Petronilla, who is a fine judge of character, said he was sour but sound, and we agreed to work for him. Our cross-channel service was easy – perfectly straightforward, routine smuggling. Tony gave us our orders and organized the discharge. All we had to do was to turn up on a dark night at the right place on the right tide.
The bottom was knocked out of the business when our politicians withdrew the basic petrol ration. From then on the police had the right to stop any truck, anywhere, and check its reason for being on the road. Night traffic was as likely as not to be questioned and examined. Tony’s importers decided the risk had become too great for a respectable firm.
He knew too much for the directors to be impolite, so they didn’t exactly fire him; they gave him a gratuity and told him that his department was closed for reorganization. He came down to spend Christmas with us. I don’t want to say where we were. Let’s call it the Coombe River, and when I talk of the ketch Antigua owned by Bill and Petronilla Rancy, you mustn’t expect to find just those names in Lloyd’s Register.
Coombe River was as warm in the winter sunshine as the Mediterranean. We lay in deep water, close to the shore. The trees came down to the edge of the gray rock, just above high-water mark, and the channel was dull and green as a pond. Up the valley you could see a bare hill and the telegraph posts at the side of the main road to the east, which marched along the high ground, clear of interruption by all the little fingers of the sea pointing and twisting inland. Within two miles of us there wasn’t anything you could call a road – just paths through the woods, and muddy farm tracks.
Over the Christmas week we did ourselves pretty well. Petronilla used to be a high-class accountant. What with our moves from port to port, our ration books and temporary ration cards, she could get Food Offices, butchers and grocers so hopelessly muddled that we were always allowed to buy twice as much grub as we were entitled to. The Customs were impressed when they never found anything on board Antigua that we couldn’t have purchased at the local shop.
Well, of course one can live amply on double rations, and Petronilla and I and George and Henry (my ex-commando crew) were feeling poetical after lunch. We wouldn’t have changed our life for any other. Tony was mopping up the government-imported Madeira, worrying about his future and jealous of the general serenity.
Petronilla sat at the top of the companion, so that only her ankles kept us company, and very good company they were.
“I’d like to get on a horse and ride for miles and miles,” she murmured.
I looked up the hatch and saw her gazing at the empty creek. Wine and a lovely landscape often made her dreamy.
“Better than the Middle East, eh, skipper?” said George.
George had been my mate in the Aegean. He didn’t like a yellow shore, and every time he saw woods and green fields he would purr and remind himself that he was back in England.
“Over the hills and far away, Petronilla?” – Tony was often a bit short with her – “What’s the matter? A long time since the last evening out?”
“Nothing you would understand, Tony,” Petronilla replied with a sweet melancholy.
I passed the bottle up to her, and we went on digesting our lunch. After a bit she put on that thrilling voice again.
“Far away from crowded roads,” she yearned, “and the stink of petrol and prying eyes.”
“That’s the stuff!” George said. He could stand a lot of sentiment.
“You mentioned horses just now,” I encouraged her.
“Yes. Riding up from the sea, with the wind blowing through my hair and a keg of brandy across the horse’s saddle. …”
“You’d break his bloody back, Petronilla,” Tony remarked.
“That’s just the trouble,” she answered. “I’ve no experience.”
I began to follow her inspiration as closely as if it had been my own. Her thoughts had started – I knew it – from a little footpath that came down through the woods to the foreshore, and had wandered on over the high turf, mile after mile to the east among the rabbits and the sheep.
“In old days,” I said, “smugglers used a string of pack horses.”
“What weight can a pack horse carry?” she asked immediately, taking out a pencil and the back of an envelope.
There Henry chipped in. You could forget for hours that Henry was on board at all, for he never opened his mouth unless he had a simple fact to tell.
“Two ’underd pounds,” Henry answered.
“Do you know anything about horses, Henry?”
“Ay,” said Henry.
Then I remembered that when he had been drafted to my unit, with a crime sheet as long as your arm, he had some inarticulate story about not liking mechanical transport and being used to horses in India. As soon as I discovered that whatever was made of metal just depressed his spirits, he gave me no trouble at all – and, as for sail, he learned all we could teach him in a week.
When Tony returned to London, he called on his firm of importers. They would not finance us or organize us, but they did say that any brandy of reasonable quality which we delivered to a warehouse in the suburbs would be paid for at three to four pounds a liter.
Petronilla worked it out. Five ponies could carry five hundred liters. After deducting cost of brandy, gear, packsaddles and ponies, there would be a profit of a thousand pounds on the first trip and a lot more on subsequent trips. She called it amortization of transport, but that’s what she meant.
Our creek in the Coombe River was perfect. We could come up with any night tide, discharge the cargo and at dawn be on a yacht club mooring in the main channel, all clear and ready for Customs. While Tony was away, we rehearsed the drill. We found that at half water Antigua could anchor within fifty feet of the shore, and that we didn’t need a boat. We could lower the barrels overboard and drag them ashore on a line.
Organization on land was much more tricky. When we had our first full-dress conference with Tony, the whole beautiful dream began to fade away.
“We’ll have to give it up,” I said at last. “There hasn’t been a string of pack horses seen in England in living memory. How the hell are we going to explain them? Circus horses?”
