Chapter VIII Flotsam
Under the Leads—A Thames-side Attic—A Man of Law—A Matter of Form—A Question of Identity—A Fine Mesh—A Dash for Freedom—Help in Need—For the Plantations—Visitors on Board—Ned Bates—In the Foc’sle—Sailor’s Knots—An Old Coat—Odds and Ends—A Soft Answer—Overboard—A Dead Heat—A Sea Lawyer—Grootz Protests—A Stern Chase—Sherry’s Story—To the Low Countries
When Harry recovered his senses he found himself tied hand and foot, and with a cloth gag between his teeth. It was pitch dark; he could hear nothing save a faint scratching near at hand; mice were evidently at their nocturnal work. He lay still perforce; he found it impossible even to wriggle over on to his side. Here was indeed a culmination of his misfortunes.
He tried to think, but the sudden attack and his subsequent unconsciousness had left his brain in a whirl. Gradually the sequence of events came back to him: his walk through the streets towards Blackfriars, the beggar woman, the three sailors, the pretended fit. What was the meaning of it? Had he been marked by the press-gang, and trepanned to serve Her Majesty on the high seas? Had he been kidnapped, to be robbed or held to ransom? Hardly the former, for a knock on the head would have served the kidnappers’ ends. Hardly the latter, for no one could have taken the pains to waylay for such a purpose a penniless youth with no friends.
Suddenly he remembered the vague uneasiness shown at times by Sherebiah; his earnest warnings; the cudgel which after all had proved useless. Sherebiah, it seemed, had had more definite reasons for alarm than he had avowed; why then had the silly fellow not spoken his mind freely? Who was the enemy? What motive could any person in the wide world have for kidnapping one who was even yet a boy and had, so far as he knew, done no harm to a living soul? The more he thought, the more he was puzzled.
He was in pain. The cords cut into his flesh; his throat was parched; he could not swallow. How long was this torture to continue? Where was he? Where were his capturers? He longed for a light, so that he might at least see the prison in which he was confined, and so diminish even by one his terrible uncertainties. But no light came, no voice or footfall sounded gratefully upon his ear; and presently a lethargy stole upon his mind and all things were again in oblivion.
He was roused by a light flashed in his eyes. Dazed and still only half conscious, he saw an unknown face bending towards him, and a hand holding a candle. The man grunted as though with relief to find the captive still alive; then, setting the candle upon the floor, he removed the gag. Harry tried to speak, but no word issued from his lips. The man went from the room, leaving the candle still burning. By its light Harry saw that he was in a narrow attic, with rough beams supporting a slanting roof, and whitewashed walls. There was a sky-light above him; he could hear the first patters of a shower of hail.
Presently the man returned bearing a can and a hunk of bread. Lifting Harry, he held the can to his lips. The prisoner drank the beer greedily.
“Where am I?” he asked, recovering his voice.
“Hold your jaw!” was the surly answer. “You are where you are.”
“Why am I brought here? What is to be done with me?”
“Hold your jaw, I say! Ye’ll get nothing out of me. Keep a still tongue; for if ye raise your voice someone I know will find means to quiet ye.”
“But I insist on knowing,” cried Harry in indignation. “Why was I dogged and attacked in the streets, and brought captive to——”
“Stow it! Least said soonest mended. Behave wi’ sense and ye’ll be treated according; otherways—well, I won’t answer for’t.”
“Loose my arms then.”
“Well, I’ll do that for ’ee, and legs too; don’t think ye can run away, ’cos ye can’t. Here’s your supper; dry, but ’tis drier where there’s none. I’ll leave ye to’t.”
Untying the cords, the man gave the bread into Harry’s hand, took up the candle, and went out, locking the door behind him. Harry could not eat; his limbs were cramped with his long immobility; when he stood his knees hardly supported him. But it was pleasant to be able to use arms and legs once more, and after a time his aching pains abated. He groped round the room, shook the door, and found it fast. He could just touch the sky-light with his outstretched hand, and he felt that the glass was loose; but he could not remove it unless he stood higher, and groping failed to find any chair or stool. Escape was impossible; he could but wait for the morning.
He lay awake the greater part of the night, but was sound asleep when the same man re-entered with his meagre breakfast. The morning brought no comfort. A gray dawn struggled through the grimy sky-light, revealing the nakedness of the room. Cobwebs festooned the beams; the boards of the floor were dirty and mouldered; the walls in places were green with damp. Harry took silently the food offered him; he was not encouraged by the previous night’s experience to question his taciturn jailer. The morning passed slowly, irksomely; when the man returned with another meal at noon, Harry ventured to address him.
“How long am I to remain caged here?”
“I can’t tell ’ee, ’cos I don’t know.”
“You’re not one of the sailors who trapped me?”
“Lord, no. I wouldn’t be a dirty swab for nothing ’cept to ’scape the gallows.”
“Who employs you in this turnkey business?”
“That’s my business.”
“Don’t be surly. I’ve done nothing to you.”
