"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.



CHAPTER XVI

DRIFTING

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.



CHAPTER XVII

THE "BLUE BOAR"

As I stepped out, the adventure, the fight, Marah's wound, all the tumult of the battle, seemed very far away, and as though they had happened to some one else who had told me of them. If my head had not ached so cruelly from the blow which the soldier gave me, I should not have believed that they had really occurred, and that I had seen them and taken part in them. It seemed to me that I was close to my home, that I should soon come to the combe country, where the Gara runs down the valley to the sea, passing the slate quarry, so grey against the copse. The road was good enough, though I was not in good trim for walking, after so many days cooped up in the lugger. I stepped forward bravely along a lonely countryside till I saw before me the houses of a town.

I thought that I had better skirt the town, lest I should tumble on the coastguards and rouse their suspicions. It was too early in the morning for a boy to be abroad, and I had no very satisfactory account to give of myself in case anybody questioned me. I knew that if I said that I had been among the smugglers I should be sent to prison. I felt that the magistrate would be too angry to listen to my story, and that they would perhaps send to me prison at once if they ever got hold of me. Magistrates in those days had a great deal of power. They were often illiterate, and they bullied and hectored the people whom they tried. I had seen one or two bad magistrates at home, and I knew how little chance I should stand if I told my unlikely story to a bench in a court-house before such men as they were. So I turned up a small road to the right, avoiding the town, where, as I could see, a good deal of bustle was stirring; indeed, the streets were full of people.

By-and-by, as the sun rose higher, I began to meet people. A few labouring men came past me, one of them carrying a pitchfork. I noticed that they looked at me curiously. One of them spoke, and said, "You have been in the wars, master!" So I said, "Yes," and passed on, wondering what he meant. After I had passed, the man stopped to look back at me. I even heard him take a few steps towards me, before he thought better of it, and went on upon his way. This set me wondering if there were anything strange about my appearance; so, when I came to the little brook or river, which crossed the road a little further on, I went down to a pool where the water was still, and looked at my image in the water. Sure enough, I had an odd appearance. The blow which the soldier gave me had broken the skin of my scalp, not badly, but enough to make an ugly scar. You may be sure that I lost no time in washing my face and head, till no stains showed. I rebuked myself for not having done this while aboard the lugger, when I had splashed my head at the scuttle-butt. I felt all the better for the wash in the brook; but when I took to the road again I had a great fear lest the labourers should hear of the battle, and give out that they had seen a wounded boy going along the road away from the beach.

After a mile of lane, I came to a highroad, past a church and houses, all very peaceful and still. I passed these, and wandered on along the highroad, thinking that I had gone many miles from the sea, though, of course, I had only gone a little distance. When one walks a new road, one finds it much longer than it really is. I sat down by the roadside now and then to think of plans. I felt that my best plan would be to go to London, and see the Lord Mayor, who, I felt sure, would help me to get home. But I had not much notion of where London was, and I knew that if I went into a house to ask the road to London, people would suspect that I was running away, and so, perhaps, find out that I had been with the smugglers. I knew that many people there must be smugglers themselves; but then, suppose that I asked at a house where they were friends of the preventives? The smugglers had signs among themselves by which they recognised each other.

They used to scratch the left ear with the left little finger, and then bite the lower lip, before shaking hands with anybody. I thought that I would go into an inn and try these signs on somebody (on the landlord if possible) and then ask his advice. An inn would be a good place, I thought, because the landlord would be sure to buy from the smugglers; besides, in inns there are generally maps of the country, showing the coaching houses, and the days of the fairs. A map of the kind would show me my road, and be a help to me in that way, even if the landlord did not recognise my signs. And yet I was half afraid of trying these signs. I did not want to get back among the smugglers.

I only wanted to get to London. I had that foolish belief that the Lord Mayor would help me. I was too young to know better; and besides, I was afraid that my being with the smugglers would, perhaps, get me hanged, if I were caught by one of those magistrates, whom I so much feared.

Presently I came to another little village, rather larger than the last. There was an inn in the main street (the "Blue Boar"), so I went into the inn-parlour, and looked about me. One or two men were talking earnestly, in low voices, to a sad-faced, weary-looking woman behind the bar. She looked up at me rather sharply as I entered, and the men turned round and stared at me, made a few more remarks to the woman, and went quickly out. I looked at the woman, scratched my left ear with my left little finger, and bit my lower lip. She caught her breath sharply and turned quite white; evidently she knew that sign extremely well.

"What is it?" she said, "what's the news? There's been fighting. Where's Dick?"

I said I didn't know where Dick was, but that there had been fighting, sure enough; and the preventives had been beaten off.

"Ah," she said, "and the stuff? Did they get the stuff off?"

I said I believed that it had got off safely.

"I believe everybody's bewitched to-day," she said, bursting into tears. "Oh, Dick, come back to me. Come back to me. Oh, why did I ever marry a man like you?"

She cried bitterly for a few minutes. Then she asked me a lot of questions about the fight. One question she repeated many times: "Was there a grey horse in the second string?"

