The Adventures of Harry Revel

S >> Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch >> The Adventures of Harry Revel

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For a while I lay and panted, flat on my back, staring up at the
stars: for the wind had chopped about and was now drawing gently off
shore, clearing the sky. But, though gentle, it had an edge of chill
which by and by brought me to my feet again. Far out on the dark
waters of the Sound glimmered the starboard light of the _Glad
Tidings_, and it seemed to me that she was heading in for shore.
Had the Pengellys too discovered that the boat was not the
water-guard's? And was O.P. working the ketch back to give me a
chance of rejoining her? Else why was she not slackening sheets and
running? Vain hope! I suppose that the new slant of wind took some
time in reaching her; for, just as I was preparing to creep back
between the furze-whins and scramble down to the foreshore again, the
green light was quenched. She had altered her helm and was clearing
the Sound.

I dared not hail her. Indeed, had I risked it, the odds were against
my voice carrying so far, to be recognised. And while I stood and
searched the darkness into which she had disappeared, my ear caught
again the muffled tramp of the soldiers, this time advancing towards
me. I waited no longer, but started running for dear life up the
shoulder of the down.

The swim and the chill breeze had numbed my legs and arms. After a
few hundred yards, however, I felt life coming back to them, and I
ran like a hare. I was stark naked, and here and there my feet
struck a heather root pushed above the turf, or wounded themselves on
low-lying sprouts of furze; but as my eyes grew used to the dark
sward I learned to avoid these. So close the night hung around me
that even on the sky-line I had no fear of being spied. I crossed
the ridge and tore down the farther slope; stumbled through a muddy
brook and mounted another hillside. My heart was drumming now, but
terror held me to it--over this second ridge and downhill again.

I supposed myself but half-way down this slope, or only a little
more, when in springing aside to avoid a low bush I missed footing
altogether; went hurling down into night, dropped plumb upon another
furze-bush--a withered one--and heard and felt it snap under me;
struck the cliff-side, bruising my hip, and slid down on loose stones
for another few yards. As I checked myself, sprawling, and came to a
standstill, some of these stones rolled on and splashed into water
far below.

For a minute or so, at full length on this treacherous bed, I could
pluck up no heart to move. Then, inch by inch at first, I drew
myself up to the broken bush and found beside it a flat ledge, smooth
and grassy, which led inland and downwards. I think it must have
been a sheep-track. I kept to it on hands and knees, and it brought
me down to the head of a small cove where a faint line of briming
showed the sea's edge rippling on a beach of flat grey stones.

My hip was hurting me, and I could run no farther. I groped along
the base of the eastern cliff and crawled into a shallow cave close
by a pile of seaweed which showed the high mark of the tide now
receding. With daylight I might discover a better hiding-place.
Meanwhile I snuggled down and drew a coverlet of seaweed over me for
warmth.

CHAPTER XII.

I FALL AMONG SMUGGLERS.

I awoke to a most curious sensation. The night was still black and
only the ridge of the cliff opposite showed, by the light of the many
stars, its dull outline above; yet I felt that the whole beach had
suddenly become crowded with people--that they were moving stealthily
about me, whispering, picking their way among the loose stones,
hunting me and yet hushing their voices as though themselves afraid.

At first, you may be sure--wakened as I was from sleep--I had no
doubt but that this unseen band of folk was after me. All that
followed my awakening passed so quickly that I cannot separate dreams
now from guesses nor apprehensions from realities. I do remember,
however, that, whereas the soldiers from whom I had run had been on
foot, my first fears were of a pursuit by cavalrymen, and therefore
it seems likely that some sound of horses' trampling must have set
them in train: but, though I strained my ears, they detected nothing
of the sort--only a subdued murmur, as of human voices, down by the
water's edge, and now and again the cautious crunch of a footstep
upon shingle. Even this I had not heard but for the extreme quiet on
the sea under the off-shore wind.

Gradually, by the light of the stars, I separated from the
surrounding shadows that of a whole mass of people inert and darkly
crowded there: and then--almost as I guessed their business--the
cliff above me shot up a flame; and their forms and their dismayed
upturned faces stood out distinct in the glare of it.

"Loose the horses and clear!" yelled someone; and another voice deep
and wrathful began to curse, but was drowned by a stampede of hoofs
upon the shingle. Straight forth from the sea--or so it looked to
me--some twenty or thirty naked horses, without rider, bit, or
bridle, broke from the crowd and came plunging up the beach at a
gallop. They were met by a roar from the cove-head, and with that a
line of glittering helmets and cuirasses sprang out of the night and
charged past me.

