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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Jim Davis, by John Masefield
+#4 in our series by John Masefield
+
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+Title: Jim Davis
+
+Author: John Masefield
+
+Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7369]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 22, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JIM DAVIS ***
+
+
+
+
+Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Eric Casteleijn, David Garcia and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Jim Davis
+
+_By_
+
+John Masefield
+
+For Judith
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+MY FIRST JOURNEY
+
+
+I was born in the year 1800, in the town of Newnham-on-Severn, in
+Gloucestershire. I am sure of the year, because my father always told
+me that I was born at the end of the century, in the year that they
+began to build the great house. The house has been finished now these
+many years. The red-brick wall, which shuts its garden from the road
+(and the Severn), is all covered with valerian and creeping
+plants. One of my earliest memories is of the masons at work, shaping
+the two great bows. I remember how my nurse used to stop to watch
+them, at the corner of the road, on the green strip by the river-bank,
+where the gipsies camped on the way to Gloucester horse-fair. One of
+the masons was her sweetheart (Tom Farrell his name was), but he got
+into bad ways, I remember, and was hanged or transported, though that
+was years afterwards, when I had left that countryside.
+
+My father and mother died when I was still a boy--my mother on the day
+of Trafalgar battle, in 1805, my father four years later. It was very
+sad at home after mother died; my father shut himself up in his study,
+never seeing anybody. When my father died, my uncle came to Newnham
+from his home in Devonshire; my old home was sold then, and I was
+taken away. I remember the day so very clearly. It was one sunny
+morning in early April. My uncle and I caught the coach at the top of
+the hill, at the door of the old inn opposite the church. The coachman
+had a hot drink handed up to him, and the ostlers hitched up the new
+team. Then the guard (he had a red coat, like a soldier) blew his
+horn, and the coach started off down the hill, going so very fast that
+I was afraid, for I had never ridden on a coach before, though I had
+seen them every day. The last that I saw of Newnham was the great
+house at the corner. It was finished by that time, of course, and as
+we drove past I saw the beautiful woman who lived there walking up and
+down the lawn with her husband, Captain Rylands, a very tall, handsome
+man, who used to give me apples. I was always afraid to eat the
+apples, because my nurse said that the Captain had killed a man. That
+was in the wars in Spain, fighting against the French.
+
+I remember a great deal about my first coach-ride. We slept that night
+at Bristol in one of the famous coaching inns, where, as a great
+treat, I had bacon and eggs for supper, instead of bread-and-milk. In
+the morning, my uncle took me with him to the docks, where he had some
+business to do. That was the first time I ever really saw big ships,
+and that was the first time I spoke with the sailors. There was a
+capstan on one of the wharves, and men were at work, heaving round it,
+hoisting casks out of a West Indiaman. One of the men said, "Come on,
+young master; give us a hand on the bar here." So I put my hands on to
+the bar and pushed my best, walking beside him till my uncle called me
+away. There were many ships there at the time, all a West Indian
+convoy, and it was fine to see their great figureheads, and the brass
+cannon at the ports, and to hear the men singing out aloft as they
+shifted spars and bent and unbent sails. They were all very lofty
+ships, built for speed; all were beautifully kept, like men-of-war,
+and all of them had their house-flags and red ensigns flying, so that
+in the sun they looked splendid. I shall never forget them.
+
+After that, we went back to the inn, and climbed into another coach,
+and drove for a long, long time, often very slowly, till we reached a
+place near Newton Abbot, where there was a kind woman who put me to
+bed (I was too tired to notice more). Then, the next morning, I
+remember a strange man who was very cross at breakfast, so that the
+kind woman cried till my uncle sent me out of the room. It is funny
+how these things came back to me; it might have been only yesterday.
+
+Late that afternoon we reached the south coast of Devon, so that we
+had the sea close beside us until the sun set. I heard the sea, as I
+thought, when we reached my uncle's house, at the end of the twilight;
+but they told me that it was a trout-stream, brawling over its
+boulders, and that the sea was a full mile away. My aunt helped to put
+me to bed, but I was too much excited to sleep well. I lay awake for a
+long, long time, listening to the noise of the brook, and to the wind
+among the trees outside, and to the cuckoo clock on the landing
+calling out the hours and half-hours. When I fell asleep I seemed to
+hear the sea and the crying out of the sailors. Voices seemed to be
+talking close beside me in the room; I seemed to hear all sorts of
+things, strange things, which afterwards really happened. There was a
+night-light burning on the wash-handstand. Whenever I woke up in the
+night the light would show me the shadow of the water jug upon the
+ceiling. It looked like an old, old man, with a humped back, walking
+the road, bowed over his cudgel.
+
+I am not going to say very much about my life during the next few
+years. My aunt and uncle had no children of their own, and no great
+fondness for the children of others. Sometimes I was very lonely
+there; but after my tenth birthday I was at school most of my time, at
+Newton Abbot. I used to spend my Easter holidays (never more than a
+week) with the kind woman who put me to bed that night of my journey.
+My summer and winter holidays I spent with my uncle and aunt in their
+little house above the trout-stream.
+
+The trout-stream rose about three miles from my uncle's house, in a
+boggy wood full of springs. It was a very rapid brook, nowhere more
+than three or four feet deep, and never more than twenty feet across,
+even near its mouth. Below my uncle's house it was full of little
+falls, with great mossy boulders which checked its flow, and pools
+where the bubbles spun. Further down, its course was gentler, for the
+last mile to the sea was a flat valley, with combes on each side
+covered with gorse and bramble. The sea had once come right up that
+valley to just below my uncle's house; but that was many years
+before--long before anybody could remember. Just after I went to live
+there, one of the farmers dug a drain, or "rhine," in the valley, to
+clear a boggy patch. He dug up the wreck of a large fishing-boat, with
+her anchor and a few rusty hoops lying beside her under the ooze about
+a foot below the surface. She must have sailed right up from the sea
+hundreds of years ago, before the brook's mouth got blocked with
+shingle (as I suppose it was) during some summer gale when the stream
+was nearly dry. Often, when I was a boy, I used to imagine the ships
+coming up from the sea, along that valley, firing their cannon. In the
+winter, when the snow melted, the valley would be flooded, till it
+looked just like a sea, and then I would imagine sea-fights there,
+with pirates in red caps boarding Spanish treasure galleons.
+
+The seacoast is mostly very bold in that part of Devon. Even where
+there are no cliffs, the land rises steeply from the sea, in grassy
+hills, with boulders and broken rock, instead of a beach, below
+them. There are small sandy beaches wherever the brooks run into the
+sea. Everywhere else the shore is "steep-to"--so much so that in many
+places it is very difficult to reach the sea. I mention this because,
+later on, that steep coast gave me some queer adventures.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+NIGHT-RIDERS
+
+
+When I was twelve years old, something very terrible happened, with
+good results for myself. The woman near Newton Abbot (I have spoken of
+her several times) was a Mrs Cottier, the wife of a schoolmaster. Her
+husband used to drink very hard, and in this particular year he was
+turned out of the school, and lost his living. His wife left him then
+(or rather he left her; for a long time no one knew what became of
+him) and came to live with us, bringing with her little Hugh Cottier,
+her son, a boy of about my own age. After that, life in my uncle's
+house was a different thing to me. Mrs Cottier was very beautiful and
+kind; she was like my mother, strangely like, always sweet and gentle,
+always helpful and wise. I think she was the dearest woman who ever
+lived. I was always proud when she asked me to do something for
+her. Once, I remember (in the winter after Mrs Cottier came to us),
+she drove to Salcombe to do her Christmas shopping. It came on to snow
+during the afternoon; and at night-time the storm grew worse. We put
+back supper, expecting her to come in at any minute, but she did not
+come. The hours went by, and still she did not come, and still the
+storm worsened. The wind was not very high, but the air was full of a
+fine, powdery, drifting snow; the night seemed full of snow; snow fell
+down the chimney and drifted in under the door. My uncle was too lame
+with sciatica to leave his bed; and my aunt, always a woman of poor
+spirit, was afraid of the night. At eight o'clock I could stand it no
+longer, so I said that I would saddle the pony, and ride out along the
+Salcombe road to find her. Hugh was for going in my place; but Hugh
+was not so strongly built as I, and I felt that Hugh would faint after
+an hour in the cold, I put on double clothes, with an oilskin jacket
+over all, and then lit the lantern, and beat out of the house to the
+stable. I put one or two extra candles in my pockets, with a flint and
+steel, and some bread and meat Something prompted me to take a hank of
+cord, and a heavy old boat-rug; and with all these things upon him old
+Greylegs, the pony, was heavy-laden.
+
+When we got into the road together, I could not see a yard in front of
+me. There was nothing but darkness and drifting snow and the gleam of
+the drifts where the light of the lantern fell. There was no question
+of losing the road; for the road was a Devon lane, narrow and deep,
+built by the ancient Britons, so everybody says, to give them
+protection as they went down to the brooks for water. If it had been
+an open road, I could never have found my way for fifty yards. I was
+strongly built for a boy; even at sea I never suffered much from the
+cold, and this night was not intensely cold--snowy weather seldom
+is. What made the ride so exhausting was the beating of the snow into
+my eyes and mouth. It fell upon me in a continual dry feathery
+pelting, till I was confused and tired out with the effort of trying
+to see ahead. For a little while, I had the roar of the trout-stream
+in my ears to comfort me; but when I topped the next combe that died
+away; and there I was in the night, beating on against the storm, with
+the strange moaning sound of the wind from Dartmoor, and the snow
+rustling to keep me company. I was not exactly afraid, for the snow in
+my face bothered me too much, but often the night would seem full of
+people--laughing, horrible people--and often I would think that I saw
+Mrs Cottier lying half-buried in a drift.
+
+I rode three miles or more without seeing anybody. Then, just before I
+reached the moor cross-roads, in a lull when the snow was not so bad,
+I heard a horse whinny, and old Greylegs baulked. Then I heard voices
+and a noise as of people riding; and before I could start old Greylegs
+I saw a party of horsemen crossing my road by the road from the sea to
+Dartmoor. They were riding at a quick trot, and though there were many
+horses (some thirty or forty), I could see, even in that light, that
+most of them were led. There were not more than a dozen men; and only
+one of all that dozen carried a lantern. Something told me that they
+were out for no good, and the same instinct made me cover my lantern
+with my coat, so that they passed me without seeing me. At first I
+thought that they were the fairy troop, and that gave me an awful
+fear; but a moment later, in the wind, I felt a whiff of tobacco, and
+of a strong, warm, sweet smell of spirits, and I knew then that they
+were the night-riders or smugglers. After they had gone, I forced old
+Greylegs forward, and trotted on, against the snow, for another
+half-mile, with my heart going thump upon my ribs. I had an awful fear
+that they would turn, and catch me; and I knew that the night-riders
+wanted no witnesses of their adventures in the dark.
+
+About four miles from home, I came to an open part of the road, where
+the snow came down in its full fury, there being no hedge to give a
+little shelter. It was so thick that I could not get Greylegs to go
+on. He stood stock-still, and cowered, though I beat him with my hank
+of cord, and kicked his ribs. It was cruel of me; but I thought of Mrs
+Cottier, with her beautiful kind face, lying in a drift of snow, and
+the thought was dreadful to me. I got down from the saddle, and put my
+lantern on the ground, and tried to drag him forward, but it was
+useless. He would not have stirred if I had lighted a fire under
+him. When he had the instinct to stand still, nothing would make him
+budge a yard. A very fierce gust came upon me then. The snow seemed to
+whirl upon me from all sides, so that I got giddy and sick. And then,
+just at the moment, there were horses and voices all about me, coming
+from Salcombe way. Somebody called out, "Hullo," and somebody called
+out "Look out, behind"; and then a lot of horses pulled up suddenly,
+and some men spoke, and a led horse shied at my lantern. I had no time
+to think or to run, I felt myself backing into old Greylegs in sheer
+fright; and then some one thrust a lantern into my face, and asked me
+who I was. By the light of the lantern I saw that he wore a woman's
+skirt over his trousers; and his face was covered by one of those
+great straw bee-skeps, pierced with holes for his eyes and mouth. He
+was one of the most terrible things I have ever seen.
+
+"Why, it's a boy," said the terrible man. "What are you doing here,
+boy?"
+
+Another man, who seemed to be a leader, called out from his horse,
+"Who are you?" but I was too scared to answer; my teeth were rattling
+in my head.
+
+"It's a trick," said another voice. "We had best go for the moor."
+
+"Shut up," said the leader, sharply. "The boy's scared."
+
+He got down from his horse, and peered at me by the lantern light.
+He, too, wore a bee-skep; in fact, they all did, for there is no
+better disguise in the world, while nothing makes a man look more
+horrible. I was not quite so terrified by this time, because he had
+spoken kindly.
+
+"Who are you?" he asked. "We shan't eat you. What are you doing here?"
+
+As well as I could I told him. The leader strode off a few paces, and
+spoke with one or two other men; but I could only catch the words,
+"Yes; yes, Captain," spoken in a low, quick voice, which seemed
+somehow familiar. Then he came back to me, and took me by the throat,
+and swayed me to and fro, very gently, but in a way which made me feel
+that I was going to be killed.
+
+"Tell me," he said, "I shall know whether you're lying, so tell the
+truth, now. What have you seen to-night?"
+
+I told him that I had seen a troop of horsemen going through the snow
+towards the moor.
+
+"That settles it, Captain," said another voice. "You can't trust a
+young chap like that."
+
+"Shut up," said the man they called Captain; "I'm master, not you."
+
+He strode off again, to speak to another man. I heard some one laugh a
+little, and then the Captain came back to me. He took me by the throat
+as before, and again shook me. "You listen to me," he said,
+grimly. "If you breathe so much as one word of what you've seen
+to-night--well--I shall know. D'ye hear? I shall know. And when I
+know--well--your little neck'll go. There's poetry. That will help you
+remember--
+
+  'When I know,
+  Your neck'll go
+  Like so'"
+
+He gave a sharp little twist of his hand upon my Adam's apple.
+
+I was terrified. I don't know what I said; my tongue seemed to wither
+on its stalk. The Captain walked to his horse, and remounted. "Come
+along, boys," he said. The line of horses started off again. A hand
+fell upon my shoulder, and a voice spoke kindly to me. "See here," it
+said, "you go on another half-mile, you'll find a barn by the side of
+the road. There's no door on the barn, and you'll see a fire
+inside. You'll find your lady there. She is safe all right. You keep
+your tongue shut now."
+
+The speaker climbed into his saddle, and trotted off into the
+night. "Half a mile. Straight ahead!" he called; then the dull
+trampling died away, and I was left alone again with Greylegs. Some
+minutes passed before I could mount; for I was stiff with fright. I
+was too frightened after that to mind the snow; I was almost too
+frightened to ride. Luckily for me the coming of the night-riders had
+startled old Greylegs also; he trotted on gallantly, though sometimes
+he floundered into a drift, and had to be helped out.
+
+Before I came to the barn the snow stopped falling, except for a few
+aimless flakes, which drifted from all sides in the air. It was very
+dark still; the sky was like ink; but there was a feel of freshness (I
+cannot describe it) which told me that the wind had changed. Presently
+I saw the barn ahead of me, to the right of the road, spreading a red
+glow of fire across the way. Old Greylegs seemed glad of the sight; he
+gave a whinny and snorted. As well as he could he broke into a canter,
+and carried me up to the door in style.
+
+"Are you safe, Mrs Cottier?" I called out.
+
+"What! Jim!" she answered. "How good of you to come for me!"
+
+The barn, unlike most barns in that country, was of only one story.
+It may have been a farmhouse in the long ago, for it had larger
+windows than most barns. These had been stuffed with sacks and straw,
+to keep out the weather. The door had been torn from its place by some
+one in need of firewood; the roof was fairly sound; the floor was of
+trampled earth. Well away from the doorway, in the centre of the barn,
+some one had lighted a fire, using (as fuel) one of the faggots
+stacked against the wall. The smoke had long since blown out of
+doors. The air in the barn was clear and fresh. The fire had died down
+to a ruddy heap of embers, which glowed and grew grey again, as the
+draughts fanned them from the doorway. By the light of the fire I
+could see Mrs Cottier, sitting on the floor, with her back against the
+wheel of her trap, which had been dragged inside to be out of the
+snow. I hitched old Greylegs to one of the iron bolts, which had once
+held a door-hinge, and ran to her to make sure that she was unhurt.
+
+"How in the world did you get here?" I asked. "Are you sure you're not
+hurt?"
+
+She laughed a little at this, and I got out my stores, and we made our
+supper by the fire. "Where's old Nigger?" I asked her; for I was
+puzzled by seeing no horse.
+
+"Oh, Jim," she said, "I've had such adventures."
+
+When she had eaten a little she told me her story.
+
+"I was coming home from Salcombe," she said, "and I was driving fast,
+so as to get home before the snow lay deep. Just outside South pool,
+Nigger cast a shoe, and I was kept waiting at the forge for nearly
+half an hour. After that, the snow was so bad that I could not get
+along. It grew dark when I was only a mile or two from the
+blacksmith's, and I began to fear that I should never get
+home. However, as I drove through Stokenham, the weather seemed to
+clear a little, so I hurried Nigger all I could, hoping to get home in
+the lull. When I got to within a hundred yards from here, in the
+little hollow, where the stunted ashes are, I found myself among a
+troop of horsemen, who stopped me, and asked me a lot of
+questions. They were all disguised, and they had lanterns among them,
+and I could see that the horses carried tubs; I suppose full of
+smuggled lace and brandy and tobacco, ready to be carried inland. Jim,
+dear, I was horribly frightened; for while they were speaking together
+I thought I heard the voice of--of some one I know--or used to know."
+
+She stopped for a moment overcome, and I knew at once that she was
+speaking of her husband, the schoolmaster that was. "And then," she
+continued, "some of them told me to get down out of the trap. And then
+another of them seized Nigger's head, and walked the trap as far as
+the barn here. Then they unharnessed Nigger, and led him away, saying
+they were short of horses, but would send him back in a day or two.
+They seemed to know all about me, where I lived, and everything. One
+of them took a faggot from a wall here, and laid the big fire, with
+straw instead of paper. While he lit it he kept his great bee-skep on
+his head (they all wore them), but I noticed he had three blue rings
+tattooed on his left ring-finger. Now, somewhere I have seen a man,
+quite recently, with rings tattooed like that, only I can't remember
+where. I wish I could think where. He was very civil and gentle. He
+saw that the fire burnt up well, and left me all those sticks and
+logs, as well as the flint and steel, in case it should go out before
+the snow stopped. Oh, and he took the rugs out of the trap, and laid
+them on the ground for me to sit on. Before he left, he said, very
+civilly, "I am sure you don't want to get folks into trouble,
+madam. Perhaps you won't mention this, in case they ask you." So I
+said that I didn't want to get people into trouble; but that it was
+hardly a manly act to leave a woman alone, in an open barn, miles from
+anywhere, on a night like to-night. He seemed ashamed at this; for he
+slunk off, saying something about 'only obeying orders,' and 'not
+having much choice in the matter.' Then they all stood about outside,
+in the snow, leaving me alone here. They must have stayed outside a
+couple of hours. About a quarter of an hour before you came I heard
+some one call out, 'There it is, boys!' and immediately they all
+trotted off, at a smart pace. They must have seen or heard some
+signal. Of course, up here on the top of the combe, one could see a
+long way if the snow lulled for a moment."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE MAN ON THE MOUND
+
+
+It was very awesome sitting there by the firelight in the lonely barn,
+hearing the strange moan of the snow-wind. When Mrs Cottier finished
+her story we talked of all sorts of things; I think that we were both
+a little afraid of being silent in such a place, so, as we ate, we
+kept talking just as though we were by the fireside at home. I was
+afraid that perhaps the revenue officers would catch us there and
+force us to tell all we knew, and I was dreadfully frightened when I
+remembered the captain in the bee-skep who had shaken my throat and
+given me such a warning to be silent. When we had finished our supper,
+I told Mrs Cottier that perhaps we could harness old Greylegs to the
+trap, but this she thought would never do, as the drifts on the road
+made it such bad going; at last I persuaded her to mount old Greylegs
+and to ride astride like a boy, or like so many of the countrywomen in
+our parts. When she had mounted I took the old pony by the head and
+led him out, carrying the lantern in my hand.
+
+When we got outside we found, to our great surprise, that the sky had
+cleared--it was a night of stars now that the wind had changed. By the
+"blink" of the snow our road was quite plain to us, and the sharp
+touch of frost in the air (which we felt all the more after our
+bonfire in the barn) had already made the snow crisp underfoot. It was
+pleasant to be travelling like that so late at night with Mrs Cottier;
+I felt like a knight who had just rescued a princess from a dragon; we
+talked together as we had never talked before. Whenever we climbed a
+bad combe she dismounted, and we walked together hand in hand like
+dear friends. Once or twice in the quiet I thought I heard the noise
+of the excisemen's horses, and then my heart thumped in my throat;
+then, when I knew myself mistaken, I felt only the delight of being of
+service to this dear woman who walked by me so merrily.
+
+When we came to the foot of the combe, to the bridge over the
+trout-stream, she stopped for a moment. "Jim," she said, drawing me to
+her, "I shall never forget to-night, nor the little friend who rode
+out to help me; I want you, after this, always to look on me as your
+mother--I knew your mother a little, years ago. Well, dear, try to
+think of me as you would of her, and be a brother to my Hugh, Jim: let
+us all three be one family." She stooped down and kissed my cheek and
+lips.
+
+"I will, Mrs Cottier," I said; "I'll always be a brother to Hugh." I
+was too deeply moved to say much more, for I had so long yearned for
+some woman like my mother to whom I could go for sympathy and to whom
+I could tell everything without the fear of being snubbed or laughed
+at. I just said, "Thank you, Mims." I don't know why I called her
+"Mims" then, but I did, and afterwards I never called her anything
+else; that was my secret name for her. She kissed me again and stroked
+my cheek with her hand, and we went on again together up the last
+steep bit of road to the house. Always, after that, I never thought of
+Mrs Cottier without feeling her lips upon my cheek and hearing the
+stamp of old Greylegs as he pawed on the snow, eager for the stable
+just round the corner.
