The MS. in a Red Box Part 16

"Because my father will be very angry when he knows what we have done."

"The more reason I should stay with you."

"Oh, you stupid Frank! Do you think he will beat me? But, if you are here, he will say things he will one day be sorry for--things you may find it hard to forgive. Whereas, if I have him alone, I can coax, or scold, or cry, as may be needed, and bring him to reason."

"Running away does not suit me," said I.

"Nor would I send you away, if you could do the least good. There is n.o.body to be knocked down or thrown into the river just now; only an elderly gentleman to be managed. And there is another at Temple Belwood impatient to see his son. Go and do your best with him, leaving my father to me."

In the end I consented. I called Luke to prepare things for my going, and he had to tell me that a tract of the fen from Sandtoft, almost direct to Belton, had been recently flooded to a depth of two to three feet by the raising of an embankment for a drain which had been begun.

In a light boat one might cross more easily and quickly than had been possible heretofore.

"Why not walk on the embankment?" I asked.

It seemed the bank was rough, and there would be awkwardness here and there in the growing darkness and a rising mist. So we settled on the boat as my conveyance. While we talked, Anna had made haste to provide supper for me, eager to have me gone, nor would she permit me to linger over the meal, or afterwards. I wanted to talk of our future, but she would not.

"Have you a ninepence?" she asked. "Rustic lovers break one, do they not?"

I broke one, and held out the halves to her.

She took one, and said, laughing, "Now we are properly plighted; what need of more words? When you bring your token, mine will be ready."

Rosy-red she blushed, as I took her in my arms, and held her against my quick-beating heart, and joined lip to lip. But she withdrew herself, cut short our leave-taking, and dismissed me.

I found Luke waiting for me with the little boat, and stepped in, bidding him stay at Sandtoft till morning, and bring me word of Mistress Goel then. He raised some objection to my going unattended, but I overruled him, and doubtless the prospect of a longer confab with Martha disposed him to obedience. He had put a lighted lantern into the boat, which would be useful, he reminded me, when I came to the will-pits. The will-pits were pools, reputed bottomless, half surrounded by very old birches, some still green, others fallen and rotting. Now the fen was under water, the trees might be plaguy unless I had a light, for the night was darker than nights are wont to be in August.

Thanking my good fellow for his care, I bade him good night, and sculled off rapidly, keeping well away from the embankment, lest there should be timbers near the foot of it. When I had gone about a mile, as I reckoned, I stopped sculling to pick up the lantern, and held it forward on the lookout for the will-pit trees. As I did so, I perceived that the boat drifted backwards and a little toward the embankment. How could there be a current in a sheet of standing water?

But a current there certainly was; and running pretty strongly too.

The Dutchmen could not be at work at this time of night, opening the sluice for any purpose that I could conjecture. There might be a defect in the embankment somewhere, a crack which was widening under pressure of water. Whatever might be the secret, my best course was to go an as fast as I could scull; so I took both in hand, pulling with all my might. Up to this time I had used only one scull over the stern, sparing my weaker arm. Not more than five minutes later the sculls sc.r.a.ped bottom and the boat stuck fast. Shipping oars, I leaned over the side, lantern in hand, and saw there were but a few inches of water all round the boat. I had not grounded on a mud-bank, but was stranded by the draining away of the water! What to do next was a question. If I could wade to the embankment, I could continue my journey on foot; but that was not to be ventured until I knew the nature of the ground, for in this part of the fen were many mire-pits, and to step into one of them meant being sucked down to a horrible death. I prodded the soil with a scull, and it went down like a spoon into porridge. I was right over a mire-pit. I tried sculling again, but that was of no use whatever. Then I attempted to thrust the boat forward, but there was nothing to thrust against. I stood up, holding the lantern above my head, peering through the mist, and saw a bush some six or seven yards ahead of me, so there was a bit of solid ground just beyond reach! If I had had a coil of rope with me, I might have thrown a loop into the bush, and so saved myself; but the painter was the only rope in the boat, and it was not more than six feet long. The only thing left for me was to wait as patiently as I could until morning, when some one might come within hail, or Luke might seek me, unless by good luck the water should rise again. 'Twas no great hardship after all: the night was not cold, but a shade chilly with the mist. As I came to this conclusion, I was startled by something which whizzed over my head and fell with a splash and a soft thud some yards beyond the boat. Somebody must be throwing from the embankment, and at me apparently. My lantern must a.s.sist his aim, so, not wishing to extinguish it, having no means of relighting it, I wrapped a thick neckerchief I wore over the horn, and stowed it in the bow. While I did this another stone crashed into the boat with such force that I judged it was hurled from a sling. Other stones followed in swift succession, but not more than one in three or four hit the boat; but one struck me such a thump on the b.u.t.tock as to set me thinking what the consequence would be of receiving another blow like it in a more vital part.

