Part 6

For the moment the threat made the tailor uncomfortable: but he felt pretty sure the sailors, when they discovered the trick, wouldn't be able to do him much harm. The laugh of the whole town would be against them: and on Regatta Night the press--unpopular enough at the best of times--would gulp down the joke and make the best of it. He went back to his bench; but on second thoughts not to his work. 'Twould be on the safe side, anyway, to be not at home for an hour or two, in case the sailors came back to cry quits: playing the lonely martyr, too, wasn't much fun with this mischief working inside of him and swelling his lungs like barm.[2] He took a bite of bread and a sup of cider, blew out the candle, let himself forth into the street after a glance to make sure that all was clear, and headed for the Fish and Anchor.

[Footnote 2: Barm=yeast.]

He found the bar-room crowded, but not with the usual Regatta Night throng of all-sorts. The drinkers assembled were either burgesses like himself or waterside men with protection-papers in their pockets: for news of the press-gang had run through the town like wildfire, and the company had given over discussing the race of the day and taken up with this new subject. Among the protected men his eye lit on Treleaven the hoveller, husband to Long Eliza, and Caius Pengelly, husband to Ann, that had pulled bow in the race. He winked to them mighty cunning. The pair of 'em seemed dreadfully cast down, and he knew a word to put them in heart again.

"Terrible blow for us, mates, this woman's mutiny!" says he, dropping into a chair careless-like, pulling out a short pipe, and speaking high to draw the company's attention.

"Oh, stow it!" says Caius Pengelly, very sour. "We'd found suthin' else to talk about; and if the women have the laugh of us to-day, who's responsible, after all? Why, you--_you_, with your darned silly song about Adam and Eve. If you hadn't provoked your wife, this here wouldn't ha' happened."

"Indeed?" says the monkey-fellow, crossing his legs and puffing. "So you've found something better to talk about? What's that, I'd like to know?"

"Why, there's a press-gang out," says Treleaven. "But there! a fellow with your shaped legs don't take no interest in press-gangs, I reckon."

"Ah, to be sure," says the little man--but he winced and uncrossed his legs all the same, feeling sorry he'd made 'em so conspicuous--"ah, to be sure, a press-gang! I met 'em; but, as it happens, that's no change of subject."

"Us don't feel in no mood to stomach your fun to-night, Hancock; and so I warn 'ee," put in Pengelly, who had been drinking more than usual and spoke thick. "If you've a meaning up your sleeve, you'd best shake it out."

Hancock chuckled. "You fellows have no invention," he said; "no resource at all, as I may call it. You stake on this race, and, when the women beat you, you lie down and squeal. Well, you may thank me that I'm built different: I bide my time, but when the clock strikes I strike with it. I never did approve of women dressing man-fashion: but what's the use of making a row in the house? 'The time is bound to come,' said I to myself; and come it has. If you want a good story cut short, I met the press-gang just now and turned 'em on to raid the Sailor's Return: and if by to-morrow the women down there have any crow over us, then I'm a Dutchman, that's all!"

"Bejimbers, Hancock," says Treleaven, standing up and looking uneasy, "you carry it far, I must say!"

"Far? A jolly good joke, _I_ should call it," answers Hancock, making bold to cross his legs again.

And with that there comes a voice crying pillaloo in the passage outside; and, without so much as a knock, a woman runs in with a face like a sheet--Sam Hockaday's wife, from the Sailor's Return.

"Oh, Mr. Oke--Mr. Oke, whatever is to be done! The press has collared Sally Hancock and all her gang! Some they've kilt, and wounded others, and all they've a-bound and carried off and shipped at the quay-door. Oh, Mr. Oke, our house is ruined for ever!"

The men gazed at her with their mouths open. Hancock found his legs somehow; but they shook under him, and all of a sudden he felt himself turning white and sick.

"You don't mean to tell me----" he began.

But Pengelly rounded on him and took him by the ear so that he squeaked. "Where's my wife, you miserable joker, you?" demanded Pengelly.

"They c-can't be in earnest!"

"You'll find that I am," said Pengelly, feeling in his breeches-pocket, and drawing out a clasp-knife almost a foot long. "What's the name of the ship?"

