He dropped behind a boulder.
A filthy little scarecrow of a man, trousers rolled about his knee, was standing in the sea, holding some one by the hand not ten yards away.
In the mist Kit thought at first that he was paddling with a child.
Then he saw his mistake. The scarecrow was holding a bare arm by the hand. That arm thrust up horribly from the water: the body to which it belonged was beneath the surface. Between his dirty teeth the man held a knife. His business was obvious. He was spoiling the dead.
A huge fellow with a tawny beard spread fan-like on his chest strolled round the Head, a musket beneath his arm.
"What, Dingy! got the jumps aboard again?" he growled.
"I thart I yeard a chap a-walkin," trembled the scarecrow.
He let the dead man"s hand flop into the water.
"Plenty o chaps--not much walkin," chirped a voice of one unseen.
A treble laugh greeted the sally.
Round the Head a boat came paddling.
In it was a man fat as a sow, and not unlike one. Honey-coloured ringlets hung down to his neck. He had slits for eyes, and the great face, dough-like, was set in an ogreish smile.
Kit saw before him in the flesh the worst of the nightmare imaginings of his nursery days. He began to dither like a monkey in the presence of a snake. There was a horror of the unnatural about the man that turned him faint. Here was Mammon, Mammon in the flesh; and so close that the boy could smell him.
"Belike it"s Black Diamond come after you, Jow!" wheezed the fat man-- "to pay you for what you done to him night afore last." The shrill voice, squeezing from that vat-like carca.s.s, added to the terror of the man.
""Twarn"t me, I tall you!" screamed the scarecrow.
"It were you, Fat George; and now you"re for puttin it on me."
The fat man backwatered in-sh.o.r.e; the smile set and horrible on his face.
"None o that, my lad, if you please," he husked--"that"s to say if you"re wishful to stay friends with George--ole George, who don"t forget."
Dingy Joe began to whimper.
"I suppose it were me flashed my knife on the Gentleman too?"
The fat man leaned on his oars.
"Now," he said with manly frankness, "that _were_ me. Every man answers for his own work in this gang, and none needn"t go short. I faced the Gentleman plucky, didn"t I, Bandy?"
"You faced him plucky from behind," chirped the voice of the man unseen.
Hoa.r.s.e laughter from behind the Head told that the shaft had gone home.
Fat George held a deprecating hand to heaven.
"Now eark to that, my G.o.d!" he squeaked. "I risk my blessed neck for em. I"m the only man o the lot got the guts to stand up to him. I tells him straight, I says--"We"ve lost our leader and our lugger in your service, my lord," says I, "and now you got to--well square it.""
""--well square it!"" snorted the giant. "That"s a pretty way to talk to a gentleman, ain"t it?"
Fat George pointed a derisive finger at him.
"Can"t forget he was a gamekeeper!" he t.i.ttered. "Touch his at and all, didn"t you, Red Beard?"
"And wish I"d never stopped touchin it!" shouted the giant. "Blasted young fool that I were!--Thought I"d take a short cut to fortune, same as the rest.--And where"s it landed me?"
He swept his hand around.
"Heark to Red Beard!" giggled Fat George. "Quite the Methody man, ain"t he?"
A gust of pa.s.sion darkened the giant"s face. He surged through the water towards the boat.
"--well square it!" he foamed. "I"ll--well square _you_, you lump o lard with the heart of a maggot!" He stopped, steadying down to a fierce scorn.
"And he would ha--well squared it only for you messin about with that blasted knife o your"n be"ind him."
"He would ha--well squared it only for you knockin the blasted knife up!" shrilled the fat man. "That"s the best _you_ can do. Pretty set for a man to be "sociated with."
He bent over his hand; his locks fell about his face; and he rocked to and fro like a weeping woman.
The sound of angry voices brought others trooping round the Head. Some slopped along in the water, others trailed along the edge. The eyes of all were down, hunting for prey.
Kit, watching them with shuddering heart, recalled that pa.s.sage in his mother"s favourite Sunday book where Christian, at the mouth of h.e.l.l, heard a company of fiends coming to meet him.
He found himself envying Christian. An honest fiend was an honest fiend; but these were men! It was their humanity, the sense of his kinship with them, that seemed to make his heart collapse.
And their names!
Toadie, the squat brute, with the front teeth; Whitey, the albino, peering and prying; One-eye, Humpy, Bandy and the rest--all labelled like dogs from some physical deformity.
Once and for all they slew in the boy"s mind the Romance of Crime. Now he understood what the old Book meant about the Wages of Sin. Death indeed; death in life. He read it in their faces. Yes; it was all true. These men _had_ done evil, and they _had_ come forth unto the Resurrection of d.a.m.nation.
And not so very long ago he had wished to be one such!--a highwayman, a smuggler, a gentlemanly villain of some sort, very devil-may-care and gallant, robbing the rich, helping the poor, waving a scented handkerchief to the ladies as he rode to Tyburn, debonair to the last.
Now he was face to face with criminals in real life. And what was their distinguishing feature?--_Filth_.
They had not shaved for days, nor washed for years. The stink of them blew off the clean sea towards him. It seemed to his imagination that the water curdled with disgust as the brutes slushed through it.
A phrase of his laughing mother"s occurred to him--_no soap, no soul_. True too.
He would have given all he had for a look at one clean-fleshed, clear- eyed Englishman, smelling of earth and honest tobacco.
"Listen to im!" grumbled Red Beard. "Might be c.o.c.k o the Gang the way he carries on."
The fat man tossed back his locks.