Jim Davis Part 3

"They're gone, all right," he said; "swords, and redcoats and pipe-clay--they're gone. And a good riddance too! I should have been back before, only your ladies were talking, looking for you, so I had to wait till they were gone. I expect you'll want your dinner, sitting here so long? Well, cut and get it."

He slung the boat-rugs into a corner, blew out the lantern, and dropped a handful of snow on to the fire. "Cut," he continued. "You can go. Get out of this. Run and get your dinners." We went with him out of the hut into the square. "See here," he continued, "don't you go coming here. You don't know of this place--see? Don't you show your little tracks in this part of the wood; this is a private house, this is--trespa.s.sers will be prosecuted. Now run along and thank 'ee for your company."

As Hugh began to squirm along the pa.s.sage, I turned and shook hands with the man. I thought it would be the polite thing to do to say good-bye properly. "Will you tell me your name?" I asked.

"Haven't got a name," he answered gruffly. "None of your business if I had." He saw that I was hurt by his rudeness, for his face changed: "I'll tell you," he added quickly; "but don't you say it about here. Gorsuch is my name--Marah Gorsuch."

"Marah," I said. "What a funny name!"

"Is it?" he said grimly: "It means bitter--bitter water, and I'm bitter on the tongue, as you may find. Now cut."

"One thing more, Mr Gorsuch," I said, "be careful of your fires. They can smell them outside when the wind blows down from the wood."

"Fires!" he exclaimed; "I don't light fires here except I've little bleating schoolboys to tea. Cut and get your porridge. Here," he called, as I went down on my hands and knees, "here's a keepsake for you."

He tossed me a little ornament of twisted silver wire woven into the form of a double diamond knot, probably by the man himself.

"Thank you, Mr Gorsuch," I said.

"Oh, don't thank me," he answered rudely: "I'm tired of being thanked. Now cut."

I wriggled through the clump after Hugh, then we ran home together through the wood, just as the dinner-bell was ringing for the second time.

Mrs Cottier asked us if we had not heard her calling.

"Yes, Mims," I said, "we did hear; but we were hidden in a secret house; we wondered if you would find us--we were close to you some of the time."

My aunt said Something about "giving a lot of trouble" and "being very thoughtless for others"; but we had heard similar lectures many times before and did not mind them much. After dinner I took Mims aside and told her everything; she laughed a little, though I could see that she was uneasy about Hugh.

"I wouldn't mention it to any one," she said. "It would be safer not. But, oh, Jim, here we are, all three of us, in league with the lawbreakers. The soldiers were here this morning asking all sorts of questions, and they'd two men prisoners with them, taken at Tor Cross on suspicion; they're to be sent to Exeter till the a.s.sizes. I'm afraid it will go hard with them; I dare say they'll be sent abroad, poor fellows. Every house is being searched for last night's work: it seems they surprised the coastguards at the Cross and tied them up in their barracks, before they landed their goods, and now the whole country is being searched by troops. And here are we three innocents,"

she went on, smiling, drawing us both to her, "all conspiring against the King's peace--I expect we shall all be transported. Well, I shall be transported, but you'd have to serve in the Navy. So now we won't talk about it any more; I've had enough smuggling for one day. Let's go out and build a real snow-house, and then Jim will be a Red Indian and we will have a fight with bows and arrows."

CHAPTER V

THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE "SNAIL"

It was during the wintry days that Mrs Cottier decided to remove us from the school at Newton Abbot. She had arranged with the Rector at Strete for us to have lessons at the Rectory every morning with young Ned Evans, the Rector's son; so when the winter holidays ended we were spared the long, cold drive and that awful "going back" to the school we hated so.

Winter drew to an end and the snow melted. March came in like a lion, bringing so much rain that the brook was flooded. We saw no more of the night-riders after that day in the snow, but we noticed little things now and then among the country people which made us sure that they were not far off. Once, when we were driving home in the evening after a day at Dartmouth, owls called along the road from just behind the hedge, whenever the road curved. Hugh and I remembered the pheasants that day in the wood, and we nudged each other in the darkness, wondering whether Mr Gorsuch was one of the owls. After that night we used to practise the call of the owls and the pheasants, but we were only clever at the owl's cry: the pheasant's call really needs a man's voice, it is too deep a note for any boy to imitate well; but we could cry like the owls after some little practice, and we were very vain when we made an owl in the wood reply to us. Once, at the end of February, we gave the owl's cry outside the "Adventure Inn,"

where the road dips from Strete to the sands, and a man ran out to the door and looked up and down, and whistled a strange little tune, or sc.r.a.p of a tune, evidently expecting an answer; but that frightened us; we made him no answer, and presently he went in muttering. He was puzzled, no doubt, for he came out again a minute later and again whistled his tune, though very quietly. We learned the sc.r.a.p of tune and practised it together whenever we were sure that no one was near us.

As for the two men taken by the troops, they were let off. The innkeeper at South Poole swore that both men had been in his inn all the night of the storm playing the "ring-quoits" game with the other guests and as his oath was supported by half-a-dozen witnesses, the case for the King fell through; the night-riders never scrupled to commit perjury. Later on I learned a good deal about how the night-riders managed things.

