Pyramus came down earlier than usual that year. The tenth of December
saw his smoke-grimed wigwams erected in the little wood, the cloaks and
scarves of the Romany women making bright blots of color among the
somber trees, bronze babies rolling among bronze leaves.
Ortho was right; the gypsy chief had been hard hit and was open to any
scheme for recouping his fortunes. After considerable haggling he
consented to a fee of six shillings per horse per run—leaders thrown
in—which was a shilling more than Ortho had intended to give him and
two shillings more than he would have taken if pressed. The cavalry had
not arrived as yet, and Ortho did not think it politic to inform Pyramus
they were expected; there were the makings in him of a good business
man.
The first run was dated for the night of January the third, but the
heavy ground swell was rolling in and the lugger lay off until the
evening of the fifth. King Nick arrived on the morning of the third,
stepped quietly into the kitchen of the “Admiral Anson” as the
Baragwanath family were sitting down to breakfast, having walked by
night from Germoe. The meal finished, he gave melodious thanks to
Heaven, sent for Ortho, asked what arrangements had been made for the
landing, condemned them root and branch and substituted an entirely
fresh lot. That done, he rode off to St. Just to survey the proposed
pack route, taking Ortho with him.
He was back again by eight o’clock at night and immediately held a
prayer-meeting in the Kiddlywink, preaching on “Lo, he thirsteth even as
a hart thirsteth after the water brooks”—a vindication of the gin
traffic—and passing on to describe the pains of hell with such graphic
detail that one Cove woman fainted and another had hysterics.
The run came off without a hitch two nights later. Ortho had his horses
loaded up and away by nine o’clock. At one-thirty a crowd of
enthusiastic diggers (all armed with clubs) were stripping his load and
secreting it in an old mine working on the outskirts of St. Just. He was
home in bed before dawn. Fifty-six casks of mixed gin, claret and brandy
they carried that night, not to mention five hundredweight of tea.
On January 17th he carried forty-three casks, a bale of silk and a
hundredweight of tea to Pendeen, dumping some odds and ends outside
Gwithian as he passed by. And so it went on.
The consumption of cheap spirits among the miners was enormous. John
Wesley, to whose credit can be placed almost the whole moral
regeneration of the Cornish tinner, describes them as “those who feared
not God nor regarded man,” accuses them of wrecking ships and murdering
the survivors and of taking their pleasure in “hurling, at which limbs
are often broken, fighting, drinking, and all other manner of
wickedness.”
In winter their pastimes were restricted to fighting and
drinking—principally drinking—in furtherance of which Ortho did a
roaring trade. Between the beginning of January and the end of March he
ran an average of five landings a month without any one so much as
wagging a finger at him. The dragoons arrived at Christmas, but instead
of a regiment two troops only appeared and they speedily declared a
policy of “live and let live.” Their commanding officer, Captain Hambro,
had not returned to his native land after years of hard campaigning to
spend his nights galloping down blind byways at the behest of a civilian
riding officer.
He had some regard for his horses’ legs and more for his own comfort. He
preferred playing whist with the local gentry, who had fair daughters
and who were the soul of hospitality. He temporized good-humoredly with
the collector, danced quadrilles with the fair daughters at the “Ship
and Castle,” and toasted their bright eyes in excellent port and claret,
the knowledge that it had not paid a penny of duty in nowise detracting
from its flavor. Occasionally—when he had no other appointment and the
weather was passable—he mounted his stalwarts and made a spectacular
drive—this as a sop to the collector. But he never came westwards; the
going was too rough, and, besides, St. Just was but small potatoes
compared with big mining districts to the east.
For every cask landed at Monks Cove, King Nick and his merry men landed
twenty either at Prussia Cove, Porthleven, Hayle or Portreath—sometimes
at all four places simultaneously. Whenever Capt. Hambro’s troopers
climbed into their saddles and took the road to Long Rock, a simple but
effective system of signals flashed ahead of them so that they found
very little.
There was one nasty affair on Marazion Beach. Owing to a
misunderstanding the cavalry came upon a swarm of tinners in process of
making a landing. The tinners (who had broached a cask and were full of
spirit in more senses than one) foolishly opened hostilities. The result
was two troopers wounded, six miners killed—bearing out King Nick’s
warning that the soldiers might easily be fooled, but they were by no
means so easily frightened. The trade absorbed this lesson and there
were no more regrettable incidents that season.
Ortho was satisfied with his winter’s work beyond all expectations. It
was a common tenet among Free Traders of those days that one cargo saved
would pay for two lost, and Ortho, so far from losing a single cargo,
had only lost five tubs in all—three stove in transshipping and two
when the mule carrying them fell into a pit. Everybody was satisfied.
