Chapter the Eleventh Sir Bevil Intervenes
Soon after breakfast next morning Dick and Sam went down to the shore to launch their boat for a day’s fishing. The post to which it was moored being close under the cliffs, they did not come in sight of it until they reached the foot of the winding path. Then Sam, who was walking ahead, uttered a cry.
“What is it?” asked Dick, hurrying on.
“Scrounch it all, look ’ee, Maister Dick!”
The boat lay on the white sand, but it was a navigable vessel no longer. It had been sawn across in three places. The old craft, which had withstood for forty years the battering of innumerable waves and the more insidious attacks of time, and in which three generations of Trevanions had sailed upon the deep, would be launched no more. It would henceforth serve no useful end except as firewood.
Dick felt first a pang of grief, then a surge of bitter rage. His enemies could not have chosen a more galling or vindictive means of wreaking their ill-will. They had dealt with the boat as the smugglers’ craft were dealt with when captured by the revenue officers. Dick saw in their act a subtle indication of the thoroughness with which they identified him with the Government men. It said: “You have joined the revenue officers; very well, we treat you as they treat us.” He had no doubt that the destruction of the boat and the firing of the tool-house were parts of one scheme.
“The cowards!” he exclaimed, “to do behind our backs what they durst not do to our face.”
“’Tis a miserable, dirty deed,” agreed Sam. “We must tell of it to the high powers.”
“Much good that will be!” cried Dick bitterly. “We can’t tell who did it; Sir Bevil will only instruct Petherick, and he is too much of a fool ever to find out, if he wanted to, which is unlikely. We can do nothing, Sam.”
“How can we go fishing now?” said Sam gloomily. “’Tis takin’ the bread out of our mouth, that’s what it is. They mean us to starve, the wretches.”
The loss of the boat was indeed a serious blow to the family at the Towers. The principal source of their food supply was cut off. In the present state of war between them and the villagers it would be impossible to borrow a boat, and the only place from which the boys could now fish the sea was the head of the jetty, where they would come into awkward contact with the hostile fishermen.
Dick examined the segments, with a lingering hope that even now old Reuben, who had so often patched and caulked the boat, might be able to repair it. But the destroyers had done their work only too well; he turned away without a word, and gloomily wended his way homeward.
As he walked towards the house, he saw a horseman riding down the road towards the village. At a second glance he recognised him as Sir Bevil Portharvan. When he reached home his father told him that Mr. Polwhele had ridden over to Portharvan House very early, and informed Sir Bevil of the night’s occurrence. That gentleman had never been on more than speaking terms with Squire Trevanion; it is not easy for a wealthy man to be cordial with one who has gone down in the world and yet retains his pride. Sir Bevil disapproved of the Squire’s attitude to his cousin, which seemed to him the outcome of sheer envy. But he was sufficiently loyal to his class to be greatly incensed at the criminal action of which the riding officer told him, and he promised to exert his influence as a magistrate to prevent any further proceedings of the same kind.
He rode to the Towers, learnt the particulars from the Squire’s lips, and, having coldly expressed his sympathy, went on. As he came to the Dower House it occurred to him to see John Trevanion, whom he had met often of late, and ask him to use his efforts to put down the persecution. Trevanion’s attitude was admirably correct. He acknowledged that he was on bad terms with the Squire; deplored the breach, which was not of his making; and promised to let it be known in the village that he disapproved of such violent measures as the people had recently taken. That was as much as he could do. Sir Bevil went away feeling that John Trevanion was an excellent fellow, and regarding his own errand even more in the light of a troublesome duty than he had done before.
From the Dower House he went straight to the inn, which was the focus of the village life, and the place from which his views would radiate with every man who left it after drinking his ale, cider, or brandy. Reining up at the door, he called Doubledick forth.
“Good mornin’, yer honour,” said the innkeeper, rubbing his hands deferentially as he obeyed the great man’s command.
“Look here, Doubledick,” said Sir Bevil bluntly, “I’ve heard of what went on at the Towers last night. That sort of thing won’t do, you know; it must be stopped, and you can tell your customers I say so. Free-trading is all very well, but arson is an ugly word and a hanging matter; and, egad! if any man is caught playing such low tricks, and brought before me, he’ll get no mercy, I promise you. Make that clear, will you?”
“Iss sure, Sir Bevil,” replied the innkeeper. “’Twas a cruel deed, the Squire bein’ so cast down and all. I’ll tell the folks yer very words, sir, that I will.”
“That’s right. I saw Mr. John Trevanion on the way down, and he agreed with me, so there will be an eye on the village nearer than mine.”
