AN UGLY CUSTOMER.
Luckily for Tregenna, the ground was wet and slippery with the mist. As
the lad flew at him, therefore, the force with which he knocked up the
pistol in the lieutenant’s hand caused him to slip on the slimy ground.
In a moment Tregenna had seized him by the wrist and flung him down.
All this time the lad had not uttered a single word. The rest of the
smugglers never ceased shouting and swearing as they fought, using
their lungs quite as lustily as they did their arms and legs, and
making a deafening din. But the pale boy never uttered a sound, even
when he was flung down. He was up again in a second, attacked Tregenna
again, and succeeded this time in inflicting a slight wound on his arm.
But the lieutenant was ready with his sword, and, just as the lad aimed
a savage thrust at his breast, he parried it, and returned it by a cut
across the lad’s head, which brought the blood flowing in a blinding
stream down the side of his face.
At that moment the hand-to-hand fight caught the attention of the rest
of the combatants, who were struggling and scuffling in the tangle of
gorse and bramble which choked up the dell at the bottom of the slope.
And a second figure, as unlike as possible to the first, rose up out
of the _mêleé_, and came to help his young comrade. A giant he was,
this loose-limbed, heavy-built sea-dog, with grizzled hair and coarse,
sullen red face, who swore loud and deep as he came on, and made for
Tregenna with a run, pistol in one hand and cutlass in the other.
“Hey, Jack! Bill! Up with ye, lads, and let the cursed hound have as
good as he’s given us! ’Tis the lubber that shot poor Tom! Up, lads!”
Up started from the gorse bushes a fresh couple of ruffians, the one a
long, lean, lanky fellow in corduroy breeches and an old rug-coat, that
had rather the air of a highwayman than of a son of the sea; the other
a little, pimply-faced rogue in loose jacket and slops, who carried a
pipe in his mouth, and a bludgeon in one hand.
This latter uttered a savage oath on perceiving who it was that they
were to attack.
“’Tis the chief, the captain. Let’s cut his throat and carry him out,
and hang him to’s own bowsprit, mates!” cried he, in a hoarse rasping
voice, as he swung his bludgeon round his head and dashed up the slope
after his comrades.
“Ay, that will we, and serve him well for his devotion to’s duty,” sang
out the burly giant who led the attack.
“Have at ’un! Slash at ’un, Robin!” piped out the lean man, in a thin
high voice that had a tone of unspeakable savagery in it.
Meanwhile, the lad, blinded by the blood that flowed from the wound in
his head, had staggered aside, out of the way of Tregenna and his new
assailants.
On they all came, quickly, eagerly, thirsting for revenge on the man
who was, they considered, the leading spirit in the crusade carried on
against their nefarious enterprises. But Tregenna did not flinch. He
had the advantage of the ground, and his own men were within call.
Planting his feet firmly in the soil, and grasping his sword, to which
he chose rather to trust than to his pistol, he shouted to his men in
the bushes below, and dealt a swashing blow at the burly giant, whom he
guessed to be the redoubtable “Robin Cursemother,” of whose exploits he
had heard.
Robin parried the blow with his cutlass, while the small man with the
bludgeon, whom they addressed as Bill, came to his assistance with a
swinging blow, which would have felled the lieutenant to the earth had
he not sprung aside just in time to avoid the full force of it.
At the same moment the tall, thin man, whom they called “Jack,” aimed
at him a blow, with the butt-end of the huge horse-pistol he carried in
his belt, which made Tregenna reel.
Luckily for him, his own men had by this time seen him and recognized
his peril. His arrival had made the numbers on both sides more equal;
and the revenue-men, who had been getting the worst of it, took heart
from the courageous stand he was making single-handed against the
smugglers, and, racing up the slope in the rear of the assailants,
diverted their attack.
There ensued a short, sharp hand-to-hand conflict, in which the
lieutenant found himself face to face with a fresh opponent in that
very “Ben the Blast” whom he had met in such strange circumstances in
front of the Frigate at Hurst some days before.
Ben came up with the last batch, panting, roaring like a bull, his face
and hands dyed with blood, his teeth set hard, and his eyes blood-shot
and aflame.
“The damned lubber that I caught with Ann! I’ll settle him! Let me but
get at him!” said he, furiously, as he came up.
By this time, however, Tregenna had gathered his men round him, so
that they presented a strong front to the smugglers, who, being on
lower ground than they, and somewhat overmatched in skill, if not in
strength, began to give way.
The lieutenant noted this, and presently gave the signal for a
simultaneous rush. Down they came, driving the cursing smugglers like
sheep before them over the rough, broken ground of the slope, until Ben
the Blast stumbled and fell over a stone, spraining his ankle in the
fall.
He got up, turned once upon his foes, with a last vicious blow of his
cutlass, which inflicted a nasty cut on the forearm of one of the
revenue-men, and yelled out—
“Off, mates, off! Game’s played!”
Then there was a stampede. The smugglers threw away such weapons as
they found cumbersome, and took to flight with as much vigor as they
had shown in the fight. Making for the dell at the bottom, Ben the
Blast, the lithe, pimply-faced Bill, and two others who were evidently
seamen, made for their boats, which, still half-full of the cargo
they had been in the act of landing when they were disturbed by the
revenue-men, was lying snug among the rocks in charge of a lad.
The tall, thin man in the rug-coat, with the rest of his companions,
went up the slope in a northeasterly direction, towards the road.
