Through Russian Snows (9 page)

"It was a case of his life or our business," he said. "If he had not
been got out of the way we must have given up the trade altogether on
this part of the coast; besides, he has been the cause, not only of
several seizures of cargoes, but of the death of eight or ten of our
comrades and of the imprisonment of many others. Now that he is out of
the way we shall find things a great deal easier."

"It served him right," the leader of the party said, "and you have
rendered good service; but what are you going to do? Do you think that
any suspicion will fall upon you?"

"Yes; I have put myself in an awkward position, I am afraid. I thought
that the job had been so well managed that it could never be traced to
me, but when I got up to the top of the hill I saw a fellow just
starting from the bottom. I did not think much of it at the time, but he
came up so quickly after me that he must have run all the way up. He has
chased me hard, and as he got nearer I could see that he had a gun too.
He was not more than a quarter of a mile away when I got to the
trap-door."

"Why didn't you hide yourself in the bushes and put a bullet into him,
Markham?"

"For several reasons. In the first place, the gun might have been heard
by some of those cussed revenue men. Then there would be an inquiry and
a search. They would have seen by the direction he had been going, that
he must have been shot from the bushes, and as no one would have been in
sight when they ran up, the thing would have been such a puzzle to them
that you may be sure they would have suspected there must be some hidden
way out of the clump. Besides, they would probably have hunted every
inch of the ground to see if they could find anything that would give
them a clue as to who had fired the shot. That is one reason."

"And quite good enough without any others," the Frenchman said.

"Well, there was another one that went for almost as much with me. I
shot down Faulkner because he was a curse to us all. He had imprisoned
several of my pals, and done a lot of damage to the trade, and was
likely to break it up altogether, besides which I had a big grudge
against him on my own account. But I should not have liked to shoot down
this fellow in cold blood. I had no feeling against him; he has done me
no harm; I did not even know who he was. If he had overtaken me in the
open, you may be sure that I should have made a fight of it, for it
would have been my life against his. I don't pretend to be soft; there
is little enough of that about me, and I have fought hard several times
in the old days when we were surprised; but I could not have shot down
that fellow without giving him a chance of his life. If there had not
been the trap-door to escape by I should have stood up, given him fair
warning, and fought it out man to man. As it was—" at this point the
conversation had been arrested by the sudden entrance of Julian.

"Who is he?" the chief of the smugglers asked Joe when he had finished
his conversation with the prisoner. "Is he a spy?"

"No; he is a young chap as lives down in the town. He is a pal of some
of our friends there, and has been with them at the landings of goods.
He was caught in that last affair, but got off because they could not
prove that he was actually engaged in the business. He is an enemy of
Faulkner's too; they had a row there, and Faulkner hit him in the face.
You can see the mark still; and he would have thrown Faulkner on to the
bonfire they had lit if he had not been prevented by some of the
coast-guards. It is through what he had heard from our friends of this
cavern, and there being an entrance to it somewhere, that he came to
look for the trap-door. I certainly pushed the bolt forward when I came
down, but I was in a hurry, so I suppose it could not have caught
rightly."

"Well, what is to be done, Joe?"

"I don't know. You see he knows about my shooting Faulkner. I would
trust him not to peach about this cavern or the trap-door, but I don't
know as I would about the other thing. It seems to me that he is just as
likely to be suspected of having a hand in it as I am. His row with
Faulkner is the talk of the place, and when Faulkner is found with a
bullet in him, he will be the first fellow to be suspected. Well, if
that was so, and you see he would not be able to account for himself for
three or four hours afterwards, he might be driven to peach on me to
save his own life, and he would be obliged to give all the story about
following me and coming down here. There would be an end of the best
hiding-place in the country, and I should not be able to show my face on
this side of the Channel again."

"I should say the safest plan would be to cut his throat and chuck him
into the sea, and have done with it."

"No, I won't have that," the poacher said positively. "Your lugger will
be in to-night, and we will take him across with us to France."

"That is all very well," one of the men said; "but what is to prevent
his coming back again?"

"We could prevent it somehow or other. We could get up a tale that he
was an English sailor we had picked up at sea, and hand him over to the
authorities, and tell them his story was, that he had fallen overboard
from an English ship of war. Then they would send him away to some place
in the interior where they keep English prisoners of war, and there he
might lie for years; perhaps never get back again. He does not know a
word of French, as you saw when you spoke to him, so he can't contradict
any story we may tell, and if by chance any questions should be asked, I
can just say what suits us."

"He might ruin us all if he came back," the smuggler growled.

"It ain't likely that he will come back," the poacher said. "I have
heard that they die off like flies in those prisons of yours; and,
besides, I will guarantee if he does, he will never split about this
place. He is a gentleman, and I will get him to swear to me, and you may
be sure he will not break his oath."

"But how about yourself?"

"Well, as he won't come back for some years, I will take my chance of
that. He has got no evidence against me; it would be his word against
mine. He would tell his story and I should tell mine, and mine would be
the most likely. I should say I met him on the hills with his gun, and,
knowing who I was, and what cause I had got to hate Faulkner, he told me
that he had shot him, and asked me to get him on board a smuggler craft
and across the Channel, and that I had done so: and that is all I should
know about it. No, I am not afraid of anything he might say when he
comes back again."

Julian had watched the speakers anxiously during this conversation. He
was wholly ignorant of French, but from the tone and manner of the
speakers, he gathered that the poacher was speaking in his favour. He
had expected no mercy; his life was nothing to these French smugglers;
and he was surprised to find the man, whose life he thought he held in
his hand if released, apparently pleading his cause.

