Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  The sight gave me pause: and for a moment I stood reconnoitring the men. To advance or not was the question, and I was still debating it, and striving to deduce something from the men’s appearance, when something, I never knew what — perhaps some noise ill-apprehended — led me to turn aside my head. Whatever the cause of the movement, it apprised me of something little suspected. Not fifty paces behind me I saw the figure of a giant horseman looming out of the mist. He was advancing along the summit of the sea-wall below which I stood; hence I saw him before he made me out: and this gave me the start and the advantage. I had time to take in the thing, and seize my horse by the head, and move eight or ten paces towards the boat before he took the cue. Then on neither side was there any concealment. With a cry, a yell rather, the mere sound of which flung me into a panic, the man urged his horse down the bank shouting fiercely to me to stand; I in utter terror spurred mine across the beach towards the men I had seen.

  I have said that I had some sixty yards of start, and two hundred or so to cross, to reach the boat; but the horses were scarcely able to trot; a yard was a furlong; and the sand swallowing up the sound of hoofs, it was a veritable race of ghosts, of phantoms, labouring through the mist across the flat, with the oily Stygian sea lapping the shore beside us. He cried out in the most violent fashion, now bidding me stay and now bidding the men stop me. And for all I know they might be in his pay, or at best be some of the reckless desperadoes who on that coast live by owling and worse practices. But they were my only hope and I too cried to them; and with joy I saw them put in again — they had before got afloat. Believing Smith to be gaining, I cried pitifully to them to save me, and then my horse stumbling, I flung myself from the saddle, and plunged through the sand towards them. At that, two sprang out to meet me and caught me under my arms; and in a moment, amid a jargon of cries in a foreign tongue whipped me over the side into the boat. Then they pushed it off and leaped in themselves, wet to the thighs; and as my pursuer came lurching down the beach, a pistol drawn in his hand, a couple of powerful strokes drove the boat through the light surf. Waving frantically he yelled to the men to wait, and rode to his boot-soles into the water; but with a jeering laugh and a volley of foreign words the sailors pulled the faster and the faster, and the mist lying thick on the water, and the boat sitting low, in half a minute we lost the last glimpse of him and his passion, and rode outward on a grey boundless sea.

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  I should have been less than a man had I not thanked God for my escape. But it is in the sap of a tree to run upward in the spring, and in the blood of a man to live in the present and future, the past going for little; and I had not crouched two minutes on the thwart before the steady lurch of the boat outwards and seawards fixed my attention. From this to asking myself by what chance I had been saved, and who were the men who sat round me — and evinced no more curiosity about me than if they had been sent to the spot purely and simply to rescue me — was but a step.

  I took it, scanned them stealthily, and was far from reassured; the sea-garb was then new to me, and these wearers of it were the wildest of their class. The fog which enfolded us magnified their clumsy shoulders and great knitted night-caps and the tarry ringlets that hung in festoons about their scarred and tanned faces. The huge gnarled hands that swung to and fro with the oars were no more like human flesh than the sea-boots which the men wore, drawn high on their thighs. They had rings in their ears, and from all came a reek of tobacco, and salt-fish, and strange oaths; nor did it need the addition of the hanger and pistol which each wore in his belt to inform me that I had fallen once again among fierce and desperate men.

  Dismayed by all I saw, it yet surprised me that no one questioned me. He who sat in the stern of the boat, and seemed to be in command, had a whistle continually at his lips, and his eyes on the curtain of haze before us; but if the tiller and navigation of the boat took up his thoughts, there were others. These, however, were content to pull on in silence, eyeing me with dull brutish stares, until the fog lifting disclosed on a sudden the hull of a tall ship looming high beside us. A shrill piping came from it — a sound I had heard before, but taken to be the scream of a sea-bird; and this, as we drew up, was followed by a hail. The man by my side let his whistle fall that he might answer — which he did, in French. A moment later our boat grated against the heaving timbers, and I, looking up through the raw morning air, saw a man in a boat-cloak spring on the bulwarks and wave his hat.

