Jim Davis Part 2

"Well, mister," the man said to me, "would you know me again, in case you saw me?"

"Yes," I said, "I should know you anywhere."

"Would you," he said, grinning. "Well, I was always the beauty of the bunch." He bit off a piece of plug tobacco and began to chew it. By-and-by he turned to Hugh to ask if he chewed tobacco. Hugh answered "No," laughing.

"Ah," said the man, "don't you learn. That's my advice. It's not easy to stop, once you begin."

He lay back in his corner, and seemed to pa.s.s into a sort of day-dream. Presently he looked up at us again, and asked us if we knew why we were there. We said that we did not.

"Well," he said, "it's like this. Last night you" (here he gave me a nudge with his foot) "you young gentleman that looks so smart, you went for a ride late at night, in the snow and all. See what came of it. There was Others out for a ride last night, quite a lot of 'em. Others that the law would be glad to know of, with men so scarce for the King's navy. Well, to-day the beaks are out trying to find them other ones. There's a power of redcoats come here, besides the preventives, and there they go, clackity clank, all swords and horses, asking at every house."

"What do they ask," said Hugh.

"They ask a lot of things," said the man. "'Where was you last night?'

That's one question. 'What time did you come in last night?' That's another. 'Let's have a look at your horse; he looks as though he'd bin out in the snow last night.' Lots of things they ask, and if they got a hold of you, young master, why, you might have noticed things last night, and perhaps they might pump what you noticed out of you. So some one thinks you had best be out of the road when they come."

"Who is some one?" I asked.

"Just some one," he answered. "Some one who gets more money than I get." His mouth drew into a hard and cruel line; he lapsed into his day-dream, still chewing his plug of tobacco. "Some one," he added, "who don't like questions, and don't like to be talked about too much."

He was silent for a minute or two, while Hugh and I looked at each other.

"Oh, I'm not going to keep you long," said the man. "Them redcoats'll have done asking questions about here before your dinner time. Then they'll ride on, and a good riddance. Your lady will know how to answer them all right. But till they're gone, why, here you'll stay. So let's be comp'ny. What's your name, young master?" He gave Hugh a dig in the ribs with his boot.

"Hugh," he answered.

"Hugh," said the man: "Hugh! You won't never come to much, you won't. What's _your_ name?" He nudged me in the same way.

"Jim," I said.

"Ah! Jim, Jim," he repeated. "I've known a many Jims. Some were good in their way, too." He seemed to shrink into himself suddenly--I can't explain it--but he seemed to shrink, like a cat crouched to spring, and his eyes burned and danced; they seemed to look right into me, horribly gleaming, till the whole man became, as it were, just two bright spots of eyes--one saw nothing else.

"Ah," he said, after a long, cruel glare at me, "this is the first time Jim and I ever met. The first time. We shall be great friends, we shall. We shall be better acquainted, you and I. I wouldn't wonder if I didn't make a man of you, one time or another. Give me your hand, Jim."

I gave him my hand; he looked at it under the lantern; he traced one or two of the lines with his blackened finger-nails, muttering some words in a strange language, which somehow made my flesh creep. He repeated the words: "Orel. Orel. Adartha Cay." Then he glanced at the other hand, still muttering, and made a sort of mark with his fingers on my forehead. Hugh told me afterwards that he seemed to trace a kind of zigzag on my left temple. All the time he was muttering he seemed to be half-conscious, almost in a trance, or as if he were mad: he frightened us dreadfully. After he had made the mark upon my brow he came to himself again.

"They will see it," he muttered. "It'll be bright enough. The mark. It'll shine. They'll know when they see it. It is very good. A very good sign: it burns in the dark. They'll know it over there in the night." Then he went on mumbling to himself, but so brokenly that we could catch only a few words here and there--"black and red, knowledge and beauty; red and black, pleasure and strength. What do the cards say?"

He opened his thick sea-coat, and took out a little packet of cards from an oilskin case. He dealt them out, first of all, in a circle containing two smaller circles; then in a curious sort of five-pointed star; lastly, in a square with a circle cutting off the corners. "Queer, queer," he said, grinning, as he swept the cards up and returned them to his pocket. "You and I will know a power of queer times together, Jim."

He brightened up after that, as though something had pleased him very much. He looked very nice when he looked pleased, in spite of his eyes and in spite of the gipsy darkness of his skin. "Here," he said, "let's be company. D'ye know any knots, you two?"

No; neither of us knew any knots except the ordinary overhand and granny knots.

"Well, I'll show you," he said. "It'll come in useful some day. Always learn what you can, that's what I say, because it'll come in useful.

That's what the Irishman said. Always learn what you can. You never know; that's the beauty of it."

He searched in his pockets till he found a small hank of spun-yarn, from which he cut a piece about a yard long. "See here," he said.

"Now, I'll teach you. It's quite easy, if you only pay attention. Now, how would you tie a knot if you was doing up a parcel?"

