First thing first, we set about our food. It is marvellous how a hungry stomach makes for lowness of spirit, and conversely, how a nourishing meal can set a man up. By the time our pie had gone, we had decided to try The White Hart that very night. If Billy had left a trace there, nothing would be gained by waiting for tomorrow.
The night was dark outside, no moon and little light coming from the crowded, leaning buildings. We started out down the cobbles, trying our best to avoid the puddles and rubbish in the street. It was very quiet. Not even a cat gave life to the deadness around us.
There occur in the affairs of men, very infrequently in a life-time, occasions when Providence seems to balance the whole course of a life on the edge of a knife. An inch, a second, a shilling more or less, and a man follows one road rather than another. Thus beggars may be made into great lords, future kind fathers into condemned felons, milk-maids into ladies. One of these occasions enveloped us on that dark street.
The first thing that happened was that my shoe-lace came undone. I crouched to tie it, and Caspar walked on whistling one of his old army marches. He had gone, I suppose, some ten yards in front of me when his whistling was cut off by several burly men jumping on him out of a narrow entry. As I stayed crouched in surprise, they quickly and efficiently secured his arms and immobilised him.
The press gang! I had yet to move when their leader ordered, “Thomas, get the other one.” Then to Caspar, “No you don’t, cully! King George has you now.” As Caspar was cursing and attempting to break free, three or four of the sailors started towards me. Too late. With fear lending wings to my feet, I ran back up the road and into Worthy’s like a rabbit fleeing into its burrow.
As I ran panting down the corridor to the tap-room, I met Jenny hurrying towards the kitchen with an empty tray. “Hey, watch yourself,” she complained. “What’s up with you?”
“The press gang’s outside. They’ve taken Caspar.”
Jenny set her tray against the wall and ran back to the tap-room with me on her heels. “Mr. Worthy,” she called in a voice that set the whole room listening. “The press is outside and they’ve taken this boy’s friend.”
A silence fell on the room as each occupant thought of his own possible future. “Don’t worry, lads,” said Worthy. “They won’t come in here. Now, boy, have you got any money?”
I did not understand his question. “How much?” I asked foolishly.
“Two guineas, maybe three,” he said. “Speak up now. If you don’t have it we shall have to have a whip round.” Voices around the room murmured in assent, as the light slowly dawned on me. He was intending to ransom Caspar.
“No, no. I have it,” I said, my hand going without thought to my purse.
“Don’t give it to me yet,” Worthy said. “Jenny, take one of the other girls and go after them. Where were they, boy?”
I stumbled out the directions with Jenny listening and she turned and ran from the room calling for a friend. Without pausing to take a shawl, they could be heard leaving at the front door.
“Now just you sit there, my lad,” said Worthy. “Jenny will get him free, if anyone can. Give him a grog.” I sat with my grog in my hand, still stunned by the rapidity with which events had unfolded. All the time a refrain ran through my head, ‘saved by a shoe-lace, saved by a shoe-lace’. For if my shoe-lace had not come undone, I would that very night have started life as a sailor on one of His Majesty’s great ships, and in all probability would have ended my days as such. Can you imagine what a difference that would have made? You would not have been at all, and I would not be caring for my parish. All for a shoe-lace.
Waiting for Jenny to return was a slow job, and it seemed as if more than an hour had passed before, chilled to the marrow, she came back to the tap-room. Silence fell as all around listened to her news. She told us that Caspar had been brought to the street outside, and that the men were waiting for their ransom. I followed her to the door. Worthy and I stood just inside while she went out with three of our precious guineas. Caspar stood between two sailors, large men with tarred pig-tails. He looked a little sheepish and held up his breeches with one hand. (It is the custom of the press gang to cut a man’s belt and waistband to impede his running away.) Jenny stood to one side as the men released him, and then handed over what seemed to be two guineas.
I did not care. So pleased was I to see Caspar smiling again that I did not grudge her a guinea for her work. She had the grace to blush a little when I winked at her just to let her understand I knew. For the rest of our stay she was most attentive, especially to Caspar whom she treated much as a mother might.
