The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson: The Dream Of X & Other Fantastic Visions (31 page)

I took the six of them up to our stable-yard, and here I had Mardy harness our biggest timber-wain to our eight big plough horses. Then I told Mardy I should not want him—for I could not trust his tongue—and John and I and our army of six set off for the fir-wood, where the guns lay hid as I have told.

It took us near until the dawn before we had the two long guns up among the rocks on the downs where we had found the secret entrance into the cave. There was a place here where a great mass of rock and earth had splitten away from the slope of the Winston, where it met the downs; and left a big scar, like an old quarry, all bracken and bramble grown.

“See, lads!” I cried.

And John and I, with the crooks of our sticks, pulled to one side a huge mass of the brambles, and there, sure enough, was a split that ran into the hillside of the Winston, so big that you could have taken a cart and horse in through it. And indeed this was so, for when we had cleared away some of the underfoot stones, and lugged back all the brambles, we drove the horses clean through and along a great twisting gallery of rock, and so to the cave, lighting them all the way with a stable lantern which I had brought.

We took the second gun in likewise, and laid it by the first; then we draped all the bracken and bramble over the hole, and you could never have guessed the things they hid so clever and natural. And afterwards to our beds, very weary and well pleased with ourselves.

IV.

My brother John and I were wakened on this day (May 25th) at four in the morning, by Geels, our gardener.

“Whist, Master Jerry!” he was saying from the window. “Wake up, now, do ’ee! Wake up, Master Jerry. Wake up, do ’ee!”

John and I sat up, each in our own beds, and stared at the window.

“What’s wrong, Geels?” I asked.

“There’s two great frigates in the bay, Master Jerry,” said Geels, “an’ they’m landin’ men so fast as they can. I been down to watch ’em from Sir Beant’s oak-woods, an’ they’m riven open the Hall an’ makin’ free with all.”

I was out of my bed long before Geels had finished, and John with me. For now we might at last have chance to read these coast-ravaging Dutchmen a lesson, with God’s aid and our own plain wit and invention.

“When did you first know they were in the bay, Geels?” I asked, as I dressed with speed.

“Half-past three they coom to anchor, by Sam Hardy’s watch,” said Geels. “They coom in round the point, maybe a while earlier, an’ Sam Hardy, as is the coast ranger this week, waked me to watch ’em, while he went down to warn the village folk. I been that excited like, I went down to the oak-woods, so I could see ’em proper close; an’ then I minded what you’d told me, to call you, Master Jerry, if they coomed, so I coom away up to the house, an’ I clomb the ivy to the window, same’s I’m at now.”

“Then they’ve not been ashore long?” I asked, as I pulled on my coat.

“No more than to get up to th’ Hall, Master Jerry,” said the old man. “A good thing Sir Beant’s away to Lunnon. But I’m feard they’m been rough like with the servants. I heerd Jan Ellis, as is cook there, screetchin’ fit to wake the dead; right over to the oak-woods, I heerd ’er. An’ it fair made me so my blood be a-boilin’ this moment. I be main glad your mother an’ sister are to Lunnon Town with Sir Charles, your father. I could wish he were here now, for a fine head he have for fightin’ and the like; a better I never met, Master Jerrold, though he’ve a timber leg. Here we are, scarce two score men in the village, what wi’ pressgangin’ an’ the like; an’ your father away, an’ you but a lad as you are—not but you’ve the brains an’ pluck of us all!—an’ no offence, Master Jerrold, if so I be bound to say you’m youngish, when the like of a thing like this do happen upon us.”

“Geels,” I said, “get down and away to the village for Tommy Larg, the blacksmith, and James and Henry Bowden, and the three Cartwright brothers. Tell them I want them up here at once. Get back here as smartly as you can. John, come down to the armoury. Come on!”

V.

I felt the blood leap in me, for here I was, nineteen years, old, and my brother sixteen and the chance to prove ourselves and to turn our plans and dreams into reality.

