Chapter VI (2)

He started very well indeed. You couldn't call him much to look at; he had a long pair of legs which seemed differently jointed to yours and mine; no shoulders nor stomach to speak of, no-coloured hair, and a glazing, watery eye. But the wonder began when you heard his voice. It filled his clothes out suddenly like one of those indiarubber squeakers the children blow at Whitsun Fair; and coming from a man whose looks were all against him, it made you feel humble-minded for having been so quick to judge. I think he had found out the value of this kind of surprise and went about neglecting his appearance on purpose.

As I say, he started very well. He preached at the Stennack on Saturday, and next day near the market-place, "for the sake," he said, "of those who could not climb the hill"--though, to be sure, they needn't have left their doors to hear him a mile off. There was a tidy gathering--farm-carts and market-carts and gigs from all parts of the country round--almost as many as if he had been John Wesley himself. He preached again at five o'clock in the evening, and so fired up Mrs. Geen that by ten next morning she was down at Nance's house, where he lodged, laying all her trouble before him.

Mr. Meakin heard her out, and then took a line which altogether surprised her. He seemed to care less for the danger her Phoby was running than for the crime he was committing. Yes; he called it a crime!

"As a Christian woman," he said, "you must know his soul's in danger. What in comparison with that does his body matter?"

Mrs. Geen hadn't any answer for this, so what she said was, "My Phoby 've never given me a day's trouble since his teething." And then, seeing the preacher was upset, and wishing to keep things as pleasant as possible, she went on, "I don't see no crime in learning to be a carpenter."

"By your own showing," said Mr. Meakin, "he is in danger of being led into smuggling by wild companions."

"Nothing wild about John Carter," she held out. "A married man and as steady as you could wish to see; a man with convictions of sin, as I know, an' two of his brothers saved. You couldn' hear a prettier preacher than Charles. And John, he always runs a freight most careful. I never heard of any wildness at all in connection with he--not a whisper."

The preacher fairly stamped, and began tapping the palm of his hand with his forefinger.

"But the smuggling, ma'am--that's what I call your attention to! The smuggling itself is not only a crime but a sin; every bit as much a sin as the violence and swearing which go with it."

"No swearing at all," said Ann Geen. "You don't know John Carter, or you wouldn' suggest such a thing. Every man that swears in his employ is docked sixpence out of his pay. My sister-in-law keeps the money in a box over her chimney-piece, and they drink it out together come Christmas."

By this the preacher was fairly dancing. "Woman!" he shouted, soon as he could recover his mouth-speech.

"I'm no such thing!" said she, up at once and very indignant. "And your master, John Wesley, would never have said it."

The preacher took a gulp and tried a quieter tack. "I beg your pardon, ma'am," says he, "but you seemed to be wilfully misunderstanding me. Let us confine ourselves to smuggling," says he.

"Very well," says she; "I'm agreeable."

"I tell you, then, that it's a sin; it's defrauding the King just as much as if you dipped your hand into His Majesty's pocket"--"I shouldn' dream of being so familiar," said Mrs. Geen, but he didn't hear her-- "and if you'll permit me, I'll explain how that is," he said.

"Well," she allowed, folding the shawl about her which she always wore in the hottest weather; "you can say what you mind to about it, so long as you help me get my Phoby back. That's what I come for."

I daresay, now, you've sometimes heard it brought up against us in these parts that we're like the men of Athens, always ready to listen to any new thing. The preacher took up his parable then and there; and being, as I say, an able man in spite of his looks, within half an hour he had actually convinced the woman that there was something to be ashamed of in smuggling. And as soon as he'd done that, nothing would satisfy her but to hire the pony-cart from the George and Dragon and drive the preacher to Prussia Cove the very next day to rescue her boy from these evil companions. "'Twould be a great thing to convince John Carter," she said, "and a feather in your cap. And even if you don't, the place is worth seeing, and he usually kills a pair of ducks for visitors."

So early the next day (Tuesday, June 4), away they started; and, the day being hot and the pony slow, arrived at Bessie Bussow's about four o'clock. 'Tis a pretty peaceable spot on a June afternoon, with the sun dropping out to sea and right against your eyes; and this day the Cove seemed more peaceable than ordinary--the boats at anchor, no sound of work at all, and scarcely a sign of life but the smoke from Bessie Bussow's chimney.

"Where's my boy?" was the first question Mrs. Geen put to her sister-in-law after the two women had kissed each other.

"Out seaning," answered Bessie, as prompt as you please. "But most likely he'll be home some time to-night. The master's got a new sean-boat, and all the boys be out working her. There's not a soul left in the Cove barring the master himself and Uncle Billy."

"Well, I'm glad of my life the boy's at such innocent work; but I've come to see John Carter and take him away. The preacher here says that smuggling is a sin and the soul's destruction; he's quite sure of it in his own mind, and whiles there's any doubt I don't want my Phoby to risk it."

"Aw?" said Bessie. "I'd dearly like to hear how he makes that out. But I han't got time to be talking just now. You'd best take him across and let him try to persuade John Carter, while I get your room ready. I saw John going towards his house ten minutes ago, and I'se warn he'll offer the preacher a bed and listen to all he's got to say."

