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Captain Mugford: Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors, a novel by William H. G. Kingston |
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Chapter 19. Last Days On The Cape--A Terrible Night |
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_ CHAPTER NINETEEN. LAST DAYS ON THE CAPE--A TERRIBLE NIGHT And now, the time of our stay on the cape was drawing to a close. Only three days more remained, and they were to be occupied in collecting our books, packing trunks, and all the unpleasant little duties that become so tedious and dispiriting when, like a drop curtain, they announce the end of the play. Perhaps if the days of our cape life had been prolonged, we should have regretted the detention from home, and yearned for our dear parents, looking on the cape, that had already lost some of its attractions, as soon to become a dreary point beaten by winter winds and seas and drifted across by the snow. But because we _must_ go, therefore it was hard to go. What cannot be done, cannot be had, cannot be reached--that is just what the boy wants. As we could not yet actually realise the desolateness and barrenness of winter there, but only remember the delights and beauties of summer and autumn, we lost cheerfulness over the boxes and trunks, and sighed because of the brick walls, narrow streets, and toilsome school-work that were soon to bound our lives. On a Wednesday we had been for our last afternoon's shooting on the moor. Our tutors had walked round to return their guns to the lenders over in the town. We strolled to the house through the fast fading afternoon light, talking of the memorable events in our half-year just closing. "Now, I think," said Drake, "that our boat-race was the best fun of all." "I don't," Alf answered, "though we had a good time then, I know; but what is there to compare with the cruise and shipwreck?--the excitement lasted so long and came out all right." "Yes, it came out all right, but there was only a tight squeak that it did not go all wrong. I tell you what, fellows, I was horribly frightened that night, before we struck on Boatswain's Reef," said Harry. Each of us but Walter added, "So was I." "Walter, now you were frightened, too. Own now!" continued Harry. "No, I was not, really!" answered Walter. "Somehow I never feel afraid on the water; and I think it must be because I was born at sea, you know, when our father and mother were returning from the West Indies. Now if I had been behind a pair of runaway horses, instead of aboard a good boat, I might have got shaky, I daresay." "Well, my opinion is," said I, "that just the best time of all was finding the smugglers' cave; but I am afraid that, after we are gone, they may come down hard on Clump and Juno, and when we have--" Walter interrupted me with "Nonsense, those fellows will know enough to keep hid or give the cape a wide berth after this. But talking about the good times we have had, I have enjoyed our shooting best of all, and so has Ugly, I'll bet--haven't you, Ugly?" To which our bright little dog answered as well as he could by barking an assent, and jumping before us to wag his tail energetically. "Hallo!" Harry exclaimed, stopping, as he spoke, to look off to sea; "there's a rakish-looking lugger--don't you see?--just there, to the south-east, near Bass Rocks. I wonder what she is after." "After?" answered Drake, "why, probably running down to Penzance." "I don't know about that," said Harry, who continued to watch the vessel with much interest; "it looks to me as if she were running close in, to anchor." "Well, let her anchor if she likes. There's nothing strange in that, when there's not wind enough to fly a feather;" and after a few moments more, in which we resumed our way to the house, Drake continued-- "Haven't our tutors proved splendid fellows? I think the Captain is the finest old chap that I ever came across; and when Mr Clare is a clergyman I should like to go to his church--shouldn't feel a bit like going to sleep then." To which we all gave a cordial assent, and, having reached the house, turned in there with the prospect of having some fun with Clump and Juno before our tutors should return. I stood at the door a few minutes. Sure enough Harry was right. Though it was too dark now to distinguish anything more than a hundred yards away, I heard the running out of a cable and then the lowering of the sails. "An odd place to anchor for the night," thought I, and so did Ugly, who was beside me, for he gave a low, uneasy howl. Juno was laying the plates for tea, as I went in. After teasing her for awhile I joined the