CHAPTER XV. THE ROAD TO LYME
We spread the tidings as far as Exeter, where Mr. Blick made some
pretence of handing me over to a schoolmaster, one Hubble, a
red-faced, cheery clergyman, one of the most ardent rebels on our
side. Indeed, the clergymen everywhere supported us, as defenders
of the Protestant faith, which that dastard James would have
destroyed. Mr. Hubble made some excuse for not taking me in at
the instant; but gave us letters of introduction to people in
towns further on, so that we could pass the militia without
difficulty, to give the news in western Dorset. So after waiting
for a little while in Exeter, gathering all the news we could of
the whereabouts of the troops of militia, we pushed on eastward,
by way of Sidmouth, to the big town of Dorchester. As we came
east, we found the militia very much more suspicious than they
had been on the western side of Exeter. At every little town we
found a strong guard so placed that no one could enter without
passing under the captain's eye. We were brought before militia
captains some two or three times a day. Sometimes we were
searched; sometimes, if the captain happened to be drunk, we were
bullied with threats of the gaol. Mr. Blick in these cases always
insisted on being brought before the magistrate, to whom he would
tell a fine indignant tale, saying what a shame it was that he
could not take his orphan nephew peaceably to school, without
being suspected of complicity in a rebellion. He would then show
Mr. Hubble's letters, or some other papers signed by the
Dartmouth magistrates. These always cleared our characters, so
that we were allowed to proceed; but I did not like the way in
which our descriptions were taken. Once on our journey, shortly
after we had left Sidmouth, where the soldiers had been very
suspicious, we turned out of the highway to leave word at a town
called Seaton. We spread the watchword at several villages near
the sea, before we came to Seaton, so that we were rather late in
arriving. Thinking no wrong, we put up at one of the inns in
Seaton, intending to pass the night there. We were at supper in
our inn, when some yeomanry rode up to the door, to ask the
landlord if an elderly man had passed that way with a boy. The
landlord, who was a good deal scared by the soldiers, showed the
captain in to us at once. We were quite as much scared to see him
as the landlord had been. The captain of the soldiers was the
very man who had given us such a searching examination in
Sidmouth that morning.
"Well," he said to Mr. Blick, "I thought you were going to
Dorchester. What brings you here?" "Sir," said Mr. Blick, "we've
been so much interrupted by soldiers that we hoped to travel away
from the main-roads."
"Well, sir," said the captain, "I've had you watched. Since you
left Sidmouth, you've been into every inn upon the road,
listening to a lot of seditious talk about Argyle. That's not my
point, though. You gave out to me that you were going to
Dorchester. Instead of that you slink off the Dorchester road at
the first opportunity. You will have to explain yourself to my
superiors. You're under arrest."
"Sir," said Mr. Blick, "I am sorry that you should think ill of
me. We will gladly come with you to answer for our conduct to the
authorities. But while the horses are being saddled, perhaps you
will join us at supper. Landlord, bring a couple of bottles more.
The captain sups with us."
But though the captain drank his couple of bottles of port, he
did not become any gentler with us. As soon as supper was over we
had to ride on again, with the troopers all round us.
"Sir," said Mr. Blick, "may I ask you where we are going with
you?"
"Axminster," said the captain.
"Well. That's on my way," said Mr. Blick.
"It'll probably end your way, for some time," said the captain.
"I'm perfectly willing to abide by the decision of the
authorities," Mr. Blick answered calmly. "But what is the meaning
of all these soldiers everywhere? I've asked the people; but
nobody seems able to give a straight answer."
"I think you know what the soldiers mean well enough," answered
the captain. "If you hadn't known you wouldn't have turned out of
the highway."
At about midnight we reached Axminster. We were taken before a
couple of officers who sat at work by candlelight over a mass of
papers, in an upper chamber of an inn. They had a wild air of
having been without sleep for some time. Their muddy riding boots
were drying in front of the fire. They had a map of the
countryside before them, all stuck about with little flags, some
red, some yellow, to show where the different troops of militia
were stationed. After saluting these officers, the captain made
his report about us, saying that we were suspicious persons, who
had started from Sialmouth, towards Dorchester. He had waited to
receive word from the troops stationed along the highway of our
arrival at various points upon the road; but, failing to hear
about us, he had searched for us, with the result that he had
found us at Seaton, some miles out of our way. The officers
questioned us closely about our plans, making notes of what we
said. They kept referring to a book of letters, as though to
verify what we said. Mr. Blick's answers made them take a
favourable view of us; but they told him in a friendly way that
the officer had done right to arrest us. They complimented the
captain on his zeal. Meanwhile, they said, since we were going to
Dorchester, we could not object to going with a military escort.
A troop of cavalry was to start in a couple of hours; we could go
with that.
We were in Dorchester for a few days, always under the eye of the
soldiers. It was a bustling, suspicious time full of false
alarms. Mr. Blick told me that the message "King Golden Cap.
After six one," meant that the Duke was to be expected off Golden
Cap, a cliff a few miles from Lyme Regis, any day after the first
of the sixth month. He was on tenter-hooks to be in Lyme to greet
him on his arrival; but this he could not hope to do. We were
watched too carefully to be able to get away to a place upon the
sea-coast. We had to be very careful how we sent our secret
message abroad into the country. I have never known a time so
full of alarms. People would ride in to the town at night with
word that Monmouth was landed, or that there was fighting all
along the coast, or that King James was dead. The drums would
beat; the cavalry would come out clattering. People would be
crying out. The loyal would come to their doorsteps ready to fly
further inland. Every night, if one lay awake, one could hear the
noise of spades in back gardens where misers were burying their
money. Then, every day, one would see the troopers coming in,
generally two at a time, with a suspected man led by a cord
knotted to his two thumbs. Dorchester gaol was full of suspected
people, who were kept in prison indefinitely, without trial, in
very great discomfort. King James was afraid, he did not really
know of what, so he took measures not so much to prevent trouble
as to avenge his own fear. Mr. Blick used to send me to the
prison every morning with loaves of fresh bread for the
prisoners.
