Jim Davis Part 16

"Jim Davis," I answered.

"What were you doing with the two trampers, Jim?" he asked.

"Please, sir," I said, "I wasn't doing anything with them."

"Ah," said one of the runners. "These young rogues is that artful, they never do nothing anywhere."

"You'll live to be hanged, I know," said the other runner.

"What were you doing with the smugglers?" asked the officer suddenly, staring hard at my face, to watch for any change of expression.

But I was ready for him. A boy is often better able to keep his countenance than a grown man. With masters, and aunts, and game-keepers all down upon him, he lives a hunted life. He gets lots of practice in keeping his countenance. A grown man often gets very little.

"What smugglers, sir?" I asked as boldly as I could.

"The men you sailed with from Etaples," said the officer.

"Sailed with?" I asked, feeling that I was done for.

"Didn't the horses splash about, when you cut the cable?" said the officer, with a smile.

This time I thought I had better not answer. I looked as puzzled as I could, and looked from one face to the other, as though for enlightenment.

"Now, Jim," said one of the runners. "It's no good. Tell us all about the smugglers, and we'll let you go."

"We know you're the boy we want," said the captain. "Make a clean breast of it, and perhaps you will get off with transportation."

"Now don't look so innocent," said the other runner. "Tell us what we want to know, or we'll make you."

Now somewhere I had read that the police bullied suspected persons in this way. If you make a guilty person believe that you know him to be guilty, you can also get him to confess if you startle him sufficiently. It occurred to me that this was what these men were doing, especially as they had not been sure of me when I came into the room.

I had some twenty or thirty seconds in which to think of an answer, for the three men spoke one after the other, without giving me a chance to speak. I shook my head, putting on a puzzled look.

"I beg your pardon, sir," I said, speaking rather roughly, in the accent which Bill had used. "I think there's some mistake."

"Oh, I think not," said the officer. "Suppose I tell you how many men were in the lugger?"

But here we were stopped by the arrival of a chaise outside. A man entered hurriedly.

"It's all right, Gray," the newcomer called to the officer. "We have the boy. We caught him back there, along the road, with a couple of gipsies. There can be no doubt about it. The clothes and bundle are just as they're described in the advertis.e.m.e.nt. Who have you here?"

"Oh, a boy we brought in on suspicion," said the officer. "Shall we let him go?"

"Well, who is he?" asked the new arrival. "Eh, boy? Who are you?"

"A poor boy," I answered.

"How do you make a living?" he asked. "Little boys, like you, oughtn't to be about on the roads, you know. What d'ye do for a living?"

I am afraid it was rather a bold statement; but I cried out that I could sing ballads.

"Oh, Jim. So you sing ballads, do you?" said the officer. "Get on to that chair and sing us a ballad."

But I was cunning and wary. "Please, sir," I said, "I'm very hungry. I don't sing, except for my dinner and a sixpence."

"So you defy the law already, do you?" said the newcomer. "Well. Eat some bread and cheese, and I will give you sixpence for a song."

So I sat down very thankfully, and made a good dinner at the table. I pretended to pay no attention to the officers; but really I listened very eagerly to all that they said. I gathered that the newcomer was a coastguard naval captain, of the name of Byrne, and I felt that he half-suspected and half-liked me, without thinking very much about me one way or the other. When I had finished my dinner--and I ate enough to last me till the night--I got upon my chair, without being pressed, and sang the ballad of "The White c.o.c.kade," then very popular all over the West country. My voice was not bad in those days, and I was used to singing; indeed, people sang more then than they do now. Everybody sang.

Captain Byrne seemed puzzled by my voice, and by my cultivated accent. "Who taught you to sing?" he asked.

So I answered that I had been in the village choir at home; which was true enough.

"And where was that?" he asked.

For a moment I thought that I would trust him, and tell him everything. Then, very foolishly, I determined to say nothing, so I said that it was a long way away, and that I had come from thence after my father had died. He whispered something to Mr. Gray, the other officer; and they looked at me curiously. They both gave me a sixpenny piece for my ballad; and then they went out. Captain Byrne stopped at the door. "Look here," he said, "you take my advice and go home. You will come to no good, leading this wandering life."

When they had gone, I went out also, and watched their chaise disappear. The last that I saw of them was the two top-hats of the runners, sticking up at the back of the conveyance, like little black chimneys.

I felt very glad that Bill was taken up, evidently in mistake for me. It seemed a fitting reward. But at the same time I knew that the mistake might be found out at any moment; and that I should be searched for as soon as Bill had cleared himself. I walked slowly away from the turnpike, so that the keeper might not suspect me, and then I nipped over a stile, and ran away across country, going inland, away from the sea, as fast as I could travel. I could tell my direction by the sun, and I kept a westerly course, almost due west, for three or four hours, till I was tired out.

It was a lonely walk, too; hardly anything but wild, rather marshy country, with few houses, few churches, and no bigger town than the tiniest of villages. At about six o'clock that afternoon, when I had gone some sixteen miles since daybreak, I felt that I could go no further, and began to cast about for a lodging-place.

