In Clive's Command: A Story of the Fight for India
E-text prepared by Martin Robb
IN CLIVE'S COMMAND
A Story of the Fight for India
by
HERBERT STRANG
Contents
Preface
Chapter 1: In which the Court Leet of Market Drayton entertains
Colonel Robert Clive; and our hero makes an acquaintance.
Chapter 2: In which our hero overhears a conversation; and, meeting
with the unexpected, is none the less surprised and offended.
Chapter 3: In which Mr. Marmaduke Diggle talks of the Golden East; and
our hero interrupts an interview, and dreams dreams.
Chapter 4: In which blows are exchanged; and our hero, setting forth
upon his travels, scents an adventure.
Chapter 5: In which Job Grinsell explains; and three visitors come by
night to the Four Alls.
Chapter 6: In which the reader becomes acquainted with William Bulger and
other sailor men; and our hero as a squire of dames acquits
himself with credit.
Chapter 7: In which Colonel Clive suffers an unrecorded defeat; and
our hero finds food for reflection.
Chapter 8: In which several weeks are supposed to elapse; and our hero
is discovered in the Doldrums.
Chapter 9: In which the Good Intent makes a running fight: Mr. Toley
makes a suggestion.
Chapter 10: In which our hero arrives in the Golden East, and Mr.
Diggle presents him to a native prince.
Chapter 11: In which the Babu tells the story of King Vikramaditya; and the
discerning reader may find more than appears on the surface.
Chapter 12: In which our hero is offered freedom at the price of honor;
and Mr. Diggle finds that others can quote Latin on occasion.
Chapter 13: In which Mr. Diggle illustrates his argument; and there
are strange doings in Gheria harbor.
Chapter 14: In which seven bold men light a big bonfire; and the
Pirate finds our hero a bad bargain.
Chapter 15: In which our hero weathers a storm; and prepares for squalls.
Chapter 16: In which a mutiny is quelled in a minute; and our Babu
proves himself a man of war.
Chapter 17: In which our hero finds himself among friends; and
Colonel Clive prepares to astonish Angria.
Chapter 18: In which Angria is astonished; and our hero begins to pay
off old scores.
Chapter 19: In which the scene changes; the dramatis personae
remaining the same.
Chapter 20: In which there are recognitions and explanations; and our
hero meets one Coja Solomon, of Cossimbazar.
Chapter 21: In which Coja Solomon finds dishonesty the worse policy;
and a journey down the Hugli little to his liking.
Chapter 22: In which is given a full, true, and particular account of
the Battle of the Carts.
Chapter 23: In which there are many moving events; and our hero finds
himself a cadet of John Company.
Chapter 24: In which the danger of judging by appearance is notably
exemplified.
Chapter 25: In which our hero embarks on a hazardous mission; and
Monsieur Sinfray's khansaman makes a confession.
Chapter 26: In which presence of mind is shown to be next best to
absence of body.
Chapter 27: In which an officer of the Nawab disappears; and Bulger
reappears.
Chapter 28: In which Captain Barker has cause to rue the day when he met
Mr. Diggle; and our hero continues to wipe off old scores.
Chapter 29: In which our hero does not win the Battle of Plassey:
but, where all do well, gains as much glory as the rest.
Chapter 30: In which Coja Solomon reappears: and gives our hero
valuable information.
Chapter 31: In which friends meet, and part: and our hero hints a proposal.
Chapter 32: In which the curtain falls to the sound of wedding bells:
and our hero comes to his own.
Preface
I have not attempted in this story to give a full account of the career of Lord Clive. That has been done by my old friend, Mr. Henty, in "With Clive in India." It has always seemed to me that a single book provides too narrow a canvas for the display of a life so full and varied as Clive's, and that a work of fiction is bound to suffer, structurally and in detail, from the compression of the events of a lifetime within so restricted a space. I have therefore chosen two outstanding events in the history of India--the capture of Gheria and the battle of Plassey--and have made them the pivot of a personal story of adventure. The whole action of the present work is comprised in the years from 1754 to 1757.
But while this book is thus rather a romance with a background of history than an historical biography with an admixture of fiction, the reader may be assured that the information its pages contain is accurate. I have drawn freely upon the standard authorities: Orme, Ives, Grose, the lives of Clive by Malcolm and Colonel Malleson, and many other works; in particular the monumental volumes by Mr. S.C. Hill recently published, "Bengal in 1756-7," which give a very full, careful and clear account of that notable year, with a mass of most useful and interesting documents. The maps of Bengal, Fort William and Plassey are taken from Mr. Hill's work by kind permission of the Secretary of State for India. I have to thank also Mr. T. P. Marshall, of Newport, for some valuable notes on the history and topography of Market Drayton.
For several years I myself lived within a stone's throw of the scene of the tragedy of the Black Hole; and though at that time I had no intention of writing a story for boys, I hope that the impressions of Indian life, character and scenery then gained have helped to create an atmosphere and to give reality to my picture. History is more than a mere record of events; and I shall be satisfied if the reader gets from these pages an idea, however imperfect, of the conditions of life under which all empire builders labored in India a hundred and fifty years ago.
Herbert Strang
Chapter 1: In which the Court Leet of Market Drayton entertains Colonel Robert Clive; and our hero makes an acquaintance.
One fine autumn evening, in the year 1754, a country cart jogged eastwards into Market Drayton at the heels of a thick-set, shaggy-fetlocked and broken-winded cob. The low tilt, worn and ill fitting, swayed widely with the motion, scarcely avoiding the hats of the two men who sat side by side on the front seat, and who, to a person watching their approach, would have appeared as dark figures in a tottering archway, against a background of crimson sky.
As the vehicle jolted through Shropshire Street, the creakings of its unsteady wheels mingled with a deep humming, as of innumerable bees, proceeding from the heart of the town. Turning the corner by the butchers' bulks into the High Street, the cart came to an abrupt stop. In front, from the corn market, a large wooden structure in the center of the street, to the Talbot Inn, stretched a dense mass of people; partly townfolk, as might be discerned by their dress, partly country folk who, having come in from outlying villages to market, had presumably been kept in the town by their curiosity or the fair weather.
"We'n better goo round about, Measter," said the driver, to the passenger at his side. "Summat's afoot down yander."
"You're a wise man, to be sure. Something's afoot, as you truly say. And, being troubled from my youth up with an inquiring nose, I'll e'en step forward and smell out the occasion. Do you bide here, my Jehu, till I come back."
"Why, I will, then, Measter, but my name binna Jehu. 'Tis plain Tummus."
"You don't say so! Now I come to think of it, it suits you better than Jehu, for the Son of Nimshi drove furiously. Well, Tummus, I will not keep you long; this troublesome nose of mine, I dare say, will soon be satisfied."
By this time he had slipped down from his seat, and was walking toward the throng. Now that he was upon his feet, he showed himself to be more than common tall, spare and loose jointed. His face was lean and swarthy, his eyes black and restless; his well-cut lips even now wore the same smile as when he mischievously misnamed his driver. Though he wore the usual dress of the Englishman of his day--frock, knee breeches and buckle shoes, none of them in their first youth--there was a something outlandish about him, in the bright yellow of his neckcloth and the red feather stuck at a jaunty angle into the ribbon of his hat; and Tummus, as he looked curiously after his strange passenger, shook his head and bit the straw in his mouth, and muttered:
"Ay, it binna on'y the nose, 't binna on'y the nose, with his Jehus an' such."
Meanwhile the man strode rapidly along, reached the fringe of the crowd, and appeared to make his way through its mass without difficulty, perhaps by reason of his commanding height, possibly by the aforesaid quaintness of his aspect, and the smile which forbade any one to regard him as an aggressor. He went steadily on until he came opposite to the Talbot Inn. At that moment a stillness fell upon the crowd; every voice was hushed; every head was craned towards the open windows of the inn's assembly room.
Gazing with the rest, the stranger saw a long table glittering under the soft radiance of many candles and surrounded by a numerous company--fat and thin, old and young, red-faced and pale, gentle and simple. At the end farthest from the street one figure stood erect--a short, round, rubicund little man, wearing a gown of rusty black, one thumb stuck into his vest, and a rosy benignity in the glance with which he scanned the table. He threw back his head, cleared his tight throat sonorously, and began, in tones perhaps best described as treacly, to address the seated company, with an intention also towards the larger audience without.
"Now, neebors all, we be trim and cozy in our insides, and 'tis time fur me to say summat. I be proud, that I be, as it falls to me, bein' bailiff o' this town, to axe ya all to drink the good health of our honored townsman an guest. I ha' lived hereabout, boy an' man, fur a matter o' fifty year, an' if so be I lived fifty more I couldna be a prouder man than I bin this night. Boy an' man, says I? Ay, I knowed our guest when he were no more'n table high. Well I mind him, that I do, comin' by this very street to school; ay, an' he minds me too, I warrant.
"I see him now, I do, skippin' along street fresh an' nimblelike, his eyne chock full o' mischief lookin' round fur to see some poor soul to play a prank on. It do feel strange-like to have him a-sittin' by my elbow today. Many's the tale I could tell o' his doin' an' our sufferin'. Why, I mind a poor lump of a 'prentice as I wunst had, a loon as never could raise a keek: poor soul, he bin underground this many year. Well, as I were sayin', this 'prentice o' mine were allers bein' baited by the boys o' the grammar school. I done my best for him, spoke them boys fair an' soft, but, bless ya, 'twas no good; they baited him worse'n ever. So one day I used my stick to um. Next mornin' I was down in my bake hus, makin' my batch ready fur oven, when, oothout a word o' warnin', up comes my two feet behind, down I goes head fust into my flour barrel, and them young--hem! the clergy be present--them youngsters dancin' round me like forty mad merry andrews at a fair."
A roar of laughter greeted the anecdote.
"Ay, neebors," resumed the bailiff, "we can laugh now, you an' me, but theer's many on ya could tell o' your own mishappenin's if ya had a mind to 't. As fur me, I bided my time. One day I cotched the leader o' them boys nigh corn market, an' I laid him across the badgerin' stone and walloped him nineteen--twenty--hee! hee! D'ya mind that, General?"
He turned to the guest at his right hand, who sat with but the glimmer of a smile, crumbling one of Bailiff Malkin's rolls on the tablecloth.
"But theer," continued the speaker, "that be nigh twenty year ago, an' the shape o' my strap binna theer now, I warrant. Three skins ha' growed since then--hee! hee! Who'd ha' thought, neebors, as that young limb as plagued our very lives out 'ud ha' bin here today, a general, an' a great man, an' a credit to his town an' country? Us all thought as he'd bring his poor feyther's gray hairs in sorrow to the grave. An' when I heerd as he'd bin shipped off to the Injies--well, thinks I, that bin the last we'll hear o' Bob Clive.
"But, bless ya! all eggs binna addled. General Clive here--'twere the Injun sun what hatched he, an' binna he, I axe ya, a rare young fightin' cock? Ay, and a good breed, too. A hunnerd year ago theer was a Bob Clive as med all our grandfeythers quake in mortal fear, a terrible man o' war was he. They wanted to put 'n into po'try an' the church sarvice.
"'From Wem and from Wyche An' from Clive o' the Styche, Good Lord, deliver us.'
"That's what they thought o' the Bob Clive o' long ago. Well, this Bob Clive now a-sittin' at my elbow be just as desp'rate a fighter, an' thankful let us all be, neebors, as he does his fightin' wi' the black-faced Injuns an' the black-hearted French, an' not the peaceful bide-at-homes o' Market Drayton."
The little bailiff paused to moisten his lips. From his audience arose feeling murmurs of approval.
"Ya known what General Clive ha' done," he resumed. "'Twas all read out o' prent by the crier in corn market. An' the grand folks in Lun'on ha' give him a gowd sword, an' he bin hob-a-nob wi' King Jarge hisself. An' us folks o' Market Drayton take it proud, we do, as he be come to see us afore he goes back to his duty.
"Theer's a example fur you boys. Theer be limbs o' mischief in Market Drayton yet.
"Ay, I see tha' 'Lijah Notcutt, a-hangin' on to winder theer. I know who wringed the neck o' Widder Peplow's turkey.
"An' I see tha' too, 'Zekiel Podmore; I know who broke the handle o' town pump. If I cotch ya at your tricks I'll leather ya fust an' clap ya in the stocks afterwards, sure as my name be Randle Malkin.
"But as I wan sayin', if ya foller th' example o' General Clive, an' turn yer young sperits into the lawful way--why, mebbe there be gowd swords an' mints o' money somewheers fur ya too.
"Well now, I bin talkin' long enough, an' to tell ya the truth, I be dry as a whistle, so I'll axe ya all to lift yer glasses, neebors, an' drink the good health o' General Clive. So theer!"
As the worthy bailiff concluded his speech, the company primed their glasses, rose and drank the toast with enthusiasm. Lusty cheers broke from the drier throats outside; caps were waved, rattles whirled, kettles beaten with a vigor that could not have been exceeded if the general loyalty had been stirred by the presence of King George himself.
Only one man in the crowd held his peace. The stranger remained opposite the window, silent, motionless, looking now into the room, now round upon the throng, with the same smile of whimsical amusement. Only once did his manner change; the smile faded, his lips met in a straight line, and he made a slight rearward movement, seeming at the same moment to lose something of his height.
It was when the guest of the evening stood up to reply: a young man, looking somewhat older than his twenty-nine years, his powdered hair crowning a strong face; with keen, deep-set eyes, full lips and masterful chin. He wore a belaced purple coat; a crimson sash crossed his embroidered vest; a diamond flashed upon his finger. Letting his eyes range slowly over the flushed faces of the diners, he waited until the bailiff had waved down the untiring applauders without; then, in a clear voice, began:
"Bailiff Malkin, my old friends--"
But his speech was broken in upon by a sudden commotion in the street. Loud cries of a different tenor arose at various points; the boys who had been hanging upon the window ledge dropped to the ground; the crowd surged this way and that, and above the mingled clamor sounded a wild and fearful squeal that drew many of the company to their feet and several in alarm to the window.
Among these the bailiff, now red with anger, shook his fist at the people and demanded the meaning of the disturbance. A small boy, his eyes round with excitement, piped up:
"An't please yer worship, 'tis a wild Injun come from nowheer an' doin' all manner o' wickedness."
"A wild Injun! Cotch him! Ring the 'larum bell! Put him in the stocks!"
But the bailiff's commands passed unheeded. The people were thronging up the street, elbowing each other, treading on each other's toes, yelling, booing, forgetful of all save the strange coincidence that, on this evening of all others, the banquet in honor of Clive, the Indian hero, had been interrupted by the sudden appearance of a live Indian in their very midst.
A curious change had come over the demeanor of the stranger, who hitherto had been so silent, so detached in manner, so unmoved. He was now to be seen energetically forcing his way toward the outskirts of the crowd, heaving, hurling, his long arms sweeping obstacles aside. His eyes flashed fire upon the yokels skurrying before him, a vitriolic stream of abuse scorched their faces as he bore them down.
At length he stopped suddenly, caught a hulking farmer by the shoulder, and, with a violent twist and jerk, flung him headlong among his fellows. Released from the man's grasp, a small negro boy, his eyes starting, his breast heaving with terror, sprang to the side of his deliverer, who soothingly patted his woolly head, and turned at bay upon the crowd, now again pressing near.
"Back, you boobies!" he shouted. "'Tis my boy! If a man of you follows me, I'll break his head for him."
He turned and, clasping the black boy's hand close in his, strode away towards the waiting cart. The crowd stood in hesitation, daunted by the tall stranger's fierce mien. But one came out from among them, a slim boy of some fifteen years, who had followed at the heels of the stranger and had indeed assisted his progress. The rest, disappointed of their Indian hunt, were now moving back towards the inn; but the boy hastened on. Hearing his quick footsteps, the man swung around with a snarl.
"I hope the boy isn't hurt," said the lad quietly. "Can I do anything for you?"
The stranger looked keenly at him; then, recognizing by his mien and voice that this at least was no booby, he smiled; the truculence of his manner vanished, and he said:
"Your question is pat, my excellent friend, and I thank you for your goodwill. As you perceive, my withers are not wrung."
He waved his right hand airily, and the boy noticed that it was covered from wrist to knuckles with what appeared to be a fingerless glove of black velvet.
"The boy has taken no harm. Hic niger est, as Horace somewhere hath it; and black spells Indian to your too hasty friends yonder. Scipio is his praenomen, bestowed on him by me to match the cognomen his already by nature--Africanus, to wit. You take me, kind sir? But I detain you; your ears doubtless itch for the eloquence of our condescending friend yonder; without more ado then, good night!"
And turning on his heel, waving his gloved hand in salutation, the stranger went his way. The lad watched him wonderingly. For all his shabbiness he appeared a gentleman. His speech was clean cut, his accent pure; yet in his tone, as in his dress, there was something unusual, a touch of the theatrical, strange to that old sleepy town.
He hoisted the negro into the cart, then mounted to his place beside the driver, and the vehicle rumbled away.
Retracing his steps, the boy once more joined the crowd, and wormed his way through its now silent ranks until he came within sight of the assembly room. But if he had wished to hear Clive's speech of thanks, he was too late. As he arrived, applause greeted the hero's final words, and he resumed his seat. To the speeches that followed, no heed was paid by the populace; words from the vicar and the local attorney had no novelty for them. But they waited, gossiping among themselves, until the festivity was over and the party broke up.
More shouts arose as the great man appeared at the inn door. Horses were there in waiting; a hundred hands were ready to hold the stirrup for Clive; but he mounted unassisted and rode off in company with Sir Philip Chetwode, a neighboring squire whose guest he was. When the principal figure had gone, the throng rapidly melted away, and soon the street had resumed its normal quiet.
The boy was among the last to quit the scene. Walking slowly down the road, he overtook a bent old man in the smock of a farm laborer, trudging along alone.
"Hey, Measter Desmond," said the old man, "I feels for tha, that I do. I seed yer brother theer, eatin' an' drinkin' along wi' the noble general, an' thinks I, 'tis hard on them as ha' to look on, wi' mouths a-waterin' fur the vittles an' drink. But theer, I'd be afeard to set lips to some o' them kickshawses as goes down into the nattlens o' high folk, an', all said an' done, a man canna be more'n full, even so it bin wi' nowt but turmuts an' Cheshire cheese.
"Well, sir, 'tis fine to be an elder son, that's true, an' dunna ye take on about it. You bin on'y a lad, after all, pardon my bold way o' speakin', an' mebbe when you come to man's estate, why, theer'll be a knife an' fork fur you too, though I doubt we'll never see General Clive in these parts no moore. Here be my turnin'; good night to ya, sir."
"Good night, Dickon."
And Desmond Burke passed on alone, out of the silent town, into the now darkening road that led to his home towards Cheswardine.
Chapter 2: In which our hero overhears a conversation; and, meeting with the unexpected, is none the less surprised and offended.
Desmond's pace became slower when, having crossed the valley, he began the long ascent that led past the site of Tyrley Castle. But when he again reached a stretch of level road he stepped out more briskly, for the darkness of the autumn night was moment by moment contracting the horizon, and he had still several miles to go on the unlighted road. Even as the thought of his dark walk crossed his mind he caught sight of the one light that served as a never-failing beacon to night travelers along that highway. It came from the windows of a wayside inn, a common place of call for farmers wending to or from Drayton Market, and one whose curious sign Desmond had many times studied with a small boy's interest.
The inn was named the "Four Alls": its sign, a crude painting of a table and four seated figures, a king, a parson, a soldier, and a farmer. Beneath the group, in a rough scrawl, were the words--
Rule all: Pray all: Fight all: Pay all.
As Desmond drew nearer to the inn, there came to him along the silent road the sound of singing. This was somewhat unusual at such an hour, for folk went early to bed, and the inn was too far from the town to have attracted waifs and strays from the crowd. What was still more unusual, the tones were not the rough, forced, vagrant tones of tipsy farmers; they were of a single voice, light, musical, and true. Desmond's curiosity was flicked, and he hastened his step, guessing from the clearness of the sound that the windows were open and the singer in full view.
The singing ceased abruptly just as he reached the inn. But the windows stood indeed wide open, and from the safe darkness of the road he could see clearly, by the light of four candles on the high mantel shelf, the whole interior of the inn parlor. It held four persons. One lay back in a chair near the fire, his legs outstretched, his chin on his breast, his open lips shaking as he snored. It was Tummus Biles, the tranter, who had driven a tall stranger from Chester to the present spot, and whose indignation at being miscalled Jehu had only been appeased by a quart of strong ale. On the other side of the fireplace, curled up on a settle, and also asleep, lay the black boy, Scipio Africanus. Desmond noted these two figures in passing; his gaze fastened upon the remaining two, who sat at a corner of the table, a tankard in front of each.
One of the two was Job Grinsell, landlord of the inn, a man with a red nose, loose mouth, and shifty eyes--not a pleasant fellow to look at, and regarded vaguely as a bad character. He had once been head gamekeeper to Sir Willoughby Stokes, the squire, whose service he had left suddenly and in manifest disgrace. His companion was the stranger, the negro boy's master, the man whose odd appearance and manner of talk had already set Desmond's curiosity a-buzzing. It was clear that he must be the singer, for Job Grinsell had a voice like a saw, and Tummus Biles knew no music save the squeak of his cartwheels. It surprised Desmond to find the stranger already on the most friendly, to all appearance, indeed, confidential terms with the landlord.
"Hale, did you say?" he heard Grinsell ask. "Ay, hale as you an' me, an' like to last another twenty year, rot him."
"But the gout takes him, you said--nodosa podagra, as my friend Ovid would say?"
"Ay, but I've knowed a man live forty year win the gout. And he dunna believe in doctor's dosin'; he goes to Buxton to drink the weeters when he bin madded wi' the pain, an' comes back sound fur six month."
"Restored to his dear neighbors and friends--caris propinquis--"
"Hang me, but I wish you'd speak plain English an' not pepper your talk win outlandish jabber."
"Patience, Job; why, man, you belie your name. Come, you must humor an old friend; that's what comes of education, you see; my head is stuffed with odds and ends that annoy my friends, while you can't read, nor write, nor cipher beyond keeping your score. Lucky Job!"
Desmond turned away. The two men's conversation was none of his business; and he suspected from the stranger's manner that he had been drinking freely. He had stepped barely a dozen paces when he heard the voice again break into song. He halted and wheeled about; the tune was catching, and now he distinguished some of the words--
Says Billy Norris, Masulipatam, To Governor Pitt: "D'ye know who I am, D'ye know who I am, I AM, I AM? Sir William Norris, Masulipatam." Says Governor Pitt, Fort George, Madras: "I know what you are--"
Again the song broke off; the singer addressed a question to Grinsell. Desmond waited a moment; he felt an odd eagerness to know what Governor Pitt was; but hearing now only the drone of talking, he once more turned his face homeward. His curiosity was livelier than ever as to the identity of this newcomer, who addressed the landlord as he might his own familiar friend.
And what had the stranger to do with Sir Willoughby Stokes? For it was Sir Willoughby that suffered from the gout; he it was that went every autumn and spring to Buxton; he was away at this present time, but would shortly return to receive his Michaelmas rents. The stranger had not the air of a husbandman; but there was a vacant farm on the estate; perhaps he had come to offer himself as a tenant.
And why did he wear that half glove upon his right hand? Finger stalls, wrist straps, even mittens were common enough, useful, and necessary at times; but the stranger's glove was not a mitten, and it had no fellow for the left hand. Perhaps, thought Desmond, it was a freak of the wearer's, on a par with his red feather and his vivid neckcloth. Desmond, as he walked on, found himself hoping that the visitor at the Four Alls would remain for a day or two.
After passing through the sleeping hamlet of Woods Eaves, he struck into a road on his left hand. Twenty minutes' steady plodding uphill brought him in sight of his home--a large, ancient, rambling grange house lying back from the road. It was now nearly ten o'clock, an hour when the household was usually abed; but the door of Wilcote Grange stood open, and a guarded candle in the hall threw a faint yellow light upon the path. The gravel crunched under Desmond's boots, and, as if summoned by the sound, a tall figure crossed the hall and stood in the entrance. At the sight Desmond's mouth set hard; his hands clenched; his breath came more quickly as he went forward.
"Where have you been, sirrah?" were the angry words that greeted him.
"Into the town, sir," returned Desmond.
He had perforce to halt, the doorway being barred by the man's broad form.
"Into the town? You defy me, do you? Did I not bid you remain at home and make up the stock book?"
"I did that before I left."
"You did, did you? I lay my life 'tis ill done. What did you in the town this time o' night?"
"I went to see General Clive."
"Indeed! You! Hang me, what's Clive to you? Was you invited to the regale? You was one of that stinking crowd, I suppose, that bawled in the street. You go and herd with knaves and yokels, do you? and bring shame upon me, and set the countryside a-chattering of Richard Burke and his idle young oaf of a brother! By gad, sir, I'll whip you for this; I'll give you something to remember General Clive by!"
He caught up a riding whip that stood in the angle of the doorway, and took Desmond by the shoulder. The boy did not flinch.
"Whip me if you must," he said quietly, "but don't you think we'd better go outside?"
The elder, with an imprecation, thrust Desmond into the open, hauled him some distance down the path, and then beat him heavily about the shoulders. He stood a foot higher, his arm was strong, his grip firm as a vise; resistance would have been vain; but Desmond knew better than to resist. He bent to the cruel blows without a wince or a murmur. Only, his face was very pale when, the bully's arm being tired and his breath spent, he was flung away and permitted to stagger to the house. He crawled painfully up the wainscoted staircase and into the dark corridor leading to his bedroom. Halfway down this he paused, felt with his hand along the wall, and, discovering by this means that a door was ajar, stood listening.
"Is that you, Desmond?" said a low voice within.
"Yes, mother," he replied, commanding his voice, and quietly entering. "I hoped you were asleep."
