Smuggler's Moon sjf-8

by Bruce Alexander

  It was a good enough plan and might have worked just as Dick Dickens and Mr. Sarton intended it to, but for one matter. There were too many of them and not enough of us. What was unknown was how many men would arrive in the boat and how well they would be armed. Mr. Perkins, newly appointed as a Deal constable, grumbled about this to me unceasingly and had cautioned me early on not to be surprised if he were to improvise a bit when the time came.

  Well, the time had come. The boat was now visible, pushing through the channel which cut through the sandbar. There were but three in the boat: two oarsmen and a passenger. Presumably, there was also cargo of some sort aboard-though I had no idea what could be so small yet of such value that it would make worthwhile the voyage of a cutter across the Channel from France. Two men of the four who had arrived with the horses waded out to the boat.

  “Jeremy!” he whispered urgently.

  “Yes, Mr. Perkins?”

  “Do you reckon you can take care of any who flee up this little hill?”

  ”You may be certain of it.”

  “Remember to shoot to wound and not to kill. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go a bit mad.”

  What did he mean by that? I’d no idea until he jumped up from our safe cover, drew the cutlass from its sheath, and let out a scream the like of which had surely not been heard in England since the days when the wild Picts came down from the north to murder and pillage the poor Anglo-Saxons. Then did he begin the run down to the beach, continuing to emit terrifying shouts as he whirled the cutlass above his head like a Musselman in the throes of some murderous dementia.

  I rose from our place upon the bluff that I might see him better-yet still better did I see those round the boat. The effect upon them of Mr. Perkins’s performance was like that of poor brutish creatures who stand in frozen awe when the lion attacks. Each of those who stood in the shallows now had in his hands a box of some dimension-the cargo. The horses, whose reins were held by one of the quartet, did not like those chilling screams of Mr. Perkins-no, not in the least; they stirred and pranced nervously and became altogether difficult to hold in check. Only the fourth of them managed to act: he drew from his belt a pistol and leveled it at Mr. Perkins; yet before he could fire, another pistol was fired at him-that of one of the constables; he staggered, wounded.

  “Drop your weapons! This be the law!”

  Then was all set in motion at once: the horses reared; he who held the reins kept tight hold, yet was thrown to the ground and dragged a bit in the sand; one of the oarsmen drew a pistol and attempted to return fire at the constables, but the powder flashed, fizzled, and failed to fire; the second oarsman and the passenger jumped into the water and began pushing their boat back out to sea in a most desperate manner; the two cargo handlers dropped the boxes they had taken from the boat and ran in opposing directions. So was it when Mr. Perkins arrived, and he was still whirling the cutlass above him as if he meant to lop off a head or two.

  So intently was I watching the scene below on the beach that I nearly failed to notice that one of the cargo men had circled round and started up the bluff. He had not yet noticed me, because I was partly hidden by the high grass of the hummock and had not moved for a minute or more. It was now time to move, however. I knew I must head him off ere he reached the top of the bluff, and I lose him completely among the houses and the winding streets at this edge of the town. I ran to intercept him.

  He was a big man, half again as large as I, but he lumbered unsteadily up the little hill in such a way that I knew I should have no difficulty in overtaking him. But then what? Short of shooting him in the leg, what could be done to stop him? He had glimpsed my approach, so there could be no question of catching him by surprise-and so I simply stopped. Yes, stopped and drew from its sheath the cutlass I had been given, and from its holster I took one of the pistols. With the sword in my right hand and the pistol in my left, I resumed my run, and in seconds I caught the big fellow up.

  “Halt,” said I.

  Yet he did not halt; he kept straining up the bluff, his feet slipping in the dry sand, so that he found it near impossible to make any upward progress.

  “Halt,” said I again.

  To no avail. He pumped his legs still more vigorously, and so I gave him a swift jab in the buttocks with the point of the sword. He let out a proper scream. I knew that I could not have hurt him quite so much as that. It must have been that he was taken by surprise.