The district was flooded with cheap liquor. All the Covers in turn
assisted in the boat-work and so picked up money in the off-season, when
they needed it most. Pyramus, with his animals in constant employment,
did so well that he delayed his northern trip for a month.
The only person (with the exception of His Majesty’s Collector of
Customs) who was not entirely pleased was Eli. In defrauding the Revenue
he had no scruples whatever, but it interfered with his farming. This
smuggling was all very fine and remunerative, but it was a mere side
line. Bosula was his lifework, his being. If he and Bohenna had to be up
all night horse leading they could not be awake all day. The bracken was
creeping in again. However, they were making money, heaps of it; there
was no denying that.
With the instinctive dislike of a seaman for a landsman, and vice versa,
neither Jacky’s George nor Pyramus would trust each other. The
amphibious Ortho was the necessary link between them and, as such, paid
out more or less what he thought fit—as has been the way with middlemen
since the birthday of the world. He paid Jacky’s George one and six per
cask for landing and Pyramus three shillings for packing (they went two
to a horse), making a profit of ten shillings clear himself. Eli, the
only person in the valley who could read, write or handle figures, kept
the accounts and knew that at the end of March they were three hundred
and forty pounds to the good. He asked Ortho where the money was.
“Hid up the valley,” said his brother. “Put away where the devil himself
wouldn’t find it.”
“What are you hiding it like that for?” Eli asked.
“Mother,” said Ortho. “That last rip-roar she had must have nigh baled
her bank dry and now she’s looking for more. I think she’ve got a notion
who bubbled her last year and she’s aiming to get a bit of her own back.
She knows I’ve got money and she’s spying on me all the time. I’d tell
you where it is only I’m afeard you’d let it out without meaning to. I’m
too sly for her—but you, you’re like a pane of glass.”
Wholesale smuggling finished with the advent of spring. The shortening
nights did not provide sufficient cover for big enterprises; dragoons
and preventive men had not the same objections to being out of their
beds in summer as in winter, and, moreover, the demand for liquor had
fallen to a minimum.
This was an immense relief to Eli, who now gave himself heart and soul
to the farm, haling Bohenna with him; but two disastrous seasons had
impaired Ortho’s vaunted enthusiasm for “the good old soil,” and he was
absent most of the week, working up connections for next winter’s
cargo-running—so he told Eli—but it was noticeable that his business
appointments usually coincided with any sporting events held in the
Hundred, and at hurling matches, bull-baitings, cock-fights and
pony-races he became almost as familiar a figure as his mother had been,
backing his fancy freely and with not infallible judgment. However, he
paid his debts scrupulously and with good grace, and, though he drank
but little himself, was most generous in providing, gratis, refreshment
for others. He achieved strong local popularity, a priceless asset to a
man who lives by flouting the law.
The money was not all misspent.
He developed in other ways, began to be particular about his person in
imitation of the better-class squires, visited a Penzance tailor of
fashion and was henceforth to be seen on public occasions in a
wide-skirted suit of black broadcloth frogged with silver lace, high
stockings to match and silver-buckled shoes, very handsome altogether.
He had his mother’s blue-black hair, curling, bull-like, all over his
head, sparkling eyes and strong white teeth. When he was fifteen she had
put small gold rings in his ears—to improve his sight, so she said. At
twenty he was six feet tall, slim and springy, moving among the boorish
crowds like a rapier among bludgeons. His laugh was ready and he had a
princely way with his money. Women turned their eyes his way,
sighing—and he was not insensible.
Rumors of his brother’s amorous affairs drifted home to Eli from time to
time. He had cast off the parish clerk’s daughter, Tamsin Eva, and was
after a farmer’s young widow in St. Levan. Now he had quarreled with the
widow and was to be seen in Trewellard courting a mine captain’s
daughter. Again he had put the miner’s daughter by, and St. Ives gossips
were coupling his name with that of the wife of a local preacher and
making a great hoity-toity about it—and so on. It was impossible to
keep track of Ortho’s activities in the game of hearts.
He came home one morning limping from a slight gunshot wound in the
thigh, and on another occasion brought his horse in nearly galloped to
death, but he made no mention of how either of these things came about.
Though his work on the farm was negligible, he spent a busy summer one
way and another.
Pyramus was down by the eighth of November, and on the night of the
fourteenth the ball was opened with a heavy run of goods, all of which
were safely delivered. From then on till Christmas cargo after cargo was
slipped through without mishap, but on St. Stephen’s day the weather
broke up, the wind bustled round to the southeast and blew great guns,
sending the big seas piling into Monks Cove in foaming hills. The Cove
men drew their boats well up, took down snares and antique blunderbusses
and staggered inland rabbiting.
Eli turned back to his farm-work with delight, but prosaic hard labor
had no further attraction for Ortho. He put in a couple of days sawing
up windfalls, a couple more ferreting with Bohenna, then he went up to
Church-town and saw Tamsin Eva again.