"Dragoons! Dragoons!"

As the yell reached me from the waterside and the men there scattered
and ran, I saw the shock of the double charge--the flame overhead
lighting up every detail of it. The riderless horses, though they
opened and swerved, neither turned tail nor checked their pace, but
heading suddenly towards the left wing of the troop went through it
as water through a gate, the dragoons either vainly hacking at them
with their sabres, or leaning from their saddles and as vainly
attempting to grip the brutes. Grip there was none to be had.
These were smugglers' horses, clipped to the skin, with houghed
manes, and tails and bodies sleek with soft soap. Nor did the
dragoons waste more trouble upon them, but charged forward and down
upon the crowd at the water's edge.

And as they charged I saw--but could not believe--that on a sudden
the crowd had vanished. A moment before they had been jostling,
shouting, cursing. They were gone now like ghosts. The light still
flared overhead. It showed no boat beyond the cove--only the
troopers reaching right across it in an irregular line, as each man
had been able to check his horse--the most of them on the verge of
the shingle, but many floundering girth-deep, and one or two even
swimming. The Riding Officer, who had followed them, was bawling and
pointing with his whip towards the cliff--at what I could not tell.

I had no time to wonder: for an unholy din broke out, on the same
instant, at the head of the beach. A couple of the smugglers' horses
had been hurled over by the dragoons' impact, and lay, hurt beyond
recovery, lashing out across the shingle with their heels. A third
had gone down under a sabre-cut, but had staggered up and was lobbing
after his comrades at a painful canter. They had traversed the heavy
shingle, reached the harder stones at the cove's head and were
sailing away at stretched gallop when a volley rang out from the
shadow of the cliff there, and the scream of more than one mingled
with fresh shouting. At that moment, and just before the flame above
me sank and died almost as swiftly as it had first shot up, a
soldier--not a dragoon, but a man in red coat and white breeches--ran
forward and sprang at the girth of the wounded horse, which had
stumbled again. He did the wise thing--for a single girth was these
horses' only harness: but whether he caught it or not I could not
tell. Ten or a dozen soldiers followed, to help him. And, the next
instant, total darkness came down on the scene like a shutter.

It did not last long. The red-coats, it turned out, had brought
lanterns, and now, at a shouted order from their commanding officer
answering the call of the dragoon officer below, began to light them.
They meant, I doubted not, to make a strict search of the cliffs;
and, if they did--my cave being but a shallow one--there was no hope
for me. But just then a dismounted trooper came running up the
beach, his scabbard scraping the shingle as he went by: and his first
words explained the mystery of the crowd's disappearance.

"Where's your officer commanding?" he panted. "The devils have got
away into the next cove through a kind of hole in the cliff--a kind
of archway so far as we make out. They've blocked it with stones and
posted three-four men there, threatening sudden death. By their own
account they're armed. Major Dilke's holding them to parley, and
wants the loan of a lantern while you, sir, march your men round and
take the gang in the rear. They reckon they've none but us to deal
with."

The infantry officer grunted that he understood, sent the trooper
back with a lantern, and quietly formed up and marched off his
company. From my hiding-place I caught scraps of the parley at the
lower end of the beach--or rather of Major Dilke's share in it; for
the smugglers answered him through a tunnel, and I could only hear
their voices mumbling in response to the threats which he flung forth
on the wide night. He was in no sweet temper, having been cheated of
a rich haul: for the flare had, of course, warned away the expected
boat, and I supposed that some of the red-coats had been dispatched
at once to search the headland for the man who lit it. Revenge was
now the Major's game, and, by his tune, he meant to have it.

But while I lay listening, a stone trickled from the cliff overhead
and plumped softly upon the seaweed at the mouth of my cave. It was
followed by a rush of small gravel (had the Major not, at the moment,
been declaiming at his loudest, his men must surely have heard it):
and this again by the plumb fall of a heavy body which still lay for
a full five seconds after alighting, and then emitted a groan so
eloquent that it raised the roots of my hair.

I held my breath. More seconds passed, and the body groaned again,
still more dolefully.

We were within three yards of one another; and, friend or foe,
if he continued to lie and groan like this for long, flesh and blood
could not stand it.

"Are you hurt?" I summoned up voice to ask.

"The devil!" I had feared that he would scream. But he sat up--
I saw his shoulders fill the mouth of the cave between me and the
starlight. By his attitude he was peering at me through the
darkness. "Who are you?"