But this I could not answer certainly. All the time that we were talking, she was crying and laughing by turns. Whenever a person entered (even if it were only the milkman) she turned white and shook, as though expecting the police.

"It's the palpitation," she would explain. "That and the sizzums."

Then she would go on laughing and crying by turns until some one else came in.

Presently the landlady looked at me rather hard. "Here," she said, "you are not one of them. You've run away from home, you have. What are you doing here?"

I said that I was on my way to London.

"To London," she said. "What's a boy like you going to London for? How are you going?"

I said that I was going to walk there, to see the Lord Mayor.

"To—see—the—Lord Mayor," she repeated. "Is the boy daft, or what?"

I blushed, and hung my head, for I did not like to be laughed at.

"What are you going to see the Lord Mayor for?" she asked with a smile.

I answered that he would send me home to my friends, as he was always generous to people in distress. She laughed very heartily when I had said this: but still, not unkindly. Then she asked me a lot of questions about my joining the smugglers, about my friends at home (particularly if they were well off), and about the money I had to carry me to London. When I had told her everything, she said,—"Well, why don't you write to your friends from here? Surely that's a more sensible plan than going to London—why, London's seventy miles. Write to your friends from here. They will get the letter in three or four days. They will be here within a week from now. That's a wiser thing to do than going to London. Why, you'd die in a ditch before you got half-way."

"I shouldn't," I answered hotly.

"Well, if you didn't you'd get taken up. It's all the same," she answered. "You stop here and write to your friends. I will see that the letter goes all right. I suppose," she continued, "I suppose your friends wouldn't let me be a loser by you? They'd pay for what you ate and that?"

"Yes," I said, "of course they will."

"What's your name?" she said sharply.

I told her.

"Oh," she said. "Jim—Jim Davis. Let's see that shirt of yours, to see if it's got your name on. I been taken in once or twice before. One has to look alive, keeping an inn."

Luckily my name was upon my shirt and stockings, so that she accepted my story without further talk, especially as the contents of my package showed her that I told her the truth about the lugger.

"I don't know what Dick will say," she said. "But now you come up, and I'll dress your head. You'll have to lie low, remember. It won't do for a smuggler like you to be seen about here. So till your friends come, you'll keep pretty dark, remember."

She led me upstairs to plaster my wound. Then she put me into a little bedroom on one of the upper floors, and told me to stay there till she called me. There were one or two books upon the shelf, including a funny one with woodcuts, a collection of tales and ballads, such as the pedlers used to sell in those days. With this book, and with a piece of paper and a pencil, I passed the morning more happily than I can say.

My head felt quite easy after it had been dressed and bandaged. My troubles were nearly over, I thought. In a week my friends would be there to fetch me away. In three days they would get my letter and hear all about my adventures; so as I wrote I almost sang aloud; I was so happy at the thought of my sorrows being ended. Mrs Dick (I never learned her real name till some years afterwards) brought me some bread and cheese at midday. As I ate, she sealed and addressed my letter for me, and took it over to the post-house, so that the postman could carry it to meet the mail, as it drove past from Rye towards London.

After my midday meal I felt strangely weary; perhaps all my excitements had been too much for me. When Mrs Dick came back to say that she had posted my letter I was almost asleep; but her manner was so strange that it roused me. She could hardly speak from anxiety and terror.

"Oh," she cried, "they have raised the whole country. My Dick'll be taken. He will. He will. They're riding all through the land arresting everybody. And they're going to hang them all, they say, as soon as they can give them their trials."

She cried and cried as though her heart would break. I did what I could to comfort her, but still she cried hysterically, and for all that afternoon she sobbed and laughed in the little upper bedroom, only going out at rare intervals, to peep into the bar, where her servant served the guests.

Towards five o'clock, the servant came running upstairs to say that a lot of the smugglers had been taken. "A whole boatload," the girl said, so that now it would "all come out, and master would be hanged." Mrs Dick told her not to talk in that way of her master, but to find out if any of the men had peached.

When the girl had gone she seemed to collect herself. She became a different woman in a minute.

"Well, if he's taken," she said, "they'll be here. That's very sure. They'll search the premises. They mustn't find you here, Mr Jim. If they find you, they'll question you, and you know too much by a long way."

"Shall I go?" I asked. "I'm willing to clear out, if you wish."

"Go?" she said. "Go? I will turn no poor boy out into the road. I have a boy of my own, somewhere walking the world. No, I'll put you in the drawing-room. Come with me, and don't make a noise."

She led me downstairs to the foot of the lowest staircase, which was rather broad, with high steps of stout old oak.

"Look," she said, as she stepped away from me—I suppose to touch some secret spring—"this is the drawing-room."

As she spoke, the two lowest stairs suddenly rolled back upon a sort of hinge, showing a little room, not much bigger than a couple of barrels, arranged underneath them. There were blankets and a mattress upon the floor of this little room, besides several packages like those which I had seen in the lugger.

"You'll have to stay here, Jim," she said kindly. "But first of all I must get together Dick's papers and that. Come on and help me."

