1
The southeasterly gale blown out, Ortho’s business went forward with a
rush. In the second week in January they landed a cargo a night to make
up for lost time, and met with a minor accident—Jacky’s George breaking
a leg in saving a gig from being stove. This handicapped them somewhat.
Anson was a capable boatsman, but haphazard in organization, and Ortho
found he had to oversee the landings as well as lead the pack-train.
Despite his efforts there were hitches and bungles here and there; the
cogs of the machinery did not mate as smoothly as they had under the
cock-sparrow. Nevertheless they got the cargoes through somehow and
there was not much to fear in the way of outside interruptions; the
dragoons seemed to have settled to almost domestic felicity in Penzance
and the revenue cutter had holed her garboard strake taking a short cut
round the Manacles and was docked at Falmouth. Ortho got so confident
that he actually brought his horses home in plain daylight.
Then on the fourteenth of February, when all seemed so secure, the roof
fell in.
Mr. William Carmichael was the person who pulled the props away. Mr.
William Carmichael, despite his name, was an Irishman, seventeen years
of age, and, as a newly-joined cornet of dragoons, drawing eight
shillings a day, occupied a position slightly less elevated than an
earth-worm. However, he was very far from this opinion. Mr. Carmichael,
being young and innocent, yearned to let blood, and he wasn’t in the
least particular whose. Captain Hambro and his two somewhat elderly
lieutenants, on the other hand, were experienced warriors, and
consequently the most pacific of creatures. Nothing but a direct order
from a superior would induce them to draw the sword except to poke the
fire. Mr. Carmichael’s martial spirit was in a constant state of
effervescence; he hungered and thirsted for gore—but without avail.
Hambro positively refused to let him run out and chop anybody. The
captain was a kindly man; his cornet’s agitation distressed him and he
persuaded one of the dimpled Miss Jagos to initiate his subordinate in
the gentler game of love (the boy would come into some sort of Kerry
baronetcy when his sire finally bowed down to delirium tremens, and it
was worth her while). But Mr. Carmichael was built of sterner stuff. He
was proof against her woman’s wiles. Line of attack! At ’em! The
lieutenants, Messrs. Pilkington and Jope, were also gentle souls,
Pilkington was a devotee of chess, Jope of sea-fishing. Both sought to
engage the fire-eater in their particular pastimes. It was useless; he
disdained such trivialities. Death! Glory!
But Hambro, whose battle record was unimpeachable, knew that in civil
police work, such as he was supposed to be doing, there is precious
little transient glory to be picked up and much adhesive mud. He knew
that with the whole population against him he stood small chance of
laying the smugglers by the heels, and if he did the county families
(who were as deeply implicated as any) would never rest until they had
got him broken. He sat tight.
This did not suit the martial Carmichael at all. He fumed and fretted,
did sword exercise in the privacy of his bedroom till his arm ached, and
then gushed his heart out in letters to his mother, which had the sole
effect of eliciting bottles of soothing syrup by return, the poor lady
thinking his blood must be out of order.
But his time was to come.
On the eighth of February Pilkington was called away to Axminster to the
bedside of his mother (at least that is what he called her) and
Carmichael was given his troop to annoy. On the morning of the
fourteenth Hambro left on three days’ leave to shoot partridges at
Tehidy, Jope and Carmichael only remaining. Jope blundered in at five
o’clock on the same afternoon sneezing fit to split himself. He had been
off Low Lee after pollack and all he had succeeded in catching was a
cold. He growled about the weather, which his boatman said was working
up for a blow, drank a pint of hot rum bumbo and sneezed himself up to
bed, giving strict orders that he was not to be roused on any account.
Carmichael was left all alone.
To him, at seven of the clock, came Mr. Richard Curral, riding officer,
a conscientious but blighted man.
He asked for Hambro, Pilkington and Jope in turn, and groaned resignedly
when he heard they were unavailable.
“Anything I can do for you?” Carmichael inquired.
Curral considered, tapping his rabbit teeth with his whip handle. Mr.
Carmichael was terribly young, the merest babe.
“N-o. I don’t think so; thank you, sir. No, never mind. Pity they’re
away, though . . . seems a chance,” he murmured, talking to himself.