"If you please, sir, I'm a boy."

"Glad to hear it. I took you at first for one of those cursed
soldiers. Hiding, eh?"

"Yes, sir."

"So am I: but this is a mighty poor place for it. They may be here
any moment with their lanterns: we had better cut across while
everything's dark. Gad!" he said, throwing his head back as if to
stare upwards, "I must have dropped twenty feet. Wonder if I've
broken anything?" He stood up, and appeared to be feeling his limbs
carefully. "Sound as a bell!" he announced. "Come along, youngster:
we'll get out of this first and talk afterwards."

He put out a hand, seeking for mine; but, missing it, touched my ribs
with his open palm and drew it away sharply.

"Good Lord, the boy's naked!"

"I've been swimming," said I.

"All right. Get out of this first and talk afterwards, that's the
order. There's a rug in my tilbury, if we can only reach it. Now
then, follow me close--and gently over the shingle!"

Like shadows we stole forth and across the cove. No one spied us,
and, thanks perhaps to Major Dilke's sustained oratory, no one heard.

"There's a track hereabouts," my new friend whispered as we gained
the farther cliff. "This looks like it--no--yes, here it is!
Close after me, sonny, and up we go. Surely, 'tis Robinson Crusoe
and man Friday with a touch of something else thrown in--can't think
what, for the moment, unless 'tis the scaling of Plataea. Ever read
Thucydides?"

"No, sir."

"He's a nigger. He floored me at Brasenose: but I bear the old cock
no malice. Now you wouldn't think I was a University man, eh?"

"No, sir." I had not the least notion of his meaning.

"I am, though; and, what's more, I'm a Justice of the Peace and
Deputy-Lieutenant for the county of Cornwall. Ever heard of Jack
Rogers of Brynn?"

Once more I had to answer "No, sir."

"Then, excuse me, but where in thunder do you come from?" He halted
and confronted me in the path. This was a facer, for the words
"Justice of the Peace" had already set me quaking.

"If you please, sir, I'd rather not tell."

"No, I dare say not," he replied magisterially. "It's my fate to get
into these false positions. Now there was Josh Truscott of
Blowinghouse--Justice of the Peace and owned two thousand acres--what
you might call a neat little property. _He_ never allowed it to
interfere, and yet somehow he carried it off. Do I make myself
plain?"

"Not very, sir."

"Well, for instance, one day he was expecting company. There was a
fountain in the middle of the lawn at Blowinghouse, and a statue of
Hercules that his old father had brought home from Italy and planted
in the middle of it. Josh couldn't bear that statue--said the
muscles were all wrong. So, if you please, he takes it down, dresses
himself in nothing at all--same as you might be, bare as my palm--and
a Justice of the Peace, mind you--and stands himself in the middle of
the fountain, with all the guests arriving. Not an easy thing to
pass off, and it caused a scandal: but folks didn't seem to mind.
'It was Truscott's way,' they said: 'after all, he comes of a clever
family, and we hope his son will be better.' A man wants character
to carry off a thing like that."

I agreed that character must have been Mr. Truscott's secret.

"Now _I_ couldn't do that for the life of me," Mr. Rogers sighed, and
chuckled over another reminiscence. "Josh had a shindy once with a
groom. The fellow asked for a rise in wages. 'You couldn't have
said anything more hurtful to my feelings,' Josh told him, and
knocked him down. There was a hole in one of his orchards where
they'd been rooting up an old apple-tree. He put the fellow in that,
tilled him up to his neck in earth, and kept him there till he
apologised. Not at all an easy thing for a Justice of the Peace to
pass off: but, bless you, folks said that he came of a clever county
family, and hoped his son would be better. The fellow didn't even
bring an action." Mr. Rogers broke off suddenly, and seemed to
meditate a new train of thought. "Hang it!" he exclaimed. "I
believe 'tis a hundred pounds. I must look it up when I get back."

"What is a hundred pounds, sir?" I asked.

"Penalty for showing a coast-light without authority. Lydia laid me
ten pounds I hadn't the pluck, though; and that'll bring it down to
ninety at the worst. She'd a small fortune in this trip, too, which
she stood to lose: but, as it turns out, I've saved that for her.
Oh, she's a treasure!"

"Did you light the flare?" I began to see that I had fallen in with
an original, and that he might be humoured.

