_Where now are these? Beneath the cliff they stand
To show the freighted pinnace where to land;
To load the ready steed with guilty haste;
To fly in terror o’er the pathless waste;
Or, when detected in their straggling course,
To foil their foes by cunning, or by force,
Or yielding part which equal knaves demand
To gain a lawless passport through the land._
CRABBE.
It is a soft moonless night in October. The darkness seems filled
with that calmest and most sufficing of all sounds, the sea, breaking
on a sandy shingle, with the long-drawn hush of the retreating wave.
Yet if you listen you may hear another sound. A footfall on the sand
occasionally, and the sound of men’s voices, lowered.
For Crumblejohn and Ratface have sent round the message that
tub-carriers, a full force of them, will be wanted on this night of
the 18th, at Grey Rock, off Knapper’s Head. And the tub-carriers are
already assembled, numbering about twenty-five villagers, and half as
many boys.
A light flares up against the night-sky at some point along the
coast, far away.
It stars the darkness, a crumb of light. Then it grows slenderly, and
sinks once more to waver upward, and then the night engulphs it all
but a creeping thread of light that holds it own.
“You can light that pipe o’ yourn, master.”
“Whoi doänt yon light bleäze then? Be ’ee sure they gave the right
beacon word? Who done it? Whose work wer to see to yon?”
“It was Ratface that see’d to that. That’s why he beänt here
to-night. He’ll see the light’s all right.”
Even as the words are spoken the spark broadens, and shoots up into a
tongue of flame. And now the caution of the tub-carriers appears to
lessen; pipes are lit, with a hand to shade the glow, and there is a
restless movement of swingles changing hands, or being laid down upon
the sand beside their owners.
These are the flail-like implements, that with the long ash
bludgeons, are the weapons of the yokel’s defence. Crumblejohn has
a large retinue, a goodly force on which he may depend. Beside the
villagers, there is the riding force of smugglers, a company of some
thirty or more; innkeepers, tradesmen, farmers, who band together to
ride with the goods far inland. The villagers, he may call out with
little or no trouble, and as porters of the kegs they are enough; but
to-night the riding gang has been summoned, Ratface was to see to
this, for this run of goods is exceptional, and only mounted men can
manage the bales of silks and other goods.
A dark object looms near. There is the sound of muffled oars, a word
is passed along to the carriers, and almost before the boat-keel
grates the beach, she is surrounded. Each man seizes and slings
a brace of kegs around him; there are words of command from the
freighters, a sound of trampling feet, of shipping oars, and the
hurried breathing of an eager crowd, working in the dark.
And then a lighter sound, the jingle of bridles, and horses hoofs
upon the sand.
“The mounted gang,” mutters Crumblejohn, as he stands upon the
shingle, looking down upon the tangled crowd of jostling men.
Here and there he sees a lantern, and the light of one bald, flaring
torch, held high in the prow of the boat by Thurot. The torch flares
vividly, the flame is taken sideways by the wind. It throws its
jagged shadows; the sea crawls grey round the beached boat.
And then a pistol-shot cracks out upon the air, followed by another,
and another, and the man who stands high in the boat with the torch
uplifted, falls heavily among the crowd.
“God ...”--it is Crumblejohn who stumbles forward; “God....”
The air rings now with the sound of fire-arms, there is a stampede
among the villagers--they are caught and bound. One man in a mask
runs here and there in the crowd, a demon of agility. He is followed
by a man on horseback, and wherever he leads, the smugglers are
thickest. He passes the villagers, he lets these go by; but of the
sixteen men that were in the galley, he has crept, and run, and
striven among them, and always at his heels the man on horseback,
whose followers secure the chief men. They overpower them, three
to one, wherever the man in the mask has given the signal. And the
swingles, the ash bludgeons, these have been turned against the men
who bore them, wrenched from their hands. And where a stand among the
men has been attempted, the mounted officers have ridden them down.
The night, so dark and quiet, has been given over to confusion.
Oliver Charlock crouches low in the smuggling boat.
And now the tumult lessens. Most of the villagers have fled, and
ten men of those who had manned the _Lapwing_ stand bound upon the
beach. Crumblejohn has long since staggered off, and subsided, blue
with fright, in a ditch, to be picked up by the Excise men some fifty
yards or more from the scene of the encounter, to be marched more
briskly than his failing senses would have thought possible, along
the road, hands bound, to his own Inn.
And Thurot, the gallant Thurot, with arms flung wide on either side
of him, lies dead, in his faded uniform, beside a blackened torch.
But there is another corpse. It lies distressfully. The form is
contorted, so that you may barely see the masked face.
Yet it should not be difficult to identify this body.
There is a finger lacking to the right hand.