Very soon she had gathered together a few papers and packets of tobacco and lace, which might have brought Dick into trouble. She laid these away in the recesses of the secret room, and told me to get inside, and go to sleep, and above all things to keep very still if people came along upon the stairs. I crept inside, rather frightened, and lay down among the blankets, to get some rest. Then Mrs Dick swung the two stairs back in to their place, a spring clicked, and I was a prisoner in the dark, shut up in the drawing-room.



CHAPTER XVIII

TRACKED

It was very dark in the drawing-room under the stairs, and rather stuffy, for the only light and air admitted came through a little narrow crack, about six inches long, and half an inch across at its broadest. There was a strong smell of mice, among other smells; and the mice came scampering all over me before I had lain there long. I lay as still as I could, because of what Mrs Dick had said, and by-and-by I fell asleep in spite of the mice, and slept until it was dark.

I was awakened by the rolling back of the stairs. As I started up, thinking that I was captured, I saw Mrs Dick standing over me with a candle in her hand.

"Hush, Jim," she said. "Get out quickly. Don't ask any questions. Get out at once. You can't stay here any longer."

"What has happened?" I asked. "Where is your husband? Has your husband come home?"

"Yes," she said. "And you must go. They're coming after you. You were seen in the lugger with an axe in your hands. A man who passed you on the road after, saw you in the lugger. He was with the soldiers, and now he's given an information. Mary, the girl, heard it down at the magistrate's, where the inquest is. And so you must go. Besides, I want the drawing-room for my Dick. He has come back, and they'll be after him quite likely. He was seen, they say. So he must lie low till we've arranged the alibi, as they call it. Everybody has to have an alibi. And so my Dick'll have one, just to make sure. Mind your head against the stair."

I crawled out, rubbing my eyes.

"Where shall I go to?" I asked.

"Oh," she said. "Until we find out, you had better go in the stable, in among the feed in the box, or covered up in the hay."

When she had settled her husband safely into the drawing-room, she bustled me out of doors into the stable, which stood in the yard at the back of the inn. She put me into a mass of loose hay, in one of the unused stalls.

"There," she said. "They'll never look for you there. Don't get hay-fever and begin to sneeze, though. Here's your parcel for you. It wouldn't do to leave that about in the house, would it?"

She wished me good night and bustled back to the inn, to laugh and jest as though nothing was happening, and as though she had no trouble in the world.

I lay very quietly in my warm nest in the hay, feeling lonely in that still stable after my nights in the lugger among the men. The old horse stamped once or twice, and the stable cat came purring to me, seeking to be petted. The church clock struck nine, and rang out a chime. Shortly after nine I heard the clatter of many horses' hoofs coming along the road, and then the noise of cavalry jingling and clattering into the inn yard. A horse whinnied, the old horse in the stable whinnied in answer. A curt voice called to the men to dismount, and for some one to hold the horses. I strained my ears to hear any further words, but some one banging on a door (I guessed it to be the inn door) drowned the orders.

Then some one cried out, "Well, break it in, then. Don't come asking me."

After that there was more banging, an excited cry from a woman, and a few minutes of quiet.

I crept from my hiding-place to the window, so that I might see what was happening. The whole yard was full of cavalry. A couple of troopers were holding horses quite close to the door. By listening carefully, I could hear what they were saying.

"Yes," said one of them; "I got a proper lick myself. I shan't mind if they do get caught. They say there's some of them caught in a boat."

"Yes," said his mate; "three. And they do say we shall find a boy here as well as the other fellow. There was a boy aboard all night. And he's been tracked here. He's as good as caught, I reckon."

"I suppose they'll all be hanged?" said the first.

"Yes," said the other. "Won't be no defence for them. Neck or nothing. Hey?"

Then they passed out of earshot, leading their horses. I was so horribly scared that I was almost beside myself. What could I do? Where could I go? Where could I hide? The only door and window opened on to the courtyard. The loft was my only chance. I snatched up my parcel, and ran to the little ladder (nailed to the wall) which led to the loft, and climbed up as though the hounds were after me.

Even in the loft I was not much better off. There was a heap of hay and a few bundles of straw lying at one end, and two great swing-doors, opening on to the courtyard, through which the hay and straw had been passed to shelter. It was plainly useless to lie down in the straw. That would be the first place searched. I should be caught at once if I hid among the straw. Then it occurred to me that the loft must lead to a pigeon-house. I had seen a pigeon-house above and at one end of the stable, and I judged that the loft would communicate with it. It was not very light, but, by groping along the end wall, I came to a little latched door leading to another little room. This was the pigeon-house, and as I burst into it, closing the door behind me, the many pigeons rustled and stirred upon their nests and perches. It was darker in the pigeon-house than in the loft, but I could see that the place was bigger than the loft itself, and this gave me hope that there would be an opening at the back of it away from the yard. I had not much time, I knew, because the troopers were already trying to open the stable-door below me. I could hear them pounding and grumbling. Just as I heard them say, "That's it. The bar lifts up. There you are"—showing that they had found how to open the door—I came to a little door at the back, a little rotten door, locked and bolted with rusty cobwebbed iron. Very cautiously I turned the lock and drew the bolts back. The latch creaked under my thumb for the first time in many years. I was outside the door on a little, rotten, wooden landing, from which a flight of wooden steps led downward. I saw beyond me a few farm-buildings, a byre, several pigsties, and three disused waggons. Voices sounded in the stable as I climbed down the steps. I heard a man say, "He might be in the loft. We might look there." And then I touched the ground, and scurried quickly past the shelters to the outer wall.