“Oh, if you seed Maister John, Sir Bevil, ’tis as good as seein’ the Lord High Constable o’ the county, I warrant ’ee. Folks think a deal o’ Maister John, they do.”
A keener observer than Sir Bevil might have detected a spice of irony in Doubledick’s remark. But the baronet was satisfied, and after yielding to the innkeeper’s invitation to take a glass to help him on his homeward journey, he rode off with the comfortable sense of having done his duty.
When Dick went to the Parsonage that afternoon for his usual lesson, he told Mr. Carlyon all that had happened. On the next Sunday the vicar preached an excellent sermon from the text, “Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark,” which the women listened to without understanding, the men going to sleep as usual.
The loss of the boat caused something like consternation among the inmates of the Towers. The Squire could not afford to buy a new one; how was the necessary fishing to be carried on? This problem taxed the wits of Dick, who lay awake for two nights pondering and puzzling. Then the thought came to him, why not build a boat? He had never attempted such a ticklish piece of work, but he was pretty handy with tools, and the idea of setting his wits against the machinations of the enemy fixed his resolution.
He remembered sorrowfully that with the burnt tool-house had perished his tools and the carpenter’s bench at which he had been accustomed to work. But he could borrow the necessary implements from Petherick, the sexton, who did all the repairs required at the church and the Parsonage. There was no lack of timber in the planking of the ruined portion of the Towers. The most formidable obstacle was his absolute ignorance of the art of boat-building, but a means of overcoming that soon suggested itself.
The Polkerran fishers obtained their boats from St. Ives, fifteen or sixteen miles away. A tramp of that distance was nothing to a healthy lad, so, early one morning, taking some bread and cheese in a wallet, and telling no one of his intention, Dick set off. It was a raw November day; the road was wet and muddy, and as Dick passed under the trees along the route his face and neck were bespattered by the drippings from their bare boughs. But he made light of such ordinary discomforts of winter; the swinging pace at which he walked set his blood coursing, and by the time he arrived at St. Ives his whole body was in a healthy glow. He entered an inn and moistened his dry fare with a glass of ale, then found his way to the principal boat-builder’s yard, and stood looking on as the workmen sawed and planed and hammered. The builder had no secret to guard; his yard was open to any one who cared to visit it. He gave Dick a friendly greeting; the men threw a glance at him, and went on with their work and their gossip as unconcernedly as though he were not there.
Having spent several hours thus, strolling through the town to warm himself while the men were at dinner, he set off in the afternoon on his long tramp homeward, going over in his head the details of the operations he had witnessed. Next day he appeared in the yard at the same time. The master-builder himself was absent, and there was a shade of surprise in the men’s expression of face as they saw him enter; but, as before, they paid no attention to him, and showed neither interest nor curiosity.
On the third day, however, when he again made his appearance, their rustic stolidity was penetrated at last.
“Mornin’ to ’ee, sonny,” said the foreman builder, a cheerful-looking veteran of sixty; “you be as regular as church-clock, to be sure.”
Dick smiled and returned the man’s greeting.
“You will know a boat from keel to gunwale,” continued the foreman.
“That’s what I’ve come for,” said Dick.
“Well, now, think o’ that!”
“Didn’t I tell ’ee so, gaffer?” remarked one of the men.
“True, you did, and a clever seein’ eye you have got, Ben.”
“And I said ’a was not a common poor man,” said another. “That’s what I said, bean’t it, Ben?”
“Iss, fay, they was yer very words.”
“Well, sir,” said the foreman, “seein’ that these clever fellers have seed so far into ye, maybe you’ll tell what’s your hidden purpose in lookin’ at we.”
“I’m learning how to build a boat,” replied Dick.
“Good now! You never thought o’ that, Ben, clever as ye be, I warrant ’ee. Well, sonny—sir, I mean—I’ve been nigh fifty year larnin’ to build a boat, and I bean’t done larnin’ yet.”
“That’s bad news, because I want to build one in a week or two.”
“Well, I won’t say but you can make some sort of a tub in the time, but ’twill be a wambly figure o’ fun, and be very useful for givin’ ye a sea-bath. Ha! ha!”
“There’s no harm in trying, though,” said Dick, good-humouredly. “Perhaps if you’d let me try my hand I might pick up a notion or two.”
“I don’t mind if I do. Just set they thwarts in the splines; that’s a little small job, and we’ll see how ’ee do set about it.”
Dick stripped off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and proceeded to perform the task given him, the foreman watching him critically the while.
