THE HUT IN THE GORSE-BUSHES
The man was on us in three strides, with his hand on our collars,
frightening us out of any power to struggle. "You young fools," he
said, not unkindly. "Why couldn't you stop when I waved to you?"
We did not answer, nor did he seem to expect us to answer. He just
swung us round with our faces from the house, and hurried us, at a
smart run, down the road. "Don't you stir a muscle," he added as he
ran. "I'm not going to eat you, unless you drive me to it."
At the lower end of the wood, nearly half a mile from our home, the
scrub was very thick. It seemed to be a tangle of briars, too thick
for hounds--too thick, almost, for rabbits. Hugh and I had never been
in that part of the wood before, but our guide evidently knew it well,
for he never hesitated. He swung us on, panting as we were, along the
clearer parts, till we came to a part where our way seemed stopped by
gorse-bushes. They rose up, thick and dark, right in front of us. Our
guide stopped and told us to look down. Among the gnarled gorse-stems
there seemed to be a passage or "run" made by some beast, fox or
badger, going to and from his lair.
"Down you go," said our guide. "There's lots of room when you
try. Imagine you're a rabbit."
We saw that it was useless to say No; and, besides, by this time we
had lost most of our terror. I dropped on to my knees at once, and
began to squirm through the passage. Hugh followed me, and the strange
man followed after Hugh. It was not really difficult, except just at
the beginning, where the stems were close together. When I had
wriggled for a couple of yards, the bushes seemed to open out to
either side. It was prickly work, but I am sure that we both felt the
romance of it, forgetting our fear before we reached the heart of the
clump.
In the heart of the clump the gorse-bushes had been cut away, and
piled up in a sort of wall about a small central square some five or
six yards across. In the middle of the square some one had dug a
shallow hollow, filling rather more than half of the open space. The
hollow was about eighteen inches deep, and roughly paved with shingle
from the beach, well stamped down into the clay. It had then been
neatly wattled over into a sort of trim hut, like the huts the
salmon-fishers used to build near Kings-bridge. The wattling was made
fairly waterproof by masses of gorse and bracken driven in among the
boughs. It was one of the most perfect hiding-places you could
imagine. It could not be seen from any point, save from high up in one
of the trees surrounding the thicket. A regiment might have beaten the
wood pretty thoroughly, and yet have failed to find it. The gorse was
so thick in all the outer part of the clump that dogs would leave its
depths un-searched. Yet, lying there in the shelter one could hear the
splashing babble of the brook only fifty yards away, and the singing
of a girl at the mill a little further up the stream.
The man told us to get inside the shelter, which we did. Inside it was
rather dark, but the man lit a lantern which hung from the roof, and
kindled a fire in a little fireplace. This fireplace was covered with
turf, so that the smoke should not rise up in a column. We saw that
the floor of the hut was heaped with bracken, and there were tarpaulin
boat-rugs piled in one corner, as though for bedding.
The man picked up a couple of rugs and told us to wrap ourselves in
them. "You'll be cold if you don't wrap up," he said.
As he tucked the rugs about us I noticed that the ring-finger of his
left hand was tattooed with three blue rings. I remembered what Mrs
Cottier had said about the man who had lighted her fire in the barn,
so I stared at him hard, trying to fix his features on my memory. He
was a well-made, active-looking man, with great arms and shoulders.
He was evidently a sailor: one could tell that by the way of his walk,
by the way in which his arms swung, by the way in which his head was
set upon his body. What made him remarkable was the peculiar dancing
brightness of his eyes; they gave his face, at odd moments, the look
of a fiend; then that look would go, and he would look like a
mischievous, merry boy; but more generally he would look fierce and
resolute. Then his straight mouth would set, his eyes puckered in as
though he were looking out to windward, the scar upon his cheek
twitched and turned red, and he looked most wrathful and terrible.
"Well, mister," the man said to me, "would you know me again, in case
you saw me?"
"Yes," I said, "I should know you anywhere."
"Would you," he said, grinning. "Well, I was always the beauty of the
bunch." He bit off a piece of plug tobacco and began to chew
it. By-and-by he turned to Hugh to ask if he chewed tobacco. Hugh
answered "No," laughing.
"Ah," said the man, "don't you learn. That's my advice. It's not easy
to stop, once you begin."
