CHAPTER XV
We had rough weather on the passage north, so that we were forced to go slowly creeping from port to port, from Bayonne to Fecamp, always in dread of boats of the English frigates, which patrolled the whole coast, keeping the French merchantmen shut up in harbour.
As we stole slowly to the north, I thought of nothing but the new Spanish sailor. He would be living on crusts, so the smugglers told me; and always he would have an overseer to prod him with a knife if, in a moment of sickness or weariness, he faltered in his work, no matter how hard it might be. But by this time I had learned that the smugglers loved to frighten me. I know now that there was not a word of truth in any of the tales they told me.
At Etaples we were delayed for nearly a fortnight, waiting, first of all, for cargo, and then for a fair wind. There were two other smugglers' luggers at Etaples with us. They were both waiting for the wind to draw to the south or southeast, so that they could dash across to Romney Sands.
As they had more cargo than they could stow, they induced Marah to help them by carrying their surplus. They were a whole day arguing about it before they came to terms; but it ended, as we all knew that it would end, by Marah giving the other captains drink, and leading them thus to give him whatever terms he asked.
The other smugglers in our boat were not very eager to work with strangers; but Marah talked them over. Only old Gateo would not listen to him.
"Something bad will come of it," he kept saying. "You mark what I say: something bad will come of it."
Then Marah would heave a sea-boot at him, and tell him to hold his jaw; and the old man would mutter over his quid and say that we should see.
We loaded our lugger with contraband goods, mostly lace and brandy, an extremely valuable cargo. The work of loading kept the men from thinking about Gateo's warnings, though, like most sailors, they were all very superstitious.
Then some French merchants gave us a dinner at the inn, to wish us a good voyage, and to put new spirit into us, by telling us what good fellows we were. But the dinner was never finished; for before they had begun their speeches a smuggler came in to say that the wind had shifted, and that it was now breezing up from the southeast. So we left our plates just as they were. The men rose up from their chairs, drank whatever was in their cups at the moment, and marched out of the inn in a body.
To me it seemed bitterly cold outside the inn, I shivered till my teeth chattered.
Marah asked me if I had a touch of fever, or if I were ill, or "what was it, anyway, that made me shiver so?"
I said that I was cold.
"Cold!" he said. "Cold? Why, it's one of the hottest nights we have had this summer. Here's a youngster says he's cold!"
One or two of them laughed at me then; for it was, indeed, a hot night. They laughed and chaffed together as they cast off the mooring ropes.
For my part, I felt that my sudden chilly fit was a warning that there was trouble coming. I can't say why I felt that, but I felt it; and I believe that Marah in some way felt it, too. Almost the last thing I saw that night, as I made up my bed under the half-deck among a few sacks and bolts of canvas, was Marah scowling and muttering, as though uneasy, at the foot of the foremast, from which he watched the other luggers as they worked out of the river ahead of us.
"He, too, feels uneasy," I said to myself.
Then I fell into a troubled doze, full of dreams of sea-monsters, which flapped and screamed at me from the foam of the breaking seas.
I was not called for a watch that night. In the early morning, between one and two o'clock, I was awakened by a feeling that something was about to happen. I sat up, and then crept out on to the deck, and there, sure enough, something was about to happen. Our sails were down, we were hardly moving through the water, the water gurgled and plowtered under our keel, there was a light mist fast fading before the wind. It was not very dark, in fact it was almost twilight. One or two stars were shining; there were clouds slowly moving over them; but the sky astern of us was grey and faint yellow, and the land, the Kentish coast, lay clear before us, with the nose of Dungeness away on our port bow. It was all very still and beautiful. The seamen moved to and fro about the lugger. Dew dripped from our rigging; the decks were wet with dew, the drops pattered down whenever the lugger rolled. The other boats lay near us, both of them to starboard. Their sails were doused in masses under the mast. I could see men moving about; I could hear the creaking of the blocks, as the light roll drew a rope over a sheave.