  “Welcome!” he cried, lustily. “And God save the King! A near thing they tell me, sir. But come on board, come on board, and we shall see Dunquerque the sooner. Up with you, Sir John, if you please, and let us be gone with the fog, and no heel-taps!”

  Then, without another word, I knew what had happened; I knew why the boat which had picked me up, had been waiting on the beach at that hour; and as I rose to my feet on the seat, and clutched the rope ladder which the sailors threw down to me, my knees knocked together; for I foresaw what I had to expect. But the deck was surer ground for debate or explanation than the cockle-shell wherein I sat, and which tossed and ducked under me, threatening every moment to upset my stomach; and I went up giddily, grasped the bulwark, and, aided by half-a-dozen grinning seamen, night-capped and ringletted, I sprang down on the deck.

  The man in the boat-cloak received me with a clumsy bow, and shook my hand. “Give you joy, Sir John!” he said. “Glad to see you, sir. I began to fear that you were taken! A little more, and I must have left you. But all’s well that ends well, and — your pardon one moment.”

  With that he broke off, and shouted half-a-dozen orders in French and English and French to the sailors; and in a moment the capstan, as I afterwards heard it called, was creaking round, and there was a hurry of feet, first to one side and then to the other, and a great shouting and a hauling at ropes. The ship heeled over so suddenly that if I had not caught at the rail I must have lost my footing, and for an instant the green seas seemed to swell up on a level with the slanting deck as if they would swallow us bodily. Instead, the sloop, still heeling over, began to gather way, and presently was hissing through the water, piling the white surf before it, only to pour it foaming to either side. The haze, like a moving curtain, began to glide by us; and looking straight ahead I saw a yellow glare that told of the sun rising over the French dunes.

  The man who had received me, and who seemed to be the master, returned to my side. “We are under way, sir,” he said, “and I am glad of it. But you will like to see Mr. Birkenhead? He would have met you, but the sea-colic took him as he lay on the swell outside Dunquerque whistling for a wind. He gets it badly one time, and one time he is as hearty as you are. He is better this morning, but he is ill enough.”

  I muttered that I would see him by-and-by, when he was better. That I would lie down a little, and ——

  “Oh! I have got a bunk for you in his cabin,” the master answered briskly. “I thought you would want to talk State secrets. Follow me, if you please, and look to your sea-legs, sir.”

  He led the way to a hatch or trap-door, and raising it began to descend. Not daring to refuse I followed him, down a steep ladder into the dark bowels of the ship, the reek of tar and bilge-water, cheese and old rum, growing stronger with every foot we descended. At the bottom of the ladder he pushed aside a sliding panel, and signed me to pass through the opening. I obeyed, and found myself in a sort of dog-hole — as it seemed to me who knew nothing of ships’ cabins — lighted only by a span-wide round window, so dark, therefore, that I stood a moment groping, and so close and foul-smelling that my gorge rose.

  Out of the gloom came a groan as of a sick sheep. “Here is Sir John, safe and sound!” cried the master in his sea tones. “There is good medicine for you, Mr. Birkenhead.” And he peered into the darkness.

  The only answer was a second groan. “Do you hear, sir?” the captain repeated. “Sir John is here.”

  A voice feebly yet unmistakably d —— d Sir John and the captain.
r />   The master chuckled hoarsely. “Set a frigate behind us with a noose flying at the yard-arm, and there is no man like him!” he said. “None, Sir John; and I have carried him across seventy times and over, sick and well, he should know the road from the Marsh to Southwark if any man does. But let him be for the present, and do you lie down in the bunk above him, and I will bring you some Nantz and a crust. When he is better, he will be as glad to see you as if you were his brother.”

  I obeyed, and fortified by the strong waters he brought me, was glad to lie down, and under cover of darkness consider my position and what chance I had of extricating myself from it. For the time, and probably until we reached Dunquerque, I was safe; but what would happen when Birkenhead — the man whom the Jacobites called the Royal Post, and who doubtless knew Sir John Fenwick by sight — what would happen, I say, when he roused himself, and found that he had not only taken off the wrong man but left Sir John to his fate? Would he not be certain to visit the mischance on my head? Or if I escaped his hands, what must I expect, a stranger, ashore in a foreign land with little money, and no language at my command? I shuddered at the prospect; yet shuddered more at the thought of Birkenhead’s anger; so that presently all my fore-looking resolved itself into a strenuous effort to put off the evil day, and prolong by lying still and quiet the sleep into which he appeared to have fallen.