Tony suddenly looked up, with a flashing grin on his tired, naval face. He had acquired the professional features, which make you think that a man has been up on the bridge for three nights running, staring through the lashing spray. That weary, clean-cut strength impresses policemen, but, if you ask me, it’s caused by pink gin rather than weather.
“The British Imperial Andean Exploration Society exercising its ponies,” said Tony.
It was one of those irresponsible suggestions that knock you cold. When we came round, Petronilla and I began to point out the difficulties.
“Nonsense, children!” Tony interrupted. “Don’t you see that it puts the whole world with us from the start? Why, you couldn’t possibly get more good will unless you said what we were really doing! All the countryside delighted! Cops benevolent! Farmers helpful! And the dear old ladies running out of their gardens with the last of the week’s sugar ration for the sweet ponies!”
“But suppose people start writing letters to the Imperial whatever-it-was?” Petronilla asked.
“Let ’em! Who the hell expects a reply from a public body in less than three months? And I’ll find a safe address just so that the letters won’t be returned.”
Well, we decided that the plan was worth a trial. We bought five Exmoor ponies, and my old friends who sold me Antigua put me in touch with another Disposals Board which handled packsaddles and harness, and of course had no market for them. Lovely stuff it was, and dirt cheap. It did you good just to stroke the leather. Then we found accommodation for Tony and Henry and the ponies at a remote Devon farm, where they could all get used to each other and to the packsaddles. Tony was right. Nobody questioned our story of the British Imperial Andean Exploration Society exercising the pack ponies for its forthcoming expedition.
Petronilla
and George and I ran down to the Loire for freight. That sounds a simple statement, but I wouldn’t like any of my readers who have a bit of capital lying idle to think that smuggling is easy. Buying is as risky as selling, for Customs informants are everywhere and well paid. So don’t take it for granted that you won’t be caught just because you step ashore on a wooden leg full of wrist watches. The chances are that the Customs know who supplied them and how much he charged; and when they start to search you’ll be lucky if your wooden leg is the only one to be sawn in half.
That’s by the way. I just want to point out that you must be sure of your supplier. Ours was an old-fashioned wine shipper with long experience and a reliable staff. His customers paid in pound notes, and anything they wanted for their little ships was brought quietly alongside as extra water in casks. He was expensive, of course, but quality and discretion were guaranteed.
There is also the sea to be considered. To sail round Ushant in March and into the Bay is no pleasure trip. We should never have tried it so early in the season if we hadn’t been short of funds after fixing up the Society and ponies. Antigua can ride any sea like a duck, but she made fifty miles of westing hove to on a sea anchor. You can imagine the discomfort. When the weather cleared and we made the Loire, Petronilla did not look like a woman any longer. She was a pillar of salt with a raw-beef complexion. Lot’s wife on a foundation of sweaters and oilskins. But, mark you, she’s not one of those Englishwomen who enjoy that kind of appearance! She spent the cash we had left, after buying brandy, in the beauty parlors of Nantes. It was worth it. She came on board again looking all fit for a week end in calm waters with an American millionaire.
Our passage home, running before half a gale from the southwest was too damn quick. I couldn’t carry less canvas with safety, and Lord knows we had little enough! We were just four days from the Loire to the Coombe River, and we never touched the engine once till we were nosing round the woods into our own creek.
I had wired Tony to expect us in anything from five to eight days – a period when there was no moon and the night tide would serve. He was to camp on the high ground, and watch the estuary every night for the yellow flash of our signal. That four-day passage, however, was the devil; there was a horrid risk that the expedition would not have arrived, or that they would not be looking out for us. I had to take it. The only alternative was to heave to off the Devon coast, and probably be reported as in difficulties or acting suspiciously.
Henry saved us. Plodding down to the west into the teeth of that wind which howled across the downs, he had been thinking of Antigua. For two days, according to Tony, the only remark he made was to state as a fact that the missus wouldn’t let her jibe. She didn’t, or I should not be here now. Henry silently bullied them into forcing the pace, and the first thing he did when they reached the last camp was to have a look at the creek. He had not been up under the telegraph posts for more than half an hour when he saw our flash and answered.
The tide had turned. It was touch and go whether we could run the cargo ashore in time to get out of the creek into the main channel. An hour after the signal, we heard the ponies rustling down over the dead leaves on the hillside. We were ready for them, tubs in the water and lines ashore. It was half tide, and the weed was showing on the banks. We just had a moment for a word with Tony, who couldn’t understand, being brought up on harbor launches, why the hell we didn’t sail a bit slower. We left George behind with the pram to help with the landing of the tubs and the loading; and then Petronilla and I took Antigua out into the main channel in the dark.
That was a nightmare, if you like. At this stage of the ebb the twisting channel was never more than fifty feet across, and the last thing we wanted was to be found high and dry on the mud in the morning. In the third bend the propeller was fouled by weed, and the tide swept us out stern foremost while we kept steerageway on her with the jib. It was a damn wonderful piece of navigation, but in our trade artistry of that sort is out of place. Everything should go like clockwork. George joined us just before dawn. He had had to come out at the bottom of the tide, walking down the bed of the channel on his hind legs and pushing the pram in front of him.