I could not devise any kind of protection at the moment, but it occurred to me that a little dodge might puzzle my enemy. I pulled up one of the thwarts with no great effort, for the little craft was old and rotten, took off my coat to hide my operations from the enemy, cut a bit of the painter, and lashed the lantern to the thwart, and set it afloat on the water, trusting to the chance that it might drift away.

I placed it with the horn on the side from the embankment, hoping it might go a little way before my a.s.sailant caught sight of it. To my great relief it glided gently off, not rounding until it had gone, as nearly as I could guess, some twenty yards. It drew his volleys for a while, and then it vanished, though whether he struck it, or it toppled over by chance, I knew not. While his attention was thus diverted from me, I had time to think what to do in case he contrived to discover my whereabouts again, which I was sanguine enough to consider unlikely.

In this I was mistaken, my enemy was not to be so easily beaten. But I turned the temporary respite to the best advantage I could think of by tearing up the other thwart, so as to get room to stretch myself in the bottom of the boat, and rolling to one side, depressing the gunnel nearly to the surface of the water, thus shielding myself from hurt as long as the crazy boards might hold against his battery.

I had been none too quick. A faint red gleam began to show through the mist, and having some notion of what the enemy might be about, I slightly enlarged the aperture of a gaping seam, and looked toward the embankment. A fire had been kindled, and the man who had lighted it stood full in the glare of it. As I had supposed, the man was Vliet.

He had a gun hanging at his back and a sling in his hand. Doubtless he had seen my departure from Sandtoft, pulled up the sluice-gate to let off the water, and followed me along the embankment. Chance had favoured him by stranding me on a spot from which I could not move. He had only to knock my boat to pieces, or even to make it unfloatable, and my fate was sealed. He could return to close the sluice, and in a few hours the water would cover both the boat and me. That was pretty safe, if he did no more than smash the boat. He would try to do more than that, I had no doubt. I could do nothing. To attempt to crawl over the slime would be to seek death. I must stick to the boat as long as the planks held together, hiding myself, if possible, and making no sound. He might imagine that I had escaped, or that I was dead, if I made no sign.

As I watched his doings, he gave me a ray of hope. He lifted a bottle to his mouth, and he did not tilt it high. How fervently I hoped that he had enough to get drunk on! His next move showed he was not by any means drunk at present. He walked away from the fire, often stopping down, as I supposed, to pick up stones. He evidently meant to spare powder and shot as long as he could, and to do his work as silently as possible. When he came back to the fire, he lighted a torch and descended the embankment, looking carefully, at the soil of the fen, as if he sought to get nearer to the boat, but he had too much prudence to venture. Then he ascended the bank and resumed his sling. He had found where the boat lay, for he managed to hit about once in three times. His aim was so bad that it would have been laughable under other circ.u.mstances, but I had no inclination to laugh, as plank after plank cracked and started. I turned over, and lay with my back to him, grinding my teeth with rage to be so ignominiously stoned and so utterly helpless. At length, perhaps after an hour of continuous firing, came a pause, and I turned over to look at my enemy. It was only too easy to see him through gaping seams and holes broken in the planking. He sat between the fire and me, so that his every movement was clearly discernible. If I had had a gun I could have shot him wherever I chose. He rubbed his right shoulder with his left hand, as if it ached with his exercise. Then he drank from his bottle, tilting it higher this time. He sat so long that I began to hope he imagined he had made an end of me; but by-and-by he rose to his feet, took his gun in hand, and prepared to fire. I rolled to the very edge of the gunnel now, and the water and ooze flowed softly in on me. It was well I did, for Vliet's aim with a gun was another matter than his aim with a sling. Shot after shot struck and riddled the heap of boards which had been a boat, but as by a miracle, shot after shot missed me. Vliet plainly believed that there could be no one in the wreck except a dead man, for he began to sing. Never have I listened to music, even the best, with more pleasure than I had in hearing that thick and drunken voice yelling a tuneless song! I watched him finish his bottle, scatter the fire, and heard by the diminishing noise that he was going back to Sandtoft.