“Not so bad,” he said when the job was finished. “I won’t say but Maister will cuss when he do see it, but ’tis not so bad for a young feller; what do ’ee say, my sonnies?”
The men left their work and inspected Dick’s, twisting their necks, pressing their lips together, and showing other marks of solemn consideration. They pronounced the work pretty good, and declared they wouldn’t have believed it.
The foreman gave Dick other little jobs to do, and being more pleased with the lad’s handiness than he had admitted, he took pains to instruct him. Dick learnt about ribs and splines; how to steam the ribs and give the necessary “flare”; the difficulty of getting the planking to “fly” to a true curve without “shramming”; and many other technical details which dashed his hope of being able to build a boat in a week.
“Don’t ’ee go and set up for a boat-builder, though,” said the foreman pleasantly. “Maister will werrit if he do think the bread ’ll be took out of his mouth.”
“No fear of that,” replied Dick laughing. “I only want to build a boat for myself, to replace an old one I lost.”
“Well, I will say ’tis a right good notion to build one yerself instead o’ buyin’ one, though ’twouldn’t do for we if everybody was so handy.”
Dick’s journeys to and fro between Polkerran and St. Ives extended over ten days. His absences greatly puzzled Sam, but Dick gave no explanation until he felt that he had learned enough to make a start, and decided to visit the boat-builder’s no more. He was not so foolish as to suppose that he had mastered the trade, but believed he knew enough to enable him to construct a boat that would serve his simple purpose. Then one morning he set Sam to collect a number of sound planks from the floors and wainscoting in the unused rooms at the Towers, and having borrowed from Petherick the tools necessary to supplement those that Reuben had, he began his task.
Day by day for a fortnight the lads worked steadily, using the dilapidated stables for their workshop. Occasionally the Squire and Reuben stood by and criticised; old Penwarden, too, looked in and offered a more or less impracticable suggestion. Once when Dick was at a loss how to proceed, he trudged to St. Ives to consult the foreman.
“What, Maister, has she sunk a’ready?” said the man with twinkling eyes, as Dick entered.
He obtained the information he desired, and within a few days afterwards the boat was finished. Nobody at the Towers, except her makers, believed that she would float. How to get her down to the water was at first a baffling problem. She was too heavy and cumbersome to be carried down the cliff-path by the boys, and they would not seek assistance from the villagers. It was Mr. Carlyon that solved the difficulty. He suggested that the boat should be conveyed on a farmer’s wagon to a dell about four miles northward, where a stream flowed into the sea. This was done early one morning, the farmer, a friend of the Vicar’s, being bound to secrecy. They launched the boat on the stream, and Sam gave a whoop of delight on seeing that she rode fairly upright. With a couple of spare sculls from their nook on the Beal, they pulled her out to sea, and Dick was pardonably proud of his handiwork when she proved quite seaworthy, if somewhat lumbering.
“She’s not very pretty, but she’s strong,” he said to Sam, “and that is all we need trouble about.”
During the weeks in which Dick had been thus occupied, no further annoyance was suffered from the villagers. Sir Bevil’s warning had apparently taken effect. Penwarden reported that two more serious checks had been given to the smugglers. Once they had been interrupted in the act of running a cargo at Lunnan Cove, some miles to the south, and a hundred tubs had been seized by Mr. Mildmay. A few days later, the cutter had gone in chase of a lugger in a stiff gale, and the seamanship of the smugglers being at least equal to that of the King’s men, the quarry had escaped. But her crew, not daring to run the cargo while the revenue officers were on the alert, had sunk the tubs, which were always carried ready slung to meet such an emergency, in five fathoms of water beyond St. Cuby’s Cove. In their hurry, however, the work was not done so carefully as usual, with the result that one of the tubs was chafed off the sinking rope, drifted about, and next morning was descried by Penwarden from the cliff. He informed Mr. Mildmay. The shallow water along the shore was systematically searched, and the whole cargo was hooked up by means of “creeps,” as the grapnels were called. Rumour, reaching the Towers by way of the Parsonage, said that on both these occasions Tonkin was the freighter, so that his loss by the successive failures was probably not far short of £300.
Tidings came, also, by the local carrier, of renewed activity on the part of the Aimable Vertu in the Channel. A revenue cruiser had fought an action with her off the Lizard, and was worsted, her commander being wounded, and the vessel only escaping by running in shore to shallow water, where the privateer could not follow. The authorities, already deeply incensed by the escape of Delarousse from Plymouth, were furious at this recurrence of his depredations, and had offered a high price for information of his movements, and a still higher reward to any officer who should capture him.