So, having stabled the pony, Mrs. Geen and the preacher walked over to Carter's house together. They found the King in his kitchen-parlour, divided between his accounts and a mug of cider, and he made them welcome, being always fond of preachers and having a great respect for Ann Geen because of her family.

There was a great heap of shavings in the fire-place, for the room was a sunny one, facing south by west. But the King told her where to find some tea that had never paid duty, and she took off her bonnet and boiled the kettle in the kitchen at the back, and it wasn't till they'd drunk a cup that she explained what had brought her, and called on the preacher to wrestle.

Captain John listened very politely, or seemed to, and nodded his head at the right time; but he couldn't help being a bit absent-minded. Fact was, he expected a cargo home that very evening, and didn't feel so easy about it as usual. Up to now he had always run his stuff in goodish-sized vessels--luggers or cutter-rigged craft running up to fifty or sixty tons as we should reckon now. But Captain Will Richards had taken a great fancy to the Cawsand plan of using light-built open row-boats or, as you might say, galleys, pulling eight oars, and put together to pass for sean-boats. After the war, when there was no longer any privateering, vessels like Captain Carter's, carrying eighteen or twenty guns apiece, couldn't pretend to be other than smugglers or pirates, and then these make-belief sean-boats came into use everywhere. But just now they were a novelty. The King, persuaded by Richards, ordered one down from Cawsand, and had already used it once or twice to meet his larger craft somewhere in a good offing and tranship their cargoes. By this he could run his kegs ashore at any state of the tide, leaving the empty vessels to be watched or overhauled by the Customs' fellows.

But this time--the weather being fine and settled, and the winds light-- he was trying a faster game, and had sent the sean-boat right across channel to Roscoff, keeping his sailing-craft in harbour. It would be dark before nine, no moon till after mid-night, and by all calculations the boat ought to make the cove between ten and eleven, after lying well outside and waiting her chance. It all seemed promising enough, but somehow the King couldn't be quite easy.

However, he listened quietly, and the preacher talked away for one solid hour, until Uncle Billy Leggo (who had been keeping watch all the afternoon) came knocking at the door. "You'll excuse me a minute," said the King, and went outside to hear the report. The weather had been flat calm all day, with a slow ground-swell running into the cove, but with the cool of the evening a light off-shore breeze had sprung up, and Uncle Billy had just seen the Revenue cutter stealing out from Penzance.

"Botheration!" said Captain Carter, and fined himself sixpence. Then he went back to the parlour, and the preacher started afresh.

Twice again before supper came Uncle Billy with news of the cutter's movements, and the second time there could be no mistaking them, for she was dodging back and forth and lying foxy around Cuddan Point.

All through supper the preacher talked on and on, and the King ate without knowing what he was eating. He couldn't afford to lose this cargo; yet Mr. Collector Wearne meant business this time, and would collar the boat to a certainty unless she were warned off. But to show a light from the coast meant a hundred pounds fine or twelve months' hard labour. The King slewed round in his chair and looked at the great pile of shavings in the fireplace. A hundred pounds fine with the chance of burning the house-thatch about his ears!

Supper over, he and his guests turned their chairs towards the fireplace. The King took flint and steel and struck a match; lit his pipe, and stared at the shavings; then dropped the light on the floor, ground it out with his heel, and puffed away thoughtfully. The preacher went on talking.

"Render unto Caesar . . . tribute to whom tribute is due. That applies to King George to-day every bit so much as it did to Caesar."

"Caesar and King George be two different persons," said Captain John, stopping his pipe with his thumb.

"The principle's the same."

"I don't see it," said the captain. "I read my Bible, and it says that Caesar ordered the whole world to be taxed. Now that's sense. Caesar didn't go niggling away with a duty on silk here and another on brandy there and another on tea and another on East Indy calicoes. Mind you, I've got no personal feeling against King George; but it does annoy me to see a man calling hisself King of England and making money in these petty ways."

"It's his birthday to-day," put in Mrs. Geen; "though I didn't remember it till I saw the flag on Ardevora church-tower this morning."

"Is it? Then we'll drink his health, ma'am, to show there's no animosity." Captain John fetched a bottle of brandy and glasses and mixed drinks for his guests. Then he took his seat, reached out for flint and steel again, and says he very quietly--

"I wish the boys were at home. We'd have a bonfire."

"Up to Walsall--that's where I come from," said the preacher, "we always kept up His Majesty's birthday with a bonfire and fireworks. But you don't seem so loyal in these parts."

"Fireworks? Did you now?" Captain John set down the tinder-box and rubbed his chin. "Well," said he, going to a cupboard, and glancing up on his way at the tall clock, "as it happens I've a rocket or two here-- though to be sure it seems like a waste, with nobody left in the Cove to see or raise so much as a cheer."

"It's the spirit of the thing that counts," said the preacher.

"They've lain here so long," Captain John went on in a sort of musing way, "they may be mildewed, for all I know."

"You leave that to me," said the preacher; "I knows all about fireworks. There don't seem nothing wrong about this one," he said, taking it and fingering the fuse. "May I have a try with 'em?"

"Try, and welcome. I don't understand these things for my part: I only know they takes up a lot of room in the cupboard, and I'll be glad to see the last of 'em."

