The Gentleman

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There was a flash in the darkness, a smother of white in the room, and
outside a sudden sobbing cry.

A hand waved in the cloud, and out of it a still voice said,

"He wun't trouble no more."

The old man leant his reeking musket against the wall, and took up his
Book tranquilly.

CHAPTER XLV

THE PARSON AT HOME

I

A clap of thunder, followed by a monstrous hissing overhead, awoke Kit
from dreams of blackberrying with Gwen in the dew-white dawn.

He started up.

"What's that?" he cried, seeking his mind.

"The privateer barking good-bye, sir," came old Piper's voice from
across the room. "She's stood in with the tide, and had a slap with
her bow-chaser. Now she's going about."

The memories swooped back on Kit; Nelson, the despatches, the swim in
the dark.

In a moment he was at the loop-hole, peering over the old man's
shoulder.

On these in the sunshine he saw the brown-patched sails of the
privateer lifted ladder-like from behind the shingle-bank, and
strangely close. Then her bows slid into view, and he realised that
she was standing out to sea:

The boy's heart soared.

They were free!

A great hand pulled him gently back from the loop-hole.

"By your leave, sir. They've a marksman on the knoll keeps on a-peckin
at us."

The boy's heart sank.

"Then we _aren't_ free?"

"Oh, no, sir. All round us, sir--a cord on em, Muster Joy calls it,
soldier-fashion."

From above the Parson's cheery voice rang out.

"So she's left you in the lurch, my lord. That comes o trusting to a
Frenchman."

Piper chuckled.

"Muster Joy and the Gentleman! Must keep on a-chaffin. At it all day
yesterday they was, atween scrimmages."

A gay voice came sailing back from the open.

"Ah, Reverend Father, good morning! Yes, you must excuse her for the
moment. She has an engagement to keep round the corner to-morrow."

"To-morrow!" echoed Kit, aghast. "Piper! how long have I been asleep?"

"Why, sir, you've slept round the clock and a bit more. It's nigh noon
of what was to-morrow when you turned in."

No wonder he was hungry; no wonder he was fresh; no wonder that sound
of hammering, which had disturbed him as he passed from a half-swoon
into sleep, seemed so far off.

"Wednesday! Then to-morrow's Thursday!" he cried, rushing into his
clothes. "O Nelson!" and he raced up the ladder.

The loft was full of light, dazzling after the twilight of the
kitchen.

II

A mattress, stuffed clumsily in the seaward window, half blocked it.
In the dormer looking towards the Downs, two biscuit-boxes crammed
with earth sat on the sill, forming a rough head-cover.

Behind these Knapp sprawled on his stomach. Beside him was a wooden
porringer full of bullets, and a basin of black powder; in his hand a
musket.

In a cobweb corner by a barrel, Blob crouched covetously; while beside
the mattress-curtain sat the Parson in his shirt-sleeves, furbishing
Polly, and pausing every now and then to spy out through the bulges.

As Kit clambered on to the floor, the Parson turned, his blue eyes
merry, and curls a-ripple.

"Ah, Kit, my boy, how are you?"

"Alive and well, sir, thanks to you. And you, sir?"

"I!" laughed the Parson. "I'm another man." A bullet whizzed by. The
Parson listened sentimentally. "That's the music!" raising his face
with a rapt smile. "Always makes me think of angels' wings."

He seemed to have grown, body and soul. His eyes shone, his cheeks
glowed; he was crisp as a rimy apple.

Kit felt the change.

Responsibility, the searcher out of souls, had exhilarated and sobered
the man. He was graver yet gayer, inspiring and inspired.

"Duck up aloft!" came a sudden roar from beneath.

The Parson smote Kit a blow on the chest that sent him staggering back
against the wall.

A bullet whistled in at one window and out at the other.

The Parson crawled across to Knapp, lying on his face, and dealt him a
tremendous buffet.

"Dog!" he thundered. "Why don't you shout?"

The little man's body leapt to the blow, but he made no answer.

