The Smugglers (15 page)

“Thank you,” I said.

“But one other thing.” He looked at me with his rakish grin. “Go through it yourself. Look for my name in there. And make sure that – ”

“I'll cut it out,” I promised. “Or I'll blotch it, or something.”

“No,” he said. “If you see I'm
not
there, will you write me in? Will you do that, John?”

It was the strangest thing I'd ever been asked, but of course it was just what he'd want.
“There'll come a day you'll hear of me,”
he'd said.
“They might have to hang me first, but hear of me you will.”

“Promise?” he asked.

“I promise,” I told him.

Dasher gave me a clap on the shoulder, then left me there at the stream. He climbed up the bank and posed at the top
for a moment, with the breeze in his coat. Then he swaggered off toward the Baskerville, already boasting of his deed. “You should have seen the way he squirmed. Should have heard him beg.”

I lay hiding for a long time, until the moon was nearly down. But the little village never fell silent. Wagons rumbled over the bridge; the inn door opened and closed. When I crawled up the bank and peered over the edge, I saw a gilded old hearse draw up at the inn and go off with a load of barrels. And behind it, to my chagrin, came the coach I'd ridden in with Father, the same driver hopping down from his seat to open the doors for the tubmen. It was no wonder, I thought, that he'd found his way to the Baskerville. No wonder he'd known poor Mrs. Pye.

I knew Dasher was right. The
Dragon
might be lost already, and with her my father's fortune. But I couldn't brave the thought of facing Father as I told him how I'd left the ship with Captain Crowe. He'd put all his trust in me alone, and I couldn't let him know how badly I had failed. I watched the moon, and when it touched the trees I started down the stream. Back toward the sea.

I waded through the water, which tumbled along, over shelves of rock, going steadily down and always faster. It had worn a gully into the cliffs, but in places it fell a fathom straight, in a foaming, roaring fury. I slid and splashed and stumbled, with one hand to keep my balance, one to hold Larson's packet safe within my shirt. And I slipped down past the edge of a cataract.

Right into the arms of a man.

He lunged up from the darkness, from the side of the stream where it pooled below the falls. He forced my face down and held me there, his knee on my back, with the water almost touching my nose. “And where are you off to?” he asked.

I didn't answer quickly enough. He plunged my head under the surface, and I heard the roar from the falls as I struggled against him. His hand in my hair, he pulled me up again. “Where?” he shouted.

I gasped for breath. “The
Dragon,”
I said. “Back to the
Dragon.”

“I thought as much,” said he. “But you'll not be doing that, my boy.”

With a twist of my arm he rolled me onto my back, and I stared up at a man in a mud-dabbled uniform. An officer's clothes. I was so shocked, so pleased, that I blurted out, “Good God! The revenue!”

“Yes,” he said, and shook me. “And what's your name? Who are you, boy?”

“Spencer,” I said. “John Spencer. And I know where the smugglers are. I can take you there.”

He laughed. “You hear that? The boy's a turncoat.”

From the bushes and the rocks came a gang of men. They all wore the same blue jackets, dark neckerchiefs, and battered hats with ribbons at the crowns. They filled the space at the bottom of the falls.

“Up you get,” the officer said. “You're coming along with us.”

“Wait!” I cried. “I'm not a smuggler.”

“Course you're not.” He dragged me to my feet. “You lot are all the same. No one's a smuggler when the revenue's there.”

“It's true,” I said. “Just listen. I can take you where they are.”

“And where is that?”

“The Baskerville,” said I.

He snorted. “That's half a mile from the sea.”

“There's a tunnel,” I said. “It comes out at the inn.”

I was hardly aware that we'd been shouting over the noise of the falls. But now the beating water was all I heard as the revenue men stared at me in astonishment.

“I have a book.” I fished the packet from my shirt. “All their names – ”

“Damn your book,” the officer said. He shoved my hand rudely away. “It's a fine story, boy, a tunnel up from the sea. We'll just see about that. We'll see if it's true.”

“I have to get to the
Dragon,”
I said.

“And send us off on a goose chase? I think not, my boy.” He took my arm and hauled me up the slope. “You'll come along with us, you will.”