+
+It was very nice to get round the corner and to see the lights of the
+house a little way in front of us; in a minute or two we were
+there. Mrs Cottier had been dragged in to the fire to all sorts of
+comforting drinks and exclamations, and old Greylegs was snug in his
+stable having his coat rubbed down before going to sleep under his
+rug. We were all glad to get to bed that night: Hugh and my aunt were
+tired with anxiety, and Mrs Cottier and I had had enough adventure to
+make us very thankful for rest.
+
+Before we parted for the night she drew me to one side and told me
+that she had not mentioned the night-riders to my uncle and aunt while
+I was busy in the stable, and that it might be safer if I, too, kept
+quiet about them. I do not know how she explained the absence of
+Nigger, but I am sure they were all too thankful to have her safely
+home again to bother much about the details of her drive.
+
+Hugh and I always slept in soldier's cot-beds in a little room looking
+out over the lane. During the night we heard voices, and footsteps
+moving in the lane beneath us, and our dog (always kennelled at the
+back of the house) barked a good deal. Hugh and I crept from our bed
+and peered through the window, but it opened the wrong way; we could
+only look down the lane, whereas the noise seemed to come from just
+above us, near the stable door; unluckily, the frost had covered the
+window with ice-flowers, so that we could not see through the
+glass. We were, however, quite certain that there were people with
+lights close to our stable door; we thought at first that we had
+better call Mrs Cottier, and then it flashed through my mind that
+these were the night-riders, come to return Nigger, so I told Hugh to
+go back to bed and forget about it. I waited at the window for a few
+moments, wondering if the men would pass the house; I felt a horrible
+longing to see those huge and ghastly things in skirts and bee-skeps
+striding across the snow, going home from their night's prowl like
+skulking foxes; but whoever they were they took no risks. Some one
+softly whistled a scrap of a tune ("Tom, Tom, the piper's son") as
+though he were pleased at having finished a good piece of work, and
+then I heard footsteps going over the gap in the hedge and the
+crackling of twigs in the little wood on the other side of the lane. I
+went back to bed and slept like a top until nearly breakfast time.
+
+I went out to the stable as soon as I was dressed, to find Joe
+Barnicoat, our man, busy at his morning's work; he had already swept
+away the snow from the doors of the house and stable, so that I could
+not see what footmarks had been made there since I went to fetch
+Greylegs at eight the night before. Joe was in a great state of
+excitement, for during the night the stable had been broken open. I
+had left it locked up, as it always was locked, after I had made
+Greylegs comfortable. When Joe came there at about half-past seven, he
+had found the broken padlock lying in the snow and the door-staple
+secured by a wooden peg cut from an ash in the hedge. As I expected,
+Nigger was in his stall, but the poor horse was dead lame from a cut
+in the fetlock: Joe said he must have been kicked there. I was
+surprised to find that the trap also had come home--there it was in
+its place with the snow still unmelted on its wheels. I helped Joe to
+dress poor Nigger's leg, saying that it was a pity we had not noticed
+it before. Joe was grumbling about "some people not having enough
+sense to know when a horse was lame," so I let him grumble.
+
+When we had dressed the wound, I turned to the trap to lift out Mrs
+Cottier's parcels, which I carried indoors. Breakfast was ready on the
+table, and Mrs Cottier and Hugh were toasting some bread at the
+fire. My aunt was, of course, breakfasting upstairs with my uncle; he
+was hardly able to stir with sciatica, poor man; he needed somebody to
+feed him.
+
+"Good morning, Mims dear," I cried. "What do you think? The trap's
+come back and here are all your parcels." I noticed then (I had not
+noticed it before) that one of the parcels was very curiously
+wrapped. It was wrapped in an old sack, probably one of those which
+filled the windows of the barn, for bits of straw still stuck in the
+threads.
+
+"Whatever have you got there, Jim?" said Mrs Cottier.
+
+"One of your parcels," I answered; "I've just taken it out of the
+trap."
+
+"Let me see it," she said. "There must be some mistake. That's not one
+of mine." She took the parcel from me and turned it over before
+opening it.
+
+On turning the package over, we saw that some one had twisted a piece
+of dirty grey paper (evidently wrapping-paper from the grocer's shop)
+about the rope yarn which kept the roll secure. Mrs Cottier noticed it
+first. "Oh," she cried, "there's a letter, too. I wonder if it's meant
+for me?"
+
+We untied the rope yarn and the paper fell upon the table; we opened
+it out, wondering what message could be written on it. It was a part
+of a grocer's sugar bag, written upon in the coarse black crayon used
+by the tallymen on the quays at Kingsbridge. The writing was
+disguised, so as to give no clue to the writer; the letters were
+badly-formed printer's capitals; the words were ill-spelled, and the
+whole had probably been written in a hurry, perhaps by the light of
+our fire in the barn.
+
+"Hors is laimd," said the curious letter. "Regret inconvenuns axept
+Respect from obt servt Captin Sharp."
+
+"Very sweet and to the point," said Mrs Cottier. "Is Nigger lame,
+then?"
+
+"Yes," I answered. "Joe says he has been kicked. You won't be able to
+drive him for some time."
+
+"Poor old Nigger," said Mrs Cottier, as she unwrapped the
+parcel. "Now, I wonder what 'Respect' Captain Sharp has sent me?"
+
+She unrolled the sacking, and out fell two of those straw cases which
+are used to protect wine-bottles. They seemed unusually bulky, so we
+tore them open. In one of them there was a roll, covered with a bit of
+tarpaulin. It contained a dozen yards of very beautiful Malines
+lace. The other case was full of silk neckerchiefs packed very
+tightly, eleven altogether; most of them of uncoloured silk, but one
+of green and another of blue--worth a lot of money in those days, and
+perhaps worth more to-day, now that such fine silk is no longer woven.
+
+"So this is what we get for the loan of Nigger, Jim," said Mrs
+Cottier. "We ought, by rights, to give these things to the revenue
+officer."
+
+"Yes," I said, "but if we do that, we shall have to say how they came,
+and why they came, and then perhaps the exciseman will get a clue, and
+we shall have brought the night-riders into trouble."
+
+It was cowardly of me to speak like this; but you must remember that I
+had been in "Captain Sharp's" hands the night before, and I was still
+terrified by his threat--
+
+  "When I know,
+  Your neck'll go
+  Like so."
+
+"Well," said Mrs Cottier, looking at me rather sharply, "we will keep
+the things, and say nothing about them: but we must find out what duty
+should be paid on them, and send it to the exciseman at
+Dartmouth. That will spare our consciences."
+
+After breakfast, Mrs Cottier went to give orders to the servant, while
+Hugh and I slipped down the lane to see how the snow had drifted in
+our little orchard by the brook. We had read somewhere that the Red
+Indians often make themselves snow-houses, or snow-burrows, when the
+winter is severe. We were anxious to try our hands at making a
+snow-house. We wanted to know whether a house with snow walls could
+really be warm, and we pictured to ourselves how strange it would be
+to be shut in by walls of snow, with only one little hole for air,
+seeing nothing but the white all round us, having no window to look
+through. We thought that it would be wonderful to have a snow-house,
+especially if snow fell after the roof had been covered in, for then
+no one could know if the dweller were at home. One would lie very
+still, wrapped up in buffalo robes, while all the time the other
+Indians would be prowling about in their war-paint, looking for
+you. Or perhaps the Spaniards would be after you with their
+bloodhounds, and you would get down under the snow in the forest
+somewhere, and the snow would fall and fall, covering your tracks,
+till nothing could be seen but a little tiny hole, melted by your
+breath, through which you got fresh air. Then you would hear the
+horses and the armour and the baying of the hounds; but they would
+never find you, though their horses' hoofs might almost sink through
+the snow to your body.
+
+We went down to the orchard, Hugh and I, determined to build a
+snow-house if the drifts were deep enough. We were not going to plunge
+into a drift, and make a sort of chamber by wrestling our bodies
+about, as the Indians do. We had planned to dig a square chamber in
+the biggest drift we could find, and then to roof it over with an old
+tarpaulin stretched upon sticks. We were going to cover the tarpaulin
+with snow, in the Indian fashion, and we had planned to make a little
+narrow passage, like a fox's earth, as the only doorway to the
+chamber.
+
+It was a bright, frosty morning: the sun shone, the world sparkled,
+the sky was of a dazzling blue, the snow gleamed everywhere. Hoolie,
+the dog, was wild with excitement. He ran from drift to drift,
+snapping up mouthfuls of snow, and burrowing down sideways till he was
+half buried.
+
+There was a flower garden at one end of the orchard, and in the middle
+of the garden there was a summer-house. The house was a large, airy
+single room (overlooking the stream), with a space beneath it,
+half-cave, half-cellar, open to the light, where Joe Barnicoat kept
+his gardening tools, with other odds-and-ends, such as bast,
+peasticks, sieves, shears, and traps for birds and vermin. Hugh and I
+went directly to this lower chamber to get a shovel for our work.
+
+We stood at the entrance for a moment to watch Hoolie playing in the
+snow; and as we watched, something caught my eye and made me look up
+sharply.
+
+Up above us, on the side of the combe beyond the lane, among a waste
+of gorse, in full view of the house (and of the orchard where we
+were), there was a mound or barrow, the burial-place of an ancient
+British king. It was a beautifully-rounded hill, some twenty-five feet
+high. A year or two before I went there it had been opened by the
+vicar, who found inside it a narrow stone passage, leading to an inner
+chamber, walled with unmortared stone. In the central chamber there
+were broken pots, a few bronze spear-heads, very green and brittle,
+and a mass of burnt bones. The doctor said that they were the bones of
+horses. On the top of all this litter, with his head between his
+knees, there sat a huge skeleton. The vicar said that when alive the
+man must have been fully six feet six inches tall, and large in
+proportion, for the bones were thick and heavy. He had evidently been
+a king: he wore a soft gold circlet round his head, and three golden
+bangles on his arms. He had been killed in battle. In the side of his
+skull just above the circle of gold, there was a great wound, with a
+flint axe-blade firmly wedged in the bone. The vicar had often told me
+about this skeleton. I remember to this day the shock of horror which
+came upon me when I heard of this great dead king, sitting in the dark
+among his broken goods, staring out over the valley. The country
+people always said that the hill was a fairy hill. They believed that
+the pixies went to dance there whenever the moon was full. I never saw
+the pixies myself, but somehow I always felt that the hill was
+uncanny. I never passed it at night if I could avoid it.
+
+Now, when I looked up, as I stood with Hugh watching the dog, I saw
+something flash upon the top of the barrow. In that bright sun, with
+all the snow about, many things were sparkling; but this thing gleamed
+like lightning, suddenly, and then flashed again. Looking at it
+sharply, I saw that there was a man upon the barrow top, apparently
+lying down upon the snow. He had something in his hand turned to the
+sun, a piece of glass perhaps, or a tin plate, some very bright thing,
+which flashed. He flashed it three times quickly, then paused, then
+flashed it again. He seemed to be looking intently across the valley
+to the top of the combe beyond, to the very place where the road from
+Salcombe swings round to the dip. Looking in that direction, I saw the
+figure of a man standing on the top of the wall against a stunted
+holly-tree at the curve of the road. I had to look intently to see him
+at all, for he was in dark clothes, which shaded off unnoticed against
+the leaves of the holly. I saw him jump down now and again, and
+disappear round the curve of the road as though to look for
+something. Then he would run back and flash some bright thing once, as
+though in answer to the man on the barrow. It seemed to me very
+curious. I nudged Hugh's arm, and slipped into the shelter of the
+cave. For a few moments we watched the signaller. Then, suddenly, the
+watcher at the road-bend came running back from his little tour up the
+road, waving his arms, and flashing his bright plate as he ran. We saw
+him spring to his old place on the wall, and jump from his perch into
+the ditch. He had some shelter there, for we could see his head
+peeping out above the snow like an apple among straw. We were so busy
+watching the head among the snow that we did not notice the man upon
+the barrow. Something made us glance towards him, and, to our surprise
+and terror, we saw him running across the orchard more than half-way
+towards us. In spite of the snow he ran swiftly. We were frightened,
+for he was evidently coming towards us. He saw that we saw him, and
+lifted one arm and swung it downwards violently, as though to bid us
+lie down.
+
+I glanced at Hugh and he at me, and that was enough. We turned at
+once, horribly scared, and ran as fast as we could along the narrow
+garden path, then over the wall, stumbling in our fright, into the
+wood. We did not know why we ran nor where we were going. We only felt
+that this strange man was after us, coming in great bounds to catch
+us. We were too frightened to run well; even had there been no snow
+upon the ground we could not have run our best. We were like rabbits
+pursued by a stoat, we seemed to have lost all power in our legs.
+
+We had a good start. Perhaps without that fear upon us we might have
+reached the house, but as it was we felt as one feels in a nightmare,
+unable to run though in an agony of terror. Getting over the wall was
+the worst, for there Hugh stumbled badly, and I had to turn and help
+him, watching the man bounding ever nearer, signing to us to stay for
+him. A minute later, as we slipped and stumbled through the scrub of
+the wood, we heard him close behind us, crying to us in a smothered
+voice to stop. We ran on, terrified; and then Hugh's foot caught in a
+briar, so that he fell headlong with a little cry.
+
+I turned at once to help him up, feeling like the doe rabbit, which
+turns (they say) against a weasel, to defend its young ones. It sounds
+brave of me, but it was not: I was scared almost out of my wits.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE HUT IN THE GORSE-BUSHES
+
+
+The man was on us in three strides, with his hand on our collars,
+frightening us out of any power to struggle. "You young fools," he
+said, not unkindly. "Why couldn't you stop when I waved to you?"
+
+We did not answer, nor did he seem to expect us to answer. He just
+swung us round with our faces from the house, and hurried us, at a
+smart run, down the road. "Don't you stir a muscle," he added as he
+ran. "I'm not going to eat you, unless you drive me to it."
+
+At the lower end of the wood, nearly half a mile from our home, the
+scrub was very thick. It seemed to be a tangle of briars, too thick
+for hounds--too thick, almost, for rabbits. Hugh and I had never been
+in that part of the wood before, but our guide evidently knew it well,
+for he never hesitated. He swung us on, panting as we were, along the
+clearer parts, till we came to a part where our way seemed stopped by
+gorse-bushes. They rose up, thick and dark, right in front of us. Our
+guide stopped and told us to look down. Among the gnarled gorse-stems
+there seemed to be a passage or "run" made by some beast, fox or
+badger, going to and from his lair.
+
+"Down you go," said our guide. "There's lots of room when you
+try. Imagine you're a rabbit."
+
+We saw that it was useless to say No; and, besides, by this time we
+had lost most of our terror. I dropped on to my knees at once, and
+began to squirm through the passage. Hugh followed me, and the strange
+man followed after Hugh. It was not really difficult, except just at
+the beginning, where the stems were close together. When I had
+wriggled for a couple of yards, the bushes seemed to open out to
+either side. It was prickly work, but I am sure that we both felt the
+romance of it, forgetting our fear before we reached the heart of the
+clump.
+
+In the heart of the clump the gorse-bushes had been cut away, and
+piled up in a sort of wall about a small central square some five or
+six yards across. In the middle of the square some one had dug a
+shallow hollow, filling rather more than half of the open space. The
+hollow was about eighteen inches deep, and roughly paved with shingle
+from the beach, well stamped down into the clay. It had then been
+neatly wattled over into a sort of trim hut, like the huts the
+salmon-fishers used to build near Kings-bridge. The wattling was made
+fairly waterproof by masses of gorse and bracken driven in among the
+boughs. It was one of the most perfect hiding-places you could
+imagine. It could not be seen from any point, save from high up in one
+of the trees surrounding the thicket. A regiment might have beaten the
+wood pretty thoroughly, and yet have failed to find it. The gorse was
+so thick in all the outer part of the clump that dogs would leave its
+depths un-searched. Yet, lying there in the shelter one could hear the
+splashing babble of the brook only fifty yards away, and the singing
+of a girl at the mill a little further up the stream.
+
+The man told us to get inside the shelter, which we did. Inside it was
+rather dark, but the man lit a lantern which hung from the roof, and
+kindled a fire in a little fireplace. This fireplace was covered with
+turf, so that the smoke should not rise up in a column. We saw that
+the floor of the hut was heaped with bracken, and there were tarpaulin
+boat-rugs piled in one corner, as though for bedding.
+
+The man picked up a couple of rugs and told us to wrap ourselves in
+them. "You'll be cold if you don't wrap up," he said.
+
+As he tucked the rugs about us I noticed that the ring-finger of his
+left hand was tattooed with three blue rings. I remembered what Mrs
+Cottier had said about the man who had lighted her fire in the barn,
+so I stared at him hard, trying to fix his features on my memory. He
+was a well-made, active-looking man, with great arms and shoulders.
+He was evidently a sailor: one could tell that by the way of his walk,
+by the way in which his arms swung, by the way in which his head was
+set upon his body. What made him remarkable was the peculiar dancing
+brightness of his eyes; they gave his face, at odd moments, the look
+of a fiend; then that look would go, and he would look like a
+mischievous, merry boy; but more generally he would look fierce and
+resolute. Then his straight mouth would set, his eyes puckered in as
+though he were looking out to windward, the scar upon his cheek
+twitched and turned red, and he looked most wrathful and terrible.
+
+"Well, mister," the man said to me, "would you know me again, in case
+you saw me?"
+
+"Yes," I said, "I should know you anywhere."
+
+"Would you," he said, grinning. "Well, I was always the beauty of the
+bunch." He bit off a piece of plug tobacco and began to chew
+it. By-and-by he turned to Hugh to ask if he chewed tobacco. Hugh
+answered "No," laughing.
+
+"Ah," said the man, "don't you learn. That's my advice. It's not easy
+to stop, once you begin."
+
+He lay back in his corner, and seemed to pass into a sort of
+day-dream. Presently he looked up at us again, and asked us if we knew
+why we were there. We said that we did not.
+
+"Well," he said, "it's like this. Last night you" (here he gave me a
+nudge with his foot) "you young gentleman that looks so smart, you
+went for a ride late at night, in the snow and all. See what came of
+it. There was Others out for a ride last night, quite a lot of
+'em. Others that the law would be glad to know of, with men so scarce
+for the King's navy. Well, to-day the beaks are out trying to find
+them other ones. There's a power of redcoats come here, besides the
+preventives, and there they go, clackity clank, all swords and horses,
+asking at every house."
+
+"What do they ask," said Hugh.
+
+"They ask a lot of things," said the man. "'Where was you last night?'
+That's one question. 'What time did you come in last night?' That's
+another. 'Let's have a look at your horse; he looks as though he'd bin
+out in the snow last night.' Lots of things they ask, and if they got
+a hold of you, young master, why, you might have noticed things last
+night, and perhaps they might pump what you noticed out of you. So
+some one thinks you had best be out of the road when they come."
+
+"Who is some one?" I asked.
+
+"Just some one," he answered. "Some one who gets more money than I
+get." His mouth drew into a hard and cruel line; he lapsed into his
+day-dream, still chewing his plug of tobacco. "Some one," he added,
+"who don't like questions, and don't like to be talked about too
+much."
+
+He was silent for a minute or two, while Hugh and I looked at each
+other.
+
+"Oh, I'm not going to keep you long," said the man. "Them redcoats'll
+have done asking questions about here before your dinner time. Then
+they'll ride on, and a good riddance. Your lady will know how to
+answer them all right. But till they're gone, why, here you'll
+stay. So let's be comp'ny. What's your name, young master?" He gave
+Hugh a dig in the ribs with his boot.
+
+"Hugh," he answered.
+
+"Hugh," said the man: "Hugh! You won't never come to much, you
+won't. What's _your_ name?" He nudged me in the same way.
+
+"Jim," I said.
+
+"Ah! Jim, Jim," he repeated. "I've known a many Jims. Some were good
+in their way, too." He seemed to shrink into himself suddenly--I can't
+explain it--but he seemed to shrink, like a cat crouched to spring,
+and his eyes burned and danced; they seemed to look right into me,
+horribly gleaming, till the whole man became, as it were, just two
+bright spots of eyes--one saw nothing else.
+
+"Ah," he said, after a long, cruel glare at me, "this is the first
+time Jim and I ever met. The first time. We shall be great friends, we
+shall. We shall be better acquainted, you and I. I wouldn't wonder if
+I didn't make a man of you, one time or another. Give me your hand,
+Jim."
+
+I gave him my hand; he looked at it under the lantern; he traced one
+or two of the lines with his blackened finger-nails, muttering some
+words in a strange language, which somehow made my flesh creep. He
+repeated the words: "Orel. Orel. Adartha Cay." Then he glanced at the
+other hand, still muttering, and made a sort of mark with his fingers
+on my forehead. Hugh told me afterwards that he seemed to trace a kind
+of zigzag on my left temple. All the time he was muttering he seemed
+to be half-conscious, almost in a trance, or as if he were mad: he
+frightened us dreadfully. After he had made the mark upon my brow he
+came to himself again.
+
+"They will see it," he muttered. "It'll be bright enough. The
+mark. It'll shine. They'll know when they see it. It is very good. A
+very good sign: it burns in the dark. They'll know it over there in
+the night." Then he went on mumbling to himself, but so brokenly that
+we could catch only a few words here and there--"black and red,
+knowledge and beauty; red and black, pleasure and strength. What do
+the cards say?"
+
+He opened his thick sea-coat, and took out a little packet of cards
+from an oilskin case. He dealt them out, first of all, in a circle
+containing two smaller circles; then in a curious sort of five-pointed
+star; lastly, in a square with a circle cutting off the
+corners. "Queer, queer," he said, grinning, as he swept the cards up
+and returned them to his pocket. "You and I will know a power of queer
+times together, Jim."