"Go below!" ordered the Parson savagely. "What's the good of you? I
set you there to warn us and all you can do is to grovel on your
stomach and snivel."

The little Cockney rose without a word and crept away, his tail
between his legs. Kit saw his face. One eye was black; and his face
was so woebegone that but for the misery in it Kit would have smiled.

"Their shooting is exquisite," said the Parson with professional
delight. "You can't show a finger.... They've nearly had Blob already
--ain't they, Blob?"

Blob, cuddling in the corner, shook his head cunningly.

"Oi've had them," he said. "Three pennorth of em," pointing to the
little pile of coppers at his side.

"I'm giving him a penny apiece for each Gang-er he gets, and twice the
money for a Frenchman," the Parson explained. "It stimulates effort,"
he added, prim as a pedagogue, but with twinkling eye. "And now, Kit,
your story."

CHAPTER XLVI

THE PARSON'S STORY

Swiftly the boy told his tale.

"But for you and the soldiers," he ended....

"There were no soldiers," answered the Parson curtly.

"What, sir!--I thought!--some men in shakos behind the bank--the men
Knapp brought."

The Parson ground his teeth.

"Knapp brought no men. He got as far as the Lamb in Eastbourne on the
hill yonder, and there he got playing the fool, and sneaked back here
about twenty minutes after you were gone with a pair of black eyes and
a pack of lies and nothing else."

All the ruddiness had left his face. It was grey as steel and dark.

"I tried him by drum-head court-martial then and there, for misconduct
in the presence of the enemy. I was the President, Piper the Court.
The Court found him guilty and sentenced him to be shot. I confirmed
the sentence, and proceeded to carry it out."

He rapped the words out clean and clear. Kit felt himself seeing this
man with new eyes, the eyes of a great respect. The fellow schoolboy
of yesterday had turned into the man of war, stern and terrible. Kit
was afraid of him.

"There was nothing to wait for," continued the Parson. "So I had him
out and made him dig his own grave against the wall.

"'It's blanky ard,' said he.

"'You're a soldier; and this is war,' I answered. 'I'm going to count
two--then fire. Make your peace with your Maker.'

"I hadn't got to two, when I heard a hubbub on the privateer, and knew
you were either caught or in difficulties.

"'This can wait,' I said. 'I'll use you first, and shoot you
afterwards!'"

The blood stole back to the Parson's face. His eyes lifted, twinkling
now.

"It's resource that makes the soldier, you know, Kit. I slipped into
my old regimentals, gave Knapp his bugle, clapped a shako on Blob's
head, and put the two of them behind the shingle-bank to act as a
skeleton-force.... And you know the rest."

Kit gazed at the square-set figure before him with respectful
admiration.

"It must have been a close thing, sir."

The Parson shrugged.

"It would have been a mere bagatelle but for the Gap Gang cutting in
on our line of retreat. That added interest, and made a bright little
affair of what would otherwise have been a dull retirement."

"And how did the Gap Gang come to cut in?"

"Oh, that's easily explained....

"At midnight I went out to beat em up--crept along under the cliff
past Holy Well. When I got to Cow Gap, there were my friends lying on
their backs in a bunch, snoring like so many sows, and the boat
beached beneath em. I believe I could have killed the lot then and
there, and nobody the wiser; but I wasn't going to soil my hands with
the cold blood of those swine. So I just jumped into the boat, and got
to work at once--put my heel through her bottom, and was just tearing
up a plank, when the noise wakes old Red Beard.

"'Who the blank's that?' he growled, sitting up in the moonlight.

"'Why,' says I, tearing away, 'the gentleman you're good enough to
call the blankety Parson.'

"'Then guess we've got you, sir,' says he, and comes down the beach at
me at the double.

"'Think so?' says I, jumping out to meet him.

"'Twenty to one, sir!' says he. 'Chuck it up.'

"'Pardon,' says I, 'nineteen to one, I think,' and downs him with my
left. O, such a beauty! flop in the mug.