Happily for me, the wall was well-grown with ivy, so that I could climb to the top. There was a six-foot drop on the far side into a lane; but it was now neck or nothing, so I let myself go. I came down with a crack which made my teeth rattle, my parcel spun away into a bed of nettles, and I got well stung in fishing it out. Then I strapped it on my back and turned along the lane in the direction which (as I judged) led me away from the sea. As I stepped out on my adventures, I heard the ordered trample of horses leaving the inn-yard together to seek elsewhere. The lane soon ended at a stile, which led into a field. I saw a barn or shed just beyond the stile, and in the shed there was a heap of hay, which smelt a little mouldy. I lay down upon it, determined to wake early, and creep back to the inn before anybody stirred in the village.

"Ah, well," I said to myself before I fell asleep, "in a week's time they will be here to take me home. Then my troubles will be over."

I remember that all my fear of the troops was gone. I felt so sure that all would be well in the morning. So, putting my parcel under my head as a pillow, I snuggled down into the hay, and very soon fell asleep.

I was awakened in the morning by the entrance of an old cart-horse, who came to smell at the hay. It was light enough to see where I was going, so I opened my knapsack and made a rough breakfast before setting out. Overnight I had planned to go back to the inn. In the cool of the morning that plan did not seem so very wise as I had thought it. I was almost afraid to put it into practice. However, I went back along the lane. With some trouble, I got over the tall brick wall down which I had dropped the night before. Then I climbed up to the pigeon-house, down the loft-ladder, into the inn-yard, to the broken back door of the tavern. The door hung from one hinge, with its lower panels kicked in just as the soldiers had left it. The inn was open to anybody who cared to enter.

I entered cautiously, half expecting to find a few soldiers billeted there. But the place was empty. I went from room to room, finding no one; Mrs. Dick seemed to have disappeared. One of the rooms was in disorder. A few broken glasses were on the floor; a chair lay on its side under the table. I went upstairs. I tapped at the outside of the drawing-room. No answer there; all was still there. I listened attentively for some sound of breathing; none came. No one was inside. I went all over the house. No one was there. I was alone in the "Blue Boar," the only person in the house. I could only guess that Mr and Mrs Dick had been arrested. To be sure, they might have run away together during the night. I did not quite know what to think.

In my wanderings, I came to the bar, which I found in great disorder; the bench was upset, jugs and glasses were scattered on the floor, and the blinds had not been pulled up. Although I had some fear of being seen from outside, I pulled up the blinds to let in a little light, so that I might look at the coaching-map which hung at one end of the bar. When I passed behind the bar to trace out for myself the road to London, I saw an open book lying on a shelf among the bottles. It was a copy of Captain Johnson's Lives of the Highwaymen and Pirates, lying open at the life of Captain Roberts, the famous pirate Whydah. Some one must have been reading it when the soldiers entered.

I looked at it curiously, for it was open at the portrait of Roberts. Underneath the portrait were a few words written in pencil in a clumsy scrawl. I read them over, expecting some of the ordinary schoolboy nonsense.

"Captain Roberts was a bad one. Jim. Don't come back here. The lobsters is around." That was all the message. But I saw at once that it was meant for me; that Mrs Dick, knowing that I should come back, had done her best to leave a warning for me. "Lobsters," I knew, was the smugglers' slang for soldiers; and if the lobsters were dangerous to me it was plain that I was wanted for my innocent share in the fight. I looked through the book for any further message; but there was no other entry, except a brief pencilled memorandum of what some one had paid for groceries many years before, at some market town not named.



CHAPTER XIX

THE ROAD TO LONDON

You may be sure that I lost no time in leaving the inn. I merely noted the way to London from the coaching-map and hurried out, repeating the direction so that I should not forget. It was a bright, cool morning: and I walked very briskly for a couple of hours, when I sat down to rest by the roadside, under a patch of willows, which grew about a little bubbling brook. Presently I saw that a little way ahead of me were three gipsy-looking people (a boy with his father and mother), sitting by the road resting. They got up, after I had been there for twenty minutes or so, and came along the road towards me, bowed under their bundles. I got up, too, intending to continue my journey; but when I was about to pass them, the man drew up in front of me.

"Beg your pardon, young master," he said; "but could you tell me the way to Big Ben?" "But that's in London," I said. "That's in London, at the House of Parliament."

"What!" he cried. "You don't mean to tell me that us have come the wrong road?'

"Yes," I said. "You're going the wrong way for London."