"I--I don't know! I never inquired! Oh, please let me go, Mr. Pengelly! Han't I got my feelings, same as yourself?"

"There's a score of vessels atween this and Cawsand," put in Treleaven, catching his breath like a man hit in the wind, "and half-a-dozen of 'em ready to weigh anchor any moment. There's naught for it but to take a boat and give chase."

Someone suggested that Sal's own boat, the _Indefatigable Woman_, would be lying off Runnell's Yard; and down to the waterside they all ran, Pengelly gripping the tailor by the arm. They found the gig moored there on a frape, dragged her to shore, and tumbled in. Half-a-dozen men seized and shipped the oars: the tailor crouched himself in the stern-sheets. Voices from shore sang out all manner of different advice: but 'twas clear that no one knew which way the press-boat had taken, nor to what ship she belonged.

To Hancock 'twas all like a sick dream. He hated the water; he had on his thinnest clothes; the night began to strike damp and chilly, with a lop of tide running up from Hamoaze and the promise of worse below. Pengelly, who had elected himself captain, swore to hail every ship he came across: and he did--though from the first he met with no encouragement. "Ship, ahoy!" he shouted, coming down with a rush upon the stern-windows of the first and calling to all to hold water. "Ahoy! Ship!"

A marine poked his head over the taffrail. "Ship it is," said he. "And what may be the matter with you?"

"Be you the ship that has walked off with half-a-dozen women from Saltash?"

The marine went straight off and called the officer of the watch, "Boat-load of drunk chaps under our stern, Sir," says he, saluting. "Want to know if we've carried off half-a-dozen women from Saltash."

"Empty a bucket of slops on 'em," said the officer of the watch, "and tell 'em, with my compliments, that we haven't."

The marine saluted, hunted up a slop-bucket, and poured it over with the message. "If you want to know more, try the guard-ship," said he.

"That's all very well, but where in thunder be the guard-ship?" said poor Pengelly, scratching his head.

Everyone knew, but everyone differed by something between a quarter and half a mile. They tried ship after ship, getting laughter from some and abuse from others. And now, to make matters worse, the wind chopped and blew up from the sou'-west, with a squall of rain and a wobble of sea that tried Hancock's stomach sorely. At one time they went so far astray in the dark as to hail one of the prison-hulks, and only sheered off when the sentry challenged and brought his musket down upon the bulwarks with a rattle. A little later, off Torpoint, they fell in with the water-police, who took them for a party rowing home to Plymouth from the Regatta, and threatened 'em with the lock-up if they didn't proceed quiet. Next they fell foul of the guard-ship, and their palaver fetched the Admiral himself out upon the little balcony in his nightshirt. When he'd done talking they were a hundred yards off, and glad of it.

Well, Sir, they tried ship after ship, the blessed night through, till hope was nigh dead in them, and their bodies ached with weariness and hunger. Long before they reached Devil's Point the tumble had upset Hancock's stomach completely. He had lost his oar; somehow it slipped off between the thole-pins, and in his weakness he forgot to cry out that 'twas gone. It drifted away in the dark--the night all round was black as your hat, the squalls hiding the stars--and he dropped off his thwart upon the bottom-boards. "I'm a dying man," he groaned, "and I don't care. I don't care how soon it comes! 'Tis all over with me, and I shall never see my dear Sally no more!"

So they tossed till day broke and showed Drake's Island ahead of them, and the whole Sound running with a tidy send of sea from the south'ard, grey and forlorn. Some were for turning back, but Pengelly wouldn't hear of it. "We must make Cawsand Bay," says he, "if it costs us our lives. Maybe we'll find half-a-dozen ships anchored there and ready for sea."

So away for Cawsand they pulled, hour after hour, Hancock all the while wanting to die, and wondering at the number of times an empty man could answer up to the call of the sea.

The squalls had eased soon after daybreak, and the sky cleared and let through the sunshine as they opened the bay and spied two sloops-of-war and a frigate riding at anchor there. Pulling near with the little strength left in them, they could see that the frigate was weighing for sea. She had one anchor lifted and the other chain shortened in: her top-sails and topgallant sails were cast off, ready to cant her at the right moment for hauling in. An officer stood ready by the crew manning the capstan, and right aft two more officers were pacing back and forth with their hands clasped under their coat-tails.