“Lot of stuff been run that way of late . . . ought to be stopped by
rights . . . pity!” he sighed.
“What’s a pity? What are you talking about?” said Mr. Carmichael, his
ears pricking. “Take that whip out of your mouth!”
Mr. Curral withdrew the whip; he was used to being hectored by military
officers.
“Er—oh! . . . er, the Monks Cove men are going to make a run to-night.”
Mr. Carmichael sat upright. “Are they, b’God! How d’you know?”
“An informer has just come in. Gives no name, of course, but says he’s
from Gwithian parish; looks like a farmer. Wants no reward.”
“Then what’s his motive?”
Mr. Curral shrugged his shoulders. “Some petty jealousy, I presume; it
usually is among these people. I’ve known a man give his brother away
because he got bested over some crab-pots. This fellow says he overheard
them making their plans in the inn there—lay under the table pretending
to be drunk. Says that tall Penhale is the ringleader; I’ve suspected as
much for some time. Of course it may only be a false scent after all,
but the informer seems genuine. What are you doing, sir?”
Mr. Carmichael had danced across the room, opened the door and was
howling for his servant. His chance had come. Gore!
“Doing! . . . Why, going to turn a troop out and skewer the lot of ’em
of course. What d’you think?” shouted that gentleman, returning. “I’d
turn out the squadron, only half the nags are streaming with strangles.
Toss me that map there. Now where is this Monks Cove?”
Mr. Curral’s eyes opened wide. He was not used to this keenness on the
part of the military. One horse coughing slightly would have been
sufficient excuse for Hambro to refuse to move—leave alone half a
squadron sick with strangles. It promised to be a dirty night too. He
had expected to meet with a diplomatic but nevertheless definite
refusal. It was merely his three-cornered conscience that had driven him
round to the billet at all—yet here was an officer so impatient to be
off that he was attempting the impossible feat of pulling on his boots
and buckling on his sword at the same time. Curral’s eyes opened wider
and wider.
“Ahem!—er—do you mean . . . er . . . are you in earnest, sir?”
“Earnest!” The cornet snorted, his face radiant. “Damn my blood but I am
in very proper earnest, Mr. What’syourname—as these dastardly
scoundrels shall discover ere we’re many hours older. Earnest, b’gob!”
“But Mr. Jope, sir . . . hadn’t you better consult Mr. Jope? . . . He
. . .”
“Mr. Jope be dam . . . Mr. Jope has given orders that he’s not to be
disturbed on any account, on _any_ account, sir. _I_ am in command here
at the moment, and if you will have the civility to show me where this
plaguy Monks Cove hides itself instead of standing there sucking your
whip you will greatly assist me in forming my plan of action.”
Curral bent over the map and pointed with his finger.
“Here you are, sir, the merest gully.”
“Then I shall charge down the gully,” said Carmichael with that quick
grasp of a situation displayed by all great commanders. The riding
officer coughed: “Then you’ll have to charge at a walk, sir, and in
single file; there’s only a rough pack-track. Further, the track is
picketed at the head; as soon as you pass a gun will be fired and when
you reach the cove there won’t be a cat stirring.”
Carmichael, like all great commanders, had his alternative. “Then I
shall charge ’em from the flank. Can I get up speed down this slope?”
Curral nodded. “Yes, sir. You can ride from top to bottom in a moment of
time.”
“How d’you mean?”
“It is practically a precipice, sir.”
“Humph!—and this flank?”
“The same, sir.”
Carmichael scratched his ear and for the first time took thought.
“Lookee,” he said presently. “If I stop the pack track here and there
are precipices on either side how can they get their horses out? I’ve
got ’em bottled.”
Curral shook his head. “I said _practically_ precipices, sir. Precipices
to go _down_, but not to come _up_. As you yourself have probably
observed, sir, a horse can scramble up anything, but he is a fool going
down. A horse falling uphill doesn’t fall far, but a horse falling down
a slope like that rolls to the bottom. A horse . . .”
“Man,” snapped the cornet, “don’t talk to me about horses. My father
keeps twenty. I know.”
Curral coughed. “I beg your pardon, sir. The informer tells me there are
a dozen places on either side by which these fellows can get their
beasts to the level. Remember it is their own valley; they’re at home
there, while we are strangers and in the dark.”
