Fitz clambered over the packages and dropped from the tail. The lane in which the cart had halted was a narrow one, running between two hedge-crowned banks. Trees showed above the line on the left—probably marking the woods Jem had spoken of. Fitz started up the bank.
Behind him he could hear the steady rumble of Walt's swearing. Seemingly the carter could not make up his mind whether to abandon the cart or remain and try to talk his way out of the clutches of a man-hungry press gang. But if they wanted men so badly that they had to strike this far inland to find them, there probably would be little Walt could do to escape them. Jem had utterly disappeared—unless a wildly waving bush at the top of the rise marked the smuggler's passing.
Fitz squeezed through what he hoped was the weakest point of the barrier, a choice which was not so clever after all, since it almost stripped him and added a wealth of bleeding scratches to his tatters. But the woods beyond were a disappointment—being no more than a small grove, the underbrush of which had been well cleared. Fitz lost no time there but dodged between the trees. And beyond those trees his luck completely failed him.
The carting lane had made a tight loop and he plunged abruptly back onto it, tramping into the first rut of the track before he realized his danger. For he had burst out upon the very pop-eyed, uniformed party he had been trying to avoid.
He twisted around, even as harsh commands rang out, but, before he could regain such miserable cover as the wood afforded, a stout shoulder struck him at hip level. So, straightly tackled he went down, striking the stony ground with enough force to drive all the wind out of his laboring lungs.
17
For a Prize, and a Battle, and a Breeze!
What is that a-bellowing there
Like a thunderhead in air?
Why should such a sight be whitening the sea?
That's a Yankee man-o-war,
And three things she's seeking for—
For a prize, and for a battle, and a breeze.
—FIRST FRUITS
The catch of the press gang, a half-dozen miserable and sullen farm boys and wayfarers, were roped together, marched back to a small fishing village on the coast, and thrust into the guarded stable of the only inn. Apparently the manpower of the village had prudently made off when the king's ship had come in a-hunting close to nightfall the day before, so the zealous lieutenant and midshipman in charge of the gang had struck inland to draw their net. And by the burst of festive song and other sounds wafting out of the inn, their good luck was now being celebrated.
Fitz dropped on a truss of straw and tried to guess the future. As an escaped prisoner of war in civilian clothes, perhaps with the added peril of an accusation of being one of the principals in a fatal duel, there was no earthly sense in revealing his identity to the officers. While he had no desire to serve His Majesty on board any ship in Fat George's navy, there was always the chance of escape. By now, Crofts, in his position, would have laid several plans to take that chance.
Thinking of Crofts reminded him of the elusive Mr. Norwood. He hoped that the Captain had succeeded where he had failed and was now safe over the Channel. What had happended to Watts? As a noncombatant he, too, must have been freed long ago.
A lantern flashed by the door and an inn servant, well guarded by two of the press gang, came in to dump helter-skelter on the floor some loaves of bread and a jug.
The lantern was taken away when the door was locked, and they were left in the dark to grope for their food. Fitz gnawed on a stale bread crust with real hunger. It was the first time he had eaten that day. Presently he became aware of a prolonged and steady sniffling out of the dark.
"What's to do?" he asked in a half-whisper.
His first answer was a louder sniff and a sort of choke. Then a boy's voice came with a shamed break to blur the words.
"Wot—wot be they a-goin' t' do wi' weuns?"
Fitz laughed without humor. "Enlist us in His Majesty's navy. A great service when men must be driven into it with clubs!"
"But—but—I ain't no sailor "
"That doesn't matter at all," Fitz informed him grimly. "You will be, if a rope's end can flog the knowledge into you."
"Squire'll git me out " But there was little hope in the voice that said that.
"Perhaps. If he can discover where you are before they shove us aboard this sloop of theirs. We'll be in the Channel by morning. This captain is shrewd enough to hunt along the coast villages with his press gang, instead of staying in a port where he can pick up only the dregs left after other gangs have hunted six or seven years before him. He won't bide here and wait for squires or anyone else to rescue his catch." Fitz wondered if either Mr. Burnette, his cousin's comrades, or both, might be riding to wrest him from the clutch of the navy.
"I don't want t' be no sailor!" Hope might be gone, but the sniffling had stopped also. There was the core of something hard in the voice, a hint of determination being born.
"Neither did I, either time," Fitz couldn't help replying.
"Be ye one o' th' Gentlemen, sir?" asked his companion with honest respect. "I heard tell as how they wos real gentry ridin' wi' 'em."
"Yes," Fitz remembered his late journey. Jem was certainly one of the Gentlemen. "I was with them—as late as last night."
"Perhaps they'll git ye out "
"There's no chance of that." Fitz stretched his arms wide. "Best sleep while they let you," he told his shadowy companion. "I wonder that they have not shipped us yet."
