The Rendezvous and Other Stories

by Patrick O'Brian

  When he had disentangled his cast and line he began to examine the altered bank, so that he should know the new lie of the pool another day. Huge slices of spongy black earth had been undercut and lay at the bottom with their long grass streaming. One slice had not quite parted; it hung with a deep wide crack between it and the still solid land. Woollen pushed it with his foot and it went over, quite slowly, with a watery sough. The water was shallow under it, and the black earth lay half awash. Woollen was still looking vacantly at it when there was a slight rumble – tremor rather than sound – under his feet and a great stone slab fell flatlings into the thin water and mud, scattering them far out across the pool. Immediately after there was an indescribable rushing noise as a hundred thousand gold coins gushed on to the slab piling up like wheat, cascading, flowing, flowing. All at once the gush stopped: one last coin rolled down, slid down the side of the pile and rang on the stone.

  Woollen had not moved. His breath suspended, his hand to his mouth; his throat was stiff, could not swallow, and his heart was doing strange things even before his reason had grasped the reality of what was before him.

  Two things stabbed into his mind: one the word ‘escape’ and a thousand implications behind it, the other the dreadfulness of the coins on the far side dribbling down to irrecoverable loss in the deep water. With a violent, epileptic jerk he leapt to rescue them. There was no need: they lay in a few inches of water on the side of a turf that had gone in before. The surprising chill of the water checked him, and he stood there gasping, with his sense coming back. Bending, he peered under the dark bank: the earth had fallen away from a stone chest buried deep in the mound; three sides of it and its lid still stood there, canted outwards by long subsidence to such a degree that no single coin remained. The fourth side and a long sliver of flawed stone from the bottom of the chest had fallen under the immense weight of the gold. His mind digested this while he drew breath, and at once he was back with one foot on the bank and the other on the stone slab, saying, ‘Easy now, old Woollen. Steady does it,’ and picking up gold with both hands. He worked with immense speed at first, but as his natural phlegm began to reassert itself even in the smallest degree he arranged them in neat piles, counting as he did so.

  His first wild flurry of spirits, painful in its intensity, calmed, to be succeeded by an all-embracing happiness. This vast hoard was his. He had not the first glimmering of a doubt there. Plans formed and reformed with lightning rapidity in his head; he lost count of the hundreds. He came up on to the bank among the piles to count again, and he suddenly found himself trembling with weariness.

  The sun came out, and the gold sent back its light, not a coin but what was brilliant; no tarnish, no obscuring dust. Woollen sat among the heaps, passing the gold through his hands. It was not Armada gold, as he had expected; there were a few Roman aurei, some Greek staters, among them coins of a beauty that struck him even then, and a mass of thick, unintelligible rounds that he supposed to be Oriental. There was no silver, no bronze. Gold; all gold.

  He knew that he could not possibly carry a tenth part of it, and while he was weighing in his mind the ways of dealing with it he was possessed with the idea that he might already have been seen – some lurker in an illicit still, some chance wandering youth in the mountainside. He did not ever suppose that there might be other things in the valley watching him, measuring his breath, weighing his shadows: silent things like a round bank of fern or a crag at a vantage point, incessantly recording, communicating with each other, collating, storing up.

  There were stills in the neighbourhood, he knew very well. The gleam of the hoard – how it flashed and shone; it would catch a man’s eye five miles away. With a chill on his soul he covered some with his coat, strewed the broken tangle over more, tore up bushes to cover the rest. He stared searchingly at the mountains, down the two ridges; there was no movement, only a kestrel hanging in the wind. The valley behind him was empty.

  ‘I must not dig. They would see the marks …’ His mind’s voice trailed off in an anguish of frustration. Illumination came: he sprang down into the water again and tore lumps from the fallen earth. Then leaning under the still overhanging bank to the great chest he levelled its floor with clods, piled it high with gold, built up a wall of stones and turf to serve for the fallen sides, and crammed the chest again. The slab, lest it should draw notice, he moved with a strength that he had never known before, and plunged it into the deep swirling middle water.

