The things that truly last when men and times have pa.s.sed They are all in Pennsylvania this morning!
Brother Square-Toes
It was almost the end of their visit to the seaside. They had turned themselves out of doors while their trunks were being packed, and strolled over the Downs towards the dull evening sea. The tide was dead low under the chalk cliffs, and the little wrinkled waves grieved along the sands up the coast to Newhaven and down the coast to long, grey Brighton, whose smoke trailed out across the Channel.
They walked to The Gap where the cliff is only a few feet high. A windla.s.s for hoisting shingle from the beach below stands at the edge of it. The Coastguard cottages are a little farther on, and an old ship"s figure-head of a Turk in a turban stared at them over the wall.
"This time to-morrow we shall be at home, thank goodness," said Una. "I hate the sea!"
"I believe it"s all right in the middle," said Dan. "The edges are the sorrowful parts."
Cordery, the coastguard, came out of the cottage, levelled his telescope at some fishing-boats, shut it with a click and walked away. He grew smaller and smaller along the edge of the cliff, where neat piles of white chalk every few yards show the path even on the darkest night.
"Where"s Cordery going?" said Una.
"Half-way to Newhaven," said Dan. "Then he"ll meet the Newhaven coastguard and turn back. He says if coastguards were done away with, smuggling would start up at once."
A voice on the beach under the cliff began to sing:
"The moon she shined on Tels...o...b.. Tye-- On Tels...o...b.. Tye at night it was-- She saw the smugglers riding by, A very pretty sight it was!"
Feet scrabbled on the flinty path. A dark, thin-faced man in very neat brown clothes and broad-toed shoes came up, followed by Puck.
"Three Dunkirk boats was standin" in!"
the man went on.
"Hssh!" said Puck. "You"ll shock these nice young people."
"Oh! Shall I? Mille pardons!" He shrugged his shoulders almost up to his ears--spread his hands abroad, and jabbered in French. "No comprenny?"
he said. "I"ll give it you in Low German." And he went off in another language, changing his voice and manner so completely that they hardly knew him for the same person. But his dark beady-brown eyes still twinkled merrily in his lean face, and the children felt that they did not suit the straight, plain, snuffy-brown coat, brown knee-breeches, and broad-brimmed hat. His hair was tied in a short pig-tail which danced wickedly when he turned his head.
"Ha" done!" said Puck, laughing. "Be one thing or t"other, Pharaoh--French or English or German--no great odds which."
"Oh, but it is, though," said Una quickly. "We haven"t begun German yet, and--and we"re going back to our French next week."
"Aren"t you English?" said Dan. "We heard you singing just now."
"Aha! That was the Suss.e.x side o" me. Dad he married a French girl out o" Boulogne, and French she stayed till her dyin" day. She was an Aurette, of course. We Lees mostly marry Aurettes. Haven"t you ever come across the saying:
"Aurettes and Lees, Like as two peas.
What they can"t smuggle, They"ll run over seas?"
"Then, are you a smuggler?" Una cried; and, "Have you smuggled much?"
said Dan.
Mr. Lee nodded solemnly.
"Mind you," said he, "I don"t uphold smuggling for the generality o"
mankind--mostly they can"t make a do of it--but I was brought up to the trade, d"ye see, in a lawful line o" descent on"--he waved across the Channel--"on both sides the water. "Twas all in the families, same as fiddling. The Aurettes used mostly to run the stuff across from Boulogne, and we Lees landed it here and ran it up to London town, by the safest road."
"Then where did you live?" said Una.
"You mustn"t ever live too close to your business in _our_ trade. We kept our little fishing smack at Sh.o.r.eham, but otherwise we Lees was all honest cottager folk--at Warminghurst under Washington--Bramber way--on the old Penn estate."
"Ah!" said Puck, squatted by the windla.s.s. "I remember a piece about the Lees at Warminghurst, I do:
"There was never a Lee to Warminghurst That wasn"t a gipsy last and first.
I reckon that"s truth, Pharaoh."
Pharaoh laughed. "Admettin" that"s true," he said, "my gipsy blood must be wore pretty thin, for I"ve made and kept a worldly fortune."
"By smuggling?" Dan asked.