"Lord!" groaned Pengelly, "if my poor Ann's aboard of she, we'll never catch her!" He sprang up in the stern-sheets and hailed with all his might.

Small enough chance had his voice of reaching her, the wind being dead contrary: and yet for the moment it looked as if the two officers aft had heard; for they both stepped to the ship's side, and one put up a telescope and handed it to the other. And still the crew of the gig, staring over their shoulders while they pulled weakly, could see the men by the capstan standing motionless and waiting for orders.

"Seems a'most as if they were expectin' somebody," says Pengelly with a sudden hopefulness: and with that Treleaven, that was pulling stroke, casts his eyes over his right shoulder and gives a gasp.

"Good Lord, look!" says he. "The tender!"

And sure enough, out of the thick weather rolling up away over Bovisand they spied now a Service cutter bearing across close-hauled, leaning under her big tops'l and knocking up the water like ginger-beer with the stress of it. When first sighted she couldn't have been much more than a mile distant, and, pull as they did with the remains of their strength, she crossed their bows a good half-mile ahead, taking in tops'l as she fetched near the frigate.

"Use your eyes--oh, use your eyes!" called out Pengelly: but no soul could they see on her besides two or three of the crew forward and a little officer standing aft beside the helmsman. Pengelly ran forward, leaping the thwarts, and fetched the tailor a rousing kick. "Sit up!" he ordered, "and tell us if that's the orficer you spoke to last night!"

The poor creature hoisted himself upon his thwart, looking as yellow as a bad egg. "I--I think that's the man," said he, straining his eyes, and dropped his head overside.

"Pull for your lives, boys," shouted Pengelly. And they did pull, to the last man. They pulled so that they reached the frigate just as the tender, having run up in the wind and fallen alongside, began uncovering hatches.

Two officers were leaning overside and watching--and a couple of the tender's crew were reaching down their arms into the hold. They were lifting somebody through the hatchway, and the body they lifted clung for a moment to the hatchway coaming, to steady itself.

"Sally!" screamed a voice from the gig.

The little officer in the stern of the tender cast a glance back at the sound and knew the tailor at once. He must have owned sharp sight, that man.

"Oh, you've come for your money, have you?" says he. And, looking up at the two officers overhead, he salutes, saying: "We've made a tidy haul, Sir--thanks to that man."

"I don't want your money. I want my wife!" yelled Hancock.

"And I mine!" yelled Pengelly.

"And I mine!" yelled Treleaven.

By this time the gig had fallen alongside the tender, and the women in the tender's hold were coming up to daylight, one by one. Sal herself stood watching the jail-delivery; and first of all she blinked a bit, after the darkness below, and next she let out a laugh, and then she reached up a hand and began unplaiting her pigtail.

"Be you the Captain of this here ship?" asks she, looking up and addressing herself to one of the officers leaning overside.

"Yes, my man; this here's the _Ranger_ frigate, and I'm her Captain. I'm sorry for you--it goes against my grain to impress men in this fashion: but the law's the law, and we're ready for sea, and if you've any complaints to make I hope you'll cut'em short."

"I don't know," says Sal, "that I've any complaints to make, except that I was born a woman. That I went on to marry that pea-green tailor yonder is my own fault, and we'll say no more about it."

By this time all the women on the tender was following Sal's example and unshredding their back-hair. By this time, too, every man aboard the frigate was gathered at the bulwarks, looking down in wonderment. There beneath 'em stood a joke too terrible to be grasped in one moment.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Rogers," says the Captain in a voice cold as a knife, "but you appear to have made a mistake."

The little officer had turned white as a sheet: but he managed to get in his say before the great laugh came. "I have, Sir, to my sorrow," says he, turning viciously on Hancock; "a mistake to be cast up against me through my career. But I reckon," he adds, "I leave the punishment for it in good hands." He glanced at Sally.

"You may lay to that, young man!" says she heartily. "You may lay to that every night when you says your prayers."

