Jim Davis/Chapter XIII

CHAPTER XIII IN THE VALLEY

We turned down the valley, along the coast-track, splashing through the little stream that makes it so boggy by the gate, and soon we were on the coach-road galloping along the straight two miles towards Tor Cross.

Our horses were beginning to give way, for we had done four miles at good speed, and now the preventives began to gain upon us. Looking back as we galloped we could see them on the straight road, about two hundred yards away. Every time we looked back they seemed to be nearer, and at last Marah leant across and told me to keep low in my saddle, as he thought they were going to fire on us. A carbine shot cracked behind us, and I heard the "zip" of the bullet over me.

A man ran out suddenly from one of the furze-bushes by the road, and a voice cried, "Stop them, boys!" The road seemed suddenly full of people, who snatched at our reins, and hit us with sticks. I got a shrewd blow over the knee, and I heard Marah say something as he sent one man spinning to the ground. "Crack, crack!" went the carbines behind us. Some one had hold of my horse's reins, shouting, "I've got you, anyway!" Then Marah fired a pistol—it all happened in a second—the bullet missed, but the flash scorched my horse's nose; the horse reared, and knocked the man down, and then we were clear, and rattling along to Tor Cross.

Looking back, we saw one or two men getting up from the road, and then half-a-dozen guns and pistols flashed, and Marah's horse screamed and staggered. There was a quarter of a mile to go to Tor Cross, and that quarter-mile was done at such a speed as I have never seen since. Marah's horse took the bit in his teeth, and something of his terror was in our horses too.

In a moment, as it seemed, we were past the houses, and over the rocks by the brook-mouth; and there, with a groan, Marah's horse came down. Marah was evidently expecting it, for he had hold of my rein at the time, and as his horse fell he cleared the body. "Get down, Jim," he said. "We're done. The horses are cooked. They have had six miles; another mile would kill them. Poor beast's heart's burst. Down with you." He lifted me off the saddle, and lashed the two living horses over the quarters with a strip of seaweed. He patted the dead horse, with a "Poor boy," and dragged me down behind one of the black rocks, which crop up there above the shingle.

The two horses bolted off along the strand, scattering the pebbles, and then, while the clash of their hoofs was still loud upon the stones, the preventives came pounding up, their horses all badly blown and much distressed. Their leader was Captain Barmoor. I knew him by his voice.

"Here's a dead horse!" he cried. "Sergeant, we have one of their horses. Get down and see if there's any contraband upon him. After them, you others. We shall get them now. Ride on, I tell you! What are you pulling up for?"

The other preventives crashed on over the shingle. Captain Barmoor and the sergeant remained by the dead horse. Marah and I lay close under the rock, hardly daring to breathe, and wondering very much whether we made any visible mark to the tall man on his horse. Shots rang out from the preventives' carbines, and the gallopers made a great clash upon the stones. We heard the sergeant's saddle creak, only a few yards away, and then his boots crunched on the beach as he walked up to the dead horse.

"No. There be no tubs here, sir," he said, after a short examination. "Her be dead enough. Stone dead, sir. There's an empty pistol-case, master."

"Oh," said Captain Barmoor. "Any saddlebag, or anything of that kind?"

The man fumbled about in the gear. "No, there was nothing of that kind—nothing at all."

"Bring on the saddle," said the captain. "There may be papers stitched in it." We heard the sergeant unbuckling the girth. "By the way," said the captain, "you're sure the third horse was led?"

"Yes," said the sergeant. "Two and a led horse there was, sir."

"H'm," said the captain. "I wonder if they have dismounted. They might have. Look about among the rocks there."

I saw Marah's right hand raise his horse-pistol, as the sergeant stepped nearer. In another moment he must have seen us. If he had even looked down, he could not have failed to see us: but he stood within six feet of us, looking all round him—looking anywhere but at his feet. Then he walked away from us, and looked at the rocks near the brook.

"D'ye see them?" snapped the captain.

"No, sir. Nothin' of 'em. They ben't about here, sir. I think they've ridden on. Shall I look in the furze there, sir, afore we go?"

"No," said the captain. "Well, yes. Just take a squint through it."

But as the sergeant waddled uneasily in his sea-boots across the shingle, the carbines of the preventives cracked out in a volley about a quarter of a mile away. A shot or two followed the volley.

"A shotgun that last, sir," said the sergeant.

"Yes," said the captain. "Come along. There's another. Come, mount, man. They're engaged."

We heard the sergeant's horse squirming about as the sergeant tried to mount, and then the two galloped off. Voices sounded close beside us, and feet moved upon the sand. "Still!" growled Marah in my ear. Some one cried out, "Further on. They're fighting further on. Hurry up, and we shall see it."

About a dozen Tor Cross men were hurrying up, in the chance of seeing a skirmish. The wife of one of them—old Mrs. Rivers—followed after them, calling to her man to come back. "I'll give it to 'ee, if 'ee don't come back. Come back, I tell 'ee." They passed on rapidly, pursued by the angry woman, while more shots banged and cracked further and further along the shore.

We waited till they passed out of hearing, and then Marah got up. "Come on, son," he said. "We must be going. Lucky your teeth didn't chatter, or they'd have heard us."

"I wish they had heard us," I cried, hotly. "Then I'd have gone home to-night. Let me go, Marah. Let me go home."

"Next trip, Jim," he said kindly. "Not this. I want you to learn about life. You will get mewed up with them ladies else, and then you will never do anything."

"Ah," I said. "But if you don't let me go I'll scream. Now then. I'll scream."

"Scream away, son," said Marah, calmly. "There's not many to hear you. But you'll not get home after what you have seen to-night. Come on, now."

