Chapter 9

The women, though overmatched, fought like cats--or like bull-dogs rather. They were borne down to the floor, but even here for a while the struggle heaved and swayed this way and that, and I had barely time to snatch up one of the candles before table, bottles, glasses, went over in a general ruin. Above the clatter of it and the cursing, as I turned to stick the candle upright in a bottle on the dresser, I heard a cheer raised from somewhere in the back premises, and two men came rushing from the inner room--two men in feminine skirts, the one naked to the waist, the other clad about his chest and neck with a loose flannel shirt and a knotted Belcher handkerchief.

They paused for just about the time it would take you to count five; paused while they drew themselves up for the charge; and the lieutenant, reading the battle in their faces--and no ordinary battle either--shouted to close the door. He shouted none too soon. In a flash the pair were upon us, and at the first blow two sailors went down like skittles. There must have been at least twenty sailors in the room, and all of them willing, yet in that superb charge the pair drove them like sheep, and the naked man had even time to drag the dresser from the clamps fastening it to the wall and hurl it down between himself and three seamen running to take him in flank. The candle went down with it: but the lieutenant, skipping back to the closed door, very pluckily held up his lantern and called on his men, in the same breath forbidding them to use their cutlasses yet. In the circumstances this was generous, and I verily believe he would have been killed for it--the pair being close upon him and their fists going like hammers--had not one of the seamen whipped out a piece of rope and, ducking low, dived under the naked man's guard and lassoed him by the ankles. Two others, who had been stretched on the floor, simultaneously grabbed his companion by the skirts and wound their arms about his knees: and so in a trice both heroes were brought to ground. Even so they fought on until quieted by two judicious taps with the hilt of the boatswain's cutlass. I honestly thought he had killed them, but was assured they were merely stunned for the time. The boatswain, it appeared, was an expert, and had already administered the same soothing medicine to two or three of the more violent among the ladies; though loath to do so (he explained), because it sometimes gave the crowd a wrong impression when the bodies in this temporary state of inanition were carried out.

The small crowd in the street, however, seemed in no mind to hinder us. Possibly experience had taught them composure. At any rate they were apathetic, though curious enough to follow us down to the quay and stand watching whilst we embarked our unconscious burdens. A lamp burned foggily at the head of the steps by which we descended to the waterside, and looking up I saw the child who had called herself Meliar-Ann standing in the circle of it, and gazing down upon the embarkation with dark unemotional eyes. Hartnoll spied her too, and waved his recovered dirk triumphantly. She paid him no heed at all.

"But look here," said the lieutenant, turning on me, "we can't take you on board to-night--and without your chests. Oh yes--I have your names; Rodd and Hartnoll . . . and a deuced lucky thing for you we tumbled upon you as we did. But Captain Suckling's orders were--and I heard him give 'em, with my own ears--to fetch you off to-morrow morning. From the Blue Posts, eh? Well, just you run back, or Blue Billy,"--by this irreverent name, as I learned later, the executive officers of his Majesty's Navy had agreed to know Mr. Benjamin Sheppard, proprietor of the Blue Posts: a solid man, who died worth sixty thousand pounds--"or Blue Billy will be sending round the crier."

"But, sir, we don't know where to find the Blue Posts!"

He stared at me, turning with his foot on the boat's gunwale. "Why, God bless the boy! you've only to turn to your left and follow your innocent nose for a hundred and fifty yards, and you'll run your heads against the doorway."

We watched the boat as it pushed off. A few of the crowd still lingered on the quay's edge, and it has since occurred to me to wonder that, as Hartnoll and I turned and ascended the steps, no violence was offered to us. We had come out to flaunt our small selves in his Majesty's uniform. Here, if ever, was proof of the respect it commanded; and we failed to notice it. Meliar-Ann had disappeared. The loungers on the quay-head let us pass unmolested, and, following the lieutenant's directions, sure enough within five minutes we found ourselves under the lamp of the Blue Posts!

The night-porter eyed us suspiciously before admitting us. "A man might say that you've made a pretty fair beginning," he ventured; but I had warned Hartnoll to keep his chin up, and we passed in with a fine show of haughty indifference.

