*CHAPTER IX*
*CLOSE QUARTERS*
"Ah, Monsieur Jack!" said De Fronsac, with his agreeable smile; "I seeyou!" Jack laughed. It was only the Frenchman after all! His fear thatit might be a smuggler was groundless.
"Yes; I'm too black for a ghost; 'tis a confoundedly dirty place,Monsieur. But how do you come here?"
"It is ver' simple, ver' simple indeed. I came out in de early morning,to promenade myself, and to compose a new sonnet on de Monstair. Behold!Vat do I see? De trap-door of dis tower is open; and, vat isdis?--assuredly I see steps mounting up to de very sommit. I amromantic, as you know, Monsieur; I love de bizarre. Can I venturemyself? Dat old Congleton--vat a strange, an eccentric! I vould liketo see de place vere he lived so solitaire. I climb; I have a littlefear; but I make de ascension; I arrive. Ho! Dis, den, is de place.Vat a magnificent spot for to compose poesy! How beautiful de spectacleover de blue, blue sea! Magnificent! Glorious! Old Congleton had agenius, hein? But you, Monsieur Jack, how came you here?"
"The same way as you, Monsieur."
"Ah! remarkable! You do not compose poesy in de early morning! You, It'ink--and your good cousin t'inks--you sail on de blue, blue sea. Desteps, too; surely dey are new. Never have I observed dem before. Itis remarkable! Old Congleton--did he ascend de tower in dat manner? Orperhaps de steps are your vork; you invent dem, Monsieur Jack?"
"No," said Jack shortly. He had never liked De Fronsac's smile.
"Den of whom? Who invent dem? Dey demand much care and skill; yes, andindustry. And for vat good to spend so much time? It vould be easier tovalk up de stairs--if de door is open, of course dat is understood. Buttruly it is more romantic--it has more of de fun, as you English say, tomount on de outside, on little steps, from hand to foot, vun may say.Yes, and if in my youth I had not lived much among de sailors of mylittle village, assuredly I should not have had de courage to make anattempt so perilous. Ve sailors, indeed, have de firm leg, de fixedeye."
De Fronsac's eye was certainly fixed--on Jack, who had an uncomfortablefeeling that the Frenchman was not only trying to find out from hismanner what he had discovered, but was talking to gain time. He wasresolving to cut the interview short, when De Fronsac, turning roundsuddenly, appeared to catch sight for the first time of the kegs.
"Ah! Voila! Ve have it! Dose barrels Monsieur Jack--you see dem? Deyare put dere vizout doubt by dese smogglairs. Ah! de rascals!Certainly ve must tell your good cousin, Monsieur Bastable. He villknow de means to take. He vill come, and take an inventaire. Certainlydat is vat ve must do. You come viz me; ve both tell him; ve go atvunce."
"Very well," said Jack. "We'll go down. Will you go first?"
"I t'ink better you."
"But I opened the trap-door. You won't know how to shut it. You gofirst and I'll see that it is properly closed."
"Ver' vell. It is a good idea."
De Fronsac accordingly stepped on to the rope-ladder, and descended witha rapidity that seemed to show he had indeed had no little experienceamongst seamen. Jack followed, closed the trap-door, and, as he wentdown, threw the iron steps one by one to the ground, where the Frenchmanstood awaiting him.
"Now vat shall ve do viz dem?" asked De Fronsac, when Jack stood besidehim. "It vas you dat discovered dem, Monsieur Jack. It is to you todecide vat ve do. It is right. You vill get great honor viz MonsieurBastable, and de Lor' Lieutenant, I t'ink you call de great man of decounty."
Jack did not wish to return the steps to their original hiding-place.It would be better, he thought, to hide them among the bushes.Accordingly with De Fronsac's assistance he carried them into thethicket, and concealed them under a heap of dead leaves.
"Now ve go to de Grange?" said the Frenchman.
"Yes. We shall be rather early; Mr. Bastable will not be up yet."
He intended to keep De Fronsac in sight until he had an opportunity ofsending a messenger to the boat for a number of men to remove the kegs.He did not feel sure that the Frenchman's visit to the tower was soaccidental as he declared; and a bird in the hand was worth two in thebush.
