Part 2 (1/2)
”Ay! we will catch him: have no fear,” says Geddes; ”scatter yourselves, my fine fellows, and shoot down the rascal if you do but sight him, for we shall suffer for it if he escape us.”
Whereupon the men, more concerned for themselves than for any hurt of Rodrigues, started off like hounds unleashed, and each, in his several direction, bent upon taking me again alive or dead. And it was none too soon, for the sawdust entering my mouth and nostrils when I breathed, I was pretty nigh choked--to say nothing of the oppression I suffered from the cords that pinned my arms and Rodrigues lying upon my back.
So when they were gone and Rodrigues, standing up and peering over the edge, said that all was clear, I lifted my head, shaking off the sawdust and spitting out that which had got into my throat, and breathed again.
”Now,” said Rodrigues; ”Now may we escape, for being all scattered, our pursuers are less likely to take us.”
”Do but cut this cord,” says I, ”and I warrant not any two shall take me.”
”Ay,” says he, ”I will cut your bonds with a good heart. But first you must swear to be secret and silent; nay, you must swear also to be obedient to my direction without question or murmuring, else will I leave you here to fare for yourself.”
I promised him this, for I was in no position to haggle over terms; yet my promise was not enough for him, but he, taking his dagger by the blade, held it to my mouth, and would have me kiss the cross of it, swearing by that sign as a Christian to obey him in every particular.
And this I did, the more readily because of the cord which Jack Geddes had knotted so cruelly about my arms that it bit into my flesh to my intolerable hurt.
Having thus made me take oath, he cut the cord, and I was free; yet for some time could I not use my arms with any freedom, by reason they were so benumbed and bruised. Nevertheless, I managed to scramble up out of the pit after Rodrigues, and thence, I following on his heels, with the stealth of any cats, we pushed our way by bush and briar through the thickest part of the wood, where, at sight of an enemy, we might lie down and be unseen. On we went, Rodrigues leading and keeping the sun well before, for a matter of three miles or thereabouts, without encountering any of my pursuers; and then, perceiving that if we kept on in this direction we must shortly come to Flus.h.i.+ng, which lies (as I have said) on the hither side of the Fal, opposite Penny-come-quick, I twitched Rodrigues by the skirt and gave him to understand this, adding that there was not a fisherman there but knew me, and would have me hanged if he could; and this was true, for I was known and feared all round and about these parts, and held to be a wild man of the woods, very dreadful and dangerous, and a bogey to frighten children withal.
”I know well enough where I am going,” says he.
”That may be,” says I; ”yet this is but a stepping out of the frying-pan into the fire, so far as I am concerned.”
Whereupon he taps the handle of his dagger as a sign to me to remember my oath, and that is all the satisfaction I got.
So on we go again, still keeping the sun before up; and descending the hill anon we come to the river-side, and here Rodrigues stops, looking to the right and left, as if uncertain; then, putting his hand over his mouth, he gives the cry of ”Cuckoo!” as natural as ever I did hear, and straight there comes an answer in the same manner from a thicket further up the river-side. Thither we made our way, but with great care, now being no more than a furlong or thereabouts from the village, screened off by a jutting point of land well timbered; and soon, pa.s.sing through the said thicket, we came on a little creek, in which lay a boat, wherein sat a couple of seamen as tawny as Rodrigues, but stouter and better favored, albeit one lacked an eye.
All about this creek there lay an open s.p.a.ce, from which an alley ran up into the wood; and, lest he should be observed, Rodrigues would not advance beyond the brush, whence he signaled his fellows to know if all were safe. And he with the one eye, rising up and stretching himself as if he were aweary, spied up the alley and all round and about, and then signaled, by winking his one eye, that he could see nothing; whereupon Rodrigues bade me cross the open quickly, get into the boat, and lie down under the sail that was there. He came not himself, but was gone when I got to the boat and cast my eye round for him. And here I may tell what I afterwards learnt concerning him. He made his way back with all speed to the sawpit, and lay there as if he had never budged when the men came back from their search after me, still feigning to be greatly hurt with his arm, though happily a.s.sured that it was not broken.
Meanwhile I, following his direction without knowing what the end thereof might be, got into the boat, and, lying down in the bottom, was covered over with the sail-cloth by one of the mariners, while the other loosed the boat from its moorings; and this was done none too quickly, for as the fellow was stepping into the boat from untying of the headline, who should come down into the open but John Geddes himself, as I knew full well by his voice.
”Hold, there!” says he, hailing the seamen. ”Have you seen a great, st.u.r.dy fellow in a leather jerkin pa.s.s this way?”
”Not we,” replies one; ”and we've been on the lookout for such a man since yesterday afternoon--and a pox to him!”
”And, pray, who set you to wait for him?” asked Geddes, and his voice told that he was now close by the boat's side.
”Why, that's my master's business that sent us, and none of yours,” said the fellow.
”Hold your clapper, Ned, and lend a hand with your oar,” cries his mate, ”for the boat is aground, and I can't shove her off. Yo, ho! all together! yo, ho?--there we be! Now off we go, Pengilly or no Pengilly, for, curse me,” says he, ”my in'ards will stand this griping no longer.”
Then there sprang up a dissension between the two seamen and Geddes, who would have them ferry him over to Penny-come-quick, and they would not; and he, laying the stock of his musket on the gunwale to draw the boat so that he might step in, one of them flung it off, while the other fetched him a blow on the head with his oar that laid Master Geddes senseless on his back. Then says the first to the other--
”Lay to, Ned, for G.o.d's sake, or mischief will come of this.”
All this while I lay still under the sail-cloth, expecting, for the most part, nothing less but to feel Geddes' foot step on to me. But his business being so concluded, I heard nothing more but the dip of the oars, the ripple of water under me, and the working of the rowlocks, until one of the men said to the other, ”Pull under her lee, that we be not seen from the sh.o.r.e”; and the next minute the boat b.u.mped, and the sail-cloth being whipped off, I found that we lay under the side of a fine, high s.h.i.+p.
”Up you go, comrade, quick,” says Ned (he with one eye).
Then up the rope steps that hung by the s.h.i.+p's side I sped, and being come on deck was as speedily hustled down into the dark hold below, where they who had followed me down barricaded me round about with divers barrels, bidding me lie quiet until I should be told it was safe to venture forth.
And all this time I knew not that I had come as a runaway aboard my uncle's s.h.i.+p the _Sure Hawk_; but so it was.