CHAPTER XXI
Five and twenty poniesTrotting through the dark,Brandy for the parson,Baccy for the clerk,Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,And watch the wall, my darling,While the gentlemen go by!
Five and twenty poniesTrotting through the dark,Brandy for the parson,Baccy for the clerk,Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,And watch the wall, my darling,While the gentlemen go by!
Five and twenty poniesTrotting through the dark,Brandy for the parson,Baccy for the clerk,Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,And watch the wall, my darling,While the gentlemen go by!
Five and twenty ponies
Trotting through the dark,
Brandy for the parson,
Baccy for the clerk,
Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,
And watch the wall, my darling,
While the gentlemen go by!
r. kipling.
O
ON the day on which the last run of goods had been cellared, Master Crumblejohn stood looking with pride, at the swift succession of casks that were being rolled briskly along his stone passage. He wore a leather apron, a good stock collar, and his hair tied in a queue, with a black ribbon in his neck. He had big buckles to his shoes and a canary waistcoat, and a brown coat upon his back.
Everybody knew the history of his liquor. In these days of a thriving back-hand trade with the wines, many houses that stood fairly with theJustices, got their supply in a manner that would have brought humbler folk to punishment. But if inquiry was pushed in regard to the “Mariner’s Rest,” the landlord had a good book to show the authorities.
Everything in his cellar was duly entered and paid for; he would show the King himself round if his Majesty chose to call. This was a favourite jest of Master Crumblejohn’s when in lighter mood, and it would be said with a nodding head to clinch matters, and between quiet puffs of a long clay-pipe.
It was hardly the fault of the excisemen if they didn’t know of a certain trap-door in the cellar, a door sufficiently hidden to be unguessed, which led down to a vault below the basement. Now this was how the illicit trade was carried on. There had to be people party to it on each side of the water, and a fishing boat or lugger, for the transport of the goods. Most of the innkeepers, and a great many others, were in sympathy with the smugglers, and the practice was spread in so fine a network of collusion all over the country, that it was a matter of great difficulty for the authorities to cope with it at all. When the liquor first came over, it was depositedin some cave, or buried in some sandy cove along the coast. Here it was left till notice was sent by the various receiving-houses that they were ready for the housing of the kegs. Then, when the attention of the authorities had been drawn off to some other quarter, night parties would be set on foot; and where the countryside was sufficiently lonely, the kegs were carried upon men’s shoulders and received by the landlord, and hidden in his vault. In some places these lawless gangs were both armed and mounted, and thus conveyed the goods far into the interior, distributing them among the various receiving-houses by the way. There was hardly a house that had not its place of concealment, which could accommodate either kegs, bales, or the smugglers themselves, as the case might be. Sometimes the kegs would be stuffed in hay trusses, and carried disguised as fodder along the road, to be lodged secretly by the light of a stable lanthorn again, in some straw ricks farther inland.
You probably know the story of the Wiltshire men who hid the kegs in the dew-pond? They were surprised one moonlight night, standing with rakes in their hands by the excisemen. Suspicion was at once aroused, and they were questioned.
“What are you doing there?”
“We be raaken the moon out of the water, Masters.” And the excisemen rode on, thanking their stars they were not as these country loons.
But the answer showed that on occasion stupidity may be used as a cloak to cover guile.
Now, in the case of Crumblejohn’s gang of smugglers, they stored their kegs, or ankers, in a cave. Here they left their liquor as short a time as possible, lest it should be discovered by those on the look-out. But this cave led up to the vaults of the inn-cellars, and very swiftly could these kegs be rolled along the tunnelled passage in the cliff.
A boy was working strenuously at the keg-rolling, Oliver Charlock by name. He was the odd boy and general servant of the establishment, and had more kicks and fewer crusts than were his share. Crumblejohn stood looking at him as he worked; if he stayed but a moment to stretch his back, or to rest his arms, he was reminded of his business.
“Do you think I keep servants, giving them board and bed, to see them a-lolling back agin’ my walls and postës, a-playing the fine gentleman abroad? No, no, Oliver Charlock, you rememberwhat you’re here for, and where you comes from; and let me see all them kegs in their places, or back you goes to your field, and finds another master.”
Oliver was nobody’s child, and had been picked up in a field of charlock. Just where the rough margin of the field joins the yellow flowers, he had been found by the old parson ten years before the time of which I speak. But when the Rectory changed hands, and the old housekeeper died, who had reared him, he was left friendless.
Then Crumblejohn had taken him as an extra lad at the Mariner’s, and henceforth life opened for him at a different page. He slept in a rat-riddled garret on a worn-out wool-sack on the floor. He rose at dawn and worked till the bats were out, bearing hard words for his services. Repeatedly was he admonished by Mr. Crumblejohn to recall where he came from, and other sour-faced remarks. As nobody knew his origin, least of all the boy himself, this might seem a useless question; but for Crumblejohn it held point in tending to depress any growth of self-esteem in Oliver, and was calculated to nip incipient ideas as to wages in the bud.
“Little warmint what had nobody to chuck acrust to ’im, found in a furrer of a field. I gives ’im board, and I gives ’im bed, and I expects such-like to work for their wittels.”
And work Oliver Charlock did, and not only at keg-rolling. When the vigilance of the authorities forbade the more usual signal of a fire being lit on some prominent point inland, he had been sent before now as emissary between the English smugglers, and Lambkin, in France. Lambkin was a man named Thurot. He was a Channel Islander, and you may read of him as rising to great prominence in the smuggling annals of his day. He was known also as O’Farrell, and was an Irish commodore in the French service for a time. He was but twenty-two when he met his death, yet he was a terror, we read, to the mercantile fleet of this kingdom. Whatever opinion we may hold as to his right or wrong doing, there is a light about his name, because he led a life of great romance, and daring.
Before leaving, Thurot had arranged with his confederates the place of the intended run of goods. Now, however, that Ratface suspected Daniel Maidment was spying on them, it became imperative to get the message over in some dependable manner, to intimate a change of placefor beaching this next run. So a rag message had been written, and Oliver had to bear it, and as Crumblejohn stood watching the keg-rolling, it was with the comfortable assurance of some anxiety having been removed. Very soon he would be standing there, watching yet another lot rolling into his capacious cellars. Already the gold chinked in his imagination, that was to fill his pockets so well; and the rings of smoke from his clay pipe rose, to float up and fade lingeringly, before his meditative eye.
But the “best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley,” and there was something in store for Master Crumblejohn, the mere possibility of which, his slow wits had never dreamed.