There were more than a dozen men; I had no choice but to lead them back. Each one carried a cutlass, and most had a pistol or two. They pulled them out and examined the flints, and in the darkness it was a sinister thing to see.

The officer sent two men down to the beach, to watch for any smugglers who might come from the tunnel. Then he told me, “Show us the way. And for your own sake, boy, we'd best find the smugglers there.”

I put the packet back in my shirt and led them, as fast as I could, up through the gully and over the ground at the top. They followed behind in a line, grunting up the steepest parts, their cutlasses clanging on stones. And then the Baskerville rose above us, black and hulking, with not a single bit of light in any of its windows.

“Empty,” said the officer. “I might have guessed as much.”

“They're in the cellar,” I said. “They're taking the barrels out to the street.” And even as I spoke, the hearse came jangling back down the road, its four black horses all in a run.

“They'll put barrels in there,” said I. “Brandy straight from France.”

We circled the inn and came out at its front. We looked in through the open doors to the hazy glow of the lantern-lit cellar. The hearse stood outside, its rear doors open. Around it lounged the black guard. And in the pool of golden light that came through the door, I saw Burton himself with his stick and his fine-looking clothes.

“There,” I said, and pointed. “That's Burton, the head of it all.”

“So it is,” the officer said. “I'll tell you, boy, I've waited years for this. Years and years I've waited.”

He spread his men out in an arc, to the left and the right, by hedgerows and trees. And for a long, long moment we waited.

I said, “There's a woman in there. Old Mrs. Pye. She's – ”

“Blind?” he asked. “Sure, we all know Sally Pye. She won't be harmed, boy. No fear about that.”

He turned his head to look at me. “You can stay right here,” he said.

“No,” I said. “I can't. They nearly killed me; they nearly drove my father from his business. I have to go with you. I have to.”

“You're a brave lad.” He put his cutlass into my hand. “Ready?” he asked.

I nodded.

He stood, and I stood beside him. He raised his hand in the air, and I lifted the sword. We started forward at a walk and, yards from the inn, broke into a run.

He shouted out, “Hold there! Hold in the name of the king!”

The smugglers, like rats caught in daylight, scurried for the cellar. They dropped the barrels on the ground; they trampled each other in a rush to escape.

I saw bright flashes of powder, and a crackle of gunfire burst through the night. I hurdled a ditch, crossed over the road, then raced past the hearse and down the ramp to the cellar.

It was madness inside. Men were locked into pairs, struggling with fists or with swords. The blue jackets of the revenue men were lost in the mass of smugglers. A pistol shot banged in my ear; a hand clamped on my shoulder. I whirled round.

And there stood Burton, his stick in his hand.

“You!” he said. “So this is your doing, is it?”

“Yes,” said I. Just to see him standing there gave me
shivers that knocked my knees together. Never had I felt such fear of a man, but neither such hatred.

“You're nothing but a pup,” he said, as calmly as before. “A meddling little dog that's hardly worth my trouble.”

He spun his stick in an arc past his knees. It seemed to fly from his hand; I saw it sail high through the cellar, then heard it clatter against the ceiling. But it was only the sheath he'd cast away. The sword was still in his hand, and it glinted in the light of the lanterns.

I raised the cutlass. He knocked it aside. I took a step back, and he came after me.

“Come, come,” he said. “You'll have to do better than that.”

I wasn't a fencer. I'd never used a sword. Again I raised the cutlass; again he knocked it away.

I went backward into the storm of swirling men, a step at a time, right through the mass of them. And Burton came steadily on. He lunged at me and put a nick in my sleeve. He lunged again, and I twisted aside with the blade passing an inch from my heart.

The cellar was thick with dust and a clamor of voices. The heat filled my eyes with sweat. The hilt of the cutlass slithered in my fingers as I tried to parry Burton's thrusts.

He swept the blade aside. He came forward with a smile on his face, poking at me like a child at a cat. Then he surprised me with a slashing cut that jangled off the cutlass guard. And when I stepped back I felt my shoulders touch the wall. I could move no farther.

“A pathetic little fight,” he said. “It's a sorry ending for you, boy.”