  He lay so close to me, divided only by the one board on which I reclined, that all the noises of the ship — the creaking of the timbers, the wash of the seas as they foamed along the quarter, and the banging of blocks and ropes — noises that never ceased, failed to cover the sound of his breathing. And this nearness to me, taken with the fact that I could not see him, so tormented me with doubt whether he was awake or asleep, was recovering or growing worse, that more than once I raised my head and listened until my neck ached. In the twilight of the cabin I could see his cloak swaying lazily on a hook; on another hung a belt with pistols, that slid this way and that with the swing of the vessel. And presently watching these and listening to the regularity of his breathing, I laid my head down and did the last thing I proposed to do or should have thought possible; for I fell asleep.

  I awoke with a man’s hand on my shoulder; and sat up with a start of alarm, a man’s voice in my ear. The floor of the cabin slanted no longer, the cloak and swordbelt hang motionless on the wall; and in place of the sullen plash of the waves and the ceaseless creaking of joists and knees, that had before filled the inwards of the ship, a medley of shouts and cries, as shrill as they were unintelligible, filled the pauses of the windlass. These things were, and I took them in and drew the inference, that we were in harbour; but mechanically, for it seemed, at the moment, that such wits as terror left me were in the grasp of the man who shook me and swore at me by turns; and whose short hair — for he was wigless — fairly bristled with rage and perplexity.

  “You! Who the devil are you?” he cried, frantically. “What witchcraft is this? Here, Gill! Gill! Do you hear, you tarry pudding-head? Who is this you have put in my cabin? And where is Fenwick? Where — —”

  “Where is Sir John?” cried a voice somewhat distant, as if the speaker stooped to the hatchway. “He is there, Mr. Birkenhead. I set him there myself. And between gentlemen, such words as those, Mr. Birkenhead — —”

  “As what?” cried the man who held me.

  “As tarry. But never mind; between friends — —”

  “Friends be hanged!” cried my assailant with violence. “Who is this fool? That is what I asked. And you, have you no tongue?” he continued, glaring at me. “Who are you, and where is Sir John Fenwick?”

  Before I could answer, the master, who had descended, crowded himself into the doorway. “That is Sir John,” he said, sulkily. “I thought that you — —”

  “This, Sir John?” the other exclaimed.

  “Ay, to be sure.”

  “As much Sir John as you are the warming-pan!” Birkenhead retorted; and released me with so much violence that my head rapped against the panels. “This, Sir John Fenwick?” And then, “Oh, man, man, you have destroyed me,” he cried. “Where is my reputation now? You have left the real Simon Pure to be taken, and brought off this — this — you booby, you grinning ape, who are you?”

  Trembling, I told him my name.

  “And Sir John?” he said. “Where is he?”

  “I left him at Ashford,” I muttered.

  “It is a lie!” he cried in a voice that thrilled me to the marrow. “You did not leave him at Ashford! He was with you on the beach — he was with you and you deserted him! You left him to be taken, and saved yourself. You wretch! You Judas!”

  God knows by what intuition he spoke. For me, I swear that it was not until that moment, not until he had put the possibility into words that I knew — ay, knew, for that was the only word, so certain was I after the event — that the man who had ridden down the beach and called vainly on the sailors to wait, the man from whom we had rowed away laughing, taking with us his last hope of life, was not Matthew Smith, but Sir John Fenwick! Now, things which should have opened my eyes then, and had not, came back to me. I recalled how tall and gaunt the rider had looked through the haze, and a something novel in his voice, and plaintive in his tone. True, I had heard the click-clack of Smith’s horse’s shoes as clearly as I ever heard anything in my life; but if Sir John, alarmed by the sound of my hasty departure, and fearing treachery, had sallied out, and leaping on the first horse he found, had ridden after me, then all was clear.

