menu_book Chapter 18

CHAPTER V. THE CRUISE OF THE CASTRAL He now felt a degree of regret with which he had never been before acquainted, and he was long before he could be reconciled to himself. RASALAS CHAPTER IV The household at Fairhaven might have been put about the previous night as never within

living memory, Miss Barrington, despite her protests, sleeping in her brother's room, and Captain Barrington in his dressing-room, Miss Lavinia's own room, all upside down and full of curtains and mattresses and bell-ropes. These permutations on account of the presence of a French hussy alleged by Jeremy when he at last sought the Canubial chamber to be a young man.

Yet even this spiritual and physical turmoil had no power to make Mrs. Jeremy late with breakfast next morning. But brother and sister alike ate her excellent fare rather silently. Hervey had told Lavinia overnight, as much as he had a mind to, and he did not amplify his information this morning.

Nor, curiously, did Miss Lavinia animate Dvert in her wanted style either upon the humour of the situation or upon his share in the epic of the spare bedroom, of which she had already rested a fuller version from John Jeremy. She was in truth regretting with all her heart that she had let Hervey into the secret of her discovery.

For one thing, she fancied she could have had a much better laugh at him afterwards if she had allowed him, all unsuspecting, to dispatch Mademoiselle on her way to Portsmouth. For another, the lad himself would not now be on the point of return to that horrid captivity, from which he had employed so much ingenuity to escape. It was true that Hervey was not displaying any great haste to inform the authorities

of his presence, but she knew that it was useless to try to move him from the performance of what he considered his duty. She could not, any vindictive feelings, apart. No doubt it was his duty to deliver up the fugitive. Miss Lavinia glanced at the clock as she rose from the breakfast table and opened the casement

window onto the jasmine and climbing rose. Down below, the little square garden lay smiling in the August sun, refreshed to a new greenness by a heavy dew and sending up the invisible incense of stalks and lavender. The mulberry tree hung its ripening fruit over the old teak bench. Sparkling and singing and very blue, the river poured by.

A couple of wagtails were taking excited little runs over the grass. Farther on were the clustered houses of old Stoey, pricked with masts, but from here the actual mouth of the estuary could not be seen. Mary's sailing boat, the kestrel, was tugging gently at her mooring boy in mid-channel. What a morning to go back to prison, and such a prison!

Has your captive had anything to eat yet? asked Miss Barrington casually as she picked a sprig of jasmine. Her brother was turning over the pages of a nautical almanac. No, I don't suppose he has, he answered in an indifferent tone. Then, if you will forgive my suggesting it, would it not be as well to send him up something,

if he asked later to take the journey back to Plymouth, or even to go to the lock-up here? I don't know what your plans are, she added, half apologetically. Send him up something, repeated Captain Barrington, laying down the almanac. How you talk, Lavinia, as if Mrs. Jeremy could go in carrying breakfast as to a guest.

Do you know that your poor tired boy fought like a demon last night, and that it took the two of us to hold him? Now, Miss Lavinia did know this, but she was making great efforts after discretion, perhaps not altogether successfully, since she objected. But even if he is such a desperate character, surely Jeremy could venture in, provided that

you were there to protect him with your pistol. Captain Barrington's face darkened, and he turned to his almanac again. How surely, you cannot really think it is too dangerous to go in, resumed his sister, still with that unusual note of pleading in her voice. And to give him an extra dose of starvation, when you know it is what he is going back

to. I've heard that the food in the prison ships is almost uneatable. And just because you are… annoyed with him, is so unlike you that I am sure it can only be because you have forgotten that you have given no orders. Why do you think it is so unlike me?

asked Hervey. He had his back turned, and was fidgeting with his book. You do not know of what a man is capable of when he is… annoyed, as you call it. I did not know myself until last night, he added, in a voice so low that his sister did not catch it.

But it is quite true, he concluded, turning round, that I had forgotten the question of food. I will rectify your mission. I was sure you had, said Miss Lavinia, and as he rang the bell she smiled at him like a grey-haired angel.