“Well, that’s true. You ha’n’t done nothing to me. That’s true enough.”
“Will you do something for me, then? You’re a good fellow, I’m sure.”
“Nay, nay, you don’t come over me, young master. Soft speeches ain’t no good for a tough un like me. When I goes out I locks ye in, and if ye holler till ye bust, ’tis no good, not at all.”
“I didn’t mean that. ’Tis dull as death lying on these rotten boards with nothing to do; bring me the morning’s paper and I’ll thank you.”
“Well, that’s harmless enough, to be sure. Gi’ me twopence and I’ll buy ye a Courant.”
“’Tis only a penny.”
“True; t’other penny’s for me.”
Harry smiled and felt for his purse. It was gone.
“Plucked clean, eh?” chuckled the man. “Trust your Wapping swab for that. All the same you shall have the paper.”
He returned with the morning’s Courant, already well thumbed. Harry ran his eye over the meagre half-sheet; there was nothing that interested him except the announcement of Lord Blandford’s death at Cambridge.
“The duke has lost his heir,” he thought. “He was a little older than myself. Perhaps it is my turn next.”
The day wore on. In the afternoon the door opened and a stranger entered along with the custodian. By his cut Harry guessed him to be a lawyer’s clerk. His movements were soft and insinuating; his face was wreathed into an artificial smile.
“Good-morning, sir!” he said softly, bowing. “I have waited upon you to complete a little matter of business; a mere formality. The document is quite ready; I have here inkhorn and quill; I have only to ask you to write your name at the foot.”
He unrolled the paper he carried, and signed to his companion to bring the writing materials.
“Ah! there is no table, I see. You can hardly write on the floor, sir; James, fetch a table from below.—Your furniture is scanty, sir,” he continued as the man went out; “in truth, there is nothing to recommend your situation but its loftiness. You are near the sky, sir, and very fortunately so, for ’tis murky and damp in the street.—Thank you, James! Now, sir, everything is in order; you will, if you please, sign your name where I place my finger, there.”
Harry took the pen offered him, and dipped it in the inkhorn. He gave no sign of his amazement.
“Yes,” he said, “with pleasure—when I have read the paper.”
“Surely, sir, at this stage it is unnecessary. Why delay? I assure you that the document is perfectly in order, and the phraseology of us men of law is—well, sir, you understand that a scrivener is paid so much a folio, and he has no temptation to be unduly brief: he! he!”
“Still, if you do not object I will read the paper. It is merely a form, as you say.”
“Very well, sir,” said the man with a patient shrug.
He lifted his hand from the paper, and Harry bent over the table to read it. The writing was clerkly and precise; the sentences were long and involved, with no support from punctuation; but, unfamiliar as he was with legal diction, Harry had no difficulty in making out the gist of the document so obligingly placed before him. His heart was thumping uncomfortably, for all his cool exterior; and he deliberately read down the close lines slowly in order to gain time to collect his thoughts. The request to sign the paper had been surprising enough, but his bewilderment was increased tenfold when he found what it was that he was asked to sign.
Stripped of its verbiage, the document stated that whereas Christopher Butler, gentleman, lately residing in Jermyn Street over against the Garter Coffee-house, had been acquitted of all his debts by the good offices of John Feggans, merchant of the City of London, the said Christopher Butler hereby entered into an indenture to serve the said John Feggans in his Plantations in the island of Barbados for a period of five years. There were qualifications and provisos and penalties which Harry passed over; then, having read the principal articles again, he looked up and said:
“Why should I sign this?”
“Sir!” said the attorney in surprise.
“Why should I sign this? What have I to do with Christopher Butler or John Feggans?”
The lawyer looked round at the other man as though asking whether he had heard aright.
“I am at a loss to give you better reasons than you know already. Who should sign it if not you?”
“I am afraid I must trouble you to explain. See, I find that Christopher Butler, having incurred debts to a large amount, has assigned these debts to John Feggans, who has paid them, and that Christopher Butler indentures himself a slave to John Feggans, to win his release by working in the Plantations. I ask you, what have I to do with all this?”
“Christopher Butler asks that?”
“Who? What did you say?”
“Christopher Butler—yourself.”
Harry laughed, so great was his sense of relief. It was all a mistake, then; he had been seized by mistake for some poor wretched fellow who had lost all his money and been forced to adopt this, the last resource of impecunious spendthrifts.
“Pardon me,” he said. “There has been a mistake. My name is not Christopher Butler.”
He smiled in the attorney’s face. The little man looked staggered.
“Not Christopher Butler?”
“Certainly not. My name is——”
Harry stopped. Some instinct of caution warned him not to disclose his real name at present.
“My name is neither Butler nor Christopher,” he added. “Now, pray let me go.”
“Sir, I have my instructions. I must make enquiries. This is unlooked for, most perplexing. Pray excuse me for one moment.”
He hurried from the room, leaving the door open. The surly custodian, who had followed the colloquy with evident interest, showed that he was not a bad fellow at bottom.
