CHAPTER XVI
When I recovered consciousness, the sun had risen; it was bright daylight all about us. That was really the first thing which I saw—the light of the sun on the deck. I struggled up to a sitting position, feeling great pain in my head. Marah lying over the tiller was the next thing which I saw; he was dead, I thought. Then I realised what had happened; we had had a fight. We were not under control; we were drifting with the tide up and down, with our sails backing and filling; up and down the deck there were wounded men, some of them preventives, some of them smugglers—poor Hankin was one of them. When I stood up I saw that I was the only person on his feet in the boat: it was not strange, perhaps.
Some of our men had gone with the horses, others had been in the water when the horsemen first charged them; probably all of those who had been in the water were either killed or taken. We had had four men aboard during the attack: of these one was badly hurt, another (Marah) was unconscious, the remaining two were drinking under the half-deck, having opened a tub of spirits. When I had stood up I felt a little stronger; I heard Marah moan a little. I tottered to the scuttle-butt, where we kept our drinking water; I splashed the contents of a couple of pannikins over my head and then drank about a pint and a half; that made me feel a different being. I was then able to do something for the others.
First of all I managed to help Marah down from his perch over the tiller: he had fallen across it with his head and hands almost touching the deck. I helped him, or rather, lifted him—for he could not help himself—to the deck; it was as much as I could do, he was so big and heavy. I put a tub under his head as a pillow, then I cut his shirt open and saw that he had been shot in the chest. I ran forward with a pannikin, drew some water, and gave him a drink. He drank greedily, biting the tin, but did not recognise me; all that he could say was "Rip-raps, Rip-raps," over and over again. The Rip-raps was the name of a race or tideway on the Campeachy coast; he had often told me about it, and I had remembered the name because it was such a queer one. I bathed his wound with the water.
After I had done what I could for Marah, I did the same for the wounded soldier. He thanked me for my trouble in a little, low, weak voice, infinitely serious—he seemed to think that I didn't believe him. "I say, thank you; thank you," he repeated earnestly, and then he gave a little gasp and fainted away in the middle of his thanks.
At that, I stood up and began to cry. I had had enough of misery, and that was more than I could bear. Between my sobs I saw—I did not observe, I just saw—that the lugger was drifting slowly northward, clear of Little Stone Point, as the smugglers had called it. I didn't much care where we drifted, but having seen so much, it occurred to me to see where the other luggers were.
One of them, I saw, was on her course for France, a couple of miles away already; the other was going for Dungeness, no doubt to pick up more hands somewhere on the Dunge Marsh. It was like them, I thought, to go off like that, leaving us to have the worst of the fight and every chance of being taken; they only thought of their own necks. When I saw that they had deserted us without even pausing to put a helmsman aboard us, I knew that there was no honour among thieves. There is not, in spite of what the proverb says. We were left alone—a boy, two drunkards, and some wounded men, within half a mile of the shore.
I looked for the preventives, but I could not see them. Most of them had gone after the horses across Romney Marsh. I did not know till long afterwards that the smugglers had beaten off the rest of the party, killing some and about twenty horses, and wounding nearly every other man engaged. It had been, in fact, a very determined battle, one of the worst ever fought between the smugglers and the authorities on that coast. As soon as the fight was over, the luggers got out from the shore, and the troops made off with their wounded to report at the fort, and to signal the Ness cutter to go in chase. At the moment when I looked for them they must, I think, have been rallying again. I could not see them, that was enough for me. Years afterwards I talked with one of the survivors, an old cavalryman. He told me how the fight had seemed to him as he rode in at us.
"And d'ye know, sir," he said, "they had a boy forward ready with an axe to cut the cable, so I fired at him" ("Thank you," I thought); "and just as I pulled the trigger one of their men hit my gee a welt, and down he came in the water, and so, of course, I missed. But for that, sir, we'd have got them."
I wondered which of the men had saved my life by hitting that "gee a welt" I wondered if he had been killed or taken, or whether he had got aboard us afterwards, or whether one of the other luggers had saved him. Well, I shall never know on this side of the grave. But it is odd, is it not, that one should have one's life saved and never know that it was in danger till twenty years afterwards, when the man who saved it was never likely to be found? But I am getting away from my story.
I soon saw that the current was slowly setting us ashore. Marah, with his great manliness, had steered the lugger out to sea for some six hundred yards before he had collapsed. Then his fellows, seeing him, as they supposed, dead, turned to drinking. The lugger, left to herself, took charge, and swung round head to wind. Since then she had drifted, sometimes making a stern-board, sometimes going ahead a little, but nearly always drifting slowly shoreward, flogging her gear, making a great clatter of blocks. If the soldiers had been half smart they would have seen that she was not under command, and ridden to Dymchurch, taken boat, and come after us. But they had had a severe beating, many of them were wounded, and they had watched our start feeling that we had safely escaped from them. I have never had much opinion of soldiers. Boys generally take their opinions ready made from their elders. I took mine from Marah, who, being a sailor, thought that a soldier was something too silly for words.