"I could not sleep until you came in, dear. I heard Dick's voice. What is the matter? Your hand is trembling, Desmond."
"Nothing, mother, as usual."
A mother's ears are quick; and Mrs. Burke detected the quiver that Desmond tried to still. She tightened her clasp on his hot hand.
"Did he strike you, dear?"
"It was nothing, mother. I am used to that."
"My poor boy! But what angered him? Why do you offend your brother?"
"Offend him!" exclaimed the boy passionately, but still in a low tone. "Everything I do offends him. I went to see General Clive; I wished to; that is enough for Dick. Mother, I am sick of it all."
"Never mind, dear. A little patience. Dick doesn't understand you. You should humor him, Desmond."
"Haven't I tried, mother? Haven't I? But what is the use? He treats me worse than any carter on the farm. I drudge for him, and he bullies me, miscalls me before the men, thrashes me--oh, mother! I can't endure it any longer. Let me go away, anywhere; anything would be better than this!"
Desmond was quivering with pain and indignation; only with difficulty did he keep back the tears.
"Hush, Desmond!" said his mother. "Dick will hear you. You are tired out, dear boy; go to bed; things will look brighter in the morning. Only have patience. Good night, my son."
Desmond kissed his mother and went to his room. But it was long before he slept. His bruised body found no comfort; his head throbbed; his soul was filled with resentment and the passionate longing for release.
His life had not been very happy. He barely remembered his father--a big, keen-eyed, loud-voiced old man--who died when his younger son was four years old. Richard Burke had run away from his Irish home to sea. He served on Admiral Rooke's flagship at the battle of La Hogue, and, rising in the navy to the rank of warrant officer, bought a ship with the savings of twenty years and fitted it out for unauthorized trade with the East Indies. His daring, skill, and success attracted the attention of the officers of the Company. He was invited to enter the Company's service. As captain of an Indiaman he sailed backwards and forwards for ten years; then at the age of fifty retired with a considerable fortune and married the daughter of a Shropshire farmer. The death of his wife's relatives led him to settle on the farm their family had tenanted for generations, and it was at Wilcote Grange that his three children were born.
Fifteen years separated the elder son from the younger; between them came a daughter, who married early and left the neighborhood. Four years after Desmond's birth the old man died, leaving the boy to the guardianship of his brother.
There lay the seed of trouble. No brothers could have been more unlike than the two sons of Captain Burke. Richard was made on a large and powerful scale; he was hard working, methodical, grasping, wholly unimaginative, and in temper violent and domineering. Slighter and less robust, though not less healthy, Desmond was a boy of vivid imagination, high strung, high spirited, his feelings easily moved, his pride easily wounded. His brother was too dull and stolid to understand him, taking for deliberate malice what was but boyish mischief, and regarding him as sullen when he was only dreamily thoughtful.
As a young boy Desmond kept as much as possible out of his brother's way. But as he grew older he came more directly under Richard's control, with the result that they were now in a constant state of feud. Their mother, a woman of sweet temper but weak will, favored her younger son in secret; she learned by experience that open intervention on his behalf did more harm than good.
Desmond had two habits which especially moved his brother to anger. He was fond of roaming the country alone for hours together; he was fond of reading. To Richard each was a waste of time. He never opened a book, save a manual of husbandry or a ready reckoner; he could conceive of no reason for walking, unless it were the business of the farm. Nothing irritated him more than to see Desmond stretched at length with his nose in Mr. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, or a volume of Hakluyt's Voyages, or perhaps Mr. Oldys's Life of Sir Walter Raleigh. And as he himself never dreamed by day or by night, there was no chance of his divining the fact that Desmond, on those long solitary walks of his, was engaged chiefly in dreaming, not idly, for in his dreams he was always the center of activity, greedy for doing.
These daydreams constituted almost the sole joy of Desmond's life. When he was only a little fellow he would sprawl on the bank near Tyrley Castle and weave romances about the Norman barons whose home it had been--romances in which he bore a strenuous part. He knew every interesting spot in the neighborhood: Salisbury Hill, where the Yorkist leader pitched his camp before the battle of Blore Heath; Audley Brow, where Audley the Lancastrian lay watching his foe; above all Styche Hall, whence a former Clive had ridden forth to battle against the king, and where his namesake, the present Robert Clive, had been born. He imagined himself each of those bold warriors in turn, and saw himself, now a knight in mail, now a gay cavalier of Rupert's, now a bewigged Georgian gentleman in frock and pantaloons, but always with sword in hand.
No name sang a merrier tune in Desmond's imagination than the name of Robert Clive. Three years before, when he was imbibing Latin, Greek, and Hebrew under Mr. Burslem at the grammar school on the hill, the amazing news came one day that Bob Clive, the wild boy who had terrorized the tradespeople, plagued his master, led the school in tremendous fights with the town boys, and suffered more birchings than any scholar of his time--Bob Clive, the scapegrace who had been packed off to India as a last resource, had turned out, as his father said, "not such a booby after all"--had indeed proved himself to be a military genius. How Desmond thrilled when the old schoolmaster read out the glorious news of Clive's defense of Arcot with a handful of men against an overwhelming host! How he glowed when the schoolroom rang with the cheers of the boys, and when, a half holiday being granted, he rushed forth with the rest to do battle in the church yard with the town boys, and helped to lick them thoroughly in honor of Clive!
From that moment there was for Desmond but one man in the world, and that man was Robert Clive. In the twinkling of an eye he became the devoutest of hero worshipers. He coaxed Mr. Burslem to let him occupy Clive's old desk, and with his fists maintained the privilege against all comers. The initials R. C. roughly cut in the oak never lost their fascination for him. He walked out day after day to Styche Hall, two miles away, and pleased himself with the thought that his feet trod the very spots once trodden by Bob Clive. Not an inch of the route from Hall to school--the meadow path into Longslow, the lane from Longslow to Shropshire Street, Little Street, Church Street, the church yard--was unknown to him: Bob Clive had known them all. He feasted on the oft-told stories of Clive's boyish escapades: how he had bundled a watchman into the bulks and made him prisoner there by closing down and fastening the shutters; how he had thrown himself across the current of a torrential gutter to divert the stream into the cellar shop of a tradesman who had offended him; above all, that feat of his when, ascending the spiral turret stair of the church, he had lowered himself down from the parapet, and, astride upon a gargoyle, had worked his way along it until he could secure a stone that lay in its mouth, the perilous and dizzy adventure watched by a breathless throng in the churchyard below. The Bob Clive who had done these things was now doing greater deeds in India; and Desmond Burke sat day after day at his desk, gazing at the entrancing R. C., and doing over again in his own person the exploits of which all Market Drayton was proud, and he the proudest.
But at the age of fourteen his brother took him from school, though Mr. Burslem had pleaded that he might remain longer and afterwards proceed to the university. He was set to do odd jobs about the farm. To farming itself he had no objection; he was fond of animals and would willingly have spent his life with them. But he did object to drudging for a hard and inconsiderate taskmaster such as his brother was, and the work he was compelled to do became loathsome to him, and bred a spirit of discontent and rebellion. The further news of Clive's exploits in India, coming at long intervals, set wild notions beating in Desmond's head, and made him long passionately for a change. At times he thought of running away: his father had run away and carved out a successful career, why should not he do the same? But he had never quite made up his mind to cut the knot.
Meanwhile it became known in Market Drayton that Clive had returned to England. Rumor credited him with fabulous wealth. It was said that he drove through London in a gold coach, and outshone the king himself in the splendor of his attire. No report was too highly colored to find easy credence among the simple country folk. Clive was indeed rich: he had a taste for ornate dress, and though neither so wealthy nor so gaily appareled as rumor said, he was for a season the lion of London society. The directors of the East India Company toasted him as "General" Clive, and presented him with a jeweled sword as a token of their sense of his services on the Coromandel coast.
No one suspected at the time that his work was of more than local importance and would have more far-reaching consequences than the success of a trading company. Clive had, in fact, without knowing it, laid the foundations of a vast empire.
At intervals during the two years, scraps of news about Clive filtered through to his birthplace. His father had left the neighborhood, and Styche Hall was now in the hands of a stranger, so that Desmond hardly dared to hope that he would have an opportunity of seeing his idol. But, information having reached the court of directors that all was not going well in India, their eyes turned at once to Clive as the man to set things right. They requested him to return to India as Governor of Fort St. David, and, since a good deal of the trouble was caused by quarrels as to precedence between the king's and the Company's officers, they strengthened his hands by obtaining for him a lieutenant colonel's commission from King George.
Clive was nothing loath to take up his work again. He had been somewhat extravagant since his arrival in England; great holes had been made in the fortune he had brought back; and he was still a young man, full of energy and ambition. What was Desmond's ecstasy, then, to learn that his hero, on the eve of his departure, had accepted an invitation to the town of his birth, there to be entertained by the court leet. From the bailiff and the steward of the manor down to the javelin men and the ale taster, official Market Drayton was all agog to do him honor. Desmond looked forward eagerly to this red letter day.
His brother, as a yeoman of standing, was invited to the banquet, and it seemed to Desmond that Richard took a delight in taunting him, throwing cold water on his young enthusiasm, ironically commenting on the mistake someone had made in not including him among the guests. His crowning stroke of cruelty was to forbid the boy to leave the house on the great evening, so that he might not even obtain a glimpse of Clive. But this was too much: Desmond for the first time deliberately defied his guardian, and though he suffered the inevitable penalty, he had seen and heard his hero, and was content.
Chapter 3: In which Mr. Marmaduke Diggle talks of the Golden East; and our hero interrupts an interview, and dreams dreams.
Sore from his flogging, Desmond, when he slept at last, slept heavily. Richard Burke was a stickler for early rising, and admitted no excuses. When his brother did not appear at the usual hour Richard went to his room, and, smiting with his rough hand the boy's bruised shoulders, startled him to wakefulness and pain.
"Now, slug-a-bed," he said, "you have ten minutes for your breakfast, then you will foot it to the Hall and see whether Sir Willoughby has returned or is expected."
Turning on his heel, he went out to harry his laborers.
Desmond, when he came down stairs, felt too sick to eat. He gulped a pitcher of milk, then set off for his two-mile walk to the Hall. He was glad of the errand. Sir Willoughby Stokes, the lord of the manor, was an old gentleman of near seventy years, a good landlord, a persistent Jacobite, and a confirmed bachelor. By nature genial, he was subject to periodical attacks of the gout, which made him terrible. At these times he betook himself to Buxton, or Bath, or some other spa, and so timed his return that he was always good tempered on rent day, much to the relief of his tenants. He disliked Richard Burke as a man as much as he admired him as a tenant; but he had taken a fancy to Desmond, lent him books from his library, took him out shooting when the weather and Richard permitted, and played chess with him sometimes of a rainy afternoon. His housekeeper said that Master Desmond was the only human being whose presence the squire could endure when the gout was on him. In short, Sir Willoughby and Desmond were very good friends.
Desmond had almost reached the gate of the Hall when, at a sudden turn of the road, he came upon a man seated upon a low hillock by the roadside, idly swishing at the long ripe grass with a cane. At the first glance Desmond noticed the strangely-clad right hand of his overnight acquaintance; the shabby clothes, the red feather, the flaming neckcloth.
The man looked up at his approach; the winning smile settled upon his swarthy face, which daylight now revealed as seamed and scarred; and, without stirring from his seat or desisting from his occupation, he looked in the boy's face and said softly:
"You are early afoot, like the son of Anchises, my young friend. If I mistake not, when Aeneas met the son of Evander they joined their right hands. We have met; let us also join hands and bid each other a very good morning."
Desmond shook hands; he did not know what to make of this remarkable fellow who must always be quoting from his school books; but there was no harm in shaking hands. He could not in politeness ask the question that rose to his lips--why the stranger wore a mitten on one hand; and if the man observed his curiosity he let it pass.
"You are on business bent, I wot," continued the stranger. "Not for the world would I delay you. But since the handclasp is but part of the ceremony of introduction, might we not complete it by exchanging names?"
"My name is Desmond Burke," said the boy.
"A good name, a pleasant name, a name that I know."
Desmond was conscious that the man was looking keenly at him.
"There is a gentleman of the same name--I chanced to meet him in London--cultivating literature in the Temple; his praenomen, I bethink me, is Edmund. And I bethink me, too, that in the course of my peregrinations on this planet I have more than once heard the name of one Captain Richard Burke, a notable seaman, in the service of our great Company. I repeat, my young friend, your name is a good one; may you live to add luster to it!"
"Captain Burke was my father."
"My prophetic soul!" exclaimed the stranger. "But surely you are somewhat late in following the paternal craft; you do not learn seamanship in this sylvan sphere."
"True," responded Desmond, with a smile. "My father turned farmer; he died when I was a little fellow, and I live with my mother. But you will excuse me, sir; I have an errand to the Hall beyond us here."
"I am rebuked. Nam garrulus idem est, as our friend Horace would say. Yet one moment. Ere we part let us complete our interrupted ceremony. Marmaduke Diggle, sir--plain Marmaduke Diggle, at your service."
He swept off his hat with a smile. But as soon as Desmond had passed on, the smile faded. Marmaduke Diggle's mouth became hard, and he looked after the retreating form with a gaze in which curiosity, suspicion, and dislike were blended.
He was still seated by the roadside when Desmond returned some minutes later.
"A pleasant surprise, Mr. Burke," he said. "Your business is most briefly, and let us hope happily despatched."
"Briefly, at any rate. I only went up to the Hall to see if the squire was returned; it is near rent day, and he is not usually so late in returning."
"Ah, your squires!" said Diggle, with a sigh. "A fine thing to have lands--olive yards and vineyards, as the Scripture saith. You are returning? The squire is not at home? Permit me to accompany you some steps on your road.
"Yes, it is a fine thing to be a landlord. It is a state of life much to be envied by poor landless men like me. I confess I am poor--none the pleasanter because 'tis my own fault. You behold in me, Mr. Burke, one of the luckless. I sought fame and fortune years ago in the fabulous East Indies--"
"The Indies, sir?"
"You are interested? In me also, when I was your age, the name stirred my blood and haunted my imagination. Yes, 'tis nigh ten years since I first sailed from these shores for the marvelous east. Multum et terris jactatus et alto. Twice have I made my fortune--got me enough of the wealth of Ormus and of Ind to buy up half your county. Twice, alas! has an unkind Fate robbed me of my all! But, as I said, 'tis my own fault. Nemo contentus, sir--you know the passage? I was not satisfied: I must have a little more; and yet a little more. I put my wealth forth in hazardous enterprises--presto! it is swept away. But I was born, sir, after all, under a merry star. Nothing discourages me. After a brief sojourn for recuperation in this salubrious spot, I shall return; and this time, mark you, I shall run no risks. Five years to make my fortune; then I shall come home, content with a round ten lakhs."
"What is a lakh?"
"Ah, I forgot, you are not acquainted with these phrases of the Orient. A lakh, my friend, is a hundred thousand rupees, say twelve thousand pounds. And I warrant you I will not squander it as a certain gentleman we know squandered his."
"You mean General Clive?"
"Colonel Clive, my friend. Yes, I say Colonel Clive has squandered his fortune. Why, he came home with thirty lakhs at the least: and what does he do? He must ruffle it in purple and fine linen, and feed the fat in royal entertainments; then, forsooth, he stands for a seat in Parliament, pours out his gold like water--to what end? A petition is presented against his return: the House holds an inquiry; and the end of the sorry farce is, that Mr. Robert Clive's services are dispensed with. When I think of the good money he has wasted--But then, sir, I am no politician. Colonel Clive and I are two ruined men; 'tis a somewhat strange coincidence that he and I are almost of an age, and that we both, before many weeks are past, shall be crossing the ocean once more to retrieve our fallen fortunes."
Walking side by side during this conversation they had now come into the road leading past Desmond's home. In the distance, approaching them, appeared a post chaise, drawn by four galloping horses. The sight broke the thread of the conversation.
"'Tis the squire at last!" cried Desmond. "Sure he must have put up at Newcastle overnight."
But that he was intently watching the rapid progress of the chaise, he might have noticed a curious change of expression on his companion's face. The smile faded, the lips became set with a kind of grim determination. But Diggle's pleasant tone had not altered when he said:
"Our ways part here, my friend--for the present. I doubt not we shall meet again; and if you care to hear of my adventures by field and flood--why, 'I will a round unvarnished tale deliver,' as the Moor of Venice says in the play. For the present, then, farewell!"
He turned down a leafy lane, and had disappeared from view before the chaise reached the spot. As it ran by, its only occupant, a big, red-faced, white-wigged old gentleman, caught sight of the boy and hailed him in a rich, jolly voice.
"Ha, Desmond! Home again, you see! Scotched the enemy once more! Come and see me!"
The chaise was past before Desmond could reply. He watched it until it vanished from sight; then, feeling somewhat cheered, went on to report to his brother that the squire had at last returned.
He felt no little curiosity about his new acquaintance. What had brought him to so retired a spot as Market Drayton? He could have no friends in the neighborhood, or he would surely not have chosen for his lodging a place of ill repute like the Four Alls. Yet he had seemed to have some acquaintance with Grinsell the innkeeper. He did not answer to Desmond's idea of an adventurer. He was not rough of tongue or boisterous in manner; his accent, indeed, was refined; his speech somewhat studied, and, to judge by his allusions and his Latin, he had some share of polite learning. Desmond was puzzled to fit these apparent incongruities, and looked forward with interest to further meetings with Marmaduke Diggle.
During the next few days they met more than once. It was always late in the evening, always in quiet places, and Diggle was always alone. Apparently he desired to make no acquaintances. The gossips of the neighborhood seized upon the presence of a stranger at the Four Alls, but they caught the barest glimpses of him; Grinsell was as a stone wall in unresponsiveness to their inquiries; and the black boy, if perchance a countryman met him on the road and questioned him, shook his head and made meaningless noises in his throat, and the countryman would assure his cronies that the boy was as dumb as a platter.
But whenever Desmond encountered the stranger, strolling by himself in the fields or some quiet lane, Diggle always seemed pleased to see him, and talked to him with the same ease and freedom, ever ready with a tag from his school books. Desmond did not like his Latin, but he found compensation in the traveler's tales of which Diggle had an inexhaustible store--tales of shipwreck and mutiny, of wild animals and wild men, of Dutch traders and Portuguese adventurers, of Indian nawabs and French bucaneers. Above all was Desmond interested in stories of India: he heard of the immense wealth of the Indian princes, the rivalries of the English, French, and Dutch trading companies; the keen struggle between France and England for the preponderating influence with the natives. Desmond was eager to hear of Clive's doings; but he found Diggle, for an Englishman who had been in India, strangely ignorant of Clive's career; he seemed impatient of Clive's name, and was always more ready to talk of his French rivals, Dupleix and Bussy. The boy was impressed by the mystery, the color, the romance of the East; and after these talks with Diggle he went home with his mind afire, and dreamed of elephants and tigers, treasures of gold and diamonds, and fierce battles in which English, French, and Indians weltered in seas of blood.
One morning Desmond set out for a long walk in the direction of Newport. It was holiday on the farm; Richard Burke allowed his men a day off once every half year when he paid his rent. They would almost rather not have had it, for he made himself particularly unpleasant both before and after. On this morning he had got up in a bad temper, and managed to find half a dozen occasions for grumbling at Desmond before breakfast, so that the boy was glad to get away and walk off his resentment and soreness of heart.
As he passed the end of the lane leading toward the Hall, he saw two men in conversation some distance down it. One was on horseback, the other on foot. At a second glance he saw with surprise that the mounted man was his brother; the other, Diggle. A well-filled moneybag hung at Richard Burke's saddle bow; he was on his way to the Hall to pay his rent. His back was towards Desmond; but, as the latter paused, Richard threw a rapid glance over his shoulder, and with a word to the man at his side cantered away.
Diggle gave Desmond a hail and came slowly up the lane, his face wearing its usual pleasant smile. His manner was always very friendly, and had the effect of making Desmond feel on good terms with himself.
"Well met, my friend," said Diggle cordially. "I was longing for a chat. Beshrew me if I have spoken more than a dozen words today, and that, to a man of my sociable temper, not to speak of my swift and practised tongue--lingua celer et exercitata: you remember the phrase of Tully's--is a sore trial."
"You seemed to be having a conversation a moment ago," said Desmond.
"Seemed!--that is the very word. That excellent farmer--sure he hath a prosperous look--had mistaken me. 'Tis not the apparel makes the man; my attire is not of the best, I admit; but, I beg you tell me frankly, would you have taken me for a husbandman, one who with relentless plowshare turns the stubborn soil, as friend Horace somewhere puts it? Would you, now?"
"Decidedly not. But did my brother so mistake you?"
"Your brother! Was that prosperous and well-mounted gentleman your brother?"
"Certainly. He is Richard Burke, and leases the Wilcote farm."
"Noble pair of brothers!" exclaimed Diggle, seizing Desmond's reluctant hand. "I congratulate you, my friend. What a brother! I stopped him to ask the time of day. But permit me to say, friend Desmond, you appear somewhat downcast; your countenance hath not that serenity one looks for in a lad of your years. What is the trouble?"
"Oh, nothing to speak of," said Desmond curtly; he was vexed that his face still betrayed the irritation of the morning.
"Very well," said Diggle with a shrug. "Far be it from me to probe your sorrows. They are nothing to me, but sure a simple question from a friend--"
"Pardon me, Mr. Diggle," said Desmond impulsively, "I did not mean to offend you."
"My dear boy, a tough-hided traveler does not easily take offense. Shall we walk? D'you know, Master Desmond, I fancy I could make a shrewd guess at your trouble. Your brother--Richard, I think you said?--is a farmer, he was born a farmer, he has the air of a farmer, and a well-doing farmer to boot. But we are not all born with a love for mother earth, and you, meseems, have dreamed of a larger life than lies within the pin folds of a farm. To tell the truth, my lad, I have been studying you."
They were walking now side by side along the Newport road. Desmond felt that the stranger was becoming personal; but his manner was so suave and sympathetic that he could not take offense.
"Yes, I have been studying you," continued Diggle. "And what is the sum of my discovery? You are wasting your life here. A country village is no place for a boy of ideas and imagination, of warm blood and springing fancy. The world is wide, my friend: why not adventure forth?"
"I have indeed thought of it, Mr. Diggle, but--"
"But me no buts," interrupted Diggle, with a smile. "Your age is--"
"Near sixteen."
"Ah, still a boy; you have a year ere you reach the bourne of young manhood, as the Romans held it. But what matters that? Was not Scipio Africanus--namesake of the ingenuous youth that serves me--styled boy at twenty? Yet you are old enough to walk alone, and not in leading strings--or waiting maybe for dead men's shoes."
"What do you mean, sir?" Desmond flashed out, reddening with indignation.
"Do I offend you?" said Diggle innocently. "I make apology. But I had heard, I own, that Master Desmond Burke was in high favor with your squire; 'tis even whispered that Master Desmond cherishes, cultivates, cossets the old man--a bachelor, I understand, and wealthy, and lacking kith or kin. Sure I should never have believed 'twas with any dishonorable motive."
"'Tis not, sir. I never thought of such a thing."
"I was sure of it. But to come back to my starting point. 'Tis time you broke these narrow bounds. India, now--what better sphere for a young man bent on making his way? Look at Clive, whom you admire--as stupid a boy as you could meet in a day's march. Why, I can remember--"
He caught himself up, but after the slightest pause, resumed:
"Forsan et haec ohm meminisse juvabit. Look at Clive, I was saying; a lout, a bear, a booby--as a boy, mark you; yet now! Is there a man whose name rings more loudly in the world's ear? And what Robert Clive is, that Desmond Burke might be if he had the mind and the will. You are going farther? Ah, I have not your love of ambulation. I will bid you farewell for this time; sure it will profit you to ponder my words."
Desmond did ponder his words. He walked for three or four hours, thinking all the time. Who had said that he was waiting for the squire's shoes? He glowed with indignation at the idea of such a construction being placed upon his friendship for Sir Willoughby.
"If they think that," he said to himself, "the sooner I go away the better."
And the seed planted by Diggle took root and began to germinate with wonderful rapidity. To emulate Clive!--what would he not give for the chance? But how was it possible? Clive had begun as a writer in the service of the East India Company; but how could Desmond procure a nomination? Perhaps Sir Willoughby could help him; he might have influence with the Company's directors. But, supposing he obtained a nomination, how could he purchase his outfit? He had but a few guineas, and after what Diggle had said he would starve rather than ask the squire for a penny. True, under his father's will he was to receive five thousand pounds at the age of twenty-one. Would Richard advance part of the sum? Knowing Richard, he hardly dared to hope for such a departure from the letter of the law. But it was at least worth attempting.
Chapter 4: In which blows are exchanged; and our hero, setting forth upon his travels, scents an adventure.
That same day, at supper, seeing that Richard was apparently in good humor, Desmond ventured to make a suggestion.
"Dick," he said frankly, "don't you think it would be better for all of us if I went away? You and I don't get along very well, and perhaps I was not cut out for a farmer."
Richard grunted, and Mrs. Burke looked apprehensively from one to the other.
"What's your idea?" asked Richard.
"Well, I had thought of a writership in the East India Company's service, or better still, a cadetship in the Company's forces."
"Hark to him!" exclaimed Richard, with a scornful laugh. "A second Clive, sink me! And where do you suppose the money is to come from?"
"Couldn't you advance me a part of what is to come to me when I am twenty-one?"
"Not a penny, I tell you at once, not a penny. 'Tis enough to be saddled with you all these years. You may think yourself lucky if I can scrape together a tenth of the money that'll be due to you when you're twenty-one. That's the dead hand, if you like; why father put that provision in his will it passes common sense to understand. No, you'll have to stay and earn part of it, though in truth you'll never be worth your keep."
"That depends on the keeper," retorted Desmond, rather warmly.
"No insolence, now. I repeat, I will not advance one penny! Go and get some money out of the squire, that is so precious fond of you."