So out into the night they three went together. But when they had the rocket fixed, Captain John was taken that poorly he had to come back and sit in the chair, and rub his thighs and his stomach. And when, sitting there, he heard the rocket go up, _whoosh!_ he had to rub them the harder.

"It went off capital!" called the preacher, popping his head in at the door. "Can't us try another?" And now Captain John had to rub his eyes before turning to him. "Take the lot," he said, and pushed the whole bundle into the preacher's hands. "Aw, if King George had a few more friends like you! Take the lot of 'em, loyal man!" He fairly thrust him out to door, and had to lean a hand there before he could follow, feeling weak all over to think of Collector Wearne and his men, and what their faces must be like, down in the Revenue cutter; but he had no time to taste the fun of it properly, for just then he heard Bessie Bussow's voice outside asking questions all of a screech. The first rocket had fetched her over hot-foot and agog, and the captain had to run out and stop her tongue, and send her home with Ann Geen. But they didn't go till the preacher had touched off every single rocket, stepping back as they went _whoosh! whoosh!_ and waving his hat and crying, "God save the King!" "God save the King!" cried Captain John after him, and Bessie stood wondering if the end of the world had come, or the master had gone clean out of his wits.

The captain used to try and explain it afterwards when he told the story. "You've seen a woman in hysterics," he'd say, "and you know how a man feels when he wants to drop work and go on the drink for a week. Well, 'twasn' exactly one or t'other with me, but a little like both. I'm a level-headed tradesman, and known for such, but if ever that chap walks into my house again, I'll be wise, and go straight out by the back door and put myself under restraint."

After the women had gone, he took the fellow back to the kitchen, and sat putting questions to him in a reverent sort of voice, and eyeing him as awesome as Billy Bennett when he hooked the mermaid, until the poor creature talked himself sleepy, and asked to be shown to his room. Captain Carter saw him to bed, came downstairs to the parlour again, and spread himself on the sofa for forty winks; for between the boat dodging out to sea and the pack-horses waiting ready up at Trenowl's farm above the hill, there was no going to bed for him that night.

He had been sleeping maybe for two hours, when a whistle fetched him to his feet and out of the door like a scout. 'Twas nothing more nor less than the boys' arrival signal, and this was what had happened.

When the preacher's first rocket went off, the collector, down on board the cutter, was taking his bit of supper in the cabin. At the sound of it he rushed up the companion, and found all his crew on deck with their necks cricked back, barring one man, who that moment popped his head up through the fore-hatchway. "What on earth was that?" he asked. "A rocket, sir," said the chief boatman; "just sent up from Prussia Cove." Mr. Wearne couldn't find his breath for a moment; but when he did, 'twas to say, "Very well, John Carter. I've a-got you this time, my dandy! I don't quite understand how you come to be such a fool. But that rocket costs you a hundred pounds, and if I'm not mistaken I'll have your cargo 'pon top of it."

The breeze still blew pretty steady, and he gave orders to stand out into the bay, get an offing, and keep a sharp look-out as the moon rose. He knew that all Carter's ordinary craft, except the sean-boat, were quiet at anchor at Bessie's Cove; but he reckoned that the boat had gone out this time to meet and unload a stranger. He never dreamed she would be crossing all the way to Roscoff and back on her own account. He knew, too, that Carter had a "spot" near Mousehole to fall back upon when a landing at Prussia Cove couldn't be worked. So he stood out to put the cutter on a line commanding both places, which, with the soldier's wind then blowing, was easy enough; and as she pushed out her nose past Cuddan Point the whole sky began to bang with rockets.

This puzzled him fairly, as Carter knew it would. And it puzzled the Cove boys in the sean-boat as they lay on their oars about three miles from shore and discussed the first warning. But in one of the flashes Captain Harry Carter, who was commanding, spied the cutter's sails quite plain under the dark of the land, plain enough to see that she was running out free. He knew that he couldn't have been seen by her in the heave of the swell, for the sean-boat lay pretty low with her heavy cargo, and he'd given her a lick of grey paint at Roscoff by way of extra precaution. So, thought he, "A signal's a signal; but brother John doesn't know what I know. Let the cutter stand out as she's going, and we'll nip in round the tail of her. She can't follow into the Cove, with her draught, even if she spies us; and by daybreak we'll have the best part of the cargo landed." And so he did, muffling oars and crossing over a mile to southward of the cutter, and after that way-all! and pull for the Cove.

The preacher at John Carter's, and Mrs. Geen at Bessie Bussow's, both woke early next morning. But Mrs. Geen was first by a good hour, and what pulled the preacher out of bed was the sound of guns. He put his head out of window, and could hardly believe it was the peaceful place he'd come upon last evening. The beach swarmed with men like emmets. Near up, by high-water mark, men were unloading a long-boat for dear life--some passing kegs, others slinging them to horses, others running the horses up the cliff under his window. At first he thought it must be their trampling had woke him out of sleep, but the next moment _bang!_ the room shook all about him, a cloud of smoke drifted up towards him from the Enys Point, and through it, while 'twas clearing, he saw John Carter and another man run to the battery and begin to load again, with Mrs. Geen behind them waving a rammer, and dancing like a paper-woman in a cyclone. Below the mouth of the Cove tossed a boatload of men, pulling and backing with their heads ducked, their faces on a level with their shoulders, and all turned back towards the battery, while a big red-faced man stood up in the stern-sheets shaking his fist and dancing almost as excitedly as Mrs. Geen. Still farther out, a fine cutter lay rocking on the swell, her bosom swinging and sails shaking in the flat calm.