We both tried, and both made granny knots, with the ends sticking out at right angles to the rest of the yarn.

"Wrong," he said. "Those are grannies. They would jam so that you'd never untie 'em, besides being ugly. There's wrong ways even in doing up a string. See here." He rapidly twisted the ends together into a reef-knot. "There's strength and beauty together," he said. "Look how neat it is, the ends tidy along the standing part, all so neat as pie. Besides, it'd never jam. Watch how I do it, and then try it for yourself."

Very soon we had both mastered the reef-knot, and had tried our hand at others--the bowline, the figure of eight, the Carrick-bend, and the old swab-hitch. He was very patient with us. He told us exactly how each knot would be used at sea, and when, and why, and what the officers would say, and how things would look on deck while they were in the doing. The time pa.s.sed pleasantly and quickly; we felt like jolly robbers in a cave. It was like being the hero of a story-book to sit there with that rough man waiting till the troops had gone. It was not very cold with the fire and the boat-rugs. We were heartily sorry when the man rose to his feet, with the remark that he must see if the coast were clear. Before he left the hut he glared down at us. "Look here," he said, "don't you try to go till I give the word. But there, we're friends; no need to speak rough to friends. I'll be back in a minute."

The strange man pa.s.sed out of the hut and along the rabbit-run to the edge of the gorse. We heard his feet crunch upon the snow beyond, rustling the leaves underneath it; and then it was very, very quiet again, though once, in the stillness, we heard a c.o.c.k pheasant calling. Another pheasant answered him from somewhere above at the upper part of the wood, and it occurred to both of us that the pheasants were the night-riders, making their private signals.

"We've had a famous adventure to tell Mother," said Hugh.

"Yes," I said; "but we had better be careful not to tell anybody else. I wonder what they do here in this hut; I suppose they hide their things here till it's safe to take them away."

"Where do they take them?" asked Hugh.

"Away into Dartmoor," I said. "And there there are wonderful places, so old Evans the postboy told me."

"What sort of places?" asked Hugh.

"Oh, caves covered over with gorse and fern, and old copper and tin mines, which were worked by the ancient Britons. They go under the ground for miles, so old Evans told me, with pa.s.sages, and steps up and down, and great big rooms cut in the rock. And then there are bogs where you can sink things till it's quite safe to take them up. The bog-water keeps them quite sound; it doesn't rot them like ordinary water. Sometimes men fall into the bogs, and the marsh-mud closes over them. That's the sort of place Dartmoor is."

Hugh was very much interested in all this, but he was a quiet boy, not fond of talking. "Yes," he said; "but where do the things go afterwards--who takes them?"

"n.o.body knows, so old Evans said," I answered; "but they go, they get taken. People come at night and carry them to the towns, little by little, and from the market towns, they get to the cities, no one knows how. I dare say this hut has been full of things--valuable lace and silk, and all sorts of wines and spirits--waiting for some one to carry them into the moor."

"Hush!" said Hugh; "there's some one calling--it's Mother."

Outside the gorse-clump, at some little distance from us, we heard Mrs Cottier and my aunt calling "Hugh!" and "Jim!" repeatedly. We lay very still wondering what they would think, and hoping that they would make no search for us. They could have tracked us in the snow quite easily, but we knew very well they would never think of it, for they were both shortsighted and ignorant of what the Red Indians do when they go tracking. To our surprise their voices came nearer and nearer, till they were at the edge of the clump, but on the side opposite to that in which the rabbit-run opened. I whispered to Hugh to be quiet as they stopped to call us. They lingered for several minutes, calling every now and then, and talking to each other in between whiles. We could hear every word of their conversation.

"It's very curious," said my aunt. "Where-ever can they have got to?

How provoking boys are!"

"It doesn't really matter," said Mims; "the officer has gone, and the boy would only have been scared by all his questions. He might have frightened the boy out of his wits. I wonder where the young monkeys have got to. They were going to build snow-huts, like the Indians.

Perhaps they're hiding in one now."

We were, had she only known it; Hugh and I grinned at each other. Suddenly my aunt spoke again with a curious inflection in her voice.

"How funny," she exclaimed.

"What is it?" asked Mrs Cottier.

"I'm almost sure I smell something burning," said my aunt "I'm sure I do. Don't you?"

There was a pause of a few seconds while the two ladies sniffed the air.

"Yes," said Mrs Cottier, "there is something burning. It seems to come from that gorse there."

"Funny," said my aunt. "I suppose some one has lighted a fire up in the wood and the smoke is blowing down on us. Well, we'll go in to dinner; it's no good staying here catching our death looking for two mad things. I suppose you didn't hear how Mrs Burns is, yesterday?"

The two ladies pa.s.sed away from the clump towards the orchard, talking of the affairs of the neighbourhood. A few minutes after they had gone, a c.o.c.k pheasant called softly a few yards from us, then the gorse-stems shook, and our friend appeared at the hut door.