CHAPTER XX

THE GIPSY CAMP

I plodded on till I came to a sort of copse or little wood, where I expected to find shelter. Supper I had resolved to do without; I wished to keep my shilling for dinner and breakfast the next day. As I came up to the copse hedge I saw that some gipsies were camped there. They had a fine travelling waggon drawn up on some waste ground near at hand; they had also pitched three or four beehive huts, made of bent poles, covered with sacks. They were horse-dealers and basket-makers, as one could see from the drove of lean horses and heap of wicker-work near the waggon. Several children were playing about among the huts. Some women were at their basket-making by the waggon. A middle-aged man, smoking a pipe, stood by the hedge, mending what looked like an enormous b.u.t.terfly net. In spite of my adventure on the road, I was not at all frightened by these gipsies, because I liked their looks, and I knew now that I had only my shilling to lose, and that I could earn a dinner at any time by singing a ballad.

The middle-aged man looked rather hard at me as I came near, and called out in a strange language to his people in the tents. They came about me at the call, and stared at me very strangely, as though I was a queer beast escaped from a menagerie. Then, to my great surprise, the man pointed to my forehead, and all the gipsies stared at my forehead, repeating those queer words which Marah had used so long before in the gorse-clump--"Orel. Orel. Adartha Cay." They seemed very pleased and proud; they clapped their hands and danced, as though I was a little prince. All the time they kept singing and talking in their curious language. Now and then one of them would come up to me and push back my cap to look at my hair, which was of a dark brown colour, with a dash of reddy gold above my forehead.

I learned afterwards that gipsies held sacred all boys with hair like mine. They call the ruddy tinge over the forehead "the cross upon crutches"; for long ago, they say, a great gipsy hero had that mark upon his brow in lines of fire; and to this day all people with a fiery lock of hair, they believe, bring luck to them.

When the gipsies had danced for some twenty minutes, the elderly man (who seemed to be a chief among them) begged me (in English) with many profound bows and smiles, to enter their waggon. I had heard that the gipsies stole little children; but as I had never heard of them stealing a boy of my age I did not fear them. So I entered the waggon as he bade me, and very neat and trim it was. Here a man produced a curious red suit of clothes, rather too small for me; but still a lot better than Bill's rags. He begged me to put it on, which I did. I know now that it was the red magical suit in which the gipsies dress their magical puppets on St. John's Eve; but as I did not then know this, I put it on quite willingly, wishing that it fitted better.

Then we came out again among the huts, and all the other gipsies crowded round me, laughing and clapping their hands; for now, they thought, their tribe would have wonderful luck wherever they went. The women put a pot upon the fire, ready for supper. Everybody treated me (very much to my annoyance) as though I were a fairy child. Whenever I spoke, they bowed and laughed and clapped their hands, crying out in their wild language, till I could have boxed their ears.

When supper was ready, they brought me to the place of honour by the fire, and fed me with all the delicacies of the gipsy race. We had hedgehog baked in a clay cover--though I did not much like him--and then a stew of poultry and pheasant (both stolen, I'm afraid) with bread baked in the ashes; and wonderful tea, which they said cost eighteen shillings a pound. They annoyed me very much by the way in which they bowed and smirked, but they really meant to be kind, and I had sense enough to know that while I was with them I should be practically safe from the runners and yeomanry. After supper they made me up a bed in the waggon. The next morning before daybreak we started off, horses, waggon, and all, away towards the west; going to Portsmouth Fair, the man said, to sell their horses.

I had not been very long among the gipsies when I discovered that I was as much a prisoner as a pet. They would never let me out of their sight. If I tried to get away by myself, one of the children, or a young woman would follow me, or rather, come in the same direction, and pretend not to be following me; but all the time noting where I went, and heading me off carefully if I went too far from the caravan.

Before the end of the first day I was wondering how it would all finish, and whether they meant to make a gipsy of me. They were very careful not to let me be seen by other travellers. When the road was clear, they would let me follow the caravan on foot; but when people drove past us, and whenever we came to a village (they always avoided the big towns), they hurried me into the waggon, and kept me from peeping out. At night, when we pitched our camp, after a long day's journey of sixteen or seventeen hours, they gave me a bed inside the caravan; and the elderly chief laid his blankets on the waggon floor, between my bed and the door, so that I should not get out. I lived with the gipsies in this way for three whole days.

I did not like it any better as time went on. I kept thinking of how I should escape, and worrying about the anxiety at home, now that my letter must have reached them. I did not think any more about the police. I felt that they would give me no more trouble; but my distress at not being able to get away from these gipsies was almost more than I could bear. On the afternoon of the third day I made a dash for freedom, but the chief soon caught me and brought me back, evidently very much displeased, and muttering something about stealing the red coat.

About midday on the fourth day, as we were pa.s.sing through a village, it chanced that a drove of sheep blocked up the road. The caravan stopped and I managed to get down from the waggon, with my gaoler, to see what was happening in the road. The sheep were very wild, and the drover was a boy who did not know how to drive them. The way was blocked for a good ten minutes, so that I had time to look about me. While we waited, a donkey-cart drove up, with two people inside it, dressed in the clothes of naval sailors--white trousers, blue, short, natty jackets (with red and green ribbons in the seams), and with huge clubbed pigtails under their black, glazed hats. One of them was evidently ill, for he lay back against the backboard and did not speak. I noticed also that he had not been to sea for a long time, as his beard was long and unkempt. The other, who drove the cart, was a one-legged man, very short and broad, with a thick black stubble on his cheeks. He was a hearty person with a voice like a lion's roar. They had rigged up Union Jacks on the donkey's blinkers, they had a pilot jack upon the shaft, and a white ensign on a flagpole tied to the backboard. The body of the cart was all sprigged out with streamers of ribbon as thick as horses' tails, and there were placards fixed to the sides of the donkey's collar. They were clumsily scrawled as follows:--