IN THE VALLEY
We turned down the valley, along the coast-track, splashing through
the little stream that makes it so boggy by the gate, and soon we were
on the coach-road galloping along the straight two miles towards Tor
Cross.
Our horses were beginning to give way, for we had done four miles at
good speed, and now the preventives began to gain upon us. Looking
back as we galloped we could see them on the straight road, about two
hundred yards away. Every time we looked back they seemed to be
nearer, and at last Marah leant across and told me to keep low in my
saddle, as he thought they were going to fire on us. A carbine shot
cracked behind us, and I heard the "zip" of the bullet over me.
A man ran out suddenly from one of the furze-bushes by the road, and a
voice cried, "Stop them, boys!" The road seemed suddenly full of
people, who snatched at our reins, and hit us with sticks. I got a
shrewd blow over the knee, and I heard Marah say something as he sent
one man spinning to the ground. "Crack, crack!" went the carbines
behind us. Some one had hold of my horse's reins, shouting, "I've got
_you_, anyway!" Then Marah fired a pistol--it all happened in a
second--the bullet missed, but the flash scorched my horse's nose; the
horse reared, and knocked the man down, and then we were clear, and
rattling along to Tor Cross.
Looking back, we saw one or two men getting up from the road, and then
half-a-dozen guns and pistols flashed, and Marah's horse screamed and
staggered. There was a quarter of a mile to go to Tor Cross, and that
quarter-mile was done at such a speed as I have never seen since.
Marah's horse took the bit in his teeth, and something of his terror
was in our horses too.
In a moment, as it seemed, we were past the houses, and over the rocks
by the brook-mouth; and there, with a groan, Marah's horse came
down. Marah was evidently expecting it, for he had hold of my rein at
the time, and as his horse fell he cleared the body. "Get down, Jim,"
he said. "We're done. The horses are cooked. They have had six miles;
another mile would kill them. Poor beast's heart's burst. Down with
you." He lifted me off the saddle, and lashed the two living horses
over the quarters with a strip of seaweed. He patted the dead horse,
with a "Poor boy," and dragged me down behind one of the black rocks,
which crop up there above the shingle.
The two horses bolted off along the strand, scattering the pebbles,
and then, while the clash of their hoofs was still loud upon the
stones, the preventives came pounding up, their horses all badly blown
and much distressed. Their leader was Captain Barmoor. I knew him by
his voice.
"Here's a dead horse!" he cried. "Sergeant, we have one of their
horses. Get down and see if there's any contraband upon him. After
them, you others. We shall get them now. Ride on, I tell you! What are
you pulling up for?"
The other preventives crashed on over the shingle. Captain Barmoor and
the sergeant remained by the dead horse. Marah and I lay close under
the rock, hardly daring to breathe, and wondering very much whether we
made any visible mark to the tall man on his horse. Shots rang out
from the preventives' carbines, and the gallopers made a great clash
upon the stones. We heard the sergeant's saddle creak, only a few
yards away, and then his boots crunched on the beach as he walked up
to the dead horse.
"No. There be no tubs here, sir," he said, after a short
examination. "Her be dead enough. Stone dead, sir. There's an empty
pistol-case, master."
"Oh," said Captain Barmoor. "Any saddlebag, or anything of that kind?"
The man fumbled about in the gear. "No, there was nothing of that
kind--nothing at all."
"Bring on the saddle," said the captain. "There may be papers stitched
in it." We heard the sergeant unbuckling the girth. "By the way," said
the captain, "you're sure the third horse was led?"
"Yes," said the sergeant. "Two and a led horse there was, sir."
"H'm," said the captain. "I wonder if they have dismounted. They might
have. Look about among the rocks there."
I saw Marah's right hand raise his horse-pistol, as the sergeant
stepped nearer. In another moment he must have seen us. If he had even
looked down, he could not have failed to see us: but he stood within
six feet of us, looking all round him--looking anywhere but at his
feet. Then he walked away from us, and looked at the rocks near the
brook.