As we drifted I went back to Marah to bathe his head with water and to give him drink. He was not conscious; he had even ceased babbling; I was afraid that he could not live for more than a few hours at the most. I had never really liked the man—I had feared him too much to like him—but he had looked after me for so long, and had been, in his rough way, so kind to me, that I cried for him as though he were my only friend. He was the only friend within many miles of me, and now he lay there dying in a boat which was drifting ashore to a land full of enemies.
It was a hateful-looking land, flat and desolate, dank and dirty-looking. The flat, dull, dirty marsh country seemed to be without life; the very grass seemed blighted. And we were drifting ashore to it, fast drifting ashore to the tune of the two drunkards:
"There was a ship, and a ship of fame:
Away, ho! Rise and shine.
There was a ship, and a ship of fame,
So rise and shine, my buck o boy."
A ship manned by such a crew was hardly a ship of fame, I thought. Then it occurred to me that if she went ashore I might escape from her, might even get safely home, or at least get to London (I had no notion how far London might be), where I thought that the Lord Mayor, of whom I had often heard as a great man, would send me home. I had a new half-crown in my pocket; that would be enough to keep me in food on the road, I thought. And then, just as I thought that, a little coast-current spun us in very rapidly, helped by the wind, for about two hundred yards. This brought us very close to the shore, but not quite near enough for me, who had no great wish to start my journey wet through.
I gave Marah a last sip of water, left a bucket of fresh water and a pannikin close to him, in case he should recover (I never thought he would), and then began to make up a little parcel of things to take with me. I was wearing the clothes of a ship's boy, canvas trousers, thick blucher shoes, a rough check shirt, and a straw hat. My own clothes—the clothes which I had worn when I scrambled down the fox's earth—were forward, under the half deck. I went to fetch them, and got them safely, though the drunkards tried to stop me, and said that they only wanted me to sing them a song to be as happy as kings. However, I got away from them, and carried my belongings aft. I then took the tarpaulin boat-rug, which covered our little Norwegian pram or skiff, on its chocks between the masts. It was rather too large for my purpose, so I cut it in two, using the one half as a bundle-cover. The other half would make a sort of cape or cloak, I thought, and to that end I folded it and slung it over my shoulder. I gave my knife a few turns upon the grindstone, pocketed some twine from one of the lockers, lashed my bundle in its tarpaulin as tightly as I could, and then went aft to the provision lockers to get some stores for the road. I took out a few ship's biscuits, a large hunk of ham, some onions, and the half of a Dutch cheese.
It occurred to me that I ought to eat before
I started, as I did not know what might befall upon the road. When I sat down upon the deck to begin my meal, I saw, to my horror, that we were drifting out again. While I had been packing, we had been swept off shore; by this time we were three hundred yards away, still drawing further out to sea. Looking out, I saw that we were drifting into a "jobble" or tide-race, which seemed to drift obliquely into the shore. This made me feel less frightened, so I turned to my food, ate heartily, and took a good swig at the scuttle-butt by way of a morning draught. Then I undid my parcel, packed as much food into it as I possibly could, and lashed it up again in its tarpaulin. I found a few reins and straps in one of the lockers, so I made shoulder-straps of them, and buckled my package to my shoulders. My last preparation was to fill a half-pint glass flask (every man aboard carries one or two of these). Just as I replaced its stopper, we swept into the jobble; the lugger filled on one tack, and lay over, and the spray of a wave came over us. Then we righted suddenly, came up into the wind with our sails slatting, and made a stern-board.
Nearer and nearer came the land; the shore, with its bent grass, seemed almost within catapult shot. I heard the wash of the sea upon the beach, I could see the pebbles on the sands shining as the foam left them. And then, suddenly, the lugger drove ashore upon a bank, stern first. In a moment she had swung round, broadside on to the shoal, heaving over on her side. Every wave which struck her lifted her further in, tossing her over on her starboard side. I could see that the tide was now very nearly fully in, and I knew that the lugger would lie there, high and dry, as soon as it ebbed.
I made Marah as comfortable as I could, and called to the drunkards to come with me. I told them that a revenue cutter was within six miles of us (there was, as it happened, but she was at anchor off Dymchurch), and that they had better be going out of that before they got themselves arrested. For answer they jeered and made catcalls, flinging a marline-spike at me. I tried a second time to make them come ashore, but one of them said, "Let's do for him," and the other cheered the proposal with loud yells. Then they came lurching aft at me, so I just slipped over the side, and waded very hurriedly ashore. The water was not deep (it was not up to my thighs in any place), so that I soon reached the sand without wetting my package. Then I looked back to see the two smugglers leaning over the side, watching my movements. One of them was singing—
"There was a ship, and a ship of fame:
Away, ho! Rise and shine"
in a cracked falsetto. The other one was saying, "You come back, you young cub."
But I did not do as they bid. I ran up the beach and as far across the wet grassland as I could without once stopping. When I thought that I was safe, I sat down under some bushes, took off my wet things, and dressed myself in my own clothes. I wrung the water from the wet canvas, repacked my parcel, and seeing a road close to me, turned into it at once, resolved to ask the way to London at the first house. I suppose that it was five o'clock in the morning when I began my journey.