In the morning, after we had checked in and dropped our cards on the yacht club, we left George on board and started out to join the British Imperial Andean Exploration Society. It took us most of the day to catch up with and find them.
They were ten miles from the coast. They couldn’t go farther because the ponies had had no rest the previous night; but when you are inland in southern England the sea has no longer any effect at all on the lives and thoughts of the local inhabitants. The villager will suspect eccentric strangers of coming two hundred miles from London, but never of coming ten miles from the sea.
The camp was in a dry, sheltered valley, under the lee of a clump of thorns. There was a fire going, and Henry was grilling rabbits. Two green pup tents were pitched, and the ponies, all in neat little blankets, were picketed, and munching happily. The packs and harness were piled on top of the barrels, all dressed by the right in some smart order that Henry had probably learned in cavalry lines on the Northwest frontier. You never saw anything so disciplined, gentlemanly and romantic. Again I had to admit that Tony was right. That camp could no more be suspected of smuggling than the Archbishop of Canterbury. We belonged, obviously, to the world of Church and State.
Church, I know, seems farfetched – but wherever you find a sort of Naval and Military Club atmosphere, there’s a chaplain just round the corner. And just as I was thinking out what I meant, and Petronilla was gnawing the last of the rabbit bones with her stockinged feet stretched out to the blaze, up the hill came the Rector and his wife. They had heard all about the Society – though Tony swore he had only seen a shepherd and only said good-evening to him. I hadn’t even seen a barn or building till the Rector appeared. Then I spotted the top of a Norman church tower sticking up above a clump of trees in the vale.
They were as charming as could be, and wanted to know if there was anything they could do for us. Tony kept them amused with stories of the Navy in Valparaiso (which he must have heard in the Port Control mess) and Petronilla had the effrontery to ask for a bath. She went off down the hill with the Rector and his wife, and, the last I heard of her, she was promising to lecture to the Women’s Institute on the objects of the expedition.
She came back in the dark, full of tea, with the salt washed out of her hair. The camp equipment was sketchy (for it had to be kept light), but when we had crawled into the second tent we found our night’s rest luxurious. Our sleeping bag was cozy; the ground was dry and stayed parallel to the horizon; and we didn’t have to turn out every four hours to relieve the wheel. Tony complained that the cold at the top of the Andes couldn’t possibly be worse than that of an English spring; but even he got a kick out of the open-air life. Of course he was carrying on both hips enough gin and angostura to make him feel a hero at the end of the day’s march.
It was a convincing expedition when we had loaded up the ponies in the morning. Ground sheets, blankets and tents were neatly folded, and hanging down on each side of the ponies to hide the barrels. Here and there Henry slung some odd frying pans and junk, in order that the packs should not look too tidy. He and Tony seemed to have no difficulty in walking twenty-five miles a day. Petronilla and I, who prefer anything but our feet to move us, marched along with them till eleven. That became the routine. We walked just as long as we enjoyed it, and then took a train or bus to some point within easy reach of their next stop.
All went smoothly till we were tramping over the bare downs between Blandford and Salisbury. It was a morning when the wind and rain swept across the grass, and the air was dull gray like an elephant’s back. You could see that the farmers in those parts preferred plenty of rich space. They had it. Give me trees and hedges and little sheltered fields – uneconomic, perhaps, but more comfortable for man and beast.
A chap came bowling out of the low clouds, driv
ing a tractor as if it were his personal tank, and drew up alongside us while we plodded through the driving damp. He was all muffled up in leather, wool and mackintoshes, and showed nothing but a lock of lank, dark hair flopping over one amused dark eye.
“Dirty weather,” he said, clearing a space in his wrappings to talk through. “Are you going far?”
“Camping under Clearbury Ring,” Tony answered.
“The glass is still falling. And, if you like,” he offered, “I’ve plenty of room for you and the ponies.”
We didn’t much care for close inspection, but it was hard to refuse; and, with the weather as it was, we didn’t want to refuse.
“Are you doing this for pleasure?” he asked. “Pilgrimage to Walsingham or something?”
“Well, as a matter of fact,” I replied, “as a matter of fact, we are just hardening the ponies of the British Imperial Andean Exploration Society.”
Tony congratulated me afterwards. He said I had the proper apologetic tone of an Englishman who is caught doing something out of the ordinary.
“This will harden ’em all right,” the man agreed. “Well, come along, and get dry. My name is Redworth and my farm is down in the dip there.”
And he charged off in his tractor as if he had just got the order to get into position hull down on the ridge.
We struck across a long slope of ploughland, and turned into the yard of an old, gray stone manor. Redworth showed us a fine barn, and told us to do what we liked with it. The barn might have been made for us; there was plenty of light, but when the high doors were shut, farm hands couldn’t see inside. Bales of hay were provided for the ponies, and glad we were to have them. Forage had been the chief difficulty all along. We couldn’t carry much extra weight, so we had to stop and buy. This usually meant that the farmer offered us stabling. Then we had to refuse it, on the weak excuse of hardening the ponies.
Tales of Adventurers Page 13