The preacher dragged on his clothes somehow, tore out of the house and down to the Point as fast as legs would carry him. "Wha--what's the meanin' of this?" he screeched, rushing up to Captain John, who was sighting one of his three little nine-pounders.

"Blest if _I_ know!" said the captain. "We was a peaceable lot enough till you and Mrs. Geen came a-visiting; but you two would play Hamlet's ghost with a Quaker meeting."

"It's my Phoby--they're after my Phoby!" screamed Mrs. Geen, and then she turned on the fellow behind Captain John; it was Hosking, once a man-of-war's man, and now supposed to be teaching her boy the carpentry trade. "_This_ is what you bring en to, is it? You deceiver, you! You bare-faced villain!" (The man had a beard as big as a furze bush.) "Look at the poor lamb up there loadin' the hosses, and to think I bore and reared en for this! If you let one of they fellows lay hands on my Phoby I'll scratch out ivery eye in your head . . ."

"Stand by, Tim," says the captain quietly. "Drat the boat! If she keeps bobbiting about like that I shall hit her, sure 'nuff!" _Bang!_ went the little gun, and kicked backwards clean over its carriage. The shot whizzed about six feet above the boat, and plunged into the heaving swell between it and the cutter. "Bit too near, that. I don't want to hurt Roger Wearne, though he _do_ make such tempting, ugly faces."

"But what do they want? What are they after?" stuttered the preacher.

"They're after my Phoby!" cried Mrs. Geen.

"Not a bit of it," said Captain John good-humouredly. "From all I can see it's the preacher here they want to collar."

"_Me!_" screams the poor man--"_me!_"

"Well, if you _will_ go letting off rockets. I dunno what it costs up to Walsall, or wherever you come from, but down in these parts 'tis a hundred pound or twelve calendar months."

The preacher turned white and began to shake all of a sudden like a leaf. "But I didn't mean--I had no idea--you don't intend to tell me--" he stammered.

"Here, Tummels!" Captain John hailed a man who came running down to lend a hand with the guns. "Take the preacher here and fix him on one of the horses; sling a keg each side of him if he looks like tumbling off. Sorry to hurry you, sir," he explained; "but 'tis for your good. You must clear out of this before the officers get sight of your face, and I don't know how much longer I can frighten 'em off. When you get up to Trenowl you can cast loose and run, and it mayn't be time wasted if you make up an _alibi_ as you go along. It don't seem hospitable, I grant ee, but as a smuggler you're too enterprising for this little out-o'-the-way cove."

Tummels led the preacher away in too much of a daze to answer. He opened his mouth, but at that moment _bang!_ went Hosking with another of the guns. By and by Captain John let out a chuckle as he saw the poor man moving up the cliff track, swaying between two kegs and clutching at his horse's mane every time Tummels smacked the beast on the rump. The horse he rode was almost the last. By seven o'clock the boys had cleared the whole of their cargo, and still the preventive boat hung in the mouth of the Cove, pulling and backing and waiting for the chance Captain John never allowed them.

You see, Captain Harry, having dodged in behind the cutter without being spied, had a pretty start with the unloading. When day broke, Mr. Wearne, finding no sean-boat or suspicious craft in sight, and allowing that there was no fear of another attempt before nightfall, had stood down again for Prussia Cove, meaning to send in a boat (for the cutter drew too much water) and have it out with Captain Carter about the rockets. You can fancy his face when he came abreast the entrance and found the boys working like a hive of bees. As for resistance, the King always swore he hadn't an idea of it till Mrs. Geen put it into his head. The battery was never intended for more than show. "She's a wonderful woman," he declared; but he had a monstrous respect for all the Lemals. "Blood in every one of 'em," he said.

But, of course, the fun wasn't finished yet. Soon after seven, and after the last of the cargo had been salved under their eyes, the preventive men drew off. By a quarter past eight Wearne had worked the cutter in as close as he dared, and then opened fire with his guns. The first shot struck the 'taty-patch in front of Carter's house; the second plunked into the water not fifteen yards from the gun's muzzle. In the swell running she could make no practice at all, though she kept it up till midday. The boys behind the battery ran out and cheered whenever one flew extra wide, and this made Wearne mad. Will Richards, Tummels, and young Phoby Geen posted themselves in shelter behind the captain's house, and whenever a shot buried itself in the soft cliff one of them would run with a tubbal and dig it out. All this time Uncle Bill Leggo, having finished loading up the kegs, was carting water from the stream on the beach to the kitchen garden above the house, and his old sister Nan leading the horses (for it was a two-horse job). Richards called to him to leave out, it was too dangerous. "Now there," said Uncle Bill, "I've been thinkin' of Nan and the hosses this brave while!"