  Some gold remained, enough to buy half the County Mayo. He dug among the bushes, in spite of his fear; he dug with his hands and slashed the roots with his knife. There was little trace when he had done. By now his mind was running fast and clear. ‘I will go over to Ballyatha,’ he said, ‘and I will sell four or five at Power’s there. Then I will buy some decent clothes and have dinner at the Connaught. To-morrow I will send some to the big London dealers, and when I have the money …’ There were so many possible variations that his mind stumbled in a happy indecision.

  He was ready. A dozen very thick coins weighed down the pockets of his coat. The sun was well down the sky but if he hurried he could reach Ballyatha in time. It was clearly essential that he should not be cheated of one day’s happiness; it was less clear how getting to Ballyatha affected the safety of everything, but he was entirely certain that it did. The way was over the pass between Slieve Donagh and Ardearg, right up the valley and over the curtain of rock that closed its upper end. A chasm, not six feet wide – a man could touch each side with outstretched arms – and twenty yards long formed the pass, and below it on the far side was the town.

  There was no path: he toiled upwards with his eyes fixed on the skyline. When he had gone a quarter of a mile he spun round, ran in long bounds downhill to the water, to the chest, grasped handfuls of gold, stuffed his pockets, his trout-bag, hurled the fish away. Then, breathing in great uneven gasps, he turned his face to the pass again and forced his labouring body up and up, on for ever, always uphill and the short grass slippery like glass.

  He must get there in time, everything depended on it. The weight was more than he could bear and the pass was infinitely high above. The sun hurried down. Woollen, the unfortunate man in all his days, pressed on and on, and still the everlasting hill stretched above and beyond him. A despairing glance over his shoulder at the sun as it dipped made him stumble and fall. The wind chilled his soaking body. On and on: not to look up: on, on, on. He did look up, and the pass in the dusk was before him.

  But in the pass he met the keeper of the hoard.

  The Dawn Flighting

  THE NIGHT WAS OLD, black, and full of driving cold rain; the moon and the stars had already passed over the sky. But anyhow they had been hidden since midnight by the low, racing, torn cloud and the flying wetness of small rain and sea-foam and the whipped-off top of standing water. Dawn was still far away: from the dark east the mounting wind blew in gusts; it bore more rain flatlings from the sea.

  Bent double, with the breath caught from his mouth, a man struggled against the force of the living wind. He walked on the top of a sea-wall that guarded the reclamation of a great marsh. At this point the wall ran straight into the teeth of the wind for a long way; there was no shelter. He had to walk carefully, for the mud had not frozen yet, and it was treacherous going. Behind him his dog, an old black Labrador, picked its way, whining in a little undertone to itself when the way was very dirty.

  A great blast came, halting him in mid-stride; he staggered and stepped back to keep his balance. The dog’s paw came under his heel and there was a yelp, but he heard nothing of it for the roaring of the wind. He leaned against it, and it bore him up with a living resilience, suddenly slackening, so that he stumbled again. The false step jerked a grunt out of him.

  Thrusting his chin down into the scarf under his high-buttoned collar and shifting the weight of his gun, the man pushed on. All his mind was taken up with his fight; every long, firm step was a victory in little. The hardness of his
way and the unceasing clamour at his ears had taken away every other thought. He was hardly aware of the places where the driven wet had pierced through, above his knees, down one side of his neck, and on his shoulder where the strap of his cartridge-bag crossed over. Earlier on he had been irked by the weight of the bag and by the drag of the gun in the crook of his arm, but now he did not heed them at all; the wind was the single, embracing enemy.

  At last the sea-wall turned right-handed, running along the south face of the saltings. At the corner he stooped and slid on all fours down the steep side into the lee. At once it seemed to him that some enormous machine had stopped; in the quiet air he breathed freely, and sighed as he squatted in the mud. The Labrador shook itself and thrust its muzzle into his relaxed hand. Absently the man felt for its ears, but the dog was insistent; the custom must be fulfilled. When he had changed the hang of the strap on his aching shoulder the man searched under his macintosh among the scarves and pullovers for an inner pocket; he found half a biscuit and his pipe. The flare of the match in his cupped hands showed his face momentarily, in flashes, as he sucked the flame down; it showed disembodied in the darkness, high cheekbones and jutting nose thrown into distorted prominence. The foul pipe bubbled, but the acrid tobacco was instantly satisfying; he drew and inhaled deeply for a few moments.

