Murch forge still further ahead. At Weare, where one crosses the River Ax, I learned from the people of the ale-house that a solitary traveller had passed an hour since. We had covered some twenty miles in five or six hours. I could not tell how the schooner did, for the road lay too deep inland. But all across the marshes the road slants towards the coast, and the sea rose again into view upon the right hand. The dim, blue plain was studded here and there with sails, but whether the schooner were in sight or not I could not determine. Then the road turned due south to Bridgwater. The dusk was thickening fast, and horse and man were pretty well jaded when we clattered into the little town. The red firelight beaconed from the windows, and I had more urgent desire for a bed than ever in my life. But there was no rest for this miserable adventurer. He must press on, and when he could bear the saddle-chafe no longer, he must even pad the hoof himself. The horse was near foundered already, and when I made request at the inn for a fresh mount, behold, Mr Murch, for no doubt but it was he, had already departed astride the only nag available. I stayed in that house an hour, had a meal while the horse was baiting, gave the wretched beast a drench of wine after the manner of the highwaymen, and started anew.

The next stage was Watchett, and with good luck we might make it in three hours. You are to remember that no man fresh from the sea feels easy on a horse, though he be an experienced rider, which I never was; conceive, then, the misery of Henry Winter. The saddle was no better than red-hot iron to him, every bone ached, and he had a dreadful pain in his belly. As the darkness gathered, a thick, soft rain began to fall. The horse stumbled and plashed and floundered onward, now and again coming to a dead stop, hanging his head and blowing heavily. Every minute the rider thought he could endure no longer, and then he would try for one more minute; and so, minute by minute, the pain and weariness wore themselves into a kind of nexus of suffering, a dolorous condition in which he seemed to have existed always, and which would endure for ever. Then he fell into a broken sleep, bowing forward with both hands clasping the pommel of the saddle; and he thought he was at sea again and had fallen asleep on watch; and then he thought he was a child, going to church with the sound of the bells in his ears, the tedious Sunday bells; and then he would awake again to see the moon shining from a rift in the clouds and a humped shadow gliding beside him. At these times I had wit enough to take an observation of the stars; and so it was, I suppose, that I kept the road, travelling at the foot of the Quantocks, and passed between the butt of the hills and the sea, and came to Watchett.

It was midnight then, and not a light shone in any window, save one; and, steering for that, I came to the inn of the place. I slid off and fell down in a heap, and staggered up, and into the tavern; and there, beside a great fire, with a bottle at his elbow, sat Mr Murch. I had forgot Mr Murch. There he was, and I suppose I stood staring at him like a ninny. Murch looked up, took his cigarro from his mouth, and surveyed me in silence.

“What, Mr Winter?” says Murch. “This is indeed an unexpected meeting. Why, I thought I saw you no later than this morning, but my eyes are older than they were, and I believed they had deceived me. Well, and how do you do, sir?”

He held out his hand, and what could I do but take it? He ordered supper for me, and mulled wine, and what could I do but accept his hospitality? I have often asked myself these questions; and although my conduct may have presented a lamentable weakness, I have never repented it. Mr Murch plied me with food and wine, using the most dignified courtesy; when I had well eaten and drunk, he offered me a cigarro; and still he talked of the weather, and the state of the roads, and the prospects of the country, and what else I forget, but never a word of nearer import. And so long as he chose to maintain reserve, I was in no mood to break it.

“I am truly sorry, Mr Winter,” says Murch, at length, “that I cannot ask you to be my guest for the night. But the truth is, I have affairs of some urgency that call me farther, and I must be jogging even now.”

“The regret would be mine,” I said, “were it not, by a singular chance, that I must be going forward likewise.”

“Dear me!” cried Murch. “And which way lies your road, sir?”

“Along the coast, all down into Devon. And which way lies yours, sir?”

“Why, the very same,” says Murch, heartily. “But what an extraordinary chance, as you say, Mr Winter, that has brought us together from the ends of the earth. We are to be fellow-travellers, again, it seems. What do you say? Shall we be jogging?”

“With all my heart,” I said.

And so it was that Mr Murch and I took the road together, and you may judge of my emotions in this dilemma. How could I quarrel with this extraordinary man? The thing were difficult enough, though we were at open enmity; and now, stuffed as I was with Mr Murch’s victuals, and treated by my host as a long-lost friend, ’twas merely impossible. I had been but a spectator of the comedy of the three buccaneers throughout, and content enough to be no more; it seemed I was to remain a spectator to the end of the piece. Some hazy notion of putting off in a shore-boat to warn the schooner, arose in my labouring mind; but, of what use would that be, even supposing I could escape from Mr Murch, since Pomfrett and Dawkins, that redoubtable navigator, were already cramming the Willing Mind main-chains under? Still, they would be the better prepared had they due warning, and I resolved to attempt this feat did the opportunity arise. But it never arose, as I shall proceed to show, and I do but mention this futile scheme, in justice to Henry Winter; who would fain appear as a man not so utterly destitute of resource in emergency as events would seem to indicate. And, although it cannot be denied that the said personage was never cast for a hero, I have never remarked that he was the less happy for that. Heroism is a fine profession: but it entails a deal of riding and riving, hard knocks and hard fare, and discomfortable tumults of passion, and little enough in the upshot to show for them, very likely. And so to my tale.