“I’m right glad, that I am,” he said. “’Twas my own thought you was too young to be such a wild dog, or else you was a most desperate wild one.”
Harry did not reply. Through the open door he heard loud voices proceeding from a room below. He could not catch the words, but there was something in the tone of the loudest voice that sounded familiar. He had no opportunity of forming a conclusion on the matter, for the speaker’s tone was instantly moderated, as though in response to a warning. Immediately afterwards the attorney returned, accompanied by a low-browed fellow in a lackey’s livery. The lawyer’s smile was as bland as ever as he came into the room.
“’Tis not unusual for a man to change his mind, Mr. Butler, but in this case I fear ’t will be a little awkward. I am instructed that you are the Christopher Butler named in this indenture, and have to insist on your affixing your signature to it.”
“Nonsense!” said Harry impatiently. “I tell you my name is not Butler, and I refuse to sign the paper. ’Tis a preposterous error. I never was in debt in my life; I know nothing of Feggans; indeed, know hardly a soul in London; why, I never was in London till a month or two ago.”
“My dear sir, my dear sir,” said the lawyer, as though expostulating with a hardened liar. Turning to the lackey, he asked: “You see this young gentleman?”
“Ay, ay, I do so.”
Harry started. The accent was pure Wiltshire, and fell on his ears like a message from home. He scanned the man’s features, but did not recognize him.
“What is his name?” went on the lawyer.
“Butler; ay, ’tis Butler, sure enough.”
“Where did you see him last?”
“In the Fleet prison, to be sure, ay, and on the common side, too.”
“You are sure of this?”
“Ay, faith, sure enough. I seed the gentleman often at maister’s; many’s the time I called a hackney for’n in the darkest hour o’ night, thinken as them as goo fast won’t goo long.”
“And you were present with your master when this little matter of business was arranged?”
“I was so, ay.”
The lawyer looked with his eternal smile at Harry.
“Now, sir,” he said, “you will no longer delay to put your hand to this document.”
Harry had been thinking rapidly. He gave up the hypothesis of error; the lawyer’s visit was clearly part of a deliberate plot; it mattered little whether he was privy to it, or was innocently carrying out his instructions. No doubt there was a Christopher Butler who had thus sold himself to pay his debts, but somebody had determined to substitute Harry for the real man. He had noticed that the name Christopher Butler was written in pencil every time it occurred in the document, all else being in ink; and it suddenly flashed upon him that the object had been to entrap him into signing his real name, which would then be substituted for the name pencilled in. He gave the lawyer a long look, put his hands behind his back, and said:
“It is waste of time. I refuse.”
Again the lawyer smiled and shrugged.
“’Tis immaterial, sir. This is but a duplicate; the original was signed three days ago in the Fleet. I have now to——”
“Liar!” shouted Harry, springing forward, his face aflame. The door stood open; only the lackey was in a direct line between the prisoner and freedom. Before the man’s slow rustic mind had accommodated itself to the situation, he was sent reeling against the wall by a straight blow between the eyes. Harry was already out of the room, at the top of the staircase, when the little attorney seized him from behind and shouted for help. The taciturn jailer stood looking on. There were cries from below and a stampede of feet, and before Harry, with the lawyer clinging to him, had descended more than four steps he was met by the three sailors. Swearing hearty oaths they threw themselves upon him, and in five minutes he was back in the attic securely trussed up.
Even his surly jailer, bringing him food, looked at him with a touch of sympathy. Harry’s haggard eyes met his with a mute appeal for help.
“Odsbud!” exclaimed the man, “’tis hard on a mere stripling. If your name bean’t Christopher Butler, what be it?”
“My name is Harry Rochester. ’Tis a vile plot. You believe me?”
“Ay, I believe ye. Tain’t in reason that a boy should ha’ got ocean deep in debt.”
“Will you help me? You see what a snare is about me. Will you go to the Star and Garter in Leicester fields and ask for Sherebiah Minshull? Tell him where I am, and what they are going to do with me.”
“But what’d be the good, mister?”
“He would find a way to help me. You would know that if you knew him.”
“And how much might ye be willing to pay, now?”
“I haven’t a penny, as you know, but he had some money. Lose no time; pray go now, at once.”
“Well, the truth on’t is I’m paid by t’other party.”
“Who is it? What is the name of the man who has hired you?”
“Faith, I don’t know, but he have a fine long purse, and ’tis a fine swashing gentleman. Howsomever, I’ll go to the Star and Garter as you say, and see your man—what be his name? Minshull; good; I’ll go soon, and—Coming, sir, coming,” he added in answer to a hail from below. “I’ll go afore ’tis dark, ’struth, I will.”
He left the room, and Harry felt a momentary glow of hope. It was dulled immediately. The three sailors re-entered. Without ado they again bound his arms, which had been loosed to allow of his lifting his food, and carried him downstairs. Daylight was fading. At the door Harry looked eagerly around for some person whom a cry might bring to his rescue. Alas! the house was in a blind alley, and no one but his captors was in sight. He did raise his voice and give one resounding call. A gag was instantly slipped into his mouth, and he was hurried to the open end of the alley, where a hackney coach stood waiting. Into this he was thrown; two of the sailors got in with him, the third mounted to a place beside the driver, and the vehicle rumbled and jolted over the rough cobbles.