other boys. Soon Juno came out to the kitchen, and when she commenced to fry the hasty-pudding, we induced Clump to tell us some of his sea adventures, in the middle of which Ugly set up a furious barking, and a moment afterwards there came a heavy rap at the front door. It was the first time there had been a knock at a door of our old house since we had been in it. Clump, leaving his story unfinished, took a candle, and Drake and I followed him into the dining-room, which he had to cross to get to the front door. But by the time we had entered the dining-room a stranger had walked into the hall, and had also proceeded to open the door opposite us. Ugly, who was greatly incensed, jumped forward and took hold of a leg of the stranger's trousers. Our visitor was a small, rough, ugly man, with a terrible squint in his eyes and a voice as unpleasant as his face. He had no collar, only a handkerchief about his neck, and wore a large, shaggy flushing jacket. His first act was to kick Ugly halfway across the room, with the salutation: "Take that, you damned cur, for your manners, damn you!" Ugly made at him again fiercer than ever, but I caught him in time and held him. "Wat will you 'ab, sir?" asked Clump in a dignified voice. "What will I have, ay? I'll have that cur's life if he comes at me agin, and I want to know, old nigger, if,"--here the rough customer spit some tobacco-juice on the floor--"I want to know if you kin 'commodate four or five gents for the night, ay?" All of Clump's spirit was aroused, and he stammered as he replied-- "No, mon; n-o-o-o! We dussen keeps no ho-o-o--hotel 'ere, we dussen. You'se find tabben ober end de town. Dis am Massa Tre-gel--Tre-gel-- Massa Tregellin's privet mansion." "Ho! ho!" answered the man, slapping his hat down on his head and spitting again. "_Massa_ Tregellin's house, is it? Look here, boys, you just tell your dad, when you see him, that he has got a foolish, consequential nigger and a mean, tumbledown affair of a hut, if it can't 'commodate some poor sailors. Howsumever, I'll go back to my lugger, and bad luck to your _mansion_! Old nig, look 'er here--perhaps we'll see each other again." He looked slowly all round the room, and went out, slamming the doors after him. Fifteen minutes afterwards our tutors came in, and when they heard of our visitor Captain Mugford waxed wroth. "I wish I had been here," he exclaimed; "if I wouldn't have put that scoundrel off soundings in about half a splice! The impudent fellow, to attempt to lord it in that style in a gentleman's house. What do you think of it, Mr Clare, eh?" "Oh, not much, Captain Mugford. The man was probably tipsy, and was of course a bully, or he would never have talked so before boys and a poor old negro. I am glad neither Walter nor Harry was in the room." "So am I, sir," said Walter; "we were in the kitchen and came in when we heard the loud talking, just as the man slammed the doors in going out. We could have done nothing more than order him out." After tea we boys went into the kitchen again, leaving our tutors playing at chess, which Mr Clare was trying to teach Captain Mugford. That kitchen was a favourite resort of ours in the evenings, and Clump and Juno liked to have us there. There was a famous fire--three or four fresh logs singing over a red mass of coal; plenty of ashes; and a whistled tune with a jet of smoke right from the heart of each stick. The brass fire-dogs were extra bright, reflecting the blaze on all sides. Some chestnuts and potatoes were roasting in the ashes, and Clump had provided some cider to treat us to, this last night of ours on the cape. So we pulled our chairs close around the fire, Clump sitting at one end, almost inside the chimney-place, smoking his pipe, and Juno at the other end, also almost inside the chimney-place, and smoking, too, her pipe. Hi! How they grinned, and chatted, and smoked. After awhile, when we had had a full hour of real fun, quizzing the old folks, telling stories, eating chestnuts and potatoes, drinking cider, and listening to stories of the West Indies, Walter and Harry got up to clean their guns. "Wen you'se cum 'ere nudder time, 'spect dese ole black folks be gwine 'way--be gwine 'crost de ribber Jordan?"