  I saw that, and cowered before the men’s accusing eyes: so that they had been more than Solomons had they taken my sudden disorder for aught but guilt — guilt brought home. For Birkenhead, his rage was terrible. He seized me by the throat, and disregarding my pitiful pleas that I had not known, I had not known, he dragged me from the berth, and made as if he would choke me there and then with his naked hands. Instead, however, he suddenly loosed me. “Faugh,” he cried; “I will not dirty my hands with you! That such as you — you should be a man’s death! You! But you shall not escape. Gill, up with him! Up with him and to the yard-arm. String him up! He shall swing before he is an hour older!”

  “In Dunquerque harbour?” said the other.

  “Why not?”

  “Why not?” said the master. “Because, Mr. Birkenhead, I serve a King de jure and not de facto. That is why not. And if you want another reason — —”

  “Well?”

  “I am not aware that His Majesty has raised you to the Bench,” the master answered sturdily.

  “Oh, you have turned sea-lawyer, have you?”

  “Law is law,” said the shipmaster. “England, or France, or the high seas.”

  “And owling is owling!” the other retorted with passion. “And smuggling, smuggling! You are a fine man to talk! If you will not hang him — as they will hang Fenwick, so help me, never doubt it! — what will you do with him?”

  “Give my men a bag of sand apiece, and let him run the gauntlet,” the captain answered, with a phlegm that froze me. “Trust me, sir, they will not leave much of a balance owing.”

  It was terrible to see how Birkenhead, vain, choleric and maddened by disappointment, jumped at the cruel suggestion. For me, I shrank into the bunk into the farthest corner, and cried for mercy; I might as well have cried to the winds. I was hauled out, the word passed up, and despite my desperate struggles, prayers and threats — the latter not unmingled with the name of Shrewsbury, which did but harden them — I was dragged to the foot of the ladder. Thence I was carried on deck, where, half-dead with fear and powerless in the hands of three stout seamen, I met none but grinning faces and looks of cruel anticipation. Few need to be told with what zest the common herd flock to a scene of cruel sport, how hard are their bosoms, how fiendish the pleasure which all but the most humane and thoughtful take in helpless suffering. Small was the chance that my pleas of innocence and appeals for a hearing would gain attention. All was ready, the men bared their arms and licked
their lips, and in a moment I must have been set for the baiting.

  But in certain circumstances the extremity of fear is another name for the extremity of daring; and the master, at this last moment going to range the crew in two lines, and one of the sailors who had me in charge releasing me for an instant, that he might arm himself with a sand-bag, I saw my opportunity. With a desperate swing I wrenched myself from the grasp of the other men. That done, a single bound carried me to the plank which joined the deck to the shore. I flew across it, swift as the wind; and as the whole crew seeing what had happened broke from their stations and with yells and whoops of glee took up the chase, I sprang on shore. Bursting recklessly through the fringe of idlers whom the arrival of the ship had brought to the water’s edge, I sped across the open wharf, threaded a labyrinth of bales and casks, and darted up the first lane to which I came.

  Fear gave me wings, and I left the wharf a score of yards ahead of my pursuers. But the seamen, who had taken up the chase with the gusto of boys let loose from school, made up for the lack of speed by whooping like demons; and the English among them halloing “Stop Thief!” and the others some French words alike in import, the alarm went abreast of me. Fortunately the lane was almost deserted, and I easily evaded the halfhearted efforts to stop me, which one or two made. It seemed that I should for the present get away. But at the last moment, at the head of the lane fate waited for me: an old woman standing in a doorway — and who made, as I came up, as if she was afraid of me — flung a bucket after me. It fell in front of me, I trod on the edge and fell with a shriek of pain.

  Before I could rise or speak, the foremost of the sailors came up and struck me on the head with a sand-bag; and the others as they arrived rained blows on me without mercy. I managed to utter a cry, then instinctively covered my head with my arms. They belaboured me until they were tired and I almost senseless; when, thinking me dead, they went off whistling, and I crawled into the nearest doorway and fainted away.