"Richard, Richard!" said his mother anxiously.
"Mother, I'm the boy's guardian. I know what it is. He has been crammed with nonsense by that idle knave at the Four Alls. Look'ee, my man, if I catch you speaking to him again, I'll flay your skin for you."
"Why shouldn't I?" replied Desmond. "I saw you speaking to him."
"Hold your tongue, sir. The dog accosted me. I answered his question and passed on. Heed what I say: I'm a man of my word."
Desmond said no more. But before he fell asleep that night he had advanced one step further towards freedom. His request had met with the refusal he had anticipated. He could hope for no pecuniary assistance; it remained to take the first opportunity of consulting Diggle. It was Diggle who had suggested India as the field for his ambition; and the suggestion would hardly have been made if there were great obstacles in the way of its being acted on. Desmond made light of his brother's command that he should cut Diggle's acquaintance; it seemed to him only another act of tyranny, and his relations with Richard were such that to forbid a thing was to provoke him to do it.
His opportunity came next day. Late in the afternoon he met Diggle, as he had done many times before, walking in the fields, remote from houses. When Desmond caught sight of him, he was sauntering along, his eyes bent upon the ground, his face troubled. But he smiled on seeing Desmond.
"Well met, friend," he said; "leni perfruor otio--which is as much as to say--I bask in idleness. Well, now, I perceive in your eye that you have been meditating my counsel. 'Tis well, friend Desmond, and whereto has your meditation arrived?"
"I have thought over what you said. I do wish to get away from here; I should like to go to India; indeed, I asked my brother to advance a part of some money that is to come to me, so that I might obtain service with the Company; but he refused."
"And you come to me for counsel. 'Tis well done, though I trow your brother would scarce be pleased to hear of it."
"He forbade me to speak to you."
"Egad, he did! Haec summa est! What has he against me?--a question to be asked. I am a stranger in these parts: that is ill; and buffeted by fortune: that is worse; and somewhat versed in humane letters: that, to the rustic intelligence, is a crime. Well, my lad, you have come to the right man at the right time. You are acquainted with my design shortly to return to the Indies--a rare field for a lad of mettle. You shall come with me."
"But are you connected with the Company? None other, I believed, has a right to trade."
"The Company! Sure, my lad, I am no friend to the Company, a set of stiff-necked, ignorant, grasping, paunchy peddlers who fatten at home on the toil of better men. No, I am an adventurer, I own it; I am an interloper; and we interlopers, despite the Company's monopoly, yet contrive to keep body and soul together."
"Then I should not sail to India on a Company's ship?"
"Far from it, indeed. But let not that disturb you, there are other vessels. And for the passage--why, sure I could find you a place as supercargo or some such thing; you would thus keep the little money you have and add to it, forming a nest egg which, I say it without boasting, I could help you to hatch into a fine brood. I am not without friends in the Indies, my dear boy; there are princes in that land whom I have assisted to their thrones; and if, on behalf of a friend, I ask of them some slight thing, provided it be honest--'tis the first law of friendship, says Tully, as you will remember, to seek honest things for our friends--if, I say, on your behalf, I proffer some slight request, sure the nawabs will vie to pleasure me, and the foundation of your fortune will be laid."
Desmond had not observed that, during this eloquent passage, Diggle had more than once glanced beyond him, as though his mind were not wholly occupied with his oratorical efforts. It was therefore something of a shock that he heard him say in the same level tone:
"But I perceive your brother approaching. I am not the man to cause differences between persons near akin; I will therefore leave you; we will have further speech on the subject of our discourse."
He moved away. A moment after, Richard Burke came up in a towering passion.
"You brave me, do you?" he cried. "Did I not forbid you to converse with that vagabond?"
"You have no right to dictate to me on such matters," said Desmond hotly, facing his brother.
"I've no right, haven't I?" shouted Richard. "I've a guardian's right to thrash you if you disobey me, and by George! I'll keep my promise."
He lifted the riding whip, without which he seldom went abroad, and struck at Desmond. But the boy's blood was up. He sprang aside as the thong fell; it missed him, and before the whip could be raised again he had leaped towards his brother. Wrenching the stock from his grasp, Desmond flung the whip over the hedge into a green-mantled pool, and stood, his cheeks pale, his fists clenched, his eyes flaming, before the astonished man.
"Coward!" he cried, "'tis the last time you lay hands on me."
Recovered from his amazement at Desmond's resistance, Richard, purple with wrath, advanced to seize the boy. But Desmond, nimbly evading his clutch, slipped his foot within his brother's, and with a dexterous movement tripped him up, so that he fell sprawling, with many an oath, on the miry road. Before he could regain his feet, Desmond had vaulted the hedge and set off at a run towards home. Diggle was nowhere in sight.
The die was now cast. Never before had Desmond actively retaliated upon his brother, and he knew him well enough to be sure that such an affront was unforgivable. The farm would no longer be safe for him. With startling suddenness his vague notions of leaving home were crystallized into a resolve. No definite plan formed itself in his mind as he raced over the fields. He only knew that the moment for departure had come, and he was hastening now to secure the little money he possessed and to make a bundle of his clothes and the few things he valued before Richard could return.
Reaching the Grange, he slipped quietly upstairs, not daring to face his mother, lest her grief should weaken his resolution, and in five minutes he returned with his bundle. He stole out through the garden, skirted the copse that bounded the farm inclosure, and ran for half a mile up the lane until he felt that he was out of reach. Then, breathless with haste, quivering with the shock of this sudden plunge into independence, he sat down on the grassy bank to reflect.
What had he done? It was no light thing for a boy of his years, ignorant of life and the world, to cut himself adrift from old ties and voyage into the unknown. Had he been wise? He had no trade as a standby; his whole endowment was his youth and his wits. Would they suffice? Diggle's talk had opened up an immense prospect, full of color and mystery and romance, chiming well with his daydreams. Was it possible that, sailing to India, he might find some of his dreams come true?
Could he trust Diggle, a stranger, by his own admission an adventurer, a man who had run through two fortunes already? He had no reason for distrust; Diggle was well educated, a gentleman, frank, amiable. What motive could he have for leading a boy astray?
Mingled with Desmond's Irish impulsiveness there was a strain of caution derived from the stolid English yeomen, his forebears on the maternal side. He felt the need, before crossing his Rubicon, of taking counsel with someone older and wiser--with a tried friend. Sir Willoughby Stokes, the squire, had always been kind to him. Would it not be well to put his case to the squire and follow his advice? But he durst not venture to the Hall yet. His brother might suspect that he had gone there and seize him, or intercept him on the way. He would wait. It was the squire's custom to spend a quiet hour in his own room long after the time when other folk in that rural neighborhood were abed. Desmond sometimes sat with him there, reading or playing chess. If he went up to the Hall at nine o'clock he would be sure of a welcome.
The evening passed slowly for Desmond in his enforced idleness. At nine o'clock, leaving his bundle in a hollow tree, he set off toward the Hall, taking a short cut across the fields. It was a dark night, and he stopped with a start as, on descending a stile overhung by a spreading sycamore, he almost struck against a person who had just preceded him.
"Who's that?" he asked quickly, stepping back a little: it was unusual to meet anyone in the fields at so late an hour.
"Be that you, Measter Desmond?"
"Oh, 'tis you, Dickon. What are you doing this way at such an hour? You ought to have been abed long ago."
"Ay, sure, Measter Desmond; but I be goin' to see squire," said the old man, apparently with some hesitation.
"That's odd. So am I. We may as well walk together, then--for fear of the ghosts, eh, Dickon?"
"I binna afeard o' ghosts, not I. True, 'tis odd I be goin' to see squire. I feel it so. Squire be a high man, and I ha' never dared lift up my voice to him oothout axen. But 'tis to be. I ha' summat to tell him, low born as I be; ay, I mun tell him, cost what it may."
"Well, he's not a dragon. I have something to tell him too--cost what it may."
There was silence for a space. Then Dickon said tremulously:
"Bin it a great matter, yourn, sir, I make bold to axe?"
"That's as it turns out, Dickon. But what is it with you, old man? Is aught amiss?"
"Not wi' me, sir, not wi' me, thank the Lord above. But I seed ya, Measter Desmond, t'other day, in speech win that--that Diggle as he do call hisself, and--and I tell ya true, sir, I dunna like the looks on him; no, he binna a right man; an' I were afeard as he med ha' bin fillin' yer head wi' fine tales about the wonders o' the world an' all."
"Is that all, Dickon? You fear my head may be turned, eh? Don't worry about me."
"Why, sir, ya may think me bold, but I do say this. If so be ya gets notions in yer head--notions o' goin' out along an' seein' the world an' all, go up an' axe squire about it. Squire he done have a wise head; he'll advise ya for the best; an' sure I bin he'd warn ya not to have no dealin's win that Diggle, as he do call hissen."
"Why, does the squire know him, then?"
"'Tis my belief squire do know everything an' everybody. Diggle he med not know, to be sure, but if so be ya say 'tis a lean man, wi' sharp nose, an' black eyes like live coals, an' a smilin' mouth--why, squire knows them sort, he done, and wouldna trust him not a ell. But maybe ya'd better go on, sir: my old shanks be slow fur one so young an' nimble."
"No hurry, Dickon. Lucky the squire was used to London hours in his youth, or we'd find him abed. See, there's a light in the Hall; 'tis in the strong room next to the library; Sir Willoughby is reckoning up his rents maybe, though 'tis late for that."
"Ay, ya knows the Hall, true. Theer be a terrible deal o gowd an' silver up in that room, fur sure, more 'n a aged man like me could tell in a week."
"The light is moving; it seems Sir Willoughby is finishing up for the night. I hope we shall not be too late."
But at this moment a winding of the path brought another face of the Hall into view.
"Why, Dickon," exclaimed Desmond, "there's another light; 'tis the squire's own room. He cannot be in two places at once; 'tis odd at this time of night. Come, stir your stumps, old man."
They hurried along, scrambling through the hedge that bounded the field, Desmond leaping, Dickon wading the brook that ran alongside the road. Turning to the left, they came to the front entrance to the Hall, and passed through the wicket gate into the grounds. They could see the squire's shadow on the blind of the parlor; but the lighted window of the strong room was now hidden from them.
Stepping in that direction, to satisfy a strange curiosity he felt, Desmond halted in amazement as he saw, faintly silhouetted against the sky, a ladder placed against the wall, resting on the sill of the strong room. His surprise at seeing lights in two rooms, in different wings of the house, so late at night, changed to misgiving and suspicion. He hastened back to Dickon.
"I fear some mischief is afoot," he said. Drawing the old man into the shade of the shrubbery, he added: "Remain here; do not stir until I come for you, or unless you hear me call."
Leaving Dickon in trembling perplexity and alarm, he stole forward on tiptoe towards the house.
Chapter 5: In which Job Grinsell explains; and three visitors come by night to the Four Alls.
At the foot of the wall lay a flower bed, now bare and black, separated by a gravel path from a low shrubbery of laurel. Behind this latter Desmond stole, screened from observation by the bushes. Coming to a spot exactly opposite the ladder, he saw that it rested on the sill of the library window, which was open. The library itself was dark, but there was still a dull glow in the next room. At the foot of the ladder stood a man.
The meaning of it all was plain. The large sum of money recently received by Sir Willoughby as rents had tempted someone to rob him. The robber must have learned that the money was kept in the strong room; and it argued either considerable daring or great ignorance to have timed his visit for an hour when anyone familiar with the squire's habits would have known that he would not yet have retired to rest.
Desmond was about to run round to the other side of the house and rouse the squire, when the dim light in the strong room was suddenly extinguished. Apparently the confederate of the man below had secured his booty and was preparing to return. Desmond remained fixed to the spot, in some doubt what to do. He might call to Dickon and make a rush on the man before him, but the laborer was old and feeble, and the criminal was no doubt armed. A disturber would probably be shot, and though the shot would alarm the household, the burglars would have time to escape in the darkness. Save Sir Willoughby himself, doubtless every person in the house was by this time abed and asleep.
It seemed best to Desmond to send Dickon for help while he himself still mounted guard. Creeping silently as a cat along the shrubbery, he hastened back to the laborer, told him in a hurried whisper of his discovery, and bade him steal round to the servants' quarters, rouse them quietly, and bring one or two to trap the man at the foot of the ladder while others made a dash through the library upon the marauder in the strong room. Dickon, whose wits were nimbler than his legs, understood what he was to do and slipped away, Desmond returning to his coign of vantage as noiselessly as he came.
He was just in time to see that a heavy object, apparently a box, was being lowered from the library window on to the ladder. Sliding slowly down, it came to the hands of the waiting man; immediately afterwards the rope by which it had been suspended was dropped from above, and the dark figure of a man mounted the sill.
He already had one leg over, preparing to descend, when Desmond, with a sudden rush, dashed through the shrubs and sprang across the path. The confederate was stooping over the booty; his back was towards the shrubbery; at the snapping of twigs and the crunching of the gravel he straightened himself and turned. Before he was aware of what was happening, Desmond caught at the ladder by the lowest rung, and jerked it violently outwards so that its top fell several feet below the windowsill, resting on the wall out of reach of the man above.
Desmond heard a smothered exclamation break from the fellow, but he could pay no further attention to him, for, as he rose from stooping over the ladder, he was set upon by a burly form. He dodged behind the ladder. The man sprang after him, blindly, clumsily, and tripped over the box. But he was up in a moment, and, reckless of the consequences of raising an alarm, was fumbling for a pistol, when there fell upon his ears a shout, the tramp of hurrying feet, and the sound of another window being thrown open.
With a muffled curse he swung on his heel, and made to cross the gravel path and plunge into the shrubbery. But Desmond was too quick for him. Springing upon his back, he caught his arms, thus preventing him from using his pistol. He was a powerful man, and Desmond alone would have been no match for him; but before he could wriggle himself entirely free, three half-clad men servants came up with a rush, and in a trice he was secured.
In the excitement of these close-packed moments Desmond had forgotten the other man, whom he had last seen with his leg dangling over the windowsill. He looked up now; the window was still open; the ladder lay exactly where he had jerked it; evidently the robber had not descended.
"Quick!" cried Desmond. "Round to the door! The other fellow will escape!"
He himself sprinted round the front of the house to the door by which the servants had issued, and met the squire hobbling along on his stick, pistol in hand.
"We have got one, sir!" cried Desmond. "Have you seen the other?"
"What--why--how many villains are there?" replied the squire, who, between amazement and wrath, was scarcely able to appreciate the situation.
"There was a man in the library; he did not come down the ladder; he may be still in the house."
"The deuce he is! Desmond, take the pistol, and shoot the knave like a dog if you meet him."
"I'll guard the door, Sir Willoughby. They are bringing the other man round. Then we'll go into the house and search. He can't get out without being seen if the other doors are locked."
"Locked and barred. I did it myself an hour ago. I'll hang the villain."
In a few moments the servants came up with their captive and the box, old Dickon following. Only their figures could be seen: it was too dark to distinguish features.
"You scoundrel!" cried the squire, brandishing his stick. "You'll hang for this.
"Take him into the house. In with you all.
"You scoundrel!"
"An' you please, Sir Willoughby, 'tis--" began one of the servants.
"In with you, I say," roared the squire. "I'll know how to deal with the villain."
The culprit was hustled into the house, and the group followed, Sir Willoughby bringing up the rear. Inside he barred and locked the door, and bade the men carry their prisoner to the library. The corridors and staircase were dark, but by the time the squire had mounted on his gouty legs, candles had been lighted, and the face of the housebreaker was for the first time visible. Two servants held the man; the others, with Desmond and Dickon, looked on in amazement.
"Job Grinsell, on my soul and body!" cried the squire. "You villain! You ungrateful knave! Is this how you repay me? I might have hanged you, you scoundrel, when you poached my game; a word from me and Sir Philip would have seen you whipped before he let his inn to you; but I was too kind; I am a fool; and you--by, gad, you shall hang this time."
The squire's face was purple with anger, and he shook his stick as though then and there he would have wrought chastisement on the offender. Grinsell's flabby face, however, expressed amusement rather than fear.
"Bless my soul!" cried the squire, suddenly turning to his men, "I'd forgotten the other villain. Off with you; search for him; bring him here."
Desmond had already set off to look for Grinsell's accomplice. Taper in hand he went quickly from room to room; joined by the squire's servants, he searched every nook and cranny of the house, examining doors and windows, opening cupboards, poking at curtains--all in vain. At last, at the end of a dark corridor, he came upon an open window some ten feet above the ground. It was so narrow that a man of ordinary size must have had some difficulty in squeezing his shoulders through; but Desmond was forced to the conclusion that the housebreaker had sprung out here, and by this time had made good his escape. Disappointed at his failure, he returned with the servants to the library.
"We can't find him, Sir Willoughby," said Desmond, as he opened the door.
To his surprise, Grinsell and Dickon were gone; no one but the squire was in the room, and he was sitting in a big chair, limp and listless, his eyes fixed upon the floor.
"We can't find him," repeated Desmond.
The squire looked up.
"What did you say?" he asked, as though the events of the past half-hour were a blank. "Oh, 'tis you, Desmond, yes; what can I do for you?"
Desmond was embarrassed.
"I--we have--we have looked for the other villain, Sir Willoughby," he stammered. "We can't find him."
"Ah! 'Twas you gave the alarm. Good boy; zeal, excellent; but a little mistake; yes, Grinsell explained; a mistake, Desmond."
The squire spoke hurriedly, disconnectedly, with an embarrassment even greater than Desmond's.
"But, sir," the boy began, "I saw--"
"Yes, yes," interrupted the old man. "I know all about it. But Grinsell's explanation--yes, I know all about it. I am obliged to you, Desmond; but I am satisfied with Grinsell's explanation; I shall go no further in the matter."
He groaned and put his hand to his head.
"Are you ill, Sir Willoughby?" asked Desmond anxiously.
The squire looked up; his face was an image of distress. He was silent for a moment; then said slowly:
"Sick at heart, Desmond, sick at heart. I am an old man--an old man."
Desmond was uncomfortable. He had never seen the squire in such a mood, and had a healthy boy's natural uneasiness at any display of feeling.
"You see that portrait?" the squire went on, pointing wearily with his stick at the head of a young man done in oils. "The son of my oldest friend--my dear old friend Merriman. I never told you of him. Nine years ago, Desmond--nine years ago, my old friend was as hale and hearty a man as myself, and George was the apple of his eye. They were for the king--God save him!-and when word came that Prince Charles was marching south from Scotland, they arranged secretly with a party of loyal gentlemen to join him. But I hung back; I had not their courage; I am alive, and I lost my friend."
His voice sank, and, leaning heavily upon his stick, he gazed vacantly into space. Desmond was perplexed and still more ill at ease. What had this to do with the incidents of the night? He shrank from asking the question.
"Yes, I lost my friend," the squire continued. "We had news of the prince; he had left Carlisle; he was moving southwards, about to strike a blow for his father's throne. He was approaching Derby. George Merriman sent a message to his friends, appointing a rendezvous: gallant gentlemen, they would join the Stuart flag! The day came, they met, and the minions of the Hanoverian surrounded them. Betrayed!--poor, loyal gentlemen, betrayed by one who had their confidence and abused it--one of my own blood, Desmond--the shame of it! They were tried, hanged--hanged! It broke my old friend's heart; he died; 'twas one of my blood that killed him."
Again speech failed him. Then, with a sudden change of manner, he said:
"But 'tis late, boy; your brother keeps early hours. I am not myself tonight; the memory of the past unnerves me. Bid me good night, boy."
Desmond hesitated, biting his lips. What of the motive of his visit? He had come to ask advice; could he go without having mentioned the subject that troubled him? The old man had sunk into a reverie; his lips moved as though he communed with himself. Desmond had not the heart to intrude his concerns on one so bowed with grief.
"Good night, Sir Willoughby!" he said.
The squire paid no heed, and Desmond, vexed, bewildered, went slowly from the room.
At the outer door he found Dickon awaiting him.
"The squire has let Grinsell go, Dickon," he said; "he says 'twas all a mistake."
"If squire says it, then 't must be," said Dickon slowly, nodding his head.
"We'n better be goin' home, sir."
"But you had something to tell Sir Willoughby?"
"Ay, sure, but he knows it--knows it better'n me."
"Come, Dickon, what is this mystery! I am in a maze; what is it, man?"
"Binna fur a aged, poor feller like me to say. We'n better go home, sir."
Nothing that Desmond said prevailed upon Dickon to tell more, and the two started homewards across the fields.
Some minutes afterwards they heard the sound of a horse's hoofs clattering on the road to their left, and going in the same direction. It was an unusual sound at that late hour, and both stopped instinctively and looked at each other.
"A late traveler, Dickon," said Desmond.
"Ay, maybe a king's post, Measter Desmond," replied the old man.
Without more words they went on till they came to a lane leading to the laborer's cottage.
"We part here," said Desmond. "Dickon, good night!"
"Good night to you, sir!" said the old man. He paused; then, in a grave, earnest, quavering voice, he added: "The Lord Almighty have you in his keeping, Measter Desmond, watch over you night and day, now and evermore."
And with that he hobbled down the lane.
At nine o'clock that night Richard Burke left the Grange--an unusual thing for him--and walked quickly to the Four Alls. The inn was closed, and shutters darkened the windows; but, seeing a chink of light between the folds, the farmer knocked at the door. There was no answer. He knocked again and again, grumbling under his breath. At length, when his patience was almost exhausted, a window above opened, and, looking up, Mr. Burke dimly saw a head.
"Is that you, Grinsell?" he asked.
"No, massa."
"Oh, you're the black boy, Mr. Diggle's servant. Is your master in?"
"No, massa."
"Well, come down and open the door. I'll wait for him."
"Massa said no open door for nuffin."
"Confound you, open at once! He knows me; I'm a friend of his; open the door!"
"Massa said no open door for nobody."
The farmer pleaded, stormed, cursed, but Scipio Africanus was inflexible. His master had given him orders, and the boy had learned, at no little cost, that it was the wisest and safest policy to obey. Finding that neither threats nor persuasion availed, Burke took a stride or two in the direction of home; then he halted, pondered for a moment, changed his mind, and began to pace up and down the road.
His restless movements were by and by checked by the sound of footsteps approaching. He crossed the road, stood in the shadow of an elm and waited. The footsteps drew nearer; he heard low voices, and now discerned two dark figures against the lighter road. They came to the inn and stopped. One of them took a key from his pocket and inserted it in the lock.
"'Tis you at last," said Burke, stepping out from his place of concealment. "That boy of yours would not let me in, hang him!"
At the first words Diggle started and swung round, his right hand flying to his pocket; but, recognizing the voice almost immediately, he laughed.
"'Tis you, my friend," he said. "Multa de nocte profectus es. But you've forgot all your Latin, Dick. What is the news, man? Come in."
"The bird is flitting, Sim, that's all. He has not been home. His mother was in a rare to-do. I pacified her; told her I'd sent him to Chester to sell oats--haw, haw! He has taken some clothes and gone. But he won't go far, I trow, without seeing you, and I look to you to carry out the bargain."
"Egad, Dick, I need no persuasion. He won't go without me, I promise you that. I've a bone to pick with him myself--eh, friend Job?"
Grinsell swore a hearty oath. At this moment the silence without was broken by the sound of a trotting horse.
"Is the door bolted?" whispered Burke. "I mustn't be seen here."
"Trust me fur that," said Grinsell. "But no one will stop here at this time o' night."
But the three men stood silent, listening. The sound steadily grew louder; the horse was almost abreast of the inn; it was passing--but no, it came to a halt; they heard a man's footsteps, and the sound of the bridle being hitched to a hook in the wall. Then there was a sharp rap at the door.
"Who's there?" cried Grinsell gruffly.
"Open the door instantly," said a loud, masterful voice.
Burke looked aghast.
"You can't let him in," he whispered.
The others exchanged glances.
"Open the door," cried the voice again. "D'you hear, Grinsell? At once!--or I ride to Drayton for the constables."
Grinsell gave Diggle a meaning look.
"Slip out by the back door, Mr. Burke," said the innkeeper. "I'll make a noise with the bolts so that he cannot hear you."
Burke hastily departed, and Grinsell, after long, loud fumbling with the bolts, threw open the door and gave admittance to the squire.
"Ah, you are here both," said Sir Willoughby, standing in the middle of the floor, his riding whip in his hand.
"Now, Mr.--Diggle, I think you call yourself, I'm a man of few words, as you know. I have to say this, I give you till eight o'clock tomorrow morning; if you are not gone, bag and baggage, by that time, I will issue a warrant. Is that clear?"
"Perfectly," said Diggle with his enigmatical smile.
"And one word more. Show your face again in these parts and I shall have you arrested. I have spared you twice for your mother's sake. This is my last warning.
"Grinsell, you hear that, too?"
"I hear 't," growled the man.
"Remember it, for, mark my words, you'll share his fate."
The squire was gone.
Grinsell scowled with malignant spite; Diggle laughed softly.
"Quanta de spe decidi!" he said, "which in plain English, friend Job, means that we are dished--utterly, absolutely. I must go on my travels again. Well, such was my intention; the only difference is, that I go with an empty purse instead of a full one. Who'd have thought the old dog would ha' been such an unconscionable time dying!"
"Gout or no gout, he's good for another ten year," growled the innkeeper.
"Well, I'll give him five. And, with the boy out of the way, maybe I'll come to my own even yet. The young puppy!"
At this moment Diggle's face was by no means pleasant to look upon.
"Fate has always had a grudge against me, Job. In the old days, I bethink me, 'twas I that was always found out. You had many an escape."
"Till the last. But I've come out of this well." He chuckled. "To think what a fool blood makes of a man! Squire winna touch me, 'cause of you. But it must gall him; ay, it must gall him."
"I--list!" said Diggle suddenly. "There are footsteps again. Is it Burke coming back? The door's open, Job."
