Chapter 8

Sure enough, descending to the street, we found it full of fog; and either the fog was of remarkable density, or Portsmouth furnished with the worst street-lamps in the world, for we had not walked five hundred yards before it dawned on me that to find our hostelry again might not be an entirely simple matter. Maybe the port wine had induced a haze of its own upon my sense of locality. I fancied, too, that the fresh air was affecting Hartnoll, unless his gait feigned a sea-roll to match his uniform. I felt a delicacy in asking him about it.

Another thing that surprised me was the emptiness of the streets. I had always imagined Portsmouth to be a populous town . . . but possibly its inhabitants were congregated around the fair, towards which we set ourselves to steer, guided by the tunding of distant drums. It mattered little If we lost our bearings, since everybody in Portsmouth must know the Blue Posts.

"Tell you what it is, Rodd," said Hartnoll, pulling up in a by-street and picking his words deliberately,--"tell you what accounts for it,"--he waved a hand at the emptiness surrounding us. "It's the press. Very night for it; and the men all hiding within doors."

"Nonsense," said I. "It's a deal likelier to be the Fat Woman or the Two-headed Calf."

"It's the press," insisted Hartnoll: and for the moment, when we emerged out of a side lane upon a square filled with flaring lights, the crashing of drums and cymbals, and the voices of showmen yelling in front of their booths, I had a suspicion that he was right. One or two women, catching sight of our uniforms, edged away swiftly, and, as they went, peered back into the darkness of the lane behind us. A few minutes later, as we dodged around the circumference of the crowd in search of an opening, we ran up against one of the women with her man in tow. She was arguing with him in a low, eager sort of voice, and he followed sulkily. At sight of us again she fetched up with a gasp of breath, almost with a squeal. The man drew himself up defiantly and began to curse us, but she quickly interrupted him, thrusting her open hand over his mouth, and drew him away down a dark courtyard.

After this we found ourselves in the glare immediately under the platform of a booth; and two minutes later were mounting the rickety steps, less of our own choice than by pressure of the crowd behind. The treat promised us within was the Siege of Copenhagen with real fireworks, which as an entertainment would do as well as another. On the way up Hartnoll whispered to me to keep my hands in my breeches pockets, if I carried my money there; and almost on the same instant cried out that someone had stolen his dirk. He stood lamenting, pointing to the empty sheath, while a stout woman at a table took our entrance-money with an impassive face. The Siege of Copenhagen was what you youngsters nowadays would call a 'fizzle,' I believe: or maybe Hartnoll's face of woe and groanings over his lost dirk damped the fireworks for me. But these were followed by a performing pony, which, after some tricks, being invited by his master to indicate among the audience a gentleman addicted to kissing the ladies and running away, thrust its muzzle affectionately into my waistcoat; whereat Hartnoll recovered his spirits at a bound, and treacherously laughed louder than any of the audience. I thought it infernally bad taste, and told him so. But, as it happened, I had a very short while to wait for revenge: for in the very next booth, being invited to pinch the biceps of the Fat Woman, my gentleman-of-the-world blushed to the eyes, cast a wild look around for escape, and turned, to fall into the arms of a couple of saucy girls who pushed him forward to hold him to his bargain. His eyes were red--he was positively crying with shame and anger--when we found ourselves outside under the torchlights that made flaming haloes in the fog.

"Hang it, Rodd! I've had enough of this fair. Let's get back to the Posts."

"What's the time?" said I, and felt for my watch.

My watch had disappeared.

It had been my mother's parting gift, and somehow the loss of it made me feel, with a shock, utterly alone in the world. Why on earth had I not clung to the respectable shelter of the Blue Posts? What a hollow mockery were these brazen cymbals, these hoarse inviting voices, these coarse show-cloths, these lights!

Curiously enough, and as if in instant sympathy with my dejection, the cymbals ceased to clash. The showmen began to extinguish their torches. I had lost my watch; Hartnoll did not own one. But we agreed that, at latest, the hour could not be much more than ten. Yet the shows were closing, the populace was melting away into the fog.