"They were all awake by this of course; and there was a little bit of
trouble. I wasn't going to ask my sweet lady to soil her lips on those
mucky blackguards, so I kept dodging away before them, just doing
enough with my dukes to keep them amused. They were no more good than
a mob of cattle, you see--drunk with sleep and liquor, the lot of em.

"'Out knives, boys, and finish the blank!' says old Toadie.

"And pon my soul they came on so hot I don't know what mightn't have
happened, when all of a sudden,

"'The boat!' screams Fat George from behind. 'Some blankety blank's at
the boat.'

"And sure enough there was a long-legged chap launching the boat. In
he jumped, shoved her off, and lay on his oars, lookin at em, as they
came running along the edge of the sea."

The Parson threw back his jolly head.

"Laugh, Kit!--I never saw a fellow laugh as he did. I roared to see
him. And all the while those chaps were skipping about on the shore,
howling like lunatics. You never heard such a row. Then Fat George,
when he saw it was all up, tried the leary lay.

"'I know it's just a joke o the Genelman's,' says he in that greasy-
wheazy voice of his.

"'That's just it, George,' the other calls across the water, 'and the
best joke I've enjoyed since I saw Black Diamond brand you with the
hot iron you'd just branded the lugger's kitten with.'

"'What I mean,' whines Fat George, 'you wouldn't go for to leave a lot
o pore blokes on a dead foul lee-shore--what got there through trying
to sarve you.'

"'Sarve me!' says the Gentleman. 'Yes, Garge, my faithful friend--
sarve me in the back with two fut o carvin-knife, while I was chattin
with Garge's pals.'

"At that Fat George snatches the musket and pulls.

"I heard the click of the hammer, but there was never so much as a
flash in a pan.

"'Thank you, thank you, Fatty, my friend,' says the French feller.
'But you know you'd make better shooting, if I hadn't wetted your
priming.'

"Then he struck his oars in the water. 'And now good-night all,' says
he. 'Black Diamond was a man, if he was a devil. As to the rest of
you, the best I can wish you is a long drop, and a rope that runs
free. And as for you, Fat George, I won't forget you in this world,
and God won't forget you in the next.'

"Then he came rowing along inside the barrier of rocks to me.

"'I don't know who you are, sir,' says he, taking off his hat in his
dandified French way, 'but I'm sure I owe you my best thanks. If it
hadn't been for you, I hardly know how I should have managed.'

"Well, of course I knew very well who he was, and what he was after.
But I knew the boat was sinking, and I saw he couldn't row. So I never
thought he'd reach the ship. Still the longer I kept him talking, the
better your chance. So--

"'You're very welcome, sir,' says I. 'Won't you step ashore and thank
me in person?'

"'I'm grieved to the heart,' says he, 'but I must postpone that
pleasure till another day. Perhaps we shall meet again. I hope to
return in a few weeks--not alone next time.'

"'Quite so,' thinks I, 'at the head of the Army of England. No you
don't, my fine fellow, not if I can keep you messing about there a few
minutes longer.'

"'And perhaps we have met before,' says I, taking off my hat.

"He peered at me in the moonlight.

"'What!' he cries--'not my old friend, Black Cock, again?'

"'The same at your service,' says I, 'still waiting to have his comb
cut.'

"'This is a great happiness,' says he, very earnest, and paddles in a
bit.

"'It's mutual,' says I. 'And if you've quite done posing won't you
step ashore and let us consummate our joy? A sweet stretch of sand,
and a lovely light.'

"Pon my soul for a moment I thought he would. Then,

"'I can't to-day, bad cess to it,' says he. 'Tell you the truth I'm in
the devil's own hurry. Got an interview with his Sacred Majesty, our
noble Emperor, whom may Heaven preserve, at twelve noon to-morrow. And
if I don't keep it, I stand to lose a lot o little things--my head
among em. I'm in disgrace, you see--always have been from a child!'

"He lifts his sword to his lips, quite the play-actor.

"'But here's to our next merry meeting, sir.'

