Mr. Jermyn led me to the pantry (a little room on the ground floor),
where he placed a plate of oranges before me.
“See how many you can eat,” he said. “But don't try to burgle yourself
free. This is a strong room.” He locked the heavy door, leaving me alone
with a well-filled pantry, which seemed to be without a window. A little
iron grating near the ceiling served as a ventilator. There was no
chance of getting out through that. The door was plated with iron. The
floor was of concrete. I was a prisoner now in good earnest. I was
no longer frightened; but I had had such scares that night that I had
little stomach for the fruit. I was only anxious to be allowed to go
back to my bed. I heard a dull noise in the upper part of the house,
followed by the falling of a plank. “There goes my bridge,” I thought.
“Are they going to be so mean as to call my uncle out of bed, to show
him what I've been doing?” I thought that perhaps they would do this, as
my uncle (for all that I knew) might be in their plot. “Well,” I said to
myself, “I shall get a good thrashing. Perhaps that brute Ephraim will
be told to thrash me. But thrashing or no, I've had enough of going out
at night. I'll ask my uncle not to thrash me, but to put me into the
Navy. I should love that. I know that I shall never get on in London.”
This sudden plan of the Navy, about which I had never before thought,
seemed to me to be a good way of getting out of my deserts. I felt sure
that my uncle would be charmed to be rid of me; while I knew very well
that boys of that generation often entered the Navy, in the care of
the captains, as naval cadets (or, as they were then called, “captain's
servants”) at the ages of eight or nine. I wondered why the debate
lasted so long. Naturally, in that gloomy little prison, lit by a single
tallow candle, with all my anxieties heavy on my mind, the time passed
slowly. But they were so long in making up their minds that it seemed
as though they had forgotten me. I began to remember horrible tales of
people shut up in secret rooms until they starved to death, or till the
rats ate them. I remembered the tale of the nun being walled up in a
vault of her convent, brick by brick, till the last brick shut off the
last glimmer of the bricklayer's lantern, till the last layer of mortar
made for her the last sound she would hear, the patting clink of the
trowel on the brick, before it was all horrible dark silence for ever.
I wondered how many people had been silenced in that way. I wondered how
long I should live, if that was what these men decided.
My fears were ended by the opening of the door. “Come on,” said Mr.
Lane. “This way,” He led me back to the council-room, where all the
conspirators sat at their places by the table. I noticed that Mr. Jermyn
(cloaked now, as for travel) was wearing his false beard again.
“Mr. Hyde,” the Duke said. “I understand that you are well disposed to
my cause.”
“Yes, your Majesty,” I answered; though indeed I only followed what my
father had told me. I had no real knowledge about it, one way or the
other. I knew only what others had told me. Still, in this instance, as
far as I have been able to judge by what I learned long afterwards,
I was right. The Duke had truly a claim to the throne; he was also a
better man than that disgraceful king who took his place.
“Very well, Mr. Hyde,” the Duke answered. “Have you any objections to
entering my service?”
I was not very sure of what he meant; it came rather suddenly upon me,
so I stammered, without replying.
“His Majesty means, would you like to join our party?” said Mr. Lane.
“To be one of us. To serve him abroad.”
I was flushed with pleasure at the thought of going abroad, among a
company of conspirators. I had no knowledge of what the consequences
might be, except that I should escape a sound whipping from my uncle or
from Ephraim. I did not like the thought of living on in London, with
the prospect of entering a merchant's office at the end of my boyhood.
I thought that in the Duke's service I should soon become a general, so
that I might return to my uncle, very splendidly dressed, to show him
how well I had managed my own life for myself. I thought that life was
always like that to the adventurous man. Besides I hoped that I should
escape school, the very thought of which I hated. Looking at the matter
in that secret council-room, it seemed so very attractive. It seemed to
give me a pathway of escape, whichever way I looked at it, from all that
I most disliked.
“Yes, your Majesty,” I said, “I should very much like to enter your
service.”
“You understand, Hyde,” said Mr. Jermyn, “that we are engaged in a very
dangerous work. It is so dangerous that we should not be justified in
allowing you to go free after what you have heard tonight. But its very
danger makes it necessary that we should tell you something of what your
work under his Majesty will be, before you decide finally to throw in
your lot with us. It is one thing to be a prisoner among us, Hyde;
but quite another to be what is called a rebel, engaged in treasonable
practices against a ruling King.”
“Still,” said Lane, “don't think that your imprisonment with us would be
unpleasant. If you would rather not join us, you have only to say so.