But Hervey did not take the pistol when he accompanied Jeremy to the prisoner's room, for he had learnt the uselessness of that weapon in the hands of a man who is determined not to use it to kill, does not wish to use it to wound, and knows that as a threat it has no power whatever. He would not have gone there at all, but that it was plainly necessary that someone should

unlock and guard the door for Jeremy, encumbered as he was with a tray, and liable to be sprung upon. However, the prisoner did not spring on John Jeremy when he entered. He did not greet him in any way but ever, as Hervey, outside, holding the door just ajar, was aware.

He heard Jeremy deposit the tray upon something, after which there was dead silence for a moment, and then his gruff voice, with a note of alarm in it. Captain Barrington, I'm pleased to come in at once, sir. Jeremy's own heart gave the most unexpected twist in his breast. The boy had somehow cut his throat or hanged himself.

Why had he not foreseen this? He went in, so sure of it that he did not lock the door. The large form of Jeremy seemed to obscure everything. He's gone, sir. He's not in the room, unless he's in the wardrobe yonder.

Gone? Yes, by George, the window was open. But that was suicide also. God knew that that had been made clear. No, he must be in the room somewhere, under the bed, in the powdering closet.

The open window was merely a ruse, and Jeremy was a fool, and he too. He snatched the key from the lock outside and fastened the door. Have you looked under the bed? No, Jeremy had not. He did it there and then, while Harvey wrenched open the door of the big mahogany wardrobe.

Quite empty. He was hiding in the closet then. Could he possibly have pushed aside the barrier and got into Lavinia's room? They would soon see. They did.

The closet was as empty as the wardrobe, and the far door immovable. Yes, the captive was indubitably gone. And since he had been deprived of all, even the most makeshift means of letting himself down from that high window, and there existed on that bare wall no natural ones, he must have jumped or let himself fall.

In that case. Harvey Barrington, who had fought at Trafalgar, turned white. He was for a moment on the point of ordering Jeremy, who was still gazing round the cupboard, to go first and look out of the window. But it was he himself who had driven the boy to it, and he must face the consequences of

his action. He went over to the open window, stood for a second or two, and then put his head out. He had already in his mind so vivid a picture of that light half-clad body, transfixed on the hellish invention below, that the fact of there being nothing there did not convey itself immediately to his brain.

And when it did, it seemed so incredible that for a flash he thought his eyes were playing him a trick. Now Jeremy, come here. Serious and heavy-footed, Jeremy came. There's nothing, after all, on those spikes, is there?

And Jeremy looked out. No, sir, nothing. He must have jumped clearer from somehow. They stared at each other. Then Hervey, leaning back against the wall, passed his hand over his eyes.

There's not a rag on him, sir, not a mark, so far as I can see, continued Jeremy, his head out of the window again. Unless someone took him off him, he never fell on him at all. But he couldn't fly, said Hervey, feeling an odd disposition to laugh. Once more he looked down that naked wall.

There was nothing we had forgotten in the room, was there, that he could have used? And then, to Jeremy, the slow-witted, came the solution. Oh, begging your pardon, sir, he said, touching him on the arm. How seems to me he've gone up, not down. Oh, put your head out again, sir, and you'll see as he could have got up, being active-like

and hard-put to it. Hervey looked. Yes, by standing outside on the window ledge, a man of moderate height could certainly manage to grasp the leaden rain gutter which ran along just under the roof. But he would have to be very athletic, or desperate, to pull himself up by that alone,

added to which a gutter of that sort was not so firmly fixed in place as designedly to carry such a weight. This one had been up for many years. Oh, good God! said Hervey, staring up at it, and then down at the spikes. How could he have trusted himself to so horribly inadequate a support, with those points waiting

down below all the time? Oh, no doubt he helped himself a bit by the corner here, sir, where the wall juts out, proceeded Jeremy, developing his discovery. Oh, God, his feet against it, or his knees. A nasty climb, though, sir, makes your blood turn, in a manner of speaking, and his weight

