Wandering Heath Part 2

"So my father pulled for the Manacles, and came to an easy close outside Carn du. And the drummer took his sticks and beat a tattoo, there by the edge of the reef; and the music of it was like a rolling chariot.

"'That will do,' says he, breaking off; 'they will follow. Pull now for the sh.o.r.e under Gunner's Meadow.'

"Then my father pulled for the sh.o.r.e, and ran his boat in under Gunner's Meadow. And they stepped out, all three, and walked up to the meadow. By the gate the drummer halted and began his tattoo again, looking out towards the darkness over the sea.

"And while the drum beat, and my father held his breath, there came up out of the sea and the darkness a troop of many men, horse and foot, and formed up among the graves; and others rose out of the graves and formed up--drowned Marines with bleached faces, and pale Hussars riding their horses, all lean and shadowy. There was no clatter of hoofs or accoutrements, my father said, but a soft sound all the while, like the beating of a bird's wing, and a black shadow lying like a pool about the feet of all. The drummer stood upon a little knoll just inside the gate, and beside him the tall trumpeter, with hand on hip, watching them gather; and behind them both my father, clinging to the gate. When no more came, the drummer stopped playing, and said, 'Call the roll.'

"Then the trumpeter stepped towards the end man of the rank and called, 'Troop-Sergeant-Major Thomas Irons!' and the man in a thin voice answered 'Here!'

"'Troop-Sergeant-Major Thomas Irons, how is it with you?'

"The man answered, 'How should it be with me? When I was young, I betrayed a girl; and when I was grown, I betrayed a friend; and for these things I must pay. But I died as a man ought. G.o.d save the King!'

"The trumpeter called to the next man, 'Trooper Henry Buckingham!'

and the next man answered, 'Here!'

"'Trooper Henry Buckingham, how is it with you?'

"'How should it be with me? I was a drunkard, and I stole, and in Lugo, in a wine-shop, I knifed a man. But I died as a man should.

G.o.d save the King!'

"So the trumpeter went down the line; and when he had finished, the drummer took it up, hailing the dead Marines in their order.

Each man answered to his name, and each man ended with 'G.o.d save the King!' When all were hailed, the drummer stepped back to his mound, and called:

"'It is well. You are content, and we are content to join you.

Wait yet a little while.'

"With this he turned and ordered my father to pick up the lantern, and lead the way back. As my father picked it up, he heard the ranks of dead men cheer and call, 'G.o.d save the King!' all together, and saw them waver and fade back into the dark, like a breath fading off a pane.

"But when they came back here to the kitchen, and my father set the lantern down, it seemed they'd both forgot about him. For the drummer turned in the lantern-light--and my father could see the blood still welling out of the hole in his breast--and took the trumpet-sling from around the other's neck, and locked drum and trumpet together again, choosing the letters on the lock very carefully. While he did this he said:

"'The word is no more Corunna, but Bayonne. As you left out an 'n'

in Corunna, so must I leave out an 'n' in Bayonne.' And before snapping the padlock, he spelt out the word slowly--'B-A-Y-O-N-E.'

After that, he used no more speech; but turned and hung the two instruments back on the hook; and then took the trumpeter by the arm; and the pair walked out into the darkness, glancing neither to right nor left.

"My father was on the point of following, when he heard a sort of sigh behind him; and there, sitting in the elbow-chair, was the very trumpeter he had just seen walk out by the door! If my father's heart jumped before, you may believe it jumped quicker now.

But after a bit, he went up to the man asleep in the chair, and put a hand upon him. It was the trumpeter in flesh and blood that he touched; but though the flesh was warm, the trumpeter was dead.

"Well, sir, they buried him three days after; and at first my father was minded to say nothing about his dream (as he thought it).

But the day after the funeral, he met Parson Kendall coming from Helston market: and the parson called out: 'Have 'ee heard the news the coach brought down this mornin'?' 'What news?' says my father.

'Why, that peace is agreed upon.' 'None too soon,' says my father.

'Not soon enough for our poor lads at Bayonne,' the parson answered.

'Bayonne!' cries my father, with a jump. 'Why, yes'; and the parson told him all about a great sally the French had made on the night of April 13th. 'Do you happen to know if the 38th Regiment was engaged?' my father asked. 'Come, now,' said Parson Kendall, 'I didn't know you was so well up in the campaign. But, as it happens, I _do_ know that the 38th was engaged, for 'twas they that held a cottage and stopped the French advance.'

"Still my father held his tongue; and when, a week later, he walked into Helston and bought a _Mercury_ off the Sherborne rider, and got the landlord of the 'Angel' to spell out the list of killed and wounded, sure enough, there among the killed was Drummer John Christian, of the 38th Foot.

"After this, there was nothing for a religious man but to make a clean breast. So my father went up to Parson Kendall and told the whole story. The parson listened, and put a question or two, and then asked:

"'Have you tried to open the lock since that night?'

"'I han't dared to touch it,' says my father.

"'Then come along and try.' When the parson came to the cottage here, he took the things off the hook and tried the lock. 'Did he say '_Bayonne_'? The word has seven letters.'

"'Not if you spell it with one 'n' as _he_ did,' says my father.

"The parson spelt it out--B-A-Y-O-N-E. 'Whew!' says he, for the lock had fallen open in his hand.