At eight o'clock next morning Hartnoll and I were eating our breakfast when the waiter brought a visitor to our box--a tallish midshipman about three years our senior, with a face of the colour of brickdust and a frame that had outgrown his uniform.

"Good-morning, gentlemen," said he; "and I daresay you guess my business. I'm to take you on board as soon as you can have your boxes ready."

We asked him if he would do us the honour to share our breakfast: whereupon he nodded.

"To tell you the truth, I was about to suggest it myself. Eh? What have we? Grilled kidneys? Good."

I called to the waiter to fetch another dish of kidneys.

"_And_ a spatchcock," added our guest. "They're famous, here, for spatchcock. _And_, yes, I think we'll say an anchovy toast. Tea? Well, perhaps, at this time of the morning--with a poker in it."

This allusion to a poker we did not understand; but fortunately the waiter did, and brought a glassful of rum, which Mr. Strangways--for so he had made himself known to us--tipped into his tea, assuring us that the great Nelson had ever been wont to refer to this--his favourite mixture--as "the pride of the morning."

"By the way," he went on, with his mouth full of kidney, "the second lieutenant tells me you were in luck's way last night."

To this we modestly agreed, and hoped that the prisoners had arrived safely on board.

He grinned. "You may lay to that. We had to club half a dozen of them as soon as they were lifted aboard. When I say 'we' I ought to add that I was in my hammock and never heard a word of it, being a heavy sleeper. _That,_" said Mr. Strangways pensively, "is my one fault."

We attempted to convey by our silence that Mr. Strangways' single fault was a trifling, a venial one.

"It'll hinder my prospects, all the same." He nodded. "You mark my words." He nodded again, and helped himself to a round of buttered toast. "But I'm told," he went on, "there was an unholy racket. They couldn't do much, having the jollies on both pair of paws; but a party in mother-o'-pearl buttons made a speech about the liberty of the subject, in a voice that carried pretty nearly to Gosport: and the first lieutenant, being an old woman, and afraid of the ship's losing reputation while he was in charge, told them all to be good boys and he would speak to the Captain when he came aboard; and served them out three fingers of rum apiece, which the bo'sun took upon himself to hocus. By latest accounts, they're sleeping it off and--I say, waiter, you might tell the cook to devil those kidneys."

"But hasn't Captain Suckling returned yet?" I ventured to ask.

"He hasn't," said Mr. Strangways. "The deuce knows where he is, and the first lieutenant, not being in the deuce's confidence, is working himself into the deuce of a sweat. What's worse, His Excellency hasn't turned up yet, nor His Excellency's suite: though a boat waited for 'em five solid hours yesterday. All that arrived was His Excellency's valet and about a score of valises, and word that the great man would follow in a shore-boat. Which he hasn't."

From this light gossip Mr. Strangways turned and addressed himself to the devilled kidneys, remarking that in his Britannic Majesty's service a man was hungry as a matter of course; which I afterwards and experimentally found to be true.

Well--not to protract the tale--an hour later we took boat with our belongings, under Mr. Strangways' escort, and were pulled on a swift tide down to the ship. It so happened that the first and second lieutenants were standing together in converse on the break of the poop when we climbed on board and were led aft to report ourselves. The second lieutenant, Mr. Fraser (in whom we recognised our friend of the night before) stepped to the gangway and shook hands with a jolly smile. His superior offered us no such cheerful welcome, but stuck his hands behind him and scowled.

"H'm," said he, "are these your two infants? They look as if they had been making a night of it."

I could have answered (but did not) that we must be looking pasty-faced indeed if his gills had the advantage of us: for the man was plainly fretting himself to fiddle-strings with anxiety. He turned his back upon us and called forward for one of the master's mates, to whom he gave orders to show us our hammocks. We saluted and took leave of him, and on our way below fell in with Strangways again, who haled us off to introduce us to the gun-room.