We shall then send you over to Holland, where you will, no doubt,
find plenty of boats with which to amuse yourself. You will be kept in
Holland till a certain much-wished event takes place, about the middle
of June. After that you will be brought back here to your uncle who, by
that time, will have forgiven you.”
“That's a very pretty ladder you made,” said the Duke. “You've evidently
lived among sailors.”
“Among fishermen mostly, your Majesty,” I said “My father was rector in
the Broads country.” I knew from his remark that someone had been across
to my uncle's house to remove all traces of my bridge. My ladder, I
knew, would now be dangling from my window, to show by which way I had
escaped.
“We want you, Hyde,” Mr. Jermyn said. “That is--we shall want you in
the event of your joining us, to be our messenger to the West. You will
travel continually from Holland to the West of England, generally to the
country near Taunton, but sometimes to Exeter, sometimes still further
to the West. You will carry letters sewn into the flap of your leather
travelling satchel. You will travel alone by your own name, giving out,
in case any one should ask you, that you are going to one of certain
people, whose names will be given to you. There will be no danger to
yourself; for the persons to whom you will be sent are not suspected;
indeed one of them is a clergyman. We think that a boy will have less
difficulty in getting about the country in its present state than any
man, provided, of course, that you travel by different routes on each
journey. If, however, by some extraordinary chance, you should be caught
with these letters in your wallet, we shall take steps to bring you off;
for we have a good deal of power, in one way or another, by which we
get things done. Still, it may well fall out, Hyde, in spite of all
our care, that you will come into the hands of men with whom we have no
influence. If you should, (remember, it is quite possible) you will be
transported to serve in one of the Virginian or West Indian plantations.
That will be the end of you as far as we are concerned. We shan't
be able to help you then. If you think the cause is right, join us,
provided that you do not think the risks too great.”
“If all goes well,” said the Duke, “if the summer should prove
prosperous, I may be able to reward a faithful servant, even if he is
only a boy.”
“I will serve your Majesty gladly,” I answered. “I should like to join
your service.”
“Very well then, Jermyn,” he said, rising swiftly on his way to the
door; “bring him on board at once.”
“We're off to Holland tonight, in the schooner there,” said Mr. Jermyn.
“So put these biscuits in your pocket. Give him another glass of wine,
Falk. Now, then. Good-bye, Lane. Good-bye everybody.”
“Good-bye,” they said. “Good-bye, boy.” In another minute we were in
the narrow road, within earshot of the tumbling water, going down to the
stairs at the lane end, to take boat. The last that I saw of my uncle's
house was the white of my ladder ropes, swinging about against the
darkness of the bricks.
“Remember, Hyde,” said Mr. Jermyn in a low voice, “that his Majesty is
always plain Mr. Scott. Remember that. Remember, too, that you are never
to speak to him unless he speaks to you. But you won't have much to do
with him. Were you ever at sea, before?”
“No, sir. Only about the Broads in a coracle.”
“You'll find it very interesting, then. If you're not seasick. Here we
are at the boat. Now, jump in. Get into the bows.”
“Mr. Scott” was already snug under a boat-cloak in the sternsheets. As
soon as we had stepped in, the boatman shoved off. The boat rippled the
water into a gleaming track as she gathered way. We were off. I was on
my way to Holland. I was a conspirator, travelling with a King. There
ahead of me was the fine hull of the schooner La Reina, waiting to carry
us to all sorts of adventure, none of them (as I planned them then) so
strange, or so terrible, as those which happened to me. As we drew up
alongside her, I heard the clack-clack of the sailors heaving at the
windlass. They were getting up the anchor, so that we might sail from
this horrible city to all the wonderful romance which awaited me, as I
thought, beyond, in the great world. Five minutes after I had stepped
upon her deck we were gliding down on the ebb, bound for Holland.
“Hyde,” said Mr. Jermyn, as we drew past the battery on the Tower
platform, “do you see the high ground, beyond the towers there?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Do you know what that is?”
“No, sir.”
“That's Tower Hill,” he answered, “where traitors, I mean conspirators
like you or me, are beheaded. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. “To have your head cut off.”
“Yes,” he said. “With all that hill black with people. The scaffold hung
with black making a sort of platform in the middle. Then soldiers, with
drums, all round. You put your head over a block, so that your neck
rests on the wood. Then the executioner comes at you with an axe. Then
your head is shown to the people. 'This is the head of a traitor.' We
may all end in that way, on that little hill there. You must be very
careful how you carry the letters, Hyde.”