"I've had enough of this. Let's get back to the Posts," Hartnoll repeated. His eyes told me that up to two days ago, when he left home, nine o'clock or thereabouts had been his regular bedtime. It had been mine also.

One of the two saucy girls, happening to pass an instant before the booth above us extinguished its lights, spied us in dejected colloquy, and came forward. Hartnoll turned from her, but I made bold to ask her the nearest way to the Blue Posts.

I will give you her exact answer. She said--"Turn up on your right hand at the next turning, but, at the next turning of all, on your left; marry, at the very next turning, turn of no hand, but turn down indirectly to the Blue Postesses."

I have it by heart, because years after I found it in Shakespeare's _Merchant of Venice_, where you may find it for yourselves, if you look, with the answer I might have made to her. She did not wait for one, however, but stood looking around in the fog as if for a guide. "Poor lads!" she went on, "you'll certainly never reach it without help, though everyone in Portsmouth knows the Blue Posts: and I'd go with you myself if I weren't due at the theatre in ten minutes' time. I have to call on the manager as soon as the house empties to-night; and if I miss it will mean losing an engagement." She puckered her brow thoughtfully, and her face in spite of the paint on it struck me as a lovely one, saucy no longer but almost angelically kind. I have never seen her again from that day to this, and I was a boy of fourteen, but I'll wager that girl had a good heart. "Your best plan," she decided, "is to step along with me, and at the stage door, or inside the theatre at any rate, we'll soon find somebody to put you in the way."

But here a small figure stepped out against us from the shadow of the platform, and a small shrillish voice piped up--

"For a copper, miss--or a copper apiece if they'll trust me. Find the Blue Postesses? W'y, I'd walk there on my head with my eyes bound!"

We stared down at her--for it was a small girl, a girl so diminutive that Hartnoll and I, who were not Anaks by any means, topped her by head and shoulders. She wore no shoes, no stockings, no covering for her head. Her hair, wet with the fog, draggled down, half-hiding her face, which was old for its age (as they say), and chiefly by reason of her sharp, gipsy-coloured eyes.

"For a copper apiece, miss, and honour bright!" said the waif.

The young actress turned to us with a laugh. "Why not?" she asked. "That is, if you're not above being beholden to the child? But I warn you not to pay her till you get to the Blue Posts."

I answered that any port was good in a storm, and the child should have sixpence if she proved as good as her word.

"So long, then, my pair of seventy-fours. I'm late for the theatre already. Good-night! and when you tuck yourselves in to bye-low don't forget to dream of your mammies." Bending quickly, she kissed Hartnoll on the cheek, and was in the act to offer me a like salute when I dodged aside, angered by her last words. She broke into a laugh like a chime of bells, made a pretty pout at me with her lips and disappeared into the darkness. Then it struck me that I need not have lost my temper; but I was none the more inclined to let Hartnoll down easily.

"I call that pretty meek," said I, as we walked off together, the child pattering, barefoot, beside us.

"What's the matter?" asked Hartnoll.

"Why, to let that girl kiss you--like a baby!"

"Sure you're not thinking of sour grapes?"

"I take you to witness," said I, "that she tried it on and I wouldn't let her."

"The more fool you!" retorted Hartnoll, edging away from me in dudgeon-- but I knew he was more than half ashamed. Just at that moment to my astonishment I felt the child at my side reach up and touch my hand.

"Ugh!" said I, drawing it away quickly. "Paws off, please! Eh?--what's this?" For she was trying to thrust something into it and to close my fingers upon it.

"Hush!" she whispered. "It's your watch."

I gave a whistle. "My watch? How the deuce did _you_ come by my watch?"

"Prigged it," said the child in a business-like voice. "Don't know why I gave it back: seemed that I wanted to. That's why I offered to come with you: and now I'm glad. Don't care if I _do_ get a hiding."

For the moment, while she plodded alongside, I could only feel the watch over in my hand, making sure that it was really mine.

"But," said I, after a long pause of wonder, "you don't suppose that _I_ want to give you a hiding, eh?--and you a girl, too!"

"No."

"Then who's going to beat you?"

"Mother." After a moment she added reassuringly, "But I've got another inside o' my bodice."