"Look here, young fellow!" the poacher said, turning towards him. "In
the first place, these men are afraid that you may betray the existence
of this place, and their opinion is that the best thing to make us safe
would be to cut your throat and throw you out of the mouth of the cave
into the sea. I told them that you knew of the cave from one of our
friends, and could be trusted to keep the secret; at any rate they
demand, in the first place, that you shall take an oath never to split
about it."

"I will do that willingly enough," Julian said, with a great feeling of
relief.

Joe Markham then dictated a terrible oath, which had been always taken
by all those made acquainted with the existence of the cave, and this
Julian repeated after him. The poacher then told the smugglers what
Julian had sworn to.

"Now, young fellow, I may tell you that we are going to take you over to
France to-night. You may think I shall be asking you to take another
oath, like that, not to say anything against me, but I ain't going to. I
shot the man, and I don't pretend to be sorry for it. He was a hard, bad
chap, and he got what he deserved. I owed him a long score, not only for
myself, but for others, and if I had not shot him, someone else would
have done so sooner or later. I shall do what I can to prevent you
coming back here, though I don't think you will say anything against me
when you do come back. In the first place, like enough I shall take to
the sea again, and may be settled in France before you return. In the
next place, I may be dead; and, most of all, you have got no evidence
against me. If I were here, and you told the story, of course I should
say that it was a lie, and that you had shot the man yourself, and I
had got you out of the way by sending you across to France in a lugger,
so I think you will see that it is best to keep a quiet tongue in your
head; anyhow I am ready to take my chance of it."

"They will be horribly alarmed when I don't get home to-night," Julian
said.

"Well, they must be alarmed," the poacher said carelessly. "You have
interfered in this business, which was none of yours, and you have got
to take the consequences; you may think yourself a lucky fellow that you
are not by this time drifting about on the tideway."

"I feel that," Julian said; "and though I did not understand a word of
what you said, I am sure that it was owing to you that I am not there. I
could not have promised that I would never say a word to anyone about
you, because one can never tell how one may be placed; but, after what
you have done, I think that I can safely promise that I will never go
out of my way to denounce you."

"I don't want any promise about it," the poacher replied. "I have made
up my mind to leave Weymouth, for, after having been in jail two years,
I shall always have the constables as well as the revenue men keeping
their eye on me, so I had intended all along to take to the lugger
again, and live on board her as I did before, and I only stayed here
until I could settle accounts with Faulkner. I have no doubt that they
will suspect me of this business. There are plenty of men who know that
I had sworn to be even with him, and my disappearance is sure to be put
down to that. Now, in the next place, will you promise not to try to
escape, because if you do, I will get them to take these ropes off you?
I dare say you have been thinking that if you could get free you would
make a run for the mouth of the cave and dive in, for it is about high
water now."

Julian had, in fact, been thinking so, but as he saw that unless he gave
his promise he would have to remain in the cords that were cutting into
his wrists, he at once took the required oath. Joe told the Frenchmen,
and they then unfastened Julian's cords.

"We may as well carry up the bales at once," their leader said, "before
it gets dark. It is no use giving anyone at sea a chance of seeing a
light. Tell him to take one and come up with us. I am not going to leave
him here by himself, promise or no promise."

The poacher translated the order to Julian. Some bales were taken out
from beneath a tarpaulin at the end of the cave, and, each shouldering
one, they proceeded up the passage until they reached the foot of the
ladder. Here they laid the bales down, and then returned to the cave.

"Is that all?" Julian asked.

"Yes, those bales are worth a lot of money. There is fifteen hundred
pounds worth of lace in one of them. The others are silks and satins,
and worth another five hundred. To-night, when we hear the signal, I and
three of the Frenchmen will go up. We shall find two men there, and
shall carry the bales to a place a mile and a half away, where they will
be hidden until it is convenient to send them up to London, or wherever
they are going to dispose of them—that is their business; ours is
finished when they hand us over the money for them. They will come at
eight o'clock, and at ten the lugger will be off the coast here and send
a boat ashore for us. So you have got five or six hours yet, and I
should say the best thing you can do is to turn in and sleep till then.
There are plenty of blankets in that corner and a pile of sheep-skins
that you can sleep on."

Julian nodded, threw two or three of the sheep-skins down in a corner,
rolled another up for a pillow, drew a blanket over him, and for the
first time looked round the cave. It was lighted only by a small hole
used as a look-out; at present a blanket hung before this. There was a
door similar to that by which he had entered from above leading to the
lower cave. How far that lower entrance might be below them Julian had
no means of knowing, but from the view he had obtained of the sea
through a large loop-hole he had passed in his descent, he did not think
that the cavern he was in could be less than seventy or eighty feet
above the water. The sole ventilation, as far as he could see, was the
current of air that found its way in through the door from below, and
passed up through that above, and what could come in through the
loop-hole seawards. Doubtless in warmer weather both the doors stood
open, but were now closed more for warmth than for any other purpose,
although he had noticed that the lower one had been bolted and locked
after he had been first captured.

As he lay down he wondered how it was all going to end. His position was
at once perilous and uncertain. He had, so far, escaped better than he
could have expected, for from the looks the Frenchmen had given him, he
had no doubt what his fate would have been had not the man he had been
chasing spoken in his favour. His life therefore seemed for the present
safe, but the future was very dark. The poacher had spoken as if he was
not likely to return for some years. They surely could not intend to
keep him on board ship all that time. Could they mean to put him upon
some vessel sailing abroad? What a way Frank and his aunt would be in!
They would learn that he had started for home early in the afternoon,
and it would be absolutely certain that he could not have strayed from
the road nor met with any accident coming along the valley. It would
certainly be awkward his being missed on the same day Faulkner had been
shot, especially as, according to the time he had started for home, he
would have come along the road somewhere about the time the magistrate
was shot.