Hammer and Anvil Part 21

CHAPTER XVII.

The cutter now flew gallantly along under a press of canva.s.s that laid her lee-bulwarks nearly under water, while the _Lightning_ fell astern, and in brief time was lost to our sight.

A sort of life had come into the silent and almost motionless crew of the cutter. They raised their heads and exchanged remarks upon the incident, which to them was nothing so unusual. Every one of these men had at some time or other been brought into dangerous contact with the revenue service. The liberty, and possibly the life of every man there had at some time or other hung by a single thread. So no one exhibited any special excitement, but Smith Pinnow least of all. He sat at the helm just as before, casting keen glances at the sails and into the dusk, chewing his tobacco, and otherwise not moving a muscle. He did not say a word to me, as if it was not worth the while of an old sea dog to speak to so young a fellow about things which he did not understand. I felt a dryness in my throat that compelled me to cough once or twice, and I b.u.t.toned my overcoat closer over my pistols.

And now another vessel loomed through the dusk, and this time it was the long-looked-for yacht, a tolerably large craft, with but a single sail, but a full deck. In a few minutes we were alongside of her, and immediately the bales of goods, which were all in readiness, were lowered from the deck of the yacht, and taken on board by the crew of the cutter, who were now alert enough in their movements. The whole went on with extraordinary silence; hardly now and then could be heard a suppressed exclamation, or an order uttered half aloud in the gruff voice of the captain of the yacht.

I was one of the first to board the yacht, but I looked around in vain for Herr von Zehren. I was already congratulating myself that he was not on board, when he suddenly emerged from the hatchway that led to the cabin. His first glance fell upon me, and he came towards me with an unsteady gait, caused, as I supposed, by the motion of the vessel.

"And what in the devil's name has brought you here?" he cried with a hoa.r.s.e voice; but I had no time to give him any explanation. The cutter had now all her lading on board, and the captain of the yacht coming up, said, "Now, be off with you!" He had just learned that a revenue schooner was about, and had no desire to risk his vessel and the rest of his cargo. "Be off!" he repeated, in a rough tone.

"To-morrow evening, then, at the same time," said Herr von Zehren.

"We'll see about it," said the captain, and sprang to the helm, for the yacht, which had already weighed her anchor, and whose mainsail was now half-mast high, began to come round to the wind.

A scene of confusion followed. The yacht's man[oe]uvre had been performed without any consideration for the cutter alongside, and came very near sinking our little craft. There was a burst of oaths on both sides, a tremendous grinding and cracking, a perilous leap from the deck of the yacht to that of the cutter, and we pushed off, while the yacht, which had already caught the wind, went on her course with full sails.

All this had taken place so rapidly, and, besides, the bustle and confusion of such a number of men on so small a craft, as they set the sails and stowed the cargo in the fore-hold, were so great, that some time pa.s.sed ere I could get to Herr von Zehren's side.

He was still swearing at the villain of a captain, the coward who was running from a miserable revenue-schooner that he could run down and sink in five minutes. Catching sight of me he asked again, "What has brought you here?"

I was somewhat embarra.s.sed how to answer this question. My suspicion of Pinnow had entirely vanished, and Pinnow sat close beside us at the helm and heard the question put in a loud tone. I contented myself with saying:

"I was afraid some misfortune might happen to you, and wanted to be with you!"

"Misfortune!" he cried. "Stupidity, cowardice, that is the only misfortune! The devil take the stupid poltroons!"

He sat down by Pinnow and talked with him in an undertone. Then turning to me, he said:

"You sent two of the men home; you should not have interfered with them. I need their services; every back is now worth a thousand _thalers_ to me. Or did you propose to carry a pack yourself?"

He said this in an irritated tone that roused my indignation. If I had acted injudiciously, I had done all for the best; and to be rebuked for my faithful service in the presence of Pinnow, it was too much. I had a sharp answer at my tongue's end, but I gulped down my anger and went forward.

