_Under the salt sea’s foam it lay,
At the outermost point of a rocky bay,
A sandy, tide-pooly, cliff-bound cove
With a red-roofed fishing village above
Of irregular cottages perched up high
Amid pale yellow poppies next to the sky.
Shells, and pebbles, and wrack below,
And shrimpers shrimping all in a row,
Tawny sails and tarry boats,
Dark-brown nets and old cork floats,
Nasty smells at the nicest spots,
Blue-jersey’d sailors, and lobster pots._
J. H. EWING.
A log fire burnt clearly on the wide stone hearth of the “Mariner’s
Rest.” Two men sat smoking. A narrow table held their pots of beer,
and they had a dingy pack of cards between them. One of these men
had lost the third finger of his right hand, and the sinews having
contracted, the maimed hand had the rigidity of a claw. This man was
alert in expression, his eyes restless. The receding chin suggested
the rodent type, and his ears set back on the narrow head completed
it.
Opposite him sat Daniel Maidment, and his was an open face, with
broad beard, honey-coloured. He wore a blue flannel shirt, falling
open at the collar, and a red belt. His hands were brown as mahogany,
and he wore gold rings in his ears.
Over these two men stood Master Crumblejohn, the landlord, and
watched the game.
“Dan hasn’t the luck to-night he had yesterday,” said the rat-faced
man, in the tone of voice that whines at you, “Dan hasn’t the luck.
Not but what you play very well, Dan, my boy--not but what you play
re-markably.”
Daniel rose from the table, pushing a small pile of silver and copper
coins towards his companion in the game.
“You’ve got the luck, Rat. I believe it’s that monkey’s paw of yours
that gets the cards witched the way you want them,” and he raised his
tankard.
Crumblejohn watched him as he stood draining it, and in the moment
that Dan’s face was covered, the landlord looked at the rat-faced
man. Some intelligence passed between them. A message slid from the
lowered lid of old Crumblejohn to the shifty, watery eyes of the man
called Rat. Daniel replaced the tankard, and saying good-night to his
companions, left the room.
Crumblejohn rose and barred the shutters and locked the outer door,
then closing the door of communication between the inner parlour and
the kitchen, he sat down again to smoke.
“We’ve got a big job on hand, and it’s likely to miscarry if we can’t
get a message over. How do you think Dan’l is working out in the
matter?” he asked of his companion.
“He won’t come in,” Rat replied in his whingeing voice. “And if you
think you’ll get Dan’l into it you’re much mistaken, my friend;
what’s more, we must keep an eye on Dan’l.”
“Keep an eye on him?” said Crumblejohn, “a more guileless crittur you
couldn’t find, to my thinking. Keep our eye on Dan’l?” he repeated.
“What d’you think he’s hanging about here for, living as he does two
villages off?” said the other. “D’you think he comes here for the
hair and hexercise? No, he’s deeper than what you take him for, is
Dan’l--you take my word for it. What news of the Lambkin, eh?”
“Nothing but this,” answered Crumblejohn, stretching a bit of rag
upon the table. Both men leaned closely over it, deciphering with
difficulty the ill-written message it contained:--
“_Fresh lot to be shipped 18. If change of place, send lad._”
“When did you get this?” asked Rat.
“It came by pigeon late yesterday,” answered the landlord; “and it
must have been blown out of the track, for look at the date of it.
The excisemen are looking about pretty closely, but there’s nothing
for their finding now. But here’s to-day the 14th, and to-morrow the
Captain’s wedding, and the fresh stuff coming over, unless we stop
it, and every hole and corner on the watch.”
“It isn’t cards that’s Dan’l’s only game, Crumblejohn,” said the
rat-faced man. “We must send the lad over--but what about the boat?”
“On the other side with Lambkin,” said the landlord.
“Pigeons?”
“Not safe enough. I’ll send a pigeon, but I must send the lad too,
for they’re on the track of this here business, and unless we can
beach it by Knapper’s Head, this matter must stand over for the time.
Now, if we was going to get Dan’l into it, as I thought we should,
we could have got his boat for the business. Lord, how handy now
that boat would ha’ come in. But I gathered you hadn’t seen your
opportoonity this evening; he didn’t give no manner o’ sign?”
“Give no manner o’ sign, do you put it? Why the man’s working for
the excisemen, and if you’d half an eye you’d have guessed it, but
leastways you was mum. No, don’t you put no trust in Dan’l for our
little trade, master; and what’s more, there mustn’t be any stuff in
the cave till he’s off the track, for he knows this coast as he knows
his own pocket, and if he’s paid for it, he’ll make it his business
to find out even more than he knows.”
“Then how’s the boy to go?” mumbled old Crumblejohn. He disliked his
friend’s superior cunning, yet he was sufficiently harassed to be
dependent on it now. “How’s the boy to go, I ask yer? Captain Bluett
don’t want no cabin-boy, for I asked it ov’ him; the places on the
vessel is all filled.”