"Eh?--to be sure I did! 'Slocked away the man in charge by mimicking
Pascoe's voice--he's the freighter, and talks like a man with no roof
to his mouth. I'm a pretty good mimic, though I say it. Nothing
easier, after that. You see, Lydia had laid me ten pounds that as a
Justice of the Peace I hadn't wit nor pluck to spoil her next run;
honestly, that is. She knows I wouldn't blow on her for worlds.
Oh, we understand one another! Now you and I'll go off and call on
her, and hear what she says about it. For in a way I've won, and in
a way I've not. I stopped the run, but also I've saved the cargo for
her: for the devil a notion had I that the soldiers had wind of it;
and, but for the flare, the boats would have run in and lost every
tub. Here we are, my lad!"

We had climbed the cliff and were crossing a field of stubble grass,
very painful to my feet. I saw the shadow of a low hedge in front,
but these words of Mr. Rogers conveyed nothing to me. "Soh, soh, my
girl!" he called softly, advancing towards the shadow: and at first I
supposed him to be addressing the mysterious Lydia. But following I
saw him smoothing the neck of a small mare tethered beside the hedge,
and the next moment had almost blundered against a light two-wheeled
carriage resting on its shafts a few yards away.

Mr. Rogers whispered to me to lift the shafts. "And be quiet about
it: there's a road t'other side of the hedge. Soh, my girl--sweetly,
sweetly!" He backed the mare between the shafts, harnessed her, and
led her along to a gate opening on the road.

"Jump up, my lad," he commanded, as he steered the tilbury through;
and up I jumped. "There's a rug somewhere by your feet, and
Lydia'll do the rest for you. Cl'k, my darling!"

Away we bowled.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE MAN IN THE VERANDAH.

The mare settled down to a beautiful stride and we spun along
smoothly over a road which, for a coast road, must have been well
laid, or Mr. Rogers's tilbury was hung on exceptionally good springs.
We were travelling inland, for the wind blew in our faces, and I
huddled myself up from it in the rug--on which a dew had fallen,
making it damp and sticky. For two miles or so we must have held on
at this pace without exchanging a word, meeting neither vehicle nor
pedestrian in all that distance, nor passing any; and so came to a
sign-post and swerved by it into a broader road, which ran level for
maybe half a mile and then began to climb. Here Mr. Rogers eased
down the mare and handed me the reins, bidding me hold them while he
lit a cigar.

"We're safe enough now," said he, pulling out a pocket tinder-box:
"and while I'm about it we'd better light the lamps." He slipped
them from their sockets and lit the pair cleverly from the same
brimstone match. "The _Highflier_'s due about this time," he
explained; "and Russell's Wagon 's another nasty thing to hit in the
dark. We're on the main road, you know." Before refixing the lamp
beside him, he held it up for a good stare at me, and grinned.
"Well, you're a nice guest for a spinster at this hour, I must say!
But there's no shyness about Lydia."

"Is she--is this Miss Lydia unmarried?" I made bold to ask.

"Lydia Belcher 's a woman in a thousand. There's no better fellow
living, and I've known worse ladies. Yes, she's unmarried."

He took the reins from me and the mare quickened her pace. After
sucking at his cigar for a while he chuckled aloud. "She's to be
seen to be believed: past forty and wears top-boots. But she was a
beauty in her day. Her mother's looks were famous--she was daughter
to one of the Earl's cottagers, on the edge of the moors"--here Mr.
Rogers jerked his thumb significantly, but in what direction the
night hid from me: "married old Sam Belcher, one of his lordship's
keepers, a fellow not fit to black her boots; and had this one child,
Lydia. This was just about the time of the Earl's own marriage.
Folks talked, of course: and sure enough, when the Earl came to die,
'twas found he'd left Lydia a thousand a year in the funds.
That's the story: and Lydia--well she's Lydia. Couldn't marry where
she would, I suppose, and wouldn't where she could; though they do
say Whitmore 's trimming sail for her."

"Whitmore?" I echoed.

"Ay, the curate: monstrous clever fellow, and a sportsman too:
Trinity College Dublin man. Don't happen to know him, do you?"

"Is he a thin-faced gentleman, very neatly dressed? Oh, but it can't
be the gentleman I mean, sir! The one I mean has a slow way of
speaking, and the hair seems gone on each side of his forehead--"

"That's Whitmore, to a T. So you know him? Well, you'll meet him at
Lydia's, I shouldn't wonder. He's there most nights."

"If you please, sir, will you set me down? I can shift for myself
somehow--indeed I can! I promised--that is, I mean, Mr. Whitmore
won't like it if--if--"

While I stammered on, Mr. Rogers pulled up the mare, quartering at
the same time to make room for the mail-coach as it thundered up the
road from westward and swept by at the gallop, with lamps flashing
and bits and swingles shaken in chorus.