He did not call me back; he did not come after me to say a friendly word as he had always before done, whenever in his hastiness he had wounded my feelings. Presently I heard him rating two of the men in a shrill voice, for what, I could not understand; but this shrill tone which I had never before heard from him, told me at once that what I had feared was the truth; he was intoxicated.

A horrible feeling of disgust and wretchedness came over me. For the sake of this man, who was gesticulating there like a maniac, I had done what I had; for his sake I was here among this abandoned crew as accomplice of a crime which from boyhood had always seemed to me one of the most detestable; for his sake I had well-nigh become a murderer.

And even now I had in my pocket my father's letter, in which the old man had given me such a solemn warning, and commanded me, if I had any regard for his peace, to return to him immediately.

I felt for the letter, and my hand came in contact with the pistols in my belt. I felt a strange impulse, here upon the spot, in the midst of the smuggler-gang, and before the eyes of their drunken leader, to blow out my brains. At this moment I thought of the good Hans who was risking himself for a cause that was not a whit better. And yet he may thank heaven, I said to myself, that he is not on this expedition.

"Boat ahoy!" suddenly rang over the water as before, and the _Lightning_ again loomed out of the dusk, and a couple of shots were fired.

This was the signal for a chase which lasted probably an hour, during which the cutter, while seeming to make every effort, by countless dexterous and daring evolutions, to escape her pursuer, drew ever nearer and nearer to that part of the coast which had been agreed upon between Pinnow and the officers, about half a mile above Zanowitz, where the depth of the water would allow her to run almost immediately upon the beach. From here one could proceed to Zehrendorf by a wagon-road which ran along the strand to Zanowitz, and from there over the heath; or one could go directly across the heath; but in the latter case there was a large and very dangerous mora.s.s to be crossed, which could only be done by secret paths known to the smugglers alone. It was ten to one that Herr von Zehren would choose the way over the moor instead of that along the coast, from the spot to which the cutter had apparently been driven.

While the chase lasted, I did not move from the spot in which I was, fully determined to take no active part in the affair, happen what might. Herr von Zehren made my pa.s.sive part an easy one; often as he came near me, he never once took any notice of me. During this hour of excitement his intoxication seemed to have increased; his behavior was that of a raging madman. He shrieked to Pinnow to run the schooner down; he returned the fire of the officers with one of Pinnow's old guns, which he had found in the cabin, although the _Lightning_ prudently kept at a distance which would have been too great for even a rifle of long range; and as the cutter, after a long tack out to sea, on which she distanced the schooner, stood in again and reached the sh.o.r.e unmolested, he leaped out into the shallow water, and his men had all to follow him, after each had been loaded with one of the heavy packs which were made up for this purpose. There were eleven carriers in all, as Pinnow offered the services of the boatmen he had brought from Zanowitz, saying that he could get along with the deaf and dumb Jacob alone; and thus the place of one of the two men whom I had sent home was filled. But there still remained a twelfth pack, which lay upon the deck, and would have been left, as there was no one to carry it, had I not managed to get it on my shoulders by laying it on the gunwale of the boat, and then springing into the surf, which reached to my knees. I was resolved that if I parted from Herr von Zehren that night, he should not be able to say that I had caused him the loss of a twelfth part of his property, won with so much toil and care, with the risk of the liberty, and lives of so many men, and at the price of his own honor.

A boisterous laugh resounded behind me as I left the cutter. It came from Pinnow; he knew what he was laughing about. The cutter, lightened of her lading, was now afloat, and as I gained the beach and turned, she was slowly standing out to sea. He had done his shameful work.

At this moment it flashed upon me, "He is a traitor, after all!" I do not know whether it was his laugh of malicious triumph that again aroused my suspicion, or what suggested the thought, but I said to myself, as I closed the file which was headed by Herr von Zehren and Jock Swart, "Now it will soon be decided."

CHAPTER XVIII.