CAPTAIN WYVERN'S ADVENTURES

I

A philosophical man will go far before he discover a pastime more grateful or better soothing to his mind than painting in water-colours. I have heard angling preached up for a better; and when I answered on behalf of water-colours that it does not matter how ill you do it, was replied to that the same holds with angling if cheerfully practised. Well, then, at angling I make a cast and hitch my line over a bough, or it drops into some thicket, and thereat how can a man keep tranquil? No, no: I had liefer stain paper any day of the week.

On Saturday afternoon, the 10th of August, 1644--a very fair hot day--while I sat in the pleasant shady church of Boconnoc, near by Lord Mohun's house in Cornwall, copying down the writings on the monuments and the scutcheons in the windows in their right colours, it came into my mind to consider much that had happened to me in two years: how that fate had made a soldier of me, a plain Essex squire; how that, not content, it had promoted me to command a troop in his Majesty's regiment of horse; how that I, who had often desired to visit Cornwall for the sake of its ancient monuments, but had never thought (being by habit lethargic) to make so far a journey, was not only arrived there, but had leisure to follow my studies amid the fret and drilling of a great army.

Yet it was all very simple. On the 1st of August we had marched with his Majesty across the passes of the Tamar, the Earl of Essex giving ground before us and daily withdrawing his forces closer around Fowey; where, having a good harbour, he could easily fetch his victuals in from the sea. I will not tell how little by little we prevented him, and at last, surprising a fort by the harbour's entry, cut him off from aid of his shipping. All this was to come. Meanwhile, though pent in a few miles of ground, he had a fair back-door for his needs. The campaign was brought to a lock, and for almost two weeks we pushed matters half-heartedly; I believe, because the King had hopes of bringing the enemy to terms. Many letters came and went by trumpet; but in our camp on the moors over Boconnoc we did little from day to day save meet and picquer with small bodies of the rebel horse.

My duties giving me leisure, I turned to recreation; and Lord! how good it seemed to be antiquary again after two years of soldiering! That afternoon I played with my box of paints as a child who comes home for his first holidays, and takes down his familiar toys from the shelf. "Let others," said I, forgetting all the distractions of our poor realm of England, "let others have the making of history so I may keep the enjoying of it!" They were famous scutcheons, too, that I sat a-copying, the Mohuns having been Earls of Somerset, Lords of Dunster, and a great family in their day. Mohun, indeed, had come with the Conqueror--

_Le viel William de Moion Ont avec li maint compagnon_,

said the rhyme, as I remembered: and, behold! a fair monument against the north wall of the chancel (where I began) carried the royal coat of England and France with a label, impaling the ground _or_ and engrailed cross _sable_ of the Mohuns--this for a Philippa of their house that married with Edward, Duke of York, slain at Agincourt: and, beside it, Courtenay's three torteaux and FitzWilliam's three bendlets, Bevill and Brewer, Strange and Redvers, a coat _vert_ with three bucks' heads having their antlers depressed (which I took for Hayre), and another coat to set an antiquary thinking, for it bore _azure_ a bend _or_, with a label of three points _gules_. "Scrope or Grosvenor," said I to myself, looking up from my work towards the East windows, where the same scutcheon was repeated. "I wonder which claims you in these parts."

The shield that bore this famous device had it quartered on the sinister side with Courtenay and Redvers; and impaling these on the dexter side were, quarterly: (1) A space patched with clear glass (originally Mohun, no doubt); (2) _Vert_ three stags' heads _or_ (?Hayre); (3) _azure_ three bendlets _or_ (FitzWilliam); (4) a device which again puzzled me. It seemed to be an arm habited in a maunch, or sleeve, _ermine_, holding in the hand a golden flower.

Now while I painted, an old man had been moving about the far end of the church, whom I took for the sexton. I had passed him in the churchyard outside, when he was scything down the grass upon a grave; and had noted no more of his back than that he wore the clothes of a hind with a scrap of sacking over his shoulders--nor perhaps would have noted so much as this, had not his clothing seemed over-warm for the time of year.

But now, while I stood conning the coats in the East window, he drew towards me and spoke, stretching forward a hand timidly, almost touching my elbow.

"Sir," said he, and his voice and face bore instant witness together of gentle birth, "I am gladly at your service if anything there perplex you." With that he nodded towards the coats-of-arms.

In a trice I had recovered myself. "Then you, too, have a taste for such trifles?" answered I. "We are well met, Sir."