  “Would you like another?” I shouted at him.

  His legs at last had halted. He turned round, and I saw in his wild eyes an unspoken threat. He seemed to be weighing his chances. I raised the point of the cutlass so that it was less than a foot from his sagging belly. I brought up the pistol that he might reckon it also in the odds against escape.

  “Go ahead,” said I in a suitably nasty tone, ”and if you do, I’ll skewer you on the sword and finish you off with the pistol. And do not suppose I lack the stomach for it.”

  I should like to think, reader, that it was my threatening tone persuaded him-and perhaps it was-but I believe it more likely that the poor fellow, panting with exhaustion, was simply too tired from the efforts he had made thus far, to consider any course but surrender.

  Reluctantly, he nodded, and I stepped aside and pointed the direction with the sword.

  “This way,” said I. ”Down there with the rest.”

  And down the bluff we went. There was nothing more for me to say to him, and so I said nothing. Upon our arrival, I found the rest had been disarmed and were in a similar state of sullen compliance. One of the constables had with him a considerable length of rope and was occupied in binding the prisoners each to each; the second held them where they stood with pistol and cutlass. Mr. Perkins brought the horse-handler back to his fellows, urging him on from the saddle with the flat of his sword. I noted that the wounded man had had his shoulder bound after a fashion; the bleeding had, in any case, been stanched with a tourniquet.

  With my prisoner added to their number, we had taken four. Not a bad haul except that three (the second cargo-handler and the two in the boat) had escaped our trap. Still, none of our fellows had been so much as scratched. We could count this a certain victory.

  In all, it took about ten minutes to attend to matters before marching the prisoners off to the inn where they would spend the night. We marched them up toward the bluff, with the constables at the head of the column and Mr. Perkins and I bringing up the rear, leading the two horses. Along the way, he mentioned a matter in which I had considerable interest, as did Sir John later on.

  “You know, Jeremy,” said he, ”something struck me as strange whilst I was putting on my show back there.”

  “Oh? And what was that?”

  “Well, when I got down amongst them and everything started happening at once, I could just swear that one of them who pushed the boat out and manned the oars-the passenger, I guess you’d say-”

  “Yes?”

  “Was wearing skirts. Could you tell better from where you were?”

  “Why, 1 don’t know. Let me think about that a moment.” I sought then to call to mind exactly what I had seen. Yet all that came was a picture of confusion. At last, giving it up, I shook my head. ”I really can’t say,” I declared. ”As you yourself put it, everything was happening at once. But it would indeed seem strange if it were a woman.”

  He nodded, then fell silent, though not for long. ”Another thing,” said he, ”these two horses.”

  “What about them?”

  “Well, that one you’re leading, he was meant to be led, no question of it. He’s big and strong and meant to carry cargo. In short, he’s a packhorse. That’s why we loaded him up with those boxes that came off the boat, whatever’s in them. An’t I right?”

  “Certainly you are, but what is your point?”

  “Just that this one I’m leading is a saddle horse, pure and simple, and a damn good one at that. She’s nervous and temperamental and just a bit headstro
ng, but those are all signs of a good animal. Now, she was all saddled and waiting there for the passenger that came off that cutter. But you know what I found out when I went to ride her? I found out she had on her a sidesaddle, a woman’s saddle, if you please. Now, what do you think of that, Jeremy?”

  ”I’d say it proves your point beyond argument,” said I, laughing. ”Now why didn’t you-”

  I never quite finished that sentence, for behind us a great roar sounded, then above, a moment later, came a great whirring noise.

  “Duck!” shouted Mr. Perkins, and duck we did. A good thing, too, for the great shower of sand that fell upon the four prisoners and two constables did miss us altogether.

  “Better run for it, gents,” yelled Mr. Perkins. ”That ain’t a musket they’re shooting at us!”

  “What is it, then?”