"'And may it be soon, Monsieur le Poseur,' says I, answering his
salute.

"And it's proved sooner than either of us expected. There's he: here'm
I. One side this wall the first light cavalryman in Europe, 'tother--
Harry Joy, ex-Captain of British infantry. Now we've got to see which
is the better man."

He squared his shoulders.

Whoever else might find the situation unsatisfactory it was not Parson
Joy.

CHAPTER XLVII

THE DESPATCH-BAG

I

"That is the first part of the story, and the least," said the Parson.
"And while I'm telling you the rest you'd better have some grub."

He reached up to a rafter.

"I keep the tackle up here out of Blob's way. The boy's all belly--
ain't you, you young shark?"

Blob stroked his waist feelingly.

"She kips on a-talkin," he purred. "She dawn't get much answer
though."

"Well, don't eat that candle anyway, you little glutton!"

"Oi warn't eatin it," said Blob, aggrieved. "Oi were suckin it."

The Parson arranged what food there was on the floor.

'"Honour and salt-beef--campaigners' fare!' as Nelson used to say in
Corsica....

"And while you're at that, I'll get on with my story."

II

He went to the gable-end and took down a tarpaulin bag hanging on a
staple.

"Kit, that was a great haul you made."

He took a packet from the bag.

"What d'you think this contains?" stripping the india-rubber from it.

There crept into his eyes again that steely look.

"It contains," he continued in the still voice of the man so moved
that he dare hardly trust himself, "a list of all those gentlemen of
Kent and Sussex who are _a nous_, as the paper says."

The boy dropped his knife.

"Traitors in fact!"

"That's the ugly word," said the Parson between set teeth. "And may
God have mercy on them as they deserve!... When I read that list," he
continued, breathing hard, "for the first time in my life I was sick,
_sick_ to call myself an Englishman.... There are men down there
I've dined with, gamed with, chaffed with, may heaven forgive me for
it! true men as I honestly believed, men I've seen drink the King's
health and damnation to the French with three times three, as a
Christian and a gentleman should. There are magistrates, squires, a
peer or two, one sheriff, a deputy-lieutenant, and small fry--
publicans, carriers, smugglers, and the like--by the score."

He spread squares of paper on the floor, piecing them.

"And here's a map in sections of the whole country from Pevensey to
Westminster--farms, inns, cottages, all put down, see!--where guides
can be got; the wells marked, bakers' shops, mills; roads, metalled
and unmetalled; and in the margin here and there a Church or what-not
drawn out pretty as you please for a sign-post."

The boy looked. Yes, it was the hand that had written the scent-bottle
note.

"There's enough in that bag to hang some of the best names in
England," continued the Parson with gloating delight. "And I hope to
have that bag in Pitt's hands before many hours are out."

The colour stole back to his cheeks, and he began to rub his hands
together.

"Kit, my boy, we'll have such a hanging as was never before seen in
England--God helping us.... That's what we're here for."

The boy's eyes were raised to his.

"No, sir, please. What we're here for is to save Nelson."

III

The Parson staggered.

"Nelson!" he cried, ghastly.

His mind clutched in the dark at something it had lost.

"The plot, sir.... Beachy Head."

"My _God_!" cried the Parson, and died against the wall.

The despatch-bag and its contents had so possessed him that Nelson's
need had for the moment slipped his mind.

"And I call myself a soldier!"

He leapt to life again.

"What's to-day?" savagely.

"Wednesday, sir."

"Is it to-morrow?"

"Yes, sir."

The life faded out of his blue eyes.

Till that moment he had been hugging the comfortable belief that Time,
the soldier's best ally and worst enemy, was on his side. Sooner or
later relief must come. Cosy in their tiny fortress, they could afford
to wait for it. The Gentleman could not. Now for the first time the
Parson learned that his anticipated ally was his foeman's.

"Talk of Knapp!--I'm the one ought to be shot."

"How soon shall we be relieved, sir?" asked the boy feverishly at his
side. "When may we expect the soldiers?"

