CHAPTER XVI
DRIFTING
When I recovered consciousness, the sun had risen; it was bright
daylight all about us. That was really the first thing which I
saw--the light of the sun on the deck. I struggled up to a sitting
position, feeling great pain in my head. Marah lying over the tiller
was the next thing which I saw; he was dead, I thought. Then I
realised what had happened; we had had a fight. We were not under
control; we were drifting with the tide up and down, with our sails
backing and filling; up and down the deck there were wounded men, some
of them preventives, some of them smugglers--poor Hankin was one of
them. When I stood up I saw that I was the only person on his feet in
the boat: it was not strange, perhaps.
Some of our men had gone with the horses, others had been in the water
when the horsemen first charged them; probably all of those who had
been in the water were either killed or taken. We had had four men
aboard during the attack: of these one was badly hurt, another (Marah)
was unconscious, the remaining two were drinking under the half-deck,
having opened a tub of spirits. When I had stood up I felt a little
stronger; I heard Marah moan a little. I tottered to the scuttle-butt,
where we kept our drinking water; I splashed the contents of a couple
of pannikins over my head and then drank about a pint and a half; that
made me feel a different being. I was then able to do something for
the others.
First of all I managed to help Marah down from his perch over the
tiller: he had fallen across it with his head and hands almost
touching the deck. I helped him, or rather, lifted him--for he could
not help himself--to the deck; it was as much as I could do, he was so
big and heavy. I put a tub under his head as a pillow, then I cut his
shirt open and saw that he had been shot in the chest. I ran forward
with a pannikin, drew some water, and gave him a drink. He drank
greedily, biting the tin, but did not recognise me; all that he could
say was "Rip-raps, Rip-raps," over and over again. The Rip-raps was
the name of a race or tideway on the Campeachy coast; he had often
told me about it, and I had remembered the name because it was such a
queer one. I bathed his wound with the water.
After I had done what I could for Marah, I did the same for the
wounded soldier. He thanked me for my trouble in a little, low, weak
voice, infinitely serious--he seemed to think that I didn't believe
him. "I say, thank you; thank you," he repeated earnestly, and then he
gave a little gasp and fainted away in the middle of his thanks.
At that, I stood up and began to cry. I had had enough of misery, and
that was more than I could bear. Between my sobs I saw--I did not
observe, I just saw--that the lugger was drifting slowly northward,
clear of Little Stone Point, as the smugglers had called it. I didn't
much care where we drifted, but having seen so much, it occurred to me
to see where the other luggers were.
One of them, I saw, was on her course for France, a couple of miles
away already; the other was going for Dungeness, no doubt to pick up
more hands somewhere on the Dunge Marsh. It was like them, I thought,
to go off like that, leaving us to have the worst of the fight and
every chance of being taken; they only thought of their own
necks. When I saw that they had deserted us without even pausing to
put a helmsman aboard us, I knew that there was no honour among
thieves. There is not, in spite of what the proverb says. We were left
alone--a boy, two drunkards, and some wounded men, within half a mile
of the shore.
I looked for the preventives, but I could not see them. Most of them
had gone after the horses across Romney Marsh. I did not know till
long afterwards that the smugglers had beaten off the rest of the
party, killing some and about twenty horses, and wounding nearly every
other man engaged. It had been, in fact, a very determined battle, one
of the worst ever fought between the smugglers and the authorities on
that coast. As soon as the fight was over, the luggers got out from
the shore, and the troops made off with their wounded to report at the
fort, and to signal the Ness cutter to go in chase. At the moment when
I looked for them they must, I think, have been rallying again. I
could not see them, that was enough for me. Years afterwards I talked
with one of the survivors, an old cavalryman. He told me how the fight
had seemed to him as he rode in at us.
"And d'ye know, sir," he said, "they had a boy forward ready with an
axe to cut the cable, so I fired at him" ("Thank you," I thought);
"and just as I pulled the trigger one of their men hit my gee a welt,
and down he came in the water, and so, of course, I missed. But for
that, sir, we'd have got them."
I wondered which of the men had saved my life by hitting that "gee a
welt" I wondered if he had been killed or taken, or whether he had got
aboard us afterwards, or whether one of the other luggers had saved
him. Well, I shall never know on this side of the grave. But it is
odd, is it not, that one should have one's life saved and never know
that it was in danger till twenty years afterwards, when the man who
saved it was never likely to be found? But I am getting away from my
story.
I soon saw that the current was slowly setting us ashore. Marah, with
his great manliness, had steered the lugger out to sea for some six
hundred yards before he had collapsed. Then his fellows, seeing him,
as they supposed, dead, turned to drinking. The lugger, left to
herself, took charge, and swung round head to wind. Since then she had
drifted, sometimes making a stern-board, sometimes going ahead a
little, but nearly always drifting slowly shoreward, flogging her
gear, making a great clatter of blocks. If the soldiers had been half
smart they would have seen that she was not under command, and ridden
to Dymchurch, taken boat, and come after us. But they had had a severe
beating, many of them were wounded, and they had watched our start
feeling that we had safely escaped from them. I have never had much
opinion of soldiers. Boys generally take their opinions ready made
from their elders. I took mine from Marah, who, being a sailor,
thought that a soldier was something too silly for words.
