The Dew of Their Youth Part 13

"My Lords and Hon. Commissioners of H. M. Excise, "Your obedient, humble servant, "Henry Baskett (Supervisor)."

The other view of this transaction I find more concisely expressed in a memorandum written in an old note-book belonging to my Uncle Tom.

"Baskett held out for forty best French, but we fobbed him off with twenty-five low-grade Rotterdam--the casks being leaky, and some packs of goods too long left at Rathan Cave, which is at the back of the isle, and counted scarce worth the carrying farther. The night fine and business most successful--thanks to an ever-watchful Providence."

The reader of these family memoirs will perhaps agree with me that, if any one could do without an ever-watchful Providence troubling itself about him, that man was my Uncle Tom.

While, therefore, we in the House of Marnhoul were in the wildest alarm--at least Agnes Anne was--forces which could not possibly be withstood were mustering to hasten to our a.s.sistance. The tarry jackets of the _Golden Hind_ would doubtless have rushed the front door with a hurrah, as readily as they would have boarded a prize, but Lalor Maitland ordered them to bring wood and other inflammable material. At least, so I judge, for presently I could see them running to and fro about the edges of the wood. They had now learned the knack of keeping in shelter most of the way. But I did not feel really afraid till I saw some of them with kegs of liquor making towards the porch. There they stove them in, and proceeded to empty the contents on the dry branches and fuel they had collected. The matter was now beginning to look really serious. To make things worse, they were evidently digging out the bottom of our cellar-stair barricade, and if they succeeded in that they would turn our position and take us in the rear.

So I sent down Agnes Anne (she not being good for much else) to the cellar to see how things were looking there, bidding her to be careful of the lantern, and to bring back as many of the five muskets as she could carry, so that I might keep the fellows in check above.

Agnes Anne came flying back with the worst kind of news. A great flame of fire was springing up out of the well of the staircase into which we had tumbled the barrels and boxes. It threatened, she said, to blow us sky-high, if there were any barrels of powder among the goods left by the smugglers.

At any rate, the flame was rapidly spreading to the other packages which had formed our breastwork of defence, and was now like to become our ruin.

For, once fairly caught, the spirit would flame high as the rigging of Marnhoul, and we should all be burnt alive, which was most likely what Lolar Maitland meant by his parting threatening.

"And it is more than likely," Agnes Anne added, "that some of the barrels burst as we threw them down the stairs, and so, with the liquor flowing among their feet, the a.s.sailants got the idea of thus burning us out."

At all events something had to be done, and that instantly. So I had perforce to leave Agnes Anne in charge of "King George" again, cautioning her not to pull the trigger till she should see the rascals actually bending to set fire to the pile underneath the porch of the front door. I also told her not to be frightened, and she promised not to.

Then I went down to the cellar. The heat there was terrible, and I do not wonder that Agnes Anne came running back to me. A pillar of blue flame was rising straight up against the arched roof of the cellar. I could hear the cries of the men working below in the pa.s.sage.

"Hook it away--give her air--she will burn ever the brisker and smoke the land-lubbers out!"

Some few of the boxes in the front tier were already on fire, and still more were smouldering, but the straightness of the vent up which the flame was coming, together with the closeness and stillness of the vault, made the flame mount straight up as in a chimney. I therefore divined rather than saw what remained for me to do. I leaped over and began, at the risk of a severe scorching, to throw back all the boxes and packages which were in danger. It was lucky for me that the smugglers had piled them pretty high, and so by drawing one or two from near the foundation, I was fortunate enough to overset the most part of it in the outward direction.

But the fierceness of the flame was beginning to tell upon the building-stone of Marnhoul, which was of a friable nature--at least that with which the vault was arched.

Luckily some old tools had been left in the corner, and it struck me that if I could dig up enough of the earthen floor or topple over the mound of earth which had been piled up at the making of the underground pa.s.sage, the fire must go out for lack of air; or, better still, would be turned in the faces of those who were digging away the barrels and boxes from the bottom of the stair-well.

This, after many attempts and some very painful burns, I succeeded in doing. The first shovelfuls did not seem to produce much effect. So I set to work on the large heap of hardened earth in the corner, and was lucky enough to be able to tumble it bodily upon the top of the column of fire. Then suddenly the terrible column of blue flame went out, just as does a Christmas pudding when it is blown upon. And for the same reason. Both were made of the flames of the French spirit called cognac, or brandy.

Then I did not mind about my burns, I can a.s.sure you. But almost gleefully I went on heaping mould and dirt upon the boxes in the well of the staircase, stamping down the earth at the top till it was almost like the hard-beaten floor of the cellar itself. I left not a crevice for the least small flame to come up through.

Then I bethought me of what might be going on above, and the flush of my triumph cooled quickly. For I thought that there was only Agnes Anne, and who knows what weakness she may not have committed. She would never have thought, for instance, of such a thing as covering in the flame with earth to put it out. To tell the truth, I did think very masterfully of myself at that moment, and perhaps with some cause, for not one in a thousand would have had the "engine" to do as I had done.

When I got to the top of the stairs, I heard cries from without, which had been smothered by the deepness of the dungeon in which I had been labouring to put out the fire. For a moment I thought that by the failure of Agnes Anne to fire off "King George" at the proper moment, the door had been forced and we utterly lost. Which seemed the harder to be borne, that I had just saved all our lives in a way so original and happy.