The boats were not very close to the shore; but it was so still, so very peaceful, that we could hear the waves breaking on the beach with a noise of hushing and of slipping shingle, as each wave passed with a hiss to slither back in a rush of foam broken by tiny stones. A man in the bows of the middle lugger showed a red lantern, and then doused it below the half-deck. He showed it three times; and at the third showing, we all turned to the shore, to see what signal the red light would bring. The shore was open before us. In the rapidly growing light, we could make out a good deal of the lie of the land. From the northern end of the beach an answering red light flashed; and then, nearer to us, a dark body was seen for a moment, kindling two green fires at a little distance from each other. Our men were not given to nervousness, they were rough, tough sailors; but they were all relieved when our signals were answered.
"It's them," they said. "It's all right. Up with the foresail. We must get the stuff ashore. It'll be dawn in a few minutes, and then we shall have the country on us."
"Heave ahead, boys!" cried one of the men in the next lugger as she drove past us to the shore.
"Ay! Heave ahead," said Marah, eyeing the coast.
He took the tiller as the lugger gathered way under her hoisted foresail. While we slipped nearer to the white line of the breakers along the sand, he muttered under his breath (I was standing just beside him) in a way which frightened me.
"I dunno," he said aloud. "But I've a feeling that there's going to be trouble. I never liked this job. Here it is, almost daylight, and not an ounce of stuff ashore. I'd never have come this trip if the freights hadn't been so good. Here, you," he cried suddenly to one of the men. "Don't you pass the gaskets. You'll furl no sails till you're home, my son. Pass the halliards along so that you can hoist in a jiffy." Then he hailed the other luggers. "Ahoy there!" he called. "You mind your eyes for trouble."
His words caused some laughter in the other boats. In our boat, they caused the men to look around at Marah almost anxiously. He laughed and told them to stand by. Then we saw that the beach was crowded with men and horses, as at Black Pool, a week or two before. In the shallow water near the beach, we dropped our killick. The men from the beach waded out to us, our own men slipped over the side. The tubs and bales began to pass along the lines of men, to the men in charge of the horses. Only one word was spoken; the word "Hurry." At every moment, as it seemed to me (full as I was of anxiety), the land showed more clearly, the trees stood out more sharply against the sky, the light in the east became more like a flame.
"Hurry," said Marah. "It'll be dawn in a tick."
Hurry was the watchword of the crews. The men worked with a will. Tub after tub was passed along. Now and then we heard a splash and an oath. Then a horse would whinny upon the beach, startled by a wave, and a man would tell him to "Stand back," or "Woa yer." I caught the excitement, and handed out the tubs with the best of them.
I suppose that we worked in this way for half an hour or a little more. The men had worked well at Black Pool, where the run had been timed to end in darkness. Now that they had to race the daylight they worked like slaves under an overseer. One string of horses trotted off, fully loaded, within twenty minutes. A second string was led down; in the growing light I could see them stamping and tossing; they were backed right down into the sea, so that the water washed upon their hocks.
"Here, Jim," said Marah suddenly, stopping me in my work, "come here to me. Look here," he said, when I stood before him. "It's getting too light for this game. We may have to cut and run. Take this hatchet here, and go forward to the bows. When I say 'cut,' you cut, without looking round. Cut the cable, see? Cut it in two, mucho pronto. And you, Hankin—you, Gateo. Stand by the halliards, stretch them along ready to hoist. No. Hoist them. Don't wait. Hoist them now."
One or two others lent their hands at the halliards, and the sails were hoisted. The men in the other luggers laughed and jeered.
"What are you hoisting sail for?" they cried.
"Sail-drill of a forenoon," cried another, perhaps a deserter from the navy.
"Shut up," Marah answered. "Don't mind them, boys. Heave round. Heave round at what you're doing. Over with them tubs, sons! My hat! Those fellows are mad to be playing this game in a light like this. There's a fort within three miles of us."
He had hardly finished speaking, when one of the men at the side of the lugger suddenly looked towards the beach, as though he had caught sight of something.
"Something's up," he said sharply.
The beach and the shore beyond were both very flat in that part; nothing but marshy land, overgrown with tussock-grass, and a few sand-dunes, covered with bents. It was not a country which could give much cover to an enemy; but in that half-light one could not distinguish very clearly, and an enemy could therefore take risks impossible in full day.
"A lot of cattle there," said the smuggler who had spoken. "It's odd there being so many."
"Don't you graze many cattle here?" said Marah, looking ashore.
"What! in the marsh?" said the man. "Not much."