The innkeeper went to the door and peered into the dark. A slight figure came up at that moment--a boy, with a bundle in his hand.
"Is that you, Grinsell? Is Mr. Diggle in?"
"Come in, my friend," said Diggle, hastening to the door. "We were just talking of you. Come in; 'tis a late hour; si vespertinus subito--you remember old Horace? True, we haven't a hen to baste with Falernian for you, but sure friend Job can find a wedge of Cheshire and a mug of ale. Come in."
And Desmond went into the inn.
Chapter 6: In which the reader becomes acquainted with William Bulger and other sailor men; and our hero as a squire of dames acquits himself with credit.
One warm October afternoon, some ten days after the night of his visit to the Four Alls, Desmond was walking along the tow path of the Thames, somewhat north of Kingston. As he came to the spot where the river bends round towards Teddington, he met a man plodding along with a rope over his shoulder, hauling a laden hoy.
"Can you tell me the way to the Waterman's Rest?" asked Desmond.
"Ay, that can I," replied the man without stopping. "'Tis about a quarter mile behind me, right on waterside. And the best beer this side o' Greenwich."
Thanking him, Desmond walked on. He had not gone many yards farther before there fell upon his ear, from some point ahead, the sound of several rough voices raised in chorus, trolling a tune that seemed familiar to him. As he came nearer to the singers, he distinguished the words of the song, and remembered the occasion on which he had heard them before: the evening of Clive's banquet at Market Drayton--the open window of the Four Alls, the voice of Marmaduke Diggle.
"Sir William Norris, Masulipatam"--these were the first words he caught; and immediately afterwards the voices broke into the second verse:
"Says Governor Pitt, Fort George, Madras, 'I know what you are: an ass, an ass, An ass, an ass, an ASS, an ASS,' Signed 'Governor Pitt, Fort George, Madras.'"
And at the conclusion there was a clatter of metal upon wood, and then one voice, loud and rotund, struck up the first verse once more--"Says Billy Norris, Masulipatam"--The singer was in the middle of the stave when Desmond, rounding a privet hedge, came upon the scene. A patch of greensward, sloping up from a slipway on the riverside; a low, cozy-looking inn of red brick covered with a crimson creeper; in front of it a long deal table, and seated at the table a group of some eight or ten seamen, each with a pewter tankard before him. To the left, and somewhat in the rear of the long table, was a smaller one, at which two seamen, by their garb a cut above the others, sat opposite each other, intent on some game.
Desmond's attention was drawn towards the larger table. Rough as was the common seaman of George the Second's time, the group here collected would have been hard to match for villainous looks. One had half his teeth knocked out, another a broken nose; all bore scars and other marks of battery.
Among them, however, there was one man marked out by his general appearance and facial expression as superior to the rest. In dress he was no different from his mates; he wore the loose blouse, the pantaloons, the turned-up cloth hat of the period. But he towered above them in height; he had a very large head, with a very small squab nose, merry eyes, and a fringe of jet-black hair round cheeks and chin.
When he removed his hat presently he revealed a shiny pink skull, rising from short, wiry hair as black as his whiskers. Alone of the group, he wore no love locks or greased pigtail. In his right hand, when Desmond first caught sight of him, he held a tankard, waving it to and fro in time with his song. He had lost his left hand and forearm, which were replaced by an iron hook projecting from a wooden socket, just visible in his loose sleeve.
He was halfway through the second stanza when he noticed Desmond standing at the angle of the hedge a few yards away. He fixed his merry eyes on the boy, and, beating time with his hook, went on with the song in stentorian tones:
"An ass, an ass, an Ass, an ASS, Signed 'Governor Pitt, Fort George, Madras.'"
The others took up the chorus, and finally brought their tankards down upon the deal with a resounding whack.
"Ahoy, Mother Wiggs, more beer!" shouted the big man.
Desmond went forward.
"Is this the Waterman's Rest?"
"Ay, ay, young gen'leman, and a blamed restful place it is, too, fit for watermen what en't naught but landlubbers, speaking by the book, but not fit for the likes of us jack tars. Eh, mateys?"
His companions grunted acquiescence.
"I have a message for Mr. Toley; is he here?"
"Ay, that he is. That's him at the table yonder.
"Mr. Toley, sir, a young gen'leman to see you."
Desmond advanced to the smaller table. The two men looked up from their game of dominoes. One was a tall, lean fellow, with lined and sunken cheeks covered with iron-gray stubble, a very sharp nose, and colorless eyes; the expression of his features was melancholy in the extreme. The other was a shorter man, snub-nosed, big-mouthed; one eye was blue, the other green, and they looked in contrary directions. His hat was tilted forward, resting on two bony prominences above his eyebrows.
"Well?" said Mr. Toley, the man of melancholy countenance.
"I have a message from Captain Barker," said Desmond. "I am to say that he expects you and the men at Custom House Quay next Wednesday morning, high tide at five o'clock."
Mr. Toley lifted the tankard at his left hand, drained it, smacked his lips, then said in a hollow voice:
"Bulger, Custom House Quay, Wednesday morning, five o'clock."
A grunt of satisfaction and relief rolled round the company, and in response to repeated cries for more beer a stout woman in a mob cap and dirty apron came from the inn with a huge copper can, from which she proceeded to fill the empty tankards.
"Is the press still hot, sir?" asked Mr. Toley.
"Yes. Four men, I was told, were hauled out of the Good Intent yesterday."
"And four bad bargains for the king," put in the second man, whose cross glances caused Desmond no little discomfort.
At this moment Joshua Wiggs, the innkeeper, came up, carrying three fowling pieces.
"There be plenty o' ducks today, mister," he said.
"Then we'll try our luck," said Mr. Toley, rising.
"Thank 'ee, my lad," he added to Desmond. "You'll take a sup with the men afore you go?
"Bulger, see to the gentleman."
"Ay, ay, sir.
"Come aboard, matey."
He made a place for Desmond at his side on the bench, and called to Mother Wiggs to bring a mug for the gentleman. Meanwhile, Mr. Toley and his companion had each taken a fowling piece and gone away with the landlord. Bulger winked at his companions, and when the sportsmen were out of earshot he broke into a guffaw.
"Rare sport they'll have! I wouldn't be in Mr. Toley's shoes for something. What's a cock-eyed man want with a gun in his hand, eh, mateys?"
Desmond felt somewhat out of his element in his present company; but having reasons of his own for making himself pleasant, he said, by way of opening a conversation:
"You seem pleased at the idea of going to sea again, Mr. Bulger."
"Well, we are and we en't, eh, mateys? The Waterman's Rest en't exactly the kind of place to spend shore leave; it en't a patch on Wapping or Rotherhithe. And to tell 'ee true, we're dead sick of it. But there's reasons; there mostly is; and the whys and wherefores, therefores and becauses, I dessay you know, young gen'lman, acomin' from Captain Barker."
"The press gang?"
"Ay, the press is hot in these days. Cap'n sent us here to be out o' the way, and the orficers to look arter us. Not but what 'tis safer for them too; for if Mr. Sunman showed his cock-eyes anywhere near the Pool, he'd be nabbed by the bailiffs, sure as he's second mate o' the Good Intent. Goin' to sea's bad enough, but the Waterman's Rest and holdin' on the slack here's worse, eh, mateys?"
"Ay, you're right there, Bulger."
"But why don't you like going to sea?" asked Desmond.
"Why? You're a landlubber, sir--meanin' no offense--or you wouldn't axe sich a foolish question. At sea 'tis all rope's end and salt pork, with Irish horse for a tit-bit."
"Irish horse?"
"Ay. That's our name for it. 'Cos why? Explain to the gen'lman, mateys."
With a laugh the men began to chant-- "Salt horse, salt horse, what brought you here? You've carried turf for many a year. From Dublin quay to Mallyack You've carried turf upon your back."
"That's the why and wherefore of it," added Bulger. "Cooks call it salt beef, same as French mounseers don't like the sound of taters an' calls 'em pummy detair; but we calls it Irish horse, which we know the flavor. Accordingly, notwithstandin' an' for that reason, if you axe the advice of an old salt, never you go to sea, matey."
"That's unfortunate," said Desmond, with a smile, "because I expect to sail next Wednesday morning, high tide at five o'clock."
"Binks and barnacles! Be you a-goin' to sail with us?"
"I hope so."
"Billy come up! You've got business out East, then?"
"Not yet, but I hope to have. I'm going out as supercargo."
"Oh! As supercargo!"
Bulger winked at his companions, and a hoarse titter went the round of the table.
"Well," continued Bulger, "the supercargo do have a better time of it than us poor chaps. And what do Cap'n Barker say to you as supercargo, which you are very young, sir?"
"I don't know Captain Barker."
"Oho! But I thought as how you brought a message from the captain?"
"Yes, but it came through Mr. Diggle."
"Ah! Mr. Diggle?"
"A friend of mine--a friend of the captain. He has arranged everything."
"I believe you, matey. He's arranged everything. Supercargo! Well, to be sure! Never a supercargo as I ever knowed but wanted a man to look arter him, fetch and carry for him, so to say. How would I do, if I might make so bold?"
"Thanks," said Desmond, smiling as he surveyed the man's huge form. "But I think Captain Barker might object to that. You'd be of more use on deck, in spite of--"
He paused, but his glance at the iron hook had not escaped Bulger's observant eye.
"Spite of the curlin' tongs, you'd say. Bless you, spit it out; I en't tender in my feelin's."
"Besides," added Desmond, "I shall probably make use of the boy who has been attending to me at the Goat and Compasses--a clever little black boy of Mr. Diggle's."
"Black boys be hanged! I never knowed a Sambo as was any use on board ship. They howls when they're sick, and they're allers sick, and never larns to tell a marlinspike from a belayin' pin."
"But Scipio isn't one of that sort. He's never sick, Mr. Diggle says; they've been several voyages together, and Scipio knows a ship from stem to stern."
"Scipio, which his name is? Uncommon name, that."
There was a new tone in Bulger's voice, and he gave Desmond a keen and, as it seemed, a troubled look.
"Yes, it is strange," replied the boy, vaguely aware of the change of manner. "But Mr. Diggle has ways of his own."
"This Mr. Diggle, now; I may be wrong, but I should say--yes, he's short, with bow legs and a wart on his cheek?"
"No, no; you must be thinking of some one else. He is tall, rather a well-looking man; he hasn't a wart, but there is a scar on his brow, something like yours."
"Ah, I know they sort; a fightin' sort o' feller, with a voice like--which I say, like a nine pounder?"
"Well, not exactly; he speaks rather quietly; he is well educated, too, to judge by the Latin he quotes."
"Sure now, a scholard. Myself, I never had no book larnin' to speak of; never got no further than pothooks an' hangers!"
He laughed as he lifted his hook. But he seemed to be disinclined for further conversation. He buried his face in his tankard, and when he had taken a long pull, set the vessel on the table and stared at it with a preoccupied air. He seemed to have forgotten the presence of Desmond. The other men were talking among themselves, and Desmond, having by this time finished his mug of beer, rose to go on his way.
"Goodby, Mr. Bulger," he said; "we shall meet again next Wednesday."
"Ay, ay, sir," returned the man.
He looked long after the boy as he walked away.
"Supercargo!" he muttered. "Diggle! I may be wrong, but--"
Desmond had come through Southwark and across Clapham and Wimbledon Common, thus approaching the Waterman's Rest from the direction of Kingston. Accustomed as he was to long tramps, he felt no fatigue, and with a boy's natural curiosity he decided to return to the city by a different route, following the river bank. He had not walked far before he came to the ferry at Twickenham. The view on the other side of the river attracted him: meadows dotted with cows and sheep, a verdant hill with pleasant villas here and there; and, seeing the ferryman resting on his oars, he accosted him.
"Can I get to London if I cross here?" he asked.
"Sure you can, sir. Up the hill past Mr. Walpole his house; then you comes to Isleworth and Brentford, and a straight road through Hammersmith village--a fine walk, sir, and only a penny for the ferryman."
Desmond paid his penny and crossed. He sauntered along up Strawberry Hill, taking a good look at the snug little house upon which Mr. Horace Walpole was spending much money and pains. Wandering on, and preferring bylanes to the high road, he lost his bearings, and at length, fearing that he was going in the wrong direction, he stopped at a wayside cottage to inquire the way.
He was farther out than he knew. The woman who came to the door in answer to his knock said that, having come so far, he had better proceed in the same direction until he reached Hounslow, and then strike into the London road and keep to it.
Desmond was nothing loath. He had heard of Hounslow and those notorious "Diana's foresters," Plunket and James Maclean--highwaymen who a few years before had been the terror of night travelers across the lonely Heath. There was a fascination about the scene of their exploits. So he trudged on, feeling now a little tired, and hoping to get a lift in some farmer's cart that might be going towards London.
More than once as he walked his thoughts recurred to the scene at the Waterman's Rest. They were a rough, villainous-looking set, these members of the crew of the Good Intent! Of course, as supercargo he would not come into close contact with them; and Mr. Diggle had warned him that he would find seafaring men somewhat different from the country folk among whom all his life hitherto had been passed.
Diggle's frankness had pleased him. They had left the Four Alls early on the morning after that strange incident at the squire's. Desmond had told his friend what had happened, and Diggle, apparently surprised to learn of Grinsell's villainy, had declared that the sooner they were out of his company the better. They had come by easy stages to London, and were now lodging at a small inn near the Tower: not a very savory neighborhood, Diggle admitted, but convenient. Diggle had soon obtained for Desmond a berth on board the Good Intent bound for the East Indies, and from what he let drop, the boy understood that he was to sail as supercargo.
He had not yet seen the vessel; she was painting, and would shortly be coming up to the Pool. Nor had he seen Captain Barker, who was very much occupied, said Diggle, and had a great deal of trouble in keeping his crew out of the clutches of the press gang. Some of the best of them had been sent to the Waterman's Rest in charge of the chief and second mates. It was at Diggle's suggestion that he had been deputed to convey the captain's message to the men.
It was drawing towards evening when Desmond reached Hounslow Heath; a wide, bare expanse of scrubby land intersected by a muddy road. A light mist lay over the ground, and he was thankful that the road to London was perfectly direct, so that there was no further risk of his losing his way. The solitude and the dismal appearance of the country, together with its ill repute, made him quicken his pace, though he had no fear of molestation; having nothing to lose, he would be but poor prey for a highwayman, and he trusted to his cudgel to protect him from the attentions of any single footpad or tramp.
Striding along in the gathering dusk, he came suddenly upon a curious scene. A heavy traveling carriage was drawn half across the road, its forewheels perilously near the ditch. Near by was a lady, standing with arms stiff and hands clenched, stamping her foot as she addressed, in no measured terms, two men who were rolling over one another in a desperate tussle a few yards away on the heath. As Desmond drew nearer he perceived that a second and younger lady stood at the horses' heads, grasping the bridles firmly with both hands.
His footsteps were unheard on the heavy road, and the elder lady's back being towards him, he came up to her unawares. She started with a little cry when she saw a stranger move towards her out of the gloom. But perceiving at a second glance that he was only a boy, with nothing villainous about his appearance, she turned to him impulsively and, taking him by the sleeve, said:
"There! You see them! The wretches! They are drunk and pay no heed to me! Can you part them? I do not wish to be benighted on this heath. The wretch uppermost is the coachman."
"I might part them, perhaps," said Desmond dubiously. "Of course I will try, ma'am."
"Sure I wouldn't trust 'em, mamma," called the younger lady from the horses' heads. "The man is too drunk to drive."
"I fear 'tis so. 'Tis not our own man, sir. As we returned today from a visit to Taplow our coachman was trampled by a horse at Slough, and my husband stayed with him--an old and trusty servant--till he could consult a surgeon. We found a substitute at the inn to drive us home. But the wretch brought a bottle; he drank with the footman all along the road; and now, as you see, they are at each other's throats in their drunken fury. Sure we shall never get home in time for the rout we are bid to."
"Shall I drive you to London, ma'am?" said Desmond, "'Twere best to leave the men to settle their differences."
"But can you drive?"
"Oh, yes," replied Desmond, with a smile. "I am used to horses."
"Then I beg you to oblige us. Yes, let the wretches fight themselves sober.
"Phyllis, this gentleman will drive us; come."
The girl--a fair, rosy cheeked, merry-eyed damsel of fifteen or thereabouts--left the horses' heads and entered the carriage with her mother. Desmond made a rapid examination of the harness to see that all was right; then he mounted the box and drove off. The noise of the rumbling wheels penetrated the besotted intelligence of the struggling men; they scrambled to their feet, looked wildly about them, and set off in pursuit. But they had no command of their limbs; they staggered clumsily this way and that, and finally found their level in the slimy ditch that flanked the road.
Desmond whipped up the horses in the highest spirits. He had hoped for a lift in a farmer's cart; fortune had favored him in giving him four roadsters to drive himself. And no boy, certainly not one of his romantic impulses, but would feel elated at the idea of helping ladies in distress, and on a spot known far and wide as the scene of perilous adventure.
The carriage was heavy; the road, though level, was thick with autumn mud; and the horses made no great speed. Desmond, indeed, durst not urge them too much, for the mist was thickening, making the air even darker than the hour warranted; and as the roadway had neither hedge nor wall to define it, but was bounded on each side by a ditch, it behooved him to go warily.
He had just come to a particularly heavy part of the road where the horses were compelled to walk, when he heard the thud of hoofs some distance behind him. The sound made him vaguely uneasy. It ceased for a moment or two; then he heard it again, and realized that the horse was coming at full gallop. Instinctively he whipped up the horses. The ladies had also heard the sound; and, putting her head out of the window, the elder implored him to drive faster.
Could the two besotted knaves have put the horseman on his track, he wondered. They must believe that the carriage had been run away with, and in their tipsy rage they would seize any means of overtaking him that offered. The horseman might be an inoffensive traveler; on the other hand, he might not. It was best to leave nothing to chance. With a cheery word, to give the ladies confidence, he lashed at the horses and forced the carriage on at a pace that put its clumsy springs to a severe test.
Fortunately the road was straight, and the horses instinctively kept to the middle of the track. But fast as they were now going, Desmond felt that if the horseman was indeed pursuing he would soon be overtaken. He must be prepared for the worst. Gripping the reins hard with his left hand, he dropped the whip for a moment and felt in the box below the seat in the hope of finding a pistol; but it was empty.
He whistled under his breath at the discovery: if the pursuer was a "gentleman of the road" his predicament was indeed awkward. The carriage was rumbling and rattling so noisily that he had long since lost the sound of the horse's hoofs behind. He could not pause to learn if the pursuit had ceased; his only course was to drive on. Surely he would soon reach the edge of the heath; there would be houses; every few yards must bring him nearer to the possibility of obtaining help. Thus thinking, he clenched his teeth and lashed the reeking flanks of the horses, which plunged along now at a mad gallop.
Suddenly, above the noise of their hoofs and the rattling of the coach he heard an angry shout. A scream came from the ladies. Heeding neither, Desmond quickly reversed his whip, holding it halfway down the long handle, with the heavy iron-tipped stock outward. The horseman came galloping up on the right side, shouted to Desmond to stop, and without waiting drew level with the box and fired point blank.
But the rapid movement of his horse and the swaying of the carriage forbade him to take careful aim. Desmond felt the wind of the bullet as it whizzed past him. Next moment he leaned slightly sidewise, and, never loosening his hold on the reins with his left hand, he brought the weighty butt of his whip with a rapid cut, half sidewise, half downwards, upon the horseman's head. The man with a cry swerved on the saddle; almost before Desmond could recover his balance he was amazed to see the horse dash suddenly to the right, spring across the ditch, and gallop at full speed across the heath.
But he had no time at the moment to speculate on this very easy victory. The horses, alarmed by the pistol shot, were plunging madly, dragging the vehicle perilously near to the ditch on the left hand. Then Desmond's familiarity with animals, gained at so much cost to himself on his brother's farm, bore good fruit. He spoke to the horses soothingly, managed them with infinite tact, and coaxed them into submission. Then he let them have their heads, and they galloped on at speed, pausing only when they reached the turnpike going into Brentford. They were then in a bath of foam; their flanks heaving like to burst.
Learning from the turnpike man that he could obtain a change of horses at the "Bull" inn, Desmond drove there, and was soon upon his way again.
While the change was being made, he obtained from the lady the address in Soho Square where she was staying. The new horses were fresh; the carriage rattled through Gunnersbury, past the turnpike at Hammersmith and through Kensington, and soon after nine o'clock Desmond had the satisfaction of pulling up at the door of Sheriff Soames' mansion in Soho Square.
The door was already open, the rattle of wheels having brought lackeys with lighted torches to welcome the belated travelers. Torches flamed in the cressets on both sides of the entrance. The hall was filled with servants and members of the household, and in the bustle that ensued when the ladies in their brocades and hoops had entered the house, Desmond saw an opportunity of slipping away. He felt that it was perhaps a little ungracious to go without a word to the ladies; but he was tired; he was unaccustomed to town society, and the service he had been able to render seemed to him so slight that he was modestly eager to efface himself. Leaving the carriage in the hands of one of the lackeys, with a few words of explanation, he hastened on towards Holborn and the city.
Chapter 7: In which Colonel Clive suffers an unrecorded defeat; and our hero finds food for reflection.
It was four o'clock, and Tuesday afternoon--the day before the Good Intent was to sail from the Pool. Desmond was kicking his heels in his inn, longing for the morrow. Even now he had not seen the vessel on which he was to set forth in quest of his fortune. She lay in the Pool, but Diggle had found innumerable reasons why Desmond should not visit her until he embarked for good and all. She was loading her cargo; he would be in the way. Captain Barker was in a bad temper; better not see him in his tantrums. The press gangs were active; they thought nothing of boarding a vessel and seizing on any active young fellow who looked a likely subject for his Majesty's navy. Such were the reasons alleged.
And so Desmond had to swallow his impatience and fill in his time as best he might; reading the newspapers, going to see Mr. Garrick and Mistress Kitty Clive at Drury Lane, spending an odd evening at Ranelagh Gardens.
On this Tuesday afternoon he had nothing to do. Diggle was out; Desmond had read the newspapers and glanced at the last number of the World; he had written to his mother--the third letter since his arrival in London; he could not settle to anything. He resolved to go for a walk as far as St. Paul's, perhaps, and take a last look at the busy streets he was not likely to see again for many a day.
Forth then he issued. The streets were muddy; a mist was creeping up from the river, promising to thicken into a London fog, and the link boys were already preparing their tow and looking for a rich harvest of coppers ere the night was old. Desmond picked his way through the quagmires of John Street, crossed Crutched Friars, and went up Mark Lane into Fenchurch Street, intending to go by Leadenhall Street and Cornhill into Cheapside.
He had just reached the lower end of Billiter Street, the narrow thoroughfare leading into Leadenhall, when he saw Diggle's tall figure running amain towards him, with another man close behind, apparently in hot pursuit. Diggle caught sight of Desmond at the same moment, and his eyes gleamed as with relief. He quickened his pace.
"Hold this fellow behind me," he panted as he passed, and before Desmond could put a question he was gone.
There was no time for deliberation. Desmond had but just perceived that the pursuer was in the garb of a gentleman and had a broad patch of plaster stretched across his left temple, when the moment for action arrived. Stooping low, he suddenly caught at the man's knees. Down he came heavily, mouthing hearty abuse, and man and boy were on the ground together.
Desmond was up first. He now saw that a second figure was hurrying on from the other end of the street. He was not sure what Diggle demanded of him; whether it was sufficient to have tripped up the pursuer, or whether he must hold him still in play. But by this time the man was also on his feet; his hat was off, his silk breeches and brown coat with lace ruffles were all bemired. Puffing and blowing, uttering many a round oath such as came freely to the lips of the Englishman of King George the Second's time, he shouted to his friend behind to come on, and, disregarding Desmond, made to continue his pursuit.
Desmond could but grapple with him.
"Let go, villain!" cried the man, striving to free himself.
Desmond clung on; there was a brief struggle, but he was no match in size or strength for his opponent, who was thick-set and of considerable girth. He fell backwards, overborne by the man's weight. His head struck on the road; dazed by the blow he loosened his clutch, and lay for a moment in semi-consciousness while the man sprang away.
But he was not so far gone as not to hear a loud shout behind him and near at hand, followed by the tramp of feet.
"Avast there!" The voice was familiar: surely it was Bulger's. "Fair play! Fourteen stone against seven en't odds. Show a leg, mateys."
The big sailor with a dozen of his mates stood full in the path of the irate gentleman, who, seeing himself beset, drew his rapier and prepared to fight his way through. A moment later he was joined by his companion, who had also drawn his rapier. Together the gentlemen stood facing the sailors.
"This is check, Merriman," said the last comer, as the seamen, flourishing their hangers menacingly, pressed forward past the prostrate body of Desmond. "The fellow has escaped you; best withdraw at discretion."
"Come on," shouted Bulger, waving his hook. "Bill Bulger en't the man to sheer off from a couple of landlubbers."
As with his mates in line he steadily advanced, the two gentlemen, their lips set, their eyes fixed on the assailants, their rapiers pointed, backed slowly up the street. The noise had brought clerks and merchants to the doors; someone sprang a rattle; there were cries for the watchmen; but no one actively interfered.
Meanwhile Desmond had regained his senses, and, still feeling somewhat dizzy, had sat down upon a doorstep, wondering not a little at the pursuit and flight of Diggle and the opportune arrival of the sailors. Everything had happened very rapidly; scarcely two minutes had elapsed since the first onset.
He was still resting when there was a sudden change in the quality of the shouts up street. Hitherto they had been boisterous rallying cries; now they were unmistakably hearty British cheers, expressing nothing but approval and admiration. And they came not merely from the throats of the sailors, but from the now considerable crowd that filled the street. A few moments afterwards he saw the throng part, and through it Bulger marching at the head of his mates, singing lustily. They came opposite to the step on which he sat, and Bulger caught sight of him.