"D'ye see them?" snapped the captain.
"No, sir. Nothin' of 'em. They ben't about here, sir. I think they've
ridden on. Shall I look in the furze there, sir, afore we go?"
"No," said the captain. "Well, yes. Just take a squint through it."
But as the sergeant waddled uneasily in his sea-boots across the
shingle, the carbines of the preventives cracked out in a volley about
a quarter of a mile away. A shot or two followed the volley.
"A shotgun that last, sir," said the sergeant.
"Yes," said the captain. "Come along. There's another. Come, mount,
man. They're engaged."
We heard the sergeant's horse squirming about as the sergeant tried to
mount, and then the two galloped off. Voices sounded close beside us,
and feet moved upon the sand. "Still!" growled Marah in my ear. Some
one cried out, "Further on. They're fighting further on. Hurry up, and
we shall see it."
About a dozen Tor Cross men were hurrying up, in the chance of seeing
a skirmish. The wife of one of them--old Mrs. Rivers--followed after
them, calling to her man to come back. "I'll give it to 'ee, if 'ee
don't come back. Come back, I tell 'ee." They passed on rapidly,
pursued by the angry woman, while more shots banged and cracked
further and further along the shore.
We waited till they passed out of hearing, and then Marah got
up. "Come on, son," he said. "We must be going. Lucky your teeth
didn't chatter, or they'd have heard us."
"I wish they had heard us," I cried, hotly. "Then I'd have gone home
to-night. Let me go, Marah. Let me go home."
"Next trip, Jim," he said kindly. "Not this. I want you to learn about
life. You will get mewed up with them ladies else, and then you will
never do anything."
"Ah," I said. "But if you don't let me go I'll scream. Now then. I'll
scream."
"Scream away, son," said Marah, calmly. "There's not many to hear
you. But you'll not get home after what you have seen to-night. Come
on, now."
He took me by the collar, and walked me swiftly to a little cove,
where one or two of the Tor Cross fishers kept their boats. I heard a
gun or two away in the distance, and then a great clatter of shingle,
as the coastguards' horses trotted back towards us, with the led horse
between two of them, as the prize of the night. They did not hear us,
and could not see us, and Marah took good care not to let me cry out
to them. He just turned my face up to his, and muttered, "You just try
it. You try it, son, and I'll hold you in the sea till you choke."
The wind was blowing from the direction of the coastguards towards us,
and even if I had cried out, perhaps, they would never have heard
me. You may think me a great coward to have given in in this way; but
few boys of my age would have made much outcry against a man like
Marah. He made the heart die within you; and to me, cold and wet from
my ducking, terrified of capture in spite of my innocence (for I was
not at all sure that the smugglers would not swear that I had joined
them, and had helped them in their fights and escapades), the outlook
seemed so hopeless and full of misery that I could do nothing. My one
little moment of mutiny was gone, my one little opportunity was lost.
Had I made a dash for it--But it is useless to think in that way.
Marah got into the one boat which floated in the little artificial
creek, and thrust me down into the stern sheets. Then he shoved her
off with a stretcher (the oars had been carried to the fisher's house,
there were none in the boat), and as soon as we were clear of the
rocks, in the rather choppy sea, he stepped the stretcher in the
mast-crutch as a mast, and hoisted his coat as a sail. He made rough
sheets by tying a few yards of spun-yarn to the coat-skirts, and then,
shipping the rudder, he bore away before the wind towards the cave by
Black Pool.
We had not gone far (certainly not fifty yards), when we saw the
horses of the coastguards galloping down to the sea, one of the horses
shying at the whiteness of the breaking water.
A voice hailed us. "Boat ahoy!" it shouted; "what are you doing in the
boat there?"
And then all the horsemen drew up in a clump among the rocks.