We had pa.s.sed the dunes, and were marching in single file across the sandy waste land on the other side. No word was spoken; each man had enough to do in carrying his heavy pack; I perhaps the most of all, although none of the men, unless it might be Jock Swart, equalled me in strength; but in such things practice is everything. And then in addition to my pack, which probably weighed a hundred-weight, I bore another burden from which the others were free, and which pressed me far more heavily--the burden of shame that my father's son was bending under this bale of silk, of which the revenue was defrauded, because I would not cause a loss of property to the man whose bread I had been eating for two months. And then I thought with what happiness my heart beat high when I left Zehrendorf in the morning, and that I was now returning deceived by the daughter, insulted by the father, contaminated by the defilement of the base traffic to which I had lent myself, and that this was the end of my visionary splendors, of my adored liberty! But the end had not yet come.

Without a moment's rest we kept on, the wet sand crunching under our feet, when of a sudden a word was given at the head of the file and pa.s.sed on in an under-tone from man to man until it came to me, who being the last could pa.s.s it no further--"Halt!"

We had reached the edge of the moor. It could be entered on this side only by a narrow strip which was pa.s.sable; then came a stretch of dry land, a sort of island, surrounded by the mora.s.s on every side, which closed in again at its opposite extremity, perhaps two thousand paces distant, and there was again only a narrow path which a heavily laden man could pa.s.s without sinking into the mora.s.s. After this came the heath, which extended from the lands of Trantowitz and Zehrendorf on one side to the dunes of Zanowitz on the other, and which I had already crossed three times to-day.

The place where we halted was the same where I had stood with Granow three evenings before. I recognized it by two willows which grew on the edge of the hollow from which I had first seen the band of night-prowlers emerge. This hollow lay now a little to our left, at perhaps fifty paces distance; and I could not have distinguished the willows in the increased darkness, but for the extraordinary keenness of my sight. On account of this darkness the men had to close up in order not to deviate from the narrow path, and this was the reason that a momentary halt had been ordered.

But it was only for a moment, and again we struck into the moor upon the narrow causeway: to the right and left among the rushes gleamed a pale phosph.o.r.escent light from the stagnant water which lay around in great pools, and the ground on which we were treading oscillated in a singular manner, as we crossed it in a sort of trot.

The path had been safely pa.s.sed, and the men were marching more slowly, when my ear caught a clicking sound like the c.o.c.king of a gun. The sound was behind me; that I had plainly heard; and I knew besides that none of our party was armed. I stopped to listen, and again I heard the same sound; and presently I distinguished upon the spot where we had just pa.s.sed, a figure emerge between the tall rushes, followed immediately by a second and a third. Without thinking to throw the heavy pack from my shoulders, and indeed without being conscious of it, I ran to the head of the file and touched Herr von Zehren, who with Jock Swart was leading the march, upon the shoulder.

"We are pursued!"

"Nonsense!" said Herr von Zehren.

"Halt!" cried a powerful voice behind us.

"Forward!" commanded our leader.

"Halt! halt!" it was repeated, and half-a-dozen shots were fired in quick succession, the bullets whistling over our heads.

In an instant our whole party was scattered, as is the custom of contrabandists when they are hotly pressed, and, as in the present instance, they are not prepared, or not disposed to offer resistance.

On all sides, except in the direction of our pursuers, I saw the men, who had at once cast off their packs, stealthily slipping away, some even creeping off on all-fours. In the next moment Herr von Zehren and I were alone.

Behind us we heard the ring of iron ramrods in the barrels. They were re-loading the muskets that had been fired. This gave a brief pause.

Herr von Zehren and I were standing together. "How many are there?" he asked in a whisper.

"I cannot make out," I answered, in a similar tone; "I think more are coming up. There can hardly be less than a dozen."

"They will not advance any further in the darkness," he said.

"They are coming now," I urged.

"Halt! Who goes there!" came again from the pursuing party, who were not more than a hundred paces off, as well as could be judged in the darkness, and again a bullet or two whistled above our heads.

"I entreat you!" I said, taking his arm to urge him forward.