Of the gun-room and its horrors you'll have formed--if lads still read their Marryat nowadays--your own conception; and I will only say that it probably bears the same relation to the _Melpomene's_ gun-room as chalk to cheese. The _Melpomene's_ gun-room was low--so low that Strangways seldom entered it but he contused himself--and it was also dark as the inside of a hat, and undeniably stuffy.

Yet to me, in my first flush of enthusiasm, it appeared eminently cosy: and the six midshipmen of the _Melpomene_--Walters, de Havilland, Strangways, Pole, Bateman, Countisford--six as good fellows as a man could wish to sail with. Youth, youth! They had their faults: but they were all my friends till the yellow fever carried off two at Port Royal; and two are alive yet and my friends to-day. I tell their six names over to-day like a string of beads, and (if the Lord will forgive a good Protestant) with a prayer for each.

Our next business was to become acquainted with the two marines who had carried our chests below, and who (as we proudly understood) were to be our body-servants. We were on deck again, and luckily out of hearing of our fellow-midshipmen, when these two menials came up to report themselves: and Hartnoll and I had just arrived at an amicable choice between them.

"Here, Bill," said the foremost, advancing and pointing at me with a forefinger, "which'll it be? If you _don't_ mind, I'll take the red-headed one, to put me in mind o' my gal."

So on the whole we settled ourselves down very comfortably aboard the _Melpomene_: but the ship was not easy that day as a society, nor could be, with her commanding officer pacing to and fro like a bear in a cage. You will have seen the black bear at the Zoo, and noticed the swing of his head as he turns before ever reaching the end of his cage? Well just so-- or very like it--the _Melpomene's_ first lieutenant kept swinging and chafing on the quarter-deck all that afternoon--or, to be precise, until six o'clock, when Captain Suckling came aboard in a shore-boat, and in his shore-going clothes.

He was a pleasant-faced man; clean-shaven, rosy-complexioned, grey-haired, with something of the air and carriage of a country squire; a pleasant-tempered man too, although he appeared to be in a pet of some sort, and fairly fired up when the first lieutenant (a little sarcastically, I thought) ventured to hope that he had been enjoying himself.

"Nothing of the sort, sir! It's the first--" Captain Suckling checked himself. "I was going to say," he resumed more quietly, "that it's the first prize-fight I have ever attended and will be the last. But in point of fact there has been no fight."

"Indeed, sir?" I heard the first lieutenant murmur compassionately.

"The men did not turn up; neither they nor their trainers. The whole meeting, in fact, was what is vulgarly called a bilk. But where is Sir John?"

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"His Excellency--you have made him comfortable?"

"His Excellency, sir, has not turned up. In fact," said the first lieutenant prettily, "I fancy that His Excellency, too, must have done what is--er--vulgarly termed a bilk."

Captain Suckling stared from his lieutenant to the shore, and from the shore to the horizon.

"The boat waited no less than five hours for him yesterday, and in the end brought off his valet with some luggage. He gave us to understand that Sir John and his Secretary would follow in a shore-boat. This was twenty-four hours ago, and they have not appeared."

"Extraordinary!"

"I have to report also," said the first lieutenant, "that at seven o'clock, in accordance with orders, Mr. Fraser took a party ashore. The press has been active of late, and at first they found the whole town shy: in fact, sir, they met with no success at all until midnight, when, just as they were on the point of returning, they raided a house and brought off eight able-bodied fellows--as fine a lot, sir, physically, as you could wish to see. For their seamanship I am unable to answer, having had no opportunity to question them. To judge from his report Mr. Fraser handled the affair well, and brought them off expeditiously; and I am relieved to tell you that, so far, we have had no trouble from shore--not so much as an inquiry sent."

"That is luck, indeed," said Captain Suckling approvingly; "and a comfort to hear at the end of a day when everything has gone wrong. Fetch them up--that is, if they are sufficiently recovered; fetch them up, and when I've shifted these clothes I'll have a look at them while daylight serves."

The Captain went below: and five minutes later I saw the first of the prisoners haled up through the hatchway. It was the man in the double overcoat; but he had lost his colour, and he no sooner reached the deck than he lurched and sat down with a thud. Since no one helped him to rise, he remained seated, and gazed about him with a drugged and vacuous stare, while the light of the approaching sunset shimmered over his mother-of-pearl buttons.

