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In the King's Name: The Cruise of the "Kestrel", a fiction by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 18. Billy Waters Finds It Out |
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_ CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. BILLY WATERS FINDS IT OUT "Well," said Billy Waters, "of all the cowardly, sneaking tricks anybody could do, I don't know a worse one than staving in a man's boat. Yah! a fellow who would do such a thing ought to be strung up at the yardarm, that he ought!" "Every day," growled Tom Tully. "Well, matey, how is we to get aboard?" "What's the good of asking me?" cried Billy Waters, who was regularly out of temper. "Leave that gun alone, will yer?" he roared as there was another flash and a report from the cutter. "It's enough to aggravate a hangel, that it is," he continued. "No sooner have I left the cutter, and my guns that clean you might drink grog out of 'em, than the skipper and that Jack Brown gets fooling of 'em about and making 'em foul. They neither of 'em know no more about loading a gun than they do about being archbishops; but they will do it, and they'll be a-busting of 'em some day. Firing again, just as if we don't know the first was a recall! Here, who's got a loaded pistol?" "Here you are, matey," said Tom Tully. "Fire away, then, uppards," said the gunner; "and let 'em know that we want help." The flash from the pistol cut the darkness; there was a sharp report, and the gunner fired his own pistols to make three shots. "There," he said, replacing them in his belt. "That'll make him send another boat, and if that there Jacky Brown's in it I shall give him a bit of my mind." There was a long pause now, during which the weary men sat apart upon the sands, or with their backs propped against the sides of the damaged boat, but at last there came a hail out of the darkness, to which Tom Tully answered with a stentorian "Boat a-hoy-oy!" "Who told you to hail, Tom Tully?" cried the gunner. "I'm chief orsifer here, so just you wait until you are told." Tom Tully growled, and the gunner walked down to where the waves beat upon the shingle just as the regular plash-plash of the oars told of the coming of the boat from the cutter with the boatswain in command, that worthy leaping ashore, followed by half a dozen men. "What's on?" he cried. "Have you found Muster Leigh?" "No." "What did you signal for?" "Boat. Ourn's stove-in, and we've got knocked about awful." "What! by the smugglers?" "Ay, my lad. They beat us off." "Then, now there's reinforcements, let's go and carry all afore us." "It's all very fine for you, coming fresh and ready, to talk," said the gunner; "but it ar'n't no use, my lad--we're reg'lar beat out. They got away somehow, and you want daylight to find 'em." "Then you may go up the side of the cutter first, my lad, that's all I've got to say," said the boatswain. "You don't catch me facing the skipper to-night." It was a close pack to get all the men on board, but it was successfully accomplished, the stove-in boat taken in tow, and the side of the cutter reached at last, where, as the boatswain had vaguely hinted, there was a storm. Billy Waters was threatened with arrest, and he was abused for an hour for his clumsy management of the expedition. "A child would have managed it better, sir," cried the lieutenant; "but never was officer in his majesty's service worse served than I am. Not one subordinate have I on whom I can depend; I might just as well get a draught of boys from the guardship, and if it was not for the men and the marines I don't know what I should do. Pipe down." The men were piped down, glad enough to get something to eat, and then to crawl to their hammocks, out of which they rolled in the morning seeming little the worse for their engagement, the injured men being bruised pretty severely, though they would not own to their hurts, being too eager, as they put it, to go and pay their debts. For quite early the cutter began to sail in pretty close to the shore, the carpenter busy the while in getting a fresh plank in the bottom of the stove-in boat, having it ready by the time the lieutenant mustered his men and told them off into the boats, leaving the boatswain in command of the cutter and leading the expedition himself. The men fancied once or twice that they could see people on the cliffs watching their movements, but they could not be sure, and as the boats grated on the shingle the rocks looked as desolate and deserted as if there had not been a soul there for years. The men were well-armed, and ready to make up for their misadventure of the previous night, and Billy Waters being sent to the front to act as guide he was not long in finding out the narrow entrance amongst the rocks, but only to be at fault directly after, on account of places looking so different in broad daylight to what they did when distorted by the shadowy gloom. He had come to the head-scratching business, when a rub is expected to brighten the intellect, and felt ready to appeal to his companions for aid and counsel when he suddenly recollected that they had clambered over a rock here, and this he now did, shouting to his companions to come on, just as the lieutenant