Some twenty minutes later it pulled up at the Tower Wharf, where Harry had vainly sought for Jan Grootz a few days before. It was now night, and as he was lifted out and borne towards the wharf side, Harry saw by the light of naphtha torches a busy scene. Sailors, lightermen, stevedores were moving hither and thither; the ground was strewn with bales and packages; the last portions of a cargo were being transferred to the hold of a barque that lay alongside. No one paid attention to the not unusual spectacle of a young fellow going unwillingly to a vessel bound for the Plantations. Harry’s captors, joking, chewing, spitting, shoved him with no tender hands on to the gangway. At the other end of it stood a dark-featured, beetle-browed old seaman, the captain of the vessel, bawling orders to this and that member of his crew.
“Ha!” he cried, as he saw the new-comer hauled along in the sailors’ arms; “this be the springald? Zooks! ye are none too soon: tide turns in half an hour.”
“Here we be, sir, true; and this be Christopher Butler, mark you, for the Plantations.”
“Papers?” roared the captain, spitting into the river.
“All taut, sir,” replied the man, producing the document that Harry had refused to sign; it bore a signature now.
“Obstropolous, eh?”
“Changed his mind, sir, it seems, since signing on; ha’ give us some trouble.”
“Oons! We’ll cure that. All aboard! Stow the cockerel in the foc’sle; strap un to a plank; we’ll have no ’tarnal tricks.”
As Harry was lugged forward he noticed two figures standing beneath a lamp swinging to one of the yards. He started, and involuntarily increased his weight upon his bearers. One of the two came forward a step towards the captain and, tapping a snuff-box, said:
“Whom have we here, captain?”
“A young puppy as ha’ run through a duke’s fortune and goes as redemptioner where I’ve carried many a man before him.”
“Indeed! So young! ’Tis sad, the wastefulness of young men in this age.”
He took a pinch of snuff and stepped back again. Harry had scanned his features and heard what he said. His heart almost stopped beating with surprise, for the speaker was Mr. Berkeley, the squire, and his companion was Captain Aglionby. “Did they not recognize me?” he thought. Surely if he could appeal to the squire he might even yet, at the last moment, be saved. He struggled with his captors, but they tightened their hold upon him and wrenched his limbs with brutal callousness. He was carried to the sailors’ quarters in the foc’sle. His bonds were loosed for a moment; then he was laid on a plank and lashed to it. There was a sudden commotion. The captain roared an order to his men, then went to the side to meet a custom-house officer who had just come aboard with two men. An observer would have noticed that Mr. Berkeley hastily turned his back and retreated into the shadow.
“Thought you’d forgot us, sir,” said the captain.
“No, no. But we won’t keep you long; you want to catch the tide.”
The rummaging crew began a perfunctory inspection of the vessel. When they were out of sight Mr. Berkeley came forward and spoke in a low tone to the captain.
“Right, sir,” he replied, and sent a man forward with orders to place Harry in a bunk in the darkest part of the foc’sle and cover him up. Consequently, when the custom-house officer reached the sailors’ quarters, where several of the crew were lolling about, Harry lay hidden, half-stifled beneath a tarpaulin.
“What’s this?” asked the officer.
“That!” cried the ship’s mate with an oath. “That’s Ned Bates, come aboard mad drunk after a spree. ’Tis the same every voyage, and the medicine’s a dose of rope’s end to-morrow.”
The officer laughed and passed on. The inspection was soon completed; the officer accepted a pinch of the captain’s snuff and left the vessel with his crew, watched by Mr. Berkeley and Captain Aglionby from the corner of a shed on the wharf. In a few minutes the ropes were cast off, and with creakings and heavings the ship moved into the current and began to float down on the ebb-tide towards the sea.
The tarpaulin was pulled off Harry by a man who took the opportunity to curse him. The gag was removed from his mouth; then he was left to himself. He thought he had reached the lowest depths of misery. Something he had learnt of the awful fate in store for him in the Plantations. Many such poor wretches as himself had sailed across the seas in the hope of redeeming themselves from debt by years of unremitting toil. On their arrival they had become, body and soul, the property of their masters. Treated as no better than convicts, they were put to the most degrading labour, and their employers contrived to keep them, even as labourers, so deeply in debt for clothes and the common necessaries of life that the day of redemption never dawned for them, and they lived and died in abject slavery. This was to be his fate! What a declension from the bright destiny that seemed to be before him but a few months ago!