The next to emerge was my friend of the splendid torso, handcuffed and fettered. When he, too, lurched and fell, I became aware for the first time that the frigate was rocking on a gentle south-westerly swell, and I turned to the bulwarks for a glance overside at the water which, up to an hour ago, had been smooth as a pond. I had scarcely reached the bulwarks when a voice forward sang out that a boat was approaching and hailing us.

Sure enough, a boat there was: and in the stern-sheets, with a couple of watermen pulling, sat two men of whom the portliss was promptly and confidently proclaimed by the midshipmen gathered around me to be no other than His Excellency.

The boat approached and fell alongside the ladder suspended a few yards aft of the ship's waist. The first lieutenant, having sent word to the Captain, hurried forward to receive our distinguished guest, who climbed heavily on his Secretary's arm. Arriving thus at the sally-way, he nodded graciously in answer to the first lieutenant's salute, pulled out a handkerchief to mop his brow, and in the act of mopping it cast a glance across the deck.

"Captain Suckling has asked me to present his excuses to your Excellency--" began the first lieutenant in his best tone of ceremony; and, with that, took a step backward as His Excellency flung out a rigid arm.

"The Dustman! for a fiver!"

"I--I beg your Excellency's pardon--your Excellency was pleased to observe--"

"The Dustman, for a hundred pounds! Jem Clark, too! Oh, catch me, Winyates!" and His Excellency staggered back, clutching at a man-rope with one hand, pointing with the other. His gaze wavered from the prisoners amidships to the first lieutenant, and from the first lieutenant to the poop-ladder, at the head of which Captain Suckling at this instant appeared, hastily buttoning his uniform coat as he came.

"A thousand pardons, your Excellency!"

"A thousand pounds, sir!"

"Hey?"

"If that's not the very pair of scoundrels I've been hunting the length and breadth of Hampshire. Fareham was the venue, Captain Suckling--if I am addressing Captain Suckling--"

"You are, sir. I--I think you said Fareham--"

"I did, sir. I don't mind confessing to you--here on the point of departing from England--that I admire the noble art, sir: so much so that I have wasted a whole day in the neighbourhood of Fareham, hunting for a prize-fight which never came off."

"But--but I don't mind confessing to your Excellency," gasped Captain Suckling, "that _I_ too have been at Fareham and have--er--met with the same disappointment."

"Disappointment, sir! When you have kidnapped the scoundrels--when you have them on board at this moment!" Sir John pointing a shaking forefinger again at the pressed men.

Captain Suckling stared in the direction where the finger pointed. "You don't mean to tell me--" he began weakly, addressing the first lieutenant.

"Mr. Fraser brought them aboard, sir," said the first lieutenant.

"And we'll have the law of you for it," promised the man in the pearl buttons from amidships, but in a weakening voice.

Captain Suckling was what they call an officer and a gentleman. He drew himself up at once.

"In my absence my officers appear to have made a small mistake. But I hope your Excellency may not be disappointed after all. I have never set eyes on either of these men before, but if that naked man be the Dustman I will put up a hundred pounds upon him, here and now; or on the other if that runs counter to your Excellency's fancy--"

"Jem Clark's my man," said Sir John. "I'll match your stake, sir."

"--And liberty for all if they show a decent fight, and a boat to set them ashore," went on Captain Suckling. "Is that a fair offer, my men?"

The man in the pearl buttons raised his head to answer for the two pugilists, who by this time were totally incapable of answering for themselves. He showed pluck, too; for his face shone with the colour of pale marble.

"A hundred pounds! Oh, go to blazes with your hundred pounds! When I tell you the Prince Regent himself had five hundred on it. . . . Oh! prop 'em up, somebody! and let the fools see what they've done to poor Jem, that I'd a-trained to a hair. And the money of half the fancy depending on his condition. . . ."

"Prop 'em up, some of you!" echoed Captain Suckling. "Eh? God bless my soul--"

He paused, staring from the yellow faces of the pugilists to the battered and contused features of his own seamen.