  “A cannon, and that was a cannonball landed just to the north of us.”

  Hard as it was to find proper footing on that sandy bluff, the entire party managed, nevertheless, to make their way to the top of it in impressively short time. The horses, too, alive to the sense of panic in the men, heaved their way up through the sand in great, bounding leaps, racing them to the summit.

  Once up and over the crest, prisoners and captors stood, resting as if out of range, wheezing and coughing. But Mr. Perkins would have none of that.

  “Better move it on, gents,” he urged them. ”Next time might come closer.”

  There was no next time, as it happened-not on that night, in any case. The cutter fired but once, perhaps more in pique than with a true intention to destroy: the prisoners were, after all, their own people. One of them was greatly disturbed by these events. The oarsman whose pistol had misfired seemed to be praying in the Romish style, blessing himself repeatedly. But listening carefully to him (he was quite near us), I found that it was not Latin but French he spoke, and that those were not prayers but curses he raised to heaven.

  A surgeon had to be roused to remove the bullet from the wounded prisoner’s shoulder. Mr. Perkins was sent by the senior constable to fetch him. I volunteered to accompany my friend, for there was yet much I wished to know. There had been little opportunity to talk while on our way to the Good King George. The constables had unwisely marched the procession through Alfred Square, perhaps eager to show off what they had accomplished in their night’s work. While they received all the attention they might have wished, even then it seemed to me to be attention of the wrong sort. At our first appearance in the square, the patrons had poured out of the Turk’s Head and the other inns, alehouses, and dives to jeer at the luckless captives. The prisoners were greeted with laughter, hoots, and cries of derision. The tenor of these calls seemed to be that the mighty had fallen, that they were finally to get what they deserved. Oddly, it had not occurred to me until then that there might be more than one party in the smuggling trade there in Deal; there might be two, three, or even more; and all might be in mortal competition, each with the other. And why not? The robber gangs of London were in such a state, were they not? Upon one fabled occasion, two gangs had fought a pitched battle in Bedford Street over the question of which of them ”owned” a certain territory below Holbourn and above the Strand.

  The crowd from Alfred Square had followed us down Middle Street, creating noise and confusion all the way to the house at Number 18. We-Mr. Perkins and I-were much annoyed by these who trooped after us, most of them drunk, all of them ill-behaved. Yet far more than we, the horses we led resented their presence-and the mare, led by Mr. Perkins, most of all. She pranced and danced, so that she was difficult even for him to hold. And at one point, she planted her front hooves and kicked back with her rear. Yet she made no contact with man nor woman, which was just as well, for Mr. Perkins had told me that he had known of people who were crippled for life from the kick of a horse.

  Mr. Sarton, no doubt troubled by the noise of the crowd, seemed to take a specially long time to unlock the door; he had insisted upon hearing from both his constables before showing his face. When he did, I saw Sir John to his rear, listening closely to all that was said.

  And what had been said? Mr. Trotter, the senior constable, stepped forward and gave to Mr. Sarton a full report, including the number captured and the number escaped, and the fact that one of the prisoners had suffered a gunshot wound.

  “Well then,” Mr. Sarton had said, ”you must get a surgeon to treat it.”

  “Soon as we’ve got them put away at the inn, I’ll send off for Mr. Parker.”

  “Yes, the inn,” Mr. Sarton had said in dismay. ”Ah, for a proper jail, eh, Mr. Trotter?”

  “Aye, sir. Quite right, sir.”

  So it was that Mr. Perkins, as the junior of the Deal constables, came to be chosen to search out and bring the surgeon, Mr. Parker, to the Good King George. They could have chosen better. Though Mr. Perkins was given an address and rough directions, he had not been in the town of Deal for a dozen years or more. He found the place much changed. And I, of course, could be of little assistance, for I was but a visitor.

