The Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea Part 49

All there was blank as the moon. The haggard cheeks and anxious eyes of the other told that he had already drunk deep of the bitter waters of life.

Blob was staring at Kit with the solemn interest of a babe.

Then he pointed a finger.

"Boy!" he bleated.

"Call me 'sir'!" ordered Kit imperiously. "And take your hands out of your pockets when you talk to me."

"Go home, Blob!" said the Parson, patting him. "Home!" pointing, "Home! and stop making a blob o yourself for the present, there's a good boy. Mr. Piper wants you to help him."

Blob shook a slow head.

"Nay," he said in musical Suss.e.x. "Oi'll boide with Maaster Sir."

Here was another boy in a land of men. In a dim way he felt their kinship.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

THE FLAP OF A FLAG

The Parson was staring through the spy-gla.s.s at Beachy Head.

A mile and a half away, it lay in misty splendour, not unlike a lion sleeping.

At the foot of it a few tiny black figures moved among the rocks.

"I make out about a score of em," he said. "The boat's beached, and a man over it. I can catch the glint on his gun-barrel. We can't get at em except along the sh.o.r.e, hang it! They'd see us coming a mile off."

"If we can't get at the boat," said Kit, "neither can the Gentleman."

"That's truth," mused the Parson, dropping the gla.s.s.

"He'll prowl about till night-fall probably. Then he'll have a chance --if they've got liquor. The boat's his one hope. He's in a tightish place, mind!--enemy's country; wings clipped; his old friends his best enemies."

"And he doesn't know whether the privateer's a Frenchman or not," said Kit. "Though, of course, he might come down to the sh.o.r.e and signal her--on chance."

"Not while it's light," replied the Parson grimly; "If he signalled from anywhere it'd be from here. And here I squat till dark. After dark he can signal till he's black in the face--he hasn't got a lantern."

The boy's anxious eyes were sea-ward.

The old pain of heart, forgotten for the moment in the cottage, had returned, the old sickening sense of failure. After all, the responsibility was _his_, and his alone. It was in _him_ old Ding-dong had trusted; it was to _him_ the scent-bottle had been bequeathed; the fate of Nelson rested on _his_ shoulders.

Hither and thither his mind darted, seeking a way of escape from the net of circ.u.mstance.

"If we could only make sure of his thinking her an Englishman!" he fretted.

"She's flying no colours," said the Parson, "that's one good thing."

"I wish she'd fly the Union Jack," replied the boy.

The remark annoyed the Parson, practical or nothing.

"What's the good of wishing what can't be?" he snarled. "You might leave that to the women."

"Why can't it be?" retorted the boy hotly.

A sound behind him caught his ears. He turned to see the flag in the cottage chimney ruffling it behind the sycamores.

It flashed a message to his heart.

"By Jove, sir!" he panted. "I've got it."

The blood had rushed to his face, and ebbed as suddenly.

"Lend me your flag, and I'll swim out with it after dark!"

The Parson stared.

"To the privateer?"

"Why not? It can't be more than a few hundred yards. I've often done more."

"Well, what if you did get there?" curt and sarcastic. "Summon her to surrender, else you'd take her by storm and put the lot to the sword, I suppose?"

"Why, board her, sir, and run the flag up! She's not a man-of-war.

They'll be keeping no watch, likely as not."

The boy was in a white blaze.

"They won't see it till broad daylight!" he panted, pressing. "And by that time the Gentleman, if he's hanging about, will see it too. If they haul it down then and run up the tricolour, he'll think it's a decoy."

There was something contagious about the lad's white-hot enthusiasm.

The light was coming and going in the Parson's eyes.

The scheme was as mad as you like. Still, there was a chance of success, a fighting chance. And was it not the only one?

Himself he no more doubted the lad's story than he doubted that a month since he had crossed swords with Fighting Fitz. But who else would believe?

Of course he must send Knapp over to Lewes at once to report to Beau Beauchamp, the Commandant there; but what would come of that?

Loving his old Service with pa.s.sionate jealousy, he was not blind to the weakness of its traditional logic: it was not probable; therefore it was not true; and so to sleep again, dear boys!

And Beau Beauchamp, of all men!