The foc’sle was dark and noisome. The smell of bilge water and the reek of the lamp affixed to the side nauseated Harry. Physically and mentally, he was desperately wretched. And through all his misery he was overcome by sheer puzzlement. Hitherto he had surmised that, being young and strong, he had been marked as an easy prey by the professional kidnappers who prowled the streets of London, trepanning unfortunate young men likely to fetch a good price with shipmasters or unscrupulous colonial merchants. But the unexpected sight of Mr. Berkeley in Captain Aglionby’s company on deck had startled him into a new theory. Many things recurred to his mind. He remembered the bitter feud that had subsisted between his father and the squire; the disappearance of Captain Aglionby after a quarrel, as village gossip said, with Mr. Berkeley; the horseman riding after the coach; the strange warnings he had received from Sherebiah. He could not but feel that these incidents were in some way connected; he began to be convinced that his present situation was due ultimately to the enmity of the squire—the gaunt, sinister old man who was indirectly responsible for his father’s death. But though this was his conclusion, he was none the less puzzled. Why should the malignity of the squire pursue the son, now that the father was removed? What harm had he ever done, or could he ever do, to the lord of the manor? Was the squire so unrelenting, was his malice so remorseless, that he must bring black ruin upon a boy in vengeance for his baulked will? It seemed inconceivable. Yet what other motive could he have? The more he thought of it, the more puzzled Harry became.
The vessel was slowly threading its way down the river among the many vessels, large and small, that lay at their moorings. At times it stopped altogether, and from the deck resounded shouts and oaths at the obstacles that checked its course. By and by some of the sailors came forward for a spell of sleep, and Harry, kept wide awake by his hunger and discomfort, saw them tumble into their bunks and soon heard their snores.
It would take several hours to reach the open sea. Was there a chance that, before the vessel left the Thames, he might even yet escape? To make the attempt was mere instinct with a high-spirited boy. The odds seemed all against him. To begin with, he was bound hand and foot to a plank, so that it was impossible even to bend his body. Suppose he rid himself of his bonds, there would be many of the crew on deck while the vessel threaded the crowded water-way, and he would be seen if he sprang overboard; and how could he free himself from the ropes? The idea had not come to him for the first time. When he was being trussed up he had remembered an old trick taught him by Sherebiah, acquired during his mountebank days, when he had mystified rustic spectators by escaping from ropes tied by the most expert hands in the village. He had so stiffened his muscles that he could wriggle out of any ordinary knot. But the situation was rendered more difficult by the plank. He could not lift himself, nor turn on his side. Lying on his back, he tried to ease the pressure of the ropes by the muscular movements he had practised with Sherebiah in sport. But he found, not to his surprise, that sailors were more skilful than anyone who had previously experimented with him. The tension was so great that he had the barest margin to work upon. Force was useless; it would only have the effect of cutting into his flesh and causing his hands and wrists to swell. But his whole mind was now bent upon one desperate venture, and, while the men snored around him, he began to strain on the ropes.
For some time all his straining was of no avail. At last he felt the rope about his wrists give a little. Taking advantage of the slackened tension, he contrived, after what seemed an hour to him, to turn his joined wrists outwards, and in a few more minutes they were free. They ached intolerably; he felt as if all power was gone from them,—as if he could never grip anything firmly again. He waited until the numbing pain was abated, then set to work to free his elbows. These had been separately tied, and after many unsuccessful efforts he almost despaired. At length, however, he managed to shift his elbows down over the edges of the plank, which he was then able to use as fulcrums. Pressing as hard as possible, he forced the ropes slightly slack, then jerked himself sideways and almost on to his face. In doing so he more than once interrupted the snores of the man beneath him, and once desisted in alarm as the fellow growled out an oath. At last his elbows were free, and he lay panting with exertion and hope.
But now that the upper part of his body was unbound, he found himself confronted by an unexpected difficulty. The board to which he was strapped extended down to his heels, and the knot being tied at the far end, he was unable to reach it. A man is never so agile with his ankles as with his wrists, and the plank had effectually prevented Harry from making use of Sherebiah’s trick in regard to his feet. It was impossible to reach the knots with his hands, for the roof of the foc’sle was so low that he could not rise to an upright posture in the bunk. He worked away at the upper part of the rope, but it was so taut that he could not ease it appreciably. He found himself making even more noise than before, and dreaded lest one of the crew should awaken too soon. Breathless with his exertions, he lay still to think. Was he to be baffled after all? Some hours must have passed since the vessel left her moorings, and though her progress had been interrupted and was always slow, yet she was drawing nearer and nearer to the mouth of the river, bringing him nearer and nearer to his doom.
A dull dazed hopelessness was gaining possession of him. He lay with wide-open eyes, staring at nothing; then caught himself following the slight pendulous motion of a seaman’s coat that hung from a nail in one of the beams. To and fro it swung, with a regularity that became at last desperately annoying. But all at once that rough stained garment became to him the most interesting and important thing in the world. It seemed to shed a bright ray of hope. Never a seaman but had a knife; fervently did Harry pray that the owner of this coat had not emptied its pockets. Stealthily he bent over. The right-hand pocket was easily within reach. He put his hand in, and drew out one after another a pipe, a pouch, a flint, a steel, a tinder-box, a string of beads, a corner of mouldy biscuit, a horn snuff-box, a tattered letter, a plug of black tobacco, a broken comb, a red handkerchief, and a nutmeg; but no knife. He could only just touch the left-hand pocket; he could not put his hand in. He pulled at the coat, and held it with one hand, bringing the pocket within reach; then he plunged the other hand into its depths. He touched a metal case; it clicked against something, and he held his breath, hoping the sound had not been heard. No one spoke or moved. He felt further; his heart gave a great leap for joy, for he could not mistake the touch of the rugged handle of a clasp-knife. Eagerly he drew it out; to cut the rope was the work of an instant; he was free.