  The address he had been given was one in St. George’s Road. Yet in giving directions, Mr. Trotter carelessly pointed us south instead of north, starting us off in the wrong direction. Thus we began wandering about the town, looking for Mr. Parker’s surgery precisely where it was not.

  Mr. Perkins was quite exasperated by the time we had searched near half an hour and found naught nor no one to

  show us the way. It was by now far too late to find anyone on the street in that part of town.

  “Now, this is damned annoying, Jeremy, old chum,” said he. ”I listened careful to him. I could practically repeat what he told us word for word.”

  “Little good it would do,” said I, ”for he clearly misinformed us. You don’t suppose he did it a-purpose, do you?”

  “No, not a bit of it. I fear it’s just that our Constable Trotter an’t too bright.”

  “We must have walked up and down every street this side of Deal.” I sighed and sought to think of something which might engage him more than my comments upon our fruitless search. Surely there was something I might ask to divert him. Then I remembered the question which had been paramount in my mind when we began this bootless enterprise.

  “Mr. Perkins, I’ve a matter at which I’ve wondered ever since you jumped up and ran down that hill of sand and began yelling and shouting at the smugglers down at the water.”

  “Well and good,” said he. ”What is it had you wondering?”

  “Why did you do it, first of all?”

  He chuckled. ”Why indeed,” said he. ”1 daresay you remember my grumbles and my protest to Sir John that the plan they had devised might work, but that we had not enough men to be sure that it would work.”

  “I remember. And you did then say you might do a bit of improvising when the time came.”

  “So I did. And what did you think of the show I put on?”

  “It was quite … quite … impressive. Not something I’ll be likely to forget. How ever did you think of doing that?”

  “Back when I was fighting in what they called Pontiac’s War-’twasn’t but an uprising, really, but it had its frights-they’d send us out on picket duty to guard the en-campment. That made for some pretty wild nights because the Chippewas had a practice of sneaking up close as they could, then jumping up and yelling the awfullest war cries, then running at our picket line and throwing one of their hatchets at the handiest target, then disappearing from sight. They didn’t do all that much damage, but they sure scared the devil out of us.”

  “So you were trying to scare them?”

  “No, more than that. I was trying to catch their attention and keep it. Y’see, those boats on the shore gave our fellows good cover to hide under, but it’s damn difficult to get out from under them. See what I mean? I gave them time to get out from under by getting the attention of the owlers, creating a diversion, y’might say.”

  “You certainly did hold them,” said
I. ”They stared at you like you were an Indian yourself, just suddenly come to life in Kent.”

  He laughed at that. ”Yeah, they did, didn’t they?”

  At least I had succeeded in raising his spirits a bit. ”Did the two constables have anything to say about that?” I asked.

  “No, but between them they gave me some mighty queer looks.” Again, he laughed, but suddenly he stopped. Clearly, something had occurred to him. ”Jeremy,” said he, ”do you remember the name of that church at the other end of High Street?”

  “Well … no, I fear I didn’t give it proper attention.”

  “Nor did I, but … could it have been St. George’s?”

  “Certainly it could, and St. George’s Road would likely be found near it,” I suggested.

  “We can only hope.”

  It took us no time to find our way to the church and thus to St. George’s Road. Waking the surgeon, however, was quite another matter. It seemed to take minutes of beating upon the door and calling out his name before his head appeared, thrust out of an upper-story window. There were then more minutes until he appeared dressed, after a fashion, with his bag of tools in hand. As we three walked along swiftly to the inn, we found little to say. The only sound was that of our footsteps upon the cobblestones and the menacing rattle and clank of saws and knives inside the surgeon’s bag.

  Upon our arrival, Mr. Perkins gave a stout single knock upon the door of the inn. He might have beat longer and louder upon it, but it was hardly necessary, for the door unexpectedly flew open. There was only silence from inside. Mr. Perkins and I exchanged looks of concern. He drew his pistol as I did mine; Mr. Parker, the surgeon, shrank back.