He took me by the collar, and walked me swiftly to a little cove, where one or two of the Tor Cross fishers kept their boats. I heard a gun or two away in the distance, and then a great clatter of shingle, as the coastguards' horses trotted back towards us, with the led horse between two of them, as the prize of the night. They did not hear us, and could not see us, and Marah took good care not to let me cry out to them. He just turned my face up to his, and muttered, "You just try it. You try it, son, and I'll hold you in the sea till you choke."

The wind was blowing from the direction of the coastguards towards us, and even if I had cried out, perhaps, they would never have heard me. You may think me a great coward to have given in in this way; but few boys of my age would have made much outcry against a man like Marah. He made the heart die within you; and to me, cold and wet from my ducking, terrified of capture in spite of my innocence (for I was not at all sure that the smugglers would not swear that I had joined them, and had helped them in their fights and escapades), the outlook seemed so hopeless and full of misery that I could do nothing. My one little moment of mutiny was gone, my one little opportunity was lost. Had I made a dash for it—But it is useless to think in that way.

Marah got into the one boat which floated in the little artificial creek, and thrust me down into the stern sheets. Then he shoved her off with a stretcher (the oars had been carried to the fisher's house, there were none in the boat), and as soon as we were clear of the rocks, in the rather choppy sea, he stepped the stretcher in the mast-crutch as a mast, and hoisted his coat as a sail. He made rough sheets by tying a few yards of spun-yarn to the coat-skirts, and then, shipping the rudder, he bore away before the wind towards the cave by Black Pool.

We had not gone far (certainly not fifty yards), when we saw the horses of the coastguards galloping down to the sea, one of the horses shying at the whiteness of the breaking water.

A voice hailed us. "Boat ahoy!" it shouted; "what are you doing in the boat there?"

And then all the horsemen drew up in a clump among the rocks.

"Us be drifting, master," shouted Marah, speaking in the broad dialect of the Devon men; "us be drifting."

"Come in till I have a look at you," cried the voice again. "Row in to the rocks here."

"Us a-got no o-ars," shouted Marah, letting the boat slip on. "Lie down, son," he said; "they will fire in another minute."

Indeed, we heard the ramrods in the carbines and the loud click of the gun-cocks.

"Boat ahoy!" cried the voice again. "Row in at once! D'ye hear? Row in at once, or I shall fire on you."

Marah did not answer.

"Present arms!" cried the voice again after a pause; and at that Marah bowed down in the stern sheets under the gunwale.

"Fire!" said the voice; and a volley ripped up the sea all round us, knocking off splinters from the plank and flattening out against the transom.

"Keep down, Jim; you're all right," said Marah. "We will be out of range in another minute."

Bang! came a second volley, and then single guns cracked and banged at intervals as we drew away.

For the next half-hour we were just within extreme range of the carbines and musketoons. During that half-hour we were slowly slipping by the long two miles of Slapton sands. We could not go fast, for our only sail was a coat, and, though the wind was pretty fresh, the set of the tide was against us. So for half an hour we crouched below that rowboat's gunwale, just peeping up now and then to see the white line of the breakers on the sand, and beyond that the black outlines of the horsemen, who slowly followed us, firing steadily, but with no very clear view of what they fired at. I thought that the two miles would never end. Sometimes the guns would stop for a minute, and I would think, "Ah! now we are out of range," or, "Now they have given us up." And then, in another second, another volley would rattle at us, and perhaps a bullet would go whining overhead, or a heavy chewed slug would come "plob" into the boat's side within six inches of me.

Marah didn't seem to mind their firing. He was too pleased at having led the preventives away from the main body of the night-riders to mind a few bullets. "Ah, Jim," he said, "there's three thousand pounds in lace, brandy, and tobacco gone to Dartmoor this night. And all them redcoat fellers got was a dead horse and a horse with a water-breaker on him. And the dead horse was their own, and the one they took. I stole 'em out of the barrack stables myself."

"But horse-stealing is a capital offence," I cried. "They could hang you."

"Yes," he said; "so they would if they could." Bang! came another volley of bullets all round us. "They'd shoot us, too, if they could, so far as that goes; but so far, they haven't been able. Never cross any rivers till you come to the water, Jim. Let that be a lesson to you."

I have often thought of it since as sound advice, and I have always tried to act upon it; but at the time it didn't give much comfort.

At the end of half an hour we were clear of Slapton sands, and coming near to Strete, and here even Marah began to be uneasy. He was watching the horsemen on the beach very narrowly, for as soon as they had passed the Lea they had stopped firing on us, and had gone at a gallop to the beach boathouse to get out a boat."

"What are they doing, Marah?" I asked.

"Getting out a boat to come after us," he answered. "Silly fools! If they'd done that at once they'd have got us. They may do it now. There goes the boat."

We heard the cries of the men as the boat ground over the shingle. Then we heard shouts and cries, and saw a light in the boathouse.

"Looking for oars and sails," said Marah, "and there are none. Good, there are none."

Happily for us, there were none. But we heard a couple of horses go clattering up the road to O'Farrell's cottage to get them.

"We shall get away now," said Marah.

In a few minutes we were out of sight of the beach. Then one of the strange coast currents caught us, and swept us along finely for a few minutes. Soon our boat was in the cave, snugly lashed to the ring-bolts, and Marah had lifted me up the stairs to the room where a few smugglers lay in their hammocks, sleeping heavily. Marah made me drink something and eat some pigeon pie; and then, stripping my clothes from me, he rubbed me down with a blanket, wrapped me in a pile of blankets, and laid me to sleep in a corner on an old sail.