At noon Wearne ceased firing, and sent off a boat towards Penzance. The Cove boys still held the battery; and the two parties had their dinners, lit their pipes and studied each other all the long after-noon. But towards five o'clock a riding company arrived to help the law, and opened a musket fire on the rear of the battery from the hedge at the top of the hill. The game was up now. The boys scattered and took shelter in Bessie Bussow's house, and Captain John, having hoisted a flag of truce, waited for Wearne and his boat with all the calmness in life.

"A pretty day's work this!" was the collector's first word as he stepped ashore.

"Amusin' from first to last," agreed Captain John in his cordial way.

Says the collector slowly, "Well, tastes differ. You may be right, of course, but we'll begin at the beginning, and see how it works out. First, then, at nine forty-five last night you showed an unauthorised light for the purpose of cheating the revenue. Cost of that caper, one hundred pounds."

"Be you talkin' of the rockets?"

"'Course I be."

"Well then, _I_ didn't fire them, nor anyone belongin' to the Cove. I didn't set anyone to fire them, and they waren't fired to warn anybody. Let alone I have proof they was sent up by a Methody preacher to relieve his feelin's. You've known me too long, Roger Wearne, to think me fool enough to waste a whole future joy[3] over so simple a business as warnin' a boat."

"What are you tellin' me?"

"The truth, as I always do; and I advise you to believe it, or 'twon't be the first time you've seen too far into a brick wall."

Wearne knew well enough what Captain John meant. Just a year before he had paid a surprise visit to the Cove, ferreted out a locked shed and asked to be shown what was inside. The King refused. "It held nothing," he said, "but provisions for his brother Henry's vessel." Of course Wearne couldn't believe this; a locked store in Prussia Cove was much too sure a thing. So first he argued, and then he broke the door open, and, sure enough, found innocent provisions inside just as he'd been promised. Next morning the shed was empty. "Didn' I warn 'ee," said John, "against breaking in that door and leaving my property exposed. Now I'll have to make 'ee pay for it;" and pay for it Wearne did.

"All I know," the captain went on, "is that a Methody preacher paid me a visit last night, with the objic (so far as I can make out, for things have been movin' so fast I hadn't time to question en as I wished) o' teachin' me what was due to King George. In pursooance o' which--it being His Majesty's birthday--he took and fired a dozen rockets I keep on the off-chance of wantin' one of these days to signal the Custom House at Penzance. I own 'twas a funny thing to do, but folks takes their patriotism different. I daresay, now, _you_ didn't even remember 'twas His Majesty's birthday."

Wearne tried a fresh tack. "We'll take that yarn later on," he said. "You can't deny a cargo was run this morning."

"We'll allow it for the moment. But that only proves that no boat was warned away."

"And when I sent a boat in to capture it, you deliberately opened fire; in other words, tried to murder me, His Majesty's representative."

"Tried to murder you? Look here." Captain John stepped to one of his still loaded guns and pointed it carefully at a plank floating out at the mouth of the Cove--a plank knocked by the cutter's guns out of Uncle Bill Leggo's 'taty patch, and now drifting out to sea on the first of the ebb. He pointed the gun carefully, let fly, and knocked the bit of wood to flinders. "That's what I do when I try," he said. "Why, bless 'ee, I was no more in earnest than _you_ were!"

This made Wearne blush for his marksmanship. "But _you'll_ have to prove that," he said.

"Why, damme," said John Carter, and fined himself another sixpence on the spot; "if you are so partic'ler, _get out there in the boat again, and I will_."

Well, the upshot was that after some palaver Wearne agreed to walk up to the captain's house and reckon the accounts between them. He had missed a pretty haul and been openly defied. On the other hand he hadn't a man hurt, and he knew the King's Government still owed John Carter for a lugger he had lent two years before to chase a French privateer lying off Ardevora. Carter had sent the lugger round at Wearne's particular request; she was short handed, and after a running fight of three or four hours the Frenchman put in a shot which sent her to the bottom and drowned fourteen hands. For this, as Wearne knew, he had never received proper compensation. I fancy the two came to an agreement to set one thing against another and call quits. At any rate, John was put to no further annoyance over that day's caper. As for the preacher, I'm told that no person in these parts ever set eyes on him again. And Ann Geen drove home that evening with her Phoby beside her. "I'm sorry to let 'ee go, my son," said John; "but 'twould never do for me to have your mother comin' over here too often. I've a great respect for all the Lemals; but on the female side they be too frolicsome for a steady-going trade like mine."

[1] Drinking-house. [2] Huguenot's house. [3] Feu de joie.

THE MAN WHO COULD HAVE TOLD.

It was ten o'clock--a sunny, gusty morning in early September--when H.M.S. _Berenice_, second-class cruiser, left the Hamoaze and pushed slowly out into the Sound on her way to the China Seas.