For a few days Dick laid up his new boat, when fishing was done, in the mouth of the little stream on which he had launched it, tramping back with Sam over the four miles to the Towers. But this became irksome, and he tried to think of some means of keeping the craft nearer home without running the risk of its destruction by the smugglers. After a good deal of anxious consideration he hit upon the idea of building a shed for it on the beach at the foot of the cliff.
“Jown me if I see the good o’ ’t,” said Sam, when Dick explained his plan. “They’ll break into the shed, or fire it, if they want to, and we’ll lose our boat and our labour too.”
“But I’ve thought of a way of preventing that, Sam. They won’t interfere with it in daylight: ’tis only the night we need fear. Well, we’ll make ’em give us warning of any trick they play.”
“I don’t see how, unless they be born fools.”
“They’re not fools: far from it: but they might be a trifle sharper in the wits, perhaps. If it comes to scheming, I think we can beat ’em, Sam. We’ll build the shed close under the house. Now listen. We’ll make the door to open outwards, and tie a strand of sewing thread to the bottom, running it through hooks along the wall and out at the back of the shed. There we’ll tie it to a fishing-line, and round a pulley up to the cliff-top, taking care to keep it off the rock by making it run through notches in sticks of wood. At the top we’ll have another pulley, and at the foot of the house wall another, and so carry it into my bedroom. There we’ll fasten it to a weight—a poker will do; which we’ll sling up beside the window. We’ll put a tea-tray underneath it, d’ you see? so that if the shed door is pulled open the thread will break, the poker will fall, and make such a clatter that we are bound to hear it all over the house.”
Sam broke into laughter.
“Ha! ha! it do mind me of the old ’ooman and little crooked sixpence,” he cried. “Do ’ee mind, Maister Dick? ‘Cat began to kill the rat, rat began to gnaw the rope,’ and so on till th’ old ’ooman got home at last. My life, ’tis a noble notion! What a headpiece you have got, to be sure! But, scrounch it all, won’t they see the line?”
“I don’t think so. ’Tis so much the colour of the rock that it will escape notice.”
“True. But s’pose we do hear a clatter-bang. That won’t stop ’em from hauling out the boat, and we couldn’ get down the cliff in time to save her.”
“I’d thought of that. We’ll fix up a booby-trap over the door.”
“Never heerd o’t. What be a booby-trap?”
“’Tis a thing that Mr. Carlyon told me of, a trick he used to play when he was a young fellow at college. You fix above the doorway something that will tumble down when the door is opened, and come plump on the head of any one entering. That will stagger them, and while they are recovering their wits we shall have time to run down. You may be sure they’ll run away before we get to them, for if we recognize them they’ll have Sir Bevil to reckon with.”
“Ha! ha!” laughed Sam. “That ’ud be a funny sight to see. We’ll do it, Maister Dick, and ’tis my wish I bean’t too sleepy to tumble up when they tries their tricks.”
It was a full day’s work, from daybreak to long past sunset, to erect the shed from materials carefully prepared beforehand. Dick felt the necessity of completing the apparatus before another day dawned, lest their proceedings should be spied from a passing boat and reported in the village before they were ready. He obtained permission from his father to remain out, telling him frankly what his purpose was, but without giving details, and toiled on, by the light of a screened lantern, until the whole contrivance wis finished. The booby-trap consisted of a pail nicely balanced on a bar running across the shed, and filled with water deeply coloured with indigo. It was connected by a thread with a loose board in the floor beneath, so that a trespasser stepping across the threshold would snap the thread, cause the pail to turn on its axis, and receive its contents on his head.
“The parson used flour, he told me,” said Dick, “but ’tis too good to waste on those rascals.”
“Ay, and a dousin’ will make ’em cuss more,” said Sam. “Oh, ’twill grieve me tarrible if I be asleep!”
Three days passed. Apparently the shed had not been discovered by the villagers. The boys tested their invention and found it successful. They took the boat out each morning, and restored it to its place when the day’s fishing was done, fastening the door from the inside, connecting it with the booby-trap, and leaving the shed by a small door, just large enough to crawl through, at the back.
On the third evening Mr. Carlyon came to the Towers to join the Trevanions in a game of whist, as he did frequently during the winter months. It was a still, clear night, with a touch of frost in the air; but the cold did not penetrate to the Squire’s room, where a blazing wood fire threw a rosy radiance on the panelled walls, and woke smiling reflections in the glasses and decanters that stood on a table near that at which the party of four were absorbed in their game. The house was quiet; Reuben and Sam had retired to rest, for the Vicar would need no attendance when he mounted his cob to ride home.