"Then take that," cried the man, giving me a shove, just as the woman flung her shawl over my head. I stepped back, for the shove was no light one; but just behind me the boy had crouched on all fours (he had evidently practised the trick), so that I went headlong over him, and had a nasty fall into the road.

"Stop his mouth, Martha," said the man: and stop it she did, with her ragged old shawl, in which she had evidently carried the provisions of the gang.

"What's he got on him?" said the woman, as the man rummaged through my pockets.

"Only a prince and a chive," said the man, disgustedly, meaning my half-crown and a jack-knife.

"Well," said the woman, "his jacket's better than Bill's, and we'll have his little portmanteau, what's more."

In another minute they had my suit stripped from me; and I had the sight of dirty little Bill, the tramper's boy, putting on my things.

"Here," said the woman. "You put on Bill's things. They're good enough for you. And don't you dare breathe a word of what we done."

"Yes," said the man, as Bill buttoned up his jacket, and took my little bundle in his hand. "You keep your little jaw shut or I'll come after you."

"Oh, Mother," said Bill. "Don't I look a young swell, neither?"

For answer, his mother grabbed him by the arm, and the three hurried away from me in the direction from which I had come. The man looked back and made a face at me, shaking his fist. I was left penniless in the road. A milestone told me that I was seventy miles from London.

I was now at the end of my resources; almost too miserable to cry. I did not know what was to become of me. I could only wander along the road, in a dazed sort of way, wishing for Marah. I was wretched and faint, and Marah was so strong and careless. Then I said to myself that Marah was dead, and that I should soon be dead, for I had neither food nor money. The smugglers had talked of shipwrecks once or twice. I had heard them say that a man could live for three days without food or drink, in fair weather; and that without food, drinking plenty of water, he could live for three weeks. They were very wild talkers, to be sure; but I remembered this now and got comfort from it. Surely, I thought, I shall be able to last for a week, and in a week I ought to be near London. Besides, I can eat grass; and perhaps I shall find a turnip, or a potato, or a partridge's nest with young ones still in it; and perhaps I shall be able to earn a few coppers by opening gates, or holding horses.

I plucked up wonderfully when I thought of all these things; though I did not at all like wearing Bill's clothes. I felt that I looked like a dirty young tramp, and that anybody who saw me would think that I was one. Besides, I had always hated dirt and untidiness, and the feeling that I carried both about me was hateful.

But Bill's clothes were to be a great help to me before noon that day. As I wandered along the road, wondering where I could get something to eat (for I was now very hungry), I came to a turnpike. The turnpike-keeper was cleaning his windows, outside his little house. When he saw me, he just popped his head inside the door, and said something to some people inside. His manner frightened me; but I was still more frightened when two Bow Street runners (as we called detectives then) and a yeomanry officer came out of the house, and laid hold of me.

"That's your boy, sir," said the turnpike-keeper.

"Come on in here," said the officer, "and give an account of yourself."

They led me into the room, where they were eating some bread and cheese.

"He doesn't answer the description," said one of the men, glancing at a paper.

"I'm not so sure about that," said the officer. "He's the exact height, and that's the same coloured hair."

"Now I come to think of it," said the keeper, "I believe I saw that boy pass along here this morning, along with two trampers. That coat with the pocket torn. Yes, and red lining showing. I thought I'd seen them."

"Well, boy," said the officer, "what's your name?"

"Jim Davis," I answered.

"What were you doing with the two trampers, Jim?" he asked.

"Please, sir," I said, "I wasn't doing anything with them."

"Ah," said one of the runners. "These young rogues is that artful, they never do nothing anywhere."

"You'll live to be hanged, I know," said the other runner.

"What were you doing with the smugglers?" asked the officer suddenly, staring hard at my face, to watch for any change of expression.

But I was ready for him. A boy is often better able to keep his countenance than a grown man. With masters, and aunts, and game-keepers all down upon him, he lives a hunted life. He gets lots of practice in keeping his countenance. A grown man often gets very little.

"What smugglers, sir?" I asked as boldly as I could.

"The men you sailed with from Etaples," said the officer.

"Sailed with?" I asked, feeling that I was done for.

"Didn't the horses splash about, when you cut the cable?" said the officer, with a smile.

This time I thought I had better not answer. I looked as puzzled as I could, and looked from one face to the other, as though for enlightenment.

"Now, Jim," said one of the runners. "It's no good. Tell us all about the smugglers, and we'll let you go."

"We know you're the boy we want," said the captain. "Make a clean breast of it, and perhaps you will get off with transportation."

"Now don't look so innocent," said the other runner. "Tell us what we want to know, or we'll make you."

Now somewhere I had read that the police bullied suspected persons in this way. If you make a guilty person believe that you know him to be guilty, you can also get him to confess if you startle him sufficiently. It occurred to me that this was what these men were doing, especially as they had not been sure of me when I came into the room.

I had some twenty or thirty seconds in which to think of an answer, for the three men spoke one after the other, without giving me a chance to speak. I shook my head, putting on a puzzled look.