“Oliver shall go all the same, captain or no captain,” whined the
rat-faced; “and you may be thankful as I’ve got my full wits if I
haven’t got my full fingers. The captain’s lady goes with him?”
“So they say. Married here to-morrow, and no end of a business, and
straight off to France with her husband in his ship.”
“Where’s she bound?”
“Boulogne.” (Only the landlord called it Boo-lone.)
“Boo-lone?” repeated the rat-faced, “the very place where Lambkin’s
waiting for a word, and you stand there asking me how we’re to get
the lad over, with a vessel making for the very port? No, no,” he
murmured, looking into the fire, “you ’urt me, Crumblejohn, you ’urt
me when you go on like that. You can be stoopid for a whin, and you
can be stoopid for a wager, but it ain’t natterel to be quite so
stoopid as you are; it ain’t natterel, and it ain’t safe.”
“Well, hang it all, a snivelling, whining ragpicker as may be
thankful to be sitting by a fireside in a comferable house, comes and
talks to me about stoopid”--Crumblejohn’s wrath broke suddenly into
an angry incoherency of words--“comes talking to me about stoopid,
I say, well, sir, stoopid yerself, sir, if yer can’t keep a civil
tongue in yer head, talking a matter over comferably with a friend,
stoopid yerself, Ratface, and be d--d to yer.”
The man with the maimed hand sat smoking while Crumblejohn spluttered
and swore.
He could afford to sit there till the anger passed over, for by
reason of his superior cunning, he held the landlord in the palm
of his hand; and he knew Crumblejohn knew this. So he sat quietly
waiting, his crafty eyes upon the fire while he smoked.
After a bit Crumblejohn became quieter, and asked sarcastically if
Rat had got any suggestion since he was so thunderin’ clever, and
if so, would he mind spitting it out as time was getting on, and if
there was going to be any getting the lad on to the captain’s ship
artful-like, they’d best be preparing the way.
“Now you show yourself to be the sensible man wot I’ve ever took you
for,” replied the rat-faced, “and here’s my little plan according.
To-morrow, being the wedding-day, you begs leave to have a word with
the bride. You suggests a barrel of apples for her acceptance with
your werry best compliments, and if you make so bold as to ask, does
the lady stay at Boo-lone, or does she travel? Mistress Bluett,
as is to be, answers according, and you congratulates her on her
opportoonities of a seafaring life.
“You says you have a favour to ask her, and you knows of a poor
sail-maker at Boo-lone; and might you make so bold as to beg Mrs.
Bluett to let a sack of sail-yarn, odd pieces and leavings, in short,
a package o’ mixed goods, go on board the captain’s vessel, and be
left at Boo-lone? You’d take it werry pleasant of her if she’d be
agreeable, and you tip her a little tale of the hunchback and his
mother, and the hard life they have of it, and how you knows of ’em
through being so werry particular to recognise the King’s laws in
the matter of liquor, your sister’s husband being in the trade. One
thing and another, you’ll have this bale o’ goods all ready, and
your speech about it said, just about the moment of starting, when
folks’ thoughts are swinging like bees in a wind, and they’re already
more in the place they’re going to, than where they’re standing at
the time. And what with the good-byes and the God-bless-yous, and
the village crowding down to see them off, and you or me carrying
the package, and the lad all the time inside it, as tight as a
cauliflower, and thanks to you and starvation weighing about half his
size, and so on to the boat with a jack-knife in his pocket to cut
his way out again, according to instructions and stripes.”
The whining voice ceased, and the two men sat in silence. Then
Crumblejohn moved uneasily in his chair.
“A power o’ talking, Rat,” he said, “you’ve allowed me, a power of
talking.”
“And it’s talking you’ve got to do this time, Crumblejohn; don’t you
make any mistake. You’ve got this lot out of the cave all right, and
you’ve got the vaults filled up in time before the company. But if we
have another run of goods before we get this lot up-country, there’ll
be more trouble than you nor me can do away with. I haven’t read
Dan’l’s letters in his coat pocket for nothing, when he was washing
himself at the pump.”
Crumblejohn enjoyed this immensely.
“Ye don’t tell me he carries his orders about with him for all the
world to see? A wal’able servant of the Crown, ’pon my honour. Rat,
you’re a wily one.”
“And wily-er than you’d suppose, for Dan’l warn’t such an innercent
as you’d be ready to think. He didn’t keep his letters so careless
neither. But I’ve been watching him, and what I learned when he
was at the pump ’s only a trifle to what I’ve learned by signs and
tokens.”
The inn-keeper knocked the ashes from his pipe. Then he rose from his
chair, ponderously.
“I wish you hadn’t given me such a power o’ talking, Rat; wish I
mayn’t break my neck over it, wish I mayn’t break my neck.”
He walked across the sanded floor and unlocked the door cautiously,
and the rat-faced man slipped past him into the night.
But how did he manage to muffle his footsteps, so that Crumblejohn
heard no sound of him upon the road?