From the Hoe, on a grassy slope below the great hotel, John Gilbart watched her as she thrust her long white side into view between Devil's Point and the wooded slopes of Mount Edgcumbe; watched her as she stole past Drake's Island and headed up the Asia passage. She kept little more than steerage way, threading her path among anchored yachts gay with bunting, and now and then politely slowing in the crowd of smaller craft under sail. For it was regatta morning. The tall club flagstaff behind and above Gilbart's head wore its full code of signals, with blue ensign on the gaff and blue burgee at the topmast head, and fluttered them intermittently as the nor'westerly breeze broke down in flaws over the leads of the club-house. Below him half a dozen small boys with bundles of programmes came skirmishing up the hill through the sparse groups of onlookers. Off the promenade pier, where the excursion steamers bumped and reeked and blew their sirens, the committee-ship lay moored in a moving swarm of rowboats, dingies, and steam-launches. She flew her B signal as yet, but the seconds were drawing on toward the five-minute gun; and beyond, on the ruffled Sound, nine or ten yachts were manoeuvring and trimming their canvas; two forty-raters dodging and playing through the opening stage of their duel for the start; four or five twenties taking matters easy as yet; all with jackyards hoisted. To the eastward a couple of belated twenties came creeping out from their anchorage in Cattewater.

All this Gilbart's gaze took in; with the stately merchantmen riding beyond the throng, and the low breakwater three miles away, and the blue horizon beyond all. Out of that blue from time to time came the low, jarring vibration which told of an unseen gunboat at practice; and from time to time a puff of white smoke from the Picklecombe battery held him listening for its louder boom. But he returned always to the _Berenice_ moving away up the Asia passage, so cautiously that between whiles she seemed to be drifting; but always moving, with the smoke blown level from her buff-coloured funnels, with clean white sides and clean white ensign, and here and there a sparkle of sunlight on rail or gun-breech or torpedo-tube. She was bound on a three-years' cruise; and Gilbart, who happened to know this and was besides something of a sentimentalist, detected pathos in this departure on a festival morning. It seemed to him--as she swung round her stern and his quick eye caught the glint of her gilded name with the muzzle of her six-inch gun on the platform above, foreshortened in the middle of its white screen like a bull's-eye in a target--it seemed to him that this holiday throng took little heed of the three hundred odd men so silently going forth to do England's work and fight her battles. On her deck yesterday afternoon he had shaken hands and parted with a friend, a stoker on board, and had seen some pitiful good-byes. His friend Casey, to be sure, was unmarried--an un-amiable man with a cynical tongue--with no one to regret him and no disposition to make a fuss over a three-years' exile. But at the head of the ship's ladder Gilbart had passed through a group of red-eyed women, one or two with babies at the breast. It was not a pretty sight: one poor creature had abandoned herself completely, and rocked to and fro holding on by the bulwarks and bellowing aloud. This and a vision of dirty wet handkerchiefs haunted him like a physical sickness.

Gilbart considered himself an Imperialist, read his newspaper religiously, and had shown great loyalty as secretary of a local sub-committee at the time of the Queen's Jubilee, in collecting subscriptions among the dockyardsmen. Habitually he felt a lump in his throat when he spoke of the Flag. His calling--that of lay-assistant and auxiliary preacher (at a pinch) to a dockyard Mission--perhaps encouraged this surface emotion; but by nature he was one of those who need to make a fuss to feel they are properly patriotic. To his thinking every yacht in the Sound should have dipped her flag to the _Berenice_.

Surely even a salute of guns would not have been too much. But no: that is the way England dismisses her sons, without so much as a cheer!

He felt ashamed of this cold send-off; ashamed for his countrymen. "What do they know or care?" he asked himself, fastening his scorn on the backs of an unconscious group of country-people who had raced one another uphill from an excursion steamer and halted panting and laughing half-way up the slope. It irritated him the more when he thought of Casey's pale, derisive face. He and Casey had often argued about patriotism; or rather he had done the arguing while Casey sneered. Casey was a stoker, and knew how fuel should be applied.

Casey made no pretence to love England. Gilbart never quite knew why he tolerated him. But so it was: they had met in the reading-room of a Sailors' Home, and had somehow struck up an acquaintance, even a sort of unacknowledged friendship. Their common love of books may have helped; for Casey--Heaven knew where or how--had picked up an education far above Gilbart's, and amazing in a common stoker. Also he wore some baffling, attractive mystery behind his reserve. Once or twice-- certainly not half a dozen times--he had at a casual word pulled open for an instant the doors of his heart and given Gilbart a sensation of looking into a furnace, into white-hot depths, sudden and frightening. But what chiefly won him was the knowledge that in some perverse, involuntary and quite inexplicable way he was liked by this sullen fellow, who had no other friend and sought none. He knew the liking to be there as surely as he knew it to be shy and sullen, curt in expression, contemptuous of itself. Had he ever troubled to examine himself honestly, Gilbart must have acknowledged himself Casey's inferior in all but amiability; and Casey no doubt knew this. But in friendship as in love there is usually one who likes and one who suffers himself to be liked, and the positions are not allotted by merit. Gilbart--a self-deceiver all his life--had accepted the compliment complacently enough.

The _Berenice_ cleared the crowd and quickened her speed as the five-minute gun puffed out from the committee-ship and the Blue Peter ran up the halyards in the smoke. Gilbart turned his attention upon the two big yachts and followed their movements until the starting-gun was fired; saw them haul up and plunge over the line so close together that the crews might have shaken hands; watched them as they fluttered out their spinnakers for the run to the eastern mark, for all the world like two great white moths floating side by side swiftly but with no show of hurry. When he returned to the cruiser she was far away, almost off the western end of the breakwater--gone, so far as he was concerned and whoever else might be watching her from the shore; the parting over, the threads torn and snapped, her crew face to face now with the long voyage.