+
+He brightened up after that, as though something had pleased him very
+much. He looked very nice when he looked pleased, in spite of his eyes
+and in spite of the gipsy darkness of his skin. "Here," he said,
+"let's be company. D'ye know any knots, you two?"
+
+No; neither of us knew any knots except the ordinary overhand and
+granny knots.
+
+"Well, I'll show you," he said. "It'll come in useful some day. Always
+learn what you can, that's what I say, because it'll come in useful.
+That's what the Irishman said. Always learn what you can. You never
+know; that's the beauty of it."
+
+He searched in his pockets till he found a small hank of spun-yarn,
+from which he cut a piece about a yard long. "See here," he said.
+"Now, I'll teach you. It's quite easy, if you only pay attention. Now,
+how would you tie a knot if you was doing up a parcel?"
+
+We both tried, and both made granny knots, with the ends sticking out
+at right angles to the rest of the yarn.
+
+"Wrong," he said. "Those are grannies. They would jam so that you'd
+never untie 'em, besides being ugly. There's wrong ways even in doing
+up a string. See here." He rapidly twisted the ends together into a
+reef-knot. "There's strength and beauty together," he said. "Look how
+neat it is, the ends tidy along the standing part, all so neat as
+pie. Besides, it'd never jam. Watch how I do it, and then try it for
+yourself."
+
+Very soon we had both mastered the reef-knot, and had tried our hand
+at others--the bowline, the figure of eight, the Carrick-bend, and the
+old swab-hitch. He was very patient with us. He told us exactly how
+each knot would be used at sea, and when, and why, and what the
+officers would say, and how things would look on deck while they were
+in the doing. The time passed pleasantly and quickly; we felt like
+jolly robbers in a cave. It was like being the hero of a story-book to
+sit there with that rough man waiting till the troops had gone. It was
+not very cold with the fire and the boat-rugs. We were heartily sorry
+when the man rose to his feet, with the remark that he must see if the
+coast were clear. Before he left the hut he glared down at us. "Look
+here," he said, "don't you try to go till I give the word. But there,
+we're friends; no need to speak rough to friends. I'll be back in a
+minute."
+
+The strange man passed out of the hut and along the rabbit-run to the
+edge of the gorse. We heard his feet crunch upon the snow beyond,
+rustling the leaves underneath it; and then it was very, very quiet
+again, though once, in the stillness, we heard a cock pheasant
+calling. Another pheasant answered him from somewhere above at the
+upper part of the wood, and it occurred to both of us that the
+pheasants were the night-riders, making their private signals.
+
+"We've had a famous adventure to tell Mother," said Hugh.
+
+"Yes," I said; "but we had better be careful not to tell anybody
+else. I wonder what they do here in this hut; I suppose they hide
+their things here till it's safe to take them away."
+
+"Where do they take them?" asked Hugh.
+
+"Away into Dartmoor," I said. "And there there are wonderful places,
+so old Evans the postboy told me."
+
+"What sort of places?" asked Hugh.
+
+"Oh, caves covered over with gorse and fern, and old copper and tin
+mines, which were worked by the ancient Britons. They go under the
+ground for miles, so old Evans told me, with passages, and steps up
+and down, and great big rooms cut in the rock. And then there are bogs
+where you can sink things till it's quite safe to take them up. The
+bog-water keeps them quite sound; it doesn't rot them like ordinary
+water. Sometimes men fall into the bogs, and the marsh-mud closes over
+them. That's the sort of place Dartmoor is."
+
+Hugh was very much interested in all this, but he was a quiet boy, not
+fond of talking. "Yes," he said; "but where do the things go
+afterwards--who takes them?"
+
+"Nobody knows, so old Evans said," I answered; "but they go, they get
+taken. People come at night and carry them to the towns, little by
+little, and from the market towns, they get to the cities, no one
+knows how. I dare say this hut has been full of things--valuable lace
+and silk, and all sorts of wines and spirits--waiting for some one to
+carry them into the moor."
+
+"Hush!" said Hugh; "there's some one calling--it's Mother."
+
+Outside the gorse-clump, at some little distance from us, we heard Mrs
+Cottier and my aunt calling "Hugh!" and "Jim!" repeatedly. We lay very
+still wondering what they would think, and hoping that they would make
+no search for us. They could have tracked us in the snow quite easily,
+but we knew very well they would never think of it, for they were both
+shortsighted and ignorant of what the Red Indians do when they go
+tracking. To our surprise their voices came nearer and nearer, till
+they were at the edge of the clump, but on the side opposite to that
+in which the rabbit-run opened. I whispered to Hugh to be quiet as
+they stopped to call us. They lingered for several minutes, calling
+every now and then, and talking to each other in between whiles. We
+could hear every word of their conversation.
+
+"It's very curious," said my aunt. "Where-ever can they have got to?
+How provoking boys are!"
+
+"It doesn't really matter," said Mims; "the officer has gone, and the
+boy would only have been scared by all his questions. He might ha^e
+frightened the boy out of his wits. I wonder where the young monkeys
+have got to. They were going to build snow-huts, like the Indians.
+Perhaps they're hiding in one now."
+
+We were, had she only known it; Hugh and I grinned at each
+other. Suddenly my aunt spoke again with a curious inflection in her
+voice.
+
+"How funny," she exclaimed.
+
+"What is it?" asked Mrs Cottier.
+
+"I'm almost sure I smell something burning," said my aunt "I'm sure I
+do. Don't you?"
+
+There was a pause of a few seconds while the two ladies sniffed the
+air.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs Cottier, "there is something burning. It seems to come
+from that gorse there."
+
+"Funny," said my aunt. "I suppose some one has lighted a fire up in
+the wood and the smoke is blowing down on us. Well, we'll go in to
+dinner; it's no good staying here catching our death looking for two
+mad things. I suppose you didn't hear how Mrs Burns is, yesterday?"
+
+The two ladies passed away from the clump towards the orchard, talking
+of the affairs of the neighbourhood. A few minutes after they had
+gone, a cock pheasant called softly a few yards from us, then the
+gorse-stems shook, and our friend appeared at the hut door,
+
+"They're gone, all right," he said; "swords, and redcoats and
+pipe-clay--they're gone. And a good riddance too! I should have been
+back before, only your ladies were talking, looking for you, so I had
+to wait till they were gone. I expect you'll want your dinner, sitting
+here so long? Well, cut and get it."
+
+He slung the boat-rugs into a corner, blew out the lantern, and
+dropped a handful of snow on to the fire. "Cut," he continued. "You
+can go. Get out of this. Run and get your dinners." We went with him
+out of the hut into the square. "See here," he continued, "don't you
+go coming here. You don't know of this place--see? Don't you show your
+little tracks in this part of the wood; this is a private house, this
+is--trespassers will be prosecuted. Now run along and thank 'ee for
+your company."
+
+As Hugh began to squirm along the passage, I turned and shook hands
+with the man. I thought it would be the polite thing to do to say
+good-bye properly. "Will you tell me your name?" I asked.
+
+"Haven't got a name," he answered gruffly. "None of your business if I
+had." He saw that I was hurt by his rudeness, for his face changed:
+"I'll tell you," he added quickly; "but don't you say it about
+here. Gorsuch is my name--Marah Gorsuch."
+
+"Marah," I said. "What a funny name!"
+
+"Is it?" he said grimly: "It means bitter--bitter water, and I'm
+bitter on the tongue, as you may find. Now cut."
+
+"One thing more, Mr Gorsuch," I said, "be careful of your fires. They
+can smell them outside when the wind blows down from the wood."
+
+"Fires!" he exclaimed; "I don't light fires here except I've little
+bleating schoolboys to tea. Cut and get your porridge. Here," he
+called, as I went down on my hands and knees, "here's a keepsake for
+you."
+
+He tossed me a little ornament of twisted silver wire woven into the
+form of a double diamond knot, probably by the man himself.
+
+"Thank you, Mr Gorsuch," I said.
+
+"Oh, don't thank me," he answered rudely: "I'm tired of being
+thanked. Now cut."
+
+I wriggled through the clump after Hugh, then we ran home together
+through the wood, just as the dinner-bell was ringing for the second
+time.
+
+Mrs Cottier asked us if we had not heard her calling.
+
+"Yes, Mims," I said, "we did hear; but we were hidden in a secret
+house; we wondered if you would find us--we were close to you some of
+the time."
+
+My aunt said Something about "giving a lot of trouble" and "being very
+thoughtless for others"; but we had heard similar lectures many times
+before and did not mind them much. After dinner I took Mims aside and
+told her everything; she laughed a little, though I could see that she
+was uneasy about Hugh.
+
+"I wouldn't mention it to any one," she said. "It would be safer
+not. But, oh, Jim, here we are, all three of us, in league with the
+lawbreakers. The soldiers were here this morning asking all sorts of
+questions, and they'd two men prisoners with them, taken at Tor Cross
+on suspicion; they're to be sent to Exeter till the Assizes. I'm
+afraid it will go hard with them; I dare say they'll be sent abroad,
+poor fellows. Every house is being searched for last night's work: it
+seems they surprised the coastguards at the Cross and tied them up in
+their barracks, before they landed their goods, and now the whole
+country is being searched by troops. And here are we three innocents,"
+she went on, smiling, drawing us both to her, "all conspiring against
+the King's peace--I expect we shall all be transported. Well, I shall
+be transported, but you'd have to serve in the Navy. So now we won't
+talk about it any more; I've had enough smuggling for one day. Let's
+go out and build a real snow-house, and then Jim will be a Red Indian
+and we will have a fight with bows and arrows."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE "SNAIL"
+
+
+It was during the wintry days that Mrs Cottier decided to remove us
+from the school at Newton Abbot. She had arranged with the Rector at
+Strete for us to have lessons at the Rectory every morning with young
+Ned Evans, the Rector's son; so when the winter holidays ended we were
+spared the long, cold drive and that awful "going back" to the school
+we hated so.
+
+Winter drew to an end and the snow melted. March came in like a lion,
+bringing so much rain that the brook was flooded. We saw no more of
+the night-riders after that day in the snow, but we noticed little
+things now and then among the country people which made us sure that
+they were not far off. Once, when we were driving home in the evening
+after a day at Dartmouth, owls called along the road from just behind
+the hedge, whenever the road curved. Hugh and I remembered the
+pheasants that day in the wood, and we nudged each other in the
+darkness, wondering whether Mr Gorsuch was one of the owls. After that
+night we used to practise the call of the owls and the pheasants, but
+we were only clever at the owl's cry: the pheasant's call really needs
+a man's voice, it is too deep a note for any boy to imitate well; but
+we could cry like the owls after some little practice, and we were
+very vain when we made an owl in the wood reply to us. Once, at the
+end of February, we gave the owl's cry outside the "Adventure Inn,"
+where the road dips from Strete to the sands, and a man ran out to the
+door and looked up and down, and whistled a strange little tune, or
+scrap of a tune, evidently expecting an answer; but that frightened
+us; we made him no answer, and presently he went in muttering. He was
+puzzled, no doubt, for he came out again a minute later and again
+whistled his tune, though very quietly. We learned the scrap of tune
+and practised it together whenever we were sure that no one was near
+us.
+
+As for the two men taken by the troops, they were let off. The
+innkeeper at South Poole swore that both men had been in his inn all
+the night of the storm playing the "ring-quoits" game with the other
+guests and as his oath was supported by half-a-dozen witnesses, the
+case for the King fell through; the night-riders never scrupled to
+commit perjury. Later on I learned a good deal about how the
+night-riders managed things.
+
+During that rainy March, while the brook was in flood all over the
+valley, Hugh and I had a splendid time sailing toy boats, made out of
+boxes and pieces of plank. We had one big ship made out of a long
+wooden box which had once held flowers along a window-sill. We had
+painted ports upon her sides, and we had rigged her with a single
+square sail. With a strong southwesterly wind blowing up the valley,
+she would sail for nearly a mile whenever the floods were out, and
+though she often ran aground, we could always get her off, as the
+water was so shallow.
+
+Now, one day (I suppose it was about the middle of the month) we went
+to sail this ship (we used to call her the _Snail_) from our side
+of the flood, right across the river-course, to the old slate quarry
+on the opposite side. The distance was, perhaps, three hundred
+yards. We chose this site because in this place there was a sort of
+ridge causeway leading to a bridge, so that we could follow our ship
+across the flood without getting our feet wet. In the old days the
+quarry carts had crossed the brook by this cause-way, but the quarry
+was long worked out, and the road and bridge were now in a bad state,
+but still good enough for us, and well above water.
+
+We launched the _Snail_ from a green, shelving bank, and shoved
+her off with the long sticks we carried. The wind caught her sail and
+drove her forward in fine style; she made a great ripple as she
+went. Once she caught in a drowned bush; but the current swung her
+clear, and she cut across the course of the brook like a Falmouth
+Packet. Hugh and I ran along the causeway, and over the bridge, to
+catch her on the other side. We had our eyes on her as we ran, for we
+feared that she might catch, or capsize; and we were so intent upon
+our ship that we noticed nothing else. Now when we came to the end of
+the causeway, and turned to the right, along the shale and rubble
+tipped there from the quarry, we saw a man coming down the slope to
+the water, evidently bent on catching the _Snail_ when she
+arrived. We could not see his face very clearly, for he wore a grey
+slouch-hat, and the brambles were so high just there that sometimes
+they hid him from us. He seemed, somehow, a familiar figure; and the
+thought flashed through me that it might be Mr Gorsuch.
+
+"Come on, Hugh," I cried, "or she'll capsize on the shale. The water's
+very shallow, so close up to this side."
+
+We began to run as well as we could, over the broken stones.
+
+"It's no good," said Hugh. "She'll be there before we are."
+
+We broke through a brake of brambles to a green space sloping to the
+flood. There was the _Snail_, drawn up, high and dry, on to the
+grass, and there was the man, sitting by her on a stone, solemnly
+cutting up enough tobacco for a pipe.
+
+"Good morning, Mr Gorsuch," I said.
+
+"Why, it's young sweethearter," he answered. "Why haven't you got your
+nurses with you?" He filled his pipe and lighted it, watching us with
+a sort of quizzical interest, but making no attempt to shake hands. He
+made me feel that he was glad to see us; but that nothing would make
+him show it. "What d'ye call this thing?" he asked, pointing with his
+toe to the _Snail_.
+
+"That's our ship," said Hugh.
+
+"Is it?" he asked contemptuously. "I thought it was your mother's
+pudding-box, with some of baby's bedclothes on it. That's what I
+thought it was."
+
+He seemed to take a pleasure in seeing Hugh's face fall. Hugh always
+took a rough word to heart, and he could never bear to hear his mother
+mentioned by a stranger.
+
+"It's a good enough ship for us," he answered hotly.
+
+"How d'ye know it is?" said the man. "You know nothing at all about
+it. What do _you_ know of ships, or what's good for you? Hey?
+You don't know nothing of the kind."
+
+This rather silenced Hugh; we were both a little abashed, and so we
+stood sheepishly for a moment looking on the ground.
+
+At last I took Hugh by the arm. "Let's take her somewhere else," I
+said softly. I bent down and picked up the ship and turned to go.
+
+The man watched us with a sort of amused contempt. "Where are you
+going now?" he asked.
+
+"Down the stream," I called back.
+
+"Drop it," he said. "Come back here."
+
+I called softly to Hugh to run. "Shan't!" I cried as we started off
+together, at our best speed.
+
+"Won't you?" he called. "Then I'll make you." He was after us in a
+brace of shakes, and had us both by the collar in less than a dozen
+yards. "What little tempers we have got," he said grinning. "Regular
+little spitfires, both of you. Now back you come till we have had a
+talk."
+
+I noticed then that he was much better dressed than formerly. His
+clothes were of the very finest sea-cloth, and well cut. The buttons
+on his scarlet waistcoat were new George guineas; and the buttons on
+his coat were of silver, very beautifully chased. His shoes had big
+silver buckles on them, and there was a silver buckle to the flap of
+his grey slouch hat. The tattoo marks on his left hand were covered
+over by broad silver rings, of the sort the Spanish onion-boys used to
+sell in Dartmouth, after the end of the war. He looked extremely
+handsome in his fine clothes. I wondered how I could ever have been
+afraid of him.
+
+"Yes," he said with a grin, when he saw me eyeing him, "my ship came
+home all right. I was able to refit for a full due. So now we'll see
+what gifts the Queen sent."
+
+We wondered what he meant by this sentence; but we were not kept long
+in doubt. He led us through the briars to the ruins of the shed where
+the quarry overseer had formerly had his office.
+
+"Come in here," he said, shoving us in front of him, "and see what the
+Queen'll give you. Shut your eyes. That's the style. Now open."
+
+When we opened our eyes we could hardly keep from shouting with
+pleasure. There, on the ground, kept upright by a couple of bricks was
+a three-foot model of a revenue cutter, under all her sail except the
+big square foresail, which was neatly folded upon her yard. She was
+perfect aloft, even to her pennant; and on deck she was perfect too,
+with beautiful little model guns, all brass, on their carriages,
+pointing through the port-holes.
+
+"Oh!" we exclaimed. "Oh! Is she really for us, for our very own?"
+
+"Why, yes," he said. "At least she's for you, Mr
+What's-your-name. Jim, I think you call yourself. Yes, Jim. Well,
+she's for you, Jim. I got something else the Queen sent for Mr
+Preacher-feller." He bent in one corner of the ruin, and pulled out
+what seemed to be a stout but broken box. "This is for you, Mr
+Preacher-feller," he said to Hugh.
+
+We saw that it was a model of a port of a ship's deck and side. The
+side was cut for a gun-port, which opened and shut by means of
+laniards; and, pointing through the opened port was a model brass
+nine-pounder on its carriage, with all its roping correctly rigged,
+and its sponges and rammers hooked up above it ready for use. It was a
+beautiful piece of work (indeed, both models were), for the gun was
+quite eighteen inches long. "There you are," said Marah Gorsuch. "That
+lot's for you, Mr Preacher-feller. Them things is what the Queen
+sent."
+
+We were so much delighted by these beautiful presents that it was some
+minutes before we could find words with which to thank him. We could
+not believe that such things were really for us. He was much pleased
+to find that his gifts gave so much pleasure; he kept up a continual
+grin while we examined the toys inch by inch.
+
+"Like 'em, hey?" he said.
+
+"Yes; I should just think we do," we answered. We shook him by the
+hand, almost unable to speak from pleasure.
+
+"And now let's come down and sail her," I said.
+
+"Hold on there," said Marah Gorsuch. "Don't be too quick. You ain't
+going to sail that cutter till you know how. You've got a lot to learn
+first, so that must wait. It's to be Master Preacher-feller's turn
+this morning. Yours'll come by-and-by. What you got to do, first go
+off, is to sink that old hulk you were playing with. We'll sink her at
+anchor with Preacher-feller's cannon."
+
+He told Hugh to pick up his toy, and to come along down to the water's
+edge. When he came near to the water, Marah took the old _Snail_
+and tied a piece of string to her bows by way of a cable. Then he
+thrust her well out into the flood, tied a piece of shale (as an
+anchor) to the other end of the string, and flung it out ahead of her,
+so that she rode at anchor trimly a few yards from the bank. "Now," he
+said, "we'll exercise great guns. Here (he produced a powder-horn) is
+the magazine; here (he produced a bag of bullets) is the
+shot-locker. Here's a bag of wads. Now, my sons, down to business.
+Cast loose your housings, take out tompions. Now bear a hand, my lads;
+we'll give your old galleon a broadside."
+
+We watched him as he prepared the gun for firing, eagerly lending a
+hand whenever we saw what he wanted. "First of all," he said, "you
+must sponge your gun. There's the sponge. Shove it down the muzzle and
+give it a screw round. There! Now tap your sponge against the muzzle
+to knock the dust off. There! Now the powder." He took his powder-horn
+and filled a little funnel (like the funnels once used by chemists for
+filling bottles of cough-mixture) with the powder. This he poured down
+the muzzle of the gun. "Now a wad," he said, taking up a screw of
+twisted paper. "Ram it home on to the powder with the rammer. That's
+the way. Now for the shot. We'll put in a dozen bullets, and then top
+with a couple more wads. There! Now she's loaded. Those bullets will
+go for fifty yards with that much powder ahind 'em. Now, all we have
+to do is to prime her." He filled the touch-hole with powder, and
+poured a few grains along the base or breech of the gun. "There!" he
+said. "Only one thing more. That is aim. Here, Mr Preacher-feller,
+Hugh, whatever your name is. You're captain of the gun; you must aim
+her. Take a squint along the gun till you get the notch on the muzzle
+against the target; then raise your gun's breech till the notch is a
+little below your target. Those wooden quoins under the gun will keep
+it raised if you pull them out a little."
+
+Hugh lay down flat on the grass and moved the gun carefully till he
+was sure the aim was correct. "Let's have a match," he said, "to see
+which is the best shot."
+
+"All right," said Marah. "We will. You have first shot. Are you ready?
+All ready? Very well then. Here's the linstock that you're to fire
+with." He took up a long stick which had a slow match twisted round
+it. He lit the slow match by a pocket flint and steel after moving his
+powder away from him. "Now then," he cried, "are you ready? Stand
+clear of the breech. Starboard battery. Fire!"
+
+Hugh dropped the lighted match on to the priming. The gun banged
+loudly, leaped back and up, and fell over on one side in spite of its
+roping as the smoke spurted. At the same instant there was a lashing
+noise, like rain, upon the water as the bullets skimmed along upon the
+surface. One white splinter flew from the _Snail's_ stern where a
+single bullet struck; the rest flew wide astern of her.
+
+"Let your piece cool a moment," said Marah, "then we will sponge and
+load again, and then Jim'll try. You were too much to the right, Mr
+Hugh. Your shots fell astern."
+
+After a minute or two we cleaned the gun thoroughly and reloaded.