  ‘Well, that’s the first leg,’ he said to the dog as he got up. He went on under the lee of the sea-wall, walking heavily in the deep, uneven mud. Further on there was a place where he had to leave the wall to strike across the marsh for a stretch of open fresh water: there was only one path that led to the mere. At this time of the year the marsh was impassable except by this track, for the land-water had deepened the mud so that a man could sink out of sight in it almost before he knew he was in danger.

  Anxiously he counted the time that he had taken walking along the southern wall; if he missed the path he would not get across the marsh for the dawn flighting. He crossed an old, broken sea-wall that joined the other, and he knew that he was near the path. When he climbed to the top of the wall to look for the three posts that would give him his bearings he felt an abatement in the wind: it blew less furiously, but it was colder now – certainly freezing. A flurry of sleet stung his cheek. The wind was veering to the north-north-east. He found the posts and the track; he was glad, for it was easy to miss in the dark, when all that could be seen looked strange, even monstrous.

  The dog went before him now, finding out the tortuous way: sometimes a single bending plank led through the deep reed-beds, loud in the wind: treading on the planks stirred the marsh smell. Once there was a rush of wings, and desolate voices fled away piping in the darkness. They were redshanks or some kind of tukes – inedible, and his half-raised gun sank.

  Now the wind was at his back; it was blowing itself out in great gusts. A thin film of ice was skimming the top of the puddles, and a more querulous note sang through the reeds. He looked over his shoulder, scanning the eastern sky for the first cold light: there seemed to be a lessening in the darkness, nothing more. He pushed on faster: the way was a little easier now.

  Presently large dim shapes came up out of the blind murk before him; they were the trees surrounding the mere. He stopped to take his bearings again, and then he went on cautiously. The ground rose a little; there were brambles and patches of alder, laced through and through with rabbit tracks. Ahead a buck-rabbit thrummed the earth, and three white scuts bobbed away. Very carefully the man came through the undergrowth among the trees: a flick of his thumb and finger brought his dog in to heel. There might well be duck down on the water. Choosing his steps and crouching low in the bushes and then in the reeds, the man slipped down the bank, down the sheltered way, and crept secretly into the butt of cut reeds at the pond’s edge.

  After a little listening pause he stood slowly up, holding his breath and staring with wide-opened eyes through the shoulder-high reeds. Still a little bent, he peered intently over the water. There were no duck; only a little grebe swam and dived unwitting on the mere. He slowly relaxed, and sat down on the rough, unsteady plank stool in the butt.

  He stretched and shook himself, for he was still desperately tired from getting up at two o’clock in the morning, and his eyes prickled. He looked to his gun, wiped a clot of mud from its barrels, and propped it carefully in the corner of the butt by his cartridge bag; he was warm now in the shelter of the reeds, and he settled himself comfortably to wait for the dawn flight of the wild duck.

  Now that he was in the butt, time seemed to begin again: for the whole of the way out across the marsh it had stopped. He had been trying to race the dawn – quite another thing. By and by he pulled out a packet of bread and cheese, with an apple against thirst, for the marsh water was sulphurous and brackish. He ate bite for bite with the dog, but absently, with his senses on the stretch.

  By imperceptible degrees the sky lightened, so that when he looked again he could see halfway across the water. The lake had formerly been a decoy: the hoops for the duck-pipes still showed in the overgrown channels, and a cottage, half-sunk and unroofed, marked where the wild-fowlers had kept their gear.