In the tap-room Caspar was welcomed by all. Grog was sent to our table, another portion of pie, and strangers came to sit and take tobacco with us. Soon what could have been a very nasty adventure faded behind us. As the grog flowed freely, we began to relax rather more than Long John would have approved, so when some of the tables called for songs, we were ready to join in the merriment. Ballads and songs of the sea were tossed from table to table, the better singers leading us on until, inevitably, the turn came round to us.
As you know I am not much of a hand at singing, not even hymns, and Caspar was worse than I. However, it would have been grossly impolite not to have stood our turn and Caspar, still holding his breeches, finally stood and sang.
We had been a long time away from England and knew none of the new songs. Deserted by his old army tunes, Caspar turned to the shanty that we used at the capstan bars of the Walrus.
Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest,
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.
Drink and the Devil has done for the rest
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum
That terrible old song was unfamiliar to the rest of the room, but they soon picked up the refrain. Their yo-ho-ho’s made the rafters ring. I was also doing my best to make the roof shake when I caught Worthy giving me a strange look.
When the singing had passed on, he came over. “Your shipmate,” he asked, “The old man you were asking for, he’d know that song of yours? And he’s a tall man with a cut here,” marking his left cheek with his finger. “Old blue coat, pig-tail, a deal of white hair in his nose, am I right?”
We sat up sharply. Billy at last. “Yes, yes,” we cried. “That’s him. Do you know where he is?”
Worthy seemed not to hear. “I recall him, now. Sat right over there, he did. With…who was it now? Tom Brierly, I believe. No, there’s no use looking for him. Tom’s only here now and again. He’s in and out of France mostly, and he was here only a couple of nights back. I believe your friend stayed here just one night. Came down here to sup, took his grog and sang that song, just as you did. Then he was off next day.”
So we retired for the night with some sense of elation. At least we had found a step on the road Billy had taken. The night had taken its toll of our energy and we slept heavily.
The morning made things look worse rather than better. True, we had found a trace of Billy, but only of where he had been. Not of where he was bound, and that is what we needed to know. True we were safe and free rather than marching down to the sea with other pressed men, but our stock of guineas had taken a hard knock.
We ate breakfast in a corner of the tap-room, by a window looking out over the roof-tops towards the river. The room was quiet, the handful of guests being very subdued after excesses of the night. Jenny was there again, bringing our bread and bacon, and we took a little of her time to ask again about Billy. She half remembered him now, but had not spoken to him. Caspar finally hit on the key to progress.
“Our shipmate,” he said, “our Billy, probably had a sea-chest along with him. Now I don’t see him carrying it all the way up into town to catch a stage-coach, nor even down to the river to take a boat. So what did he do? He must have found himself a porter, that’s what. Now if you were sitting here and wanted a porter, what would you do? You’d ask Jenny, that’s what.”
We called Jenny over again and exp
lained the idea. Her female curiosity was becoming aroused and she began to take a real interest in our quest. “There’s only one man we use here, and that’s John Thomas. I’ll go for him.”
She returned quickly with a small square man in tow. We invited him to sit with us and Jenny brought him a mug of small beer. At first he gave no help at all. No, he could not recall anyone of that stamp, and he was sure he would remember if he had moved a sea-chest. He did not take a sea-chest every day. Then he stopped and thought.
“When did you say it was? Now, then. That explains it. I was away visiting friends about that time,” he said firmly.
Jenny shrieked with laughter. “He was taken drunk,” she said. “And spent a week locked up. Visiting friends!” She was giggling with delight.
“That was it,” John Thomas went on without embarrassment. “So I was. And my nephew Johnny was doing the work for me.”
“I believe I remember now.” Jenny was excited. “Go and get him quick. I’m sure he took a sea-chest one day along with a couple of empty herring kegs for Mr. Worthy.”
“No call for that,” said John Thomas, lifting his mug. “He’s gone to Crediton with his Dad today. His Dad’s a carter, you know. They left in the dark to be back today. I expect he’ll be in before night. I’ll send him round as soon as he’s done the horses.”