+
+"Now," said Marah, "remember one thing. If you was in a ship, fighting
+that other ship, you wouldn't want just to blaze away at her
+broadside. No. You'd want to hit her so as your shot would rake all
+along her decks from the bow aft, or from the stern forrard. You wait
+a second, Master Jim, till the wind gives her bows a skew towards you,
+or till her stern swings round more. There she goes. Are you ready?
+Now, as she comes round; allow for it. Fire!"
+
+Very hurriedly I made my aim, and still more hurriedly did I give
+fire. Again came the bang and flash; again the gun clattered over;
+but, to my joy, a smacking crack showed that the shot went home. The
+shock made the old _Snail_ roll. A piece of her bow was knocked
+off. Two or three bullets ripped through her sail. One bored a groove
+along her, and the rest went over her.
+
+"Good," said. Marah. "A few more like that and she's all our own. Now
+it's my shot. I'll try to knock her rudder away. Wait till she
+swings. There she comes! There she comes! Over a little. Up a
+little. Now. Fire." He darted his linstock down upon the priming. The
+gun roared and upset; the bullets banged out the _Snail's_ stern,
+and she filled slowly, and sank to the level of the water, her mast
+standing erect out of the flood, and her whole fabric swaying a little
+as the water moved her up and down.
+
+After that we fired at the mast till we had knocked it away, and then
+we placed our toys in the sheltered fireplace of the ruin and came
+away, happy to the bone, talking nineteen to the dozen.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE OWL'S CRY
+
+
+For the next month we passed all our afternoons with Marah. In the
+mornings the Rector gave us our lessons at Strete; then we walked home
+to dinner; then we played with our gun and cutter, or at the sailing
+of our home-made boats, till about six, when we went home for
+tea. After tea we prepared our lessons for the next day and went
+upstairs to bed, where we talked of smugglers and pirates till we fell
+asleep. Marah soon taught us how to sail the cutter; and, what was
+more, he taught us how to rig her. For an hour of each fine afternoon
+he would give us a lesson in the quarry office, showing us how to rig
+model boats, which we made out of old boxes and packing-cases. In the
+sunny evenings of April we used to sail our fleets, ship against ship,
+upon the great freshwater lake into which the trout-brook passes on
+its way to the sea. Sometimes we would have a fleet of ships of the
+line anchored close to the shore, and then we would fire at them with
+the gun and with one of Marah's pistols till we had shattered them to
+bits and sunk them. Sometimes Marah would tell us tales of the
+smugglers and pirates of long ago, especially about a pirate named Van
+Horn, who was burned in his ship off Mugeres Island, near Campeachy,
+more than a hundred years back.
+
+"His ship was full of gold and silver," said Marah. "You can see her
+at a very low tide even now. I've seen her myself. She is all burnt to
+a black coal, a great Spanish galleon, with all her guns in her. I was
+out fishing in the boat, and a mate said, 'Look there. There she is!'
+and I saw her as plain as plain among all the weeds in the sea. The
+water's very clear there, and there she was, with the fishes dubbing
+their noses on her. And she's as full of gold as the Bank of
+England. The seas'll have washed Van Horn's bones white, and the bones
+of his crew too; eaten white by the fish and washed white, lying there
+in all that gold under the sea, with the weeds growing over them. It
+gives you a turn to think of it, don't it?"
+
+"Why don't they send down divers to get the gold?" asked Hugh.
+
+"Why!" said Marah. "There's many has tried after all that gold. But
+some the shacks took and some the Spaniards took, and then there was
+storms and fighting. None ever got a doubloon from her. But
+somebody'll have a go for it again. I tried once, long ago. That was
+an unlucky try, though. Many poor men died along of that one. They
+died on the decks," he added. "It was like old Van Horn cursing
+us. They died in my arms, some of 'em. Seven and twenty seamen, and
+one of them was my mate, Charlie!"
+
+I have wandered away from my story, I'm afraid, remembering these
+scraps of the past; but it all comes back to me now, so clearly that
+it seems to be happening again. There are Marah and Hugh, with the sun
+going down behind the gorse-bank, across the Lea; and there are the
+broken ships floating slowly past, with the perch rising at them; and
+there is myself, a very young cub, ignorant of what was about to come
+upon me. Perhaps, had I known what was to happen before the leaves of
+that spring had fallen, I should have played less light-heartedly, and
+given more heed to Mr Evans, the Rector.
+
+Now, on one day in each week, generally on Thursdays, we had rather
+longer school hours than on the other days. On these days of extra
+work Hugh and I had dinner at the Rectory with Ned Evans, our
+schoolmate. After dinner we three boys would wander off together,
+generally down to Black Pool, where old Spanish coins (from some
+forgotten wreck) were sometimes found in the sand after heavy weather
+had altered the lie of the beach. We never found any Spanish coins,
+but we always enjoyed our afternoons there. The brook which runs into
+the sea there was very good for trout, in the way that Marah showed
+us; but we never caught any, for all our pains. In the summer we meant
+to bathe from the sands, and all through that beautiful spring we
+talked of the dives we would take from the spring-board running out
+into the sea. Then we would have great games of ducks and drakes, with
+flat pebbles; or games of pebble-dropping, in which our aim was to
+drop a stone so that it should make no splash as it entered the water.
+But the best game of all was our game of cliff-exploring among the
+cliffs on each side of the bay, and this same game gave me the
+adventure of my life.
+
+One lovely afternoon towards the end of the May of that year, when we
+were grubbing among the cliff-gorse as usual, wondering how we could
+get down the cliffs to rob the sea-birds' nests, we came to a bare
+patch among the furze; and there lay a couple of coastguards, looking
+intently at something a little further down the slope, and out of
+sight, beyond the brow of the cliff. They had ropes with them, and a
+few iron spikes, and one of them had his telescope on the grass beside
+him. They looked up at us angrily when we broke through the thicket
+upon them, and one of them hissed at us through his teeth: "Get out,
+you boys. Quick. Cut!" and waved to us to get away, which we did, a
+good deal puzzled and perhaps a little startled. We talked about it on
+our way home. Ned Evans said that the men were setting rabbit snares,
+and that he had seen the wires. Hugh thought that they might be after
+sea-birds' eggs during their hours off duty. Both excuses seemed
+plausible, but for my own part I thought something very different.
+The men, I felt, were out on some special service, and on the brink of
+some discovery. It seemed to me that when we broke in upon them they
+were craning forward to the brow of the cliff, intently listening. I
+even thought that from below the brow of the cliff, only a few feet
+away, there had come a noise of people talking. I did not mention my
+suspicions to Hugh and Ned, because I was not sure, and they both
+seemed so sure; but all the way home I kept thinking that I was
+right. It flashed on me that perhaps the night-riders had a cave below
+the cliff-brow, and that the coast-guards had discovered the
+secret. It was very wrong of me, but my only thought was: "Oh, will
+they catch Marah? Will poor Marah be sent to prison?" and the fear
+that our friend would be dragged off to gaol kept me silent as We
+walked.
+
+When we came to the gate which takes you by a short cut to the valley
+and the shale quarry, I said that I would go home that way, while the
+others went by the road, and that we would race each other, walking,
+to see who got home first. They agreed to this, and set off together
+at a great rate; but as soon as they were out of sight behind the
+hedge I buckled my satchel to my shoulders and started running to warn
+Marah. It was all downhill to the brook, and I knew that I should find
+Marah there,--for he had said that he was coming earlier than usual
+that afternoon to finish off a model boat which we were to sail after
+tea. I ran as I had never run before--I thought my heart would thump
+itself to pieces; but at last I got to the valley and saw Marah
+crossing the brook by the causeway. I shouted to him then and he heard
+me. I had not breath to call again, so I waved to him to come and then
+collapsed, panting, for I had run a good mile across country. He
+walked towards me slowly, almost carelessly; but I saw that he was
+puzzled by my distress, and wondered what the matter was.
+
+"What is it?" he asked. "What's the rally for?"
+
+"Oh," I cried, "the coastguards--over at Black Pool."
+
+"Yes," he said carelessly, "what about _them?_"
+
+"They've discovered it," I cried. "The cave under the
+cliff-top. They've discovered it."
+
+His face did not change; he looked at me rather hard; and then asked
+me, quite carelessly, what I had seen.
+
+"Two coastguards," I answered. "Two coastguards. In the furze. They
+were listening to people somewhere below them."
+
+"Yes," he said, still carelessly, "over at Black Pool? I suppose they
+recognized you?"
+
+"Yes, they must have. We three are known all over the place. And I ran
+to tell you."
+
+"So I see," he said grimly. "You seem to have run like a
+tea-ship. Well, you needn't have. There's no cave on this side
+Salcombe, except the hole at Tor Cross. What made you run to tell
+_me?_"
+
+"Oh," I said, "you've been so kind--so kind, and--I don't know--I
+thought they'd send you to prison."
+
+"Did you?" he said gruffly. "Did you indeed? Well, they won't. There
+was no call for you to fret your little self. Still, you've done it;
+I'll remember that--I'll always remember that. Now you be off to your
+tea, quick. Cut!"
+
+When he gave an order it was always well for us to obey it at once; if
+we did not he used to lose his temper. So when he told me to go I got
+up and turned away, but slowly, for I was still out of breath. I
+looked back before I passed behind the hedge which marks the beginning
+of the combe, but Marah had disappeared--I could see no trace of
+him. Then suddenly, from somewhere behind me, out of sight, an owl
+called--and this in broad daylight. Three times the "Too-hoo, too-hoo"
+rose in a long wail from the shrubs, and three times another owl
+answered from up the combe, and from up the valley, too, till the
+place seemed full of owls. "Too-hoo, too-hoo" came the cries, and very
+faintly came answers--some of them in strange tones, as though the
+criers asked for information. As they sounded, the first owl answered
+in sharp, broken cries. But I had had enough. Breathless as I was, I
+ran on up the valley to the house, only hoping that no owl would come
+swooping down upon me. And this is what happened. Just as I reached
+the gate which leads to the little bridge below the house I saw Joe
+Barnicoat galloping towards me on an unsaddled horse of Farmer
+Rowser's. He seemed shocked, or upset, at seeing me; but he kicked the
+horse in the ribs and galloped on, crying out that he was having a
+little ride. His little ride was taking him at a gallop to the owl,
+and I was startled to find that quiet Joe, the mildest gardener in the
+county, should be one of the uncanny crew whose signals still hooted
+along the combes.
+
+When I reached home the others jeered at me for a sluggard. They had
+been at home for twenty minutes, and had begun tea. I let them talk as
+they pleased, and then settled down to work; but all that night I
+dreamed of great owls, riding in the dark with bee-skeps over them,
+filling the combes with their hootings.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE TWO COASTGUARDS
+
+
+The next morning, when Hugh and I came to Strete for our lessons, we
+found a lot of yeomen and preventives drawn up in the village. People
+were talking outside their houses in little excited groups. Jan
+Edeclog, the grocer, was at the door of his shop, wiping his hands on
+his apron. There was a general rustle and stir, something had
+evidently happened.
+
+"What's all the row about, Mr Edeclog?" I asked.
+
+"Row?" he asked. "Row enough, Master Jim. Two of the coastguards, who
+were on duty yesterday afternoon, have disappeared. It's thought
+there's been foul play."
+
+My heart sank into my boots, my head swam, I could hardly stand
+upright. All my thought was: "They have been killed. And all through
+my telling Marah. And I'm a murderer."
+
+I don't know how I could have got to the Rectory gate, had not the
+militia captain come from the tavern at that moment. He mounted his
+horse, called out a word of command, and the men under him moved off
+towards Slapton at a quick trot.
+
+"They have gone to beat the Lay banks," said some one, and then some
+one laughed derisively.
+
+I walked across to the Rectory and flung my satchel of books on to the
+floor. The Rector's wife came into the hall as we entered. "Why, Jim,"
+she said, "what is the matter? Aren't you well?"
+
+"Not very," I answered.
+
+"My dear," she cried to her husband, "Jim's not well. He looks as
+though he'd seen a ghost, poor boy."
+
+"Why, Jim," said the Rector, coming out of the sitting-room, "what's
+the matter with you? Had too much jam for breakfast?"
+
+"No," I said. "But I feel faint. I feel sick. Can I go to sit in the
+garden for a minute?"
+
+"Yes," he answered. "Certainly. I'll get you a glass of cold water."
+
+I was really too far gone to pay much heed to anything. I think I told
+them that I should be quite well in a few minutes, if they would leave
+me there; and I think that Mrs Evans told her husband to come indoors,
+leaving me to myself. At any rate they went indoors, and then the cool
+air, blowing on me from the sea, refreshed me, so that I stood up.
+
+I could think of nothing except the words: "I am a murderer." A wild
+wish came to me to run to the cliffs by Black Pool to see whether the
+bodies lay on the grass in the place where I had seen them (full of
+life) only a few hours before. Anything was better than that
+uncertainty. In one moment a hope would surge up in me that the men
+would not be dead; but perhaps only gagged and bound: so that I could
+free them. In the next there would be a feeling of despair, that the
+men lay there, dead through my fault, killed by Marah's orders, and
+flung among the gorse for the crows and gulls. I got out of the
+Rectory garden into the road; and in the road I felt strong enough to
+run; and then a frenzy took hold of me, so that I ran like one
+possessed. It is not very far to Black Pool; but I think I ran the
+whole way. I didn't feel out of breath when I got there, though I had
+gone at top speed; a spirit had been in me, such as one only feels at
+rare times. Afterwards, when I saw a sea-fight, I saw that just such a
+spirit filled the sailors, as they loaded and fired the guns.
+
+I pushed my way along the cliffs through the gorse, till I came to the
+patch where the coast-guards had lain. The grass was trampled and
+broken, beaten flat in places as though heavy bodies had fallen on it;
+there were marks of a struggle all over the patch. Some of the near-by
+gorse twigs were broken from their stems; some one had dropped a small
+hank of spun-yarn. They had lain there all that night, for the dew was
+thick upon them. What puzzled me at first was the fact that there were
+marks from only two pairs of boots, both of the regulation pattern.
+The men who struggled with the coastguards must have worn moccasins,
+or heelless leather slippers, made out of some soft hide.
+
+I felt deeply relieved when I saw no bodies, nor any stain upon the
+grass. I began to wonder what the night-riders had done with the
+coastguards; and, as I sat wondering, I heard, really and truly, a
+noise of the people talking from a little way below me, just beyond
+the brow of the cliff. That told me at once that there was a cave,
+even as I had suspected. I craned forward eagerly, as near as I dared
+creep, to the very rim of the land. I looked down over the edge into
+the sea, and saw the little blue waves creaming into foam far below
+me.
+
+I could see nothing but the side of the cliff, with its projecting
+knobs of rock; no opening of any kind, and yet a voice from just below
+me (it seemed to come from below a little projecting slab a few feet
+down): a voice just below me, I say, said, quite clearly, evidently
+between puffs at a pipe, "I don't know so much about that." Another
+voice answered; but I could not catch the words. The voice I should
+have known anywhere; it was Marah's "good-temper voice," as he called
+it, making a pleasant answer.
+
+"That settles it," I said to myself. "There's a cave, and the
+coastguards are there, I'll be bound, as prisoners. Now I have to find
+them and set them free."
+
+Very cautiously I peered over the cliff-face, examining every knob and
+ledge which might conceal (or lead to) an opening in the rock. No. I
+could see nothing; the cliff seemed to me to be almost sheer; and
+though it was low tide, the rocks at the base of the cliffs seemed to
+conceal no opening. I crept cautiously along the cliff-top, as near to
+the edge as I dared, till I was some twenty feet from the spot where I
+had heard the voice. Then I looked down again carefully, searching
+every handbreadth for a firm foothold or path down the rocks, with an
+opening at the end, through which a big man could squeeze his
+body. No. There was nothing. No living human being could get down that
+cliff-face without a rope from up above; and even If he managed to get
+down, there seemed to be nothing but the sea for him at the end of his
+journey. Again I looked carefully right to the foot of the
+crag. No. There was absolutely nothing; I was off the track somehow.
+
+Now, just at this point the cliff fell Inland for a few paces, forming
+a tiny bay about six yards across. To get along the cliff towards
+Strete I had to turn inland for a few steps, then turn again towards
+the sea, in order to reach the cliff. I skirted the little bay in this
+manner, and dropped one or two stones into it from where I stood. As I
+craned over the edge, watching them fall into the sea, I caught sight
+of something far below me, in the water.
+
+I caught my breath and looked again, but the thing, whatever it was,
+had disappeared from sight. It was something red, which had gleamed
+for a moment from behind a rock at the base of the cliff. I watched
+eagerly for a moment or two, hearing the sucking of the sea along the
+stones, and the cry of the seagulls' young in their nests on the
+ledges. Then, very slowly, as the slack water urged it, I saw the red
+stem-piece of a rather large boat nosing slowly forward apparently
+from the cliff-face towards the great rock immediately in front of
+it. The secret was plain in a moment. Here was a cave with a
+sea-entrance, and a cave big enough to hide a large, seagoing fisher's
+boat; a cave, too, so perfectly hidden that it could not possibly be
+seen from any point except right at the mouth. A coastguard's boat
+could row within three yards of the entrance and never once suspect
+its being there, unless, at a very low tide, the sea clucked strangely
+from somewhere within. Any men entering the little bay in a boat would
+see only the big rock hiding the face of the cliff. No one would
+suspect that behind the rock lay a big cave accessible from the sea,
+at low tide in fair weather. Even in foul weather, good boatmen (and
+all the night-riders were wonderful fellows in a boat) could have made
+that cave in safety, for at the mouth of the little bay there was a
+great rock, which shut it in on the southwest side, so that in our bad
+southwesterly gales the bay or cove would have been sheltered, though
+full of the foam spattered from the sheltering crag.
+
+I had found the cave, but my next task was to find an entrance, and
+that seemed to be no easy matter. I searched every inch of the
+cliff-face for a foothold, but there was nothing there big enough for
+anything bigger than a sea-lark. I could never have clambered down the
+cliff, even had I the necessary nerve, which I certainly had not. The
+only way down was to shut my eyes and walk over the cliff-edge, and
+trust to luck at the bottom, and "that was one beyond me"--only Marah
+Gorsuch would have tried that way. No; there was no way down the
+cliff-side, that was certain.
+
+Now, somebody--I think it was old Alec Jewler, the ostler at the Tor
+Cross posting-house--had told me that here and there along the coast,
+but most of all in Cornwall, near Falmouth, there had once been
+arsenic mines, now long since worked out. Their shafts, he said, could
+be followed here and there for some little distance, and every now and
+again they would broaden out into chambers, in which people sometimes
+live, even now. It occurred to me that there might be some such
+shaft-opening among the gorse quite close to me; so I crept away from
+the cliff-brink, and began to search among the furze, till my skin was
+full of prickles. Though I searched diligently for an hour or two, I
+could find no hole big enough to be the mouth of a shaft. I knew that
+a shaft of the kind might open a hundred yards from where I was
+searching, and I was therefore well prepared to spend some time in my
+hunt. And at last, when I was almost tired of looking, I came across a
+fox or badger earth, not very recent, which seemed, though I could not
+be certain, to broaden out inside. I lay down and thrust my head down
+the hole, and that confirmed me. From up the hole there came the reek
+of strong ship's tobacco. I had stumbled upon one of the cave's
+air-holes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE CAVE IN THE CLIFF
+
+
+My heart was thumping on my ribs as I thrust and wriggled my body down
+the hole. I did not think how I was to get back again; it never once
+occurred to me that I might stick in the burrow, and die stifled
+there, like a rat in a trap. My one thought was, "I shall save the
+coastguards," and that thought nerved me to push on, careless of
+everything else. It was not at all easy at first, for the earth fell
+in my ears from the burrow-roof, and there was very little room for my
+body. Presently, as I had expected, the burrow broadened out--I could
+kneel erect in it quite easily; and then I found that I could stand up
+without bumping my head. I was not frightened, I was only very
+excited; for, now that I stood in the shaft, the reek of the tobacco
+was very strong. I could see hardly anything--only the light from the
+burrow-mouth, lighting up the sides of the burrow for a yard or two,
+and a sort of gleam, a sort of shining wetness, upon the floor of the
+shaft and on its outer wall. I heard the wash of the sea, or thought I
+heard it, and that was the only noise, except a steady drip, drip,
+splash where water dripped from the roof into a pool on the floor. For
+a moment I stood still, not certain which way to go. Then I settled to
+myself the direction from which I had heard the voices, and turned
+along the shaft on that side.
+
+When I had walked a few yards my nerve began to go; for the gleam on
+the walls faded, the last glimmer of light went out. I was walking
+along an unknown path in pitchy darkness, hearing only the drip, drip,
+splash of the water slowly falling from the roof. Suddenly I ran
+against a sort of breastwork of mortared stones, and the shock almost
+made me faint. I stretched my hand out beyond it, but could feel
+nothing, and then downward on the far side, but could feel nothing;
+and then I knocked away a scrap of stone from the top of the wall, and
+it seemed to fall for several seconds before a faint splash told me
+that it had reached water. The shaft seemed to turn to the right and
+left at this low wall, and at first I turned to the left, but only for
+a moment, as I soon saw that the right-hand turning would bring me
+more quickly to the cliff-face from which I had heard the voices.
+After I had made my choice, you may be sure that I went on hands and
+knees, feeling the ground in front of me. I went forward very, very
+slowly, with the wet mud coming through my knickerbockers, and the
+cold drops sometimes falling on my neck from the roof. At last I saw a
+little glimmer of light, and there was a turning to the left; and just
+beyond the turning there was a chamber in the rock, all lit up by the
+sun, as clear as clear. There were holes in the cliff-face, one of
+them a great big hole, and the sun shone through on to the floor of
+the cave, and I could look out and see the sea, and the seagulls going
+past after fish, and the clouds drifting up by the horizon. Very
+cautiously I crept up to the entrance to the chamber, and then into
+it, so that I could look all round it.