"Us be drifting, master," shouted Marah, speaking in the broad dialect
of the Devon men; "us be drifting."
"Come in till I have a look at you," cried the voice again. "Row in to
the rocks here."
"Us a-got no o-ars," shouted Marah, letting the boat slip on. "Lie
down, son," he said; "they will fire in another minute."
Indeed, we heard the ramrods in the carbines and the loud click of the
gun-cocks.
"Boat ahoy!" cried the voice again. "Row in at once! D'ye hear? Row in
at once, or I shall fire on you."
Marah did not answer.
"Present arms!" cried the voice again after a pause; and at that Marah
bowed down in the stern sheets under the gunwale.
"Fire!" said the voice; and a volley ripped up the sea all round us,
knocking off splinters from the plank and flattening out against the
transom.
"Keep down, Jim; you're all right," said Marah. "We will be out of
range in another minute."
Bang! came a second volley, and then single guns cracked and banged at
intervals as we drew away.
For the next half-hour we were just within extreme range of the
carbines and musketoons. During that half-hour we were slowly slipping
by the long two miles of Slapton sands. We could not go fast, for our
only sail was a coat, and, though the wind was pretty fresh, the set
of the tide was against us. So for half an hour we crouched below that
rowboat's gunwale, just peeping up now and then to see the white line
of the breakers on the sand, and beyond that the black outlines of the
horsemen, who slowly followed us, firing steadily, but with no very
clear view of what they fired at. I thought that the two miles would
never end. Sometimes the guns would stop for a minute, and I would
think, "Ah! now we are out of range," or, "Now they have given us up."
And then, in another second, another volley would rattle at us, and
perhaps a bullet would go whining overhead, or a heavy chewed slug
would come "plob" into the boat's side within six inches of me.
Marah didn't seem to mind their firing. He was too pleased at having
led the preventives away from the main body of the night-riders to
mind a few bullets. "Ah, Jim," he said, "there's three thousand pounds
in lace, brandy, and tobacco gone to Dartmoor this night. And all them
redcoat fellers got was a dead horse and a horse with a water-breaker
on him. And the dead horse was their own, _and_ the one they
took. I stole 'em out of the barrack stables myself."
"But horse-stealing is a capital offence," I cried. "They could hang
you."
"Yes," he said; "so they would if they could." Bang! came another
volley of bullets all round us. "They'd shoot us, too, if they could,
so far as that goes; but so far, they haven't been able. Never cross
any rivers till you come to the water, Jim. Let that be a lesson to
you."
I have often thought of it since as sound advice, and I have always
tried to act upon it; but at the time it didn't give much comfort.
At the end of half an hour we were clear of Slapton sands, and coming
near to Strete, and here even Marah began to be uneasy. He was
watching the horsemen on the beach very narrowly, for as soon as they
had passed the Lea they had stopped firing on us, and had gone at a
gallop to the beach boathouse to get out a boat.
"What are they doing, Marah?" I asked.
"Getting out a boat to come after us," he answered. "Silly fools! If
they'd done that at once they'd have got us. They may do it now.
There goes the boat."
We heard the cries of the men as the boat ground over the
shingle. Then we heard shouts and cries, and saw a light in the
boathouse.
"Looking for oars and sails," said Marah, "and there are none. Good,
there are none."
Happily for us, there were none. But we heard a couple of horses go
clattering up the road to O'Farrell's cottage to get them.
"We shall get away now," said Marah.
In a few minutes we were out of sight of the beach. Then one of the
strange coast currents caught us, and swept us along finely for a few
minutes. Soon our boat was in the cave, snugly lashed to the
ring-bolts, and Marah had lifted me up the stairs to the room where a
few smugglers lay in their hammocks, sleeping heavily. Marah made me
drink something and eat some pigeon pie; and then, stripping my
clothes from me, he rubbed me down with a blanket, wrapped me in a
pile of blankets, and laid me to sleep in a corner on an old sail.