"Blest if it en't our supercargo!" he cried, stopping short.
A shout of laughter broke from the sailors. One of them struck up a song.
"Oho! we says goodby, But never pipes our eye, Tho' we leaves Sue, Poll, and Kitty all behind us; And if we drops our bones Down along o' Davy Jones, Why, they'll come and axe the mermaids for to find us."
"And what took ye, Mister Supercargo, to try a fall with the fourteen stoner?"
"Oh, I was helping a friend."
"Ay, an' a friend was helpin' him, an' here's a dozen of us a-helpin' of one supercargo."
"And I'm much obliged to you, Mr. Bulger. But what were you cheering for?"
"Cheerin'! Why, you wouldn't guess. 'Twas General Clive, matey."
"General Clive!"
"Ay, General Clive, him what chased the mounseers out o' Fort St. George with a marlinspike. I didn't know him at fust, comin' up behind t'other chap; but when I seed that purple coat with the gold lace and the face of him above it I knowed him. In course there was no more fight for us then; 'twas hip-hip hurray and up with our hangers. Clive, he smiled and touched his hat. 'Bulger,' says he, 'you en't much fatter--'"
"Does he know you, then?"
"Know me! In course he does. Wasn't I bo'sun's mate on board the Indiaman as took him east twelve year ago or more? That was afore I got this here button hook o' mine. Ay, I remember him well, a-trampin' up an' down deck with his hands in his pockets an' his mouth set tight an' his chin on his stock, never speakin' to a soul, in the doldrums if ever a lad was. Why, we all thought there was no more spirit in him than in the old wooden figurehead--leastways, all but me.
"'I may be wrong,' says I to old Tinsley the bo'sun, 'I may be wrong,' says I, 'but I be main sure that young sad down-in-the-mouth have got a blazin' fire somewhere in his innards.'
"Ay, and time showed it. There was a lot of cadets aboard as poked fun at the quiet chap an' talked him over, a-winkin' their eyes. From talkin' it got to doin'. One day, goin' to his bunk, he found it all topsyversy, hair powder on his pillow, dubbin in his shavin' cup, salt pork wropt up in his dressin' gown. Well, I seed him as he comed on deck, an' his face were a sight to remember, pale as death, but his eyes a-blazin' like live coals in the galley fire. Up he steps to the cadet as was ringleader; how he knowed it I can't tell you, but he was sure of it, same as I always am.
"'Sir,' says he, quiet as a lamb, 'I want a word with you.'
"'Dear me!' says the cadet, 'have Mr. Clive found his voice at last?'
"'Yes, sir,' says Clive, 'he has, an' something else.'
"Cook happened to be passin' with a tray; a lady what was squeamish had been having her vittles on deck. Mr. Clive cotched up a basin o' pea soup what was too greasy for madam, and in a twink he sets it upside down on the cadet's head. Ay, 'twas a pretty pictur', the greasy yellow stuff runnin' down over his powdered hair an' lace collar an' fine blue coat. My eye! there was a rare old shindy, the cadet cursin' and splutterin', the others laughin' fit to bust 'emselves. The cadet out with his fists, but there, 'twas no manner o' use. Mr. Clive bowled him over like a ninepin till he lay along deck all pea soup an' gore. There was no more baitin' o' Mr. Clive that voyage.
"'Bo'sun,' says I, 'what did I tell you? I may be wrong, but that young Mr. Bob Clive'll be a handful for the factors in Fort St. George.'"
While this narrative had been in progress, Desmond was walking with Bulger and his mates back towards the river.
"How was it you happened to be hereabouts so early?" asked Desmond. "I didn't expect to see you till tomorrow."
Bulger winked.
"You wouldn't axe if you wasn't a landlubber, meanin' no offense," he said. "'Tis last night ashore. We sailor men has had enough o' Waterman's Rests an' such like. To tell you the truth, we gave Mr. Toley the slip, and now we be goin' to have a night at the Crown an' Anchor."
"What about the press gang?"
"We takes our chance. They won't press me, sartin sure, 'cos o' my tenterhook here, and I'll keep my weather eye open, trust me for that."
Here they parted company. Desmond watched the jolly crew as they turned into the Minories, and heard their rollicking chorus:
"Ho! when the cargo's shipped, An the anchor's neatly tripped, An' the gals are weepin' bucketfuls o' sorrer, Why, there's the decks to swab, An' we en't a-goin' to sob, S'pose the sharks do make a meal of us tomorrer."
At the Goat and Compasses Diggle was awaiting him.
"Ha! my friend, you did it as prettily as a man could wish. Solitudo aliquid adjuvat, as Tully somewhere hath it, not foreseeing my case, when solitude would have been my undoing. I thank thee."
"Was the fellow attacking you?" asked Desmond.
"That to be sure was his intention. I was in truth in the very article of peril; I was blown; my breath was near gone, when at the critical moment up comes a gallant youth--subvenisti homini jam perdito--and with dexterous hand stays the enemy in his course."
"But what was it all about? Do you know the man?"
"Ods my life! 'twas a complete stranger, a man, I should guess, of hasty passions and tetchy temper. By the merest accident, at a somewhat crowded part, I unluckily elbowed the man into the kennel, and though I apologized in the handsomest way, he must take offense and seek to cut off my life, to extinguish me in primo aevo, as Naso would say. But Atropos was forestalled, my thread of life still falls uncut from Clotho's shuttle; still, still, my boy, I bear on the torch of life unextinguished."
Desmond felt that all this fine phrasing, this copious draft from classical sources, was intended to quench the ardor of his curiosity. Diggle's explanation was very lame; the fury depicted on the pursuer's face could scarcely be due to a mere accidental jostling in the street. And Diggle was certainly not the man to take to his heels on slight occasion. But, after all, Diggle's quarrels were his own concern. That his past life included secrets Desmond had long suspected, but he was not the first man of birth and education who had fallen into misfortune, and at all events he had always treated Desmond with kindness. So the boy put the matter from his thoughts.
The incident, however, left a sting of vexation behind it. In agreeing to accompany Diggle to the East, Desmond had harbored a vague hope of falling in with Clive and taking service, in however humble a capacity, with him. It vexed him sorely to think that Clive, whose memory for faces, as his recognition of Bulger after twelve years had shown, was very good, might recognize him, should they meet, as the boy who had played a part in what was almost a street brawl. Still, it could not be helped. Desmond comforted himself with the hope that Clive had taken no particular note of him, and, if they should ever encounter, would probably meet him as a stranger.
Chapter 8: In which several weeks are supposed to elapse; and our hero is discovered in the Doldrums.
The Good Intent lay becalmed in the doldrums. There was not wind enough to puff out a candle flame. The sails hung limp and idle from the masts, yet the vessel rolled as in a storm, heaving on a tremendous swell so violently that it would seem her masts must be shaken out of her. The air was sweltering, the sky the color of burnished copper, out of which the sun beat remorselessly in almost perpendicular beams. Pitch ran from every seam of the decks, great blisters like bubbles rose upon the woodwork; the decks were no sooner swabbed than--presto!--it was as though they had not known the touch of water for an age.
For three weeks she had lain thus. Sometimes the hot day would be succeeded by a night of terrible storm, thunder crashing around, the whole vault above lacerated by lightning, and rain pouring as it were out of the fissures in sheets. But in a day all traces of the storm would disappear, and if, meanwhile, a sudden breath of wind had carried the vessel a few knots on her southward course, the hopes thus raised would prove illusory, and once more she would lie on a sea of molten lead, or, still worse, would be rocked on a long swell that had all the discomforts of a gale without its compensating excitement.
The tempers of officers and crew had gone from bad to worse. The officers snapped and snarled at one another, and treated the men with even more than the customary brutality of the merchant marine of those days. The crew, lounging about half naked on the decks, seeking what shelter they could get from the pitiless sun, with little to do and no spirit to do anything, quarreled among themselves, growling at the unnecessary tasks set them merely to keep them from flying at each other's throats.
The Good Intent was a fine three-masted vessel of nearly four hundred tons, large for those days, though the new East Indiamen approached five hundred tons. When her keel was laid for the Honorable East India Company some twenty years earlier, she had been looked on as one of the finest merchant vessels afloat; but the buffeting of wind and wave in a score of voyages to the eastern seas, and the more insidious and equally destructive attacks of worms and dry rot, had told upon her timbers. She had been sold off and purchased by Captain Barker, who was one of the class known as "interlopers," men who made trading voyages to the East Indies on their own account, running the risk of their vessels being seized and themselves penalized for infringing the Company's monopoly. She was now filled with a miscellaneous cargo: wine in chests, beer and cider in bottles, hats, worsted stockings, wigs, small shot, lead, iron, knives, glass, hubblebubbles, cochineal, sword blades, toys, coarse cloth, woolen goods--anything that would find a market among the European merchants, the native princes, or the trading classes of India. There was also a large consignment of muskets and ammunition. When Desmond asked the second mate where they were going, the reply was that if he asked no questions he would be told no lies.
On this sultry afternoon a group of seamen, clad in nothing but shirt and breeches, were lolling, lying crouching on the deck forward, circled around Bulger. Seated on an upturned tub, he was busily engaged in baiting a hook. Tired of the "Irish horse" and salt pork that formed the staple of the sailors' food, he was taking advantage of the calm to fish for bonitos, a large fish over two feet long, the deadly enemy of the beautiful flying fish that every now and then fell panting upon the deck in their mad flight from marine foes. The bait was made to resemble the flying fish itself, the hook being hidden by white rag stuffing, with feathers pricked in to counterfeit spiked fins.
As the big seaman deftly worked with iron hook and right hand, he spun yarns for the delectation of his mates. They chewed tobacco, listened, laughed, sneered, as their temper inclined them. Only one of the group gave him rapt and undivided attention--a slim youth, with hollow sunburnt cheeks, long bleached hair, and large gleaming eyes. His neck and arms were bare, and the color of boiled lobsters; but, unlike the rest, he had no tattoo marks pricked into his skin. His breeches were tatters, his striped shirt covered with party-colored darns.
"Ay, as I was saying," said Bulger, "'twas in these latitudes, on my last voyage but three. I was in a Bristol ship a-carryin' of slaves from Guinea to the plantations. Storms!--I never seed such storms nowhere; and contrariwise, calms enough to make a Quaker sick. In course the water was short, an' scurvy come aboard, an' 'twas a hammock an' round shot for one or the other of us every livin' day. As reg'lar as the mornin' watch the sharks came for their breakfast; we could see 'em comin' from all p'ints o' the compass; an' sure as seven bells struck there they was, ten deep, with jaws wide open, like Parmiter's there when there's a go of grog to be sarved out. We was all like the livin' skellington at Bartlemy Fair, and our teeth droppin' out that fast, they pattered like hailstones on the deck."
"How did you stick 'em in again?" interrupted Parmiter, anxious to get even with Bulger for the allusion to his gaping jaw. He was a thick set, ugly fellow, his face seamed with scars, his mouth twisted, his ears dragged at the lobes by heavy brass rings.
"With glue made out of albacores we caught, to be sure. Well, as I was saying, we was so weak there wasn't a man aboard could reach the maintop, an' the man at the wheel had two men to hold him up. Things was so, thus, an' in such case, when, about eight hells one arternoon, the lookout at the masthead--"
"Thought you couldn't climb? How'd he get there?" said the same skeptic.
"Give me time, Parmiter, and you'll know all about the hows an' whys, notwithstandin's and sobeits. He'd been there for a week, for why? 'cos he couldn't get down. We passed him up a quarter pint o' water and a biscuit or two every day by a halyard.
"Well, as I was sayin', all at once the lookout calls out, 'Land ho!'--leastways he croaked it, 'cos what with weakness and little water our throats was as dry as last year's biscuit.
"'Where away?' croaks first mate, which I remember his name was Tonking.
"And there, sure enough, we seed a small island, which it might be a quarter-mile long. Now, mind you, we hadn't made a knot for three weeks. How did that island come there so sudden like? In course, it must ha' come up from the bottom o' the sea. And as we was a-lookin' at it we saw it grow, mateys--long spits o' land shootin' out this side, that side, and t'other side--and the whole concarn begins to move towards us, comin' on, hand over hand, slow, dead slow, but sure and steady. Our jaws were just a-droppin' arter our teeth when fust mate busts out in a laugh; by thunder, I remember that there laugh today! 'twas like--well, I don't know what 'twas like, if not the scrapin' of a handsaw; an' says he, 'By Neptune, 'tis a darned monstrous squid!'
"And, sure enough, that was what it was, a squid as big round as the Isle o' Wight, with arms that ud reach from Wapping Stairs to Bugsby Marshes, and just that curly shape. An' what was more, 'twas steerin' straight for us. Ay, mateys, 'twas a horrible moment!"
The seamen, even Parmiter the scoffer, were listening open mouthed, when a hoarse voice broke the spell, cutting short Bulger's story and dispersing the group.
"Here you, Burke, you, up aloft and pay the topmost with grease. I'll have no lazy lubbers aboard my ship, I tell you. I've got no use for nobody too good for his berth. No Jimmy Duffs for me! Show a leg, or, by heavens, I'll show you a rope's end and make my mark--mind that, my lad!"
Captain Barker turned to the man at his side.
"'Twas an ill turn you did me and the ship's company, Mr. Diggle, bringing this useless lubber aboard."
"It does appear so, captain," said Diggle sorrowfully. "But 'tis his first voyage, sir: discipline--a little discipline!"
Meanwhile Desmond, without a word, had moved away to obey orders. He had long since found the uselessness of protest. Diggle had taken him on board the Good Intent an hour before sailing. He left him to himself until the vessel was well out in the mouth of the Thames, and then came with a rueful countenance and explained that, after all his endeavors, the owners had absolutely refused to accept so youthful a fellow as supercargo. Desmond felt his cheeks go pale.
"What am I to be, then?" he asked quietly.
"Well, my dear boy, Captain Barker is rather short of apprentices, and he has no objection to taking you in place of one if you will make yourself useful. He is a first-rate seaman. You will imbibe a vast deal of useful knowledge and gain a free passage, and when we reach the Indies I shall be able, I doubt not, by means of my connections, to assist you in the first steps of what, I trust, will prove a successful career."
"Then, who is supercargo?"
"Unluckily that greatness has been thrust upon me. Unluckily, I say; for the office is not one that befits a former fellow of King's College at Cambridge. Yet there is an element of good luck in it, too; for, as you know, my fortunes were at a desperately low ebb, and the emoluments of this office, while not great, will stand me in good stead when we reach our destination, and enable me to set you, my dear boy--to borrow from the vernacular--on your legs."
"You have deceived me, then!"
"Nay, nay, you do bear me hard, young man. To be disappointed is not the same thing as to be deceived. True, you are not, as I hoped, supercargo, but the conditions are not otherwise altered. You wished to go to India--well, Zephyr's jocund breezes, as Catullus hath it, will waft you thither: we are flying to the bright cities of the East. No fragile bark is this, carving a dubious course through the main, as Seneca, I think, puts it. No, 'tis an excellent vessel, with an excellent captain, who will steer a certain course, who fears not the African blast nor the grisly Hyades nor the fury of Notus--"
Desmond did not await the end of Diggle's peroration. It was then too late to repine. The vessel was already rounding the Foreland, and though he was more than half convinced that he had been decoyed on board on false pretenses, he could not divine any motive on Diggle's part, and hoped that his voyage would be not much less pleasant than he had anticipated.
But even before the Good Intent made the Channel he was woefully undeceived. His first interview with the captain opened his eyes. Captain Barker was a small, thin, sandy man, with a large upper lip that met the lower in a straight line, a lean nose, and eyes perpetually bloodshot. His manner was that of a bully of the most brutal kind. He browbeat his officers, cuffed and kicked his men, in his best days a martinet, in his worst a madman. The only good point about him was that he never used the cat, which, as Bulger said, was a mercy.
"Humph!" he said when Desmond was presented to him. "You're him, are you? Well, let me tell you this, my lad: the ship's boy on board this 'ere ship have got to do what he's bid, and no mistake about it. If he don't, I'll make him. Now, you go for'ard into the galley and scrape the slush off the cook's pans; quick's the word."
From that day Desmond led a dog's life. He found that as ship's boy he was at the beck and call of the whole company. The officers, with the exception of Mr. Toley, the melancholy first mate, took their cue from the captain; and Mr. Toley, as a matter of policy, never took his part openly. The men resented his superior manners and the fact that he was socially above them. The majority of the seamen were even more ruffianly than the specimens he had seen at the Waterman's Rest--the scum of Wapping and Rotherhithe. His only real friend on board was Bulger, who helped him to master the many details of a sailor's work, and often protected him against the ill treatment of his mates; and, in spite of his one arm, Bulger was a power to be reckoned with.
At the best of times the life of a sailor was hard, and Desmond found it at first almost intolerable. Irregular sleep on an uncomfortable hammock, wedged in with the other members of the crew, bad food, and over exertion told upon his frame. From the moment when all hands were piped to lash hammocks to the moment when the signal was given for turning in, it was one long round of thankless drudgery. But he proved himself to be very quick and nimble. Before long, no one could lash his hammock with the seven turns in a shorter time than he. After learning the work on the mainsails and trysails he was sent to practise the more acrobatic duties in the tops, and when two months had passed, no one excelled him in quickness aloft.
If his work had been confined to the ordinary seaman's duties he would have been fairly content, for there is always a certain pleasure in accomplishment, and the consciousness of growing skill and power was some compensation for the hardships he had to undergo. But he had to do dirty work for the cook, clean out the styes of the captain's pigs, swab the lower deck, sometimes descend on errands for one or other to the nauseous hold.
Perhaps the badness of the food was the worst evil to a boy accustomed to plain but good country fare. The burgoo or oatmeal gruel served at breakfast made him sick; he knew how it had been made in the cook's dirty pans. The "Irish horse" and salt pork for dinner soon became distasteful; it was not in the best condition when brought aboard, and before long it became putrid. The strong cheese for supper was even more horrible. He lived for the most part on the tough sea biscuit of mixed wheat and pea flour, and on the occasional duffs of flour boiled with fat, which did duty as pudding. For drink he had nothing but small beer; the water in the wooden casks was full of green, grassy, slimy things. But the fresh sea air seemed to be a food itself; and though Desmond became lean and hollow cheeked, his muscles developed and hardened. Little deserving Captain Barker's ill-tempered abuse, he became handy in many ways on board, and proved to be the possessor of a remarkably keen pair of eyes.
When, in obedience to the captain's orders, he was greasing the mast, his attention was caught by three or four specks on the horizon.
"Sail ho!" he called to the officer of the watch.
"Where away?" was the reply.
"On the larboard quarter, sir; three or four sail, I think."
The officer at once mounted the shrouds and took a long look at the specks Desmond pointed out, while the crew below crowded to the bulwarks and eagerly strained their eyes in the same direction.
"What do you make of 'em, Mr. Sunman?" asked the captain.
"Three or four sail, sir, sure enough. They are hull down; there's not a doubt but they're bringing the wind with 'em."
"Hurray!" shouted the men, overjoyed at the prospect of moving at last.
In a couple of hours the strangers had become distinctly visible, and the first faint puffs of the approaching breeze caused the sails to flap lazily against the yards. Then the canvas filled out, and at last, after nearly a fortnight's delay, the Good Intent began to slip through the water at three or four knots.
The wind freshened during the night, and next morning the Good Intent was bowling along under single-reefed topsails. The ships sighted the night before had disappeared, to the evident relief of Captain Barker. Whether they were Company's vessels or privateers he had no wish to come to close quarters with them.
After breakfast, when the watch on deck were busy about the rigging or the guns, or the hundred and one details of a sailor's work, the rest of the crew had the interval till dinner pretty much to themselves. Some slept, some reeled out yarns to their messmates, others mended their clothes.
It happened one day that Desmond, sitting in the forecastle among the men of his mess, was occupied in darning a pair of breeches for Parmiter. It was the one thing he could not do satisfactorily; and one of the men, after quizzically observing his well meant but ludicrous attempts, at last caught up the garment and held it aloft, calling his mates' attention to it with a shout of laughter.
Parmiter chanced to be coming along at the moment. Hearing the laugh, and seeing the pitiable object of it, he flew into a rage, sprang at Desmond, and knocked him down.
"What do you mean, you clumsy young lubber, you," he cried, "by treating my smalls like that? I'll brain you, sure as my name's Parmiter!"
Desmond had already suffered not a little at Parmiter's hands. His endurance was at an end. Springing up with flaming cheeks he leaped towards the bully, and putting in practice the methods he had learned in many a hard-fought mill at Mr. Burslem's school, he began to punish the offender. His muscles were in good condition; Parmiter was too much addicted to grog to make a steady pugilist; and though he was naturally much the stronger man, he was totally unable to cope with his agile antagonist.
A few rounds settled the matter; Parmiter had to confess that he had had enough, and Desmond, flinging his breeches to him, sat down tingling among his mates, who greeted the close of the fight with spontaneous and unrestrained applause.
Next day Parmiter was in the foretop splicing the forestay. Desmond was walking along the deck when suddenly he felt his arm clutched from behind, and he was pulled aside so violently by Bulger's hook that he stumbled and fell at full length. At the same moment something struck the deck with a heavy thud.
"By thunder! 'twas a narrow shave," said Bulger. "See that, matey?"
Looking in the direction Bulger pointed, he saw that the foretopsail sheet block had fallen on deck, within an inch of where he would have been but for the intervention of Bulger's hook. Glancing aloft, he saw Parmiter grinning down at him.
"Hitch that block to a halyard, youngster," said the man.
Desmond was on the point of refusing; the man, he thought, might at least have apologized: but reflecting that a refusal would entail a complaint to the captain, and a subsequent flogging, he bit his lips, fastened the block, and went on his way.
"'Tis my belief 'twas no accident," said Bulger afterwards. "I may be wrong, but Parmiter bears a grudge against you. And he and that there Mr. Diggle is too thick by half. I never could make out why Diggle diddled you about that supercargo business; he don't mean you no kindness, you may be sure; and when you see two villains like him and Parmiter puttin' their heads together, look out for squalls, that's what I say."
Desmond was inclined to laugh; the idea seemed preposterous.
"Why are you so suspicious of Mr. Diggle?" he said. "He has not kept his promise, that's true, and I am sorry enough I ever listened to him. But that doesn't prove him to be an out-and-out villain. I've noticed that you keep out of his way. Do you know anything of him? Speak out plainly, man."
"Well, I'll tell you what I knows about him."
He settled himself against the mast, gave a final polish to his hook with holystone, and using the hook every now and then to punctuate his narrative, began.
"Let me see, 'twas a matter o' three years ago. I was bo'sun on the Swallow, a spanker she was, chartered by the Company, London to Calcutta. There was none of the doldrums that trip, dodged 'em fair an' square; a topsail breeze to the Cape, and then the fust of the monsoon to the Hugli. We lay maybe a couple of months at Calcutta, when what should I do but take aboard a full dose of the cramp, just as the Swallow was in a manner of speakin' on the wing. Not but what it sarved me right, for what business had I at my time of life to be wastin' shore leave by poppin' at little dicky birds in the dirty slimy jheels, as they call 'em, round about Calcutta!
"Well, I was put ashore, as was on'y natural, and 'twas a marvel I pulled through--for it en't many as take the cramp in Bengal and live to tell it. The Company, I'll say that for 'em, was very kind; I had the best o' nussin' and vittles; but when I found my legs again there I was, as one might say, high and dry, for there was no Company's ship ready to sail. So I got leave to sign on a country ship, bound for Canton; and we dropped down the Hugli with enough opium on board to buy up the lord mayor and a baker's dozen of aldermen.
"Nearly half a mile astern was three small country ships, such as might creep round the coast to Chittagong, dodgin' the pirates o' the Sandarbands if they was lucky, and gettin' their weazands slit if they wasn't. They drew less water than us, and was generally handier in the river, which is uncommon full of shoals and sandbanks; but for all that I remember they was still maybe half a mile astern when we dropped anchor--anchors, I should say--for the night, some way below Diamond Harbor. But to us white men the way o' these Moors is always a bag o' mystery, and as seamen they en't anyway of much account. Well, it might be about seven bells, and my watch below, when I was woke by a most tremenjous bangin' and hullabaloo. We tumbles up mighty sharp, and well we did, for there was one of these country fellows board and board with us, and another foulin' our hawser. Their grapnels came whizzin' aboard; but the first lot couldn't take a hold nohow, and she dropped downstream. That gave us a chance to be ready for the other. She got a grip of us and held on like a shark what grabs you by the legs. But pistols and pikes had been sarved out, and when they came bundlin' over into the foc'sle, we bundled 'em back into the Hugli, and you may be sure they wasn't exactly seaworthy when they got there. They was a mixed lot; that we soon found out by their manner o' swearin' as they slipped by the board, for although there was Moors among 'em, most of 'em was Frenchies or Dutchmen, and considerin' they wasn't Englishmen they made a good fight of it. But over they went, until only a few was left; and we was just about to finish 'em off, when another country ship dropped alongside, and before we knew where we was a score of yellin' ruffians was into the waist and rushin' us in the stern sheets, as you might say. We had to fight then, by thunder! we did.
"The odds was against us now, and we was catchin' it from two sides. But our blood was up, and we knew what to expect if they beat us. 'Twas the Hugli for every man Jack of us, and no mistake. There was no orders, every man for himself, with just enough room and no more to see the mounseers in front of him. Some of us--I was one of 'em--fixed the flints of the pirates for'ard, while the rest faced round and kept the others off. Then we went at 'em, and as they couldn't all get at us at the same time, owing to the deck being narrow, the odds was not so bad arter all. 'Twas now hand to hand, fist to fist, one for you and one for me; you found a Frenchman and stuck to him till you finished him off, or he finished you, as the case might be, in a manner of speakin'. Well, I found one lanky chap--he was number four that night--and all in ten minutes, as it were, I jabbed a pike at him, and missed, for it was hard to keep footin' on the wet deck, though the wet was not Hugli water; thick as it is, this was thicker--and he fired a pistol at me by way of thank you. I saw his figurehead in the flash, and I shan't forget it either, for he left me this to remember him by, though I didn't know it at the time."