+
+It was not a very large room (I suppose it was fifteen feet square)
+and it looked rather smaller than it was, because it was heaped almost
+to the roof in one or two places with boxes and kegs, and the various
+sea-stores, such as new rope and spare anchors. In one corner of it
+(in the corner at which I entered it) a flight of worn stone steps led
+downwards into the bowels of the earth. "Aha!" I thought; "so that's
+how you reach your harbour!" Then I crept up to one of the piles of
+boxes and cautiously peeped over.
+
+I looked over cautiously, for as I entered the room I had the eerie
+feeling which one gets sometimes at night; I felt that there was
+somebody else in the room. Sure enough there was somebody else--two
+somebodies--and my heart leaped up in joy to see them. Sitting on the
+ground, tied by the body to some of the boxes over which I peered,
+were the two missing coastguards. Their backs were towards me, and
+their hands and feet were securely bound; but they were unhurt, that
+was the great thing. One of them was quietly smoking, filling the cave
+with strong tobacco smoke; the other was asleep, breathing rather
+heavily. It was evidently a pleasant holiday for the pair of them. No
+other person was in the room, but I saw that on the far side of the
+chamber another gallery led on into the cliff to another chamber, and
+from this chamber came the sound of many voices talking (in a dull
+quiet way), and the slow droning of the song of a drunken man. I shut
+my eyes, and lay across the boxes as still as a dead man, trying to
+summon up enough courage to speak to the coastguard; and all the time
+the drunkard's song quavered and shook, and died down, and dragged on
+again, as though it would never end. Afterwards I often heard that
+song, in all its thirty stanzas; and I have only to repeat a line of
+it to bring back to myself the scene of the sunny cave, with the bound
+coastguard smoking, and the smugglers talking and talking just a few
+paces out of sight.
+
+  "And the gale it roar-ed dismally
+  As we went to New Barbary,"
+
+said the singer; and then some one asked a question, and some one
+struck a light for his pipe, and the singer droned on and on about the
+bold Captain Glen, and the ship which met with such disaster.
+
+At last I summoned up enough courage to speak. I crawled over the
+boxes as far as I could, and touched the coastguard. "Sh!" I said, in
+a low voice, "Don't make a sound. I've come to rescue you."
+
+The man stared violently (I dare say his nerves were in a bad way
+after his night in the cave), he dropped his pipe with a little
+clatter on the stones, and turned to stare at me.
+
+"Sh!" I said again. "Don't speak. Don't make a sound."
+
+I crept round the boxes to him, and opened my knife. It was a strong
+knife, with very sharp blades (Marah used to whet them for me), so
+that it did not take me long to cut through the "inch-and-a-half-rope,"
+which lashed the poor fellow to the boxes.
+
+"Thankee, master," the man said, as he rose to his feet and stretched
+himself. "I was getting stiff. Now, let's get out of here. D'ye know
+the way out?"
+
+"Yes," I said, "I think I do. Oh, don't make a noise; but come this
+way. This way."
+
+Very quietly we stole out by the gallery by which I had entered. We
+made no attempt to rouse the sleeping man; he slept too heavily, and
+we could not afford to run risks. I don't know what the coastguard's
+feelings were. As for myself, I was pretty nearly fainting with
+excitement. I could hear my heart go thump, thump, thump; it seemed to
+be right up in my very throat. As we stepped into the gloom of the
+gallery, the smugglers behind us burst into the chorus at the end of
+the song--
+
+  "O never more do I intend
+  For to cross the raging main
+  But to live at home most cheerfull-ee,
+  And thus I end my traged-ee."
+
+I felt that if I could get away from that adventure I, too, would live
+at home most cheerfully until the day of my death. We took advantage
+of the uproar to step quickly into the darkness of the passage.
+
+Just before we came to the low stone breastwork which had given me
+such a shock a few minutes before, we heard some one whistling a bar
+of a tune. The tune was the tune of--
+
+  "Oh, my true love's listed, and wears a white cockade."
+
+And to our horror the whistler was coming quickly towards us. In
+another second we saw him stepping along the gallery, swinging a
+lantern. He was a big, strong man, evidently familiar with the way.
+
+"Back," said the coastguard in a gasp. "Get back, for your life, and
+down that staircase."
+
+The man didn't see us; didn't even hear us. He stopped at the stone
+breastwork, opened his lantern, and lit his pipe at the candle, and
+then stepped on leisurely towards the chamber. Our right course would
+have been "to go for him," knock him down, knock the breath out of
+him, lash his wrists and ankles together, and bolt for the
+entrance. But the coastguard was rather upset by his adventure, and he
+let the minute pass by. Had he rushed at the man as soon as he
+appeared; but, there--it is no use talking. We didn't rush at him, we
+scuttled back into the chamber, and then down the worn stone steps cut
+out of the rock, which seemed to lead down and down into the bowels of
+the earth. As we hurried down, leaping lightly on the tips of our
+toes, the quaver of the tune came after us, so clearly that I even
+made a guess at the whistler's identity.
+
+When we had run down the staircase about half-way down to sea-level we
+found ourselves in a cave as big as the church at Dartmouth. It was
+fairly light, for the entrance was large, though low, and at low water
+(as it was then) the roof of the cave mouth stood six feet from the
+sea. The sea ran up into the cave in a deep triangular channel, with a
+landing-place (a natural ledge of rock) on each of the sides, and the
+sea entrance at the base. The sea made a sort of clucking noise about
+the rocks; and at the right inland it washed upon a cave-floor of
+pebbles, which clattered slightly as the swell moved them. The roof
+dripped a little, and there were little pools on both the landings,
+and the whole place had a queer, dim, green, uncanny light upon it;
+due, I suppose, to the deep water of the channel. I saw all these
+things afterwards, at leisure; I did not notice them very clearly in
+that first moment. All that I saw then was a large sea-lugger, lying
+moored at the cavemouth, some few feet lower down. She was a beautiful
+model of a boat (I had seen that much in seeing her bow from the top
+of the cliff), but of course her three masts were unstepped, and she
+was rather a handful for a man and a boy. We saw her, and made a leap
+for her together, and both of us landed in her bows at the same
+instant, just as the man with the lantern, peering down from the top
+of the stairs, asked us what in the world we were playing at down
+there.
+
+The coastguard made no answer, for he was busy in the bows; I think he
+had his knife through the painter in five seconds. Then he snatched up
+a boat-hook (I took an oar), and we drove her with all our strength
+along the channel into (or, I should say, towards) the open sea and
+freedom.
+
+"Hey," cried the man with the lantern, "chuck that! Are you mad?" He
+took a step or two down the staircase, in order to see better.
+
+"Drive her, oh, drive her, boy!" cried the coastguard.
+
+I thrust with all my force, the coastguard gave a mighty heave, the
+lugger slid slowly seawards.
+
+"Hey!" yelled the smuggler, clattering upstairs, dropping his lantern
+down on us. "Hey, Marah, Jewler, Smokewell, Hankin--all of you!
+They've got away in the boat."
+
+"Now the play begins," said the coastguard. "Another heave, and
+another--together now!"
+
+We drove the lugger forward again, so that half her length thrust out
+into the sea. We ran aft to give her a final thrust out, and just at
+that moment her bow struck upon the rock at the cave mouth: in the
+excitement of the moment we had not realised that one of us was wanted
+in the bows to shove her nose clean into the sea. The blow threw us
+both upon our hands and knees in the stern sheets; it took us
+half-a-dozen seconds to pick ourselves up, and then I realised that I
+should have to jump forward and guide the boat clear of all outlying
+dangers. As I sprang to the bows there came yells from the top of the
+stairs, where I saw half-a-dozen smugglers coming full tilt towards
+us.
+
+Some one cried out, "Drop it, drop it, you fool!" Another voice cried,
+"Fire!" and two or three shots cracked out, making a noise like a
+cannonade. The coastguard gave a last desperate heave, I shoved the
+bows clear, and lo! we were actually gliding out. The coastguard's
+body was outside the cliff in full sunlight, giving a final thrust
+from the cliff wall. And then I saw Marah leap into the stern sheets
+as they passed out of the cave; he gave a little thrust to the
+coastguard, just a gentle thrust--enough to make him lose his balance
+and topple over.
+
+"That's enough now," he said, with a grim glance at me. "That's enough
+for one time."
+
+He picked up the coastguard's boat-hook (the man just grinned and
+looked sheepish; he made no attempt to fight with Marah) and thrust
+the boat back into the cave with half-a-dozen deft strokes. Another
+smuggler dropped down into the stern sheets, looked at the coastguard
+with a grin, and helped to work the lugger back into the cave. A third
+man threw down a sternfast to secure her; a fourth jumped into the bow
+and began to put a long splice into the painter which we had cut. We
+had tried and we had failed; here we were prisoners again, and I felt
+sick at heart lest those rough smugglers should teach us a lesson for
+our daring. But Marah just told the coastguard to jump out.
+
+"Out you get," he said, "and don't try that again."
+
+"I won't," said the coastguard.
+
+"You'd better not," said another smuggler. That was all.
+
+We were helped out of the lugger on to the ledge above the channel,
+and the smugglers walked behind us up the stairs to the room we had
+just left. The other coastguard was still snoring, and that seemed
+strange to me, for the last few minutes had seemed like hours.
+
+"Better bring him inside, boss," said one of the smugglers. "He may
+try the same game."
+
+"He's got no young sprig to cut his lashings," said Marah. "He'll be
+well enough." So they left the man to his quiet and passed on with
+their other prisoners into the inner room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+SIGNING ON
+
+
+The inner room was much larger than the prison chamber; it was not
+littered with boxes, but clean and open like a frigate's lower
+deck. It was not, perhaps, quite so light as the other room, but there
+were great holes in the cliff hidden by bushes from the view of
+passing fishermen, and the sun streamed through these on to the floor,
+leaving only the ends of the room in shadow. The room had been
+arranged like the mess-deck of a war-ship; there were sea-chests and
+bags ranged trimly round the inner wall; there was a trestle table
+littered with tin pannikins and plates. The roof was supported by a
+line of wooden stanchions. There were arm racks round the stanchions,
+containing muskets, cutlasses, and long, double-barrelled pistols. As
+I expected, there were several bee-skeps hanging from nails, or lying
+on the floor. I was in the smugglers' roost, perhaps in the presence
+of Captain Sharp himself.
+
+The drunken smuggler who had sung of Captain Glen was the only
+occupant of the room when we entered: he sat half asleep in his chest,
+still clutching his pannikin, still muttering about the boatswain. He
+was an Italian by birth, so Marah told me. He was known as Gateo.
+When he was sober he was a good seaman, but when he was drunk he would
+do nothing but sing of Captain Glen until he dropped off to sleep. He
+had served in the Navy, Marah told me, and had once been a boatswain's
+mate in the _Victory_; but he had deserted, and now he was a
+smuggler living in a hole in the earth.
+
+"And now," said Marah, after he had told me all this, "you and me will
+have to talk. Step into the other room there, you boys," he cried to
+the other smugglers: "I want to have a word with master here."
+
+One of the men--he was the big man who had raised the alarm on us; I
+never knew his real name, everybody always called him Extry--said
+glumly that he "wasn't going to oblige boys, not for dollars."
+
+Marah turned upon him, and the two men faced each other; the others
+stood expectantly, eager for a fight. "Step into the other room
+there," repeated Marah quietly.
+
+"I ain't no pup nor no nigger-man," said Extry. "You ain't going to
+order me."
+
+Marah seemed to shrink into himself and to begin to sparkle all
+over--I can't describe it: that is the effect he produced--he seemed
+to settle down like a cat going to spring. Extry's hand travelled
+round for his sheath-knife, and yet it moved indecisively, as though
+half afraid. And then, just as I felt that Extry would die from being
+looked at in that way, he hung his head, turned to the door, and
+walked out sheepishly according to order. He was beaten.
+
+"No listening now," said Marah, as they filed out. "Keep on your own
+side of the fence."
+
+"Shall we take Gatty with us?" said one of the men.
+
+"Let him lie," said Marah; "he's hove down for a full due, Gatty is."
+
+The men disappeared with their prisoner. Marah looked after them for a
+moment. "Now," he said, "come on over here to the table, Master Jim."
+He watched me with a strange grin upon his face; I knew that grin; it
+was the look his face always bore when he was worried. "Now we will
+come to business. Lie back against the hammocks and rest; I'm going to
+talk to you like a father."
+
+I lay back upon the lashed-up hammocks and he began.
+
+"I suppose you know what you've done? You've just about busted
+yourself. D'ye know that? You thought you'd rescue the pugs"--he meant
+coastguards. "Well, you haven't. You have gone and shoved your head
+down a wasp's nest, so you'll find. How did you get here, in the first
+place? What gave you your clue?"
+
+"I saw the coastguards up above here yesterday," I answered, "and I
+thought I heard voices speaking from below the brow of the cliff, so
+then I searched about till I found a hole, and so I got down here."
+
+"Ah," said Marah, "they will be round here looking for you, then. I'll
+take the liberty of hiding your tracks." He went in to the other room
+and spoke a few words to one of the other smugglers. "Well," he said,
+as he came back to me, "they'll not find you now, if they search from
+now till glory. They'll think you fell into the sea."
+
+"But," I exclaimed, "I must go home! Surely I can go home now? They'll
+be so anxious."
+
+"Yes," said Marah, "they'll be anxious. But look you here, my son;
+folk who acts hasty, as you've done, they often make other people
+anxious--often enough. Very anxious indeed, some of 'em. That's what
+you have done by coming nosing around here. Now here you are, our
+prisoner--Captain Sharp's prisoner--and here you must stay."
+
+"But, I _must_ go home," I cried, the tears coming to my eyes.
+"I _must_ go home."
+
+"Well, you just can't," he answered kindly. "Think it over a
+minute. You've come here," he went on, "nosing round like a spy;
+you've found out our secret. You might let as many as fifty men in for
+the gallows--fifty men to be hanged, d'ye understand; or to be
+transported, or sent to a hulk, or drafted into a man-o'-war. I don't
+say you would, for I believe you have sense: still, you're only a boy,
+and they might get at you in all sorts of ways. Cunning lawyers
+might. And then you give us away and where would _we_ be? Eh,
+boy? Where would we be? Suppose you gave us away, meaning no harm, not
+really knowing what you done. Well, I ask you, where would _we_
+be?"
+
+"I wouldn't give you away," I said hotly. "You know I wouldn't. I
+never gave you away about the hut in the woods."
+
+"No," he said, "you never; but this time there's men's necks
+concerned. I can't help myself--Captain Sharp's, orders. I couldn't
+let you go if I wanted to; the hands wouldn't let me. It'd be putting
+so many ropes round their necks." By this time I was crying. "Don't
+cry, young 'un," he said; "it won't be so bad. But you see yourself
+what you've done now, don't you?"
+
+He walked away from me a turn or two to let me have my cry out. When
+my sobs ceased, he came back and sat close to me, waiting for me to
+speak.
+
+"What will you do to me?" I asked him.
+
+"Why," he answered, "there's only one thing _to_ be done; either
+you've got to become one of us, so as if you give us away you'll be in
+the same boat--I don't say you need be one of us for long; only a trip
+or two--or, you'll have to walk through the window there, and that's a
+long fall and a mighty wet splash at the bottom."
+
+I thought of Mims waiting at home for me, and of the jolly tea-table,
+with Hoolie begging for toast and Hugh's face bent over his plate.
+The thought that I should never see them again set me crying
+passionately--I cried as if my heart would break.
+
+"Why--come, come," said Marah; "I thought you were a sailor. Take a
+brace, boy. We're not going to kill you. You'll make a trip or two.
+What's that? Why it's only a matter of a week or two, and it'll make a
+man of you. A very jolly holiday. I'll be able to make a man of you
+just as I said I would. You'll see life and you'll see the sea, and
+then you'll come home and forget all about us. But go home you'll not,
+understand that, till we got a hold on you the same as you on us."
+
+There was something in his voice which gave me the fury of despair. I
+sprang to my feet, almost beside myself. "Very well, then," I
+cried. "You can drown me. I'm not going to be one of you. And if I
+ever get away I'll see you all hanged, every one of you--you first."
+
+I couldn't say more, for I burst out crying again.
+
+Marah sat still, watching me. "Well, well," he said, "I always thought
+you had spirit. Still, no sense in drowning you, no sense at all."
+
+He walked to the door and called out to some of the smugglers, "Here,
+Extry, Hankin, you fellows, just come in here, I want you a moment."
+
+The men came in quickly, and ranged themselves about the room,
+grinning cheerfully.
+
+"'Low me to introduce you," said Marah. "Our new apprentice, Mr Jim
+Davis."
+
+The men bowed to me sheepishly.
+
+"Glad to meet Mr Davis," said one of them.
+
+"Quite a pleasure," said another.
+
+"I s'pose you just volunteered, Mr Jim?" said the third.
+
+"Yes," said Marah; "he just volunteered. I want you to witness his
+name on the articles." He produced a sheet of paper which was scrawled
+all over with names. "Now, Mr Jim," he said, "your name,
+please. There's ink and pen in the chest here."
+
+"What d'ye want my name for?" I asked.
+
+"Signing on," he said, winking at me. It's only a game."
+
+"I won't set my name to the paper." I cried. "I'll have nothing to do
+with you. I'd sooner die--far sooner."
+
+"That's a pity," said Marah, taking up the pen. "Well, if you won't,
+you won't."
+
+He bent over the chest and wrote "Jim Davis" in a round, unformed,
+boyish hand, not unlike my own.
+
+"Now, boys," he said, "you have seen the signature. Witness it,
+please."
+
+The men witnessed the signature and made their clumsy crosses; none of
+them could write.
+
+"You see?" asked Marah. "We were bound to get you, Jim. You've signed
+our articles." "I've done nothing of the kind," I said. "Oh! but you
+have," he said calmly. "Here's your witnessed signature. You're one of
+us now."
+
+"It's a forgery!" I cried.
+
+"Forgery?" he said in pretended amazement. "But here are witnesses to
+swear to it. Now don't take on, son"--he saw that I was on the point
+of breaking down again at seeing myself thus trapped. "You can't get
+away. You're ours. Make the best of a bad job. We will tell your
+friends you are safe. They'll know within an hour that you will not be
+home till the end of June. After that you will be enough one of us to
+keep your tongue shut for your own sake. I'm sorry you don't like
+it. Well, 'The sooner the quicker' is a good proverb. The sooner you
+dry your tears, the quicker we can begin to work together. Here,
+Smokewell, get dinner along; it's pretty near two o'clock. Now, Jim,
+my son, I'll just send a note to your people." He sat down on a chest
+and began to write. "No," he added; "_you_ had better write. Say
+this: 'I am safe. I shall be back in three weeks' time. Say I have
+gone to stay in Somersetshire with Captain Sharp. Do not worry about
+me. Do not look for me. I am safe.' There; that's enough. Give it
+here. Hankin, deliver this letter at once to Mrs Cottier, at the
+Snail's Castle. Don't show your beautiful face to more'n you can
+help. Be off."
+
+Hankin took the letter and shambled out of the cave. Long afterwards I
+heard that he shot it through the dining-room window on a dart of
+hazelwood while my aunt and Mrs Cottier were at lunch. That was the
+last letter I wrote for many a long day. That was my farewell to
+boyhood, that letter.
+
+After a time Smokewell brought in dinner, and we all fell-to at the
+table. For my own part, I was too sick at heart to eat much, though
+the food was good enough. There was a cold fowl, a ham, and a great
+apple-pasty.
+
+After dinner, the men cut up tobacco, and played cards, and smoked,
+and threw dice; but Marah made them do this in the outer room. He was
+very kind to me in my wretchedness. He slung one of the hammocks for
+me, and made me turn in for a sleep. After a time I cried myself into
+a sort of uneasy doze. I woke up from time to time, and whenever I
+woke up I would see Marah smoking, with his face turned to the window,
+watching the sea. Then I would hear the flicker of the cards in the
+next room, and the voices of the players. "You go that? Do you? Well,
+and I'll raise you." And then I would hear the money being paid to the
+winners, and wonder where I was, and so doze off again into all manner
+of dreams.
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE BATTLE ON THE SHORE
+
+
+We had rough weather on the passage north, so that we were forced to
+go slowly creeping from port to port, from Bayonne to Fecamp, always
+in dread of boats of the English frigates, which patrolled the whole
+coast, keeping the French merchantmen shut up in harbour.
+
+As we stole slowly to the north, I thought of nothing but the new
+Spanish sailor. He would be living on crusts, so the smugglers told
+me; and always he would have an overseer to prod him with a knife if,
+in a moment of sickness or weariness, he faltered in his work, no
+matter how hard it might be. But by this time I had learned that the
+smugglers loved to frighten me. I know now that there was not a word
+of truth in any of the tales they told me.
+
+At Etaples we were delayed for nearly a fortnight, waiting, first of
+all, for cargo, and then for a fair wind. There were two other
+smugglers' luggers at Etaples with us. They were both waiting for the
+wind to draw to the south or southeast, so that they could dash across
+to Romney Sands.
+
+As they had more cargo than they could stow, they induced Marah to
+help them by carrying their surplus. They were a whole day arguing
+about it before they came to terms; but it ended, as we all knew that
+it would end, by Marah giving the other captains drink, and leading
+them thus to give him whatever terms he asked.
+
+The other smugglers in our boat were not very eager to work with
+strangers; but Marah talked them over. Only old Gateo would not listen
+to him.
+
+"Something bad will come of it," he kept saying. "You mark what I say:
+something bad will come of it."
+
+Then Marah would heave a sea-boot at him, and tell him to hold his
+jaw; and the old man would mutter over his quid and say that we should
+see.
+
+We loaded our lugger with contraband goods, mostly lace and brandy, an
+extremely valuable cargo. The work of loading kept the men from
+thinking about Gateo's warnings, though, like most sailors, they were
+all very superstitious.
+
+Then some French merchants gave us a dinner at the inn, to wish us a
+good voyage, and to put new spirit into us, by telling us what good
+fellows we were. But the dinner was never finished; for before they
+had begun their speeches a smuggler came in to say that the wind had
+shifted, and that it was now breezing up from the southeast. So we
+left our plates just as they were. The men rose up from their chairs,
+drank whatever was in their cups at the moment, and marched out of the
+inn in a body.