“I wish you could get out of this habit of propounding the obvious,”
said Carmichael. He dabbed his finger down on the map. “Look—supposing
we wait for them out here across their line of march?”
“They’d scatter all over the moor, sir. We’d be lucky if we caught a
couple on a thick night like this.”
Carmichael plumped down on a chair and savagely rubbed his curls.
“Well, Mr. Riding Officer, I presume that in the face of these
insurmountable difficulties you propose to sit down and do nothing—as
usual. Let these damned ruffians run their gin, flout the law, do
exactly as they like. Now let me tell you I’m of a different kidney, I
. . .”
“You will pardon me, sir,” said Curral quietly, “but I haven’t as yet
been given the opportunity of proposing anything.”
“What’s your plan then?”
“How many men can you mount, sir?”
“Forty with luck. I’ll have to beat the taverns for ’em.”
“Very good, sir. Send a small detachment to stop the head of the track;
not to be there before ten o’clock. The rest, under yourself, with me
for guide, will ride to the top of the cliff which overhangs the village
from the east and there leave the horses. The informer tells me there is
a sheep-track leading down from there and they picket the top of it—an
old man with a gun to fire if he hears anything. That picket will have
to be silenced.”
“Who’s going to do that?” the cornet inquired.
“I’ve got a man of my own I think can do it. He was a great poacher
before he got religion.”
“And then?”
“Then we’ll creep, single file, down the sheep-track, muster behind the
pilchard sheds and rush the landing—the goods should be ashore by then.
I trust that meets with your approval, sir?”
The cornet nodded, sobered. “It does—you seem to be something of a
tactician, Mr. . . . er . . . Curral.”
“I served foreign with Lord Mark Kerr’s Regiment of Horse Guards, sir,”
said the riding officer, picking up his whip.
Carmichael’s jaw dropped. “Horse Guards! . . . Abroad! . . . One of
_us_! Dash my guts, man, why didn’t you say so before?”
“You didn’t ask me, sir,” said Curral and sucked his whip.
2
Uncle Billy Clemo sat behind a rock at the top of the sheep-path and
wished to Heaven the signal would go up. A lantern run three times to
the truck of the flag-pole was the signal that the horses were away and
the pickets could come in. Then he would be rewarded with two shillings
and a drop of hot toddy at the Kiddlywink—and so to bed.
He concentrated his thoughts on the hot toddy, imagined it tickling
bewitchingly against his palate, wafting delicious fumes up his
nostrils, gripping him by the throat, trickling, drop by drop, through
his chilled system, warm and comforting, trickling down to his very
toes. He would be happy then. He had been on duty since seven-thirty; it
was now after ten and perishing cold. The wind had gone round suddenly
to the northeast and was gaining violence every minute. Before dawn it
would be blowing a full gale. Uncle Billy was profoundly thankful he was
not a horse leader. While Penhale and Company were buffeting their way
over the moors he would be in bed, praise God, full of toddy. In the
meanwhile it was bitter cold. He shifted his position somewhat so as to
get more under the lee of the rock and peered downwards to see how they
were getting on. He could not see much. The valley was a pit of
darkness. A few points of light marked the position of the hamlet,
window lights only. The fisher-folk knew their own place as rats know
their holes and made no unnecessary show of lanterns. A stranger would
have imagined the hamlet slept; in reality it was humming like a hive.
A dim half-moon of foam marked the in-curve of the Cove; seaward was
blank darkness again. Uncle Billy, knowing what to look for and where to
look, made out a slightly darker blur against the outer murk—the lugger
riding to moorings, main and mizzen set. She was plunging a goodish bit,
even down there under shelter of the cliffs. Uncle Billy reckoned the
boat’s crews must be earning their money pulling in against wind and
ebb, and once more gave thanks he was not as other men.
The wind came whimpering over the high land, bending the gorse plumes
before it, rattling the dead brambles, rustling the grass. Something
stirred among the brambles, something living. He picked up his old Brown
Bess. A whiff of scent crossed his nostrils, pungent, clinging. He put
the Bess down again. Fox. He was bitter cold, especially as to the feet.