  He was unready, for all his vigilance, when the first duck passed over: one hand was scrabbling in his pouch, the other holding his pipe. With his unlighted pipe in his mouth and his gun in his hands, he listened again: the sound was high above, a sound hard to convey. There was a creaking in it, and a whistling. His ears followed the sound, and the dog stared up into the dim quarter-light. The noise circled round the mere twice, coming lower. Mallard they were, by the sound, and they were coming down. The butt stood on a spit of land with the length of the pond lying out on each side, so that the duck would come in across. He stood with his back to the wind, jiggling his forehand nervously and biting hard on the stem of his pipe. Down, and up again: he caught a glimpse of them, five mallard. They came round lower, the flight-note changed and they braced hard against the wind to land. Up went the gun and his fingers poised delicately round the triggers. The sound of wings rushed closer: he saw the duck, picked the right-hand bird, steadied, and fired, swinging his second barrel into them as they crossed so quickly that the two tongues of flame stabbed the darkness almost at the same moment. There was a splash in front of him, then a threshing in the water. His hands, working of themselves, broke the gun and thrust new cartridges into the smoking breech. He stared up, waiting for the duck to circle overhead, but they swung wide out of range, and he heard them go. The Labrador stood rigid, ears pointing: Fetch, he said, and the dog flung itself into the water. It was back in a minute with the mallard held gently at the shoulder. Stooping, he let the dog put it into his hand, and as he straightened a disturbed sheldrake passed over, gruntling as it flew. It circled the mere twice and came down with a long splash: he had caught a glimpse of the breadth of its wings and had heard its small noise, for the wind was dying now, and he was nearly sure that it was a sheldrake. The bird swam close to the butt, safe in its uneatable rankness, so close that he could see the nob on its beak: he was glad to see it, for it would bring the other duck down.

  He lit his pipe, crouching in the bottom of the butt, with his head on one side for the sound of wings. Presently they came, a flight of mallard, and above them, close behind, half a dozen sharp-winged widgeon. The mallard came straight down, sweeping right across in front of the butt with their wings held against the wind and their bodies almost upright; they tore up the water, each making a distinct tearing sound, and settled at the far end of the decoy. At once they changed from things of the wind to earth-bound, quacking ducks, awkward and lumpish in the water. The widgeon, more wary, went round high and fast: they seemed to suspect something, but the duck on the water reassured them, and they dropped down, slipping sideways down through the air on stiff, decurved wings, on the one slant and then on the other, like aeroplanes that have come in too high.

  They came straight at the butt, as if to skim over it and land the other side. As he brought his gun up for the difficul
t shot they saw him and lifted: he fired at once. The first barrel jerked the bird a yard higher and clipped feathers from its wing; the second missed altogether. With a loud and rushing noise, the mallard got up. He stared impassively after the flying widgeon, not allowing himself any emotion, for he was a choleric man, and if he let himself start to kick and swear he might carry on and spoil his whole morning with rage, as he had done before.

  Automatically he re-loaded, sniffing the sharp, sweet powder smell: the mallard wheeled back over the pond. He took a chance shot at the lowest and winged it. It came down in a long slope into the brushwood on the other side of the decoy. The dog went after it, but could not reach it, for the bird was in a tall, dense thicket of brambles. The dog came back after a long time and stood bowing in deprecation: the air was quite still now, and the mallard could be heard moving over on the other side. He cast a look round the low bowl of the sky, now almost white, and saw no birds: he walked quickly round the mere, for he hated to leave a wounded bird for any length of time. The brambles ripped through to his flesh, but he got the duck and gripped it by the neck. A strong pull, and the bird jerked convulsively and died.

  He looked up: three widgeon were coming over, high and fast, with their pointed wings sounding clear. He flung himself on his back in the rushes. They were right over his head as he raised his gun: the movement was plain, in spite of the rushes, and they lifted high. It was too long a shot, but he fired his choke barrel at the middle bird, making great allowance ahead. The bird seemed to fold, to collapse in the air: it fell like a plummet and hit the ground a yard from his feet so hard that he felt it strike. He stared at the duck with an unconscious grin of pleasure; for it was a wonderfully long shot. He picked it up and smoothed its beautiful ruffled breast with his finger. With a sudden, unforeseen leap, the widgeon came back to life; it almost sprang from his loose hands. He killed it and went back to the butt.