+
+To me it seemed bitterly cold outside the inn, I shivered till my
+teeth chattered.
+
+Marah asked me if I had a touch of fever, or if I were ill, or "what
+was it, anyway, that made me shiver so?"
+
+I said that I was cold.
+
+"Cold!" he said. "Cold? Why, it's one of the hottest nights we have
+had this summer. Here's a youngster says he's cold!"
+
+One or two of them laughed at me then; for it was, indeed, a hot
+night. They laughed and chaffed together as they cast off the mooring
+ropes.
+
+For my part, I felt that my sudden chilly fit was a warning that there
+was trouble coming. I can't say why I felt that, but I felt it; and I
+believe that Marah in some way felt it, too. Almost the last thing I
+saw that night, as I made up my bed under the half-deck among a few
+sacks and bolts of canvas, was Marah scowling and muttering, as though
+uneasy, at the foot of the foremast, from which he watched the other
+luggers as they worked out of the river ahead of us.
+
+"He, too, feels uneasy," I said to myself.
+
+Then I fell into a troubled doze, full of dreams of sea-monsters,
+which flapped and screamed at me from the foam of the breaking seas.
+
+I was not called for a watch that night. In the early morning, between
+one and two o'clock, I was awakened by a feeling that something was
+about to happen. I sat up, and then crept out on to the deck, and
+there, sure enough, something was about to happen. Our sails were
+down, we were hardly moving through the water, the water gurgled and
+plowtered under our keel, there was a light mist fast fading before
+the wind. It was not very dark, in fact it was almost twilight. One or
+two stars were shining; there were clouds slowly moving over them; but
+the sky astern of us was grey and faint yellow, and the land, the
+Kentish coast, lay clear before us, with the nose of Dungeness away on
+our port bow. It was all very still and beautiful. The seamen moved to
+and fro about the lugger. Dew dripped from our rigging; the decks were
+wet with dew, the drops pattered down whenever the lugger rolled. The
+other boats lay near us, both of them to starboard. Their sails were
+doused in masses under the mast. I could see men moving about; I could
+hear the creaking of the blocks, as the light roll drew a rope over a
+sheave.
+
+The boats were not very close to the shore; but it was so still, so
+very peaceful, that we could hear the waves breaking on the beach with
+a noise of hushing and of slipping shingle, as each wave passed with a
+hiss to slither back in a rush of foam broken by tiny stones. A man in
+the bows of the middle lugger showed a red lantern, and then doused it
+below the half-deck. He showed it three times; and at the third
+showing, we all turned to the shore, to see what signal the red light
+would bring. The shore was open before us. In the rapidly growing
+light, we could make out a good deal of the lie of the land. From the
+northern end of the beach an answering red light flashed; and then,
+nearer to us, a dark body was seen for a moment, kindling two green
+fires at a little distance from each other. Our men were not given to
+nervousness, they were rough, tough sailors; but they were all
+relieved when our signals were answered.
+
+"It's them," they said. "It's all right. Up with the foresail. We must
+get the stuff ashore. It'll be dawn in a few minutes, and then we
+shall have the country on us."
+
+"Heave ahead, boys!" cried one of the men in the next lugger as she
+drove past us to the shore.
+
+"Ay! Heave ahead," said Marah, eyeing the coast.
+
+He took the tiller as the lugger gathered way under her hoisted
+foresail. While we slipped nearer to the white line of the breakers
+along the sand, he muttered under his breath (I was standing just
+beside him) in a way which frightened me.
+
+"I dunno," he said aloud. "But I've a feeling that there's going to be
+trouble. I never liked this job. Here it is, almost daylight, and not
+an ounce of stuff ashore. I'd never have come this trip if the
+freights hadn't been so good. Here, you," he cried suddenly to one of
+the men. "Don't you pass the gaskets. You'll furl no sails till you're
+home, my son. Pass the halliards along so that you can hoist in a
+jiffy." Then he hailed the other luggers. "Ahoy there!" he
+called. "You mind your eyes for trouble."
+
+His words caused some laughter in the other boats. In our boat, they
+caused the men to look around at Marah almost anxiously. He laughed
+and told them to stand by. Then we saw that the beach was crowded with
+men and horses, as at Black Pool, a week or two before. In the shallow
+water near the beach, we dropped our killick. The men from the beach
+waded out to us, our own men slipped over the side. The tubs and bales
+began to pass along the lines of men, to the men in charge of the
+horses. Only one word was spoken; the word "Hurry." At every moment,
+as it seemed to me (full as I was of anxiety), the land showed more
+clearly, the trees stood out more sharply against the sky, the light
+in the east became more like a flame.
+
+"Hurry," said Marah. "It'll be dawn in a tick."
+
+Hurry was the watchword of the crews. The men worked with a will. Tub
+after tub was passed along. Now and then we heard a splash and an
+oath. Then a horse would whinny upon the beach, startled by a wave,
+and a man would tell him to "Stand back," or "Woa yer." I caught the
+excitement, and handed out the tubs with the best of them.
+
+I suppose that we worked in this way for half an hour or a little
+more. The men had worked well at Black Pool, where the run had been
+timed to end in darkness. Now that they had to race the daylight they
+worked like slaves under an overseer. One string of horses trotted
+off, fully loaded, within twenty minutes. A second string was led
+down; in the growing light I could see them stamping and tossing; they
+were backed right down into the sea, so that the water washed upon
+their hocks.
+
+"Here, Jim," said Marah suddenly, stopping me in my work, "come here
+to me. Look here," he said, when I stood before him. "It's getting too
+light for this game. We may have to cut and run. Take this hatchet
+here, and go forward to the bows. When I say 'cut,' you cut, without
+looking round. Cut the cable, see? Cut it in two, mucho pronto. And
+you, Hankin--you, Gateo. Stand by the halliards, stretch them along
+ready to hoist. No. Hoist them. Don't wait. Hoist them now."
+
+One or two others lent their hands at the halliards, and the sails
+were hoisted. The men in the other luggers laughed and jeered.
+
+"What are you hoisting sail for?" they cried.
+
+"Sail-drill of a forenoon," cried another, perhaps a deserter from the
+navy.
+
+"Shut up," Marah answered. "Don't mind them, boys. Heave round. Heave
+round at what you're doing. Over with them tubs, sons! My hat! Those
+fellows are mad to be playing this game in a light like this. There's
+a fort within three miles of us."
+
+He had hardly finished speaking, when one of the men at the side of
+the lugger suddenly looked towards the beach, as though he had caught
+sight of something.
+
+"Something's up," he said sharply.
+
+The beach and the shore beyond were both very flat in that part;
+nothing but marshy land, overgrown with tussock-grass, and a few
+sand-dunes, covered with bents. It was not a country which could give
+much cover to an enemy; but in that half-light one could not
+distinguish very clearly, and an enemy could therefore take risks
+impossible in full day.
+
+"A lot of cattle there," said the smuggler who had spoken. "It's odd
+there being so many."
+
+"Don't you graze many cattle here?" said Marah, looking ashore.
+
+"What! in the marsh?" said the man. "Not much."
+
+"Them's no cattle," said Marah, after a pause, "Them's not
+cows. Them's horses. Sure they're horses. Yes, and there's men
+mounting them. They have crawled up, leading their horses, and now
+we're done. Look out, boys!" he shouted. "Look out! Get on board."
+
+Even as he spoke the whole shore seemed to bristle with cavalry. Each
+slowly moving horse stopped a moment, for his rider to mount. There
+were fifty or sixty of them: they seemed to spread all along the edge
+of the bay except at the northern end, where the line was not quite
+closed.
+
+"Sentries asleep," said Mafah. "This is the way they carry on in
+Kent. Yes. There's the sentry. Asleep on the sand-dune. Oh, yes. Time
+to wake up it is. You Mahon ape. Look at him."
+
+We saw the sentry leap to his feet, almost under the nose of a
+horse. He was too much surprised even to fire his pistol. He just
+jumped up, all dazed, holding up his hands to show that he
+surrendered. We saw two men on foot secure his hands. That was our
+first loss.
+
+It all happened very, very quickly. We were taken by surprise, all
+unready, with our men ashore or mixed among the horses, or carrying
+tubs in the water. The troops and preventives were over the last dune
+and galloping down the sand to us almost before Marah had finished
+speaking; yet even then in all the confusion, as a captain shouted to
+us to "surrender in the name of the King," the smugglers were not
+without resource. A young man in a blue Scotch bonnet jumped on one of
+the horses, snatching another horse by the rein; half-a-dozen others
+did the same; the second string, half-loaded, started as they were up
+the sand and away at full gallop for the north end of the bay, where
+no soldiers showed as yet.
+
+It was done in an instant of time; drilled horsemen could not have
+done it; the little man in the blue bonnet saw the one loophole and
+dashed for it. There was no shouting. One or two men spoke, and then
+there it was--done. Practically all the horses were lashing along the
+beach, going full tilt for safety: they galloped in a body like a
+troop of cavalry. Two preventives rode at them to stop them, but they
+rode slap into the preventives, tumbled them over, horse and man and
+then galloped on, not looking back. A trooper reined in, whipped up
+his carbine and fired, and that was the beginning of the fight. Then
+there came a general volley; pistols and carbines cracked and banged;
+a lot of smoke blew about the beach and along the water; our men
+shouted to each other; the soldiers cheered.
+
+In another ten seconds a battle was going on in the water all round
+us. The horsemen urged their horses right up to the sides of the
+luggers.
+
+The men in the water hacked at the horses' legs with their hangers;
+the horses screamed and bit. I saw one wounded horse seize a smuggler
+by the arm and shake him as a dog shakes a rat; the rider of the
+horse, firing at the man, shot the horse by accident through the
+head. I suppose he was too much excited to know what he was doing--I
+fancy that men in a battle are never quite sane. The horse fell over
+in the water, knocking down another horse, and then there was a
+lashing in the sea as the horse tried to rise. The smugglers cut at
+him in the sea and all the time his rider was half under water trying
+to get up and pulling at the trigger of his useless, wetted pistol.
+
+It all happened so quickly, that was the strange thing. In one minute
+we were hard at work at the tubs, in the next we were struggling and
+splashing, hacking at each other with swords, firing in each other's
+faces. Half-a-dozen horsemen tried to drag the lugger towards the
+shore, but the men beat them back, knocked them from their saddles, or
+flogged the horses over the nose with pistol-butts.
+
+All this time the guns were banging, men were crying out, horses were
+screaming; it was the most confused thing I ever saw.
+
+Marah knocked down a trooper with a broken cleat and shouted to me to
+cut the cable--which I did at once. One or two men ran to trim sail,
+and Marah took the tiller. At that moment a trooper rode into the sea
+just astern of us--I remember to this day the brightness of the splash
+his horse made; Marah turned at the noise and shot the horse; but the
+man fired too, and Marah seemed to stagger and droop over the tiller
+as though badly hit. Seeing that, I ran aft to help him. It seemed to
+me as I ran that the side of the lugger was all red with clambering,
+shouting soldiers, all of them firing pistols at me.
+
+Marah picked himself up as I got there. "Out of the way, boy," he
+cried. Two or three smugglers rallied round him. There were more
+shots, more cries. Half-a-dozen redcoats came aft in a rush; someone
+hit me a blow on the head, and all my life seemed to pass from me in a
+stream of fire out at my eyes. The last thing which I remember of the
+tussle was the face of the man who hit me. He was a pale man with wide
+eyes, his helmet knocked off, his stock loose at his throat; I just
+saw him as I fell, and then everything passed from my sight in a sound
+of roaring, like the roaring of waters in a spate.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+DRIFTING
+
+
+When I recovered consciousness, the sun had risen; it was bright
+daylight all about us. That was really the first thing which I
+saw--the light of the sun on the deck. I struggled up to a sitting
+position, feeling great pain in my head. Marah lying over the tiller
+was the next thing which I saw; he was dead, I thought. Then I
+realised what had happened; we had had a fight. We were not under
+control; we were drifting with the tide up and down, with our sails
+backing and filling; up and down the deck there were wounded men, some
+of them preventives, some of them smugglers--poor Hankin was one of
+them. When I stood up I saw that I was the only person on his feet in
+the boat: it was not strange, perhaps.
+
+Some of our men had gone with the horses, others had been in the water
+when the horsemen first charged them; probably all of those who had
+been in the water were either killed or taken. We had had four men
+aboard during the attack: of these one was badly hurt, another (Marah)
+was unconscious, the remaining two were drinking under the half-deck,
+having opened a tub of spirits. When I had stood up I felt a little
+stronger; I heard Marah moan a little. I tottered to the scuttle-butt,
+where we kept our drinking water; I splashed the contents of a couple
+of pannikins over my head and then drank about a pint and a half; that
+made me feel a different being. I was then able to do something for
+the others.
+
+First of all I managed to help Marah down from his perch over the
+tiller: he had fallen across it with his head and hands almost
+touching the deck. I helped him, or rather, lifted him--for he could
+not help himself--to the deck; it was as much as I could do, he was so
+big and heavy. I put a tub under his head as a pillow, then I cut his
+shirt open and saw that he had been shot in the chest. I ran forward
+with a pannikin, drew some water, and gave him a drink. He drank
+greedily, biting the tin, but did not recognise me; all that he could
+say was "Rip-raps, Rip-raps," over and over again. The Rip-raps was
+the name of a race or tideway on the Campeachy coast; he had often
+told me about it, and I had remembered the name because it was such a
+queer one. I bathed his wound with the water.
+
+After I had done what I could for Marah, I did the same for the
+wounded soldier. He thanked me for my trouble in a little, low, weak
+voice, infinitely serious--he seemed to think that I didn't believe
+him. "I say, thank you; thank you," he repeated earnestly, and then he
+gave a little gasp and fainted away in the middle of his thanks.
+
+At that, I stood up and began to cry. I had had enough of misery, and
+that was more than I could bear. Between my sobs I saw--I did not
+observe, I just saw--that the lugger was drifting slowly northward,
+clear of Little Stone Point, as the smugglers had called it. I didn't
+much care where we drifted, but having seen so much, it occurred to me
+to see where the other luggers were.
+
+One of them, I saw, was on her course for France, a couple of miles
+away already; the other was going for Dungeness, no doubt to pick up
+more hands somewhere on the Dunge Marsh. It was like them, I thought,
+to go off like that, leaving us to have the worst of the fight and
+every chance of being taken; they only thought of their own
+necks. When I saw that they had deserted us without even pausing to
+put a helmsman aboard us, I knew that there was no honour among
+thieves. There is not, in spite of what the proverb says. We were left
+alone--a boy, two drunkards, and some wounded men, within half a mile
+of the shore.
+
+I looked for the preventives, but I could not see them. Most of them
+had gone after the horses across Romney Marsh. I did not know till
+long afterwards that the smugglers had beaten off the rest of the
+party, killing some and about twenty horses, and wounding nearly every
+other man engaged. It had been, in fact, a very determined battle, one
+of the worst ever fought between the smugglers and the authorities on
+that coast. As soon as the fight was over, the luggers got out from
+the shore, and the troops made off with their wounded to report at the
+fort, and to signal the Ness cutter to go in chase. At the moment when
+I looked for them they must, I think, have been rallying again. I
+could not see them, that was enough for me. Years afterwards I talked
+with one of the survivors, an old cavalryman. He told me how the fight
+had seemed to him as he rode in at us.
+
+"And d'ye know, sir," he said, "they had a boy forward ready with an
+axe to cut the cable, so I fired at him" ("Thank you," I thought);
+"and just as I pulled the trigger one of their men hit my gee a welt,
+and down he came in the water, and so, of course, I missed. But for
+that, sir, we'd have got them."
+
+I wondered which of the men had saved my life by hitting that "gee a
+welt" I wondered if he had been killed or taken, or whether he had got
+aboard us afterwards, or whether one of the other luggers had saved
+him. Well, I shall never know on this side of the grave. But it is
+odd, is it not, that one should have one's life saved and never know
+that it was in danger till twenty years afterwards, when the man who
+saved it was never likely to be found? But I am getting away from my
+story.
+
+I soon saw that the current was slowly setting us ashore. Marah, with
+his great manliness, had steered the lugger out to sea for some six
+hundred yards before he had collapsed. Then his fellows, seeing him,
+as they supposed, dead, turned to drinking. The lugger, left to
+herself, took charge, and swung round head to wind. Since then she had
+drifted, sometimes making a stern-board, sometimes going ahead a
+little, but nearly always drifting slowly shoreward, flogging her
+gear, making a great clatter of blocks. If the soldiers had been half
+smart they would have seen that she was not under command, and ridden
+to Dymchurch, taken boat, and come after us. But they had had a severe
+beating, many of them were wounded, and they had watched our start
+feeling that we had safely escaped from them. I have never had much
+opinion of soldiers. Boys generally take their opinions ready made
+from their elders. I took mine from Marah, who, being a sailor,
+thought that a soldier was something too silly for words.
+
+As we drifted I went back to Marah to bathe his head with water and to
+give him drink. He was not conscious; he had even ceased babbling; I
+was afraid that he could not live for more than a few hours at the
+most. I had never really liked the man--I had feared him too much to
+like him--but he had looked after me for so long, and had been, in his
+rough way, so kind to me, that I cried for him as though he were my
+only friend. He was the only friend within many miles of me, and now
+he lay there dying in a boat which was drifting ashore to a land full
+of enemies.
+
+It was a hateful-looking land, flat and desolate, dank and
+dirty-looking. The flat, dull, dirty marsh country seemed to be
+without life; the very grass seemed blighted. And we were drifting
+ashore to it, fast drifting ashore to the tune of the two drunkards:
+
+  "There was a ship, and a ship of fame:
+    Away, ho! Rise and shine.
+  There was a ship, and a ship of fame,
+    So rise and shine, my buck o boy."
+
+A ship manned by such a crew was hardly a ship of fame, I
+thought. Then it occurred to me that if she went ashore I might escape
+from her, might even get safely home, or at least get to London (I had
+no notion how far London might be), where I thought that the Lord
+Mayor, of whom I had often heard as a great man, would send me home.
+I had a new half-crown in my pocket; that would be enough to keep me
+in food on the road, I thought. And then, just as I thought that, a
+little coast-current spun us in very rapidly, helped by the wind, for
+about two hundred yards. This brought us very close to the shore, but
+not quite near enough for me, who had no great wish to start my
+journey wet through.
+
+I gave Marah a last sip of water, left a bucket of fresh water and a
+pannikin close to him, in case he should recover (I never thought he
+would), and then began to make up a little parcel of things to take
+with me. I was wearing the clothes of a ship's boy, canvas trousers,
+thick blucher shoes, a rough check shirt, and a straw hat. My own
+clothes--the clothes which I had worn when I scrambled down the fox's
+earth--were forward, under the half deck. I went to fetch them, and
+got them safely, though the drunkards tried to stop me, and said that
+they only wanted me to sing them a song to be as happy as
+kings. However, I got away from them, and carried my belongings aft. I
+then took the tarpaulin boat-rug, which covered our little Norwegian
+pram or skiff, on its chocks between the masts. It was rather too
+large for my purpose, so I cut it in two, using the one half as a
+bundle-cover. The other half would make a sort of cape or cloak, I
+thought, and to that end I folded it and slung it over my shoulder. I
+gave my knife a few turns upon the grindstone, pocketed some twine
+from one of the lockers, lashed my bundle in its tarpaulin as tightly
+as I could, and then went aft to the provision lockers to get some
+stores for the road. I took out a few ship's biscuits, a large hunk of
+ham, some onions, and the half of a Dutch cheese.
+
+It occurred to me that I ought to eat before
+
+I started, as I did not know what might befall upon the road. When I
+sat down upon the deck to begin my meal, I saw, to my horror, that we
+were drifting out again. While I had been packing, we had been swept
+off shore; by this time we were three hundred yards away, still
+drawing further out to sea. Looking out, I saw that we were drifting
+into a "jobble" or tide-race, which seemed to drift obliquely into the
+shore. This made me feel less frightened, so I turned to my food, ate
+heartily, and took a good swig at the scuttle-butt by way of a morning
+draught. Then I undid my parcel, packed as much food into it as I
+possibly could, and lashed it up again in its tarpaulin. I found a few
+reins and straps in one of the lockers, so I made shoulder-straps of
+them, and buckled my package to my shoulders. My last preparation was
+to fill a half-pint glass flask (every man aboard carries one or two
+of these). Just as I replaced its stopper, we swept into the jobble;
+the lugger filled on one tack, and lay over, and the spray of a wave
+came over us. Then we righted suddenly, came up into the wind with our
+sails slatting, and made a stern-board.
+
+Nearer and nearer came the land; the shore, with its bent grass,
+seemed almost within catapult shot. I heard the wash of the sea upon
+the beach, I could see the pebbles on the sands shining as the foam
+left them. And then, suddenly, the lugger drove ashore upon a bank,
+stern first. In a moment she had swung round, broadside on to the
+shoal, heaving over on her side. Every wave which struck her lifted
+her further in, tossing her over on her starboard side. I could see
+that the tide was now very nearly fully in, and I knew that the lugger
+would lie there, high and dry, as soon as it ebbed.
+
+I made Marah as comfortable as I could, and called to the drunkards to
+come with me. I told them that a revenue cutter was within six miles
+of us (there was, as it happened, but she was at anchor off
+Dymchurch), and that they had better be going out of that before they
+got themselves arrested. For answer they jeered and made catcalls,
+flinging a marline-spike at me. I tried a second time to make them
+come ashore, but one of them said, "Let's do for him," and the other
+cheered the proposal with loud yells. Then they came lurching aft at
+me, so I just slipped over the side, and waded very hurriedly
+ashore. The water was not deep (it was not up to my thighs in any
+place), so that I soon reached the sand without wetting my
+package. Then I looked back to see the two smugglers leaning over the
+side, watching my movements. One of them was singing--
+
+  "There was a ship, and a ship of fame:
+  Away, ho! Rise and shine"
+
+in a cracked falsetto. The other one was saying, "You come back, you
+young cub."