--exclaimed Juno, with a long sigh. "Now, don't talk in that way," said Harry; "why, marm Juno, you and Clump will live to dance at my wedding; see if you don't; and now, Juno, just give us a kettle of hot water, will you, to rinse out these gun-barrels with." When the guns were washed, dried, and rubbed off with oil, I said to Clump, "Have you got any bullets or buckshot?" "Don't know, Massa Bob--'spects so, en my ole tool-box." "Why," asked Drake, "what are you going to do, Bob, with bullets and buckshot?" Clump was down on his knees in the closet, overhauling the tool-box he had spoken of. "Well, Drake, I'll tell you if Clump finds the articles," I answered. "Have you got any, Clump?" "Yah, Massa, 'ere's a han'ful." "These bullets and buckshot," I continued, "are for Walter and Harry to load their guns with; for, just as sure as that fellow came here this afternoon, just so sure, I believe, he will be back here before morning with more like him." "What stuff," sang out Walter, laughing; "what puts that in your head, Bob?" "I don't know exactly what, Walter, but I suspect it, and I have not liked to say anything about it before, because I was afraid of being laughed at. But the more I think of it, the more certain I am that the man who was here to-night is one of the band of smugglers who owned the goods taken through our means by the revenue men. There are others with him, and, mark my word, they have not come back for nothing. Now do, fellows, load your guns. We needn't say anything and get laughed at, for the Captain will surely laugh if we tell him my suspicions. You can take your guns upstairs, and then, if anything does happen before morning, you'll be all ready." "Well, Walter," said Harry, "suppose we do--it's good fun at any rate to make believe that robbers, and outlaws, and smugglers, and all other sorts of odd visitors are coming--and--I cannot help owning that what Bob says sounds probable. So here go two bullets for this barrel, and nine buckshot for the other. Come, Walt, load up! Don't you shake in your boots already? ugh!" "It is curious that we should have pretended to be smugglers if smugglers really do come. Probably that makes Bob fancy they will come; still, I wish that we had not frightened the old people so," said Walter, loading his gun; and a few minutes later Mr Clare opened the kitchen door and called us in to evening prayers. As they always did, Clump and Juno assembled with us in the dining-room. There was something very impressive in those few moments before the chapter for reading was found. There was the sound of the turning over of the Bible leaves, and that of a light, pattering autumn rain without, (it had commenced after dark), besides the comfortable crackling of the wood-fire, and the occasional snapping of the fresh logs. The old, devoted, pious negroes; the rugged, benevolent Captain, with an expression of thought and reverent waiting in his face; and we boys, so full of youth and spirits, sat thinking--soberly, and perhaps solemnly-- how neither sickness nor harm had come near us; what blessings of pleasure, health, and strength had waited on us all during half a year; how those dear ones separated from us had been preserved from suffering and calamity, and were hoping to meet us before another week had commenced; how the common ties and associations that had united us so happily and so long were soon to be sundered. Those and many other-- some graver, some lighter--thoughts, in those few seconds, occupied our minds, whilst Mr Clare turned over the leaves beneath the table lamp, and then his clear, strong voice slowly and feelingly uttered the words: "I will say of the Lord, _He is_ my refuge and my fortress: my God; in Him will I trust. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust: His truth _shall_ be _thy_ shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday... Because thou hast made the Lord which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation... For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone... He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble: I will deliver him and honour him. With long life will I satisfy him, and show him My salvation." And when the prayers had ended, we separated quietly for our beds, the Captain going off as usual to the brig. I turned the key in the hall-door as he went out--the first time such a thing had been done during our stay on the cape. Ugly coiled himself up on the horsehair sofa in the dining-room, and in half an hour more, I suppose, every soul in the old house was asleep. I dreamed that a lot of rabbits were in a hole together and making a humming noise, which, I believed, was a whispering they were having together, and I wanted to hear what they said, but that Ugly made such a barking I could not. I woke up, and, sure enough, Ugly was very noisy in the room below, barking regularly and harshly. No one else in the house seemed to be disturbed. There was a placid snoring in the attic, a pattering of rain on the roof, and a splashing of water, as it ran off steadily in a stream to the ground. But in