He was a widower and his daughter-in-law kept him short in the matter of
socks. He stood up—which was against orders—and stamped the turf till
he got some warmth back in his toes, sat down again and thought about
the hot toddy. The lugger was still there, lunging at her moorings. They
were a plaguy time landing a few kegs! Jacky’s George would have
finished long before—these boys! Whew! it was cold up there!
The gale’s voice was rising to a steady scream; it broke against Uncle
Billy’s rock as though it had been a wave. Shreds of dead bracken and
grass whirled overhead. The outer darkness, which was the sea, showed
momentary winks of gray—breakers. When the wind lulled for a second, a
deep melancholy bay, like that of some huge beast growling for meat,
came rolling in from the southwest—the surf on the Twelve Apostles.
There were stirrings and snappings in the brambles. That plaguy fox
again, thought Uncle Billy—or else rabbits. His fingers were numb now.
He put the Bess down beside him, blew on his hands, thrust them well
down in his pockets and snuggled back against the rock. The lugger would
slip moorings soon whether she had unloaded or not, and then toddy,
scalding his throat, trickling down to his . . .
Something heavy dropped on him from the top of the rock, knocking him
sideways, away from the gun, pinning him to the ground; hands, big and
strong as brass, took him round the throat, drove cruel thumbs into his
jugular, strangling him.
“Got him, Joe,” said a voice. “Bring rope and gag quick!” He got no hot
toddy that night.
3
“That the lot?” the lugger captain bellowed.
“Aye,” answered his mate.
“Cast off that shore boat then and let go forward soon’s she’m clear.”
“Aye, aye. Pull clear, you; look lively!”
The _Gamecock’s_ crew jerked their oars into the pins and dragged the
gig out of harm’s way.
The moorings buoy splashed overboard, the lugger, her mainsail backed,
came round before the wind and was gone.
“Give way,” said Anson; “the wind’s getting up a fright.” He turned to
Ortho. “You’ll have a trip to-night . . . rather you nor me.”
Ortho spat clear of the gunwale. “Have to go, I reckon; the stuff’s
wanted, blast it! Has that boat ahead unloaded yet?”
“She haven’t signaled,” the bowman answered.
“No matter, pull in,” said Anson. “We haven’t no more than the leavings
here; we can land this li’l’ lot ourselves. Give way, all.”
Four blades bit the water with a will, but the rowers had to bend their
backs to wrench the gig in against the wind and tide. It was a quarter
of an hour before they grounded her nose on the base of the slip.
“Drag her up a bit, boys,” said Anson. “Hell!—what’s that?”
From among the dark huddle of houses came a woman’s scream,
two—three—and then pandemonium, shouts, oaths, crashes, horses
stamping, the noise of people rushing and struggling, and, above all, a
boy’s voice hysterically shouting, “Fire! Curse you! Fire!”
“Christ!” said Ortho. “The Riders! Hey, push her off! For God’s sake,
push!”
The two bowmen, standing in the water, put their backs to the boat and
hove; Ortho and Anson in the stern used their oars pole-wise.
“All together, he-ave!”
Slowly the gig began to make stern-way.
“Heave!”
The gig made another foot. Feet clattered on the slip-head and a voice
cried, “Here’s a boat escaping! Halt or I fire!”
“Hea-ve!” Ortho yelled. The gig made another foot and was afloat. There
was a spurt of fire from the slip and a bullet went droning overhead.
The bowman turned and dodged for safety among the rocks.
“Back water, back!” Anson exhorted.
There were more shouts from the shore, the boy’s voice crowing shrill as
a cockerel, a quick succession of flashes and more bullets went wailing
by. The pair in the boat dragged at their oars, teeth locked, terrified.
Wind and tide swept them up, darkness engulfed them. In a couple of
minutes the shots ceased and they knew they were invisible. They lay on
their oars, panting.
“What now?” said Ortho. “Go after the lugger? We can’t go back.”
“Lugger’s miles away, going like a stag,” said Anson. “Best chance it
across the bay to Porthleven.”
“Porthleven?”
“Where else? Wind’s dead nor’east. Lucky if we make that. Throw this
stuff out; she’s riding deep as a log.”