Here Bulger held up the iron hook that did duty for his left forearm. Then glancing cautiously around, he added in a whisper:
"'Twas Diggle--or I'm a Dutchman. That was my fust meetin' with him. Of course, I'm in a way helpless now, being on the ship's books, and he in a manner of speakin' an orficer; but one of these days there'll be a reckonin', or my name en't Bulger."
The boatswain brought down his fist with a resounding whack on the scuttle butt, threatening to stave in the top of the barrel.
"And how did the fight end?" asked Desmond.
"We drove 'em back bit by bit, and fairly wore 'em down. They weren't all sailormen, or we couldn't have done it, for they had the numbers; but an Englishman on his own ship is worth any two furriners--aye, half a dozen some do say, though I wouldn't go so far as that myself--and at the last some of them turned tail and bolted back. The ship's boy, what was in the shrouds, saw 'em on the run and set up a screech: 'Hooray! hooray!' That was all we wanted. We hoorayed too; and went at 'em in such a slap-bang go-to-glory way that in a brace of shakes there wasn't a Frenchman, a Dutchman, nor a Moor on board. They cut the grapnels and floated clear, and next mornin' we saw 'em on their beam ends on a sandbank a mile down the river. That's how I fust come across Mr. Diggle; I may be wrong, but I says it again: look out for squalls."
For some days the wind held fair, and the ship being now in the main track of the trades, all promised well for a quick run to the Cape. But suddenly there was a change; a squall struck the vessel from the southwest. Captain Barker, catching sight of Desmond and a seaman near at hand, shouted:
"Furl the top-gallant sail, you two. Now show a leg, or, by thunder, the masts will go by the board."
Springing up the shrouds on the weather side, Desmond was quickest aloft. He crawled out on the yard, the wind threatening every moment to tear him from his dizzy, rocking perch, and began with desperate energy to furl the straining canvas. It was hard work, and but for the development of his muscles during the past few months, and a naturally cool head, the task would have been beyond his powers. But setting his teeth and exerting his utmost strength, he accomplished his share of it as quickly as the able seaman on the lee yard.
The sail was half furled when all at once the mast swung through a huge arc; the canvas came with tremendous force against the cross trees, and Desmond, flung violently outwards, found himself swinging in midair, clinging desperately to the leech of the sail. With a convulsive movement he grasped at a loose gasket above him, and catching a grip, wound it twice or thrice round his arm. The strain was intense; the gasket was thin and cut deeply into the flesh; he knew that should it give way nothing could save him. So he hung, the wind howling around him, the yards rattling, the boisterous sea below heaving as if to clutch him and drag him to destruction.
A few seconds passed, every one of which seemed an eternity. Then through the noise he heard shouts on deck. The vessel suddenly swung over, and Desmond's body inclined towards instead of from the mast. Shooting out his arm he caught at the yard, seized it, and held on, though it seemed that his arm must be wrenched from the socket. In a few moments he succeeded in clambering on to the yard, where he clung, endeavoring to regain his breath and his senses.
Then he completed his job, and with a sense of unutterable relief slid down to the deck. A strange sight met his eyes. Bulger and Parmiter were lying side by side; there was blood on the deck; and Captain Barker stood over them with a marlinspike, his eyes blazing, his face distorted with passion. In consternation Desmond slipped out of the way, and asked the first man he met for an explanation.
It appeared that Parmiter, who was at the wheel when the squall struck the ship, had put her in stays before the sail was furled, with the result that she heeled over and Desmond had narrowly escaped being flung into the sea. Seeing the boy's plight, Bulger had sprung forward, and, knocking Parmiter from the wheel, had put the vessel on the other tack, thus giving Desmond the one chance of escape which, fortunately, he had been able to seize. The captain had been incensed to a blind fury, first with Parmiter for acting without orders and then with Bulger for interfering with the man at the wheel. In a paroxysm of madness he attacked both men with a spike; the ship was left without a helmsman, and nothing but the promptitude of the melancholy mate, who had rushed forward and taken the abandoned wheel himself, had saved the vessel from the imminent risk of carrying away her masts.
Later in the day, when the squall and the captain's rage had subsided, the incident was talked over by a knot of seamen in the forecastle.
"You may say what you like," said one, "but I hold to it that Parmiter meant to knock young Burke into the sea. For why else did he put the ship in stays? He en't a fool, en't Parmiter."
"Ay," said another, "and arter that there business with the block, eh? One and one make two; that's twice the youngster has nigh gone to Davy Jones through Parmiter, and it en't in reason that sich-like things should allers happen to the same party."
"But what's the reason?" asked a third. "What call has Parmiter to have such a desperate spite against Burke? He got a lickin', in course, but what's a lickin' to a Englishman? Rot it all, the youngster en't a bad matey. He've led a dog's life, that he have, and I've never heard a grumble, nary one; have you?"
"True," said the first. "And I tell you what it is. I believe Bulger's in the right of it, and 'tis all along o' that there Diggle, hang him! He's too perlite by half, with his smile and his fine lingo and all. And what's he keep his hand wropt up in that there velvet mitten thing for? I'd like to know that. There's summat mortal queer about Diggle, mark my words, and we'll find it out if we live long enough."
"Wasn't it Diggle brought Burke aboard?"
"Course it was; that's what proves it, don't you see? He stuffs him up as he's to be supercargo; call that number one. He brings him aboard and makes him ship boy; that's number two. He looks us all up and down with those rat's eyes of his, and thinks we're a pretty ugly lot, and Parmiter the ugliest, how's that for number three? Then he makes hissel sweet to Parmiter; I've seed him more'n once; that's number four. Then there's that there block: five; and today's hanky panky: six; and it wants one more to make seven, and that's the perfect number, I've heard tell, 'cos o' the Seven Champions o' Christendom."
"I guess you've reasoned that out mighty well," drawled the melancholy voice of Mr. Toley, who had come up unseen and heard the last speech. "Well, I'll give you number seven."
"Thunder and blazes, sir, he en't bin and gone and done it already?"
"No, he en't. Number seven is, be kind o' tender with young Burke. Count them words. He's had enough kicks. That's all."
And the melancholy man went away as silently as he had come.
Chapter 9: In which the Good Intent makes a running fight: Mr. Toley makes a suggestion.
Making good sailing, the Good Intent reached Saldanhas Bay, where she put in for a few necessary repairs, then safely rounded the Cape, and after a short stay at Johanna, one of the Comoro Islands, taking in fresh provisions there, set sail for the Malabar coast. The wind blew steadily from the southwest, and she ran merrily before it.
During this part of the voyage Desmond found his position somewhat improved. His pluck had won the rough admiration of the men; Captain Barker was not so constantly chevying him; and Mr. Toley showed a more active interest in him, teaching him the use of the sextant and quadrant, how to take the altitude of the sun, and many other matters important in navigation.
It was the third week of April, and the monsoon having begun, Captain Barker expected before long to sight the Indian coast. One morning, about two bells, the lookout reported a small vessel on the larboard bow, laboring heavily. The captain took a long look at it through his perspective glass, and made out that it was a two-masted grab; the mainmast was gone.
"Odds bobs," he said to Mr. Toley, "'tis strange to meet a grab so far out at sea. We'll run down to it."
"What is a grab?" asked Desmond of Bulger, when the news had circulated through the ship's company.
"Why, that's a grab, sure enough. I en't a good hand at pictur' paintin'; we're runnin' square for the critter, and then you'll see for yourself. This I'll say, that you don't see 'em anywheres in partickler but off the Malabar coast."
Desmond was soon able to take stock of the vessel. It was broad in proportion to its length, narrowing from the middle to the end, and having a projecting prow like the old-fashioned galleys of which he had seen pictures. The prow was covered with a deck, level with the main deck of the vessel, but with a bulkhead between this and the forecastle.
"En't she pitchin'!" remarked Bulger, standing by Desmond's side. "You couldn't expect nothing else of a craft built that shape. Look at the water pourin' off her; why, I may be wrong, but I'll lay my best breeches she's a-founderin'."
As usual, Bulger was right. When the grab was overhauled, the men on board, dark-skinned Marathas with very scanty clothing, made signs that they were in distress.
"Throw her into the wind," shouted the captain.
Mr. Toley at the wheel put the helm down, the longboat was lowered, and with some difficulty, owing to the heavy sea, the thirty men on the grab were taken off. As they came aboard the Good Intent, Diggle, who was leaning over the bulwarks, suddenly straightened himself, smiled, and moved towards the taffrail. One of the newcomers, a fine muscular fellow, seeing Diggle approaching, stood for a moment in surprise, then salaamed. The Englishman said something in the stranger's tongue, and grasped his hand with the familiarity of old friendship.
"You know the man, Mr. Diggle?" said the captain.
"Yes, truly. The Gentoos and I are in a sense comrades in arms. His name is Hybati; he's a Maratha."
"What's he jabbering about?"
The man was talking rapidly and earnestly.
"He says, captain," returned Diggle, with a smile, "that he hopes you will send and fetch the crew's rice on board. They won't eat our food--afraid of losing caste."
"I'll be hang if I launch the longboat again. The grab won't live another five minutes in this sea, and I wouldn't risk two of my crew against a hundred of these dirty Moors."
"They'll starve otherwise, captain."
"Well, let 'em starve. I won't have any nonsense aboard my ship. Beggars mustn't be choosers, and if the heathen can't eat good honest English vittles they don't deserve to eat at all."
Diggle smiled and explained to Hybati that his provisions must be left to their fate. Even as he spoke a heavy sea struck the vessel athwart, and, amid cries from the Marathas she keeled over and sank.
When the strangers had dried themselves, Diggle inquired of Hybati how he came to be in his present predicament. The Maratha explained that he had been in command of Angria's fortress of Suwarndrug, which was so strong that he had believed it able to withstand any attacks. But one day a number of vessels of the East India Company's fleet had appeared between the mainland and the island on which the fortress was situated, and had begun a bombardment which soon reduced the parapets to ruins. The chief damage had been done by an English ship. Hybati and his men had made the best defense they could, but the gunners were shot down by musket fire from the round tops of the enemy, and when a shell set fire to a thatched house within the fort, the garrison were too much alarmed to attempt to extinguish the flames; the blaze spread, a powder magazine blew up, and the inhabitants, with the greater part of the soldiers, fled to the shore, and tried to make their escape in eight large boats. Hybati had kept up the fight for some time longer, hoping to receive succor; but under cover of the fire of the ships the English commodore landed half his seamen, who rushed up to the gate, and cutting down the sally port with their axes forced their way in.
Seeing that the game was up, Hybati fled with thirty of his men, and was lucky in pushing off in the grab, unobserved by the enemy. The winds, however, proving contrary, the vessel had been blown northward along the coast and then driven far out to sea. With the breaking of the monsoon a violent squall had dismasted the grab and shattered her bulkhead; she was continually shipping water, and, as the sahib saw, was at the point of sinking when the English ship came up.
Such was the Maratha's story, as by and by it became common property on board the Good Intent. Of all the crew Desmond was perhaps the most interested. To the others there was nothing novel in the sight of the Indians; but to him they stood for romance, the embodiment of all the tales he had heard and all the dreams he had dreamed of this wonderful country in the East. He was now assured that he was actually within reach of his desired haven; and he hoped shortly to see an end of the disappointments and hardships, the toils and distresses, of the past seven months.
He was eager to learn more of these Marathas, and their fortress, and the circumstances of the recent fight. Bulger was willing to tell all he knew; but his information was not very exact, and Desmond did not hear the full story till long after.
The Malabar coast had long been the haunt of Maratha pirates, who interfered greatly with the native trade between India and Arabia and Persia. In defense of the interests of his Mohammedan subjects the Mogul emperor at length, in the early part of the eighteenth century, fitted out a fleet, under the command of an admiral known as the Sidi. But there happened to be among the Marathas at that time a warrior of great daring and resource, one Kunaji Angria. This man first defeated the Sidi, then, in the insolence of victory, revolted against his own sovereign, and set up as an independent ruler.
By means of a well-equipped fleet of grabs and gallivats he made himself master of place after place along the coast, including the Maratha fortress at Suwarndrug and the Portuguese fort of Gheria. His successors, who adopted in turn the dynastic name of Angria, followed up Kunaji's conquest, until by the year 1750 the ruling Angria was in possession of a strip of territory on the mainland a hundred and eighty miles long and about forty broad, together with many small adjacent islands.
For the defense of this little piratical state Angria's Marathas constructed a number of forts, choosing admirable positions and displaying no small measure of engineering skill. From these strongholds they made depredations by sea and land, not only upon their native neighbors, but also upon the European traders, English, Dutch, and Portuguese; swooping down on unprotected merchant vessels and even presuming to attack warships. Several expeditions had been directed against them, but always in vain; and when in 1754 the chief of that date, Tulaji Angria, known to Europeans as the Pirate, burnt two large Dutch vessels of fifty and thirty-six guns respectively, and captured a smaller one of eighteen guns, he boasted in his elation that he would soon be master of the Indian seas.
But a term was about to be put to his insolence and his depredations. On March twenty-second, 1755, Commodore William James, commander of the East India Company's marine force, set sail from Bombay in the Protector of forty-four guns, with the Swallow of sixteen guns, and two bomb vessels. With the assistance of a Maratha fleet he had attacked the island fortress of Suwarndrug, and captured it, as Hybati had related. A few days afterwards another of the Pirate's fortresses, the island of Bancoote, six miles north of Suwarndrug, surrendered. The Maratha rajah, Ramaji Punt, delighted with these successes against fortified places which had for nearly fifty years been deemed impregnable, offered the English commodore an immense sum of money to proceed against others of Angria's forts; but the monsoon approaching, the commodore was recalled to Bombay.
The spot at which the Good Intent had fallen in with the sinking grab was about eighty miles from the Indian coast, and Captain Barker expected to sight land next day. No one was more delighted at the prospect than Desmond. Leaving out of account the miseries of the long voyage, he felt that now he was within reach of the goal of his hopes. The future was all uncertain; he was no longer inclined to trust his fortunes to Diggle, for though he could not believe that the man had deliberately practised against his life, he had with good reason lost confidence in him, and what he had learned from Bulger threw a new light on his past career.
One thing puzzled him. If the Pirate was such a terror to unprotected ships, and strong enough to attack several armed vessels at once, why was Captain Barker running into the very jaws of the enemy? In her palmy days as an East Indiaman the Good Intent had carried a dozen nine-pounders on her upper deck and six on the quarterdeck; and Bulger had said that under a stout captain she had once beaten off near Surat half a dozen three-masted grabs and a score of gallivats from the pirate stronghold at Gheria. But now she had only half a dozen guns all told, and even had she possessed the full armament there were not men enough to work them, for her complement of forty men was only half what it had been when she sailed under the Company's flag.
Desmond confided his puzzlement to Bulger. The seaman laughed.
"Why, bless 'ee, we en't a-goin' to run into no danger. Trust Cap'n Barker for that. You en't supercargo, to be sure; but who do you think them guns and round shots in the hold be for? Why, the Pirate himself. And he'll pay a good price for 'em, too."
"Do you mean to say that English merchants supply Angria with weapons to fight against their own countrymen?"
"Well, blest if you en't a innocent. In course they do. The guns en't always fust-class metal, to be sure; but what's the odds? The interlopers ha' got to live."
"I don't call that right. It's not patriotic."
"Patry what?"
"Patriotic--a right way of thinking of one's own country. An Englishman isn't worth the name who helps England's enemies."
Bulger looked at him in amazement. The idea of patriotism was evidently new to him.
"I'll have to put that there notion in my pipe and smoke it," he said. "I'd fight any mounseer, or Dutchman, or Portuguee as soon as look at him, 'tis on'y natural; but if a mounseer likes to give me twopence for a thing that's worth a penny--why, I'll say thank 'ee and axe him--leastways if there's any matey by as knows the lingo--to buy another."
Shortly after dawn next morning the lookout reported four vessels to windward. From their appearance Captain Barker at once concluded that two were Company's ships, with an escort of a couple of grabs. As he was still scanning them he was joined by Diggle, with whom he entered into conversation.
"They're making for Bombay, I reckon," said the captain.
"I take it we don't wish to come to close quarters with them, Barker?"
"By thunder, no! But if we hold our present course we're bound to pass within hailing distance. Better put 'em off the scent."
He altered the vessel's course a point or two with the object of passing to windward of the strangers, as if steering for the Portuguese port of Goa.
"They are running up their colors," remarked Diggle, half an hour later.
"British, as I thought. We'll hoist Portuguese."
A minute or two later a puff of smoke was observed to sally from the larger of the two grabs, followed in a few seconds by the boom of a gun.
"A call to us to heave to," said Bulger, in answer to Desmond's inquiry. "The unbelievin' critters thinks that Portuguee rag is all my eye."
But the Good Intent was by this time to windward of the vessels, and Captain Barker, standing on the quarterdeck, paid no heed to the signal. After a short interval another puff came from the deck of the grab, and a round shot plunged into the sea a cable's length from the Good Intent's bows, the grab at the same time hauling her wind and preparing to alter her course in pursuit. This movement was at once copied by the other three vessels, but being at least half a mile ahead of the grab that had fired, they were a long distance astern when the chase--for chase it was to be--began.
Captain Barker watched the grab with the eyes of a lynx. The Good Intent had run out of range while the grab was being put about; but the captain knew very well that the pursuer could sail much closer to the wind than his own vessel, and that his only chance was to beat off the leading boat before the others had time to come up.
It required very little at any time to put Captain Barker into a rage, and his demeanor was watched now with different feelings by different members of the crew. Diggle alone appeared unconcerned; he was smiling as he lolled against the mast.
"They'll fire at me, will they?" growled the captain with a curse. "And chase me, will they? By jimmy, they shall sink me before I surrender!"
"Degeneres animos timor arguit," quoted Diggle, smiling.
"Argue it? I'll be hanged if I argue it! They're not king's ships to take it on 'emselves to stop me on the high seas! If the Company wants to prevent me from honest trading in these waters let 'em go to law, and be hanged to 'em! Talk of arguing! Lawyer's work. Humph!"
"You mistake, Barker. The Roman fellow whose words slipped out of my mouth almost unawares said nothing of arguing. 'Fear is the mark of only base minds': so it runs in English, captain; which is as much as to say that Captain Ben Barker is not the man to haul down his colors in a hurry."
"You're right there. Another shot! That's their argument: well, Ben Barker can talk that way as well as another."
He called up the boatswain. Shortly afterwards the order was piped, "Up all hammocks!" The men quickly stowed their bedding, secured it with lashings, and carried it to the appointed places on the quarterdeck, poop, or forecastle. Meanwhile the boatswain and his mates secured the yards; the ship's carpenter brought up shot plugs for repairing any breeches made under the waterline; and the gunners looked to the cannon and prepared charges for them and the small arms.
Bulger was in charge of the twelve-pounder aft, and Mr. Toley had tolled off Desmond to assist him. They stood side by side watching the progress of the grab, which gained steadily in spite of the plunging due to its curious build. Presently another shot came from her; it shattered the belfry on the forecastle of the Good Intent, and splashed into the sea a hundred yards ahead.
"They make good practice, for sartin," remarked Bulger. "I may be wrong, but I'll lay my life there be old man-o'-war's men aboard. I mind me when I was with Captain Golightly on the Minotaur--"
But Bulger's yarn was intercepted. At that moment the boatswain piped, "All hands to quarters!" In a surprisingly short time all timber was cleared away, the galley fire was extinguished, the yards slung, the deck strewn with wet sand, and sails, booms, and boats liberally drenched with water. The gun captains, each with his crew, cast loose the lashings of their weapons and struck open the ports. The tompions was taken out; the sponge, rammer, crows and handspikes placed in readiness, and all awaited eagerly the word for the action to begin.
"'Tis about time we opened our mouths at 'em," said Bulger. "The next bolus they send us as like as not will bring the spars a-rattlin' about our ears. To be sure it goes against my stummick to fire on old messmates; but it en't in Englishmen to hold their noses and swallow pills o' that there size. We'll load up all ready, mateys."
He stripped to the waist, and tied a handkerchief over his ears. Desmond and the men followed his example. Then one of them sponged the bore, another inserted the cartridge, containing three pounds of powder, by means of a long ladle, a third shoved in a wad of rope yarn. This having been driven home by the rammer, the round shot was inserted, and covered like the cartridge with a wad. Then Bulger took his priming iron, an instrument like a long thin corkscrew, and thrust it into the touch hole to clear the vent and make an incision in the cartridge. Removing the priming iron, he replaced it by the priming tube--a thin tapering tube with very narrow bore. Into this he poured a quantity of fine mealed powder; then he laid a train of the same powder in the little groove cut in the gun from the touch hole towards the breech. With the end of his powder horn he slightly bruised the train, and the gun only awaited a spark from the match.
Everything was done very quickly, and Desmond watched the seamen with admiration. He himself had charge of the linstock, about which was wound several matches, consisting of lengths of twisted cotton wick steeped in lye. They had already been lighted, for they burnt so slowly that they would last for several hours.
"Now, we're shipshape," said Bulger. "Mind you, Burke, don't come to far for'ard with your linstock. I don't want the train fired with no sparks afore I'm ready. And 'ware o' the breech; she'll kick like a jumping jackass when the shot flies out of her, an'll knock your teeth out afore you can say Jack Robinson--
"Ah! there's the word at last; now, mateys, here goes!"
He laid the gun, waited for the ship to rise from a roll, and then took one of the matches, gently blew its smoldering end, and applied the glowing wick to the bruised part of the priming. There was a flash, a roar, and before Desmond could see the effect of the shot Bulger had closed the vent, the gun was run in, and the sponger was at work cleaning the chamber.
As the black smoke cleared away it was apparent that the seaman had not forgotten his cunning. The shot had struck the grab on the deck of the prow and smashed into the forecastle. But the bow chasers were apparently uninjured, for they replied a few seconds later.
"Ah! There's a wunner!" said Bulger admiringly.
A shot had carried away a yard of the gunwale of the Good Intent, scattering splinters far and wide, which inflicted nasty wounds on the second mate and a seaman on the quarterdeck. A jagged end of the wood flying high struck Diggle on the left cheek. He wiped away the blood imperturbably; it was evident that lack of courage was not among his defects.
Captain Barker's ire was now at white heat. Shouting an order to Bulger and the next man to make rapid practice with the two stern chasers, he prepared to fall off and bring the Good Intent's broadside to bear on the enemy.
But the next shot was decisive. Diggle had quietly strolled down to the gun next to Bulger's. It had just been reloaded. He bade the gun captain, in a low tone, to move aside. Then, with a glance to see that the priming was in order, he took careful sight, and waiting until the grab's main, mizzen and foremasts opened to view altogether, he applied the match. The shot sped true, and a second later the grab's mainmast, with sails and rigging, went by the board.
A wild cheer from the crew of the Good Intent acclaimed the excellent shot.
"By thunder!" said Bulger to Desmond. "Diggle may be a rogue and a vagabond, but he knows how to train a gun."
Captain Barker signified his approval by a tremendous mouth-filling oath. But he was not yet safe. The second grab was following hard in the wake of the first; and it was plain that the two Indiamen were both somewhat faster than the Good Intent; for during the running fight that had just ended so disastrously for the grab, they had considerably lessened the gap between them and their quarry. Captain Barker watched them with an expression of fierce determination, but not without anxiety. If they should come within striking distance it was impossible to withstand successfully their heavier armament and larger crews. The firing had ceased: each vessel had crowded on all sail; and the brisk breeze must soon bring pursuer and pursued to a close engagement which could have only one result.
"I may be wrong, but seems to me we'd better say our prayers," Bulger remarked grimly to his gun crew.
But Desmond, gazing up at the shrouds, said suddenly:
"The wind's dropping. Look!"
It was true. Before the monsoon sets in in earnest it not unfrequently happens that the wind veers fitfully; a squall is succeeded almost instantaneously by a calm. So it was now. In less than an hour all five vessels were becalmed; and when night fell three miles separated the Good Intent from the second grab; the Indiamen lay a mile farther astern; and the damaged vessel was out of sight.
Captain Barker took counsel with his officers. He expected to be attacked during the night by the united boats of the pursuing fleet. Under cover of darkness they would be able to creep up close and board the vessel, and the captain knew well that if taken he would be treated as a pirate. His papers were made out for Philadelphia; he had hoisted Portuguese colors, but the enemy at close quarters could easily see that the Good Intent was British built; he had disabled one of the Company's vessels; there would be no mercy for him.
He saw no chance of beating off the enemy; they would outnumber him by at least five to one. Even if the wind sprang up again there was small likelihood of escape. One or other of the pursuing vessels would almost certainly overhaul him, and hold him until the others came up.
"'Tis a 'tarnal fix," he said.
"Methinks 'tis a case of actum est de nobis," remarked Diggle pleasantly.
"Confound you!" said the captain with a burst of anger. "What could I expect with a gallows bird like you aboard? 'Tis enough to sink a vessel without shot."
Diggle's face darkened. But in a moment his smile returned.
"You are overwrought, captain," he said; "you are unstrung. 'Twould be ridiculous to take amiss words said in haste. In cold blood--well, you know me, Captain Barker. I will leave you to recover from your brief madness."
He went below. The captain was left with Mr. Toley and the other officers. Barker and Toley always got on well together, for the simple reason that the mate never thwarted his superior, never resented his abuse, but went quietly his own way. He listened now for a quarter of an hour, with fixed sadness of expression, while Captain Barker poured the vials of his wrath upon everything under the sun. When the captain had come to an end, and sunk into an estate of lowering dudgeon, Mr. Toley said quietly:
"'Tis all you say, sir, and more. I guess I've never seen a harder case. But while you was speaking, something you said struck a sort of idea into my brain."