He lay back in his corner, and seemed to pass into a sort of
day-dream. Presently he looked up at us again, and asked us if we knew
why we were there. We said that we did not.
"Well," he said, "it's like this. Last night you" (here he gave me a
nudge with his foot) "you young gentleman that looks so smart, you
went for a ride late at night, in the snow and all. See what came of
it. There was Others out for a ride last night, quite a lot of
'em. Others that the law would be glad to know of, with men so scarce
for the King's navy. Well, to-day the beaks are out trying to find
them other ones. There's a power of redcoats come here, besides the
preventives, and there they go, clackity clank, all swords and horses,
asking at every house."
"What do they ask," said Hugh.
"They ask a lot of things," said the man. "'Where was you last night?'
That's one question. 'What time did you come in last night?' That's
another. 'Let's have a look at your horse; he looks as though he'd bin
out in the snow last night.' Lots of things they ask, and if they got
a hold of you, young master, why, you might have noticed things last
night, and perhaps they might pump what you noticed out of you. So
some one thinks you had best be out of the road when they come."
"Who is some one?" I asked.
"Just some one," he answered. "Some one who gets more money than I
get." His mouth drew into a hard and cruel line; he lapsed into his
day-dream, still chewing his plug of tobacco. "Some one," he added,
"who don't like questions, and don't like to be talked about too
much."
He was silent for a minute or two, while Hugh and I looked at each
other.
"Oh, I'm not going to keep you long," said the man. "Them redcoats'll
have done asking questions about here before your dinner time. Then
they'll ride on, and a good riddance. Your lady will know how to
answer them all right. But till they're gone, why, here you'll
stay. So let's be comp'ny. What's your name, young master?" He gave
Hugh a dig in the ribs with his boot.
"Hugh," he answered.
"Hugh," said the man: "Hugh! You won't never come to much, you
won't. What's _your_ name?" He nudged me in the same way.
"Jim," I said.
"Ah! Jim, Jim," he repeated. "I've known a many Jims. Some were good
in their way, too." He seemed to shrink into himself suddenly--I can't
explain it--but he seemed to shrink, like a cat crouched to spring,
and his eyes burned and danced; they seemed to look right into me,
horribly gleaming, till the whole man became, as it were, just two
bright spots of eyes--one saw nothing else.
"Ah," he said, after a long, cruel glare at me, "this is the first
time Jim and I ever met. The first time. We shall be great friends, we
shall. We shall be better acquainted, you and I. I wouldn't wonder if
I didn't make a man of you, one time or another. Give me your hand,
Jim."
I gave him my hand; he looked at it under the lantern; he traced one
or two of the lines with his blackened finger-nails, muttering some
words in a strange language, which somehow made my flesh creep. He
repeated the words: "Orel. Orel. Adartha Cay." Then he glanced at the
other hand, still muttering, and made a sort of mark with his fingers
on my forehead. Hugh told me afterwards that he seemed to trace a kind
of zigzag on my left temple. All the time he was muttering he seemed
to be half-conscious, almost in a trance, or as if he were mad: he
frightened us dreadfully. After he had made the mark upon my brow he
came to himself again.
"They will see it," he muttered. "It'll be bright enough. The
mark. It'll shine. They'll know when they see it. It is very good. A
very good sign: it burns in the dark. They'll know it over there in
the night." Then he went on mumbling to himself, but so brokenly that
we could catch only a few words here and there--"black and red,
knowledge and beauty; red and black, pleasure and strength. What do
the cards say?"
He opened his thick sea-coat, and took out a little packet of cards
from an oilskin case. He dealt them out, first of all, in a circle
containing two smaller circles; then in a curious sort of five-pointed
star; lastly, in a square with a circle cutting off the
corners. "Queer, queer," he said, grinning, as he swept the cards up
and returned them to his pocket. "You and I will know a power of queer
times together, Jim."
He brightened up after that, as though something had pleased him very
much. He looked very nice when he looked pleased, in spite of his eyes
and in spite of the gipsy darkness of his skin. "Here," he said,
"let's be company. D'ye know any knots, you two?"
No; neither of us knew any knots except the ordinary overhand and
granny knots.
"Well, I'll show you," he said. "It'll come in useful some day. Always
learn what you can, that's what I say, because it'll come in useful.
That's what the Irishman said. Always learn what you can. You never
know; that's the beauty of it."