After this hint, he showed me a hammock in the schooner's 'tweendecks,
telling me that I should soon be accustomed to that kind of bed. “It is
a little awkward at first,” he said, “especially the getting in part;
but, when once snugly in, it is the most comfortable kind of bed in the
world.” After undressing by the light of a huge ship's lantern, which
Mr. Jermyn called a battle-lantern, I turned into my hammock, rather
glad to be alone. Now that I was pledged to this conspiracy business,
with some knowledge of what it might lead to, I half wished myself well
out of it. The 'tweendecks was much less comfortable than the bedroom
which I had left so gaily such a very little time before. I had
exchanged a good prison for a bad one. The smell of oranges, so near to
the hold in which they were stored, was overpowering, mixed, as it was,
with the horrible ship-smell of decaying water (known as bilge-water)
which flopped about at each roll a few feet below me. My hammock was
slung in a draught from the main hatchway. People came down the hatchway
during the night to fetch coils of rope or tackles. Tired as I was, I
slept very badly that first night on board ship. The schooner seemed to
be full of queer, unrelated movements. The noise of the water slipping
past was like somebody talking. The striking of the bells kept me from
sleeping. I did not get to sleep till well into the middle watch (about
two in the morning) after which I slept brokenly until a rough voice
bawled in my ear to get up out of that, as it was time to wash down.
I put my clothes on hurriedly, wondering where I should find a basin
in which to wash myself. I could see none in the 'tweendecks; but I
supposed that there would be some in the cabins, which opened off the
'tweendecks on each side. Now a 'tweendecks (I may as well tell you
here) is nothing more than a deck of a ship below the upper deck. If
some of my readers have never been in a ship, let them try to imagine
themselves descending from the upper deck--where all the masts stand--by
a ladder fixed in a square opening known as a hatchway. About six feet
down this ladder is the 'tweendecks, a long narrow room, with a ceiling
so low that unless you bend, you bump your head against the beams.
If you will imagine a long narrow room, only six feet high, you will
know what a 'tweendecks is like. Only in a real 'tween-decks it is
always rather dark, for the windows (if you care to call them so) are
thick glass bull's-eyes which let in very little light. A glare of light
comes down the hatchways. Away from the hatchways a few battle-lanterns
are hung, to keep up some pretence of light in the darkest corners. At
one end of this long narrow room in La Reina a wooden partition, running
right across from side to side, made a biggish chamber called “the
cabin,” where the officers took their meals. A little further along the
room, one on each side of it, were two tiny partitioned cabins, about
seven feet square, in which the officers slept, two in each cabin one
above the other, in shelf-beds, or bunks. My hammock had been slung
between these cabins, a little forward of them. When I turned out, I
saw that the rest of the 'tweendecks was piled with stores of all kinds,
lashed down firmly to ringbolts. Right forward, in the darkness of the
ship's bows, I saw other hammocks where the sailors slept.
I was wondering what I was to do about washing, when the rough man who
had called me a few minutes before came down to ask me why I was not up
on deck. I said that I was wondering where I could wash myself.
“Wash yourself,” he said. “You haven't made yourself dirty yet. You
don't wash at sea till your work's done for the day. Why, haven't you
lashed your hammock yet?”
“Please, sir,” I said, “I don't know how.”
“Well, for once,” he said, “I'll show you how. Tomorrow you'll do it for
yourself.”
“There,” he said, when he had lashed up the hammock, by what seemed to
me to be art-magic, “don't you say you don't know how to lash a 'ammick.
I've showed you once. Now shove it in the rack there. Up on deck with
you.”
I ran up the ladder to the deck, thinking that this was not at all the
kind of service which I had expected. When I got to the deck I felt
happier; for it was a lovely bright morning. The schooner was under all
sail, tearing along at what seemed to me to be great speed. We were
out at sea now. England lay behind us, some miles away. I could see the
windows gleaming in a little town on the shore. Ships were in sight,
with rollers of foam whitening under them. Gulls dipped after fish. The
clouds drove past. A fishing boat piled with fish was labouring up to
London, her sails dark with spray. On the deck of the schooner some
barefooted sailors were filling the wash-deck tubs at a hand-pump. One
man was at work high aloft on the topsail yard, sitting across the yard
with his legs dangling down, keeping his seat (as I thought) by balance.
I found the scene so delightful that I gazed at it like a boy in a
trance, was still staring, when the surly boor who had called me (he was
the schooner's mate it seemed) came up behind me.
“Well,” he said, in the rough, bullying speech of a sailor, “do ye see
it?”
“See what, sir?”
“What you're looking at.”
“Yes, sir,” I answered.
“Then you got no butter in your eyes, then. Why ain't you at work?”
“What am I to do, sir?”