"No, in the tobacco trade."
"You don"t mean to say you gave up smuggling just to go and be a tobacconist!" Dan looked so disappointed they all had to laugh.
"I"m sorry; but there"s all sorts of tobacconists," Pharaoh replied.
"How far out, now, would you call that smack with the patch on her foresail?" He pointed to the fishing-boats.
"A scant mile," said Puck after a quick look.
"Just about. It"s seven fathom under her--clean sand. That was where Uncle Aurette used to sink his brandy kegs from Boulogne, and we fished "em up and rowed "em into The Gap here for the ponies to run inland. One thickish night in January of "93, Dad and Uncle Lot and me came over from Sh.o.r.eham in the smack, and we found Uncle Aurette and the L"Estranges, my cousins, waiting for us in their lugger with New Year"s presents from mother"s folk in Boulogne. I remember Aunt Cecile she"d sent me a fine new red knitted cap, which I put on then and there, for the French was having their Revolution in those days, and red caps was all the fashion. Uncle Aurette tells us that they had cut off their King Louis" head, and, moreover, the Brest forts had fired on an English man-o"-war. The news wasn"t a week old.
""That means war again, when we was only just getting used to the peace," says Dad. "Why can"t King George"s men and King Louis" men do on their uniforms and fight it out over our heads?"
""Me too, I wish that," says Uncle Aurette. "But they"ll be pressing better men than themselves to fight for "em. The press-gangs are out already on our side: you look out for yours."
""I"ll have to bide ash.o.r.e and grow cabbages for a while, after I"ve run this cargo; but I do wish"--Dad says, going over the lugger"s side with our New Year presents under his arm and young L"Estrange holding the lantern--"I just do wish that those folk which make war so easy had to run one cargo a month all this winter. It "ud show "em what honest work means."
""Well, I"ve warned ye," says Uncle Aurette. "I"ll be slipping off now before your Revenue cutter comes. Give my love to sister and take care o" the kegs. It"s thicking to southward."
"I remember him waving to us and young Stephen L"Estrange blowing out the lantern. By the time we"d fished up the kegs the fog came down so thick Dad judged it risky for me to row "em ash.o.r.e, even though we could hear the ponies stamping on the beach. So he and Uncle Lot took the dinghy and left me in the smack playing on my fiddle to guide "em back.
"Presently I heard guns. Two of "em sounded mighty like Uncle Aurette"s three-pounders. He didn"t go naked about the seas after dark. Then come more, which I reckoned was Captain Giddens in the Revenue cutter. He was open-handed with his compliments, but he _would_ lay his guns himself. I stopped fiddling to listen, and I heard a whole skyful o" French up in the fog--and a high bow come down on top o" the smack. I hadn"t time to call or think. I remember the smack heeling over, and me standing on the gunwale pushing against the ship"s side as if I hoped to bear her off.
Then the square of an open port, with a lantern in it, slid by in front of my nose. I kicked back on our gunwale as it went under and slipped through that port into the French ship--me and my fiddle."
"Gracious!" said Una. "What an adventure!"
"Didn"t anybody see you come in?" said Dan.
"There wasn"t any one there. I"d made use of an orlop-deck port--that"s the next deck below the gun-deck, which by rights should not have been open at all. The crew was standing by their guns up above. I rolled on to a pile of dunnage in the dark and I went to sleep. When I woke, men was talking all round me, telling each other their names and sorrows just like Dad told me pressed men used to talk in the last war. Pretty soon I made out they"d all been hove aboard together by the press-gangs, and left to sort "emselves. The ship she was the _Embuscade_, a thirty-six gun Republican frigate, Captain Jean Baptiste Bompard, two days out of Le Havre, going to the United States with a Republican French Amba.s.sador of the name of Genet. They had been up all night clearing for action on account of hearing guns in the fog. Uncle Aurette and Captain Giddens must have been pa.s.sing the time o" day with each other off Newhaven, and the frigate had drifted past "em. She never knew she"d run down our smack. Seeing so many aboard was total strangers to each other, I thought one more mightn"t be noticed; so I put Aunt Cecile"s red cap on the back of my head, and my hands in my pockets like the rest, and, as we French say, I circulated till I found the galley.