“I’ll neither ride nor sail on the private account any more,” says Murch, as we plashed forward in the dark. “This is the last cast. Strange, how we spend our lives getting and saving, and go down quick into the grave at the last. We’re all at knuckle-bones with Signor Death, Mr Winter. I’ve seen many a tall fellow swinging in chains on Gallow’s Point, who would have made an ornament to his country had he lived; the birds feeding on the head of many a fine man who was ready to become a member of Parliament or a Doctor of Divinity. But his repentance came too late, you see—his log was never kept posted. I took warning early by those poor dangling memorials, Mr Winter. You know my rule—a clean ship, alow and aloft, fit for the Great Commander’s inspection by day or night. So I count upon a little leisure in the evening of my days—a clear conscience, no regrets, a good house out of sound of the sea, a cellar of good wine, a library of the classics. For it may surprise you, Mr Winter, to hear that I’ve never read the literature of the ancients. The time to gain that learning which is given to fortunate young men like yourself, sir, must be bought with many a painful year by those who do their business in the great waters.”

He spoke with a settled assurance, strange to remark in a man who was even then riding a desperate race with fortune; and as we journeyed he continued to talk in the same strain. Day was breaking behind the wild hills as we rode into Porlock. Winter had gone in the night; the soft air, filled with the noise of running waters, savoured of the spring; and the sky was faintly touched with hues of rose. We broke our fast at the inn, and Mr Murch ate more than you would think possible.

“I don’t know how it is,” said he. “I’m as hungry as a boy, and it’s not my habit, neither. Why, I feel younger to-day than I have done this many a year, Mr Winter. Is it English air and Exmoor mutton? At this rate, I shall live for ever.”

And his eye was bright as a young man’s as he got into the saddle again, despite the pain it must have cost him, as I knew from my own sufferings.

We had taken fresh horses, and so rode from out the cup of the valley and came upon the summit of the moorland, where the wind blew keen. We halted, and gazed to seaward. The sea, a brilliant blue, spread away into a bright haze, dotted here and there with sails of ships; but I could not tell, at that distance, if the schooner were among them. Murch, who knew the look of the ship better than I, might have made her out; but if he did, he kept the discovery to himself; and we jogged on without a word. Presently Mr Murch began to talk again, and all he said was pitched in the same key of moralism. He told of his voyages, and the strange countries he had explored, and the foreign cities he had visited; and to hear him talk, you would think the old buccaneer had spent his life as the peaceablest explorer in the world, journeying in the interests of the Royal Society. Yet his narrative continually inferred misfortune or disaster, or something of a darker name, requiring immediate repentance. The word was always on his lips; for want of repentance, it appeared, all his old companions had perished in one way or another; by means of this singular operation, himself had survived danger and escaped judgment, to devote himself at last to the study of the ancients.

“Their bones lie scattered far and wide—the bones of my good shipmates,” said Murch, “I shall think upon them as I sit beside the winter fire, with the claret warming before the blaze. Some lie fathoms deep; the skeletons of some are whitening on sandy Cays; the hanged men are melted to the four winds, sinew and bone. What a troop of ghosts, to come at my signal as I sit snug by the fire, the rain dashing on the windows.... But would you believe it, Mr Winter,” cried Murch, breaking off suddenly, “I’m hungry again—actually famished.”

It was at this point that I began to regard the old buccaneer with a tincture of fear. There was something not right about the man. What was it? Not merely was his ordinary strain of talk heightened as by a touch of fever, which might have been caused by the excitement of his enterprise, but there was something new and daunting in him, though I could not put a name to it. I did not like his look. It might easily be that his late disastrous voyage, coming upon him on the top of a long life of sailing and fighting in hot climates, had unsettled his wits. It would be an ill moment for me if Mr Murch went mad on these desolate hills; and I kept a wary eye upon my travelling companion. And yet there was nothing of madness in his talk, and his manner held the same strong composure.

We must needs halt at Lynton for another meal, though it was scarce two hours since we had breakfasted at Porlock. Murch took his food standing, in a greedy haste. Then we were in the saddle again, making a long stage of it to Ilfracombe, for the going was extremely heavy. Yet Murch never lost his patience, but held steadily onward, with the same bright-eyed composure, the same intermittent talk, the same complaints of hunger. So, mile after mile, we ploughed our way across the unending wastes of moorland, high above the sea, and still the next hill rose in soft undulations before us, and still the wind blew with a constant force in our faces. It was long past noon when we rode down into Ilfracombe, where we had another full meal.