It was at a dance in the long room of the “Lamb and Flag” tavern and she
was looking her best, dressed in blue flounced out at the hips, with a
close-fitting bodice. She was what is known in West Cornwall as a “red
Dane,” masses of bright auburn hair she had and a soft white skin.
Ortho, whose last three little affairs had been pronounced brunettes,
turned to her with a refreshened eye, wondering what had made him leave
her. She was dancing a square dance with her faithful swain, Tom
Trevaskis, when Ortho entered, circling and curtseying happily to the
music of four fiddles led by Jiggy Dan.
The mine captain’s daughter glowed as rosy as a pippin, too rosy; the
preacher’s spouse was an olive lady, almost swarthy. Tamsin Eva’s
slender neck might have been carved from milk-ivory and she was tinted
like a camellia. Ortho’s dark eyes glittered. But it was her hair that
fascinated him most. The room was lit by dips lashed to decorated barrel
hoops suspended from the rafters, and as Tamsin in her billowy blue
dress swept and sidled under these the candlelight played tricks with
her burnished copper head, flicked red and amber lights over and into
it, crowned her with living gold. The black Penhale felt his heart leap;
she was most lovely! Why on earth had he ever dropped her? Why?
Deep down he knew; it was because, for all her physical attraction, she
wearied him utterly, seemed numbed in his presence, had not a word to
say. That Trewellard wench at least had a tongue in her head and the
widow had spirit; he could still almost feel his cheek tingle where she
had hit him. But that queenly crown of hair! He had an over-mastering
desire to pull it down and bury his face in the shining golden torrent.
He would too, ecod! Dull she might have been, but that was two years
ago. She’d grown since then, and so had he, and learnt a thing or two; a
score of women had been at pains to teach him. He hadn’t gone far with
Tamsin previously—she’d been too damned soft—but he would now. He’d
stir her up. Apparently shallow women were often deep as the sea, deep
enough to drown one. He’d take the risk of drowning; he fed on risks.
That the girl was formally betrothed to Trevaskis did not deter him in
the slightest. There was no point in the game in which he could not
out-maneuver the slovenly yokel.
He waited till the heated boy went to get himself a drink, and then
shouldered through the press and claimed Tamsin for the next dance,
claiming her smilingly, inevitably, as though she was his private
property and there had not been a moment’s break between them. The
girl’s eyes went blank with dismay, she tried to decline. He didn’t seem
to hear, but took her hand. She hung back weakly. There was no weakness
in Ortho’s grip; he led her out in spite of herself. She couldn’t resist
him, she never had been able to resist him. Fortunately for her he had
never demanded much. Poor Tamsin! Two years had not matured her
mentally. She had no mind to mature; she was merely a pretty chattel,
the property of the strongest claimant. Ortho was stronger than
Trevaskis, so he got her.
When the boy returned she was dancing with the tall Free Trader; the
golden head drooped, the life had gone out of her movements, but she was
dancing with him. Trevaskis tried to get to her at every pause, but
always Ortho’s back interposed. The farmer went outside and strode up
and down the yard, glaring from time to time through the window; always
Tamsin was dancing with Penhale. Trevaskis ground his teeth. Two years
ago he had been jockeyed in the same way. Was this swart gypsy’s whelp,
whose amorous philanderings were common talk, to have first call on his
bright girl whenever he deigned to want her? Trevaskis swore he should
not, but how to frustrate him he did not know. Plainly Tamsin was
bewitched, was incapable of resistance; she had admitted as much,
weeping. Thrash Ortho to a standstill he could not; he was not a brave
man and he dared not risk a maul with the smuggler. Had Penhale been a
“foreigner” he could have roused local feeling against him, but Penhale
was no stranger; he was the squire of Bosula and, moreover, most
popular, far more popular than he was himself. He had a wild idea of
trying a shot over a bank in the dark—and abandoned it, shuddering.
Supposing he missed! What would Penhale do to him? What wouldn’t he do
to him? Trevaskis hadn’t courage enough even for that. He strode up and
down, oblivious of the rain gusts, trying to discover a chink in the
interloper’s armor.
As for Ortho, he went on dancing with Tamsin, and when it was over took
her home; he buried his face in that golden torrent. He was up at
Church-town the very next night and the next night and every night till
the gale blew out.
Trevaskis, abandoning a hopeless struggle, followed in the footsteps of
many unlucky lovers and drowned his woes in drink. It was at the
Kiddlywink in Monks Cove that he did his drowning and not at the “Lamb
and Flag,” but as his farm lay about halfway between the two there was
nothing remarkable in that.
What did cause amusement among the Covers, however, was the
extraordinary small amount of liquor it required to lay him under the
bench and the volume of his snores when he was there.