But the captives were not allowed to rest long. Within the hour the guards came in, kicked them up into line, and urged them down a muddy street, through a fine mist of rain, to the wharf. There they found the boats which took them out to the sloop.
Snug below a fastened hatch, Fitz repeated a string of blistering words as he nursed his wrist which a knotted rope "starter" had cracked across the bone. The fetid smells of the sloop were worse than those of the privateer, and he had little room to move, packed in as he was with the rest of the pressed men.
Sounds of the sloop getting under weigh were easy to identify. Fitz guessed that their voyage would end either at Portsmouth or Plymouth, to join with the squadron. He set his teeth on his lip and strove to fight off the rising nausea which the pitching and the stench had given rise to.
His fellow sufferers were either less iron-willed or more susceptible, and within a very few minutes their prison was a nightmare of groaning, sickened men. Fitz rubbed his wrist and began to wish with all his heart for five minutes on the gun deck of the Retaliation with this damned sloop for a target. Ninnes could have laid a shot in the old days which would have had the mast clean out of her.
Unconsciously his lips shaped the firing orders which he had heard bawled so many times by powder-hoarsened voices. He jumped as a hand touched his bruised wrist.
"Kin weuns git out, sir?"
"If and when they want us," Fitz returned between set teeth. "We may have been bagged to supply another ship and they might be taking us back to port to sort us out. Aboard here there's no chance of escape as there would have been had they tried to march us overland. The man who planned this is a clever devil!"
Apparently the Channel was not in the best of moods. The sloop bucked seas which almost sent her spinning top-wise. Fitz remembered the storm which had driven the Retaliation under the very waves she had been fashioned to battle. He tried to brace himself in a corner and keep away from the solid mass of misery which filled most of the floor space in their cage. It would be a test of endurance, yet while he in no way welcomed it, he was much better prepared for the experience than the rest of the poor creatures who shared that stinking space.
After a while his head began to pound, and he felt as faint as he had after the spill on the moor road. Now and then he was aware of voices, but it was too much trouble to try to sort out words.
It was the rumble of a gun carriage directly overhead which brought him back to full consciousness. He had heard that sound too often to
be mistaken. By the sounds which drifted down to them he guessed the sloop was preparing for an engagement, although she still bobbed like a cork in the wild waters.
"Fight, sir!" someone babbled in his ear.
Fitz pulled himself together. "Sounds like that. There are American privateers hereabouts willing to scrap "
They all heard the shot which thudded home above their heads. Heard that and the dreadful gurgling scream which answered it. There was a cry of fear and horror from the pressed men, and those who could stand pulled themselves up, shouting to be let out.
"They'll leave us t' die!" screeched one of the prisoners.
Fitz bit his lip. This was different from the battles on the Retaliation. Then he had been in the open— with duties of his own to keep his mind occupied. But this being penned-up in the dark hold of a fighting ship—a passive target for any round shot which might tear through—this was
He caught at the tatters of his courage, fought down the hysteria which had almost set him to screaming with the rest of them. Instead he tried to shout them down. Vainly, for he only strained his throat and no one listened.
There were more shots going home now, and the sloop shuddered at each blow. Her return fire was ragged. Fitz tried to count the guns which were still in use. But in all the clamor he could not mark them.
At last a silence fell, broken only by the pounding of feet back and forth overhead. Even the prisoners were struck dumb by the sudden lapse in the battle and stopped their cries to listen.
"Wot's happened?" demanded one.
"Fight's over, I think," Fitz replied. "Either the sloop has struck her colors—or the enemy has. If it's the first, we can hope to get out."
That magic word "out" set them to going again, and men tried to reach the hatch overhead to pound on it. Without success, since it was above arm's reach, and the movement of the ship kept them from climbing on one another's shoulders. But within a space of moments the hatch was ripped off and they blinked up at a row of heads dark against the light.
"Phew!" One of the men above pulled back with an exclamation of disgust. "What an almighty stink! Get them out of there, Collins."
A rope ladder was dropped, and the pressed men began to pull themselves up—mostly with the clumsiness of landsmen. Fitz climbed nimbly enough at his turn and was herded with the others to one side of the deck. One glance told him that his wild hope was true.
He was standing on the deck of a beaten ship, and across the water was a slim, rakish craft with a familiar flag. Impulsively he started to join the officer who had superintended the removal of the hatch. But that gentleman was already giving them his attention, eyeing their battered group without much favor.
"Pressed, eh?" He did not hold his handkerchief to his nose as he stood to the windward of them, but he gave the impression that he wished he could. "Any of you Americans?"
Fitz's hand moved in salute, and he took another step forward.
"Sublieutenant Lyon, Marines, from the Retaliation out of Baltimore, sir. Escaped prisoner of war from Mill Prison," he added quickly in answer to the officer's look of incredulous amazement.