I’ve heard it said that the hardest thing for a hunter of wild animals to do is to wait. And as hunters of men, we found the same. We had before us a whole day with nothing to do. To stretch our legs, and let the girls get on with the cleaning, we walked up to the town. With time weighing heavily on us and no money to waste, we walked up one side of the main street staring into the shop windows. And then back down the other side. We looked at the empty cattle market. We walked around the cathedral close and even allowed our boredom to tempt us inside to look at the statues and tombs. This was the first time either of us had been inside a church for many years.
The grey weather relented a little in the afternoon. We walked beside the river in a weak sun, but that soon drew in and we were back early at Worthy’s to wait for John Thomas’s nephew. He came late, a tall spindly youth towering over his uncle. The pair of them sat down and asked if we were going to buy dinner. Even such information as we sought had a price it seemed. Jenny, herself more than a little curious as to what would come out, brought dinner for the four of us. Once it was safely on the table, John Thomas encouraged his nephew to talk.
“Right, boy. Tell the gentlemen what you remember.” Then in an aside to us, “He remembers it all, you know. Speak up, boy.”
The youth was tongue-tied. He turned red, he stared at the table, in his confusion he even put a piece of pie in his simple mouth. “He remembers it all,” his uncle repeated. “Tell ’em where you took the chest, Johnny. To The Sun, wasn’t it?” John Thomas nodded, and the boy took up the movement and nodded with him. “The gentleman was going to Barnstaple, wasn’t he? With an old sea-chest?”
Again Johnny nodded, more vigorously this time, and still struggling with a mouth full of pie stated proudly, “He were a captain, he were.” It was little enough, but he had told us all we needed to know. Billy had gone off to the north of Devon, a wild and sparsely populated part of the county where an old sea captain from foreign parts should be easy to find.
We retired that night full of elation at our success, and rose early to resume our pursuit. The first thing to do was to write to Long John. Having delivered the letter to The Sun to be carried to Bristol, (and fortunately avoiding the embarrassment of meeting our old girl friend and explaining why we had preferred Worthy’s over Widow Howard’s) we set out to walk to Barnstaple some fifty miles away.
I have not been to Barnstaple for many years now, but I hear the roads are not much improved. We walked not only to save money but also because such coaches as went that way travelled so slowly that we lost very little time. We were fortunate in the weather. Not only was there little wind but for once there were two days without the slightest shower of rain. With our jackets bundled over our shoulders, we followed wet and stony lanes up and down steep hills. Dark and twisted woods shadowed us, tall bare banks towered over us, and flocks of crows and starlings stalked the empty fields. We spent one night in a farmer’s barn and the next under a rick in the corner of a field. Early the following morning, we reached the small market town of Barnstaple, sitting on the banks of the River Taw.
Feeling old hands at the game now, we started to enquire for Billy Bones. The first stop, as in Exeter, was the coaching inn, The Golden Fleece. And, as in Exeter, we had no luck at all. The inn-keeper had no interest in two sailors looking for an old ship-mate.
Sitting on Barnstaple quay we pondered our problem and watched the muddy Taw flow by. Of course, Billy had no orders to keep out of grog shops and a drink was probably the first thing he would seek after leaving the coach. We started to look for a grog shop. In this small town had a choice of one, and we were lucky straight away. The barman not only remembered Billy but had helped him on his way.
“Your ship-mate, he didn’t want to stay in Barnstaple. He wanted to stay in a small place, he said, and one where he could look out west when he liked. Said he wanted to keep an eye on the ships out of the Indies. I expect he wanted to be half afloat, which he will be because I sent him over to my cousin who keeps the Admiral Benbow at Welcombe Mouth. That’s a small place, sure enough, and so near the sea he’ll have it in bed with him when the gales blow.”