"Look here, what's the matter?" he demanded. "Why don't you want to
meet Whitmore?" Then as I would not answer but continued to entreat
him, "There's something deuced fishy about you. Here I find you,
stark naked, hiding from the soldiers: yet you can't be one of the
'trade,' for you don't know the country or the folks living
hereabouts--only Whitmore: and Whitmore you won't meet, and your name
you won't tell, nor where you come from--only that you've been
swimming. 'Swimming,' good Lord! You didn't swim from France, I
take it." He flicked his whip and fell into a muse. "And I'm a
Justice of the Peace, and the Lord knows what I'm compounding with."
He mused again. "Tell you what I'll do," he exclaimed; "I'll take
you up to Lydia's as I promised. If Whitmore's there, you shan't
meet him if you don't want to: and if the house is full, I'll drop
you in the shrubbery with the rug, and get them to break up early.
Only I must have your solemn davey that you'll stay there and not
quit until I give you leave. Eh?"

I gave that promise.

"Very well. I'll tip the wink to Lydia, and when we've cleared the
company, we'll have you in and get the rights of this. Oh, you may
trust Lydia!"

As he said this we were passing a house the long whitewashed front of
which abutted glimmering on the road. A light shone behind the blind
of one lower window and showed through a chink under the door.
"The Major 's sitting up late," observed Mr. Rogers, and again
flicked up the mare.

Two minutes later he pulled the left rein and we swung through an
open gateway and were rolling over soft gravel. Tall bushes of
laurel on either hand glinted back the lights of the tilbury, and
presently around a sweep of the drive I saw a window shining.
Mr. Rogers pulled up once more.

"Jump out and take the path to the left. It'll bring you out almost
facing the front door. Wait among the laurels there."

I climbed down and drew my rug about me as he drove on and I heard
the tilbury's wheels come to a halt on the gravel before the house.
Then, following the path which wound about a small shrubbery, I came
to the edge of the gravel sweep before the porch just as a groom took
the mare and cart from him and led them around to the left, towards
the stables. I saw this distinctly, for on the right of the porch,
where there ran a pretty deep verandah, each window on the ground
floor was lit and flung its light across the gravel to the laurel
behind which I crouched. There were in all five windows; of which
three seemed to belong to an empty room, and two to another filled
with people. The windows of this one stood wide open, and the racket
within was prodigious. Also the company seemed to consist entirely
of men. But what surprised me most was to see that the tables at
which these guests drank and supped--as the clatter of knives and
plates told me, and the shouting of toasts--were drawn up in a
semicircle about a tall bed-canopy reaching almost to the ceiling in
the far right-hand corner. The bed itself was hidden from me by the
broad backs of two sportsmen seated in line with it and nursing a
bottle apiece under their chairs.

Now while I wondered, Mr. Jack Rogers passed briskly through the room
with the closed windows towards this chamber of revelry, preceded by
an elderly woman with a smoking dish in her hands. I could not see
the doorway between the two rooms; but the company announced his
appearance with a shout, and several guests pushing back their chairs
and rising to welcome him, in the same instant were disclosed to me,
first, the pale face of the Rev. Mr. Whitmore under a sporting print
by the wall opposite, and next, reclining in the bed, the most
extraordinary figure of a woman.

So much of her as appeared above the bedclothes was arrayed in an
orange-coloured dressing-gown and a night-cap the frills of which
towered over a face remarkable in many ways, but chiefly for its
broad masculine forehead and the firm outline of its jaw and chin.
Indeed, I could hardly believe that the face belonged to a woman.
A slight darkening of the upper lip even suggested a moustache, but
on a second look I set this down to the shadow of the bed-canopy.

A round table stood at her elbow, with a bottle and plate upon it:
and in one hand she lifted a rummer to Mr. Rogers's health, crooking
back the spoon in it with her forefinger as she drank, that it might
not incommode her aquiline nose.

"Good health, Jack, and sit you down!" she hailed him, her voice
ringing above the others like a bell. "Tripe and onions it is, and
Plymouth gin--the usual fare: and while you're helping yourself, tell
me--do I owe you ten pounds or no?"

"That depends," Mr. Rogers answered, searching about for a clean
plate and seating himself amid the hush of the company. "All the
horses back?"

"Five of 'em. They came in together, nigh on an hour ago, and not a
tub between 'em. The roan's missing."

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