+
+But I did not do as they bid. I ran up the beach and as far across the
+wet grassland as I could without once stopping. When I thought that I
+was safe, I sat down under some bushes, took off my wet things, and
+dressed myself in my own clothes. I wrung the water from the wet
+canvas, repacked my parcel, and seeing a road close to me, turned into
+it at once, resolved to ask the way to London at the first house. I
+suppose that it was five o'clock in the morning when I began my
+journey.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE "BLUE BOAR"
+
+
+As I stepped out, the adventure, the fight, Marah's wound, all the
+tumult of the battle, seemed very far away, and as though they had
+happened to some one else who had told me of them. If my head had not
+ached so cruelly from the blow which the soldier gave me, I should not
+have believed that they had really occurred, and that I had seen them
+and taken part in them. It seemed to me that I was close to my home,
+that I should soon come to the combe country, where the Gara runs down
+the valley to the sea, passing the slate quarry, so grey against the
+copse. The road was good enough, though I was not in good trim for
+walking, after so many days cooped up in the lugger. I stepped forward
+bravely along a lonely countryside till I saw before me the houses of
+a town.
+
+I thought that I had better skirt the town, lest I should tumble on
+the coastguards and rouse their suspicions. It was too early in the
+morning for a boy to be abroad, and I had no very satisfactory account
+to give of myself in case anybody questioned me. I knew that if I said
+that I had been among the smugglers I should be sent to prison. I felt
+that the magistrate would be too angry to listen to my story, and that
+they would perhaps send to me prison at once if they ever got hold of
+me. Magistrates in those days had a great deal of power. They were
+often illiterate, and they bullied and hectored the people whom they
+tried. I had seen one or two bad magistrates at home, and I knew how
+little chance I should stand if I told my unlikely story to a bench in
+a court-house before such men as they were. So I turned up a small
+road to the right, avoiding the town, where, as I could see, a good
+deal of bustle was stirring; indeed, the streets were full of people.
+
+By-and-by, as the sun rose higher, I began to meet people. A few
+labouring men came past me, one of them carrying a pitchfork. I
+noticed that they looked at me curiously. One of them spoke, and said,
+"You have been in the wars, master!" So I said, "Yes," and passed on,
+wondering what he meant. After I had passed, the man stopped to look
+back at me. I even heard him take a few steps towards me, before he
+thought better of it, and went on upon his way. This set me wondering
+if there were anything strange about my appearance; so, when I came to
+the little brook or river, which crossed the road a little further on,
+I went down to a pool where the water was still, and looked at my
+image in the water. Sure enough, I had an odd appearance. The blow
+which the soldier gave me had broken the skin of my scalp, not badly,
+but enough to make an ugly scar. You may be sure that I lost no time
+in washing my face and head, till no stains showed. I rebuked myself
+for not having done this while aboard the lugger, when I had splashed
+my head at the scuttle-butt. I felt all the better for the wash in the
+brook; but when I took to the road again I had a great fear lest the
+labourers should hear of the battle, and give out that they had seen a
+wounded boy going along the road away from the beach.
+
+After a mile of lane, I came to a highroad, past a church and houses,
+all very peaceful and still. I passed these, and wandered on along the
+highroad, thinking that I had gone many miles from the sea, though, of
+course, I had only gone a little distance. When one walks a new road,
+one finds it much longer than it really is. I sat down by the roadside
+now and then to think of plans. I felt that my best plan would be to
+go to London, and see the Lord Mayor, who, I felt sure, would help me
+to get home. But I had not much notion of where London was, and I knew
+that if I went into a house to ask the road to London, people would
+suspect that I was running away, and so, perhaps, find out that I had
+been with the smugglers. I knew that many people there must be
+smugglers themselves; but then, suppose that I asked at a house where
+they were friends of the preventives? The smugglers had signs among
+themselves by which they recognised each other.
+
+They used to scratch the left ear with the left little finger, and
+then bite the lower lip, before shaking hands with anybody. I thought
+that I would go into an inn and try these signs on somebody (on the
+landlord if possible) and then ask his advice. An inn would be a good
+place, I thought, because the landlord would be sure to buy from the
+smugglers; besides, in inns there are generally maps of the country,
+showing the coaching houses, and the days of the fairs. A map of the
+kind would show me my road, and be a help to me in that way, even if
+the landlord did not recognise my signs. And yet I was half afraid of
+trying these signs. I did not want to get back among the smugglers.
+
+I only wanted to get to London. I had that foolish belief that the
+Lord Mayor would help me. I was too young to know better; and besides,
+I was afraid that my being with the smugglers would, perhaps, get me
+hanged, if I were caught by one of those magistrates, whom I so much
+feared.
+
+Presently I came to another little village, rather larger than the
+last. There was an inn in the main street (the "Blue Boar"), so I went
+into the inn-parlour, and looked about me. One or two men were talking
+earnestly, in low voices, to a sad-faced, weary-looking woman behind
+the bar. She looked up at me rather sharply as I entered, and the men
+turned round and stared at me, made a few more remarks to the woman,
+and went quickly out. I looked at the woman, scratched my left ear
+with my left little finger, and bit my lower lip. She caught her
+breath sharply and turned quite white; evidently she knew that sign
+extremely well.
+
+"What is it?" she said, "what's the news? There's been
+fighting. Where's Dick?"
+
+I said I didn't know where Dick was, but that there had been fighting,
+sure enough; and the preventives had been beaten off.
+
+"Ah," she said, "and the stuff? Did they get the stuff off?"
+
+I said I believed that it had got off safely.
+
+"I believe everybody's bewitched to-day," she said, bursting into
+tears. "Oh, Dick, come back to me. Come back to me. Oh, why did I ever
+marry a man like you?"
+
+She cried bitterly for a few minutes. Then she asked me a lot of
+questions about the fight. One question she repeated many times: "Was
+there a grey horse in the second string?"
+
+But this I could not answer certainly. All the time that we were
+talking, she was crying and laughing by turns. Whenever a person
+entered (even if it were only the milkman) she turned white and shook,
+as though expecting the police.
+
+"It's the palpitation," she would explain. "That and the sizzums."
+
+Then she would go on laughing and crying by turns until some one else
+came in.
+
+Presently the landlady looked at me rather hard. "Here," she said,
+"you are not one of them. You've run away from home, you have. What
+are you doing here?"
+
+I said that I was on my way to London.
+
+"To London," she said. "What's a boy like you going to London for?
+How are you going?"
+
+I said that I was going to walk there, to see the Lord Mayor.
+
+"To--see--the--Lord Mayor," she repeated. "Is the boy daft, or what?"
+
+I blushed, and hung my head, for I did not like to be laughed at.
+
+"What are you going to see the Lord Mayor for?" she asked with a
+smile.
+
+I answered that he would send me home to my friends, as he was always
+generous to people in distress. She laughed very heartily when I had
+said this: but still, not unkindly. Then she asked me a lot of
+questions about my joining the smugglers, about my friends at home
+(particularly if they were well off), and about the money I had to
+carry me to London. When I had told her everything, she said,--"Well,
+why don't you write to your friends from here? Surely that's a more
+sensible plan than going to London--why, London's seventy miles. Write
+to your friends from here. They will get the letter in three or four
+days. They will be here within a week from now. That's a wiser thing
+to do than going to London. Why, you'd die in a ditch before you got
+half-way."
+
+"I shouldn't," I answered hotly.
+
+"Well, if you didn't you'd get taken up. It's all the same," she
+answered. "You stop here and write to your friends. I will see that
+the letter goes all right. I suppose," she continued, "I suppose your
+friends wouldn't let me be a loser by you? They'd pay for what you ate
+and that?"
+
+"Yes," I said, "of course they will."
+
+"What's your name?" she said sharply.
+
+I told her.
+
+"Oh," she said. "Jim--Jim Davis. Let's see that shirt of yours, to see
+if it's got your name on. I been taken in once or twice before. One
+has to look alive, keeping an inn."
+
+Luckily my name was upon my shirt and stockings, so that she accepted
+my story without further talk, especially as the contents of my
+package showed her that I told her the truth about the lugger.
+
+"I don't know what Dick will say," she said. "But now you come up, and
+I'll dress your head. You'll have to lie low, remember. It won't do
+for a smuggler like you to be seen about here. So till your friends
+come, you'll keep pretty dark, remember."
+
+She led me upstairs to plaster my wound. Then she put me into a little
+bedroom on one of the upper floors, and told me to stay there till she
+called me. There were one or two books upon the shelf, including a
+funny one with woodcuts, a collection of tales and ballads, such as
+the pedlers used to sell in those days. With this book, and with a
+piece of paper and a pencil, I passed the morning more happily than I
+can say.
+
+My head felt quite easy after it had been dressed and bandaged. My
+troubles were nearly over, I thought. In a week my friends would be
+there to fetch me away. In three days they would get my letter and
+hear all about my adventures; so as I wrote I almost sang aloud; I was
+so happy at the thought of my sorrows being ended. Mrs Dick (I never
+learned her real name till some years afterwards) brought me some
+bread and cheese at midday. As I ate, she sealed and addressed my
+letter for me, and took it over to the post-house, so that the postman
+could carry it to meet the mail, as it drove past from Rye towards
+London.
+
+After my midday meal I felt strangely weary; perhaps all my
+excitements had been too much for me. When Mrs Dick came back to say
+that she had posted my letter I was almost asleep; but her manner was
+so strange that it roused me. She could hardly speak from anxiety and
+terror.
+
+"Oh," she cried, "they have raised the whole country. My Dick'll be
+taken. He will. He will. They're riding all through the land arresting
+everybody. And they're going to hang them all, they say, as soon as
+they can give them their trials."
+
+She cried and cried as though her heart would break. I did what I
+could to comfort her, but still she cried hysterically, and for all
+that afternoon she sobbed and laughed in the little upper bedroom,
+only going out at rare intervals, to peep into the bar, where her
+servant served the guests.
+
+Towards five o'clock, the servant came running upstairs to say that a
+lot of the smugglers had been taken. "A whole boatload," the girl
+said, so that now it would "all come out, and master would be hanged."
+Mrs Dick told her not to talk in that way of her master, but to find
+out if any of the men had peached.
+
+When the girl had gone she seemed to collect herself. She became a
+different woman in a minute.
+
+"Well, if he's taken," she said, "they'll be here. That's very
+sure. They'll search the premises. They mustn't find you here, Mr Jim.
+If they find you, they'll question you, and you know too much by a
+long way."
+
+"Shall I go?" I asked. "I'm willing to clear out, if you wish."
+
+"Go?" she said. "Go? I will turn no poor boy out into the road. I have
+a boy of my own, somewhere walking the world. No, I'll put you in the
+drawing-room. Come with me, and don't make a noise."
+
+She led me downstairs to the foot of the lowest staircase, which was
+rather broad, with high steps of stout old oak.
+
+"Look," she said, as she stepped away from me--I suppose to touch some
+secret spring--"this is the drawing-room."
+
+As she spoke, the two lowest stairs suddenly rolled back upon a sort
+of hinge, showing a little room, not much bigger than a couple of
+barrels, arranged underneath them. There were blankets and a mattress
+upon the floor of this little room, besides several packages like
+those which I had seen in the lugger.
+
+"You'll have to stay here, Jim," she said kindly. "But first of all I
+must get together Dick's papers and that. Come on and help me."
+
+Very soon she had gathered together a few papers and packets of
+tobacco and lace, which might have brought Dick into trouble. She laid
+these away in the recesses of the secret room, and told me to get
+inside, and go to sleep, and above all things to keep very still if
+people came along upon the stairs. I crept inside, rather frightened,
+and lay down among the blankets, to get some rest. Then Mrs Dick swung
+the two stairs back in to their place, a spring clicked, and I was a
+prisoner in the dark, shut up in the drawing-room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+TRACKED
+
+
+It was very dark in the drawing-room under the stairs, and rather
+stuffy, for the only light and air admitted came through a little
+narrow crack, about six inches long, and half an inch across at its
+broadest. There was a strong smell of mice, among other smells; and
+the mice came scampering all over me before I had lain there long. I
+lay as still as I could, because of what Mrs Dick had said, and
+by-and-by I fell asleep in spite of the mice, and slept until it was
+dark.
+
+I was awakened by the rolling back of the stairs. As I started up,
+thinking that I was captured, I saw Mrs Dick standing over me with a
+candle in her hand.
+
+"Hush, Jim," she said. "Get out quickly. Don't ask any questions. Get
+out at once. You can't stay here any longer."
+
+"What has happened?" I asked. "Where is your husband? Has your husband
+come home?"
+
+"Yes," she said. "And you must go. They're coming after you. You were
+seen in the lugger with an axe in your hands. A man who passed you on
+the road after, saw you in the lugger. He was with the soldiers, and
+now he's given an information. Mary, the girl, heard it down at the
+magistrate's, where the inquest is. And so you must go. Besides, I
+want the drawing-room for my Dick. He has come back, and they'll be
+after him quite likely. He was seen, they say. So he must lie low till
+we've arranged the alibi, as they call it. Everybody has to have an
+alibi. And so my Dick'll have one, just to make sure. Mind your head
+against the stair."
+
+I crawled out, rubbing my eyes.
+
+"Where shall I go to?" I asked.
+
+"Oh," she said. "Until we find out, you had better go in the stable,
+in among the feed in the box, or covered up in the hay."
+
+When she had settled her husband safely into the drawing-room, she
+bustled me out of doors into the stable, which stood in the yard at
+the back of the inn. She put me into a mass of loose hay, in one of
+the unused stalls.
+
+"There," she said. "They'll never look for you there. Don't get
+hay-fever and begin to sneeze, though. Here's your parcel for you.
+It wouldn't do to leave that about in the house, would it?"
+
+She wished me good night and bustled back to the inn, to laugh and
+jest as though nothing was happening, and as though she had no trouble
+in the world.
+
+I lay very quietly in my warm nest in the hay, feeling lonely in that
+still stable after my nights in the lugger among the men. The old
+horse stamped once or twice, and the stable cat came purring to me,
+seeking to be petted. The church clock struck nine, and rang out a
+chime. Shortly after nine I heard the clatter of many horses' hoofs
+coming along the road, and then the noise of cavalry jingling and
+clattering into the inn yard. A horse whinnied, the old horse in the
+stable whinnied in answer. A curt voice called to the men to dismount,
+and for some one to hold the horses. I strained my ears to hear any
+further words, but some one banging on a door (I guessed it to be the
+inn door) drowned the orders.
+
+Then some one cried out, "Well, break it in, then. Don't come asking
+me."
+
+After that there was more banging, an excited cry from a woman, and a
+few minutes of quiet.
+
+I crept from my hiding-place to the window, so that I might see what
+was happening. The whole yard was full of cavalry. A couple of
+troopers were holding horses quite close to the door. By listening
+carefully, I could hear what they were saying.
+
+"Yes," said one of them; "I got a proper lick myself. I shan't mind if
+they do get caught. They say there's some of them caught in a boat."
+
+"Yes," said his mate; "three. And they do say we shall find a boy here
+as well as the other fellow. There was a boy aboard all night. And
+he's been tracked here. He's as good as caught, I reckon."
+
+"I suppose they'll all be hanged?" said the first.
+
+"Yes," said the other. "Won't be no defence for them. Neck or
+nothing. Hey?"
+
+Then they passed out of earshot, leading their horses. I was so
+horribly scared that I was almost beside myself. What could I do?
+Where could I go? Where could I hide? The only door and window opened
+on to the courtyard. The loft was my only chance. I snatched up my
+parcel, and ran to the little ladder (nailed to the wall) which led to
+the loft, and climbed up as though the hounds were after me.
+
+Even in the loft I was not much better off. There was a heap of hay
+and a few bundles of straw lying at one end, and two great
+swing-doors, opening on to the courtyard, through which the hay and
+straw had been passed to shelter. It was plainly useless to lie down
+in the straw. That would be the first place searched. I should be
+caught at once if I hid among the straw. Then it occurred to me that
+the loft must lead to a pigeon-house. I had seen a pigeon-house above
+and at one end of the stable, and I judged that the loft would
+communicate with it. It was not very light, but, by groping along the
+end wall, I came to a little latched door leading to another little
+room. This was the pigeon-house, and as I burst into it, closing the
+door behind me, the many pigeons rustled and stirred upon their nests
+and perches. It was darker in the pigeon-house than in the loft, but I
+could see that the place was bigger than the loft itself, and this
+gave me hope that there would be an opening at the back of it away
+from the yard. I had not much time, I knew, because the troopers were
+already trying to open the stable-door below me. I could hear them
+pounding and grumbling. Just as I heard them say, "That's it. The bar
+lifts up. There you are"--showing that they had found how to open the
+door--I came to a little door at the back, a little rotten door,
+locked and bolted with rusty cobwebbed iron. Very cautiously I turned
+the lock and drew the bolts back. The latch creaked under my thumb for
+the first time in many years. I was outside the door on a little,
+rotten, wooden landing, from which a flight of wooden steps led
+downward. I saw beyond me a few farm-buildings, a byre, several
+pigsties, and three disused waggons. Voices sounded in the stable as I
+climbed down the steps. I heard a man say, "He might be in the
+loft. We might look there." And then I touched the ground, and
+scurried quickly past the shelters to the outer wall.
+
+Happily for me, the wall was well-grown with ivy, so that I could
+climb to the top. There was a six-foot drop on the far side into a
+lane; but it was now neck or nothing, so I let myself go. I came down
+with a crack which made my teeth rattle, my parcel spun away into a
+bed of nettles, and I got well stung in fishing it out. Then I
+strapped it on my back and turned along the lane in the direction
+which (as I judged) led me away from the sea. As I stepped out on my
+adventures, I heard the ordered trample of horses leaving the inn-yard
+together to seek elsewhere. The lane soon ended at a stile, which led
+into a field. I saw a barn or shed just beyond the stile, and in the
+shed there was a heap of hay, which smelt a little mouldy. I lay down
+upon it, determined to wake early, and creep back to the inn before
+anybody stirred in the village.
+
+"Ah, well," I said to myself before I fell asleep, "in a week's time
+they will be here to take me home. Then my troubles will be over."
+
+I remember that all my fear of the troops was gone. I felt so sure
+that all would be well in the morning. So, putting my parcel under my
+head as a pillow, I snuggled down into the hay, and very soon fell
+asleep.
+
+I was awakened in the morning by the entrance of an old cart-horse,
+who came to smell at the hay. It was light enough to see where I was
+going, so I opened my knapsack and made a rough breakfast before
+setting out. Overnight I had planned to go back to the inn. In the
+cool of the morning that plan did not seem so very wise as I had
+thought it. I was almost afraid to put it into practice. However, I
+went back along the lane. With some trouble, I got over the tall brick
+wall down which I had dropped the night before. Then I climbed up to
+the pigeon-house, down the loft-ladder, into the inn-yard, to the
+broken back door of the tavern. The door hung from one hinge, with its
+lower panels kicked in just as the soldiers had left it. The inn was
+open to anybody who cared to enter.
+
+I entered cautiously, half expecting to find a few soldiers billeted
+there. But the place was empty. I went from room to room, finding no
+one; Mrs. Dick seemed to have disappeared. One of the rooms was in
+disorder. A few broken glasses were on the floor; a chair lay on its
+side under the table. I went upstairs. I tapped at the outside of the
+drawing-room. No answer there; all was still there. I listened
+attentively for some sound of breathing; none came. No one was
+inside. I went all over the house. No one was there. I was alone in
+the "Blue Boar," the only person in the house. I could only guess that
+Mr and Mrs Dick had been arrested. To be sure, they might have run
+away together during the night. I did not quite know what to think.
+
+In my wanderings, I came to the bar, which I found in great disorder;
+the bench was upset, jugs and glasses were scattered on the floor, and
+the blinds had not been pulled up. Although I had some fear of being
+seen from outside, I pulled up the blinds to let in a little light, so
+that I might look at the coaching-map which hung at one end of the
+bar. When I passed behind the bar to trace out for myself the road to
+London, I saw an open book lying on a shelf among the bottles. It was
+a copy of Captain Johnson's _Lives of the Highwaymen and
+Pirates_, lying open at the life of Captain Roberts, the famous
+pirate Whydah. Some one must have been reading it when the soldiers
+entered.
+
+I looked at it curiously, for it was open at the portrait of
+Roberts. Underneath the portrait were a few words written in pencil in
+a clumsy scrawl. I read them over, expecting some of the ordinary
+schoolboy nonsense.
+
+"Captain Roberts was a bad one. _Jim_. Don't come back here. The
+lobsters is around." That was all the message. But I saw at once that
+it was meant for me; that Mrs Dick, knowing that I should come back,
+had done her best to leave a warning for me. "Lobsters," I knew, was
+the smugglers' slang for soldiers; and if the lobsters were dangerous
+to me it was plain that I was wanted for my innocent share in the
+fight. I looked through the book for any further message; but there
+was no other entry, except a brief pencilled memorandum of what some
+one had paid for groceries many years before, at some market town not
+named.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE ROAD TO LONDON
+
+
+You may be sure that I lost no time in leaving the inn. I merely noted
+the way to London from the coaching-map and hurried out, repeating the
+direction so that I should not forget. It was a bright, cool morning:
+and I walked very briskly for a couple of hours, when I sat down to
+rest by the roadside, under a patch of willows, which grew about a
+little bubbling brook. Presently I saw that a little way ahead of me
+were three gipsy-looking people (a boy with his father and mother),
+sitting by the road resting. They got up, after I had been there for
+twenty minutes or so, and came along the road towards me, bowed under
+their bundles. I got up, too, intending to continue my journey; but
+when I was about to pass them, the man drew up in front of me.