At the armoury I took down two swords that had belonged to our father when he was no older than I; for, as I said to John, we should bring no shame on the good blades by our attempt, and we knew that our father would have pride that we should wear them on such errand as we had in mind, if we but carried ourselves with courage and honour; for our father was a man who would see us dead with gladness, if with honour, rather than alive and backward in any time that courage of heart might be heeded.

“Now the powder,” I said, for our father kept always a great stock for the three twelve-pounder cannons that he had mounted on Winston Head. He had made the villagers these two years practise with the guns, once on May Day and once on Michaelmas Day. Six men he had appointed to each gun, and a pile of twelve-pound shot to each, that he had from the Royal foundry with the guns. But the men were not very smart to hit a mark, for they fired but six shots on each day at a tub that was towed out and moored in the cove, and no man had ever hit it yet: though once James Bartlett splashed it with a round-shot, and my father was that pleased that he sent the crew down a barrel of beer to drink the health of Bartlett in.

John and I rolled out four barrels of the powder from the armoury and rolled them along the great passageway to the main hall, where we left them.

“I hope Geels will hurry,” I told John “We’ve a deal to do. This place must be made safe, and the shot from the cannon on the Head must be carried down into the cave, and the cannon spiked—”

“Spiked?” interrupted my brother. “What for? Are not the villagers going to fire them at the frigates?”

I laughed a little.

“Don’t be an ass, John,” I said. “If you think but half a minute, you’ll see that the Dutch would send fifty or sixty men up and just cut ’em to pieces in no time. Then they could turn the guns on to their houses. By this time, I expect, the village will be empty and everybody hiding. That’s why our idea to have the guns in the cave is so good—for the Dutch cannot easily get at us, and we shall be able, to do something to-day that will teach them a lesson, and make our father proud of us. That reminds me, run down to Mardy’s cottage and tell him and his father to come up at once, if they haven’t gone off into the woods to hide.”

While my brother was gone, I rummaged out some fuse that was kept in canisters in the armoury, and three dozen empty bombs that were made for a nine-pounder gun and bought cheap by my father, who thought to pick up a nine-pounder gun some day for a trifle from the wreckers.

These bombs I took for the two great thirty-two-pounders, having a notion how I might use them, for I had not a single shot for either of the big pieces, though we had mounted them complete more than a fortnight before.

Besides the empty nine-pounder bombshells, I found also some lengths of chain from our farmyard that were used for harrowing, also three bags of great tenpenny-nails, which pleased me a deal, and a big cake of beeswax, and all the blankets off the beds.

I got also from the armoury twelve muskets, with their flasks and bullet-bags, and a keg of ready-cast bullets.

We had already in the cave two big butts of water, with rammers and mops that the two Bowden lads had made; and Larg, the blacksmith, had fitted iron rings into the floor of the cave for the gun-tackles, which same had been fitted very cleverly by the Cartwrights.

All of this I thought over a dozen times as I ran backwards and forwards carrying things. Then I heard John at the entrance door, and Mardy and his father with him.

“Put Meg and Molly in the shafts and fetch round the firewood trolly,” I called to them.

And, when it was brought, I set them to loading all the gear into it, and made them lash it all secure. After which, I sent John up to the roof to see if he could discover any signs of Geels or the Dutch.

He came down, very excited, in a minute to tell me that Geels was running along the green walk towards the house with the six others, and a dozen Dutch sailors after them with their cutlasses drawn and carrying muskets.

“The muskets, John!” I said quietly, and had one up in my hand as I spoke. I snapped open a powder-flask, and, by all good mercies, there was powder in it. I caught a bunch of the weapons up in my left hand by the muzzles and snapped a charge into each. “The bullets, John!” I said very quick, but still quietly, so us not to fluster him. “Don’t wait to wad. Drop two into each!”

I whipped out a ramrod and plunged it into each barrel, as my brother dropped in the bullets. As I rammed home the last, I laid the whole lot down and began to prime them, one at a time, handing them out to John and Mardy and his father as I did so. I loaded six in all in less than one full minute, and no man can say I was slow.

“Now follow me,” I said, and ran through the great door and down into the shrubbery that bordered the green walk.

