THE DOVECOTE
With the tiller in his hand, the brave lieutenant meditated sadly. There
was plenty of time for thought before quick action would be needed,
although the Dovecote was so near that no boat could come out of it
unseen. For the pinnace was fetching a circuit, so as to escape the eyes
of any sentinel, if such there should be at the mouth of the cavern, and
to come upon the inlet suddenly. And the two other revenue boats were in
her wake.
The wind was slowly veering toward the east, as the Grimsby man had
predicted, with no sign of any storm as yet, but rather a prospect of
winterly weather, and a breeze to bring the woodcocks in. The gentle
rise and fall of waves, or rather, perhaps, of the tidal flow, was
checkered and veined with a ripple of the slanting breeze, and twinkled
in the moonbeams. For the moon was brightly mounting toward her zenith,
and casting bastions of rugged cliff in gloomy largeness on the mirror
of the sea. Hugging these as closely as their peril would allow,
Carroway ordered silence, and with the sense of coming danger thought:
“Probably I shall kill this man. He will scarcely be taken alive, I
fear. He is as brave as myself, or braver; and in his place I would
never yield. If he were a Frenchman, it would be all right. But I hate
to kill a gallant Englishman. And such a pretty girl, and a good girl
too, loves him with all her heart, I know. And that good old couple who
depend upon him, and who have had such shocking luck themselves! He has
been a bitter plague to me, and often I have longed to strike him down.
But to-night--I can not tell why it is--I wish there were some way
out of it. God knows that I would give up the money, and give up my
thief-catching business too, if the honor of the service let me. But
duty drives me; do it I must. And after all, what is life to a man who
is young, and has no children? Better over, better done with, before
the troubles and the disappointment come, the weariness, and the loss of
power, and the sense of growing old, and seeing the little ones hungry.
Life is such a fleeting vapor--I smell some man sucking peppermint! The
smell of it goes on the wind for a mile. Oh! Cadman again, as usual.
Peppermint in the Royal Coast-Guard! Away with it, you ancient beldame!”
Muttering something about his bad tooth, the man flung his lozenge away;
and his eyes flashed fire in the moonlight, while the rest grinned a low
grin at him. And Adam Andrews, sitting next him, saw him lay hands upon
his musketoon.
“Are your firelocks all primed, my lads?” the commander asked, quite as
if he had seen him, although he had not been noticing; and the foremost
to answer “Ay, ay, sir,” was Cadman.
“Then be sure that you fire not, except at my command. We will take them
without shedding blood, if it may be. But happen what will, we must have
Lyth.”
With these words, Carroway drew his sword, and laid it on the bench
beside him; and the rest (who would rather use steel than powder) felt
that their hangers were ready. Few of them wished to strike at all;
for vexed as they were with the smugglers for having outwitted them
so often, as yet there was no bad blood between them, such as must be
quenched with death. And some of them had friends, and even relatives,
among the large body of free-traders, and counted it too likely that
they might be here.
Meanwhile in the cave there was rare work going on, speedily, cleverly,
and with a merry noise. There was only one boat, with a crew of six men,
besides Robin Lyth the captain; but the six men made noise enough for
twelve, and the echoes made it into twice enough for any twenty-four.
The crew were trusty, hardy fellows, who liked their joke, and could
work with it; and Robin Lyth knew them too well to attempt any high
authority of gagging. The main of their cargo was landed and gone
inland, as snugly as need be; and having kept beautifully sober over
that, they were taking the liberty of beginning to say, or rather sip,
the grace of the fine indulgence due to them.
Pleasant times make pleasant scenes, and everything now was fair
and large in this happy cave of freedom. Lights of bright resin were
burning, with strong flare and fume, upon shelves of rock; dark water
softly went lapping round the sides, having dropped all rude habits at
the entrance; and a pulse of quiet rise and fall opened, and spread to
the discovery of light, tremulous fronds and fans of kelp. The cavern,
expanding and mounting from the long narrow gut of its inlet, shone with
staves of snowy crag wherever the scour of the tide ran round;
bulged and scooped, or peaked and fissured, and sometimes beautifully
sculptured by the pliant tools of water. Above the tide-reach darker
hues prevailed, and more jagged outline, tufted here and there with
yellow, where the lichen freckles spread. And the vault was framed of
mountain fabric, massed with ponderous gray slabs.
All below was limpid water, or at any rate not very muddy, but as bright
as need be for the time of year, and a sea which is not tropical. No one
may hope to see the bottom through ten feet of water on the Yorkshire
coast, toward the end of the month of November; but still it tries to
look clear upon occasion; and here in the caves it settles down, after
even a week free from churning. And perhaps the fog outside had helped
it to look clearer inside; for the larger world has a share of the
spirit of contrariety intensified in man.
Be that as it may, the water was too clear for any hope of sinking tubs
deeper than Preventive eyes could go; and the very honest fellows who
were laboring here had not brought any tubs to sink. All such coarse
gear was shipped off inland, as they vigorously expressed it; and
what they were concerned with now was the cream and the jewel of their
enterprise.
The sea reserved exclusive right of way around the rocky sides, without
even a niche for human foot, so far as a stranger could perceive. At
the furthermost end of the cave, however, the craggy basin had a lip
of flinty pebbles and shelly sand. This was no more than a very narrow
shelf, just enough for a bather to plunge from; but it ran across the
broad end of the cavern, and from its southern corner went a deep dry
fissure mounting out of sight into the body of the cliff. And here the
smugglers were merrily at work.