+
+"Beg your pardon, young master," he said; "but could you tell me the
+way to Big Ben?" "But that's in London," I said. "That's in London, at
+the House of Parliament."
+
+"What!" he cried. "You don't mean to tell me that us have come the
+wrong road?'
+
+"Yes," I said. "You're going the wrong way for London."
+
+"Then take that," cried the man, giving me a shove, just as the woman
+flung her shawl over my head. I stepped back, for the shove was no
+light one; but just behind me the boy had crouched on all fours (he
+had evidently practised the trick), so that I went headlong over him,
+and had a nasty fall into the road.
+
+"Stop his mouth, Martha," said the man: and stop it she did, with her
+ragged old shawl, in which she had evidently carried the provisions of
+the gang.
+
+"What's he got on him?" said the woman, as the man rummaged through my
+pockets.
+
+"Only a prince and a chive," said the man, disgustedly, meaning my
+half-crown and a jack-knife.
+
+"Well," said the woman, "his jacket's better than Bill's, and we'll
+have his little portmanteau, what's more."
+
+In another minute they had my suit stripped from me; and I had the
+sight of dirty little Bill, the tramper's boy, putting on my things.
+
+"Here," said the woman. "You put on Bill's things. They're good enough
+for you. And don't you dare breathe a word of what we done."
+
+"Yes," said the man, as Bill buttoned up his jacket, and took my
+little bundle in his hand. "You keep your little jaw shut or
+_I_'ll come after you."
+
+"Oh, Mother," said Bill. "Don't I look a young swell, neither?"
+
+For answer, his mother grabbed him by the arm, and the three hurried
+away from me in the direction from which I had come. The man looked
+back and made a face at me, shaking his fist. I was left penniless in
+the road. A milestone told me that I was seventy miles from London.
+
+I was now at the end of my resources; almost too miserable to cry. I
+did not know what was to become of me. I could only wander along the
+road, in a dazed sort of way, wishing for Marah. I was wretched and
+faint, and Marah was so strong and careless. Then I said to myself
+that Marah was dead, and that I should soon be dead, for I had neither
+food nor money. The smugglers had talked of shipwrecks once or
+twice. I had heard them say that a man could live for three days
+without food or drink, in fair weather; and that without food,
+drinking plenty of water, he could live for three weeks. They were
+very wild talkers, to be sure; but I remembered this now and got
+comfort from it. Surely, I thought, I shall be able to last for a
+week, and in a week I ought to be near London. Besides, I can eat
+grass; and perhaps I shall find a turnip, or a potato, or a
+partridge's nest with young ones still in it; and perhaps I shall be
+able to earn a few coppers by opening gates, or holding horses.
+
+I plucked up wonderfully when I thought of all these things; though I
+did not at all like wearing Bill's clothes. I felt that I looked like
+a dirty young tramp, and that anybody who saw me would think that I
+was one. Besides, I had always hated dirt and untidiness, and the
+feeling that I carried both about me was hateful.
+
+But Bill's clothes were to be a great help to me before noon that
+day. As I wandered along the road, wondering where I could get
+something to eat (for I was now very hungry), I came to a
+turnpike. The turnpike-keeper was cleaning his windows, outside his
+little house. When he saw me, he just popped his head inside the door,
+and said something to some people inside. His manner frightened me;
+but I was still more frightened when two Bow Street runners (as we
+called detectives then) and a yeomanry officer came out of the house,
+and laid hold of me.
+
+"That's your boy, sir," said the turnpike-keeper.
+
+"Come on in here," said the officer, "and give an account of
+yourself."
+
+They led me into the room, where they were eating some bread and
+cheese.
+
+"He doesn't answer the description," said one of the men, glancing at
+a paper.
+
+"I'm not so sure about that," said the officer. "He's the exact
+height, and that's the same coloured hair."
+
+"Now I come to think of it," said the keeper, "I believe I saw that
+boy pass along here this morning, along with two trampers. That coat
+with the pocket torn. Yes, and red lining showing. I thought I'd seen
+them."
+
+"Well, boy," said the officer, "what's your name?"
+
+"Jim Davis," I answered.
+
+"What were you doing with the two trampers, Jim?" he asked.
+
+"Please, sir," I said, "I wasn't doing anything with them."
+
+"Ah," said one of the runners. "These young rogues is that artful,
+they never do nothing anywhere."
+
+"You'll live to be hanged, I know," said the other runner.
+
+"What were you doing with the smugglers?" asked the officer suddenly,
+staring hard at my face, to watch for any change of expression.
+
+But I was ready for him. A boy is often better able to keep his
+countenance than a grown man. With masters, and aunts, and
+game-keepers all down upon him, he lives a hunted life. He gets lots
+of practice in keeping his countenance. A grown man often gets very
+little.
+
+"What smugglers, sir?" I asked as boldly as I could.
+
+"The men you sailed with from Etaples," said the officer.
+
+"Sailed with?" I asked, feeling that I was done for.
+
+"Didn't the horses splash about, when you cut the cable?" said the
+officer, with a smile.
+
+This time I thought I had better not answer. I looked as puzzled as I
+could, and looked from one face to the other, as though for
+enlightenment.
+
+"Now, Jim," said one of the runners. "It's no good. Tell us all about
+the smugglers, and we'll let you go."
+
+"We know you're the boy we want," said the captain. "Make a clean
+breast of it, and perhaps you will get off with transportation."
+
+"Now don't look so innocent," said the other runner. "Tell us what we
+want to know, or we'll make you."
+
+Now somewhere I had read that the police bullied suspected persons in
+this way. If you make a guilty person believe that you know him to be
+guilty, you can also get him to confess if you startle him
+sufficiently. It occurred to me that this was what these men were
+doing, especially as they had not been sure of me when I came into the
+room.
+
+I had some twenty or thirty seconds in which to think of an answer,
+for the three men spoke one after the other, without giving me a
+chance to speak. I shook my head, putting on a puzzled look.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," I said, speaking rather roughly, in the
+accent which Bill had used. "I think there's some mistake."
+
+"Oh, I think not," said the officer. "Suppose I tell you how many men
+were in the lugger?"
+
+But here we were stopped by the arrival of a chaise outside. A man
+entered hurriedly.
+
+"It's all right, Gray," the newcomer called to the officer. "We have
+the boy. We caught him back there, along the road, with a couple of
+gipsies. There can be no doubt about it. The clothes and bundle are
+just as they're described in the advertisement. Who have you here?"
+
+"Oh, a boy we brought in on suspicion," said the officer. "Shall we
+let him go?"
+
+"Well, who is he?" asked the new arrival. "Eh, boy? Who are you?"
+
+"A poor boy," I answered.
+
+"How do you make a living?" he asked. "Little boys, like you, oughtn't
+to be about on the roads, you know. What d'ye do for a living?"
+
+I am afraid it was rather a bold statement; but I cried out that I
+could sing ballads.
+
+"Oh, Jim. So you sing ballads, do you?" said the officer. "Get on to
+that chair and sing us a ballad."
+
+But I was cunning and wary. "Please, sir," I said, "I'm very hungry. I
+don't sing, except for my dinner and a sixpence."
+
+"So you defy the law already, do you?" said the newcomer. "Well. Eat
+some bread and cheese, and I will give you sixpence for a song."
+
+So I sat down very thankfully, and made a good dinner at the table. I
+pretended to pay no attention to the officers; but really I listened
+very eagerly to all that they said. I gathered that the newcomer was a
+coastguard naval captain, of the name of Byrne, and I felt that he
+half-suspected and half-liked me, without thinking very much about me
+one way or the other. When I had finished my dinner--and I ate enough
+to last me till the night--I got upon my chair, without being pressed,
+and sang the ballad of "The White Cockade," then very popular all over
+the West country. My voice was not bad in those days, and I was used
+to singing; indeed, people sang more then than they do now. Everybody
+sang.
+
+Captain Byrne seemed puzzled by my voice, and by my cultivated
+accent. "Who taught you to sing?" he asked.
+
+So I answered that I had been in the village choir at home; which was
+true enough.
+
+"And where was that?" he asked.
+
+For a moment I thought that I would trust him, and tell him
+everything. Then, very foolishly, I determined to say nothing, so I
+said that it was a long way away, and that I had come from thence
+after my father had died. He whispered something to Mr. Gray, the
+other officer; and they looked at me curiously. They both gave me a
+sixpenny piece for my ballad; and then they went out. Captain Byrne
+stopped at the door. "Look here," he said, "you take my advice and go
+home. You will come to no good, leading this wandering life."
+
+When they had gone, I went out also, and watched their chaise
+disappear. The last that I saw of them was the two top-hats of the
+runners, sticking up at the back of the conveyance, like little black
+chimneys.
+
+I felt very glad that Bill was taken up, evidently in mistake for
+me. It seemed a fitting reward. But at the same time I knew that the
+mistake might be found out at any moment; and that I should be
+searched for as soon as Bill had cleared himself. I walked slowly away
+from the turnpike, so that the keeper might not suspect me, and then I
+nipped over a stile, and ran away across country, going inland, away
+from the sea, as fast as I could travel. I could tell my direction by
+the sun, and I kept a westerly course, almost due west, for three or
+four hours, till I was tired out.
+
+It was a lonely walk, too; hardly anything but wild, rather marshy
+country, with few houses, few churches, and no bigger town than the
+tiniest of villages. At about six o'clock that afternoon, when I had
+gone some sixteen miles since daybreak, I felt that I could go no
+further, and began to cast about for a lodging-place.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE GIPSY CAMP
+
+
+I plodded on till I came to a sort of copse or little wood, where I
+expected to find shelter. Supper I had resolved to do without; I
+wished to keep my shilling for dinner and breakfast the next day. As I
+came up to the copse hedge I saw that some gipsies were camped
+there. They had a fine travelling waggon drawn up on some waste ground
+near at hand; they had also pitched three or four beehive huts, made
+of bent poles, covered with sacks. They were horse-dealers and
+basket-makers, as one could see from the drove of lean horses and heap
+of wicker-work near the waggon. Several children were playing about
+among the huts. Some women were at their basket-making by the
+waggon. A middle-aged man, smoking a pipe, stood by the hedge, mending
+what looked like an enormous butterfly net. In spite of my adventure
+on the road, I was not at all frightened by these gipsies, because I
+liked their looks, and I knew now that I had only my shilling to lose,
+and that I could earn a dinner at any time by singing a ballad.
+
+The middle-aged man looked rather hard at me as I came near, and
+called out in a strange language to his people in the tents. They came
+about me at the call, and stared at me very strangely, as though I was
+a queer beast escaped from a menagerie. Then, to my great surprise,
+the man pointed to my forehead, and all the gipsies stared at my
+forehead, repeating those queer words which Marah had used so long
+before in the gorse-clump--"Orel. Orel. Adartha Cay." They seemed very
+pleased and proud; they clapped their hands and danced, as though I
+was a little prince. All the time they kept singing and talking in
+their curious language. Now and then one of them would come up to me
+and push back my cap to look at my hair, which was of a dark brown
+colour, with a dash of reddy gold above my forehead.
+
+I learned afterwards that gipsies held sacred all boys with hair like
+mine. They call the ruddy tinge over the forehead "the cross upon
+crutches"; for long ago, they say, a great gipsy hero had that mark
+upon his brow in lines of fire; and to this day all people with a
+fiery lock of hair, they believe, bring luck to them.
+
+When the gipsies had danced for some twenty minutes, the elderly man
+(who seemed to be a chief among them) begged me (in English) with many
+profound bows and smiles, to enter their waggon. I had heard that the
+gipsies stole little children; but as I had never heard of them
+stealing a boy of my age I did not fear them. So I entered the waggon
+as he bade me, and very neat and trim it was. Here a man produced a
+curious red suit of clothes, rather too small for me; but still a lot
+better than Bill's rags. He begged me to put it on, which I did. I
+know now that it was the red magical suit in which the gipsies dress
+their magical puppets on St. John's Eve; but as I did not then know
+this, I put it on quite willingly, wishing that it fitted better.
+
+Then we came out again among the huts, and all the other gipsies
+crowded round me, laughing and clapping their hands; for now, they
+thought, their tribe would have wonderful luck wherever they went. The
+women put a pot upon the fire, ready for supper. Everybody treated me
+(very much to my annoyance) as though I were a fairy child. Whenever I
+spoke, they bowed and laughed and clapped their hands, crying out in
+their wild language, till I could have boxed their ears.
+
+When supper was ready, they brought me to the place of honour by the
+fire, and fed me with all the delicacies of the gipsy race. We had
+hedgehog baked in a clay cover--though I did not much like him--and
+then a stew of poultry and pheasant (both stolen, I'm afraid) with
+bread baked in the ashes; and wonderful tea, which they said cost
+eighteen shillings a pound. They annoyed me very much by the way in
+which they bowed and smirked, but they really meant to be kind, and I
+had sense enough to know that while I was with them I should be
+practically safe from the runners and yeomanry. After supper they made
+me up a bed in the waggon. The next morning before daybreak we started
+off, horses, waggon, and all, away towards the west; going to
+Portsmouth Fair, the man said, to sell their horses.
+
+I had not been very long among the gipsies when I discovered that I
+was as much a prisoner as a pet. They would never let me out of their
+sight. If I tried to get away by myself, one of the children, or a
+young woman would follow me, or rather, come in the same direction,
+and pretend not to be following me; but all the time noting where I
+went, and heading me off carefully if I went too far from the caravan.
+Before the end of the first day I was wondering how it would all
+finish, and whether they meant to make a gipsy of me. They were very
+careful not to let me be seen by other travellers. When the road was
+clear, they would let me follow the caravan on foot; but when people
+drove past us, and whenever we came to a village (they always avoided
+the big towns), they hurried me into the waggon, and kept me from
+peeping out. At night, when we pitched our camp, after a long day's
+journey of sixteen or seventeen hours, they gave me a bed inside the
+caravan; and the elderly chief laid his blankets on the waggon floor,
+between my bed and the door, so that I should not get out. I lived
+with the gipsies in this way for three whole days.
+
+I did not like it any better as time went on. I kept thinking of how I
+should escape, and worrying about the anxiety at home, now that my
+letter must have reached them. I did not think any more about the
+police. I felt that they would give me no more trouble; but my
+distress at not being able to get away from these gipsies was almost
+more than I could bear. On the afternoon of the third day I made a
+dash for freedom, but the chief soon caught me and brought me back,
+evidently very much displeased, and muttering something about stealing
+the red coat.
+
+
+About midday on the fourth day, as we were passing through a village,
+it chanced that a drove of sheep blocked up the road. The caravan
+stopped and I managed to get down from the waggon, with my gaoler, to
+see what was happening in the road. The sheep were very wild, and the
+drover was a boy who did not know how to drive them. The way was
+blocked for a good ten minutes, so that I had time to look about
+me. While we waited, a donkey-cart drove up, with two people inside
+it, dressed in the clothes of naval sailors--white trousers, blue,
+short, natty jackets (with red and green ribbons in the seams), and
+with huge clubbed pigtails under their black, glazed hats. One of them
+was evidently ill, for he lay back against the backboard and did not
+speak. I noticed also that he had not been to sea for a long time, as
+his beard was long and unkempt. The other, who drove the cart, was a
+one-legged man, very short and broad, with a thick black stubble on
+his cheeks. He was a hearty person with a voice like a lion's
+roar. They had rigged up Union Jacks on the donkey's blinkers, they
+had a pilot jack upon the shaft, and a white ensign on a flagpole tied
+to the backboard. The body of the cart was all sprigged out with
+streamers of ribbon as thick as horses' tails, and there were placards
+fixed to the sides of the donkey's collar. They were clumsily scrawled
+as follows:--
+
+  Pity the Braiv English Seamen,
+    Wonded in the Wars,
+  Help them as cannot help theirselves,
+  We have Bled for our nativland.
+    Nelson and Bronte.
+
+This wonderful conveyance pulled up among the sheep. The one-legged
+man stood upright in the cart, called for three cheers, and at once
+began to roar out the never-ending ballad of the battle of Belle
+Isle:--
+
+  At the battle of Belle Isle,
+  I was there all the while, etc., etc.
+
+Everybody clustered round to listen, and to admire the turnout.
+
+I could not get very near to the cart, because of the press; but I
+noticed quite suddenly that the sick man was staring rather hard at me
+from under the rim of his glazed hat, which was jammed down over his
+eyes. The eyes seemed familiar. There was something familiar in the
+figure, covered up, as it was, with the rough beard, and with a ship's
+boat-cloak. It reminded me of Marah, somehow, and yet it could not
+possibly be Marah; and yet the man was staring hard at me.
+
+A countryman came out of an inn with a mug of drink for the singer,
+who checked his song at about the hundred-and-fiftieth stanza, to take
+the mug with a "Thank ye, mate," and hand it to his sick friend. The
+sick man took the mug with his left hand, opening the fingers
+curiously, and still looking hard at me. My heart gave a great jump,
+for there were three blue rings tattooed on one of the fingers. The
+man waved his mug towards me. "Hoo, hoo, hoo," he cried, imitating an
+owl with his weak voice. "Hoo, hoo, hoo." Then he clapped his right
+hand across his mouth to warn me to be silent, and drank, with a bow
+to the giver.
+
+It _was_ Marah, after all. At this moment the caravan started,
+and the man urged me to enter the waggon again. I did so; but as I
+turned away, Marah smiled in an absurd manner at me, and bowed three
+times, making everybody laugh. That made me feel sure that he would
+help me to escape, and to get home again. I could not help laughing at
+his trick of dressing up as "a braiv English seaman, wonded in the
+war." Had the people known in what wars he had been wounded, they
+would not have been so free with their kindness, perhaps.
+
+It occurred to me that Marah had made the owl's cry (or night signal)
+to show me that I might expect him at night. So when the gipsies went
+to bed that night I lay awake among them, pretending to be fast
+asleep. It was very dark, shut up in the waggon. The gipsies slept
+heavily, and I could hear the horses outside, cropping on the grass
+and snorting. Once or twice I heard a clock strike very far away. Then
+I fell asleep, I think, in spite of my excitement. I woke with a
+start, because just outside the waggon came the wild crying of an owl:
+and then, at that instant, a banging of guns and pistols. A voice
+cried out: "The horses. Save the horses." Some one screamed "Help!
+help!" in a falsetto. More guns banged and cracked, and I heard a rush
+of hoofs as the drove of horses stampeded. The gipsies in the waggon
+rushed out as one man to save the precious horses. I rushed out after
+them, and there was Marah with his one-legged friend, crouched under
+the waggon, waiting for me.
+
+"Well, Jim," he said; "nip this way, quick. We have a suit of clothes
+all ready for you."
+
+So they hurried me away to their little cart, where I found a boy's
+suit, which I was glad to put on, as of course I never wore the
+precious red suit in bed.
+
+"Those were good fire-crackers," said Marah's friend. "They made the
+horses run."
+
+"Yes," said Marah. "I knew we could clear the gipsies out of the way
+and get Jim clear. Well, Jim, my son, I'm not strong enough to talk
+much. I reckon I have done with night-riding since I got this slug in
+my chest. But here we are again, bound home, my son, with not much
+shot in the locker."
+
+"You be quiet," said his friend; "you'll be getting your wound
+bad. Get up, Neddy."
+
+We trotted off to a little inn which stood at some distance from the
+gipsies' camp.
+
+The next morning, after a comfortable night in bed; I asked Marah how
+he had escaped. He told me that when the lugger drove ashore, one or
+two smugglers who had hidden in the dunes, crept down to her and
+carried him ashore. The two others, the drunkards, were too noisy to
+bring off. They were captured, and condemned to serve in the
+Navy. Marah's wound was not very severe; but he had had a great shock,
+and would not be able to exert himself for many weeks. An old smuggler
+(the one-legged man) had dressed his wound for him, and had then
+disguised him as I saw him, with a beard and naval clothes. One of the
+many Captains Sharp had advanced money for the journey home; but to
+avoid suspicion they had rigged up their donkey-cart; and worked their
+way as poor sea-ballad singers.
+
+"And now," said Marah, "I heard tell in Kent that you'd written home
+by the mail-coach, a full five days ago. Well, Jim, we're near the
+coach-road here. I reckon your friends'll be coming to see you by
+to-day's coach. If we go out into the road, to the 'Bold Sawyer'
+yonder, where they change horses and wait, I reckon you'll be able to
+save them some of their journey. Hey, Sally," he cried to the
+waitress, "what time does the Plymouth mail pass by?"
+
+"At eleven o'clock," said Sally.
+
+"At six bells, Jim," said Marah, "you'll see your folk again. On that
+I'll wager my best new silver buttons."
+
+The clock struck ten.
+
+It was a fair sunny summer's day, with a brisk wind blowing, when we
+ranged ourselves across the road outside the "Bold Sawyer." The
+coach-horn, sounding in the distance, was drawing rapidly nearer; we
+could hear the rhythm of the sixteen hoofs. Presently the horses swung
+round the corner; we saw the coachman flick his leaders so that he
+might dash up to the inn in style. Then as they galloped up I saw
+two well-known figures sitting outside, well muffled up.
+
+They were Hugh and Mrs Cottier. We had flags in our hands, so we waved
+them and shouted. The one-legged man roared out his doings at the
+battle of Belle Isle. I heard Hugh shouting at the top of his voice,
+"Look, Mother. It's Jim. It's Jim." We had a great dinner at the "Bold
+Sawyer" at one o'clock that day. We had hardly finished at half-past
+three, when the mail-coach stopped for us, to take us on our first
+stage home.
+
+I need only add a few words. Hugh became a "parson fellow," as Marah
+had put it; while I, in time, went to Jamaica as a planter. Marah and
+the one-legged man took the Gara Mill together, and did very well at
+it. Mr Cottier is now a Captain in the Portuguese Navy. Mrs Cottier
+keeps house for me here on the Gara. We are all a good deal older; but
+we keep well. Marah and I are planning a new adventure; for old Van
+Horn's treasure is still among the coral, and some day we are going to
+try for it.
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Jim Davis, by John Masefield
+
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