The sun was sinking as we came out upon the bare heights above Morte Point, the northern horn of Morte Bay, of which Baggy Point, beneath which lay the ship, made the southern; and there, some five miles out to seaward, was a little ship beating up against the wind. Now, Morte Bay is scarce four miles round the bend, all level sand, rising landward into grassy dunes. The schooner—if indeed that little craft were she—had nearly double that distance to make, against a head wind. There, beyond the long, brown reach of sand, hid in the purple shadow of the rocky point, lay the Blessed Endeavour. Murch halted, staring to seaward under his hand, the level sunlight striking upon the lower part of his face, revealing every wrinkle of his netted skin, every hair of his great white beard. So I see him now, staring to seaward under his hand, sitting motionless on his horse.

He struck spurs in and clattered down the rocky and steep descent to the sea-shore. Halfway down his horse stumbled and fell, Murch avoiding the animal and coming unhurt to his feet. The poor beast had broken his leg—a glance told us that.

Without a word, Murch drew a pistol and shot the animal through the head; and the smoke had not cleared, or the echoes done leaping from rock to rock, before he had mounted my horse—for I had incautiously dismounted—and was picking his way down the hill at the best pace he could. Slow as he went, ’twas faster than I could travel. But I had a pistol, too, and now was the time to use it; there was no scruple to prevent my shooting my own horse, at least, and I hauled out the weapon, looked to the priming, and dragged myself to a stumbling run. We came to the belt of rolling sand-dunes, and the little, steep ascents checked Mr Murch’s jaded nag, already oppressed with a rider near double the weight he had been carrying hitherto. I lay down and took a steady rest, and when horse and rider forged upon the reddening sunset sky, I pulled the trigger. ’Twas a long shot, but the ball struck the wretched animal somewhere; he stumbled and fell. By the time Murch had disengaged himself, and was lashing savagely at his horse, I had loaded afresh, and the second shot told also. Murch dropped the bridle, facing about, and fired in my direction; but I was hid in the long dry grass, and the bullet sang harmlessly overhead. I thought he would have made at me then; but no, he turned about; I saw his great figure for an instant, black upon the red flush of the sky, as he crossed the summit of the hillock. As he dropped into the hollow I rose to pursue him. We were on equal terms now, so far as two such different men might be; but, I began to think that Harry Winter, in the words of old Dawkins’s chanty, might cry farewell to earth and sky. Nothing seemed easier than for Murch to plant a bullet in him among the sand-hills.

But, avoiding the sky-line, I ran along the hollows of the dunes, until I caught a glimpse of Mr Murch, far out on the vast stretch of sand, trotting heavily forward. The tide was low, showing no more than a delicate fringe of foam beyond a mile of wet sand, gleaming blood-red in the dying sunlight. Far to seaward, the dagger-point of a sail notched the glimmering waters. In the impenetrable shadow of the dark cliffs that rose beyond the brown plain of sand and ran bluntly out to sea, the ship, the goal of forlorn hope, lay still hidden from sight.

Murch was out of range when I came to the level sand, or I think I would have tried a shot at him. This indomitable old gentleman had been near twenty-four hours in the saddle, yet he kept ahead of me. His trot had fallen to a walk; he ploughed along with hanging head, yet he never stopped; while, as for me, I was fain to halt every few paces, and, even so, I thought I should have burst. A man could have crawled on his belly faster than Murch was going, and yet I could not gain upon him. There was but one chance left. When he came within hail of the ship there might be a delay while the men got a boat ashore. But even then Murch had as good a chance—or better—of shooting me as I approached, as I had of shooting him. Meanwhile, he was slowly, irresistibly drawing near the goal; to all appearance, the little black triangle of the schooner’s sail was hardly within the bay; and, keeping the same distance behind him, as though the space between us were enchanted, dragging one foot up and setting it down again, with an inconceivable effort, there came toiling the last hope of Brandon Pomfrett, of Mr Dawkins, of the merchants of Bristol city, and of Mrs A.

So we went, one behind the other, until the masts and yards of the Blessed Endeavour, lying beneath the crags, were dimly printed in the shadow. The schooner was behind us now, and the last flicker of hope died within me. The red ball of the sun hung immediately above the horizon; sea and shore were drenched with red light; a red mist swam giddily before my eyes, with the figure of Murch, a black dot, in the centre.

Suddenly, I saw the bowed figure halt and throw up its hands; the red mist cleared away, and I beheld Murch sinking to his knees, struggling in the sand. He cried out, with an accent of mortal terror dreadful to hear, and, as in a dream, when one strives to run and leaden weights clog the feet, so I struggled ineffectually towards the agonised figure, that seemed, in the red illumination, to be writhing in a lake of blood. The quicksand had him by the waist; he upreared his huge trunk, and I saw his face for one moment—not all the tides of time can wash out the remembrance. He flung himself this way and that, with gasps and groans that seemed to tear his heart. The ooze rose to his chest; his arms were swallowed to the elbow; he dragged them free with a bursting effort, and the slime rose to his chin. An inarticulate gabble of sounds broke from him; then, his mouth was choked with sand. The last I saw of the poor wretch was a hand that clutched at the air once or twice, then sank out of sight. A ripple agitated the wet, oily surface once and again, and all was still.