He attacked with the point of the sword. He put all his weight into that lunge, and I watched with a dreamlike terror as the point tore through my shirt.

I didn't feel the blade go in. I heard Burton grunt, and it was as though he had hit me with his fist instead. The blow slammed against my stomach with a solid thud, and when he drew his arm away, the sword slipped from his hand and hung there, sagging from my stomach.

Unbalanced, Burton staggered back. I gripped the cut-lass with both my hands, swung it up, and swung it down. It twisted in my palms, and I struck him with the flat of the blade, on his jaw and neck. But the blow knocked him to the floor, facefirst into the dust and the blood. And before I could strike him again, the revenue officer threw himself between us. He came at a rush from the mass of men and stopped my hand with his.

“Wait!” he cried. “There's a trophy for the hangman.”

Then again I saw Burton's sword poking from my stomach. And my knees gave way, and I sank down against the wall.

The fighting had ended, leaving the cellar littered with bodies. The smugglers were being led from the cellar in groups of three and four. A dozen more came shuffling out of the tunnel, with revenue men herding them on.

The officer used his neckerchief to bind Burton's hands at the wrists. He tightened the knot until Burton groaned.

“Shut up,” growled the officer. “One more sound–a single word–and I'll slit your throat.” He grinned. “Just ask me if I won't.”

Burton made no sound at all.

The officer crawled toward me. “Don't move,” he said. “Let's have a look at you there.”

“I don't
feel
hurt,” I said.

“It's the shock,” he told me. “Now lie quiet, boy.”

T
he revenue officer opened my shirt. He probed with his fingers down the blade of the sword, but I couldn't feel his movements at all. Then he pinched the blade in his hand and yanked it free. And with it, skewered on its tip, came Larson's oilskin packet.

“There's a bit of luck,” he said, and plucked the packet from the sword. “Look at that, boy.”

He passed it to me, and I opened it. The point had pierced the envelope and embedded itself in Larson's book. It was all that had saved me.

“Is that your book?” he asked. “The smugglers' names?”

I nodded.

“It will have to go to London.”

He reached out to take it, but I held it away. I had made a promise to Dasher, and I meant to keep it before I gave the book to anyone else. “I could take it there myself,” I said.

“And why not?” said he. “You're going directly to London, are you?”

“As fast as I can.”

It was the truth, but not entirely so. Yes, I would go to London as quickly as possible. But first I had to see to the
Dragon.
First I had to deal with Captain Crowe.

The revenue officer hauled Burton to his feet. For a moment my eyes met the smuggler's, and I saw there the same look a mouse would see in those of a cat about to spring upon it.

“You'Ve lost the ship,” said Burton. “You know that, don't you? The ship and the cargo and all that you have. What a fine job you've done, to lose so much so fast.”

The officer struck him on the mouth, and blood bubbled at Burton's lips. “Shut up, I told you!” the officer said. And then, to me, “Are you coming along?”

I said, “I'd like to sit for a while.”

“I understand.” He tugged viciously at Burton's arms and sent him staggering toward the door. “I owe you a debt, boy,” he said. “All of England owes you a debt.”

I watched him go through the door. Then I climbed to my feet and started off down the tunnel.

I ran down its length in the glow of the lanterns, in the shine of the shells, out through the mouth and down to the sand. A faint glimmer of starlight was enough to show me that the beach was deserted. There was not a soul to be seen, not a smuggler or revenue man. Yet the
Dragon
was right where I'd left her, hulking and huge, barely afloat on the rising tide.

It seemed that Captain Crowe had abandoned the ship.
Perhaps he had fled at the sight of the revenue, leaving her stuck in the mud, empty of all but the wool. If I could get to the
Dragon,
I thought, I still might save her. Even alone, I could raise enough sail to take her back to the Downs.
“A man and a boy can handle a schooner,”
the captain had told me.

Soon I discovered that my dinghy was gone, as was the boat that Dasher had used. The whole little fleet seemed to have vanished, though it shouldn't have surprised me. Likely it was the first thing the smugglers did, for an empty boat in the morning would be a sure sign to the revenue that work had been done in the moonlight. But my discovery left me disheartened.