He searched in his pockets till he found a small hank of spun-yarn,
from which he cut a piece about a yard long. "See here," he said.
"Now, I'll teach you. It's quite easy, if you only pay attention. Now,
how would you tie a knot if you was doing up a parcel?"
We both tried, and both made granny knots, with the ends sticking out
at right angles to the rest of the yarn.
"Wrong," he said. "Those are grannies. They would jam so that you'd
never untie 'em, besides being ugly. There's wrong ways even in doing
up a string. See here." He rapidly twisted the ends together into a
reef-knot. "There's strength and beauty together," he said. "Look how
neat it is, the ends tidy along the standing part, all so neat as
pie. Besides, it'd never jam. Watch how I do it, and then try it for
yourself."
Very soon we had both mastered the reef-knot, and had tried our hand
at others--the bowline, the figure of eight, the Carrick-bend, and the
old swab-hitch. He was very patient with us. He told us exactly how
each knot would be used at sea, and when, and why, and what the
officers would say, and how things would look on deck while they were
in the doing. The time passed pleasantly and quickly; we felt like
jolly robbers in a cave. It was like being the hero of a story-book to
sit there with that rough man waiting till the troops had gone. It was
not very cold with the fire and the boat-rugs. We were heartily sorry
when the man rose to his feet, with the remark that he must see if the
coast were clear. Before he left the hut he glared down at us. "Look
here," he said, "don't you try to go till I give the word. But there,
we're friends; no need to speak rough to friends. I'll be back in a
minute."
The strange man passed out of the hut and along the rabbit-run to the
edge of the gorse. We heard his feet crunch upon the snow beyond,
rustling the leaves underneath it; and then it was very, very quiet
again, though once, in the stillness, we heard a cock pheasant
calling. Another pheasant answered him from somewhere above at the
upper part of the wood, and it occurred to both of us that the
pheasants were the night-riders, making their private signals.
"We've had a famous adventure to tell Mother," said Hugh.
"Yes," I said; "but we had better be careful not to tell anybody
else. I wonder what they do here in this hut; I suppose they hide
their things here till it's safe to take them away."
"Where do they take them?" asked Hugh.
"Away into Dartmoor," I said. "And there there are wonderful places,
so old Evans the postboy told me."
"What sort of places?" asked Hugh.
"Oh, caves covered over with gorse and fern, and old copper and tin
mines, which were worked by the ancient Britons. They go under the
ground for miles, so old Evans told me, with passages, and steps up
and down, and great big rooms cut in the rock. And then there are bogs
where you can sink things till it's quite safe to take them up. The
bog-water keeps them quite sound; it doesn't rot them like ordinary
water. Sometimes men fall into the bogs, and the marsh-mud closes over
them. That's the sort of place Dartmoor is."
Hugh was very much interested in all this, but he was a quiet boy, not
fond of talking. "Yes," he said; "but where do the things go
afterwards--who takes them?"
"Nobody knows, so old Evans said," I answered; "but they go, they get
taken. People come at night and carry them to the towns, little by
little, and from the market towns, they get to the cities, no one
knows how. I dare say this hut has been full of things--valuable lace
and silk, and all sorts of wines and spirits--waiting for some one to
carry them into the moor."
"Hush!" said Hugh; "there's some one calling--it's Mother."
Outside the gorse-clump, at some little distance from us, we heard Mrs
Cottier and my aunt calling "Hugh!" and "Jim!" repeatedly. We lay very
still wondering what they would think, and hoping that they would make
no search for us. They could have tracked us in the snow quite easily,
but we knew very well they would never think of it, for they were both
shortsighted and ignorant of what the Red Indians do when they go
tracking. To our surprise their voices came nearer and nearer, till
they were at the edge of the clump, but on the side opposite to that
in which the rabbit-run opened. I whispered to Hugh to be quiet as
they stopped to call us. They lingered for several minutes, calling
every now and then, and talking to each other in between whiles. We
could hear every word of their conversation.
"It's very curious," said my aunt. "Where-ever can they have got to?
How provoking boys are!"
"It doesn't really matter," said Mims; "the officer has gone, and the
boy would only have been scared by all his questions. He might have
frightened the boy out of his wits. I wonder where the young monkeys
have got to. They were going to build snow-huts, like the Indians.
Perhaps they're hiding in one now."