"That don't happen often. What is it?"
"Why, the sort of idea that came to me out o' what you was saying was just this. How would it be to take soundings?"
"So, that's your notion, is it? Hang me, are you a fool like the rest of 'em? You're always taking soundings! What in the name of thunder do you want to take soundings for?"
"Nothing particular, cap'n. That was the kind o' notion that come of what you was saying. Of course it depends on the depths hereabouts."
"Deep enough to sink you and your notions and all that's like to come of 'em. Darned if I ain't got the most lubberly company ever mortal man was plagued with. Officers and men, there en't one of you as is worth your salt, and you with your long face and your notions--why, hang me, you're no more good than the dirtiest waister afloat."
Mr. Toley smiled sadly, and ventured on no rejoinder. After the captain's outburst none of the group dared to utter a word. This pleased him no better; he cursed them all for standing mum; and spent ten minutes in reviling them in turn. Then his passion appeared to have burnt itself out. Turning suddenly to the melancholy mate, he said roughly:
"Go and heave your lead, then, and be hanged to it."
Mr. Toley walked away aft and ordered one of the men to heave the deep-sea lead. The plummet, shaped like the frustum of a cone, and weighing thirty pounds, was thrown out from the side in the line of the vessel's drift.
"By the mark sixty, less five," sang out the man when the lead touched the bottom.
"I guess that'll do," said the first mate, returning to the quarterdeck.
"Well, what about your notion?" said the captain scornfully. But he listened quietly and with an intent look upon his weatherbeaten face as Mr. Toley explained.
"You see, sir," he said, "while you was talking just now, I sort o' saw that if they attack us, 'twon't be for at least two hours after dark. The boats won't put off while there's light enough to see 'em; and won't hurry anyhow, 'cos if they did the men 'ud have nary much strength left to 'em. Well, they'll take our bearings, of course. Thinks I, owing to what you said, sir, what if we could shift 'em by half a mile or so? The boats 'ud miss us in the darkness."
"That's so," ejaculated the captain; "and what then?"
"Well, sir, 'tis there my idea of taking soundings comes in. The Good Intent can't be towed, not with our handful of men; but why shouldn't she be kedged? That's the notion, sir; and I guess you'll think it over."
"By jimmy, Toley, you en't come out o' Salem, Massachusetts, for nothing. 'Tis a notion, a rare one; Ben Barker en't the man to bear a grudge, and I take back them words o' mine--leastways some on 'em.
"Bo'sun, get ready to lower the longboat."
The longboat was lowered, out of sight of the enemy. A kedge anchor, fastened to a stout hawser, was put on board, and as soon as it was sufficiently dark to make so comparatively small an object as a boat invisible to the hostile craft, she put off at right angles to the Good Intent's previous course, the hawser attached to the kedge being paid out as the boat drew away. When it had gone about a fifth of a mile from the vessel the kedge was dropped, and a signal was given by hauling on the rope.
"Clap on, men!" cried Captain Barker. "Get a good purchase, and none of your singsong; avast all jabber."
The crew manned the windlass and began with a will to haul on the cable in dead silence. The vessel was slowly warped ahead. Meanwhile the longboat was returning; when she reached the side of the Good Intent, a second kedge was lowered into her, and again she put off, to drop the anchor two cables' length beyond the first, so that when the ship had tripped that, the second was ready to be hauled on.
When the Good Intent had been thus warped a mile from her position at nightfall, Captain Parker ordered the operation to be stopped. To avoid noise the boat was not hoisted in. No lights were shown, and the sky being somewhat overcast, the boat's crew found that the ship was invisible at the distance of a fourth of a cable's length.
"I may be wrong," said Bulger to Desmond, "but I don't believe kedgin' was ever done so far from harbor afore. I allers thought there was something in that long head of Mr. Toley, though, to be sure, there en't no call for him to pull a long face, too."
An hour passed after the loading had been stopped. All on board the Good Intent remained silent, speaking, if they spoke at all, in whispers. There had been no signs of the expected attack. Desmond was leaning on the gunwale, straining his eyes for a glimpse of the enemy. But his ears gave him the first intimation of their approach. He heard a faint creaking, as of oars in rowlocks, and stepped back to where Bulger was leaning against the mast.
"There they come," he said.
The sound had already reached Captain Barker's ears. It was faint; doubtless the oars were muffled. The ship was rolling lazily; save for the creaking nothing was heard but the lapping of the ripples against the hull. So still was the night that the slightest sound must travel far, and the captain remarked in a whisper to Mr. Toley that he guessed the approaching boats to be at least six cables' lengths distant.
Officers and men listened intently. The creaking grew no louder; on the contrary, it gradually became fainter, and at last died away. There was a long silence, broken only by what sounded like a low hail some considerable distance away.
"They're musterin' the boats," said Bulger, with a chuckle. "I may be wrong, but I'll bet my breeches they find they've overshot the mark. Now they'll scatter and try to nose us out."
Another hour of anxious suspense slowly passed, and still nothing had happened. Then suddenly a blue light flashed for a few moments on the blackness of the sea, answered almost instantaneously by a rocket from another quarter. It was clear that the boats, having signaled that the search had failed, had been recalled by the rocket to the fleet.
"By thunder, Mr. Toley, you've done the trick!" said the captain.
"I guess we don't get our living by making mistakes--not in Salem, Massachusetts," returned the first mate with his sad smile.
Through the night the watch was kept with more than ordinary vigilance, but nothing occurred to give Captain Barker anxiety. With morning light the enemy could be seen far astern.
Chapter 10: In which our hero arrives in the Golden East, and Mr. Diggle presents him to a native prince.
About midday a light breeze sprang up from the northwest. The two Indiamen and the uninjured grab, being the first to catch it, gained a full mile before the Good Intent, under topgallant sails, studding sails, royal and driver, began to slip through the water at her best speed. But, as the previous day's experience had proved, she was no match in sailing capacity for the pursuers. They gained on her steadily, and the grab had come almost within cannon range when the man at the masthead shouted:
"Sail ho! About a dozen sail ahead, sir!"
The captain spluttered out a round dozen oaths, and his dark face grew still darker. So many vessels in company must surely mean the king's ships with a convoy. The French, so far as Captain Barker knew, had no such fleet in Indian waters, nor had the Dutch or Portuguese. If they were indeed British men-o'-war he would be caught between two fires, for there was not a doubt that they would support the Company's vessels.
"We ought to be within twenty miles of the coast, Mr. Toley," said Captain Barker.
"Ay, sir, and somewhere in the latitude of Gheria."
"Odds bobs, and now I come to think of it, those there vessels may be sailing to attack Gheria, seeing as how, as these niggers told us, they've bust up Suwarndrug."
"Guess I'll get to the foretop myself and take a look, sir," said Mr. Toley.
He mounted, carrying the only perspective glass the vessel possessed. The captain watched him anxiously as he took a long look.
"What do you make of 'em?" he shouted.
The mate shut up the telescope and came leisurely down.
"I count fifteen in all, sir."
"I don't care how many. What are they?"
"I calculate they're grabs and gallivats, sir."
The captain gave a hoarse chuckle.
"By thunder, then, we'll soon turn the tables! Angria's gallivats--eh, Mr. Toley? We'll make a haul yet."
But Captain Barker was to be disappointed. The fleet had been descried also by the pursuers. A few minutes later the grab threw out a signal, hauled her wind and stood away to the northward, followed closely by the two larger vessels. The captain growled his disappointment. Nearly a dozen of the coast craft, as they were now clearly seen to be, went in pursuit, but with little chance of coming up with the chase. The remaining vessels of the newly-arrived fleet stood out to meet the Good Intent.
"Fetch us that Maratha fellow," cried the captain, "and hoist a white flag."
When the Maratha appeared, a pitiable object, emaciated for want of food, Captain Barker bade him shout as soon as the newcomers came within hailing distance. The white flag at the masthead, and a loud, long-drawn hail from Hybati, apprised the grab that the Good Intent was no enemy, and averted hostilities. And thus it was, amid a convoy of Angria's own fleet, that Captain Barker's vessel, a few hours later, sailed peacefully into the harbor of Gheria.
Desmond looked with curious eyes on the famous fort and harbor. On the right, as the Good Intent entered, he saw a long, narrow promontory, at the end of which was a fortress, constructed, as it appeared, of solid rock. The promontory was joined to the mainland by a narrow isthmus of sand, beyond which lay an open town of some size. The shore was fringed with palmyras, mangoes and other tropical trees, and behind the straw huts and stone buildings of the town leafy groves clothed the sides of a gentle hill.
The harbor, which forms the mouth of a river, was studded with Angria's vessels, large and small, and from the docks situated on the sandy isthmus came the busy sound of shipwrights at work. The rocky walls of the fort were fifty feet high, with round towers, long curtains, and some fifty embrasures. The left shore of the harbor was flat, but to the south of the fort rose a hill of the same height as the walls of rock. Such was the headquarters of the notorious pirate Tulaji Angria, the last of the line which had for fifty years been the terror of the Malabar coast.
The Good Intent dropped anchor off the jetty running out from the docks north of the fort. Captain Barker had already given orders that no shore leave was to be allowed to the crew, and as soon as he had stepped into the longboat, accompanied by Diggle, the men's discontent broke forth in angry imprecations, which Mr. Toley wisely affected not to hear.
No time was lost in unloading the portion of the cargo intended for Angria. The goods were carried along the jetty by stalwart Marathas clad only in loincloths, and stored in rude cabins with penthouse roofs. As Desmond knew, the heavy chests that taxed the strength of the bearers contained for the most part muskets and ammunition. The work went on for the greater part of the day, and at nightfall neither the captain nor Diggle had returned to the vessel.
Next day a large quantity of Indian produce was taken on board. Desmond noticed that as the bales and casks reached the deck, some of the crew were told off to remove all marks from them.
"What's that for?" repeated Bulger, in reply to a question of Desmond's. "Why, 'cos if the ship came to be overhauled by a Company's vessel, it would tell tales if the cargo had Company's marks on it. That wouldn't do by no manner o' means."
"But how should they get Company's marks on them?"
Bulger winked.
"You're raw yet, Burke," he said. "You'll know quite as much as is good for you by the time you've made another voyage or two in the Good Intent."
"But I don't intend to make another voyage in her. Mr. Diggle promised to get me employment in the country."
"What? You still believes in that there Diggle? Well, I don't want to hurt no feelin's, and I may be wrong, but I'll lay my bottom dollar Diggle won't do a hand's turn for you."
The second day passed, and in the evening Captain Barker, who had hitherto left Mr. Toley in charge, came aboard in high humor.
"I may be wrong," remarked Bulger, "but judgin' by cap'n's face, he've been an' choused the Pirate--got twice the valley o' the goods he's landed."
"I wonder where Mr. Diggle is?" said Desmond.
"You en't no call to mourn for him, I tell you. He's an old friend of the Pirate, don't make no mistake; neither you nor me will be any the worse for not seein' his grinnin' phiz no more. Thank your stars he've left you alone for the last part of the voyage, which I wonder at, all the same."
Next day all was bustle on board in preparation for sailing. In the afternoon a peon {messenger} came hurrying along the jetty, boarded the vessel, and handed a note to the captain, who read it, tore it up, and dismissed the messenger. He went down to his cabin, and coming up a few minutes later, cried:
"Where's that boy Burke?"
"Here, sir," cried Desmond, starting up from the place where, in Bulger's company, he had been splicing a rope.
"Idling away your time as usual, of course. Here, take this chit {note} and run ashore. 'Tis for Mr. Diggle, as you can see if you can read."
"But how am I to find him, sir?"
"Hang me, that's your concern. Find him, and give the chit into his own hand, and be back without any tomfoolery, or by thunder I'll lay a rope across your shoulders."
Desmond took the note, left the vessel, and hurried along the jetty. After what Bulger had said he was not very well pleased at the prospect of meeting Diggle again. At the shore end of the jetty he was accosted by the peon who had brought Diggle's note on board. The man intimated by signs that he would show the way, and Desmond, wondering why the Indian had not himself waited to receive Captain Barker's answer, followed him at a rapid pace on shore, past the docks, through a corner of the town where the appearance of a white stranger attracted the curious attention of the natives, to an open space in front of the entrance to the fort.
Here they arrived at a low wall cut by an open gateway, at each side of which stood a Maratha sentry armed with a matchlock. A few words were exchanged between Desmond's guide and one of the sentries; the two entered, crossed a compound dotted with trees, and passing through the principal gateway came to a large, square building near the center of the fort. The door of this was guarded by a sentry. Again a few words were spoken. Desmond fancied he saw a slight smile curl the lips of the natives; then the sentry called another peon who stood at hand, and sent him into the palace.
Desmond felt a strange sinking at heart. The smile upon these dark faces awakened a vague uneasiness; it was so like Diggle's smile. He supposed that the man had gone in to report that he had arrived with the captain's answer. The note still remained with him; the Marathas apparently knew that it was to be delivered personally; yet he was left at the door, and his guide stood by in an attitude that suggested he was on guard.
How long was he to be kept waiting? he wondered. Captain Barker had ordered him to return at once; the penalty for disobedience he knew only too well; yet the minutes passed, and lengthened into two hours without any sign of the man who had gone in with the message. Desmond spoke to the guide, but the man shook his head, knowing no English. Becoming more and more uneasy, he was at length relieved to see the messenger come back to the door and beckon him to enter. As he passed the sentries they made him a salaam in which his anxious sensitiveness detected a shade of mockery; but before he could define his feelings he reached a third door guarded like the others, and was ushered in.
He found himself in a large chamber, its walls dazzling with barbaric decoration--figures of Ganessa, a favorite idol of the Marathas, of monstrous elephants, and peacocks with enormously expanded tails. The hall was so crowded that his first confusion was redoubled. A path was made through the throng as at a signal, and at the end of the room he saw two men apart from the rest.
One of them, standing a little back from the other, was Diggle; the other, a tall, powerful figure in raiment as gaudy as the painted peacocks around him, his fingers covered with rings, a diamond blazing in his headdress, was sitting cross-legged on a dais. Behind him, against the wall, was an image of Ganessa, made of solid gold, with diamonds for eyes, and blazing with jewels. At one side was his hookah, at the other a two-edged sword and an unsheathed dagger. Below the dais on either hand two fierce-visaged Marathas stood, their heads and shoulders covered with a helmet, their bodies cased in a quilted vest, each holding a straight two-edged sword. Between Angria and the idol two fan bearers lightly swept the air above their lord's head with broad fans of palm leaves.
Desmond walked towards the dais, feeling woefully out of place amid the brilliant costumes of Angria's court. Scarcely two of the Marathas were dressed alike; some were in white, some in lilac, others in purple, but each with ornaments after his own taste. Desmond had not had time before leaving the Good Intent to smarten himself up, and he stood there a tall, thin, sunburnt youth in dirty, tattered garments, doing his best to face the assembly with British courage.
At the foot of the dais he paused and held out the captain's note. Diggle took it in silence, his face wearing the smile that Desmond knew so well and now so fully distrusted. Without reading it, he tore it in fragments and threw them upon the floor, at the same time saying a few words to the resplendent figure at his side.
Tulaji Angria was dark, inclined to be fat, and not unpleasant in feature. But it was with a scowling brow that he replied to Diggle. Desmond was no coward, but he afterward confessed that as he stood there watching the two faces, the dark, lowering face of Angria, the smiling, scarcely less swarthy face of Diggle, he felt his knees tremble under him. What was the Pirate saying? That he was the subject of their conversation was plain from the glances thrown at him; that he was at a crisis in his fate he knew by instinct; but, ignorant of the tongue they spoke, he could but wait in fearful anxiety and mistrust.
He learned afterwards the purport of the talk.
"That is your man?" said Angria. 'You have deceived me. I looked for a man of large stature and robust make, like the Englishmen I already have. What good will this slim, starved stripling be in my barge?"
"You must not be impatient, huzur {lord}," replied Diggle. "He is a stripling, it is true; slim, certainly; starved--well, the work on board ship does not tend to fatten a man. But give him time; he is but sixteen or seventeen years old, young in my country. In a year or two, under your regimen, he will develop; he comes of a hardy stock, and already he can make himself useful. He was one of the quickest and handiest on board our ship, though this was his first voyage."
"But you yourself admit that he is not yet competent for the oar in my barge. What is to recompense me for the food he will eat while he is growing? No, Diggle sahib, if I take him I must have some allowance off the price. In truth, I will not take him unless you send me from your vessel a dozen good muskets. That is my word."
"Still, huzur--" began Diggle, but Angria cut him short with a gesture of impatience.
"That is my word, I say. Shall I, Tulaji Angria, dispute with you? I will have twenty muskets, or you may keep the boy."
Diggle shrugged and smiled.
"Very well, huzur. You drive a hard bargain; but it shall be as you say. I will send a chit to the captain, and you shall have the muskets before the ship sails."
Angria made a sign to one of his attendants. The man approached Desmond, took him by the sleeve, and signed for him to come away. Desmond threw a beseeching look at Diggle, and said hurriedly:
"Mr. Diggle, please tell me--"
But Angria rose to his feet in wrath, and shouted to the man who had Desmond by the sleeve. Desmond made no further resistance. His head swam as he passed between the dusky ranks out into the courtyard.
"What does it all mean?" he asked himself.
His guide hurried him along until they came to a barn-like building under the northwest angle of the fort. The Maratha unlocked the door, signed to Desmond to enter, and locked him in. He was alone.
He spent three miserable hours. Bitterly did he now regret having cast in his lot with the smooth-spoken stranger who had been so sympathetic with him in his troubles at home. He tried to guess what was to be done with him. He was in Angria's power, a prisoner, but to what end? Had he run from the tyranny at home merely to fall a victim to a worse tyranny at the hands of an oriental? He knew so little of Angria, and his brain was in such a turmoil, that he could not give definite shape to his fears.
He paced up and down the hot, stuffy shed, awaiting, dreading, he knew not what. Through the hole that served for a window he saw men passing to and fro across the courtyard, but they were all swarthy, all alien; there was no one from whom he could expect a friendly word.
Toward evening, as he looked through the hole, he saw Diggle issue from the door of the palace and cross towards the outer gate.
"Mr. Diggle! Mr. Diggle!" he called. "Please! I am locked up here."
Diggle looked round, smiled, and leisurely approached the shed.
"Why have they shut me up here?" demanded Desmond. "Captain Barker said I was to return at once. Do get the door unlocked."
"You ask the impossible, my young friend," replied Diggle through the hole. "You are here by the orders of Angria, and 'twould be treason in me to pick his locks."
"But why? what right has he to lock me up? and you, why did you let him? You said you were my friend; you promised--oh, you know what you promised."
"I promised? Truly, I promised that, if you were bent on accompanying me to these shores, I would use my influence to procure you employment with one of my friends among the native princes. Well, I have kept my word; firmavi fidem, as the Latin hath it. Angria is my friend; I have used my influence with him; and you are now in the service of one of the most potent of Indian princes. True, your service is but beginning. It may be arduous at first; it may be long ab ovo usque ad mala; the egg may be hard, and the apples, perchance, somewhat sour; but as you become inured to your duties, you will learn resignation and patience, and--"
"Don't!" burst out Desmond, unable to endure the smooth-flowing periods of the man now self-confessed a villain. "What does it mean? Tell me plainly; am I a slave?"
"Servulus, non servus, my dear boy. What is the odds whether you serve Dick Burke, a booby farmer, or Tulaji Angria, a prince and a man of intelligence? Yet there is a difference, and I would give you a word of counsel. Angria is an oriental, and a despot; it were best to serve him with all diligence, or--"
He finished the sentence with a meaning grimace.
"Mr. Diggle, you can't mean it," said Desmond. "Don't leave me here! I implore you to release me. What have I ever done to you? Don't leave me in this awful place."
Diggle smiled and began to move away. At the sight of his malicious smile the prisoner's despair was swept away before a tempest of rage.
"You scoundrel! You shameless scoundrel!"
The words, low spoken and vibrant with contempt, reached Diggle when he was some distance from the shed. He turned and sauntered back.
"Heia! contumeliosae voces! 'Tis pretty abuse. My young friend, I must withdraw my ears from such shocking language. But stay! if you have any message for Sir Willoughby, your squire, whose affections you have so diligently cultivated to the prejudice of his nearest and dearest, it were well for you to give it. 'Tis your last opportunity; for those who enter Angria's service enjoy a useful but not a long career. And before I return to Gheria from a little journey I am about to make, you may have joined the majority of those who have tempted fate in this insalubrious clime. Horae momento cita mors yen it--you remember the phrase?"
Diggle leaned against the wooden wall, watching with malicious enjoyment the effect of his words. Desmond was very pale; all his strength seemed to have deserted him. Finding that his taunts provoked no reply, Diggle went on:
"Time presses, my young friend. You will be logged a deserter from the Good Intent. 'Tis my fervent hope you never fall into the hands of Captain Barker; as you know, he is a terrible man when roused."
Waving his gloved hand, he moved away. Desmond did not watch his departure. Falling back from the window, he threw himself upon the ground, and gave way to a long fit of black despair.
How long he lay in this agony he knew not. But he was at last roused by the opening of the door. It was almost dark. Rising to his feet, he saw a number of men hustled into the shed. Ranged along one of the walls, they squatted on the floor, and for some minutes afterwards Desmond heard the clank of irons and the harsh grating of a key. Then a big Maratha came to him, searched him thoroughly, clapped iron bands upon his ankles, and locked the chains to staples in the wall. Soon the door was shut, barred, and locked, and Desmond found himself a prisoner with eight others.
For a little they spoke among themselves, in the low tones of men utterly spent and dispirited. Then all was silent, and they slept. But Desmond lay wide awake, waiting for the morning.
The shed was terribly hot. Air came only through the one narrow opening, and before an hour was past the atmosphere was foul, seeming the more horrible to Desmond by contrast with the freshness of his life on the ocean. Mosquitoes nipped him until he could scarcely endure the intense irritation. He would have given anything for a little water; but though he heard a sentry pacing up and down outside, he did not venture to call to him, and could only writhe in heat and torture, longing for the dawn, yet fearing it and what it might bring forth.
Worn and haggard after his sleepless night, Desmond had scarcely spirit enough to look with curiosity on his fellow prisoners when the shed was faintly lit by the morning sun. But he saw that the eight men, all natives, were lying on crude charpoys {mat beds} along the wall, each man chained to a staple like his own. One of the men was awake; and, catching Desmond's lusterless eyes fixed upon him, he sat up and returned his gaze.
"Your Honor is an English gentleman?"
The words caused Desmond to start: they were so unexpected in such a place. The Indian spoke softly and carefully, as if anxious not to awaken his companions.
"Yes," replied Desmond. "Who are you?"
"My name, sir, is Surendra Nath Chuckerbutti. I was lately a clerk in the employ of a burra {great} sahib, English factor, at Calcutta."
"How did you get here?"
"That, sahib, is a moving tale. While on a visit of condolence to my respectable uncle and aunt at Chittagong, I was kidnapped by Sandarband piratical dogs. Presto!--at that serious crisis a Dutch ship makes apparition and rescues me; but my last state is more desperate than the first. The Dutch vessel will not stop to replace me on mother earth; she is for Bombay, across the kala pani {black water}, as we say. I am not a swimmer; besides, what boots it?--we are ten miles from land, to say nothing of sharks and crocodiles and the lordly tiger. So I perforce remain, to the injury of my caste, which forbids navigation. But see the issue. The Dutch ship is assaulted; grabs and gallivats galore swarm upon the face of the waters; all is confusion worse confounded; in a brace of shakes we are in the toils. It is now two years since this untoward catastrophe. With the crew I am conveyed hither and eat the bitter crust of servitude. Some of the Dutchmen are consigned to other forts in possession of the Pirate, and three serve here in his state barge."
Desmond glanced at the sleeping forms.
"No, sir, they are not here," said the Babu {equivalent to Mr.; applied by the English to the native clerk}, catching his look. "They share another apartment with your countrymen--chained? Oh, yes! These, my bedfellows of misfortune, are Indians, not of Bengal, like myself; two are Biluchis hauled from a country ship; two are Mussulmans from Mysore; one a Gujarati; two Marathas. We are a motley crew--a miscellany, no less."
"What do they do with you in the daytime?"
"I, sir, adjust accounts of the Pirate's dockyard; for this I am qualified by prolonged driving of quill in Calcutta, to expressed satisfaction of Honorable John Company and English merchants. But my position, sir, is of Damoclean anxiety. I am horrified by conviction that one small error of calculation will entail direst retribution. Videlicet, sir, this week a fellow captive is minus a finger and thumb--and all for oversight of six annas {the anna is the 16th part of a rupee}. But I hear the step of our jailer; I must bridle my tongue."
The Babu had spoken throughout in a low monotonous tone that had not disturbed the slumbers of his fellow prisoners. But they were all awakened by the noisy opening of the door and the entrance of their jailer. He went to each in turn, and unlocked their fetters; then they filed out in dumb submission, to be escorted by armed sentries to the different sheds where they fed, each caste by itself.
When the eight had disappeared the jailer turned to Desmond, and, taking him by the sleeve, led him across the courtyard into the palace. Here, in a little room, he was given a meager breakfast of rice; after which he was taken to another room where he found Angria in company with a big Maratha, who had in his hand a long bamboo cane. The Pirate was no longer in durbar {council, ceremonial} array, but was clad in a long yellow robe with a lilac-colored shawl.