Trying to conceal our excitement, we called for another round of grog and let the barman give us directions. It was easy enough. A fishing smack let us ride in comfort down the Taw, bump across the bar and beat over to Clovelly. This fishing village hangs onto its cliff-face like lichen to an old rock, weathering the worst storms the ocean can throw at it. There are no roads at all, only a succession of cobbled stairways leading in and out of the low, white-washed cottages and eventually to the flat ground above. Here we spent the night in a tavern, carefully obeying Long John’s orders to keep out of the tap-room. We also had a care not to show any interest in Billy. Once we found out our course for the Admiral Benbow, it was off to bed and ready for an early start.
We were fortunate that Welcombe Mouth lies a little way off the Bude road, for we must not be seen by Billy. We made our walk from Clovelly in the blessed obscurity of a cold sea mist. It hid our passage from many of the country folk, but it is not possible to pass even the emptiest of Devon fields without becoming news for many tongues. When we had to, we gave out we were sailors heading for Plymouth by way of Bude. As the morning passed, so did the mist and we moved out to the cliff-top path to be less noticed.
The Admiral Benbow lay, as it does today, in one of those sharp little valleys that cut through the sea-cliffs and conduct small streams down to the sea. The steep valley sides were thick with gorse, dead bracken and brambles. The blackness of this cover hung over the cluster of white cottages below. The Admiral Benbow was the largest building, set on the seaward side of the hamlet, all sheltered from the rage of the sea by a bend in the valley. As we peered down through the gorse bushes, the noise of the farm-yards came up to us. Chickens chattered and scratched, and a young pup vainly tried to bar an old sow from entering a gateway. A steaming dung-cart ground up the muddy street on its way to the fields. We settled down for an uncomfortable wait.
We wished we might be in the Admiral Benbow, keeping warm in comfort instead of enduring the wet cold seeping into our bones. The inn lay quiet below us, its painted sign hardly moving in the wind, and we wondered where Billy might be. We did not have a long delay. Before we had finished our lunch of bread and cheese, the door of the inn opened and out stumped Billy Bones, all wrapped up in a short coat and carrying a spy-glass under his arm. Squaring his hat, he set off down the valley.
“He’s looking old,” Caspar whispered in my ear. It was true. Billy looked a little bent, and perhaps his step was short and stiff. “The old devil will turn up his toes before we can get
hold of him.”
I was more interested in leaving our hiding place as quickly as possible and getting away from the long spy-glass Billy carried. When he passed under some trees we drew back from the valley and, out of sight of the village, made for the road. Here we conferred. We had to get word back to Long John, and we had to keep an eye on Billy. Watching him too closely would only scare him into running again, but we did not want to lose him. If he did run, he might go south towards Bude, or may be north to Bideford and Barnstaple. He might ship out on a coaster, but Bude would be the handiest place for that anyway. We decided that Caspar would carry on to Bude as we had intended, but I would go back to Bideford until Long John sent help. If Billy took the road north or south, we would be waiting for him.
Watching and Waiting
It is a tedious business indeed to wait a week or more with no duty to perform, and Bideford quay is cold in winter. The dark grey cobblestones seemed to forever glisten in the fading light of the year, swept clean by the wind and rain rushing in from the ocean. A few coasters rode up the Torridge, bringing cargoes of coal and wheat, and drifted out again when the weather allowed loaded with clay or timber or wool. The fishermen did little fishing at this time of year, taking just enough to keep their families with fresh fish. Their major work was the long business of overhauling the boats and their gear, stripping old paint and replacing rotted planking, readying their craft for the next year. The next year was still a long way off and if the weather turned bad, they were as likely to stay at home as they were to work. The rush would not really start until February had passed.
I took lodgings with a washerwoman, the widow of a fisherman, who was glad to earn a little extra to keep her children. At least I had shelter and food, but the days were very long. Also my money would not last forever and I needed work to eke it out. By rising before dawn, I soon found work unloading boats, helping mend nets and cordage, and getting the little fishing vessels ready for sea again. Turning my hand to some carpentry and painting kept me busy by the river, where I could observe all that passed.
Where Gold Lies Page 5