has brought away the gutter a little. Unlucky for him, it didn't break loose altogether. Yes, assented his master shortly. He had had enough of that gutter, and straightway abandoned the contemplation of it. But when once he was on the roof, he continued, he would find no great difficulty, I imagine,

in climbing down the other side of the house, into the garden, because of the ivy. Oh, child's play to this, sir, pronounced Jeremy, bringing his head in again. But for all we know, he'm on the roof still. I doubt it, said Captain Barrington, but I suppose we had better make sure. We will not, however, take his route there.

They emerged, indeed, in a more prosaic manner, by the trap door in the attic, provided for the purpose, and, as Harvey had expected, found neither the fugitive nor any traces of his passage. Scanning the view of the river and the countryside afforded by their present elevation, John Jeremy gave vent to a wonder as to where the wildcat was to now, and his master wondered also. Not far away, and probably, he would never get any distance in that

scanty and torn attire, and with no money. He was bound to be recaptured sooner or later, for all that he had risked a horrible death to win clear of Fairhaven. And now it was his business to go out, and, by setting the hounds on his trail, carry out last night's threats, and complete his own revenge. But the minutes went by, and still Captain Barrington stood there on the roof with his hands

behind his back, for over the grinning visions which had been so hot in his brain last night, the vision of the Signora and her mythical love and desertion, the Signora he had so decorously and absurdly left in the garden, of the sister and her even more successful onslaught on his sympathy and credulity, the memories which made him grind his teeth over his own gullibility. There was scored, palimpsest-wise, another picture of a dazed figure with a bleeding mouth

caught in Jeremy's unsparing hold. How surely, in that savage hour upstairs, he had settled his account with a culprit. Yes, the business of informing was too distasteful. Let the government find and catch its lost prize if it liked. After that crazy climb he was not going to join in the hunt. The boy was too game. Yet it must be confessed that to this vult fas of Harvey Barrington's there contributed also, since the motives for any resolve are seldom unmixed,

a faint dislike to owning that his prisoner had given him the slip, and an absolute horror of having to acknowledge that he himself had, in the first instance, been completely duped as to that prisoner's sex. For now he saw, and wondered at his tardy perception of it, that this fact would certainly have to be revealed, or how should he account for the Frenchman's presence in his house at all. He turned quickly round.

And Jeremy, he said, in his quarter-deck voice, as long as an escaped French prisoner was under my roof, it was my duty to hand him over to the authorities, and I should have done it this morning. But, all things considered, I do not intend to inform them that he has been here and has escaped. His whereabouts will be discovered quite soon enough. So, not a word to anyone outside the house about last night's business.

I do not choose to be the subject of idle gossip. Is that clear? Aye, aye, sir, replied John Jeremy, and saluted him among the chimney-pots. Am I to tell Hannah the same, sir? I will see Mrs. Jeremy myself on the matter, replied his master, walking towards the trap-door. How curious thing, sir, observed Jeremy, half shyly, rubbing a hand up and down his trousers.

But she won't, in a manner speaking, believe me, when I say the young lady which she saw was a young man. How won't she, returned Hervey rather grimly. How we will have her up, then, and show her the climb he did. How me taking down them curtains has upset her proper, observed Hannah's spouse. I doubt if she'll make much account of any climb till they'm back in their places again. Let me go first and hold the ladder, sir.

And as Captain Barrington had decreed, so it was at Fairhaven. Mrs. Jeremy, indeed, when she had received her orders, remarked, but not to their giver, that she had no desire to gossip about a French hussy having been brought after dark into the house, and Miss Lavinia, with her own accusing conscience, was only too delighted to obey the order to hold her tongue, though it was more than probable that the precaution would be useless.