"God bless my soul!" repeated Captain Suckling. "Mr. Fraser!"

"Sir!" The second lieutenant stepped forward.

"You mean to tell me that--that these two men--inflicted--er--_all this?_"

"They did, sir. If I might explain the unfortunate mistake--"

"You describe it accurately, sir. I could say to you, as Sir Isaac Newton said to his dog Diamond, 'Oh, Mr. Fraser, Mr. Fraser, you little know what you have done!'"

"Indeed, sir, I fear we acted hastily. The fact is we found the two new midshipmen, Rodd and Hartnoll, in something of a scrape with these people. . . ." The second lieutenant told how he had found me battering at the door, and how he had effected an entrance: but the Captain listened inattentively.

"Your Excellency," he said, interrupting the narrative and turning on the Governor, "I really think these men will give us little sport here."

"They are going to be extremely ill," said His Excellency, "and that presently."

"I had better send them ashore."

"Decidedly; and before they recover. Also, if I might advise, I would not be too hasty in knocking off their handcuffs."

"We are short-handed," mused Captain Suckling; "but really the situation will be a delicate one unless we weigh anchor at once."

"You will be the laughing-stock of all the ships inside the Wight, and the object of some indignation ashore."

"There is nothing to detain us, for doubtless I can pick up a few recruits at Falmouth. . . . But what to do with these men?"

"May I suggest that I have not yet dismissed my shore-boat?"

"The very thing!" Captain Suckling gazed overside, and then southward towards the Wight, whence a light sea-fog was drifting up again to envelop us.

"I never thought," he murmured, "to be thankful for thick weather to weigh anchor in!"

He turned and stared pensively at the line of prisoners who had staggered one by one to the bulwarks, and leaned there limply, their resentment lost for the time in the convulsions of nature.

"It seems like taking advantage of their weakness," said he pensively.

"It does," agreed His Excellency; "but I strongly advise it."

A moment, and a moment only, Captain Suckling hesitated before giving the order. . . . Then in miserable procession the strong men were led past us to the ladder, each supported by two seamen. The gangway was crowded, and my inches did not allow me to look over the bulwarks: but I heard the boatswain knocking off their irons in the boat below, and the objurgating voice of the man in the pearl buttons.

"Give way!" shouted someone. I edged towards the gangway and stooped; and then, peering between the legs of my superior officers, I saw the boat glide away from the frigate's side. Our friends lay piled on the bottom-boards and under the thwarts like a catch of fish. One or two lifted clenched fists: and the boatmen, eyeing them nervously, fell to their oars for dear life.

As the fog swallowed them, someone took me by the ear.

"Hullo, young gentlemen," said His Excellency, pinching me and reaching out a hand for Hartnoll, who evaded him, "it seems to me you deserve a thrashing apiece for yesterday and a guinea apiece for to-day. Will you take both, or shall we call it quits?"

Well, we called it quits for the time. But twenty years later, happening upon me at Buckingham Palace at one of King William's last levees, he shook hands and informed me that the balance sheet at the time had been wrongly struck: for I had provided him with a story which had served him faithfully through half his distinguished career. A week later a dray rumbled up to the door of my lodgings in Jermyn Street, and two stout men delivered from it a hogshead of the sherry you are now drinking. He had inquired for Hartnoll's address, but Hartnoll, poor lad, had lain for fifteen years in the British burial-ground at Port Royal.

THE BLACK JOKE.

A REPORTED TALE OF TWO SMUGGLERS.

I.

My mother's grandfather, Dan'l Leggo, was the piousest man that ever went smuggling, and one of the peaceablest, and scrupulous to an extent you wouldn't believe. He learnt his business among the Cove boys at Porthleah--or Prussia Cove as it came to be called, after John Carter, the head of the gang, that was nicknamed the King o' Prussia. Dan'l was John Carter's own sister's son, trained under his eye; and when the Carters retired he took over the business in partnership with young Phoby Geen, a nephew by marriage to Bessie Bussow that still kept the Kiddlywink at Porthleah, and had laid by a stockingful of money.