"I beg your pardon, sir," I said, speaking rather roughly, in the accent which Bill had used. "I think there's some mistake."

"Oh, I think not," said the officer. "Suppose I tell you how many men were in the lugger?"

But here we were stopped by the arrival of a chaise outside. A man entered hurriedly.

"It's all right, Gray," the newcomer called to the officer. "We have the boy. We caught him back there, along the road, with a couple of gipsies. There can be no doubt about it. The clothes and bundle are just as they're described in the advertisement. Who have you here?"

"Oh, a boy we brought in on suspicion," said the officer. "Shall we let him go?"

"Well, who is he?" asked the new arrival. "Eh, boy? Who are you?"

"A poor boy," I answered.

"How do you make a living?" he asked. "Little boys, like you, oughtn't to be about on the roads, you know. What d'ye do for a living?"

I am afraid it was rather a bold statement; but I cried out that I could sing ballads.

"Oh, Jim. So you sing ballads, do you?" said the officer. "Get on to that chair and sing us a ballad."

But I was cunning and wary. "Please, sir," I said, "I'm very hungry. I don't sing, except for my dinner and a sixpence."

"So you defy the law already, do you?" said the newcomer. "Well. Eat some bread and cheese, and I will give you sixpence for a song."

So I sat down very thankfully, and made a good dinner at the table. I pretended to pay no attention to the officers; but really I listened very eagerly to all that they said. I gathered that the newcomer was a coastguard naval captain, of the name of Byrne, and I felt that he half-suspected and half-liked me, without thinking very much about me one way or the other. When I had finished my dinner—and I ate enough to last me till the night—I got upon my chair, without being pressed, and sang the ballad of "The White Cockade," then very popular all over the West country. My voice was not bad in those days, and I was used to singing; indeed, people sang more then than they do now. Everybody sang.

Captain Byrne seemed puzzled by my voice, and by my cultivated accent. "Who taught you to sing?" he asked.

So I answered that I had been in the village choir at home; which was true enough.

"And where was that?" he asked.

For a moment I thought that I would trust him, and tell him everything. Then, very foolishly, I determined to say nothing, so I said that it was a long way away, and that I had come from thence after my father had died. He whispered something to Mr. Gray, the other officer; and they looked at me curiously. They both gave me a sixpenny piece for my ballad; and then they went out. Captain Byrne stopped at the door. "Look here," he said, "you take my advice and go home. You will come to no good, leading this wandering life."

When they had gone, I went out also, and watched their chaise disappear. The last that I saw of them was the two top-hats of the runners, sticking up at the back of the conveyance, like little black chimneys.

I felt very glad that Bill was taken up, evidently in mistake for me. It seemed a fitting reward. But at the same time I knew that the mistake might be found out at any moment; and that I should be searched for as soon as Bill had cleared himself. I walked slowly away from the turnpike, so that the keeper might not suspect me, and then I nipped over a stile, and ran away across country, going inland, away from the sea, as fast as I could travel. I could tell my direction by the sun, and I kept a westerly course, almost due west, for three or four hours, till I was tired out.

It was a lonely walk, too; hardly anything but wild, rather marshy country, with few houses, few churches, and no bigger town than the tiniest of villages. At about six o'clock that afternoon, when I had gone some sixteen miles since daybreak, I felt that I could go no further, and began to cast about for a lodging-place.



CHAPTER XX

THE GIPSY CAMP

I plodded on till I came to a sort of copse or little wood, where I expected to find shelter. Supper I had resolved to do without; I wished to keep my shilling for dinner and breakfast the next day. As I came up to the copse hedge I saw that some gipsies were camped there. They had a fine travelling waggon drawn up on some waste ground near at hand; they had also pitched three or four beehive huts, made of bent poles, covered with sacks. They were horse-dealers and basket-makers, as one could see from the drove of lean horses and heap of wicker-work near the waggon. Several children were playing about among the huts. Some women were at their basket-making by the waggon. A middle-aged man, smoking a pipe, stood by the hedge, mending what looked like an enormous butterfly net. In spite of my adventure on the road, I was not at all frightened by these gipsies, because I liked their looks, and I knew now that I had only my shilling to lose, and that I could earn a dinner at any time by singing a ballad.

The middle-aged man looked rather hard at me as I came near, and called out in a strange language to his people in the tents. They came about me at the call, and stared at me very strangely, as though I was a queer beast escaped from a menagerie. Then, to my great surprise, the man pointed to my forehead, and all the gipsies stared at my forehead, repeating those queer words which Marah had used so long before in the gorse-clump—"Orel. Orel. Adartha Cay." They seemed very pleased and proud; they clapped their hands and danced, as though I was a little prince. All the time they kept singing and talking in their curious language. Now and then one of them would come up to me and push back my cap to look at my hair, which was of a dark brown colour, with a dash of reddy gold above my forehead.

I learned afterwards that gipsies held sacred all boys with hair like mine. They call the ruddy tinge over the forehead "the cross upon crutches"; for long ago, they say, a great gipsy hero had that mark upon his brow in lines of fire; and to this day all people with a fiery lock of hair, they believe, bring luck to them.