But he was not yet out of danger. His limbs were loosed, but he was still imprisoned in an outward-bound ship. There was only one way of reaching safety: to gain the deck, spring overboard, and swim to land. He knew nothing about ships; he could row and swim, but till he came to London he had seen no vessel larger than a rowing boat. He guessed that while the barque was still in the Thames only a small portion of the crew would be on duty; but he did not know at what part of the ship they would be, nor where he would run least danger of detection. It was still dark; he might easily stumble as he moved about amid unfamiliar surroundings, and there was the risk that, even if he reached the bulwarks safely and sprang over, he might never succeed in reaching land alive. He did not know the width of the stream; he had been so long without food and had expended so much energy during the last few hours that he was in no condition to endure long fatigue. It would perhaps be better to rest for a little, and seize a moment as day was breaking, when there would be light enough to guide his steps.
His body was still tingling from the strain of the ropes, but with the passing minutes his physical ease increased, and he was able to think more and more calmly. He heard the clang of a bell. Immediately afterwards a sailor came into the foc’sle, woke the man below Harry, and, when he had tumbled grumbling out of his berth, lay down in his place. It was a change of watch.
“Where are we, Bill?” asked the man who had been roused.
“Opening up Gravesend,” was the reply; “and a dirty night. Raining hard, a following wind; we’ll make a good run out.”
The man was asleep as soon as he had finished the sentence, and Harry was reassured by his snores. Gravesend, he supposed, was a river-side village; if he could make his dive there he might find helping hands on shore. He wondered what the time was; the bells that he heard at intervals conveyed no information to him. He raised himself on his elbow and glanced round. It seemed to him that, in the opening to his left, the darkness was thinning; and the vessel was heaving to. The time had come for his venture.
He sat up as high as his confined quarters allowed and surveyed his position. There were five men within the narrow space, all asleep, snoring in various keys. From above came now and then the sound of a voice and the tramp of feet; nothing else was to be heard. Slipping his leg over the side of the bunk, Harry paused for a moment, then slid to the floor. His knee knocked the edge of the bunk below; the seaman turned over with a grunt and asked sleepily, “Be it time already?” It was better to answer than to remain silent, thought Harry. Making his voice as gruff as possible, he said quickly:
“No; keep still, you lubber.”
“Lubber yourself; I’ll split your——”
His threat ended with a snore. Harry waited a moment to assure himself that all was quiet again; then, divesting himself of his long coat, which he knew would be a serious encumbrance in the water, he groped cautiously towards the opening, now showing as a gray patch in the gloom. Rain and sleet beat in upon him as he halted for a moment and threw a quick glance around before emerging on to the deck. In the waist of the vessel on the port side two men were hauling up casks, probably belated provisions, from a river craft lashed alongside; three or four seamen were high up in the rigging, and the mate was bellowing to them hoarse commands in what to Harry’s landsman’s ears was a foreign tongue. Harry felt that it was now or never; but, even as he prepared to spring, there was a heavy footfall above, and a man dropped from the foc’sle deck and alighted a couple of yards away. He swung on his heel to enter the foc’sle, and the two stood face to face.
Harry recognized the broad coarse features of the sailor to whose feigned fit his easy capture was due. The man’s first impression was evidently that Harry was one of the crew; he quickly saw his mistake, but before his thought could translate itself into action Harry, who had the advantage of being strung up for just such a meeting, sprang upon him as a bolt from a bow. Reeling under a deftly planted blow the man slipped and fell heavily to the deck. Harry was past him in an instant, gained the side of the vessel, and, vaulting lightly on to the bulwark, had dived into the river before the astonished seaman could recover his breath to shout an alarm. In a few seconds Harry rose to the surface, shook the water from his face, and struck out for the shore.
Behind him he heard the angry shouts of the sailors, and afterwards the click of oars working in the row-locks. A boat was evidently in pursuit. No doubt the craft alongside had been cast loose, for there could not have been time to lower a boat. Could he reach land in time? His dive had been so hasty that he had not had time to look around and select his course. But now, through the pelting rain, he gazed ahead to find the nearest way to safety. Judging by the noise of the oars, the boat was rapidly overhauling him, for although he had left his coat behind, he made but slow progress in his water-logged clothes. His view of the shore was intercepted by a few small one-masted vessels lying at anchor, and by a large brig moored about a hundred yards off the clump of trees that formed the western boundary of Gravesend. If he could gain the other side of the brig he thought he might dodge his pursuers. But he doubted whether his strength and speed could be sustained so long. The seamen were pulling with a will; the master himself was in the boat urging them on with oaths and execrations.