We were, had she only known it; Hugh and I grinned at each
other. Suddenly my aunt spoke again with a curious inflection in her
voice.
"How funny," she exclaimed.
"What is it?" asked Mrs Cottier.
"I'm almost sure I smell something burning," said my aunt "I'm sure I
do. Don't you?"
There was a pause of a few seconds while the two ladies sniffed the
air.
"Yes," said Mrs Cottier, "there is something burning. It seems to come
from that gorse there."
"Funny," said my aunt. "I suppose some one has lighted a fire up in
the wood and the smoke is blowing down on us. Well, we'll go in to
dinner; it's no good staying here catching our death looking for two
mad things. I suppose you didn't hear how Mrs Burns is, yesterday?"
The two ladies passed away from the clump towards the orchard, talking
of the affairs of the neighbourhood. A few minutes after they had
gone, a cock pheasant called softly a few yards from us, then the
gorse-stems shook, and our friend appeared at the hut door.
"They're gone, all right," he said; "swords, and redcoats and
pipe-clay--they're gone. And a good riddance too! I should have been
back before, only your ladies were talking, looking for you, so I had
to wait till they were gone. I expect you'll want your dinner, sitting
here so long? Well, cut and get it."
He slung the boat-rugs into a corner, blew out the lantern, and
dropped a handful of snow on to the fire. "Cut," he continued. "You
can go. Get out of this. Run and get your dinners." We went with him
out of the hut into the square. "See here," he continued, "don't you
go coming here. You don't know of this place--see? Don't you show your
little tracks in this part of the wood; this is a private house, this
is--trespassers will be prosecuted. Now run along and thank 'ee for
your company."
As Hugh began to squirm along the passage, I turned and shook hands
with the man. I thought it would be the polite thing to do to say
good-bye properly. "Will you tell me your name?" I asked.
"Haven't got a name," he answered gruffly. "None of your business if I
had." He saw that I was hurt by his rudeness, for his face changed:
"I'll tell you," he added quickly; "but don't you say it about
here. Gorsuch is my name--Marah Gorsuch."
"Marah," I said. "What a funny name!"
"Is it?" he said grimly: "It means bitter--bitter water, and I'm
bitter on the tongue, as you may find. Now cut."
"One thing more, Mr Gorsuch," I said, "be careful of your fires. They
can smell them outside when the wind blows down from the wood."
"Fires!" he exclaimed; "I don't light fires here except I've little
bleating schoolboys to tea. Cut and get your porridge. Here," he
called, as I went down on my hands and knees, "here's a keepsake for
you."
He tossed me a little ornament of twisted silver wire woven into the
form of a double diamond knot, probably by the man himself.
"Thank you, Mr Gorsuch," I said.
"Oh, don't thank me," he answered rudely: "I'm tired of being
thanked. Now cut."
I wriggled through the clump after Hugh, then we ran home together
through the wood, just as the dinner-bell was ringing for the second
time.
Mrs Cottier asked us if we had not heard her calling.
"Yes, Mims," I said, "we did hear; but we were hidden in a secret
house; we wondered if you would find us--we were close to you some of
the time."
My aunt said Something about "giving a lot of trouble" and "being very
thoughtless for others"; but we had heard similar lectures many times
before and did not mind them much. After dinner I took Mims aside and
told her everything; she laughed a little, though I could see that she
was uneasy about Hugh.
"I wouldn't mention it to any one," she said. "It would be safer
not. But, oh, Jim, here we are, all three of us, in league with the
lawbreakers. The soldiers were here this morning asking all sorts of
questions, and they'd two men prisoners with them, taken at Tor Cross
on suspicion; they're to be sent to Exeter till the Assizes. I'm
afraid it will go hard with them; I dare say they'll be sent abroad,
poor fellows. Every house is being searched for last night's work: it
seems they surprised the coastguards at the Cross and tied them up in
their barracks, before they landed their goods, and now the whole
country is being searched by troops. And here are we three innocents,"
she went on, smiling, drawing us both to her, "all conspiring against
the King's peace--I expect we shall all be transported. Well, I shall
be transported, but you'd have to serve in the Navy. So now we won't
talk about it any more; I've had enough smuggling for one day. Let's
go out and build a real snow-house, and then Jim will be a Red Indian
and we will have a fight with bows and arrows."