When the gipsies had danced for some twenty minutes, the elderly man (who seemed to be a chief among them) begged me (in English) with many profound bows and smiles, to enter their waggon. I had heard that the gipsies stole little children; but as I had never heard of them stealing a boy of my age I did not fear them. So I entered the waggon as he bade me, and very neat and trim it was. Here a man produced a curious red suit of clothes, rather too small for me; but still a lot better than Bill's rags. He begged me to put it on, which I did. I know now that it was the red magical suit in which the gipsies dress their magical puppets on St. John's Eve; but as I did not then know this, I put it on quite willingly, wishing that it fitted better.

Then we came out again among the huts, and all the other gipsies crowded round me, laughing and clapping their hands; for now, they thought, their tribe would have wonderful luck wherever they went. The women put a pot upon the fire, ready for supper. Everybody treated me (very much to my annoyance) as though I were a fairy child. Whenever I spoke, they bowed and laughed and clapped their hands, crying out in their wild language, till I could have boxed their ears.

When supper was ready, they brought me to the place of honour by the fire, and fed me with all the delicacies of the gipsy race. We had hedgehog baked in a clay cover—though I did not much like him—and then a stew of poultry and pheasant (both stolen, I'm afraid) with bread baked in the ashes; and wonderful tea, which they said cost eighteen shillings a pound. They annoyed me very much by the way in which they bowed and smirked, but they really meant to be kind, and I had sense enough to know that while I was with them I should be practically safe from the runners and yeomanry. After supper they made me up a bed in the waggon. The next morning before daybreak we started off, horses, waggon, and all, away towards the west; going to Portsmouth Fair, the man said, to sell their horses.

I had not been very long among the gipsies when I discovered that I was as much a prisoner as a pet. They would never let me out of their sight. If I tried to get away by myself, one of the children, or a young woman would follow me, or rather, come in the same direction, and pretend not to be following me; but all the time noting where I went, and heading me off carefully if I went too far from the caravan. Before the end of the first day I was wondering how it would all finish, and whether they meant to make a gipsy of me. They were very careful not to let me be seen by other travellers. When the road was clear, they would let me follow the caravan on foot; but when people drove past us, and whenever we came to a village (they always avoided the big towns), they hurried me into the waggon, and kept me from peeping out. At night, when we pitched our camp, after a long day's journey of sixteen or seventeen hours, they gave me a bed inside the caravan; and the elderly chief laid his blankets on the waggon floor, between my bed and the door, so that I should not get out. I lived with the gipsies in this way for three whole days.

I did not like it any better as time went on. I kept thinking of how I should escape, and worrying about the anxiety at home, now that my letter must have reached them. I did not think any more about the police. I felt that they would give me no more trouble; but my distress at not being able to get away from these gipsies was almost more than I could bear. On the afternoon of the third day I made a dash for freedom, but the chief soon caught me and brought me back, evidently very much displeased, and muttering something about stealing the red coat.

About midday on the fourth day, as we were passing through a village, it chanced that a drove of sheep blocked up the road. The caravan stopped and I managed to get down from the waggon, with my gaoler, to see what was happening in the road. The sheep were very wild, and the drover was a boy who did not know how to drive them. The way was blocked for a good ten minutes, so that I had time to look about me. While we waited, a donkey-cart drove up, with two people inside it, dressed in the clothes of naval sailors—white trousers, blue, short, natty jackets (with red and green ribbons in the seams), and with huge clubbed pigtails under their black, glazed hats. One of them was evidently ill, for he lay back against the backboard and did not speak. I noticed also that he had not been to sea for a long time, as his beard was long and unkempt. The other, who drove the cart, was a one-legged man, very short and broad, with a thick black stubble on his cheeks. He was a hearty person with a voice like a lion's roar. They had rigged up Union Jacks on the donkey's blinkers, they had a pilot jack upon the shaft, and a white ensign on a flagpole tied to the backboard. The body of the cart was all sprigged out with streamers of ribbon as thick as horses' tails, and there were placards fixed to the sides of the donkey's collar. They were clumsily scrawled as follows:—

Pity the Braiv English Seamen, Wonded in the Wars, Help them as cannot help theirselves, We have Bled for our nativland. Nelson and Bronte.

This wonderful conveyance pulled up among the sheep. The one-legged man stood upright in the cart, called for three cheers, and at once began to roar out the never-ending ballad of the battle of Belle Isle:—

At the battle of Belle Isle, I was there all the while, etc., etc.

Everybody clustered round to listen, and to admire the turnout.

I could not get very near to the cart, because of the press; but I noticed quite suddenly that the sick man was staring rather hard at me from under the rim of his glazed hat, which was jammed down over his eyes. The eyes seemed familiar. There was something familiar in the figure, covered up, as it was, with the rough beard, and with a ship's boat-cloak. It reminded me of Marah, somehow, and yet it could not possibly be Marah; and yet the man was staring hard at me.