I whistled again, and called up Hartnoll, who had been lagging behind sulkily. But he lost his sulks when I showed him the watch: and he too whistled, and we stood stock-still gazing at the child, who had halted with one bare foot on the edge of the gutter.

"She has another about her," said I. "She confessed it."

"Good Lord!" As the child made a motion to spring away, Hartnoll stepped out across the gutter and intercepted her. "I--I say," he stammered, "you don't by any chance happen to have my dirk?"

She fell to whimpering. "Lemme go . . . I took pity on yer an' done yer a kindness . . . put myself out o' the way, I did, and this is what I get for it. Thought you was kind-hearted, I did, and--if you don't lemme go, I'll leave you to find your way, and before mornin' the crimps'll get you." She threatened us, trembling with passion, shaking her finger at the ugly darkness.

"Look here," said I, "if you said anything about another watch, understand that I didn't hear. You don't suppose I want to take it from you? I'm only too glad to have my own again, and thank you."

"I thought _'e_ might," she said, only half-reassured, jerking a nod towards Hartnoll. "As for his dirk, I never took it, but I know the boy as did. He lives the way we're going, and close down by the water; and if you spring a couple o' tanners maybe I'll make him give it up."

"I'd give all I possess to get back that dirk," said Hartnoll, and I believe he meant it.

"Come along, then,"--and we plunged yet deeper into the dark bowels of Portsmouth. The child had quite recovered her confidence, and as we went she explained to us quite frankly why her mother would be angry. The night--if I may translate out of her own language, which I forget-- was an ideal one for pocket-picking, what with the crowd at the fair, and the fog, and (best of all, it seemed) the constables almost to a man drawn off to watch the roads around Fareham.

"But what," I asked, "is the matter with Fareham?"

My ignorance staggered her. "What? Hadn't we heard of the great Prize-fight?" We had not. "Not the great fight coming off between Jem Clark and the Dustman?" We were unfamiliar even with the heroes' names.

She found this hard--very hard--to believe. Why, Portsmouth was full of it, word having come down from London the date was to-morrow, and that Fareham, or one of the villages near Fareham, the field of battle. The constabulary, too, had word of it--worse luck--and were on their mettle to break up the meeting, as the sportsmen of Portsmouth and its neighbourhood were all on their mettle to attend it. This, explained the child in her thin clear voice,--I can hear it now discoursing its sad, its infinitely weary wisdom to us two Johnny Newcomes,--this was the reason why the fair had closed early. The show-folk were all waiting, so to speak, for a nod. The tip given, they would all troop out northward, on each other's heels, greedy for the aftermath of the fight. Rumour filled the air, and every rumour chased after the movements of the two principals and their trainers, of whom nothing was known for certain save that they had left London, and (it was said) had successfully dodged a line of runners posted for some leagues along the Bath and Portsmouth roads. For an hour, soon after sunset, the town had been stunned by a report that Brighton, after all, would be the venue: a second report said Newbury, or at any rate a point south-west of Reading. Fire drives out fire: a third report swore positively that Clark and the Dustman were in Portsmouth, in hiding, and would run the cordon in the small hours of the morning.

So much--and also that her own name was Meliar-Ann and her mother kept a sailor's lodging-house--the small creature told us, still trotting by our side, until we found ourselves walking alongside a low wall over which we inhaled strong odours of the sea and of longshore sewage, and spied the riding-lights of the harbour looming through the fog. At the end of this we came to the high walls of a row of houses, all very quiet and black to the eye, except that here and there a chink of light showed through a window-shutter or the sill of a street-door. Throughout that long walk I had an uncanny sensation as of being led through a town bewitched, hushed, but wakeful and expectant of something. . . . I can get no nearer to explaining. We must have passed a score of taverns at least; of that I have assured myself by many a later exploration of Portsmouth: and in those days a Portsmouth tavern never closed day or night, save for the death of a landlord, nor always for that. But to-night a murmur at most distinguished it from the other houses in the street.

Meliar-Ann solved the puzzle for us, with a wise nod of the head--

"There's a press out; or elst they're expecting one," she said.