During that rainy March, while the brook was in flood all over the valley, Hugh and I had a splendid time sailing toy boats, made out of boxes and pieces of plank. We had one big s.h.i.+p made out of a long wooden box which had once held flowers along a window-sill. We had painted ports upon her sides, and we had rigged her with a single square sail. With a strong southwesterly wind blowing up the valley, she would sail for nearly a mile whenever the floods were out, and though she often ran aground, we could always get her off, as the water was so shallow.

Now, one day (I suppose it was about the middle of the month) we went to sail this s.h.i.+p (we used to call her the _Snail_) from our side of the flood, right across the river-course, to the old slate quarry on the opposite side. The distance was, perhaps, three hundred yards. We chose this site because in this place there was a sort of ridge causeway leading to a bridge, so that we could follow our s.h.i.+p across the flood without getting our feet wet. In the old days the quarry carts had crossed the brook by this cause-way, but the quarry was long worked out, and the road and bridge were now in a bad state, but still good enough for us, and well above water.

We launched the _Snail_ from a green, shelving bank, and shoved her off with the long sticks we carried. The wind caught her sail and drove her forward in fine style; she made a great ripple as she went. Once she caught in a drowned bush; but the current swung her clear, and she cut across the course of the brook like a Falmouth Packet. Hugh and I ran along the causeway, and over the bridge, to catch her on the other side. We had our eyes on her as we ran, for we feared that she might catch, or capsize; and we were so intent upon our s.h.i.+p that we noticed nothing else. Now when we came to the end of the causeway, and turned to the right, along the shale and rubble tipped there from the quarry, we saw a man coming down the slope to the water, evidently bent on catching the _Snail_ when she arrived. We could not see his face very clearly, for he wore a grey slouch-hat, and the brambles were so high just there that sometimes they hid him from us. He seemed, somehow, a familiar figure; and the thought flashed through me that it might be Mr Gorsuch.

"Come on, Hugh," I cried, "or she'll capsize on the shale. The water's very shallow, so close up to this side."

We began to run as well as we could, over the broken stones.

"It's no good," said Hugh. "She'll be there before we are."

We broke through a brake of brambles to a green s.p.a.ce sloping to the flood. There was the _Snail_, drawn up, high and dry, on to the gra.s.s, and there was the man, sitting by her on a stone, solemnly cutting up enough tobacco for a pipe.

"Good morning, Mr Gorsuch," I said.

"Why, it's young sweethearter," he answered. "Why haven't you got your nurses with you?" He filled his pipe and lighted it, watching us with a sort of quizzical interest, but making no attempt to shake hands. He made me feel that he was glad to see us; but that nothing would make him show it. "What d'ye call this thing?" he asked, pointing with his toe to the _Snail_.

"That's our s.h.i.+p," said Hugh.

"Is it?" he asked contemptuously. "I thought it was your mother's pudding-box, with some of baby's bedclothes on it. That's what I thought it was."

He seemed to take a pleasure in seeing Hugh's face fall. Hugh always took a rough word to heart, and he could never bear to hear his mother mentioned by a stranger.

"It's a good enough s.h.i.+p for us," he answered hotly.

"How d'ye know it is?" said the man. "You know nothing at all about it. What do _you_ know of s.h.i.+ps, or what's good for you? Hey?

You don't know nothing of the kind."

This rather silenced Hugh; we were both a little abashed, and so we stood sheepishly for a moment looking on the ground.

At last I took Hugh by the arm. "Let's take her somewhere else," I said softly. I bent down and picked up the s.h.i.+p and turned to go.

The man watched us with a sort of amused contempt. "Where are you going now?" he asked.

"Down the stream," I called back.

"Drop it," he said. "Come back here."

I called softly to Hugh to run. "Shan't!" I cried as we started off together, at our best speed.

"Won't you?" he called. "Then I'll make you." He was after us in a brace of shakes, and had us both by the collar in less than a dozen yards. "What little tempers we have got," he said grinning. "Regular little spitfires, both of you. Now back you come till we have had a talk."

I noticed then that he was much better dressed than formerly. His clothes were of the very finest sea-cloth, and well cut. The b.u.t.tons on his scarlet waistcoat were new George guineas; and the b.u.t.tons on his coat were of silver, very beautifully chased. His shoes had big silver buckles on them, and there was a silver buckle to the flap of his grey slouch hat. The tattoo marks on his left hand were covered over by broad silver rings, of the sort the Spanish onion-boys used to sell in Dartmouth, after the end of the war. He looked extremely handsome in his fine clothes. I wondered how I could ever have been afraid of him.

"Yes," he said with a grin, when he saw me eyeing him, "my s.h.i.+p came home all right. I was able to refit for a full due. So now we'll see what gifts the Queen sent."

We wondered what he meant by this sentence; but we were not kept long in doubt. He led us through the briars to the ruins of the shed where the quarry overseer had formerly had his office.

"Come in here," he said, shoving us in front of him, "and see what the Queen'll give you. Shut your eyes. That's the style. Now open."

When we opened our eyes we could hardly keep from shouting with pleasure. There, on the ground, kept upright by a couple of bricks was a three-foot model of a revenue cutter, under all her sail except the big square foresail, which was neatly folded upon her yard. She was perfect aloft, even to her pennant; and on deck she was perfect too, with beautiful little model guns, all bra.s.s, on their carriages, pointing through the port-holes.