Harry swam on gamely, changing his stroke in the effort to husband his strength. But he had only had a couple of minutes’ start, and looking over his shoulder he saw that with the best will in the world he must soon be overtaken. Only twenty yards separated him from the boat; he had just come opposite the poop of the stationary brig; he wondered whether a shout would bring anyone to his assistance, when a small skiff appeared from round the stern of the vessel, only a few feet distant from him. It had just put off from the brig and was swinging round towards the shore. Harry gave a hail; the men in the boat rested on their oars; collecting his remaining strength in a few desperate strokes he got alongside, and clutched the gunwale just as he felt himself at his last gasp. At the same moment the pursuing boat came up, and the man at the tiller had some ado to avoid a collision.
“Back water!” roared the master.
The way on the boat was checked; it came to a stop a few yards beyond the skiff and nearer the shore. Meanwhile Harry had been dragged on board the skiff, and lay drenched, shivering, gasping across the thwarts.
“Cotched, the villain!” cried the ship’s master exultantly. “Pull alongside, men.”
A few strokes brought the two boats together.
“I’ll thank ye to hand un over,” said the master. “Zooks! he shall pay for this.”
He received no reply, but instead a voice which Harry, half dead as he was from cold and fatigue, recognized with a leaping heart, ordered the crew of the skiff to pull back to the brig.
“Hi!” roared the master, as the boats parted, “are ye deaf or what? Hand over that there runaway; ’tis a deserter. Pull after ’em, men.”
The boat started in pursuit, the master shouting with increasing anger. The skiff came below the brig’s stern, where a rope ladder was hanging over the side.
“Gi’ un up, d’ye hear? Gi’ un up, or ’twill be the worse for ye.”
“Gif him up! Ja, ja; certainly, but not now, mine vrient; not now, and not to you. Dat is not my way. We do not dings zo in Holland.”
“What in thunder are ye gibbering about?” roared the master—“you dirty swab of a Dutchman, you! I tell you he is a deserter. Hand un over, or I’ll have the law of ye.”
“De law! Zo, mine vrient. We will talk over dis matter as good vrients.”
Grootz sat down, while the men on the brig prepared to haul Harry, now limp with utter exhaustion, on deck.
“I, Jan Grootz, find dis young man in de river; ver well. He float in de river; well again; he is what de law call flotsam—dat is zo. Now, mine vrient,”—here Grootz’s fat forefinger began to waggle—“flotsam, say de law, belong to de sovereign, dat is, to de lady Queen Anne. What is for me to do in such a case—for me, Jan Grootz? I render to Cæsar—who is de Queen—dat which is Cæsar’s—dat which belong to de gracious majesty Queen Anne. Derefore I gif up dis young man to de Queen’s officer at Gravesend—perhaps, when he is dry. Zo!”
While this speech was being delivered in the Dutchman’s slow drawl, with a placid persuasiveness suited to a discussion between friends who did not see quite eye to eye, the master had been growing purple with rage. He was about to explode into invective when he saw that Harry was being swung up.
“Give way, men!” he shouted. “Run her alongside.”
He held himself in readiness to board the skiff as soon as he came within leaping distance. But Grootz, with an activity little to be expected in so burly a frame, seized an oar that had been shipped by one of his men now lending a hand in hoisting Harry on board, and, springing to his feet, with a shrewd thrust sent the master spinning over the side of his boat into the river. He came up nearly a dozen yards away; his crew pulled towards him, and when he was at last hauled into the boat he was fifty yards down the river. He had evidently shipped a good deal of water, for Grootz’s blow must have knocked the breath out of his body; the purple hue of his cheeks had given place to a mottled sickliness. He gasped and puffed and swore; but Harry was by this time safe on board the brig; to take him by main force was clearly impossible; and the discomfited master had no alternative but to regain his own vessel.
Harry was carried to the cabin, his wet clothes were taken off, he was wrapped in blankets and forced to swallow a good bumper of cordial before the Dutchman would allow him to speak.
“Zo!” exclaimed Grootz when he was comfortable.
“You saved my life, sir,” said Harry warmly. “I was nearly done.”
“Zo!”
“They were taking me to the Plantations. I never heard from Lord Marlborough. They trapped me. All my money was gone. I went to the Angel and Crown to find you, to ask you to give me work; you had sailed.”
“Zo! talk no more. Flotsam! Gunst! I tell you dis, my vrient; put not your drust in princes: every man learn dis zoon or late: better zoon. Zo!”
The honest Dutchman left Harry to sleep while he resumed his interrupted journey to the shore. But he had barely reached the deck when he heard himself hailed by a stentorian voice from a wherry sweeping by under full sail and the rapid ply of oars.
“Ahoy there! Ha’ ye seed a ship named the Merry Maid a-sailen down-along this way?”