The nose of their boat was run high upon the shingle; two men on board
of her were passing out the bales, while the other four received them,
and staggered with them up the cranny. Captain Lyth himself was in the
stern-sheets, sitting calmly, but ordering everything, and jotting down
the numbers. Now and then the gentle wash was lifting the brown timbers,
and swelling with a sleepy gush of hushing murmurs out of sight. And now
and then the heavy vault was echoing with some sailor's song.
There was only one more bale to land, and that the most precious of
the whole, being all pure lace most closely packed in a water-proof
inclosure. Robin Lyth himself was ready to indulge in a careless song.
For this, as he had promised Mary, was to be his last illegal act.
Henceforth, instead of defrauding the revenue, he would most loyally
cheat the public, as every reputable tradesman must. How could any man
serve his time more notably, toward shop-keeping, and pave fairer way
into the corporation of a grandly corrupt old English town, than by long
graduation of free trade? And Robin was yet too young and careless to
know that he could not endure dull work. “How pleasant, how comfortable,
how secure,” he was saying to himself, “it will be! I shall hardly be
able to believe that I ever lived in hardship.”
But the great laws of human nature were not to be balked so. Robin Lyth,
the prince of smugglers, and the type of hardihood, was never to wear a
grocer's apron, was never to be “licensed to sell tea, coffee, tobacco,
pepper, and snuff.” For while he indulged in this vain dream, and was
lifting his last most precious bale, a surge of neither wind nor tide,
but of hostile invasion, washed the rocks, and broke beneath his feet.
In a moment all his wits returned, all his plenitude of resource,
and unequalled vigor and coolness. With his left hand--for he was
as ambidexter as a brave writer of this age requires--he caught up a
handspike, and hurled it so truly along the line of torches that only
two were left to blink; with his right he flung the last bale upon the
shelf; then leaped out after it, and hurried it away. Then he sprang
into the boat again, and held an oar in either hand.
“In the name of the king, surrender,” shouted Carroway, standing, tall
and grim, in the bow of the pinnace, which he had skillfully driven
through the entrance, leaving the other boats outside. “We are three to
one, we have muskets, and a cannon. In the name of the king, surrender.”
“In the name of the devil, splash!” cried Robin, suiting the action
to the word, striking the water with both broad blades, while his men
snatched oars and did the same. A whirl of flashing water filled the
cave, as if with a tempest, soaked poor Carroway, and drenched his
sword, and deluged the priming of the hostile guns. All was uproar,
turmoil, and confusion thrice confounded; no man could tell where he
was, and the grappling boats reeled to and fro.
“Club your muskets, and at 'em!” cried the lieutenant, mad with rage,
as the gunwale of his boat swung over. “Their blood be upon their own
heads; draw your hangers, and at 'em!”
He never spoke another word, but furiously leaping at the smuggler
chief, fell back into his own boat, and died, without a syllable,
without a groan. The roar of a gun and the smoke of powder mingled with
the watery hubbub, and hushed in a moment all the oaths of conflict.
The revenue men drew back and sheathed their cutlasses, and laid down
their guns; some looked with terror at one another, and some at their
dead commander. His body lay across the heel of the mast, which had been
unstepped at his order; and a heavy drip of blood was weltering into a
ring upon the floor.
For several moments no one spoke, nor moved, nor listened carefully;
but the fall of the poor lieutenant's death-drops, like the ticking of
a clock, went on. Until an old tar, who had seen a sight of battles,
crooked his legs across a thwart, and propped up the limp head upon his
doubled knee.
“Dead as a door-nail,” he muttered, after laying his ear to the lips,
and one hand on the too impetuous heart, “Who takes command? This is a
hanging job, I'm thinking.”
There was nobody to take command, not even a petty officer. The command
fell to the readiest mind, as it must in such catastrophes. “Jem, you do
it,” whispered two or three; and being so elected, he was clear.
“Lay her broadside on to the mouth of the cave. Not a man stirs out
without killing me,” old Jem shouted; and to hear a plain voice was
sudden relief to most of them. In the wavering dimness they laid the
pinnace across the narrow entrance, while the smugglers huddled all
together in their boat. “Burn two blue-lights,” cried old Jem; and it
was done.
“I'm not going to speechify to any cursed murderers,” the old sailor
said, with a sense of authority which made him use mild language; “but
take heed of one thing, I'll blow you all to pieces with this here
four-pounder, without you strikes peremptory.”
The brilliance of the blue-lights filled the cavern, throwing out
everybody's attitude and features, especially those of the dead
lieutenant. “A fine job you have made of it this time!” said Jem.
They were beaten, they surrendered, they could scarcely even speak to
assert their own innocence of such a wicked job. They submitted to be
bound, and cast down into their boat, imploring only that it might be
there--that they might not be taken to the other boat and laid near the
corpse of Carroway.
“Let the white-livered cowards have their way,” the old sailor said,
contemptuously. “Put their captain on the top of them. Now which is
Robin Lyth?”
The lights were burned out, and the cave was dark again, except when a
slant of moonlight came through a fissure upon the southern side. The
smugglers muttered something, but they were not heeded.
“Never mind, make her fast, fetch her out, you lubbers. We shall see him
well enough when we get outside.”
But in spite of all their certainty, they failed of this. They had only
six prisoners, and not one of them was Lyth.