Part 13 (1/2)
”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 ash.o.r.e 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, s.n.a.t.c.hing 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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 las.h.i.+ng 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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 las.h.i.+ng 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 splas.h.i.+ng, hacking at each other with swords, firing in each other's faces. Half-a-dozen hors.e.m.e.n tried to drag the lugger towards the sh.o.r.e, but the men beat them back, knocked them from their saddles, or flogged the horses over the nose with pistol-b.u.t.ts.
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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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-b.u.t.t, 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 sh.o.r.e.
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 sh.o.r.e, 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 ash.o.r.e. 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 sh.o.r.eward, 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 ash.o.r.e 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 gra.s.s seemed blighted. And we were drifting ash.o.r.e to it, fast drifting ash.o.r.e to the tune of the two drunkards:
”There was a s.h.i.+p, and a s.h.i.+p of fame: Away, ho! Rise and s.h.i.+ne.