The words revived the Parson like a whip-lash. Knapp, a soldier, had
betrayed his trust. He, a soldier, had let slip thirty golden hours.
He was bitterly jealous for his dear Service.

"We shan't be relieved," he snarled. "How can the soldiers relieve us
when they don't know we want relief? Knapp didn't get through--told
you so already once."

"But the country-folk, sir! Surely they'll report."

"No, they won't," stonily. "This is Sussex. We aren't alive in Sussex:
we're dead-alive.... If they did see anything was up they'd only think
it was one of the ordinary rows between the blockade-men and the
gentlemen, as they call the smugglers."

He looked out of the Downward window. There was little comfort. Tall
men in French uniforms swaggered about England's greensward as though
already it was theirs. He could catch their beastly foreign lingo. The
sight and sound made him mad. Grim old watchdog that he was, he felt
the bristles at the back of his neck rising. What right had these
strange folk in his back-yard?--O to make his teeth meet in their
gaitered legs!

Besides the Frenchmen, not a soul stirring.

English rooks cawing over English green, and an English sheepdog
answering them.

A lonely land at the best of times, it was a desert now.

Westward in a cloud of beeches, a grey house glimmered--George
Cavendish's--empty. The Seahouses over by Splash Point--empty too. So
was every house of any size for ten miles inland from Fair-light to
Selsea Bill. Everybody bolted who could afford it. The old lady of
Hailsham quite a proverb for pluck in these parts; and they said she
looked under her bed every night to see if the French had come.

And the luck! where was the luck?

Ten days since this uttermost corner of England had stirred to the
strange music of men making ready for battle: bugle-calling Cavalry in
the new barracks in Eastbourne on the hill; thundering Artillery in
the Circular Redoubt at Langney Point; Sea-Fencibles in the martello-
towers along Pevensey Levels. Now all was still and dead again. A
concentration in force had taken place at Lewes. The Cavalry had been
withdrawn to the camp there. A case of cholera had emptied Langney
Fort. The Sea-Fencibles had run away. Black Diamond had swept up the
blockademen.

Darkness, darkness, everywhere.

Kit stole to his side.

"We _must_ get a message through to Nelson," he chattered. "We
_must_."

The boy felt himself at war with destiny, and crushed by it. He
recalled the Man of Despair in the Iron Cage in Pilgrim's Progress.
The fate of the country was in his hands. He alone had the knowledge
that could save her, and he could not use it. He was a dumb thing,
possessed of a vast world-secret, which he could not impart for lack
of voice.

"If there's no other way, we must cut our way through."

The Parson met him with a rough,

"Nonsense."

"Why?" hotly.

"Impossible--that's why."

It was the first time he had thrown that dead-wall word across the
lad's path, and it maddened the boy.

After all, _he_ was responsible, not this beefy soldier.

"That's a word we don't know in _our_ Service, sir," he cried
with scornful nostrils.

The taunt touched the Parson on the raw.

He swung round savagely.

"_Your_ Service!" he stormed. "At a time such as this, there is
only one Service for loyal hearts, and that's the Service of his
country."

The lad quailed before the thunder-and-lightning of the man's wrath.

"Why can't we sally?" sullenly.

The Parson shot a hand toward the window.

The boy followed his pointing finger.

In the open, behind the wall, was a camp-fire, a group of soldiers
squatting round it, arms piled. To right and left, embracing the
cottage, a chain of sentries ran, tall men all in tall-plumed bear-
skins.

Old Piper was right. A cordon indeed!

"Grenadiers of the Guard!" rumbled the Parson in the boy's ear,
rolling his r's like a _feu de joie_. "Marksmen to a man;
veterans all; and half of them decorated."

Grenadiers of the Guard! the men of the Bridge of Lodi, of the Battle
of the Pyramids and Mount Tabor, of Hochstadt and Hohenlinden.

Kit recalled the tops of the _Cocotie_ swarming with riflemen,
and old Ding-dong's surprised disgust.

Now he understood.