“Do,” he said. “Ain't you Mr. Scott's servant?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then get a bucket of fresh water out of the cask there. Take this
scrubber. You'll find some soap in the locker there. Now scrub out the
cabin as quick as you know how.”
He showed me down to the cabin. It was a dingy, dirty little room about
twelve feet square over all, but made, in reality, much smaller by the
lockers which ran along each side.
It was lighted by two large wooden ports, known as “chase ports,”
through which the chase guns or “stern-chasers pointed. Only one gun (a
long three pounder on a swivel) was mounted; for guns take up a lot of
room. With two guns in that little cabin there would not have been room
enough to swing a cat. You need six feet for the proper swinging of a
cat, so a man-of-war boatswain told me. The cat meant is the cat of nine
tails with which they used to flog seamen. To flog properly one needs a
good swing, so my friend said.
“There you are,” said the mate of the schooner. “Now down on your knees.
Scrub the floor here. See you get it mucho blanco.”
He left me feeling much ashamed at having to work like a common ship's
boy, instead of like a prince's page, which is what I had thought
myself. Like many middle-class English boys I had been brought up to
look on manual work as degrading. I was filled with shame at having
to scrub this dirty deck. I, who, only yesterday, had lorded it over
Ephraim, as though I were a superior being. You boys who go to good
schools try to learn a little humbleness. You may think your parents
very fine gentlefolk; but in the world, outside a narrow class, the
having gentle parents will not help one much. It may be that you, for
all your birth, have neither the instincts nor the intellect to preserve
the gentility your parents made for you. You are no gentleman till
you have proved it. Your right level may be the level of the betting
publican, or of the sneak-thief, or of things even lower than these. It
is nothing to be proud of that your parents are rich enough to keep your
hands clean of joyless, killing toil, at an age when many better men
are old in slavery. Try to be thankful for it; not proud. Leisure is
the most sacred thing life has. A wise man would give his left hand for
leisure. You that have it given to you by the mercy of gentle birth,
regard it as a trust; make noble use of it. Many great men waste half
their energies in the struggle for that which you regard, poor fools, as
your right, as something to brag of.
I had never scrubbed a floor in my life; but I had seen it done, without
taking much account of the art in it. I set to work, feeling more
degraded each moment, as the hardness of the deck began to make my knees
sore. When I had done about half of the cabin (in a lazy, neglectful
way, leaving patches unscrubbed, only just wetted over, so as to seem
clean to a chance observer) I thought that I would do no more; but wait
till Mr. Jermyn came to me. I would tell him that I wished to go home,
that I was not going to be a common sailor, but a trusted messenger,
with a lot more to the same tune, meaning, really, that I hated this job
of washing decks like poison. I dare say, if the truth were known, the
sudden change in my fortunes had made me a little homesick. But even so,
I was skulking work which had been given to me. What was worse, I was
being dishonest. For I was pretending to do the work, even when I took
least trouble with it. At last I took it into my head to wet the whole
floor with water, meaning to do no more to it. While I was doing this
the mate came into the cabin.
“Look here,” he said. “I've been watching you. You ain't working. You're
skulking. You ain't trying to wash that deck. You're making believe,
thinking I won't know any different. Don't answer me. I know what you're
doing. Now then. You go over every bit of that deck which you've just
slopped at. Do it over. I'm going to stand here till it's done.”
It was in my mind to be rebellious; but this man did not look like a
good man to rebel from. He was a big grim sailor with a length of rope
in his hand. He called it his “manrope.” “You see my manrope,” he said.
“His name's Mogador Jack. He likes little skulks like you.” Afterwards
I learned that a manrope is the rope rail at a ship's gangway, or
(sometimes) a length of rope in the gangway-side for boatmen to catch as
they came alongside the ship. I did not like the look of Mogador Jack,
so I went at my scrubbing with all my strength, keeping my thoughts
to myself. My knees felt very sore. My back ached with the continual
bending down. I had had no food that morning, either, that was another
thing. “Spell, oh,” said the man at last. “Straighten your back a bit.
Empty your bucket over the side. No. Not through the sternport. Carry
in on deck. Empty it there. Then fill it again. Lively, too. It'll be
breakfast time before you've done. You've got to have this cabin ready
by eight bells.”
I will not tell you how I finished the deck. I will say only this, that
at the end I began to take a sort of pride or pleasure in making the
planks white. Afterwards, I always found that there is this pleasure in
manual work. There is always pleasure of a sort in doing anything
that is not very easy. “There,” the mate said. “Now lay the table for
breakfast. You'll find the things in them lockers. Lay for three places.
Don't break the ship's crockery while you're doing it.”