"Them's no cattle," said Marah, after a pause, "Them's not cows. Them's horses. Sure they're horses. Yes, and there's men mounting them. They have crawled up, leading their horses, and now we're done. Look out, boys!" he shouted. "Look out! Get on board."
Even as he spoke the whole shore seemed to bristle with cavalry. Each slowly moving horse stopped a moment, for his rider to mount. There were fifty or sixty of them: they seemed to spread all along the edge of the bay except at the northern end, where the line was not quite closed.
"Sentries asleep," said Mafah. "This is the way they carry on in Kent. Yes. There's the sentry. Asleep on the sand-dune. Oh, yes. Time to wake up it is. You Mahon ape. Look at him."
We saw the sentry leap to his feet, almost under the nose of a horse. He was too much surprised even to fire his pistol. He just jumped up, all dazed, holding up his hands to show that he surrendered. We saw two men on foot secure his hands. That was our first loss.
It all happened very, very quickly. We were taken by surprise, all unready, with our men ashore or mixed among the horses, or carrying tubs in the water. The troops and preventives were over the last dune and galloping down the sand to us almost before Marah had finished speaking; yet even then in all the confusion, as a captain shouted to us to "surrender in the name of the King," the smugglers were not without resource. A young man in a blue Scotch bonnet jumped on one of the horses, snatching another horse by the rein; half-a-dozen others did the same; the second string, half-loaded, started as they were up the sand and away at full gallop for the north end of the bay, where no soldiers showed as yet.
It was done in an instant of time; drilled horsemen could not have done it; the little man in the blue bonnet saw the one loophole and dashed for it. There was no shouting. One or two men spoke, and then there it was—done. Practically all the horses were lashing along the beach, going full tilt for safety: they galloped in a body like a troop of cavalry. Two preventives rode at them to stop them, but they rode slap into the preventives, tumbled them over, horse and man and then galloped on, not looking back. A trooper reined in, whipped up his carbine and fired, and that was the beginning of the fight. Then there came a general volley; pistols and carbines cracked and banged; a lot of smoke blew about the beach and along the water; our men shouted to each other; the soldiers cheered.
In another ten seconds a battle was going on in the water all round us. The horsemen urged their horses right up to the sides of the luggers.
The men in the water hacked at the horses' legs with their hangers; the horses screamed and bit. I saw one wounded horse seize a smuggler by the arm and shake him as a dog shakes a rat; the rider of the horse, firing at the man, shot the horse by accident through the head. I suppose he was too much excited to know what he was doing—I fancy that men in a battle are never quite sane. The horse fell over in the water, knocking down another horse, and then there was a lashing in the sea as the horse tried to rise. The smugglers cut at him in the sea and all the time his rider was half under water trying to get up and pulling at the trigger of his useless, wetted pistol.
It all happened so quickly, that was the strange thing. In one minute we were hard at work at the tubs, in the next we were struggling and splashing, hacking at each other with swords, firing in each other's faces. Half-a-dozen horsemen tried to drag the lugger towards the shore, but the men beat them back, knocked them from their saddles, or flogged the horses over the nose with pistol-butts.
All this time the guns were banging, men were crying out, horses were screaming; it was the most confused thing I ever saw.
Marah knocked down a trooper with a broken cleat and shouted to me to cut the cable—which I did at once. One or two men ran to trim sail, and Marah took the tiller. At that moment a trooper rode into the sea just astern of us—I remember to this day the brightness of the splash his horse made; Marah turned at the noise and shot the horse; but the man fired too, and Marah seemed to stagger and droop over the tiller as though badly hit. Seeing that, I ran aft to help him. It seemed to me as I ran that the side of the lugger was all red with clambering, shouting soldiers, all of them firing pistols at me.
Marah picked himself up as I got there. "Out of the way, boy," he cried. Two or three smugglers rallied round him. There were more shots, more cries. Half-a-dozen redcoats came aft in a rush; someone hit me a blow on the head, and all my life seemed to pass from me in a stream of fire out at my eyes. The last thing which I remember of the tussle was the face of the man who hit me. He was a pale man with wide eyes, his helmet knocked off, his stock loose at his throat; I just saw him as I fell, and then everything passed from my sight in a sound of roaring, like the roaring of waters in a spate.