They made their way through the undergrowth. With the frost the treeshad now lost nearly all their leaves, which thickly covered the grass.Jack led the way, the Frenchman following a yard or two behind,maintaining a running fire of small talk, to which Jack replied with anoccasional monosyllable. On the edge of the Hollow they entered a densecopse; there was a sudden rustle, and half a dozen rough-clad men withblackened faces sprang from behind the trees. Jack's hand flew to hisbreast-pocket where he kept his pistol, but before he could draw it, DeFronsac caught his arm, crying:
"Save me, Monsieur Jack, save me!"
In spite of his apparent alarm, his grasp was so firm that Jack wasquite unable to draw his weapon.
"Let me go!" he cried angrily, trying to shake himself free. But DeFronsac clung to him still more desperately, repeating his cry "Saveme!" In another moment the men were upon him. Then at last theFrenchman let go his hold, and Jack found himself in the grip of twostalwart fishers. He struggled violently, but in vain, and in a fewseconds more he was lying on the ground securely gagged and bound.
Then his eyes were bandaged, he was blindfolded, lifted, and carriedrapidly for some distance. When he was set down and the bandage removedfrom his eyes, he saw that he was in an underground chamber, dimly litthrough a barred grating in the roof. He tried to speak, but his wordswere choked by the gag.
"Now you listen to me," said one of the men, whose voice he thought herecognized. "'Taint no good shouting or struggling. We've got ye firm,Mr. Hardy, king's officer though ye be. So long as you give us notrouble you'll take no harm. I'm gwine to ease that there gag; but ifyou shout, I'll clap it on again and keep it there. That's plain. Notthat it be any good shouting, for there's never a soul hereabout but themen who'll guard ye."
Jack was not so foolish as to spend his strength and his breathuselessly. He saw that he was helpless, and mentally vowed to be evenwith De Fronsac at the first opportunity. Suspicious before, he nowfelt certain that the Frenchman had deliberately trapped him, though hewas amazed to find that the poetical tutor was a smuggler.
He remained throughout the day in the under-ground room, guarded all thetime by one man, who sat by the grating and refused to be drawn into anytalk. He was given some bread and cheese, and spirits and water todrink; and he spent the long hours in wondering what was to become ofhim, and in relishing beforehand the punishment he meant to administerto De Fronsac some day. To think of escape was vain; the men hadevidently brought him down by a ladder, which they had drawn up whenthey left, closing and bolting the trap-door.
Who were they? Jack wondered. What was their real connection with DeFronsac? What would they do with him? What would Babbage and the menat the boat do when he did not return? What steps would LieutenantBlake take when he found, as he must soon do, that his midshipman wasmissing? There was no doubt that the smugglers would promptly removethe kegs and the signaling apparatus from the Folly, and they would haveplenty of time to get clear away before the boat's crew becamesuspicious.
Late in the afternoon, as Jack guessed by the dimness of the lightthrough the grating, he heard voices above. A heavy object was droppedon the floor; the trap-door was lifted, a ladder let down, and three mendescended into the room.
"You be coming along of us," said the man who had before addressed him.
"Look here, whoever you are--" Jack began; but he said no more, for thegag was roughly thrust into his mouth, he was once more blindfolded, andtaken up the ladder. Then he was lifted from the floor and lowered intowhat he judged to be a large empty water-butt.
"Double up your knees, Mr. Hardy," said the man. "You be going a littlejourney."
There was no help for it. Jack feeling, as he afterward said, like atrussed turkey, sat crouching in the butt. The top was hammered on.Then the butt was lifted, carried a few st
eps, and hoisted on to a cart,which rumbled away. Jack was more angry than alarmed; the men evidentlyintended him no harm, or they would have knocked him on the head beforethis; but a water-butt, even though holes have been bored in its sidesto let in air, is not the most comfortable of vehicles, and Jack wasbeginning to feel cramped and bruised and half-stifled when the cartstopped. The butt was lowered, not too gently; Jack was pretty wellshaken up. But his former experience was pleasant compared with hissensations when the butt was rolled round and round on its lower edge,as he had seen draymen rolling barrels of beer. His head fairly swam bythe time the teetotum movement ceased.
Then he heard voices again, and the creaking of tackle.