"He stood considering it a moment, and then he says,' I tell you what. I shouldn't blab this all round the parish, if I was you.

You won't get no credit for truth-telling, and a miracle's wasted on a set of fools. But if you like, I'll shut down the lock again upon a holy word that no one but me shall know, and neither drummer nor trumpeter, dead nor alive, shall frighten the secret out of me.'

"'I wish to gracious you would, parson,' said my father.

"The parson chose the holy word there and then, and shut the lock back upon it, and hung the drum and trumpet back in their place.

He is gone long since, taking the word with him. And till the lock is broken by force, n.o.body will ever separate those twain."

THE LOOE DIE-HARDS.

Captain Pond, of the East and West Looe Volunteer Artillery (familiarly known as the Looe Die-hards), put his air-cushion to his lips and blew. This gave his face a very choleric and martial expression.

Nevertheless, above his suffused and distended cheeks his eyes preserved a pensive melancholy as they dwelt upon his Die-hards gathered in the rain below him on the long-sh.o.r.e, or Church-end, wall. At this date (November 3, 1809) the company numbered seventy, besides Captain Pond and his two subalterns; and of this force four were out in the boat just now, mooring the practice-mark--a barrel with a small red flag stuck on top; one, the bugler, had been sent up the hill to the nine-pounder battery, to watch and sound a call as soon as the target was ready; a sixth, Sergeant Fugler, lay at home in bed, with the senior lieutenant (who happened also to be the local doctor) in attendance. Captain Pond clapped a thumb over the orifice of his air-cushion, and heaved a sigh as he thought of Sergeant Fugler. The remaining sixty-four Die-hards, with their firelocks under their great-coats, and their collars turned up against the rain, lounged by the embrasures of the sh.o.r.e-wall, and gossiped dejectedly, or eyed in silence the blurred boat bobbing up and down in the grey blur of the sea.

"Such coa.r.s.e weather I hardly remember to have met with for years,"

said Uncle Israel Spettigew, a cheerful s.e.xagenarian who ranked as efficient on the strength of his remarkable eyesight, which was keener than most boys'. "The sweep from over to Polperro was cleanin' my chimbley this mornin', and he told me in his humorous way that with all this rain 'tis so much as he can do to keep his face dirty--hee-hee!"

n.o.body smiled. "If you let yourself give way to the enjoyment of little things like that," observed a younger gunner gloomily, "one o'

these days you'll find yourself in a better land like the snuff of a candle. 'Tis a year since the Company's been allowed to move in double time, and all because you can't manage a step o' thirty-six inches 'ithout getting the palpitations."

"Well-a-well, 'tis but for a brief while longer--a few fleeting weeks, an' us Die-hards shall be as though we had never been. So why not be cheerful? For my part, I mind back in 'seventy-nine, when the fleets o' France an' Spain a.s.sembled an' come up agen' us--sixty-six sail o' the line, my sonnies, besides frigates an' corvettes to the amount o' twenty-five or thirty, all as plain as the nose on your face: an' the alarm guns goin', up to Plymouth, an' the signals hoisted at Maker Tower--a b.l.o.o.d.y flag at the pole an' two blue 'uns at the outriggers. Four days they laid to, an' I mind the first time I seed mun, from this very place as it might be where we'm standin'

at this moment, I said 'Well, 'tis all over with East Looe this time!' I said: 'an' when 'tis over, 'tis over, as Joan said by her weddin'.' An' then I spoke them verses by royal Solomon--Wisdom two, six to nine. 'Let us fill oursel's wi' costly wine an' ointments,'

I said: 'an' let no flower o' the spring pa.s.s by us. Let us crown oursel's wi' rosebuds, afore they be withered: let none of us go without his due part of our voluptuousness'--"

"Why, you old adage, that's what Solomon makes th' _unG.o.dly_ say!"

interrupted young Gunner Oke, who had recently been appointed parish clerk, and happened to know.

"As it happens," Uncle Issy retorted, with sudden dignity--"as it happens, I _was_ unG.o.dly in them days. The time I'm talkin' about was August 'seventy-nine; an' if I don't mistake, your father an'

mother, John Oke, were courtin' just then, an' 'most too shy to confide in each other about havin' a parish clerk for a son."

"Times hev' marvellously altered in the meanwhile, to be sure," put in Sergeant Pengelly of the "Sloop" Inn.

"Well, then," Uncle Issy continued, without pressing his triumph, "''Tis all over with East Looe,' I said, 'an' this is a black day for King Gearge,' an' then I spoke them verses o' Solomon. 'Let none of us,' I said, 'go without his due part of our voluptuousness'; and with that I went home and dined on tatties an' bacon. It hardly seems a thing to be believed at this distance o' time, but I never relished tatties an' bacon better in my life than that day--an' yet not meanin' the laste disrespect to King Gearge. Disrespect? If his Majesty only knew it, he've no better friend in the world than Israel Spettigew. G.o.d save the King!"

And with this Uncle Issy pulled off his cap and waved it round his head, thereby shedding a _moulinet_ of raindrops full in the faces of his comrades around.

This was observed by Captain Pond, standing on the platform above, beside Thundering Meg, the big 24-pounder, which with four 18-pounders on the sh.o.r.e-wall formed the lower defences of the haven.