It was not until he had gone, that I knew how cold and wet I was, and then discovered that the half of the boat on which I lay had sunk into the mire. At first I fancied that I had to do with nothing more serious than the ooze, which had flowed in when I lay on the edge of the boat; but by dipping my fingers straight down into the mud, I found that the pit was swallowing my raft and me slowly, but surely, at the rate, it might be, of a barleycorn a minute. I could not be sure of that, for I had no certainty about time. The one certainty was that the mud was gaining on me. I feared to move about, lest my weight should make worse of the wreck; but I could not lie still in the dark to be steadily sucked under, so I rolled over in a very gingerly manner, and by degrees pressed down the holed and shattered planking on to the surface of the mire, thus upheaving the side on which I had before lain. For a wonder it did not go utterly to pieces, and I lay on it some time before it began to be overflowed by the mud, when I turned gently over to the other side which had been raised by my weight. This gave way more quickly than before, but it held me up for perhaps ten minutes, and then I repeated the performance, and continued this kind of see-saw for, I should think, an hour or more, but on the seventh or eighth turning, with a great cracking, the one side parted from the other, the line of breakage being not far from the keel, as I made out by groping. For a second or two, I fell into despair, but soon perceived that my chances of escape were perhaps improved by the splitting of the boat. Kneeling on the less broken half, with my legs as far apart as I could stretch them, I tried to pull the other half upwards and forwards. It was hard work, for the mire held it fast, and my half sank at least half a foot while I tugged at the other, but at length I had the ma.s.s in front of me, and crawled on to it. My arms felt as if they were pulled half out of their sockets, but there was no time to rest. I must try to get the piece of the wreck on which I had knelt out of the mire and before the other. This proved a tougher job still.

Before the thing was done, I was up to the middle of my thighs in the pit, and almost spent, but done it was at last, and as I pushed it forward, it encountered some solid obstacle. There was dry ground, or a tree, not more than three yards or so ahead of me. That a.s.surance gave me the strength of madness. I dragged myself a little out of the mud, and threw myself on the piece of wreckage with such force, that it sank beneath my weight so deeply that I was swallowed up in the mire, shoulder high. But the other end of my raft remained firm, and by clutching, writhing, pulling, I got inch by inch out of the slough, and, while doing so, to my unspeakable joy I perceived a faint glimmer of dawn. That showed me a down-drooping branch of birch above my head, which at last I reached, and clung to it trembling lest it should break. It held, and by its aid I gained solid ground. I threw my arms round the trunk of the tree as though it had been a human friend, laughing and sobbing in a breath. Then I vowed Sebastian Vliet should answer to me for his dastard trick before he was many hours older.

After that, I remembered to thank G.o.d for my deliverance, and fell asleep over my thanksgiving. I must have slept an hour or more, for the sun was above the horizon when I awoke cold and shivering.

It would be wearisome to relate how I got home, for nothing happened by the way; though I have the keenest recollection of the effort it cost to walk the two miles, which were as long as twenty, my clothing being caked with mire even to my shirt, and my limbs shaking with cold and exhaustion.

But by the usual breakfast hour I had eaten and drunk, washed and changed, and was my own man again. I had need of all my strength, for my father came into the room with suppressed fury in face and voice.

"At last you have condescended to honour me," he began. "Have you come to say you will save Temple from the hammer, or that you choose beggary for yourself and disgrace for your father? Quick: let me know your mind."

"If you mean will I wed a girl I do not love----"

I was answering, when my father burst out--

"Bah! Do not sicken me with play-actor rubbish. Are you going to act like a man of sense and of honour, or like an idiot?"

"I will not offer marriage to Mistress Ryther," I replied.

"Then begone out of the house," he thundered, "and let me never see your fool-face again, and if there is anything in a father's curse, may it cling to you as long as you live."

At this moment, Mr. Butharwick entered the room with a feeble step. He stretched out his hands imploringly to my father, and said in a voice not his own--

"My honoured patron, my friend and benefactor," and something more which was indistinguishable, for his mouth began to work strangely.

Then he staggered, and would have fallen but my father caught him in his arms, and laid him on the couch.

I called for help, and servants came hurrying into the room, to whom my father gave order about fetching a surgeon, and this, that, and the other, adding--

"Bid Savage, the attorney, come to me without delay." Then, turning to me, he said: "Will you go, or must I have you thrown out by the servants?"

My dear old tutor's face looked my way, and I thought I saw a beseeching in his eyes, but I could do nothing. I went out, haunted by the drawn face and the wistful eyes, and the face of my father hard as if cut in marble. It was my last sight of both of them.