I heard a distant clock chiming for midnight as we followed her along this row of houses. Ahead of us a door opened, throwing a thin line of light upon the roadway, and was closed again softly, after the person within had stood listening (as it seemed to me) for five seconds or so.

Meliar-Ann started suddenly in front of us, spreading her arms out, then slowly backwards, and so motioning us to halt under the shadow of the wall. Obeying, we saw her tiptoe forwards, till, coming to the door which had just been closed, she crept close and tapped on it softly, yet in a way that struck me as being deliberate. Afterwards, thinking it over, I felt pretty sure that the child knocked by code.

At all events the door opened again, almost at once and as noiselessly as before. Hartnoll and I squeezed our bodies back in the foggy shadow, and I heard a voice ask, "Is that Smithers?" To this Meliar-Ann made some response which I could not catch, but its effect was to make the voice--a woman's--break out in a string of querulous cursings. "Drat the child!" it said (or rather, it said something much stronger which I won't repeat before the Rector. Eh, Rector--what's that you say? _Maxima debetur pueris_--oh, make yourself easy: I won't corrupt their morals). "Drat the child!" it said, then, or words to that effect. "Bothering here at this time of night, when Bill's been a-bed this hour and a half, and time you was the same." To this Meliar-Ann made, and audibly, the briefest possible answer. She said, "You lie." "Strike me dead!" replied the woman's voice in the doorway. "You lie," repeated the child; "and you'd best belay to that. Bill's been stealin' and got himself into trouble . . . a midshipman's dirk, it was, and he was seen taking it. I've run all this way to warn him. . . ." The two voices fell to muttering. "You can slip inside if you like and tell him quietly," said the woman after a while. "He's upstairs and asleep too, for all I know. If he brought any such thing home with him _I_ never saw it, and to that I'll take my oath."

But here another and still angrier voice--a virago's--broke in from the passage behind, demanding to know if the door was being kept open to invite the whole town. The child stood her ground on the doorstep. An instant later a hand reached out, clutched her--it seemed by the hair-- and dragged her inside. Then followed a strangling sob and the thud of heavy blows--

"Rodd, I can't stand this," whispered Hartnoll.

I answered, "Nor I;" and together we made a spring for it and hurled into the passage, bearing back the woman who tried to hold the door against us.

At the rush of our footsteps the virago dropped Meliar-Ann and fled down the passage towards a doorway, through which she burst, screaming. The child, borne forward by our combined weight, tottered and fell almost across the threshold of this room, where a flight of stairs, lit by a dingy lamp, led up into obscure darkness. On the third stair under the lamp I caught a momentary vision of a dirty, half-naked boy standing with a drawn dirk in his hand, and with that, my foot catching against Meliar-Ann's body, I pitched past, head foremost, into the lighted room.

As I fell I heard, or seemed to hear, a scuffle of feet, followed by a shout from Hartnoll behind us--"My dirk! You dirty young villain!"--and another stampede, this time upon the stairway. Then, all of a sudden, the room was quiet, and I picked myself up and fell back against the door-post, face to face with half a dozen women.

They were assuredly the strangest set of females I had ever set eyes on, and the tallest-grown: nor did it relieve my astonishment to note that they wore bonnets and shawls, as if for a journey, and that two or three were smoking long clay pipes. The room, in fact, was thick with tobacco-smoke, through the reek of which my eyes travelled to a disorderly table crowded with glasses and bottles of strong waters, in the midst of which two tallow dips illuminated the fog; and beyond the table to the figure of a man stooping over a couple of half-packed valises; an enormously stout man swathed in greatcoats--a red-faced, clean-shaven man, with small piggish eyes which twinkled at me wickedly as I picked myself up, and he, too, stood erect to regard me.

"Press-gang be d--d!" he growled, answering the virago's call of warning. "More likely a spree ashore. And where might _you_ come from, young gentleman? And what might be _your_ business to-night, breakin' into a private house?"

I cast a wild look over the bevy of forbidding females and temporised, backing a little until my shoulder felt the door-post behind me.

"I was trying to find my way to the Blue Posts," said I.

"Then," said the stout man with obvious truth, "you ain't found it yet."