As we drifted I went back to Marah to bathe his head with water and to
give him drink. He was not conscious; he had even ceased babbling; I
was afraid that he could not live for more than a few hours at the
most. I had never really liked the man--I had feared him too much to
like him--but he had looked after me for so long, and had been, in his
rough way, so kind to me, that I cried for him as though he were my
only friend. He was the only friend within many miles of me, and now
he lay there dying in a boat which was drifting ashore to a land full
of enemies.
It was a hateful-looking land, flat and desolate, dank and
dirty-looking. The flat, dull, dirty marsh country seemed to be
without life; the very grass seemed blighted. And we were drifting
ashore to it, fast drifting ashore to the tune of the two drunkards:
"There was a ship, and a ship of fame:
Away, ho! Rise and shine.
There was a ship, and a ship of fame,
So rise and shine, my buck o boy."
A ship manned by such a crew was hardly a ship of fame, I
thought. Then it occurred to me that if she went ashore I might escape
from her, might even get safely home, or at least get to London (I had
no notion how far London might be), where I thought that the Lord
Mayor, of whom I had often heard as a great man, would send me home.
I had a new half-crown in my pocket; that would be enough to keep me
in food on the road, I thought. And then, just as I thought that, a
little coast-current spun us in very rapidly, helped by the wind, for
about two hundred yards. This brought us very close to the shore, but
not quite near enough for me, who had no great wish to start my
journey wet through.
I gave Marah a last sip of water, left a bucket of fresh water and a
pannikin close to him, in case he should recover (I never thought he
would), and then began to make up a little parcel of things to take
with me. I was wearing the clothes of a ship's boy, canvas trousers,
thick blucher shoes, a rough check shirt, and a straw hat. My own
clothes--the clothes which I had worn when I scrambled down the fox's
earth--were forward, under the half deck. I went to fetch them, and
got them safely, though the drunkards tried to stop me, and said that
they only wanted me to sing them a song to be as happy as
kings. However, I got away from them, and carried my belongings aft. I
then took the tarpaulin boat-rug, which covered our little Norwegian
pram or skiff, on its chocks between the masts. It was rather too
large for my purpose, so I cut it in two, using the one half as a
bundle-cover. The other half would make a sort of cape or cloak, I
thought, and to that end I folded it and slung it over my shoulder. I
gave my knife a few turns upon the grindstone, pocketed some twine
from one of the lockers, lashed my bundle in its tarpaulin as tightly
as I could, and then went aft to the provision lockers to get some
stores for the road. I took out a few ship's biscuits, a large hunk of
ham, some onions, and the half of a Dutch cheese.
It occurred to me that I ought to eat before
I started, as I did not know what might befall upon the road. When I
sat down upon the deck to begin my meal, I saw, to my horror, that we
were drifting out again. While I had been packing, we had been swept
off shore; by this time we were three hundred yards away, still
drawing further out to sea. Looking out, I saw that we were drifting
into a "jobble" or tide-race, which seemed to drift obliquely into the
shore. This made me feel less frightened, so I turned to my food, ate
heartily, and took a good swig at the scuttle-butt by way of a morning
draught. Then I undid my parcel, packed as much food into it as I
possibly could, and lashed it up again in its tarpaulin. I found a few
reins and straps in one of the lockers, so I made shoulder-straps of
them, and buckled my package to my shoulders. My last preparation was
to fill a half-pint glass flask (every man aboard carries one or two
of these). Just as I replaced its stopper, we swept into the jobble;
the lugger filled on one tack, and lay over, and the spray of a wave
came over us. Then we righted suddenly, came up into the wind with our
sails slatting, and made a stern-board.
Nearer and nearer came the land; the shore, with its bent grass,
seemed almost within catapult shot. I heard the wash of the sea upon
the beach, I could see the pebbles on the sands shining as the foam
left them. And then, suddenly, the lugger drove ashore upon a bank,
stern first. In a moment she had swung round, broadside on to the
shoal, heaving over on her side. Every wave which struck her lifted
her further in, tossing her over on her starboard side. I could see
that the tide was now very nearly fully in, and I knew that the lugger
would lie there, high and dry, as soon as it ebbed.
I made Marah as comfortable as I could, and called to the drunkards to
come with me. I told them that a revenue cutter was within six miles
of us (there was, as it happened, but she was at anchor off
Dymchurch), and that they had better be going out of that before they
got themselves arrested. For answer they jeered and made catcalls,
flinging a marline-spike at me. I tried a second time to make them
come ashore, but one of them said, "Let's do for him," and the other
cheered the proposal with loud yells. Then they came lurching aft at
me, so I just slipped over the side, and waded very hurriedly
ashore. The water was not deep (it was not up to my thighs in any
place), so that I soon reached the sand without wetting my
package. Then I looked back to see the two smugglers leaning over the
side, watching my movements. One of them was singing--
"There was a ship, and a ship of fame:
Away, ho! Rise and shine"
in a cracked falsetto. The other one was saying, "You come back, you
young cub."
But I did not do as they bid. I ran up the beach and as far across the
wet grassland as I could without once stopping. When I thought that I
was safe, I sat down under some bushes, took off my wet things, and
dressed myself in my own clothes. I wrung the water from the wet
canvas, repacked my parcel, and seeing a road close to me, turned into
it at once, resolved to ask the way to London at the first house. I
suppose that it was five o'clock in the morning when I began my
journey.