But no news of the fugitive came to Fairhaven and Hervey, though he kept his ears open and stoey that afternoon. He could not, naturally, put any questions, heard nothing. He had no idea in what direction the young man had gone in his forlorn endeavour, evidently not across the river, or he would surely have taken the skiff of whose convenient presence he was, as Hervey remembered, very well aware. It was Miss Lavinia who made the only discovery worth mention, and even that led

nowhere, which was that a large stem of ivy had been torn away from the wall of the house, about ten feet from the ground on the garden front. And it seemed quite probable that this minor catastrophe marked the path of the wildcat, and that he himself had accompanied the ivy, and added a more or less severe fall, though upon grass, to his other disabilities. Miss Barrington started for Exeter next morning, and Hervey, left alone once more,

found his mind dwelling, with ever less appreciation of his own part in it, on that scene in the spare bedroom. Yes, he had behaved like a brute. He did not blame himself for having detained an escaping enemy, nor for having deprived him of his only means of further flight, his money, though it was deuce awkward to know what he was going to do with it now that he had it, since he had resolved not to inform the authorities of the owner's presence and escape.

Lavinia had suggested the poor box, but that did not seem quite the right destination for someone else's banknotes. The letters taken from the captive, as a cursory glance had shown, were from an Englishwoman. Hervey did not read them. If the young men were recaptured, and he got to know of it, he would try to return them to him, perhaps his money, too. He knew his name, or at least the name he went by, and the letters bore it also.

Hobart asked of believing his story of injured innocence. No, the boy was too clever, too good an actor, but he did wish that he had not given him that unnecessary and ferocious blow. A spectator would have said that it was thoroughly justified and dealt in self-defense. Hervey knew that it was neither, and was aware of what exactly had inspired it, and though he did not wish to name the feeling. If only he had not been so blind at

the outset, had drawn the right conclusions from what now seemed so obvious, in the height, unusual in a woman, the voice too deep, the reluctance to attract attention. At bay upstairs, in his proper attire, the masquerader had looked so much younger and slighter, and so much more spent. That accusing picture was before him again. He turned his gaze away from it. Late in the afternoon, having succeeded in banishing the

scene and its protagonist from the surface, at least, of his mind, and seeing the prospect of a fine evening, he decided to go for a sail. The kestrel paid off slowly, under mainsail and jib, her owner at the helm, but very soon Fairhaven was left behind, and the first river-huddled houses of Stowe were slipping past, old dwellings which looked as if they had sprung up by natural growth on their piles or ancient tide-green walls.

Not many craft in the river today, murmured Captain Barrington. I see a bricksome trawler over there, grumbled his satellite. What be doing here, I wonder? I'll come to sell fish, probably. Stowe men can catch their own fish, I reckon, replied Jeremy indignantly. Look at the berth he's put himself in. Hervey smiled. Oh, I see a vessel ahead which is chosen of worse. Oh, when did that schooner run ashore,

on the whale's back? For half a mile or so farther down the river, on the invisible shoal, which was the bain of Stowe harbor, lay a large schooner. Her tilted hull and masts gave her an odd effect of floating at an angle, but Captain Barrington was aware that she was not floating. She grounded two days ago, sir, in the neap. Have to wait for the next spring tide to fetch her off. Don't know where she hail from. Her crew is all gone ashore.

Her top's ill now, sir. Not yet, replied his master, though they were past the harbor, where Stowe river widened to the dignity of an estuary before it gave itself to the sea, and here he commonly shook out the kestrel's extra plumage. But this evening he was content to slip gently along with what sail she was carrying, his eyes fixed ahead on the mild unrest of the bar, thinking of that calamity of

his own, which was woven in such unfading colors on the arrows of his mind. It needed but a touch to set the tapestry swaying, and the whole scene would spring to life again. And the stranded schooner there in the sunlight had done it, though it was an uncharted rock, not a sand bank, which had sunk HMS Suffolk that dark October night off the Sillies. The court-martial had acquitted our captain, who was indeed perfectly blameless, condemnation being pretty equally

divided between a faulty chart and the sailing master. But Harvey Barrington never got another ship. How was it likely a man who had lost a 74? And very shortly afterwards, in 1811, came the flimsy pretext on which he, at 39, experienced, competent, and ambitious, was put on half pay. In wartime. He might be blameless, but he had lost a 74. And yet that voice had said the other night, with such indignance scorn,