They lightened the gig of its entire load and stepped the mast. Anson
was at the halliards hoisting the close-reefed mainsail. Ortho kept at
the tiller until there was a spit of riven air across his cheek and down
came the sail on the run.
He called out, “What’s the matter?”
There was no answer for a minute, and then Anson said calmly from under
the sail, “Shot, I b’lieve.”
“What is—halliards?”
“Me, b’lieve.”
“You! Shot! What d’you mean? Where?”
“In chest. Stray shot, I reckon; they can’t hit nawthing when they aim.
Thee’ll have to take her thyself now. . . . O-ooh. . . .” He made a
sudden, surprised exclamation as if the pain had only just dawned on him
and began to cough.
“Hoist sail . . . thou . . . fool. . . A-ah!”
Ortho sprang forward and hoisted the sail; the gig leapt seawards. The
coughing began again mingled with groans. They stabbed Ortho to the
heart. Instead of running away they should be putting back; it was a
doctor they wanted. He would put back at once and get Anson attended to.
That he himself would be arrested as the ringleader, tried and either
hung or transported did not occur to him. Half his happy boyhood had
been spent with Anson; the one thing was to ease his agony.
“Going to put back,” he yelled to the prostrate man under the bow
thwart. “Put back!”
“You can’t,” came the reply . . . and more coughing.
Of course he couldn’t. If he had thought for a moment he would have
known it. Wind and tide would not let him put back. There was nothing
for it but the twelve-mile thrash across the open bay to Porthleven; he
prayed there might be a doctor there.
He luffed, sheeted home, rounded the great mass of Black Carn, braced as
sharp as he dared and met a thunder clap of wind and sea. It might have
been waiting for him round the corner, so surely did it pounce. It
launched itself at him roaring, a ridge of crumbling white high
overhead, a hill of water toppling over.
The loom and bellow of it stunned his senses, but habit is a strong
master. His mind went blank, but his hand acted, automatically jamming
the helm hard over. The gig had good way on; she spun as a horse spins
on its hocks and met the monster just in time. Stood on her stern; rose,
seesawed on the crest, three quarters of her keel bare, white tatters
flying over her; walloped down into the trough as though on a direct
dive to the bottom, recovered and rose to meet the next. The wild soar
of the bows sent Anson slithering aft. Ortho heard him coughing under
the stroke thwart.
“She’ll never do it,” he managed to articulate. “Veer an’ let . . . let
. . . her drive.”
“Where for?” Ortho shouted. “Where for? D’you hear me?”
“Scilly,” came the answer, broken by dreadful liquid chokings.
The waves broke with less violence for a minute or two and Ortho managed
to get the _Gamecock_ away before the wind, though she took a couple of
heavy dollops going about.
Scilly! A handful of rocks thirty miles away in the open Atlantic, pitch
dark, no stars, no compass, the Runnelstone to pass, then the Wolf! At
the pace they were going they would be on the Islands long before dawn
and then it would be a case of exactly hitting either Crow Sound or St.
Mary’s Sound or being smashed to splinters. Still it was the only
chance. He would hug the coast as near as he dared till past the
Runnelstone—if he ever passed the Runnelstone—and then steer by the
wind; it was all there was to steer by.
It was dead northeast at present, but if it shifted where would he be
then? It did not bear thinking on and he put it from his mind. He must
get past the Runnelstone first; after that . . .
He screwed up every nerve as tight as it would go, forced his senses to
their acutest, set his teeth—swore to drive the boat to Scilly—but he
had no hope of getting there, no hope at all.
The _Gamecock_, under her rag of canvas, ran like a hunted thing. It was
as though all the crazy elements were pouring southwest, out to the open
sea, and she went with them, a chip swept headlong in a torrent of
clamorous wind and waters. On his right Ortho could just discern the
loom of the coast. Breaker-tops broke, hissing, astern, abeam, ahead.
Spindrift blew in flat clouds, stinging like hail. Flurries of snow fell
from time to time.
He was wet through, had lost all feeling in his feet, while his hands on
the sheet and tiller were so numbed he doubted if he could loosen them.
On and on they drove into the blind turmoil. Anson lay in the water at
the bottom, groaning and choking at every pitch.