He drew a long breath, and was aware for the first time of a woman standing about twenty yards on his left behind a group of chattering holiday-makers. He saw at a glance that she did not belong to them, but was gazing after the _Berenice_; a forlorn, tearless figure, with a handkerchief crumpled up into a ball in her hand. Affability was a part of Gilbart's profession, and besides, he hated to see a woman suffer. He edged toward her and lifted his hat.

"I hope," said he, "these persons are not annoying you? They don't understand, of course. I, too, have a friend on the _Berenice_."

The woman looked at him as though she heard but could not for the moment grasp what he said. She tightened her grip on the handkerchief and kept her lips firmly compressed.

Gilbart saw that, though tearless, her eyes wore traces of tears--no redness, but some swelling of the lids, with dark semicircles underneath.

"To them," he went on, nodding toward the holiday-keepers, "it's only regatta day. To them she's only a passing ship helping to make up the pretty scene. They know nothing of the gallant hearts she carries or the sore ones she leaves behind. If they knew, I wonder if they'd care? The ordinary Anglo-Saxon has so little imagination!"

She was staring at him now, and at length seemed to understand. But with understanding there grew in her eyes a look of anger, almost of repugnance. "Oh, please go away!" she said.

He lifted his hat and obeyed; indeed, he walked off to the farthest end of the Hoe. He was hurt. He had a thin-skinned vanity, and hated to look small even before a stranger. That snub poisoned his morning, and although he looked at the yachts, his mind ran all the time upon the encounter. To be sure he had brought it upon himself, but he preferred to consider that he had meant kindly--had obviously meant kindly. He tried to invent a retort,--a gentle, dignified retort which would have touched her to a regret for her injustice--nothing more. Perhaps it was not yet too late to return and convey his protest under a delicate apology; or perhaps the mere sight of him, casually passing, might move her to make amends. He even strolled back some way with this idea, but she had disappeared.

The _Berenice_ had vanished too; around Penlee Point no doubt. He remembered the field-glasses slung in a case by his hip and was fumbling with the leather strap when a drop of rain fell on his hand, the herald of a smart shower. A dark squall came whistling down the Hamoaze; and standing there in the fringe of it he saw it strike and spread itself out like a fan over the open Sound at his feet, blotting the sparkle out of the water, while some of the small boats heeled to it and others ran up into the wind and lay shaking. It was over in five minutes, and the sun broke out again before the rain ceased falling; but Gilbart decided that there was more to follow. He had not come out to keep holiday, and an unfinished manuscript waited for him in his lodgings--an address on True Manliness, to be delivered two evenings hence in the Mission Room to lads under eighteen. Though he delivered them without manuscript, Gilbart always prepared his addresses carefully and kept the fair copies in his desk. He lived in hope of being reported some day, and then--who could say but a book might be called for?

His lodgings lay midway down a long, dreary street of small houses, each with a small yard at the back, each built of brick and stuccoed, all as like as peas, all inhabited by dockyardsmen or the families of gunners, artificers, and petty officers in the navy. Prospect Place was its deceptive name, and it ran parallel with three precisely similar thoroughfares--Grafton Place, Alderney Place, and Belvedere Avenue. These four--with a cross-street, where the Mission Room stood facing a pawnbroker's--comprised Gilbart's field of labour.

He reached home a little after twelve, ate his dinner, and fell to work on his manuscript. By half-past three he had finished all but the peroration. Gilbart prided himself on his perorations; and knowing from experience that it helped him to ideas and phrases he caught up his hat and went out for a walk.

During that walk he did indeed catch and fix the needed sentences. But, as it happened, he was never afterward able to recall one of them. All he remembered was that much rain must have fallen; for the pavements which had been dry in the morning were glistening, and the roadways muddy and with standing puddles. On his way homeward each of these puddles reflected the cold, pure light of the dying day, until Prospect Place might have been a street in the New Jerusalem, paved with jasper, beryl, and chrysoprase. So much he remembered, and also that his feet must have taken him back to the Hoe, where the crowd was thicker and the regatta drawing to an end--a few yachts only left to creep home under a greenish sky, out of which the wind was fast dying. He had paused somewhere to listen to a band: he could give no further account to himself.

For this was what had happened: as he entered his lodgings and closed the front door, the letter-box behind it fell open and he saw a sealed envelope lying inside. He picked it out and read the address.

"Mrs. Wilcox!" he called down the passage. "When did this come?"

Mrs. Wilcox, appearing at the kitchen door and wiping her hands, could not tell. The midday post or else the three o'clock. There were no others. Come to think of it, she had heard a postman's knock when she was dishing up the dinner, but had supposed it to be next door. It sounded like next door.

Gilbart took the letter upstairs with him. The address was in Casey's handwriting. "Queer fellow, Casey." He broke the seal in the little bay window. "Just like him, though, to shake hands yesterday without a spark of feeling, and then send his good-byes to reach me after he was well on his way." He drew out the inclosure, unfolded it, and saw that the paper bore the printed address of the Sailors' Home where Casey dossed when ashore, and where writing-paper was supplied gratis. "Couldn't have come ashore after I left him: he'd paid his bill at the Rest and his bag was aboard. Must have had this in his pocket all the time; might just as well have handed it to me--with instructions not to open it--and saved the stamp. What a secretive old chap it is!"