Conscious that he made a very poor appearance in his tatters, Desmond felt that the two men looked at him with contempt. A brief conversation passed between them; then the Maratha salaamed to Angria and went from the room, beckoning Desmond to follow him. They went out of the precincts of the palace, and through a part of the town, until they arrived at the docks. There the laborers, slaves and free, were already at work. Desmond at the first glance noticed several Europeans among them, miserable objects who scarcely lifted their heads to look at this latest newcomer of their race. His guide called up one of the foremen shipwrights, and instructed him to place the boy among a gang of the workmen. Then he went away. Scarcely a minute had elapsed when Desmond heard a cry, and looking round, saw the man brutally belaboring with his rattan the bare shoulders of a native. He quivered; the incident seemed of ill augury.
In a few minutes Desmond found himself among a gang of men who were working at a new gallivat in process of construction for Angria's own use. He received his orders in dumb show from the foreman of the gang. Miserable as he was, he would not have been a boy if he had not been interested in his novel surroundings; and no intelligent boy could have failed to take an interest in the construction of a gallivat. It was a large rowboat of from thirty to seventy tons, with two masts, the mizzen being very slight. The mainmast bore one huge sail, triangular in form, its peak extending to a considerable height above the mast. The smaller gallivats were covered with a spar deck made of split bamboos, their armament consisting of pettararoes fixed on swivels in the gunwale. But the larger vessels had a fixed deck on which were mounted six or eight cannon, from two to four pounders; and in addition to their sail they had from forty to fifty oars, so that, with a stout crew, they attained a rate of four or five miles an hour.
One of the first things Desmond learned was that the Indian mode of ship building differed fundamentally from the European. The timbers were fitted in after the planks had been put together; and the planks were put together, not with flat edges, but rabbited, the parts made to correspond with the greatest exactness. When a plank was set up, its edge was smeared with red lead, and the edge of the plank to come next was pressed down upon it, the inequalities in its surface being thus shown by the marks of the lead. These being smoothed away, if necessary several times, and the edges fitting exactly, they were rubbed with da'ma, a sort of glue that in course of time became as hard as iron. The planks were then firmly riveted with pegs, and by the time the work was finished the seams were scarcely visible, the whole forming apparently one entire piece of timber.
The process of building a gallivat was thus a very long and tedious one; but the vessel when completed was so strong that it could go to sea for many years before the hull needed repair.
Desmond learned all this only gradually; but from the first day, making a virtue of necessity, he threw himself into the work and became very useful, winning the good opinion of the officers of the dockyard. His feelings were frequently wrung by the brutal punishments inflicted by the overseer upon defaulters. The man had absolute power over the workers. He could flog them, starve them, even cut off their ears and noses. One of his favorite devices was to tie a quantity of oiled cotton round each of a man's fingers and set light to these living torches.
Another, used with a man whom he considered lazy, was the tank. Between the dockyard and the river, separated from the latter only by a thin wall, was a square cavity about seven feet deep covered with boarding, in the center of which was a circular hole. In the wall was a small orifice through which water could be let in from the river, while in the opposite wall was the pipe and spout of a small hand pump. The man whom the overseer regarded as an idler was let down into the tank, the covering replaced, and water allowed to enter from the river. This was a potent spur to the defaulter's activity, for if he did not work the pump fast enough the water would gradually rise in the tank, and he would drown. Desmond learned of one case where the man, utterly worn out by his life of alternate toil and punishment, refused to work the pump and stood in silent indifference while the water mounted inch by inch until it covered his head and ended his woes.
Desmond's diligence in the dockyard pleased the overseer, whose name was Govinda, and he was by and by employed on lighter tasks which took him sometimes into the town. Until the novelty wore off he felt a lively interest in the scenes that met his eye--the bazaars, crowded with dark-skinned natives, the men mustachioed, clad for the most part in white garments that covered them from the crown of the head to the knee, with a touch of red sometimes in their turbans; the women with bare heads and arms and feet, garbed in red and blue; the gosains, mendicants with matted hair and unspeakable filth; the women who fried chapatis {small, flat, unleavened cakes} on griddles in the streets, grinding their meal in handmills; the sword grinders, whetting the blades of the Maratha two-edged swords; the barbers, whose shops had a never-ending succession of customers; the Brahmans, almost naked and shaved bald save for a small tuft at the back of the head; the sellers of madi, a toddy extracted from the cocoanut palm; the magicians in their shawls, with high stiff red cap, painted all over with snakes; the humped bullocks that were employed as beasts of burden, and when not in use roamed the streets untended; occasionally the basawa, the sacred bull of Siva, the destroyer, and the rath {car} carrying the sacred rat of Ganessa. But with familiarity such scenes lost their charm; and as the months passed away Desmond felt more and more the gnawing of care at his heart, the constant sadness of a slave.
Chapter 11: In which the Babu tells the story of King Vikramaditya; and the discerning reader may find more than appears on the surface.
Day followed day in dreary sameness. Regularly every evening Desmond was locked with his eight fellow prisoners in the shed, there to spend hours of weariness and discomfort until morning brought release and the common task. He had the same rations of rice and ragi {a cereal}, with occasional doles of more substantial fare. He was carefully kept from all communication with the other European prisoners, and as the Bengali was the only man of his set who knew English, his only opportunities of using his native tongue occurred in the evening before he slept.
His fellow prisoners spoke Urdu among themselves, and Desmond found some alleviation of the monotony of his life in learning the lingua franca of India under the Babu's tuition. He was encouraged to persevere in the study by the fact that the Babu proved to be an excellent storyteller, often beguiling the tedium of wakeful hours in the shed by relating interminable narratives from the Hindu mythology, and in particular the exploits of the legendary hero Vikramaditya. So accomplished was he in this very oriental art that it was not uncommon for one or other of the sentries to listen to him through the opening in the shed wall, and the head warder who locked the prisoners' fetters would himself sometimes squat down at the door before leaving them at night, and remain an interested auditor until the blast of a horn warned all in the fort and town that the hour of sleep had come. It was some time before Desmond was sufficiently familiar with the language to pick up more than a few words of the stories here and there, but in three months he found himself able to follow the narrative with ease.
Meanwhile he was growing apace. The constant work in the open air, clad, save during the rains, in nothing but a thin dhoti {a cloth worn round the waist, passed between the legs and tucked in behind the back}, developed his physique and, even in that hot climate, hardened his muscles. The Babu one day remarked with envy that he would soon be deemed worthy of promotion to Angria's own gallivat, whose crew consisted of picked men of all nationalities.
This was an honor Desmond by no means coveted. As a dockyard workman, earning his food by the sweat of his brow, he did not come in contact with Angria, and was indeed less hardly used than he had been on board the Good Intent. But to become a galley slave seemed to him a different thing, and the prospect of pulling an oar in the Pirate's gallivat served to intensify his longing to escape.
For, though he proved so willing and docile in the dockyard, not a day passed but he pondered the idea of escape. He seized every opportunity of learning the topography of the fort and town, being aided in this unwittingly by Govinda, who employed him more and more often, as he became familiar with the language, in conveying messages from one part of the settlement to another. But he was forced to confess to himself that the chances of escape were very slight. Gheria was many miles from the nearest European settlement where he might find refuge. To escape by sea seemed impossible; if he fled through the town and got clear of Angria's territory he would almost certainly fall into the hands of the Peshwa's {the prime minister and real ruler of the Maratha kingdom} people, and although the Peshwa was nominally an ally of the Company, his subjects--a lawless, turbulent, predatory race--were not likely to be specially friendly to a solitary English lad. A half-felt hope that he might be able to reach Suwarndrug, lately captured by Commodore James, was dashed by the news that that fort had been handed over by him to the Marathas. Moreover, such was the rivalry among the various European nations competing for trade in India that he was by no means sure of a friendly reception if he should succeed in gaining a Portuguese or Dutch settlement. Dark stories were told of Portuguese dealings with Englishmen, and the Dutch bore no good repute for their treatment of prisoners.
It was a matter of wonder to Desmond that none of his companions ever hinted at escape. He could not imagine that any man could be a slave without feeling a yearning for liberty; yet these men lived through the unvarying round; eating, toiling, sleeping, without any apparent mental revolt. He could only surmise that all manliness and spirit had been crushed out of them, and from motives of prudence he forbore to speak of freedom.
But one evening, a sultry August evening when the shed was like an oven, and, bathed in sweat, he felt utterly limp and depressed, he asked the Babu in English whether anyone had ever escaped out of Angria's clutches. Surendra Nath Chuckerbutti glanced anxiously around, as if fearful that the others might understand. But they lay listless on their charpoys; they knew no English, and there was nothing in Desmond's tone to quicken their hopelessness.
"No, sahib," said the Bengali; "such escapade, if successful, is beyond my ken. There have been attempts; cui bono? Nobody is an anna the better. Nay, the last state of such misguided men is even worse; they die suffering very ingenious torture."
Desmond had been amazed at the Babu's command of English until he learned that the man was an omnivorous reader, and in his leisure at Calcutta had spent many an hour in poring over such literature as his master's scanty library afforded, the works of Mr. Samuel Johnson and Mr. Henry Fielding in particular.
At this moment Desmond said no more, but in the dead of night, when all were asleep, he leaned over to the Babu's charpoy and gently nudged him.
"Surendra Nath!" he whispered.
"Who calls?" returned the Babu.
"Listen. Have you yourself ever thought of escaping?"
"Peace and quietness, sir. He will hear."
"Who?"
"The Gujarati, sir--Fuzl Khan."
"But he doesn't understand. And if he did, what then?"
"He was the single man, positively unique, who was spared among six attempting escape last rains."
"They did make an attempt, then. Why was he spared?"
"That, sir, deponent knoweth not. The plot was carried to Angria."
"How?"
"That also is dark as pitch. But Fuzl Khan was spared, that we know. No man can trust his vis-a-vis. No man is now so bold to discuss such matters."
"Is that why we are all chained up at night?"
"That, sir, is the case. It is since then our limbs are shackled."
Desmond thought over this piece of information. He had noticed that the Gujarati was left much alone by the others. They were outwardly civil enough, but they rarely spoke to him of their own accord, and sometimes they would break off in a conversation if he appeared interested. Desmond had put this down to the man's temper; he was a sullen fellow, with a perpetually hangdog look, occasionally breaking out in paroxysms of violence which cost him many a scourging from the overseer's merciless rattan. But the attitude of his fellow prisoner was more easily explained if the Babu's hint was well founded. They feared him.
Yet, if he had indeed betrayed his comrades, he had gained little by his treachery. He was no favorite with the officers of the yard. They kept him hard at work, and seemed to take a delight in harrying him. More than once, unjustly, as it appeared to Desmond, he had made acquaintance with the punishment tank. In his dealings with his fellows he was morose and offensive. A man of great physical strength, he was a match for any two of his shed companions save the Biluchis, who, though individually weaker, retained something of the spirit of their race and made common cause against him. The rest he bullied, and none more than the Bengali, whose weaklier constitution spared him the hard manual work of the yard, but whose timidity invited aggression.
Now that the subject which constantly occupied his thoughts had been mooted, Desmond found himself more eagerly striving to find a solution of the problem presented by the idea of escape. At all hours of the day, and often when he lay in sleepless discomfort at night, his active mind recurred to the one absorbing matter: how to regain his freedom. He had already canvassed the possibilities of escape by land, only to dismiss the idea as utterly impracticable; for even could he elude the vigilance of the sentries he could not pass as a native, and the perils besetting an Englishman were not confined to Angria's territory.
But how stood the chances of escape by sea? Could he stow himself on board a grab or gallivat, and try to swim ashore when near some friendly port? He put the suggestion from him as absurd. Supposing he succeeded in stowing himself on an outgoing vessel, how could he know when he was near a friendly port without risking almost certain discovery? Besides, except in such rare cases as the visit of an interloper like the Good Intent, the Pirate did little trade. His vessels were employed mainly in dashing out on insufficiently-convoyed merchantmen.
But the train of thought once started could not but be followed out. What if he could seize a grab or gallivat in the harbor? To navigate such a vessel required a party, men having some knowledge of the sea. How stood his fellow prisoners in that respect? The Biluchis, tall wiry men, were traders, and had several times, he knew, made the voyage from the Persian Gulf to Surat. It was on one of these journeys that they had fallen into Angria's hands. They might have picked up something of the simpler details of navigation. The Mysoreans, being up-country men and agriculturists, were not likely even to have seen the sea until they became slaves of Angria. The Marathas would be loath to embark; they belonged to a warrior race which had for centuries lived by raiding its neighbors; but being forbidden by their religion to eat or drink at sea they would never make good seamen. The Babu was a native of Bengal, and the Bengalis were physically the weakest of the Indian peoples, constitutionally timid, and unenterprising in matters demanding physical courage. Desmond smiled as he thought of how his friend Surendra Nath might comport himself in a storm.
There remained the Gujarati, and of his nautical capacity Desmond knew nothing. But, mentioning the matter of seamanship casually to the Babu one day, he learned that Fuzl Khan was a khalasi {sailor} from Cutch. He had in him a strain of negro blood, derived probably from some Zanzibari ancestor brought to Cutch as a slave. The men of the coast of Cutch were the best sailors in India; and Fuzl Khan himself had spent a considerable portion of his life at sea.
Thus reflecting on the qualities of his fellow captives, Desmond had ruefully to acknowledge that they would make a poor crew to navigate a grab or gallivat. Yet he could find no other, for Angria's system of mixing the nationalities was cunningly devised to prevent any concerted schemes. If the attempt was to be made at all, it must be made with the men whom he knew intimately and with whom he had opportunities of discussing a plan.
But he was at once faced by the question of the Gujarati's trustworthiness. If there was any truth in Surendra Nath's suspicions, he would be quite ready to betray his fellows; and if looks and manner were any criterion, the suspicions were amply justified. True, the man had gained nothing by his former treachery, but that might not prevent him from repeating it, in the hope that a second betrayal would compel reward.
While Desmond was still pondering and puzzling, it happened one unfortunate day that Govinda the overseer was carried off within a few hours by what the Babu called the cramp--a disease now known as cholera. His place was immediately filled. But his successor was a very different man. He was not so capable as Govinda, and endeavored to make up for his incapacity by greater brutality and violence. The work of the yard fell off; he tried to mend matters by harrying the men. The whip and rattan were in constant use, but the result was less efficiency than ever, and he sought for the cause everywhere but in himself. The lives of the captives, bad enough before, became a continual torment.
Desmond fared no better than the rest. He lost the trifling privileges he had formerly enjoyed. The new overseer seemed to take a delight in bullying him. Many a night, when he returned to the shed, his back was raw where the lash had cut a livid streak through his thin dhoti. His companions suffered in common with him, Fuzl Khan more than any. For days at a time the man was incapacitated from work by the treatment meted out to him. Desmond felt that if the Gujarati had indeed purchased his life by betraying his comrades, he had made a dear bargain.
One night, when his eight companions were all asleep, and nothing could be heard but the regular calls of the sentries, the beating of tom toms in the town, and the howls of jackals prowling in the outskirts, Desmond gently woke the Babu.
"My friend, listen," he whispered, "I have something to say to you."
Surendra Nath turned over in his charpoy.
"Speak soft, I pray," he said.
"My head is on fire," continued Desmond. "I cannot sleep. I have been thinking. What is life worth to us? Can anything be worse than our present lot? Do you ever think of escape?"
"What good, sir? I have said so before. We are fettered; what can we do? There is but one thing that all men in our plight desire; that is death."
"Nonsense! I do not desire death. This life is hateful, but while we live there is something to hope for, and I for one am not content to endure lifelong misery. I mean to escape."
"It is easy to say, but the doing--that is impossible."
"How can we tell that unless we try? The men who tried to escape did not think it impossible. They might have succeeded--who can say?--if Fuzl Khan had not betrayed them."
"And he is still with us. He would betray us again."
"I am not sure of that. See what he has suffered! Today his whole body must have writhed with pain. But for the majum {a preparation of hemp} he has smoked and the plentiful ghi {clarified butter} we rubbed him with, he would be moaning now. I think he will be with us if we can only find out a way. You have been here longer than I; can not you help me to form a plan?"
"No, sahib; my brain is like running water. Besides, I am afraid. If we could get rid of our fetters and escape we might have to fight. I cannot fight; I am not a man of war; I am commercial."
"But you will help me if I can think of a plan?"
"I cannot persuade myself to promise, sahib. It is impossible. Death is the only deliverer."
Desmond was impatient of the man's lack of spirit. But he suffered no sign of his feeling to escape him. He had grown to have a liking for the Babu.
"Well, I shall not give up the idea," he said. "Perhaps I shall speak of it to you again."
Two nights later, in the dark and silent hours, Desmond reopened the matter. This time the conversation lasted much longer, and in the course of it the Babu became so much interested and indeed excited that he forgot his usual caution, and spoke in a high-pitched tone that woke the Biluchi on the other side. The man hurled abuse at the disturber of his repose, and Surendra Nath regained his caution and relapsed into his usual soft murmur. Desmond and he were still talking when the light of dawn stole into the shed; but though neither had slept, they went about their work during the day with unusual briskness and lightness of heart.
That evening, after the prisoners had eaten their supper in their respective eating rooms, they squatted against the outer wall of the shed for a brief rest before being locked up for the night. The Babu had promised to tell a story. The approaches to the yard were all guarded by the usual sentries, and in the distance could be heard the clanking of the warder's keys as he went from shed to shed performing his nightly office.
"The story! the story!" said one of the Marathas impatiently. "Why dost thou tarry, Babu?"
"I have eaten, Gousla, and when the belly is full the brain is sluggish. But the balance is adjusting itself, and in a little I will begin."
Through the farther gate came the warder. Desmond and his companions were the last with whom he had to deal. His keys jangling, he advanced slowly between two Marathas armed with matchlocks and two-edged swords.
The Babu had his back against the shed, the others were grouped about him, and at his left there was a vacant space. It was growing dusk.
"Hai, worthy jailer!" said Surendra Nath pleasantly, "I was about to tell the marvelous story of King Bhoya's golden throne. But I will even now check the stream at the source. Your time is precious. My comrades must wait until we get inside."
"Not so, Babu," said the warder gruffly. "Tell thy tale. Barik Allah, you nine are the last of my round. I will myself wait and hear, for thou hast a ready tongue, and the learning of a pundit {learned man, teacher}, Babu, and thy stories, after the day's work, are they not as honey poured on rice?"
"You honor me beyond my deserts. If you will deign to be seated!"
The warder marched to the vacant spot at the Babu's side, and squatted down, crossing his legs, his heavy bunch of keys lying on the skirt of his dhoti. The armed Marathas stood at a little distance, leaning on their matchlocks, within hearing of the Babu, and at spots where they could see anyone approaching from either end of the yard. It would not do for the warder to be found thus by the officer of the watch.
"It happened during the reign of the illustrious King Bhoya," began the Babu; then he caught his breath, looking strangely nervous.
"It is the heat, good jailer," he said hurriedly; "--of the illustrious King Bhoya, I said, that a poor ryot {peasant} named Yajnadatta, digging one day in his field, found there buried the divine throne of the incomparable King Vikramaditya. When his eyes were somewhat recovered from the dazzling vision, and he could gaze unblinking at the wondrous throne, he beheld that it was resplendent with thirty-two graven images, and adorned with a multitude of jewels: rubies and diamonds, pearls and jasper, crystal and coral and sapphires.
"Now the news of this wondrous discovery coming to the ears of King Bhoya, he incontinently caused the throne to be conveyed to his palace, and had it set in the midst of his hall of counsel that rose on columns of gold and silver, of coral and crystal. Then the desire came upon him to sit on this throne, and calling his wise men, he bade them choose a moment of good augury, and gave order to his servitors to make all things ready for his coronation. Whereupon his people brought curded milk, sandalwood, flowers, saffron, umbrellas, parasols, divers tails--tails of oxen, tails of peacocks; arrows, weapons of war, mirrors and other objects proper to be held by wedded women--all things, indeed, meet for a solemn festival, with a well-striped tiger skin to represent the seven continents of the earth; nothing was wanting of all the matters prescribed in the Shastras {holy books} for the solemn crowning of kings; and having thus fulfilled their duty, the servitors humbly acquainted his Majesty therewith. Then when the Guru {religious teacher}, the Purohita {hereditary priest of the royal house}, the Brahmans, the wise men, the councilors, the officers, the soldiers, the chief captain, had entered, the august King Bhoya drew near the throne, to the end that he might be anointed.
"But lo! the first of the carven figures that surrounded the throne thus spake and said: 'Harken, O King. That prince who is endowed with sovereign qualities; who shines before all others in wealth, in liberality, in mercy; who excels in heroism and in goodness; who is drawn by his nature to deeds of piety; who is full of might and majesty; that prince alone is worthy to sit upon this throne--no other, no meaner sovereign, is worthy. Harken, O King, to the story of the throne.'"
"Go on, Babu," said the jailer, as the narrator paused; "what said the graven image?"
"'There once lived,'" continued the Babu, "'in the city of Avanti, a king, Bartrihari by name. Having come to recognize the vanity of earthly things, this king one day left his throne and went as a jogi {ascetic} afar into the desert. His kingdom, being then without a head--for he had no sons, and his younger brother, the illustrious Vikramaditya, was traveling in far lands--fell into sore disorder, so that thieves and evildoers increased from day to day.
"'The wise men in their trouble sought diligently for a child having the signs of royalty, and in due time, having found one, Xatrya by name, they gave the kingdom into his charge. But in that land there dwelt a mighty jin {evil spirit}, Vetala Agni {spirit of fire}, who, when he heard of what the wise men had done, came forth on the night of the same day the young king had been enthroned and slew him and departed. And it befell that each time the councilors found a new king, lo, the Vetala Agni came forth and slew him.
"'Now upon a certain day, when the wise men, in sore trouble of heart, were met in council, there appeared among them the illustrious Vikramaditya, newly returned from long travel, who, when he had heard what was toward, said:
"'"O ye wise men and faithful, make me king without ado."
"'And the wise men, seeing that Vikramaditya was worthy of that dignity thus spake:
"'"From this day, O excellency, thou art king of the realm of Avanti."
"'Having in this fashion become king of Avanti, Vikramaditya busied himself all that day with the affairs of his kingdom, tasting the sweets of power; and at the fall of night he prepared, against the visit of the Vetala Agni, great store of heady liquors, all kinds of meat, fish, bread, confections, rice boiled with milk and honey, sauces, curded milk, butter refined, sandalwood, bouquets and garlands, divers sorts of sweet-scented things; and all these he kept in his palace, and himself remained therein, reclining in full wakefulness upon his fairest bed.
"'Then into this palace came the Vetala Agni, sword in hand, and went about to slay the august Vikramaditya. But the king said:
"'"Harken, O Vetala Agni; seeing that thy Excellency has come for to cause me to perish, it is not doubtful that thou wilt succeed in thy purpose; albeit, all these viands thou dost here behold have been brought together for thy behoof; eat, then, whatsoever thou dost find worthy; afterwards thou shalt work thy will."
"'And the Vetala Agni, having heard these words, filled himself with this great store of food, and, marvelously content with the king, said unto him:
"'"Truly I am content, and well disposed towards thee, and I give thee the realm of Avanti; sit thou in the highest place and taste its joys; but take heed of one thing: every day shalt thou prepare for me a repast like unto this."
"'With these words, the Vetala Agni departed from that spot and betook him into his own place.
"'Then for a long space did Vikramaditya diligently fulfill that command; but by and by, growing aweary of feeding the Vetala Agni, he sought counsel of the jogi Trilokanatha, who had his dwelling on the mount of Kanahakrita. The jogi, perceiving the manifold merits of the incomparable Vikramaditya, was moved with compassion towards him, and when he had long meditated and recited sundry mantras {hymns and prayers}, he thus spake and said:
"'"Harken, O King. From the sacred tank of Shakravatar spring alleys four times seven, as it were branches from one trunk, to wit, seven to the north, seven to the east, seven to the west, and seven to the south. Of the seven alleys springing to the north do you choose the seventh, and in the seventh alley the seventh tree from the sacred tank, and on the seventh branch of the seventh tree thou shalt find the nest of a bulbul. Within that nest thou shalt discover a golden key."'"
The Babu was now speaking very slowly, and an observer watching Desmond would have perceived that his eyes were fixed with a strange look of mingled eagerness and anxiety upon the storyteller. But no one observed this; every man in the group was intent upon the story, hanging upon the lips of the eloquent Babu.
"'Having obtained the golden key,'" continued the narrator, "'thou shalt return forthwith to thy palace, and the same night, when the Vetala Angi has eaten and drunk his fill, thou shalt in his presence lay the key upon the palm of thy left hand, thus--'" (here the Babu quietly took up a key hanging from the bunch attached to the warder's girdle, and laid it upon his left palm). "'Then shalt thou say to the Vetala:
"'"O illustrious Vetala, tell me, I pray thee, what doth this golden key unlock?"
"'Then if the aspect of the Vetala be fierce, fear not, for he must needs reply: such is the virtue of the key; and by his words thou shalt direct thy course. Verily it is for such a trial that the gods have endowed thee with wisdom beyond the common lot of men.
"'Vikramaditya performed in all points the jogi's bidding; and having in the presence of the Vetala laid the golden key upon the palm of his hand, a voice within bade him ask the question:
"'"O Vetala, what art thou apt to do? What knowest thou?"
"'And the Vetala answered:
"'"All that I have in my mind, that I am apt to perform. I know all things."
"'And the king said:
"'"Speak, then; what is the number of my years?"
"'And the Vetala answered:
"'"The years of thy life are a hundred."
"'Then said the king:
"'"I am troubled because in the tale of my years there are two gaps; grant me, then, one year in excess of a hundred, or from the hundred take one."
"'And the Vetala answered:
"'"O King, thou art in the highest degree good, liberal, merciful, just, lord of thyself, and honored of gods and of Brahmans; the measure of joys that are ordained to fill thy life is full; to add anything thereto, to take anything therefrom, are alike impossible."
"'Having heard these words, the king was satisfied, and the Vetala departed unto his own place.
"'Upon the night following the king prepared no feast against the