On the success of this venture hung Napoleon's world-projects.
_Coute que coute_, he had told Mouche, he must bring off this
coup. So he was employing on it the pick of the first Army the world
had ever seen.

As he thought of the issues at stake, the boy's soul fainted within
him.

How could he, Kit Caryll, aged fifteen, and hovering on the brink of
tears, stand up against the Victor of Marengo?

CHAPTER XLVIII

THE DOXIE'S DAUGHTER

I

The boy's long face, anxious before, grew haggard now.

It wore the look of one with the enthusiasms of a saint across whose
path Sin, the Insurmountable, has fallen suddenly.

"We're done," he said, husky and white.

His words revived the other. True man that he was, despair in the
boy's heart quickened the courage in his own.

"Never say die till you're dead," he cried, squaring his shoulders--
"that's the Englishman's motto."

His spirit rose to meet the occasion.

"Our theatrical friend outside there's no fool. But--but--but! there's
just one element he's not reckoned with."

"What?" cried Kit, hanging on his words.

The Parson dropped head and voice.

"Who saved you from the _Tremendous_?" he whispered. "Who handed
you up a cliff a goat couldn't climb?--who brought you to this house?
--who put the flag-idea into your head, and brought it off?"

The Parson's words made sudden confusion in the lad's mind. It came to
him with a shock of surprise to find such triumphant faith in this
ruddy fighting-man.

"And why d'you think of all the houses in the world He sent you to
this one?" the other continued.

"Because of you, sir."

The Parson frowned, and approached his lips to the lad's ear.

"_Because it's got a secret passage!_"

This most matter-of-fact explanation flashed the laughter to the boy's
eyes.

"I mean it," said the other earnestly. "Ain't you noticed anything
about the floor of the kitchen?"

"It sounds hollow."

"It is hollow. It's built over an old decoy-pond."

In a few words the Parson outlined the history of the secret passage.

A water-way had led from decoy-pond to sea. The sea had gone back and
left the water-way and pond high and dry. Sixty years back a sly old
sea-dog had built this lonely cottage over the pond. He had covered
the water-way and made a drain of it. Thus he had secured a secret
passage to the sea, and the cottage had become the receiving depot of
Ruxley's crew.

"Where does it lead to?" asked the boy, all eyes.

"Out into the creek we crossed on the way to the Wish."

"And how many people know about it?"

"Three. One's you; one's me; one's the son of the man who built the
cottage--and that's old Piper down below there.... It's not been used
for forty years. The sea went back and back, and the creek's been dry
these years past."

Kit's knees invited him to prayer. This was not chance; it was not
coincidence.

"You're right, sir," said the boy chokily. "He's in it."

"And what's more He's going to get us out," replied the Parson,
cheerfully matter-of-fact.

The boy was slipping off his coat.

"I'd better start at once. There's not a second to lose. Nelson may
sail this evening."

The Parson laid a kind hand on the lad's shoulder.

"The boy's as greedy for glory as Nelson himself," he laughed. "But
the Navy can't do it _all_, you know. Give _us_ a chance....
When we've got the best pair of legs South of Thames trained to a
tick, and fighting mad for their chance, we may as well use em."

Kit gasped.

"Nipper Knapp!" and added in a flash, "May I go with him, sir?"

"To the mouth of the drain," said the Parson. "No further."

II

He turned about.

"Blob, come here. Keep a sharp look-out at this window, and give a
holloa if anything stirs. You can sing em a little song, if you know
one to keep em quiet."

He slid down into the twilight of the kitchen. There only the old
foretop-man was to be seen, patient at his post of watch.

"Where's Knapp, Piper?"

"Why, sir, in the cellar. Wanted to be alone with his trouble, I
reck'n. Tarrabul down-earted, the poor lad be."

"I'll cheer him up," cried the Parson, and disappeared through an open
trap-door into the night beneath. "Nipper Knapp! Nipper Knapp, my boy!"

In two minutes he was back.

Knapp was at his heel, sparring playfully at the back of the other's
head.

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