He held the letter close to his eyes in the waning daylight.

"DEAR JOHN,--By the time this reaches you we shall have started;
and by then, or a little later, I shall have gone and the
Berenice with me. If you ask where, I don't know; but it is where
we shall never meet.

"You serve your country in your own way. I am going to serve mine.
Perhaps I shall also be serving yours; for it is only by striking
terribly and without warning that the brave men in this world can
get even with the cowards who make its laws.

"One thing I envy you--you'll be alive to see the rage of the sheep.
I am playing this hand alone and without help. So when your silly
newspapers begin to cry out about secret societies, _you will
know_. I never belonged to one in my life.

"I think I am sorriest about the way you'll think of me. But that
makes no real difference, because I know it to be foolish. I have
the stuff on board and the little machine. I cannot fix the time
to an hour up or down; but you may take it for sure that _some time
between 10 p.m. and midnight the_ Berenice _will be at the bottom of
the sea_ with

"Yours, P. C."

While John Gilbart read this there was silence in the stuffy little room, and for some minutes after. Then he stepped to the mantelpiece for the match-box and candle. A small ormolu clock ticked there, and while he groped for the matches he put out a hand to stop the noise, which had suddenly grown intolerable. He desisted, remembering that he did not know how the clock worked--that Mrs. Wilcox, who wound it up religiously on Monday mornings, was proud of it, and--anyway, _that_ wasn't the machine he wanted to stop. He found a match, lit it and held it close to the letter.

The match burned low, scorched his fingers. He dropped it in the fender, where it flickered out, just missing the "waterfall" of shavings with which Mrs. Wilcox decorated her fireplace in the summer months. He did not light another, but went back to the window and stood there, quite still.

Down the street to the westward, over the wet roofs still glimmering in the twilight, one pale green rift divided the heavy clouds, and in that rift the last of the daylight was dying. Across the way, in the house facing him, a woman was lighting a lamp. As a rule the inhabitants of Prospect Place did not draw the blinds of their upper rooms until they closed the shutters also and went to bed: and Gilbart looked straight into the little parlour. But he saw nothing.

He was trying--vainly trying--to bring his mind to it. Nothing really big had happened to him before: and his first feeling, characteristically selfish, was that this terrible thing had risen up to alter all the rest of his life. He must disentangle himself, get away to a distance and have a look at it. His brain was buzzing. Yes, there it rose, like a black wall between this moment and all the hours to come; a brute barrier stretching clean across the prospect. Again and again he brought his mind up to it as you might coax a horse up to a fence; again and again it refused. Each time in the last few steps his heart froze, extending its chill until every separate faculty hung back springless and inert. And there was no getting round!

Why had this happened to _him_ of all people? It never for a moment occurred to him to doubt Casey's word. He saw it now; hideous as the deed was, Casey was capable of it--had always been capable of it. Let it go for a miserable tribute to Casey's honesty in the past that Gilbart accepted the infernal statement at once and without suspicion. He knew now that from the bottom of their intercourse this candid devil had been grinning up at him all the time; only his own cowardly, comfortable habit of seeing the world as he wished it had kept his eyes turned from the truth. Men don't as a rule commit crimes; not one man in millions translates himself into a crime of this sort; the odds against his daring it are only to be told in millions. Yet it had happened. Man or devil, Casey never paltered with his creed; if the world differed from him, then it was Casey against the world; a hopeless business for him, yet he would get in a blow if possible. And Casey had got in his blow. The incredible had happened; but (Gilbart groaned) why had it happened to _him?_ In his stupefaction he returned again and again upon this, catching in the flood at that one little straw of self; not inhumanly, as callous to the ruin of others; but pitifully, meanly, because it was the one thing familiar in the roar and din. He cursed Casey; cursed him for betraying his friendship. The man had no right-- He pulled up suddenly, with a laugh. After all, Casey had played the game, had faced the music, and would go down with the _Berenice_. One soul against three hundred and fifty, perhaps; not what you would call atonement; but, after all, the best he had to offer. Wonder how many Samson pulled down with him at Gaza? Wonder if the Bible says?

"Beg pardon, Mr. Gilbart?"

It was Mrs. Wilcox standing in the doorway with his tea on a tray.

"It--it was nothing," he stammered. She must have heard his laugh.

"Talking to yourself? I often hear you at it over your sermons and things; sometimes at your dressing, too; I hears you when I'm in here doing up the room. You'd like the lamp lit, I suppose?" She set down the tray.

"Not just yet."

"Well, it's a bad habit, reading with your meals."

"It's not worth while to bring a lamp. I must drink my tea in a hurry, and run out. I have an engagement."

He heard her go out and close the door. "Casey had no right. It was a betrayal. If the man were bent on this infernal crime--put the atrocity of it aside for a moment--call it just an ordinary crime; . . . but why need he have written that letter? Why involve _him?_ Well, not involve, perhaps; still there was a kind of responsibility--"