At last, after midnight, in the night of the 11th of June, a
memorable day for the West, riders came in with news which
destroyed the night's rest of the town. Monmouth had landed at
Lyme the evening before, after sailing about in sight of the town
all day. That was news indeed. It made a strange uproar in the
streets. The trumpets blew from every inn-door to summons the
billeted soldiers. Officers ran about bawling for their
sergeants; the sergeants hurried about with lanterns, rousing the
men from where they slept. All the streets were full of cavalry
men trying to form in the crowd. At last, when they were formed,
a trumpet sounded, making everyone keep silence. Then in the
stillness an officer shouted out an order, which no one, save a
soldier, could understand. Instantly the kettle-drums began to
pound; the swords jingled; the horses whinnied, tossing up their
heads. The soldiers trotted off smartly towards Bridport, leaving
the town strangely quiet, strangely scared, to discuss the great
news from Lyme.
I was watching the crowd at my bed-room window when the horsemen
trotted off. While I stood looking at them, Mr. Blick ran
upstairs, bidding me to come down at once, as now there was a
chance to get to Lyme. "Come quick," he said. "The troops are
gone. We must follow on their tracks. It'll be too late later in
the morning." In less than twenty minutes we were trotting after
the soldiers at a good pace, passing some scores of men on foot
who were hurrying, as they said, to see the battle. Mr. Blick
wore a sword which clattered as he rode. The people hearing the
noise thought that he was an officer, perhaps a colonel, riding
with his servant. Many of the men asked him where the battle was
to be, whether it would begin before daylight, whether Monmouth
was come with the French, all sorts of questions, to which we
answered at random. In the light summer night we had a fair view
of things. When we dismounted to lead our horses up or down the
steep hills of that road, the straggling sight-seers came all
round us as we walked, to hear what we had to tell. We could see
their faces all about us, strange in the dusk, like ghosts, not
like real men. At the top of one hill, Mr. Blick warned them to
look out for themselves. He told them that before morning the
highway would be patrolled by troops who would take them in
charge as suspicious characters trying to join Monmouth, which
actually happened the next day when the militia officers realized
that war had begun. His words scared off a number ,of them; but
many kept on as they were going, to see the great battle, which,
they said, would begin as soon as it was light.
When the sun began to peep, we turned off the highway in order to
avoid Bridport, which we passed a little after dawn. A few miles
further on we felt that we could turn into the road again as we
were safe from the militia at that distance. Then, feeling happy
at the thought of the coming contest, which, we felt sure, would
be won by our side, we pressed our tired nags over the brook
towards the steep hill which separates Charmouth from Lyme.
It was early morning, about five o'clock, when we came to
Charmouth; but the little town was as busy as though it were noon
on fair-day. The street was crowded. People were coming in from
all the countryside. A man was haranguing the crowd from a
horseless waggon drawn up at an inn. The horses had no doubt been
pressed into Monmouth's service some hours before. I should think
that there must have been three hundred people listening to the
orator. Men, already half drunk, with green boughs in their hats,
were marching about the town in uneven companies, armed with
clubs torn from the hedges. Weeping women followed them, trying
to persuade their sons or husbands to come home. Other men were
bringing out horses from private stables. People were singing.
One man, leaning out of a window, kept on firing his pistol as
fast as he could load. Waving men cheered from the hill above.
The men in the town cheered back. There was a great deal of noisy
joking everywhere. They cheered us as we rode through them,
telling us that Monmouth had arms for all. One poor woman begged
Mr. Blick to tell her man to come home, as without him the
children would all starve. The crowd groaned at her; but Mr.
Blick stopped them, calling the husband, who was in a sad
state of drunken vainglory, to leave the ranks in which he tried
to march. "We don't want fathers of families," he cried. "We want
these tight young bachelors. They're the boys." Indeed, the tight
young bachelors felt that this was the case, so the woman got her
man again; lucky she was to get him. As far as I could judge, the
crowd imagined us to be great officers; at any rate our coming
drew away the listeners from the waggon. They came flocking to
our heels as though we were the Duke himself. A drummer beat up a
quickstep; the crowd surged forward. We marched across the fields
to Lyme, five hundred strong. One of the men, plucking a sprig of
hawthorn from the hedge, asked me to wear it in my hat as the
Duke's badge, which I did. He called me "Captain." "Captain," he
said. "We had a brush with them already, this morning, along the
road here. Two on 'em were killed. They didn't stay for no more."
So fighting had begun then, the civil war had taken its first
fruits of life. There could be no more shillyshallying; we had
put our hands to a big business. In spite of the noise of the
march, my spirits were rather dashed by the thought of those two
men, lying dead somewhere on the road behind us, killed by their
own countrymen.
We are said to be a sober people; but none of those who saw Lyme
that morning would have had much opinion of our sobriety.
Charmouth had been disorderly; Lyme was uproarious. Outside the
town, in one of the fields above the church, we were stopped by
a guard of men who all wore white scarves on their arms, as well
as green sprays in their hats. They stopped us, apparently,
because their captain wished to exercise them in military
customs. They were evidently raw to the use of arms. They handled
their muskets like spades. "Be you for Monmouth, masters?" they
asked us, grinning. When we said that we were, this very
unmilitary guard told us to pass on. "Her've got arms for all,"
they said. "The word be 'Fear nothing but God.'" Some of them
joked with friends among our party. They waved their muskets to
us.