The Squire was in the act of shuffling the pack, when suddenly the silence of the house was shattered by a tremendous crash in one of the rooms above. Mrs. Trevanion pressed her hand to her side; the Squire missed his cast, and let the cards fall to the floor; Mr. Carlyon put down the glass which he had just raised to his lips, so hastily that the fluid spilled on the baize. Dick sprang up.
“’Tis the alarm!” he cried. “They are at my shed!”
He dashed out of the room, to meet Sam in shirt and breeches tumbling down the stairs. Dick seized a cutlass hanging on the wall, Sam the parson’s riding-whip, and throwing open the door they sallied out into the night.
“It dinged me out of a lovely dream,” said Sam. “Dash my buttons, ’twas a noble noise.”
They scampered along the cliff to the zigzag path. Meanwhile the Squire hurriedly explained the matter to the astonished Vicar.
“Bless my life, I must go too,” cried Mr. Carlyon. “The impudence of the scoundrels! Is this the result of Sir Bevil’s intervention? Come along, Squire; bring your pistols. Man of peace as I am, I will give you absolution if you wing one of those fellows!”
The two hastened forth less than a minute after the boys. Both were active men, in spite of their years, and they scrambled down the path with no more stumbles than were excusable in elderly gentlemen a little short in the wind. Before they got to the bottom they saw a boat just pulling off from the shore, and the boys knee-deep in water, trying to give a parting salutation with their weapons to the disturbers of the peace. Sam had the satisfaction of hearing a bellow from the man in the stern of the boat as the whip-thong slashed his face; but Dick’s cutlass was not long enough for effective use, and in a few seconds the marauders were out of reach.
The four met on the beach and hastened up towards the shed. To their surprise the door was only half open.
“They must have heard the noise,” said Dick. “My window is open. I daresay they waited to see what it meant, and then heard us coming down, for when we got to the foot of the path they were beginning to shove the boat off.”
“The neatest contrivance I ever heard of. I congratulate you on your ingenuity,” said the Vicar heartily. “But we may as well see that the villains have done no mischief.”
As he spoke he pulled the door fully open, and before Dick could check him, set his foot on the threshold. Instantly there was a splash; the worthy man gasped and spluttered, and came out with a spring, shaking his head like a dog emerging from a bath.
“God bless my soul!” cried the Squire, looking with amazement at the dark shower pouring from his friend on to the sand. “What on earth is this?”
“Ho! ho!” laughed Sam, prancing with delight, his veneration for the Church quite eclipsed by his joy at a fellow mortal’s misadventure. “I ha’ seed it arter all. Ho! ho!”
Dick, overwhelmed with dismay, shook Sam by the arm and bade him be silent. What excuse, what reparation could he make to the venerable gentleman who had suffered so untoward an accident?
“I didn’t think—I tried to—I’m dreadfully sorry, sir,” he stammered.
“Ha! ha!” came the parson’s rolling laugh. “‘Pon my life, he’s an apt pupil, Squire. The young dog! Ha! ha!”
“Explain this—this—” began the Squire angrily.
“This booby-trap, Squire,” cried Mr. Carlyon. “’Tis I am the booby. I taught Dick, in a reckless burst of confidence, how we young rantipoles at Oxford used to deal with each other—and our tutors too, I’m bound to say. I wish I hadn’t. But, you young rascal, I told you that we used flour: what is this horrible stuff?”
“Only a solution of indigo, sir; it won’t do you any harm,” replied poor Dick.
“Won’t do me any harm? Only make me black and blue, eh? Ha! ha! I’m glad ’tis no worse. But ’tis a thousand pities those ruffians escaped the shower. Well, well, the rain falls on the just and the unjust, we’re told, and——bless me, Squire, it takes me back forty years, when we had rigged up a trap for a freshman, and it toppled on the reverend head of the dean himself. Ha! ha!”
“Ha! ha!” laughed the Squire, his vexation giving way to his sense of humour.
“Ho! ho!” roared Sam. “Drown me if it bean’t the——”
“Shut up!” growled Dick. “Why must you laugh at the Vicar in that idiotic way?”
“‘Cos he laughs at hisself,” said Sam, highly aggrieved. “I wouldn’ laugh at him with his nightgown on in church, not I; but when he be just like a simple common man, daze me if I can keep it in.”
The two elders were now climbing the path. Dick stayed to retie the thread, though he did not expect that the marauders, after the alarm they had had, would make a second attempt that night. Having closed the door, he accompanied Sam up the cliff, greatly relieved when he heard, far above, the Vicar’s hearty laugh, as he related to the Squire sundry other pranks and escapades of his younger days.