Luke met me in the hall, and I bade him follow me to my room. He had a letter for me, the first I had received from my love, full of courage and cheer, which just then I sadly needed. Luke told me the doctor was transported with rage on hearing his daughter avow her fixed determination to abide by her promise to me, so that even Martha was terrified by his furious wrath. And my true-hearted love could write to sustain my nagging spirits when she was in such trouble herself!

Everybody had been at a loss to understand Vliet, who had tried to soothe the doctor, affecting to think Mistress Goel would be in a more compliant temper by-and-by. I understood him well enough. The scoundrel was confident he had put me out of the way: he should soon know better. It eased my heart a little to write him a few lines, in which I challenged him to meet me in open fight, and declared I would hunt him down like a verminous beast if he was too cowardly to meet me fairly. This I gave to Luke to be delivered into Vliet's hand without loss of time.

After I had told Luke of my last night's adventure, to which he listened with wide eyes and some muttered curses, he cried out--

"From this time forrard, Measter Frank, I'se stick to you like your shadder."

"That is just what you will not do, my good fellow, for I am an outcast from my father's house; and where I may go, or what I shall do is all in the dark to me, except that I kill Vliet, if he does not kill me, to-day or to-morrow."

"Wherever you go, I go too," answered my man.

"That is quite impossible, Luke," said I. "We must part for the good reason that I have not five pounds in the world, and that won't keep me, to say nothing of a serving man, for many days. Besides," I added, "you can be much more useful to me by staying at Temple. I may want a friend in the house, and I want above all things, some trusty friend to watch over the safety of Mistress Goel, when I may be far away. You can come and go between this and Sandtoft, and I shall be sure that whatever two true souls can do for her will be done."

We argued and wrangled for a good while, Luke urging everything he could think of to induce me to take him with me, but I would not give way. He took my instructions sorrowfully, not to say sulkily, as to what was to be done with my belongings, the main of which I desired him to carry to the vicarage at Crowle, with a message to my aunt. Just then I could not face the dear lady, or bear her exclamations and expostulations, nor did I incline to see my friend Portington. I had resolved to spend the time between now and my duel with Vliet at Belshaw, in the company of my new friend, because there could be no heartrending talk with him, and also because I hoped to learn from him how to join Captain John Smith, which appeared to me the likeliest means of earning my living, with some chance of cutting my way to fortune. For the few days which I expected to pa.s.s in the neighbourhood, I meant to ride Trueboy, and afterwards to sell him to replenish my purse. These things being arranged, I appointed a place where Luke was to meet me the next evening, and went to the stables. I hoped to get away quietly, but it was not to be. Almost every servant in and about the house, down to the kitchen wench and the youngest stable-boy, had a.s.sembled to say good-bye to me, the women crying, and the men murmuring hoa.r.s.ely what they meant for encouragement. They would have unmanned me, but for Trueboy. He, having had far too little exercise lately, was as frisky as an unbroken colt, rearing, and lashing out his heels in sheer delight, so the little crowd scattered right and left, and I mounted and rode off at full gallop across the park, the shortest cut to Belshaw.

CHAPTER XIV

"I suppose Vliet will be blotted out of existence, if he be fool enough to meet you, which I doubt. But, my friend, you are of a charming simplicity. We are not an extremely law-abiding people in the Isle, but there is a constable of the wapentake; there are justices of the peace. Would it have been very troublesome to send the Dutchman to Lincoln Castle to await his trial for attempted murder? He would have been out of the way for a time, at any rate, and there is just a chance he might have been hanged. You prefer to give him the opportunity to shoot you, or to devise some other means of killing you more convenient to himself. Or, if you should kill him, the law may be set in motion against you, probably by the gentleman who objects to you as a son-in-law. If you will be advised by me, you will retract your cartel of defiance, and take steps to commit Mynherr Vliet to gaol."

So spoke my friend Drury, when I told him how matters stood with me.

One half of my mind held him wise, but that did not in the least quench my desire to settle my quarrel with Vliet man to man. I have often done things, knowing all the while I was a fool for doing them; my difficulty not being lack of wisdom (for my friends have always been ready to supply me with the best) so much as want of liking for it.

While I waited at Belshaw for the answer to my challenge, my friend gave me many particulars of the history of Captain John Smith, whom he thought one of the greatest men in the world, although the captain was his cousin.

"He is now in London," said John, "and in hope to lead another expedition. He will snap you up at a word. A tall fellow who has more lives than a cat, and relishes fighting better than his victuals, will suit him to admiration."