You do not know what it is to suffer injustice. You who are of those who dispense it. How did he not? Why else was he here now, idly staring this little craft, all that was left him to command? He roused himself from his bitter and useless contemplation. John Jeremy, sitting sideways on the weather-combing, was contemplating him, and Harvey's reserve fretted even under his gaze. How that schooner looked berthed for a month, he observed in a matter-of-fact tone,

gazing at her as they approached the sandbank. Broken water indicated the shallow, but no sand was visible. We will go to Larboard of Old Walesback for a change. From habit, he nearly always took the right-hand channel. How really, I hardly know this side of the river. Who has got old John Wood's farm now? How that is it, is it not? he asked, pointing over the dancing water at the solitary standing farmhouse, about a furlong from the edge of the river, which they

were just leaving behind them. Ay, sir, it is. A nasty, low-lived, ill condition sat there now, from all I hear, three brothers of the name of Willis. Foreigners, they be, said Jeremy, meaning, of course, not true Devon men. Will you have topsell up now, sir? When a moment, the foreigners seemed excited about something, observed Harvey, craning his neck to look behind him, as a sudden outburst of shouts and yells

came clearly over the intervening quarter-mile or so of water. How likely their bees had swarmed on one of them, suggested Jeremy unemotionally. Standing amidst ships, he gazed back, shading his eyes with his horny palms. No, they'm chasing one of the hands, the pitchforks, too. They're running for dear life, making for the river. And do we look, sir? Harvey brought the kestrel farther into the wind and let her hang, twisting himself to sea.

Something of an agitating nature was certainly taking place at the abode of the brothers Willis. Eight or ten men, with a woman or two among them, had suddenly poured themselves out in a stream from behind the previously quiet farmhouse, shouting, yelling, and most of them, brandishing either a stick, a hoe, or, as Jeremy had discerned, the deadly pitchfork. Harvey's eye caught the pursuers first, and then was aware of the pursuit. A slender, scantily

clad figure, which, with only a few yards' advantage of the foremost, was running like a deer for the water. Captain Barrington gave vent to an exclamation. His mouth tightened. Oh, stand by, Jeremy. I'm going about. The kestrel's already wavering sail flapped. She rolled, hesitated, and then he looked and then obeyed and began to make for the scene of the drama. Even as she came about,

the fleeing figure had reached the water's edge and, stumbling a little, waded in waist deep and then struck out vigorously. A redoubled shout of rage went up from the pursuers, and one, with a yell, hurled his pitchfork at the swimmer. The rest contented themselves with imprecations and stones from the foreshore. Harvey Barrington, standing up at the helm, was shouting, too.

Oh, stop that, you brutes. Oh, stop it, I say. But his voice, even if it carried to the ears of the infuriated group at the water's edge, had no effect. Meanwhile the swimmer, his head a dark object amid the splashes of the fusillade of stones, none of which, luckily, seemed to be reaching their mark, forged slowly on towards midstream, using the overarm stroke, but always with the same arm.

Although he was not swimming quickly, he was drawing away from the castrol as well as from the shore, and Harvey's eyes were so keenly fixed on that head and arm as not to notice that the wind had fallen into one of those sudden little lulls common in a harbor, and that the cutter was now making very little headway indeed. He's swimming very oddly, said Captain Barrington, aloud. I wonder if those devils did get a pitchfork into him, after all. And where is

he making for? Oh, he'll never get over to the other side. If he has any wits left, he'll make for the stranded schooner. I suppose he doesn't know there's no one on board. Oh, damn it, the wind's dropped. Jeremy, already conscious of this fact, brought his gaze back from the peak of the mainsail. Was it him, sir, the Frenchie? Of course it is. We will pick him up if we can. Top-sail, Jeremy, as quick as possible. But even in the short time it took to set the extra