"I'm at the shore," he thought. "Surely they're not going to set meafloat!" The idea of going adrift in a water-butt made him feelseasick, till he remembered that it was impossible; the butt would fillwith water, and if they wished to drown him they would not have taken somuch trouble.
"Why, 'Zekiel," he heard a man say, "was your tub leaking?"
"A trifle, but we've bunged it up; 'tis all shipshape and seaworthynow."
"'Tis mortal heavy, blamed if 'tisn't."
"Course it is; 'tis well-nigh full."
Two or three low chuckles followed this sentence. Then the butt wasrolled up what seemed to be a gradual incline, and dropped a foot or twowith a bump that set Jack's bones clashing.
"I'm on a boat," he thought, "this is a voyage of adventure. Wish togoodness I could knock the top off this cage of mine and get a littleair."
As if in answer to his wish, a few minutes later, when he felt by themotion that the boat was putting out to sea, the lid was knocked off,the gag removed, and he drew a long breath of relief.
"I say, you men," he said, in a husky voice that sounded like that of astranger, "undo my eyes and hands, and let me out."
There was no answer. He remained in his cramped and uncomfortablequarters for some hours, his repeated requests to be taken out passingunheeded. He began to feel very low-spirited. His body ached all over;his hands were still bound; and the butt was so narrow that he couldhardly shift his position by an inch. His chief feeling was no longerrage against De Fronsac, but an intense longing to stretch himself. Andthen, strange as it appeared to him, he began to feel sleepy.
He was wakened from a half-doze by a loud hail, answered by a fainterone from a distance. A few seconds later he was released from the butt,and lowered, still bound, over the side of the vessel into a smallerboat. The boat did not go far; after a few strokes of the oars Jackfelt a slight bump; he was unceremoniously hoisted again; and when atlast his eyes and hands were unbound, and he had recovered the use ofhis sight, he found himself on board a lugger, whose crew had theswarthy faces and red caps of French fishermen. Greetings wereexchanged between the men of the two vessels; then the French luggermade sail and stood out into mid-channel.
Jack was too much relieved at having recovered his freedom to mind wherehe was going. For a time he had not even the curiosity to ask; it wasquite enough to breathe freely, and use his eyes and stretch his limbs.But night was drawing on, and when a meager supper was brought to him heasked in French for what port the vessel was making.
"No port, Monsieur," replied the man with a grin.
"Well, what place, then?"
"Where the captain commands, Monsieur."
"And where does the captain command? Speak out, man."
"Only the captain knows, Monsieur."
Jack gave it up. The man's answers were perfectly polite, but it wasevident he had received orders to tell nothing. Jack was taken belowand made fairly comfortable. When morning dawned and he was allowed togo on deck there was no land in sight. But about midday a coast-linecame into view, and in the evening, after beating about for hours, astrong land wind keeping the lugger off shore, the skipper managed torun into a little cove beneath high cliffs. It was a wild part of theNorman coast; there were no dwellings where the lugger ran ashore; andJack had to tramp for several miles among the Frenchmen, over a roughroad, before they arrived at a little fishing hamlet. Here he had toshare a pallet bed in the auberge with one of the fishermen, two othersoccupying a similar bed at the other side of the room.
Jack and his bedfellow both found it difficult to sleep, and theFrenchman proved more loquacious than any of the others. He could speakno English save a few words, and his French was so broad a dialect thatJack, who knew little French at the best, was often at a loss tounderstand him. But he understood enough to learn that he had been keptin an underground chamber near the Hollow until the time came when aboat might put off, ostensibly for night fishing, really to convey theprisoner to the French lugger, the whereabouts of which would be knownto the Luscombe smugglers. He had been carried on board the boat fromthe cart openly at Luscombe quay.
"Whose boat was it?"
"It was to a man--Monsieur might know him--who calls himself Goujon."
"No, I don't know anybody of that name. Who is he?"
"He is Goujon; that is all."
"Is he a fisherman? What is he like?"
"I have never seen him, Monsieur. For myself, I have never put foot toland in England. But the captain knows him; ah, yes! the captain knowsGoujon."
And Jack at last went to sleep, wondering who Goujon could be.
Jack Hardy: A Story of English Smugglers in the Days of Napoleon Page 9