As they were all far nimbler of foot over the ground, which they knew
well, than were their opponents, Lieutenant Tregenna stopped the
pursuit of the smugglers when he saw how fast they gained ground, and
directed his men to seize such of the contraband goods as were already
landed.
When, however, they reached in their turn the bottom of the dell, where
they expected to find the booty, they discovered that it had all been
safely removed, under cover of the mist, and of the excitement of the
fight, and that the boat which had brought it had got out of sight also.
In the meantime Tregenna had been looking about him for the lad who had
been the first to attack him, and whom he had himself, in self-defense,
somewhat severely wounded. He felt something like admiration of the
courage the boy had shown in attacking him single-handed, and was
sincerely anxious to learn whether the wound he had been forced to
inflict was likely to have lasting consequences.
In answer to the lieutenant’s questions, one of the men said that
he had seen one man stagger down the slope some minutes before the
conclusion of the struggle, in the direction of the shore.
“He looked, sir,” said the man, “as if he’d had enough of it. He
didn’t hardly fare to seem to know whither he was going.”
Tregenna went down towards the shore, trying to find some track
which he might follow; but the mist and the darkness were creeping
on together, and the traces of the conflict being on all sides, in
trampled, blood-stained grass and roughened ground, he found nothing to
guide his steps.
But when he got down to the beach he was more fortunate. He found
footmarks and little red spots on the broken sandstone rocks, and,
following these indications, he came round a jutting point of frowning
cliff, to a cave, partly hollowed out by the action of the sea, and
partly by human hands, the walls of which were green with the slime
left by the tides.
Half in and half out of the cave, lying on the shingle and broken
rocks, lay the body of the lad of whom he was in search.
It was with something like tenderness that Tregenna stooped, and, full
of dread that his own blow had killed him, raised the lad from the
ground, turning him, and looking into his white and livid face, with
the half-dried blood making disfiguring patches on one side of it.
For the first moment he thought the boy was dead; but on further
examination he found that the heart was still beating, and at the same
moment the lad, who had been in danger of suffocation from the fact
that he had fallen face downwards, showed by a movement of the eyelids,
and by a quivering of the muscles of the mouth, that he was alive, and
recovering.
Tregenna cleansed his face as well as he could from the blood and
sand with which it was disfigured. There was no need to loosen his
clothes, for his shirt was open at the neck, confined only by a flowing
neckerchief, which now hung wet and bedraggled on his breast.
“What cheer, mate!” cried Tregenna, as he supported the lad by the
shoulders against his knee, and felt in his own pocket for the flask
he usually carried there, and which was as much a necessity of his
adventurous life as the pistol at his belt or the sword at his side.
The lad opened his eyes, stared at him for a moment dully, then with a
gleam of returning consciousness. It was at that moment that Tregenna
put the flask of _aqua vitæ_ to his lips.
“Drink, lad, drink. ’Twill bring thy senses together. And fear not.
We’ll not let a brave boy hang, smuggler though he may be! Drink, and
fear not. But take this warning, not to meddle with the affairs of
lawless folk again.”
Still the boy maintained the dead silence which had been such a
strangely marked characteristic of him during the fight. He gulped down
the spirit put to his lips, and then sat, with his head bent upon his
hand, as if still half stupid, either from the blow which had wounded
him or from consequent loss of blood.
Tregenna thought there was something of despair in his attitude, and
in the wild gaze with which he looked about him, staring first at the
gray sea, the edge of which was like a roll of white vapor, and then at
the frowning cliff above him. He seemed to be listening for some voice,
some footstep.
“Come,” said the lieutenant, in a cheery tone, “don’t lose thy spirit,
boy; thou showedst enough and to spare but an hour since. Thy comrades
are gone, ’tis true, and thou art left alone. But, give but thy word to
refrain from such company for the future, and I’ll pardon thee, and see
thee on thy way, for the sake of the courage thou hast shown, ill as
thy cause was.”
Still the lad said nothing in answer. But he looked around him with
returning intelligence, not at his captor indeed, but at everything
else, and particularly at the cliffs, with their jutting points and
scrubby growth of reed and flowering weed.
Tregenna followed the direction of his eyes, but saw nothing in
particular to attract his attention. But as he took a step away the lad
suddenly sprang up, snatching up the lieutenant’s pistol, which he had
deposited on the ground while tending the wounded boy, and made for a
point where the cliff was steepest and apparently most inaccessible.
As soon as he reached it he placed his foot on a ledge of the rock,
and, seizing a rope which was evidently well-known to him, began to
climb up the face of the cliff with astounding agility, considering his
recent dazed condition.
Tregenna followed quickly. But the lad, who was by this time a good way
up, drew up the end of the rope after him, and fastened it into a knot
so that it was far out of his pursuer’s reach. To attempt to climb the
cliff without it was impossible and Tregenna could only stand and shake
his fist at the lad in impotent rage at the daring with which he had
been again outwitted.
But the lad’s impudence and audacity did not stop there. The moment he
reached the summit of the cliff, he dislodged a loose mass of earth and
sandstone which was lying loose in one of the crevices at the edge,
and, with a deft kick, hurled it down upon his generous enemy below.
Tregenna stepped back hastily, receiving thus only some fragments of
dust and earth upon his head, instead of the heavy mass which had been
intended for him.
And he swore to himself, as he turned away and made for his own boat,
that he would never again be so soft-hearted as to spare one of these
ruffians, who, even in early youth, were dead to every generous human
feeling.