a minute or two, between Ugly's barks I thought I heard something which recalled what I had been dreaming of, the rabbits whispering in their burrow. I listened. Yes, some persons outside the house were talking together in low voices. I crawled to a window and looked out. There was an indistinct group of three or four persons standing by the rock, twenty yards from the house. Their talk was only a murmur of different voices in discussion, sometimes louder, sometimes fainter; but as I watched, one of the group struck a light, and I saw in the flash four or five or more figures, and the face of the man who had entered the house in the evening, who was now holding a lantern to be lighted, and was also looking up at the house. It was a dark lantern, I suppose, for the light was shut up in some way after that. I shook each of the boys and told them to look out of the window, and then I ran into Mr Clare's room and woke him. When he saw that some sort of robbery or attack was to be made on the house, he exclaimed, "I hope they do not know that the Captain is alone in the brig," and ran downstairs to bolt all the doors and windows as securely as they could be fastened, and awaken Clump and Juno, who slept in a little room off the kitchen. Not a lamp was lighted in the house, but the smugglers had heard the noises made, and now, talking and swearing aloud, approached the door and turned the handle. Being bolted within, they could not open it. "Hullo! hullo! I say, you Tregellin fellows, wake up!"--it was the voice we had heard before--"wake up and let us in?"--it sounded as if he turned to his companions then, and laughed and muttered something--"here's some decent sailor-boys as wants a drop and a bite, so wake up quick, boys and niggers!--let us in, I say, or we'll break open the doors, and break your bones into the bargain." At the conclusion of the speech, they all beat on the door and house with fists and sticks, and laughed loudly at their leader's joke. Mr Clare now went down the narrow, creaking stairs again to the big door they were pounding against so fiercely, and from behind its defence answered the summons. "Men: this is a private house, and you must go away. You will get nothing here, and we are armed." "Hurrah!" they answered without. I shall omit the terrible oaths with which they loaded every breath they spoke. "Who are you, big voice?" "No matter," called out Mr Clare, "who I am. I suspect who you are, and we do not intend to let you get in here--that is all." "That's a lie--we'll be in in ten minutes and make your bass a squeak. If you don't open this 'ere door in a jiffy--we'll make grease-pots of you along with them niggers. Look what we'll do with your castle--just what we have been doing with the old hulk down there on the rocks." As he spoke, the darkness in the house withdrew to the holes and corners, and flashes of red and white light shot into every window and played on the walls, reflected from the midnight sky that had suddenly kindled to a blaze. The outlaws had set the old wreck on fire--our dear old school-house. Could the Captain be there, sleeping yet? or had they killed him? Ah! that doubt about Captain Mugford's safety magnified the danger of our own situation to our imaginations. If those outlaws could burn, in madness, such a harmless thing as the castaway brig, and could conquer such a powerful man as our salt tute, what might they not do here to us? The hour--the yelling and swearing and banging at the doors--the lurid glare flashing from the sky to show us each other's fear-stamped countenances--those united to bewilder and appal us boys at least. Juno, too, was upstairs in our room, sitting on a low chair, perfectly silent, but overcome by dread. But Clump, who now showed the courage he really possessed, was active with Mr Clare downstairs, strengthening every window and door. He was not afraid. His old spirit was aroused, and, in the defence of his dear master's children, he was anxious to prove his courage and fidelity. "Harry," Mr Clare called up the stairs, "bring me your gun. I shall want that down here. You say it is all loaded and ready, eh? Well, bring it down. Walter, you keep yours upstairs, and all you boys remain there until it is necessary to come down; and now, Walter, don't fire unless there is absolute necessity. The rascals can't burn this house unless they light the roof, and they can't stay here all night to do that, for the light of the _Clear the Track_ will bring over some of the townspeople. Poor Mugford! poor Mugford! Bob, you climb up to that little window in the south gable-end, and see if you can detect any movement about the wreck." Harry