"No, sir," said I.

"And that bein' the case, you'll march out and close the door behind you. Not,"--he went on more kindly--"that I'd be inhospitable to his Majesty's uniform, 'specially when borne by a man of your inches; and to prove it I'll offer you a drink before parting."

He reached out a hand towards one of the black bottles. I was about to thank him and decline, withdrawing my eyes from a black-bonneted female with (unless the shadow of her bonnet played me false) a stiff two-days' beard on her massive chin, when a noise of feet moving over the boards above, and of a scuffle, followed by loud whimpering, reminded me of Hartnoll.

"I don't go without my mate," I answered defiantly enough.

"And what the '--' have I to do with your mate?" demanded the stout man. "I tell you," said he, losing his temper and striding to the stairway, as the sounds of a struggle recommenced overhead, "if your mate don't hold the noise he's kicking up this instant, bringing trouble on respectable folks, I'll cut his liver out and fling it arter you into the street."

He would have threatened more, though he could hardly have threatened worse, but at this moment a door opened in the back of the room and a bullet-head thrust itself forward, followed by a pair of shoulders naked and magnificently shaped.

"Time to start, is it?" demanded the apparition. "Or elst what in thunder's the meanin' o' this racket, when I was just a-gettin' of my beauty sleep?"

The stout man let out a murderous oath, and, rushing back, thrust the door close upon the vision; but not before I had caught a glimpse of a woman's skirt enwrapping it from the waist down. The next moment one of the females had caught me up: I was propelled down the passage at a speed and with a force that made the blood sing in my ears, and shot forth into the darkness; where, as I picked myself up, half-stunned, I heard the house-door slammed behind me.

I take no credit for what I did next. No doubt I remembered that Hartnoll was still inside; but for aught I know it was mere shame and rage, and the thought of my insulted uniform, that made me rush back at the door and batter it with fists and feet. I battered until windows went up in the houses to right and left. Voices from them called to me; still I battered: and still I was battering blindly when a rush of footsteps came down the street and a hand, gripping me by the collar, swung me round into the blinding ray of a dark lantern.

"Hands off!" I gasped, half-choked, but fighting to break away.

"All right, my game-cock!" A man's knuckles pressed themselves firmly into the nape of my neck. "Hullo! By gosh, sir, if it ain't a midshipman!"

"A midshipman?" said a voice of command. "Slew him round here. . . . So it is, by George! . . . and a nice time of night! Hold him up, bo'sun--you needn't be choking the lad. Now then, boy, what's your name and ship?"

"Rodd, sir--of the _Melpomene_--and there's another inside--" I began.

"The _Melpomene!_"

"Yes, sir: and there's my friend inside, and for all I know they're murdering him. . . . A lot of men dressed up as women. . . . His name's Hartnoll--" I struggled to make away for another rush at the door, and had my heel against it, when it gave way and Hartnoll came flying out into the night. The officer, springing past me, very cleverly thrust in a foot before it could be closed again.

"Men dressed as women, you say?"

"It's an old trick, sir," panted the bo'sun, pushing forward. "I've knowed it played ever since I served on a press. If you'll let the boys draw covert, sir . . . they've had a blank night, an' their tempers'll be the better for it."

He planted his shoulder against the door, begging for the signal, and the crew closed up around the step with a growl.

"My dirk!" pleaded Hartnoll. "I was getting it away, but one of 'em half-broke my arm and I dropped it again in the passage."

"Hey? Stolen your dirk--have they? That's excuse enough. . . . Right you are, men, and in you go!"

He waved his cocked hat to them as a huntsman lays on his hounds. In went the door with a crash, and in two twos I was swept up and across the threshold and surging with them down the passage. By reason of my inches I could see nothing of what was happening ahead. I heard a struggle, and in the midst of it a hand went up and smashed the lamp over the stairway, plunging us all in total darkness. But the lieutenant had his lantern ready, and by the rays of it the sailors burst open the locked door at the end and flung themselves upon the Amazons before the candles could be extinguished. At the same moment the lieutenant called back an order over my head to his whippers-in, to find their way around and take the house in the rear.