But I was wrong. The shouting came not from the wicked crew of the privateersman, but from the shouting of a vast number of people, most of them mounted on farm and country horses, with some of finer limb and better blood, managed by young fellows having the air of laird's sons or others of some position. None of these had his face bare. But in place of the black highwayman masks of the followers of Galligaskins, these wore only a strip of white kerchief across the face, though, as I could see, more for the form of the thing than from any real apprehension of danger.

Indeed, in the very forefront of the cavalcade I saw our own two cart horses, Dapple and Dimple, and the lighter mare Bess, which my grandfather used for riding to and fro upon his milling business. I had not the least doubt that my three uncles were bestriding them, though I never knew that there were any arms about the house except the old fowling-piece belonging to grandfather, with which on moonlight nights he killed the hares that came to nibble the plants in his cabbage garden.

Soon the sailors and their abettors were fleeing in every direction.

But, what took me very much by surprise, there was no firing or cutting down, though there was a good deal of smiting with the flat of the sword. And at the entrance of the ice-mound I saw a great many very scurvy fellows come trickling out, all burned and scorched, to run the gauntlet of a row of men on foot, who drubbed them soundly with cudgels before letting them go.

Seeing this, I opened the window and shouted with all my might.

"Apprehend them! They are villains and thieves. They have broken into this house and tried to kill us all, besides setting fire to the cellar and everything in it!"

The men without, both those on foot and those on horseback, had been calm till they heard this, and then, lo! each cavalier dismounted and all came running to the door, calling on us to open instantly.

"Not to you any more than to the others!" I cried. For, indeed, I saw not any good reason. It appeared to me, since there was no real fighting, that the two parties must be in alliance, or, at least, have an understanding between them.

But Agnes Anne called out, "Nonsense, I see Uncle Aleck and Uncle Ebenezer. I am going to open the door to them, whatever you say!"

So all in a minute the house of Marnhoul, long so desolate and silent, wherein such deeds of valour and strategy had recently been wrought, grew populous with a mult.i.tude all eager to win down to the cellar. But Agnes Anne brought up my three uncles (and another who was with them) and bade them watch carefully over the safety of Louis and Miss Irma.

(For so I must again call her now that she had, as it were, come to her own again.)

As for me they carried me down with them, to tell all about the attempt to burn the goods in the cellar. And angry men they were when they saw so many webs of fine cloth, so many bolts of Flanders lace, so many kegs of rare brandy damaged and as good as lost. But when they understood that, but for my address and quickness, all would have been lost to them, they made me many compliments. Also an old man with a silver-hilted sword, who carried himself like some great gentleman, bade me tell him my _name_, and wrote it down in his note-book, saying that I was of too good a head and quick a hand to waste on a dominie.

And, indeed, I was of that mind (or something very much like it) myself.

An old haunted house like Marnhoul to defend, a young maid of high family to rescue (and adopt you as her brother for a reward) did somehow take the edge off teaching the Rule of Three and explaining the _De Bello Gallico_ to imps who cannot understand, and would not if they could.

PART II

CHAPTER XV

MY GRANDMOTHER SPEAKS HER MIND

"There is no use talking" (said my grandmother, as she always did when she was going to do a great deal of it), "no, listen to me, there is no use talking! These two young things need a home, and if _we_ don't give it to them, who will? Stay longer in that great gaol of a house, worse than any barn, they shall not--exposed day and night to a traffic of sea rascals, thieves and murderers, _they shall not_----"

"What I want to know is who is to keep them, and what the safer they will be here?"

It was the voice of my Aunt Jen which interrupted. None else would have dared--save mayhap my grandfather, who, however, only smiled and was silent.

"Ne'er you mind that, Janet," cried her mother, "what goes out of our basket and store will never be missed. And father says the same, be sure of that!"

My grandfather did say the same, if to smile quietly and approvingly is to speak. At any rate, in a matter which did not concern him deeply, he knew a wiser way than to contradict Mistress Mary Lyon. She was quite capable of keeping him awake two-thirds of the night arguing it out, without the faintest hope of altering the final result.

"The poor things," mourned my grandmother, "they shall come here and welcome--that is, till better be. Of course, they might be more grandly lodged by the rich and the great--gentlefolk in their own station. But, first of all, they do not offer, and if they did, they are mostly without experience. To bring up children, trust an old hen who has clucked over a brood of her own!"

"Safer, too, here," approved my grandfather, nodding his head; "the tarry breeches will think twice before paying Heathknowes a visit--with the lads about and the gate shut, and maybe the old dog not quite toothless yet!"

This, indeed, was the very heart of the matter. Irma and Sir Louis would be far safer at the house of one William Lyon, guarded by his stout sons, by his influence over the wildest spirits of the community, in a house garrisoned by a horde of sleepless sheep-dogs, set in a defensible square of office-houses, barns, byres, stables, granaries, cart-sheds, peat-sheds and the rest.

"And when the great arrive to call," said Aunt Jen, with sour insight, "you, mother, will stop the churning just when the b.u.t.ter is coming to put on your black lace cap and ap.r.o.n. You will receive the lady of the manse, and Mrs. General Johnstone, and----"

"And if I do, Jen," cried her mother, "what is that to you?"

"Because I have enough to do as it is," snapped Jen, "without your b.u.t.ter-making when you are playing the lady down the house!"

Grandmother's black eyes crackled fire. She turned threateningly to her daughter.

"By my saul, Lady Lyon," she cried, "there is a stick in yon corner that ye ken, and if you are insolent to your mother I will thrash you yet--woman-grown as ye are. Ye take upon yourself to say that which none of your brothers dare set their tongue to!"