He shook his head, avoiding my look. You might have called his a noble face, but more than anything else it was patient. "I belong to these parts," said he; "and would ask a stranger to use my small knowledge: but, for myself, all such things may pass with me into oblivion, and I say 'Amen.'"

Said I then, "Maybe you can tell me of that coat in the fourth quarter dexter--the hand grasping a gold fleur-de-lys."

"Willingly," said he. "That is another device of the Mohuns, who in later times changed it for the sable cross engrailed. At the first they bore a man's hand in a sleeve: the flower it grasps came to them in this way: There was a certain Reginald Mohun, Lord of Dunster, who gave himself entirely to good works and founded a great abbey at Newenham, on the Somerset border. That was in Henry the Third's time--I think in twelve hundred and forty-six or, maybe, fifty. Having seen his abbey consecrated, he passed to the Court of Rome, which in those days was held at Lyons, to have his charters confirmed, and he happened there in Lent, when the Pope's custom was, on a day after hearing _Laetare Jerusalem_, to give a rose or flower of gold to the most honourable man then to be found at his court. They made inquiry that year and found the most honourable to be this Reginald Mohun, of whom the Pope asked what rank he bore in England. Mohun answered, 'a plain Knight bachelor.' 'Fair son,' said the Pope, 'hardly can I give you then this flower, which has never been given to one below a King or a Duke, or, at least, an Earl; therefore we will that you shall be Earl of Este'--which, as you know, is Somerset. Mohun answered, 'Holy Father, I have not wherewithal to maintain that title.' So the Pope gave him two hundred marks a year out of the Peter's pence; and so the Mohuns added golden flowers to their arms."

"I thank you, Sir," said I. "But whose is this other noble coat of _azure_ with the bend _or_? Did Grosvenor ever wed in these parts? Or Scrope?"

"Neither," said he. "That coat is mine."

"Yours?" I cried, surprised out of good manners. "But this, Sir, is the very coat over which Scrope and Grosvenor contended."

"Any are welcome to it now," he answered. "But it is Carminowe, and I am Carminowe."

"I ought to have known of a third claimant," said I, musing. "I have indeed heard of Carminowe: but I had thought the family to be long since perished."

He drew back a little and scanned me. "_Finis rerum_," said he quietly. "It comes to all; but sometimes it lingers, and--as with me--lingers overlong. I believe, Sir, that you are a Captain in his Majesty's Troop, and will have seen your share of fighting and of life in camp. Your present occupation proves you to be a contemplative man. Will you answer if I put to you a question or two?"

"Willingly," said I.

"You are unmarried?"

"I am."

"And you volunteered for the King's service in a hot-fit of loyalty; or maybe in a hot-fit of indignation at the perils threatening him, or against the insolence of Parliament? You had come to an age when with cooling judgment these fits grow rare, yet have not quite given over their patient to the calm of middle life.--You will tell me if I guess amiss?"

"But on the contrary, Sir," said I; "you have read me correctly. 'Twas in a passion of loyalty that I took up arms."

"And in the quest of it," he went on, "you fancied that all the currents of your nature had been swept into a fresh channel; that you were a new man; that this upheaving strife altered the face of all things, and you along with it."

"Why, and so it has!" cried I.

"Nay, but think awhile! You have marched and countermarched for--how long?--two years?--two years of that period of life when honest thoughtful men turn to making account with themselves, try to learn why they were sent into the world and what to do, observe the hopes and ambitions of their fellows, prove their own limits, and so set up their rest against old age and death. You rode from home under a sudden persuasion that your business in the world, and the business of all these thousands of different men, was to defend his Majesty. How long this persuasion held you I will not guess; yet I do not doubt that, as the days went by, you observed all these particles of an army returning to their true natures--the young gentlemen of your troop picquering in bravado, or in mere love of a skirmish, because their blood is hot; coarser fellows lusting to break heads for the sake of plunder; craftier knaves, who know that war is insanely wasteful, robbing their own side at less risk; calculators such as Wilmot, Grenville, Goring, playing for high stakes under the fence of warfare, which of itself interests them not a jot. As for you, Sir--I took note of your horse just now at the churchyard gate. You see well to his grooming."