A countryman came out of an inn with a mug of drink for the singer, who checked his song at about the hundred-and-fiftieth stanza, to take the mug with a "Thank ye, mate," and hand it to his sick friend. The sick man took the mug with his left hand, opening the fingers curiously, and still looking hard at me. My heart gave a great jump, for there were three blue rings tattooed on one of the fingers. The man waved his mug towards me. "Hoo, hoo, hoo," he cried, imitating an owl with his weak voice. "Hoo, hoo, hoo." Then he clapped his right hand across his mouth to warn me to be silent, and drank, with a bow to the giver.

It was Marah, after all. At this moment the caravan started, and the man urged me to enter the waggon again. I did so; but as I turned away, Marah smiled in an absurd manner at me, and bowed three times, making everybody laugh. That made me feel sure that he would help me to escape, and to get home again. I could not help laughing at his trick of dressing up as "a braiv English seaman, wonded in the war." Had the people known in what wars he had been wounded, they would not have been so free with their kindness, perhaps.

It occurred to me that Marah had made the owl's cry (or night signal) to show me that I might expect him at night. So when the gipsies went to bed that night I lay awake among them, pretending to be fast asleep. It was very dark, shut up in the waggon. The gipsies slept heavily, and I could hear the horses outside, cropping on the grass and snorting. Once or twice I heard a clock strike very far away. Then I fell asleep, I think, in spite of my excitement. I woke with a start, because just outside the waggon came the wild crying of an owl: and then, at that instant, a banging of guns and pistols. A voice cried out: "The horses. Save the horses." Some one screamed "Help! help!" in a falsetto. More guns banged and cracked, and I heard a rush of hoofs as the drove of horses stampeded. The gipsies in the waggon rushed out as one man to save the precious horses. I rushed out after them, and there was Marah with his one-legged friend, crouched under the waggon, waiting for me.

"Well, Jim," he said; "nip this way, quick. We have a suit of clothes all ready for you."

So they hurried me away to their little cart, where I found a boy's suit, which I was glad to put on, as of course I never wore the precious red suit in bed.

"Those were good fire-crackers," said Marah's friend. "They made the horses run."

"Yes," said Marah. "I knew we could clear the gipsies out of the way and get Jim clear. Well, Jim, my son, I'm not strong enough to talk much. I reckon I have done with night-riding since I got this slug in my chest. But here we are again, bound home, my son, with not much shot in the locker."

"You be quiet," said his friend; "you'll be getting your wound bad. Get up, Neddy."

We trotted off to a little inn which stood at some distance from the gipsies' camp.

The next morning, after a comfortable night in bed; I asked Marah how he had escaped. He told me that when the lugger drove ashore, one or two smugglers who had hidden in the dunes, crept down to her and carried him ashore. The two others, the drunkards, were too noisy to bring off. They were captured, and condemned to serve in the Navy. Marah's wound was not very severe; but he had had a great shock, and would not be able to exert himself for many weeks. An old smuggler (the one-legged man) had dressed his wound for him, and had then disguised him as I saw him, with a beard and naval clothes. One of the many Captains Sharp had advanced money for the journey home; but to avoid suspicion they had rigged up their donkey-cart; and worked their way as poor sea-ballad singers.

"And now," said Marah, "I heard tell in Kent that you'd written home by the mail-coach, a full five days ago. Well, Jim, we're near the coach-road here. I reckon your friends'll be coming to see you by to-day's coach. If we go out into the road, to the 'Bold Sawyer' yonder, where they change horses and wait, I reckon you'll be able to save them some of their journey. Hey, Sally," he cried to the waitress, "what time does the Plymouth mail pass by?"

"At eleven o'clock," said Sally.

"At six bells, Jim," said Marah, "you'll see your folk again. On that I'll wager my best new silver buttons."

The clock struck ten.

It was a fair sunny summer's day, with a brisk wind blowing, when we ranged ourselves across the road outside the "Bold Sawyer." The coach-horn, sounding in the distance, was drawing rapidly nearer; we could hear the rhythm of the sixteen hoofs. Presently the horses swung round the corner; we saw the coachman flick his leaders so that he might dash up to the inn in style. Then as they galloped up I saw two well-known figures sitting outside, well muffled up.

They were Hugh and Mrs Cottier. We had flags in our hands, so we waved them and shouted. The one-legged man roared out his doings at the battle of Belle Isle. I heard Hugh shouting at the top of his voice, "Look, Mother. It's Jim. It's Jim." We had a great dinner at the "Bold Sawyer" at one o'clock that day. We had hardly finished at half-past three, when the mail-coach stopped for us, to take us on our first stage home.

I need only add a few words. Hugh became a "parson fellow," as Marah had put it; while I, in time, went to Jamaica as a planter. Marah and the one-legged man took the Gara Mill together, and did very well at it. Mr Cottier is now a Captain in the Portuguese Navy. Mrs Cottier keeps house for me here on the Gara. We are all a good deal older; but we keep well. Marah and I are planning a new adventure; for old Van Horn's treasure is still among the coral, and some day we are going to try for it.



THE END