“Ja, ja!” cried Grootz, chuckling; “what for you ask?”
But the man gave him no answer; only called to the two men rowing the wherry to pull more lustily.
“Hi!” shouted the Dutchman in his turn; and though his voice was usually low he could roar at need. “Hi! you be too late!”
The man did not turn his head.
“Hi! she is two mile ahead!”
Sherebiah gave no sign. He was rapidly passing out of earshot.
“Hi!” shouted Grootz still more loudly. “Sherebiah, stop! Mynheer Harry is here!”
Sherebiah jumped up so violently that, heavy as the wherry was, he almost upset it.
“Master Harry?” he roared.
“Ja! I tell you.”
The wherry slewed round and headed toward the brig. Grootz lit his pipe and watched, his little eyes twinkling with amusement. Sherebiah looked positively aggrieved when he came aboard.
“Oons! ’tis sinful to tear a poor mortal man’s heart out, ’tis so. Here be I, a-chasen a villanous creature, the Merry Maid by name, thinken as Master Harry were a forsaken prisoner aboard on her, and ’tis all much ado about nothen, and he a-laughen in his sleeve along o’ your cargo! I wouldn’ ha’ thowt it, not I. Where be the deceiven trickster?”
“Asleep,” said Grootz, with a puff of smoke. “Flotsam!” He chuckled and guffawed; it was a joke that would last his lifetime.
“What your meanen may be I don’t know, Mynheer; but ’tis me as ought to be sleepen. No sleep ha’ I had, not a wink, since Master Harry played this trick on me; ay, ’twas sinful. And I’ll punch Ralph Aglionby’s costard, I will so, first chance I gets.”
“Tell me about it,” said Grootz.
Sherebiah related how, on returning to his inn with the money for which he had pledged Harry’s trinkets, he was surprised to find his young master absent. As time passed on, and he did not make his appearance, Sherebiah became thoroughly alarmed. About seven o’clock in the evening he hurried off to Southwark, and enquired of the porter at the White Hart whether Captain Aglionby was within. The captain had left a week before, said the porter, in company with a tall, bent, shabby old gentleman. Sherebiah’s worst fears were realized. For weeks he had expected the stroke, and now it had fallen suddenly, and at a time when he was not at hand to parry it. He hastened at once to the house in which, as he had made it his business to know, Mr. Berkeley was staying. Neither the squire nor Captain Aglionby was at home. Sherebiah thereupon took his station at a convenient spot near the house whence he could see without being seen, and some time after midnight was rewarded. The two men he sought returned together. Allowing a little time to elapse, he went to the house and asked to see Captain Aglionby, giving the servant a vague message which he believed would bring the captain to the door. Instead of him, however, Mr. Berkeley himself appeared. To Sherebiah’s question as to what had become of Harry, the squire replied coldly that he knew nothing about him, and shut the door in his questioner’s face.
“Ay, I were a fool to ask un,” admitted Sherebiah ruefully. “I had ought to ha’ thowt o’ poor old feyther o’ mine.”
Sherebiah was determined to have his question answered somehow. He was early at his post next morning, keeping a careful eye upon the door of the house. He saw the squire and Captain Aglionby issue forth together and visit a lawyer up four flights of stairs in a house near Holborn Bars. He followed all three to a house in a blind alley farther east, never suspecting that Harry was there confined. He shadowed them when they left, saw them enter a coffee-house, followed them when they came out, and then lost sight of them. Returning to his own inn to enquire whether anything had been heard of Harry, he found that a man had called an hour before and left a message for him, asking him to call without delay at an address in Smithfield. Hastening there at once, he learnt from Harry’s late jailer how he had been kidnapped and shipped off to the Plantations. At full speed he rushed to the wharf, only to learn that the Merry Maid, William Shovel master, had just taken the tide and was now on her way to the sea.
“You med ha’ knocked me down wi’ a feather. I sat me down on a box under a gashly torch, and thinks I, ‘Rafe Aglionby be too much for ’ee this time, Sherebiah Stand-up-and-bless.’ I stood up, I did; time an’ tide waits for no man; ’twas a sudden thought; I seed a sailen wherry alongside wharf, and two big swabs hangen round. I showed ’em a crown a-piece, and said there’s more to foller, and mebbe summat out o’ the Queen’s purse too; and here I be, all my poor mortal flesh a-wamblen like a aspen. ’Tis tooken a year off my life, ay, ’tis so.”
Jan Grootz smiled.
“Mine good vrient,” he said, “I tell you dis. You will come ashore with me; we will go to your inn and fetch your goods. It will delay us, but only one day. Den my ship sails; Amsterdam; you will come?”
“Sakes! What about Master Harry, then?”
“He alzo.”
“Oons! Be that th’ order o’ the day? Well, ’tis a long lane has no turnen. Will there be time for me to go and ha’ a few words wi’ Rafe Aglionby?”
“No.”
“Well, I’ll save ’em up. A rod bean’t none the wuss for bein’ salted. Ay, and I were not always a man o’ peace!”