handed him the gun, and I climbed to the lookout, relinquishing Ugly, whom I had been holding, to Juno's care. He had been ordered not to bark, so now he only panted fiercely and listened intently. The smugglers, after vain attempts at the front door--they could have smashed in the windows, shutters, latches, glass, and all, but their small size and height from the ground made them most dangerous to enter by when there were defenders within went round to the back of the house, and presently I heard a great ripping and banging of boards there, and Mr Clare's voice call quickly-- "If one inch of you enter there, I will fire--understand that." Then we heard a shot, but knew by the report that it was not Harry's gun, and Drake called down the stairs, "Clump, who fired?" "De smugglers, Massa; one den shoot tru de winder at Massa Clare, but tank de Lor, the scoundrel miss." Just then I saw--and how the blood coursed with one cold sweep from my heart and back again--amid the hot flames of the burning wreck, Captain Mugford's figure. He sprang from the deck to the rocks and was rushing towards the house. I turned and called the good news, but found that Juno and I were alone. The others, too much excited and interested in the contest to remain longer prisoners in the attic, had got on the stairway, and when I looked down on them Walter was on the bottom step with his gun cocked. Now many steps and the yelled-out blasphemy of the smugglers came round the house again to the front. Though, as we knew afterwards, two remained to keep Mr Clare occupied there, whilst the three others were to try the windows again. Captain Mugford must be near. Oh! that he could get here safely. Ugly jumped by me, and, uttering a savage bark, sprang downstairs and past Walter. He had escaped from Juno's charge. As he flew about the rooms downstairs, a whole sash and shutter in the south-east room were driven in by a blow of an immense beam, and in another second half the body of a smuggler was above the window-sill. But with a tremendous leap Ugly reached him and pinned him by the throat. They tumbled back together. Then we heard a new voice--Captain Mugford's! "You cowards, you hang-dogs, you scum of the sea, you dark-hearted blackguards--take that! Aye, villains!--and that!" Two pistol shots were heard. Harry jumped to open the door for Captain Mugford. Walter stood ready beside him with the gun. I ran with Drake to the open window, to see if harm had come to our dear salt tute, and Alfred had hurried in to where Mr Clare was alone guarding the back-door and broken windows, for he had sent Clump, not knowing of our being downstairs and of the Captain's coming, to fight where we were. Clump had a short iron bar in his hands. I saw the man whom Ugly had gripped fallen on his knees and cutting our gallant little dog from his neck with a knife. One outlaw was stretched on the ground. Another was struggling with the Captain. He was a large, powerful fellow, and seemed to be getting the better of our now much-exhausted tutor. As I looked, the prostrate man rose, and both he and the one whom poor Ugly-- now dead on the grass--had attacked came to help crush the Captain. Then the front door was flung open. Walter fired, and the man who had killed our brave dog dropped the knife he held, and, clasping his left shoulder with his right hand, screamed out a terrible oath, and, yelling with pain, ran from the struggle. At the same moment--all these events, from the time Captain Mugford arrived until the door was opened to admit him, not occupying probably three minutes--the Captain fell beneath his adversary, whose fingers clutched his throat, and the infuriated outlaw seemed determined to finish him. Walter could not fire again without shooting the very one for whose safety alone he would fire. But Clump jumped out with his iron bar and struck the assailant on the head. The Captain was released just as I saw the other miscreant level a pistol at Clump. I called, "Oh, Clump, Clump, take care!" With the sound of my voice came the sharp, fatal crack of the pistol, and Clump fell back--_dead_! Two minutes more and all the smugglers were in full flight. The old, grey-headed, faithful, true-hearted Clump was dead, and Juno stretched unconscious on her husband's body. Ugly, all hacked to pieces, lay in a pool of blood, yet gasping. Captain Mugford, wounded, bruised, and exhausted, sat on the doorstep. Mr Clare was leaning over Clump with a hand on the pulseless heart. The burning wreck yet lighted the heavens, and the horrid scene at the very doorstep of our home of such a happy half-year. _ |
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