“You’ll get your heads broke,” I said, “if you wait much longer. Hark to
that!”
The approaching horses had turned off the turf on to the hard road; the
steps of first one and then another sounded out down the silent hill.
I knew it was the Free Traders from that; for except between banks they
kept to the soft roadsides as if it were an article of faith. The noise
of hoofs became that of an army.
The runners began to consult. The shadow called Thorns was for bolting
across country; but Lilly white was not built for speed. Besides he did
not know the lie of the land, and believed the Free Traders were mere
bogeys.
“They’ll never touch us,” Lillywhite grumbled. “We’ve a warrant...
King’s name....” He was flashing his lanthorn aimlessly up the hill.
“Besides,” he began again, “we’ve got this gallus bird. If he’s not a
Spaniard, he knows all about them. I heard him. Kemp he may be, but he
spoke Spanish up there... and we’ve got something for our trouble. He’ll
swing, I’ll lay you a------”
From far above us came a shout, then a confused noise of voices. The
moon began to get up; above the cutting the clouds had a fringe of
sudden silver. A horseman, cloaked and muffled to the ears, trotted
warily towards us.
“What’s up?” he hailed from a matter of ten yards. “What are you showing
that glim for? Anything wrong below?”
The runners kept silence; we heard the click of a pistol lock.
“In the King’s name,” Lillywhite shouted, “get off that nag and lend a
hand! We’ve a prisoner.”
The horseman gave an incredulous whistle, and then began to shout, his
voice winding mournfully uphill, “Hallo! Hallo--o--o.” An echo stole
back, “Hallo! Hallo--o--o”; then a number of voices. The horse stood,
drooping its head, and the man turned in his saddle. “Runners,” he
shouted, “Bow Street runners! Come along, come along, boys! We’ll roast
’em.... Runners! Runners!”
The sound of heavy horses at a jolting trot came to our ears.
“We’re in for it,” Lillywhite grunted. “D------n this county of Kent.”
Thorns never loosed his hold of my collar. At the steep of the hill the
men and horses came into sight against the white sky, a confused crowd
of ominous things.
“Turn that lanthorn off’n me,” the horseman said. “Don’t you see you
frighten my horse? Now, boys, get round them....”
The great horses formed an irregular half-circle round us; men descended
clumsily, like sacks of corn. The lanthorn was seized and flashed upon
us; there was a confused hubbub. I caught my own name.
“Yes, I’m Kemp... John Kemp,” I called. “I’m true blue.”
“Blue be hanged!” a voice shouted back. “What be you a-doing with
runners?”
The riot went on--forty or fifty voices. The runners were seized;
several hands caught at me. It was impossible to make myself heard; a
fist struck me on the cheek.
“Gibbet ’em,” somebody shrieked; “they hung my nephew! Gibbet ’em all
the three. Young Kemp’s mother’s a bad ’un. An informer he is. Up with
’em!”
I was pulled down on my knees, then thrust forward, and then left to
myself while they rushed to bonnet Lillywhite. I stumbled against a
great, quiet farm horse.
A continuous scuffling went on; an imperious voice cried: “Hold your
tongues, you fools! Hold your tongues!...” Someone else called: “Hear to
Jack Rangsley. Hear to him!”
There was a silence. I saw a hand light a torch at the lanthorn, and the
crowd of faces, the muddle of limbs, the horses’ heads, and the quiet
trees above, flickered into sight.
“Don’t let them hang me, Jack Rangsley,” I sobbed. “You know I’m no spy.
Don’t let ’em hang me, Jack.”
He rode his horse up to me, and caught me by the collar.
“Hold your tongue,” he said roughly. He began to make a set speech,
anathematizing runners. He moved to tie our feet, and hang us by our
finger-nails over the quarry edge.
A hubbub of assent and dissent went up; then the crowd became unanimous.
Rangsley slipped from his horse.
“Blindfold ’em, lads,” he cried, and turned me sharply round.
“Don’t struggle,” he whispered in my ear; his silk handkerchief came
cool across my eyelids. I felt hands fumbling with a knot at the back of
my head. “You’re all right,” he said again. The hubbub of voices ceased
suddenly. “Now, lads, bring ’em along.”
A voice I knew said their watchword, “Snuff and enough,” loudly, and
then, “What’s agate?”
Someone else answered, “It’s Rooksby, it’s Sir Ralph.”
The voice interrupted sharply, “No names, now. I don’t want hanging.”
The hand left my arm; there was a pause in the motion of the
procession. I caught a moment’s sound of whispering. Then a new voice
cried, “Strip the runners to the shirt. Strip ’em. That’s it.” I heard
some groans and a cry, “You won’t murder us.” Then a nasal drawl, “We
will sure--_ly_.” Someone else, Rangsley, I think, called, “Bring ’em
along--this way now.”
After a period of turmoil we seemed to come out of the crowd upon a very
rough, descending path; Rangsley had called out, “Now, then, the rest of
you be off; we’ve got enough here”; and the hoofs of heavy horses
sounded again. Then we came to a halt, and Rangsley called sharply from
close to me:
“Now, you runners--and you, John Kemp--here you be on the brink of
eternity, above the old quarry. There’s a sheer drop of a hundred feet.
We’ll tie your legs and hang you by your fingers. If you hang long
enough, you’ll have time to say your prayers. Look alive, lads!”
The voice of one of the runners began to shout, “You’ll swing for
this--you------”
As for me I was in a dream. “Jack,” I said, “Jack, you won’t----”
“Oh, that’s all right,” the voice said in a whisper. “Mum, now! It’s all
_right_.”
It withdrew itself a little from my ear and called, “‘Now then, ready
with them. When I say three....”
I heard groans and curses, and began to shout for help. My voice came
back in an echo, despairingly. Suddenly I was dragged backward, and the
bandage pulled from my eyes,
“Come along,” Rangsley said, leading me gently enough to the road, which
was five steps behind. “It’s all a joke,” he snarled. “A pretty bad one
for those catchpolls. Hear ’em groan. The drop’s not two feet.”
We made a few paces down the road; the pitiful voices of the runners
crying for help came plainly to my ears.
“You--they--aren’t murdering them?” I asked.
“No, no,” he answered. “Can’t afford to. Wish we could; but they’d make
it too hot for us.”
We began to descend the hill. From the quarry a voice shrieked:
“Help--help--for the love of God--I can’t....”
There was a grunt and the sound of a fall; then a precisely similar
sequence of sounds.
“That’ll teach ’em,” Rangsley said ferociously. “Come along--they’ve
only rolled down a bank. They weren’t over the quarry. It’s all right. I
swear it is.”
And, as a matter of fact, that was the smugglers’ ferocious idea of
humour. They would hang any undesirable man, like these runners, whom it
would make too great a stir to murder outright, over the edge of a low
bank, and swear to him that he was clawing the brink of Shakespeare’s
Cliff or any other hundred-foot drop. The wretched creatures suffered
all the tortures of death before they let go, and, as a rule, they never
returned to our parts.