was approaching to fulminate in wrath upon his subordinate's ignorance. "Here you are," he cried, and one after the other the men tumbled down the rock, following him through each well-remembered turn--spots impressed upon them by the blows they had received, until they were brought to a standstill in a complete _cul-de-sac_, through a passage so narrow that one man could have held it against a dozen if there had been anything to hold. The lieutenant squeezed his way past the men till he stood beside his subordinate. "Well, why have you brought us here?" he exclaimed. "This here's the place where we chased 'em to, your honour," said the gunner, "and then they disappeared like." "But you said it was so dark that you could not see any one." "Yes, your honour, we couldn't hardly see 'em; but they disappeared all the same." "Where? How?" "Some'eres here, your honour." "Nonsense, man! The rock's thirty feet high here, and they could not go up that." "No, your honour." "Then where did they go?" "That's what none of us can't tell, your honour." "Look here, Waters," said the lieutenant in a rage; "do you mean to tell me that you have let me lead his majesty's force of marines and sailors to the attack of a smugglers' stronghold, and then got nothing more to show than a corner in the rocks?" Billy Waters scratched his head again and looked up at the face of the rock, then at the sides, and then down at his feet, before once more raising his eyes to his commander. "Now, sir!" exclaimed the latter, "what have you to say?" Billy Waters appealed to the rocks again in mute despair, but they were as stony-faced as ever. "Do you hear me, sir?" cried the lieutenant. "The fact of it is that you all came ashore, got scandalously intoxicated, and then began fighting among yourselves." "No, we didn't," growled Tom Tully from somewhere in the rear. "Who was that? What mutinous scoundrel dared to speak like that?" cried the lieutenant; but no one answered, though the question was twice repeated. "Very good, then," continued the lieutenant; "I shall investigate this directly I am back on board. Waters, consider yourself under arrest." "All right, your honour," said the gunner; "but if I didn't get a crack on the shoulder just about here from some one, I'm a Dutchman." "Ay, ay," was uttered in chorus; and the members of the previous night's party stared up at the rocks on all sides, in search of some evidence to lay before their doubting commander; but none being forthcoming, they reluctantly followed him back to the open shore, where, as there was nothing to be seen but rocks, sand, and stones, and the towering cliff, they proceeded back to the boats. "Fools! idiots! asses!" the lieutenant kept muttering till they embarked, the gunner and Tom Tully being in one boat, the lieutenant in the other, which was allowed to get well on ahead before the occupants of the second boat ventured to speak, when Tom Tully became the spokesman, the gunner being too much put out by the rebuff he had met with to do more than utter an occasional growl. "Lookye here, my lads," said Tully; "arter this here, I'll be blessed." That was all he said; but it was given in so emphatic a tone, and evidently meant so much, that his messmates all nodded their heads in sage acquiescence with his remark. Then they looked at each other and bent steadily to their oars, in expectation of what was to take place as soon as they got on board. By the time they were three-quarters of the way Billy Waters had somewhat recovered himself. "I've got it," he exclaimed. "Got what?" said three or four men at once. "Why that 'ere. I see it all now. Them chaps lives atop o' the cliff when they ar'n't afloat, and they've got tackle rigged up ready, and what do they do but whip one another up the side o' the rock, just as you might whip a lady out of a boat up the side of a three-decker." Tom Tully opened his mouth and stared at the gunner in open admiration. "Why, what a clever chap you are, Billy!" he growled. "I shouldn't ha' thought o' that if I'd lived to hundred-and-two." "I see it all now plain enough, mates," continued the gunner. "I was hitting at that chap one minute in the dark, and then he was gone. He'd been keeping me off while his mates was whipped up, and then, when his turn came, up he goes like a bag o' biscuit into a warehouse door at Portsmouth, and I'll lay a tot o' grog that's what's become of our young orsifer." "Hark at him!" cried Tom Tully, giving his head a sidewise wag. "That's it for sartain; and if I wouldn't rather sarve under Billy Waters for skipper than our luff, I ar'n't here." "You'd best tell him, then, as soon as we get on board," said one of the men. "What! and be called a fool and a hidiot!" cried the gunner. "Not I, my lads. I says let him find it out for hisself now, for I sha'n't tell nothing till I'm asked." In this spirit the crew of the second boat reached the side of the cutter, went on board, the boats were hoisted up, and Billy Waters had the pleasure of finding himself placed under arrest, with the great grief upon his mind that his guns were left to the tender mercies of the boatswain, and a minor sorrow in the fact that his supply of grog was stopped. _ |
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