There was a thudding of running feet, and then the crash of a musket near by. Someone in the green walk cried out, and immediately I heard Larg, the blacksmith, shout out:

“Ey, the murderin’ swine! I’d gie my hand for a good musket!”

I peered through the bushes, and saw the Dutchmen to our right, kneeling, to steady their aim.

“Quick!” I said to the others. “Stick your guns out and shoot! Same as if you were at your poaching tricks, Mardy!”

The man grinned, licking his lips a little. He never bothered to set the musket to his shoulder, but fired with the butt on his thigh. By Jove, but he killed two Dutchmen with that one shot. And then John and I opened fire.

I killed one with my first, and John wounded one, who lay on his face and kicked, screaming like any woman. That stopped John, and Mardy’s father just snatched his other musket from him, and loosed it again from his thigh. I never saw the like of such shooting; I fired my second musket and wounded one Dutchman slightly; but already Mardy had killed seven outright, for his son had never even attempted to fire, but just handed his two weapons over to his father.

“Charge them!” I shouted. “Use the butts!” And I burst through the hedge into the green walk, with the three others after me. But the Dutchmen that remained alive ran, throwing away their muskets.

“Stop!” I said to my army.

As we all stopped, I noticed that Mardy’s father was laughing silently. A curious man. I had heard rumours of his gun shooting and his coolness, and I never saw the equal before or since.

Geels and the six others had stopped when they saw the Dutchmen begin to fall, and now they came running back round us, with Larg supporting Oliver Cartwright, the youngest of the fishing brothers, who had been shot in the thick of the lower leg, but nothing much of a wound, as it proved.

“A’m thankin’ God ye coomed, Master Jerry,” said Geels, panting for breath. “They was agoin’ to fire just as ye fired, an’ I do reckon they’d ’a’ had every one of us through the back.”

“Come on, all!” I said. “No, Larg, don’t cut that poor wounded devil’s throat! Leave him. I’ll give you killing enough presently. Pick up their muskets, and bring their ammunition. Hurry, all of you! We’re going to give these beggars a lesson that will make them shy of visiting Caunston Cove again in a hurry.”

They did as I bade them, and we hastened back to our house, which is named Caunston Tower, and has its own moat, forty feet broad; and glad was I then to think of the moat (though my mother always said it made the house damp), for I feared that the Dutchmen who escaped might return with others—but not many, if our plan carried out properly.

The moat was crossed by one oak-timbered bridge to the great entrance door, and there was still the chains attached and the windlass in the cellar by which the bridge might be hoisted up in front of the doorway as in past times, though we never used them except once each year to test the bridge, which idea was a whim of my father’s.

As we came back into the big hall there were four of the maids crowded there, pale and shivering with terror, and Alice, our cook (and a big woman she was), trying to get them back to their own part of the house.

“The Dutchmen!” screamed out the four servant-maids as we ran in through the big doorway.

“Dutchmen, ye idiots!” said Alice. “Drat ye! Saw ye ever Dutch loons like yon?”

“Be quiet, all of you, please,” I said. “There is not the least danger. Sam Hardy’s away nearly an hour ago for the soldiers, and they should be here within four or five hours. Alice, if there’s any shooting, keep all your lot in the cellars. Do try to get them out of our way now.”

“Ess, Master Jerry,” said Alice.

And without a word more she slipped an arm each round the waists of two of the maids, and half carried and half dragged them out to their own quarters, with the other two following quietly enough.

“Now, Geels,” I said, “we’re going to see what we can do with these Dutchmen. I’m leaving you in charge here, with Mardy and his father under you. As soon as we’re across the bridge hoist it clean up before the door, and then close all the heavy outer shutters. Load all the muskets, and for the rest trust to Heaven, or to the quick eye of Mardy here, who is worth any three men I ever saw with a musket. I’m leaving young Cartwright with you. He can fire a musket, but he’ll be no good for walking for a while yet, I fancy.”

Geels started some kind of remonstrance, as did the Cartwright boy at being left, but I just signed to my men to slip their Dutch bandoliers over their heads and follow me to the loaded trolly.