sail, it began to seem a little doubtful if they would be able to accomplish this design. Harvey, hauling on the top-sail halyards, knew instinctively that the swimmer, now almost in mid-stream, was in difficulties. He cursed himself for having stood staring instead of getting the rest of the canvas on sooner. However, in a moment or two the Kestrel responded to the new impetus and began to cut through the water as if she knew what was

required of her and rejoiced to do it. But for all that the outgoing tide, not his own efforts now, was sweeping her quarry away from her and round the other side of the whale's back. Harvey could see that he had abandoned the effort of swimming, and, devoting his energies merely to keeping afloat, had thrown himself onto his back. Shouts came from the disappointed group on shore as, midway between them and the shore,

the Kestrel shot past on the now fresher breeze, but Harvey did not even turn his head. A prisoner, a French prisoner, came to his ears. How let them ball, he thought disgustedly. But from where he stood at the tiller the French prisoner was no longer visible. He had disappeared entirely round the northern point of the shoal. Harvey swore. But next moment the Kestrel also was past the point and he looked over his left

shoulder. No, the young man was still afloat, but struggling. Already, Jeremy. Like a bird checking in flight, the Kestrel went about, rounded the bubbling, sucking sand, and was chasing up the deep water the other side. Hold on one moment more, shouted Harvey to the half-swimmer, half-flawsome, a few yards ahead on his starboard bow. The top-sail was already down, the jib coming in under Jeremy's skilled hands.

In another second or two the main-sail itself came down with a run. Even then, as was almost inevitable, they overshot him a little, but he had enough wits left in him to understand what was happening, and as the big boat glided by, he made an effort to fight her wash and get alongside. Leaning over, Harvey threw him a rope, and rather to his surprise,

the young man compassed a few painful strokes and seized it as it trailed past him. Excellent, shouted Harvey. Hold tight now. And he began to haul in. The Kestrel's way was spending itself. In another moment or two she would be stationary, except for the tide. And only just in time, too, thought Captain Barrington, as hand over hand he pulled in the

rope, and not very fast, for fear of jerking it out of the hold whose only strength lay probably in its desperation. And which was, he saw, a one-handed hold to boot. And no, I don't think you need go overboard, Jeremy, for that mariner already had his coat off. Hold on to the slack of this, so that I can use both my hands to get him in. So that I can use both my hands to get him in.

We must be careful that we don't overset in doing it. Here we are. He was alongside, yes, sodden and panting, and exhausted almost to the point of unconsciousness. But as Harvey leaned over the side to clutch him, the half-closed eyes, under the plastered, dripping hair, opening, met his, and into them shot the next instant such a look of horror and

aversion as turned Harvey cold. You, it's you. No, gasped old the sabliac, loosed his frantic grip of the rope, threw up his arms, and went instantly under. Half stunned though he was with the shock of it, Harvey made a quick mechanical grab at the disappearing body, but in vain. The next second a resounding splash that John Jeremy, for once not waiting for orders, had entered the estuary,

and John Jeremy swam like a porpoise. Await till you see where he comes up, said Harvey quietly. He was very pale. In another moment something reappeared a few yards away, something that now had no more volition of its own than a drifting spar. With half a dozen powerful strokes, Jeremy reached and secured it, and was shortly treading water alongside, holding the in-earth head and shoulders out of the water,

while the rest of the lax body showed a disposition to be sucked under the cutter's keel. Will this, or whatever it is, hold, I wonder, muttered Harvey, twisting one hand into something white, fastened across the almost bare breast like a scarf. Oh yes, I think so. Now, one, two, three. A heave, a jerk, a grab at the trailing legs, a certain tilting and rocking on the kestrel's part, a moment's uncertainty and balancing on the gunnel, and Captain Barrington had got his prisoner back again.