"Your captain?"
"Captain Daniel Crofts, sir."
"You are a Marylander?"
"Yes, sir."
"Over there," the officer jerked his thumb aft and Fitz obeyed.
"Any more?"
Sullen shakes of the head and blank stares were the only replies to that question. The officer shot a crisp order over his shoulder to his own men.
"Coffin, Kitchner, see them aboard that fishing smack and turn the whole parcel loose. They're no sailors and will thank their lucky stars to be free. No use cluttering up the Shark with them."
Fitz was rowed to the American brig with a contingent of the victors. The American privateer was not long out of her native Philadelphia, and already well on the way to making a fortune for her owners and crew. He fronted her commander, Captain Stephen Deal, with some misgivings as to his welcome. But
Deal, having served under Crofts, was interested only in knowing of his friend's luck and present situation. To which questions Fitz could only tell what he knew up to the moment they had ridden out of The Green Man's yard together.
Deal, a bustling man in his middle thirties, new come to command after years as second to more lucky officers, was bubbling over with zeal and poured into Fitz's ears a fat budget of news from home, intermingled with his own high hopes for the future. His success with the sloop had been as good as half a dozen noggins of brandy to put spirit into the whole ship.
But Fitz was more than a little depressed. The Shark might be a well-found, smart-sailing weapon with a sea-wise commander on her. And Lady Luck might have chosen her bowsprit for a permanent perch. But she was not the Retaliation.
When he realized the trend of his on thoughts he was startled. Was he actually homesick for the clipper which had carried him out of Baltimore? His feet instinctively found their balance on the swaying deck. He walked sure-footed where months before he would have clutched at the nearest support. He drew lungfuls of the mingled odors of bilge water, old cheese, bad salt pork, sulphur, and salt air, and found it good. And he was almost frightened by this discovery.
By adroit questioning he discovered that the Shark was halfway through a cruise which would eventually return her to Bordeaux, to which port she had already dispatched the five prizes she had taken. And there was no hope of quitting her until that return—unless, of course, Fitz had the overwhelming ill-luck to encounter His Majesty's navy for the third time.
Luck had a way of turning on threes, Fitz thought dismally to himself as he swung in the spare hammock they had found for him. Having not signed papers on the Shark, though Deal had been most cordial in urging him to do so, he was still only a passenger.
It was shortly after dawn that they almost ran down the St. Malouin privateer. Small, hardly larger than the fishing smack she resembled so closely, she was homeward bound, herding before her a prize twice her size, with the flags of two more captures spanking the breeze below her own ensign. Fitz saw his chance and took it, begging passage on her to France. Deal tried to persuade him to remain, but Fitz was stubborn.
The St. Malouin captain was disposed to being talkative, though his patois was almost beyond Fitz's comprehension. By understanding one word in four the Marylander guessed at the rest. But at the sound of one mangled name he was instantly alert.
"Crofts! You say Captain Crofts?"
"Oui, Capitaine Crofts." Though twisted, that name was clear. "You know Capitaine Crofts?"
"Yes. He is in Saint Malo? He escaped?"
The Malouin threw out his hands. "He escaped, oui. But if he is in Saint Malo yet—that I can not tell you. He was there, and some of his officers too. I, Henri Bodlieu, can point out to you the rooms they inhabit —over the pastry establishment of M'sieur Harve. And that I shall do for you, if you wish it "
For the rest of the voyage back to the inner harbor of St. Malo, Fitz raged impatiently. Captain Bodlieu laughed at him indulgently.
"Dieu, would you have me rein dolphins to my Petite Belle that we may make harbor sooner? We are on a swift sailer, oui. My pretty one." He laid his hand caressingly on the rail. "She is noted for the quickness of her heels. We shall raise harbor in good time and then we shall seek out these friends of yours and settle the little matter of your transportation fees."
Bodlieu watched him from beneath half-lowered eyelids, and Fitz knew that the French captain was waiting to see how he would take this intimation that the Petite Belle was not carrying him free of charge. He fingered the money belt at his middle, flattened of its last gold piece. Considering the prizes the Retaliation had sent into St. Malo—even if only one of them made port safely—he should have money enough waiting him there to meet current expenses as soon as he could reach Crofts.
"Fair enough," he returned, and Bodlieu clapped him on the shoulder.
But even when they reached harbor Fitz had to wait impa
tiently while the captain conferred with the port authorities and saw to this form and that. Finally, seeming to sense Fitz's mounting irritation, he brought up one of the officers.
"I find, M'sieur, that affairs of business will keep me here yet awhile. And you must have the highest impatience to join with your friends. Therefore I send Jules with you. Jules knows well the shop of M'sieur Harve."
Fitz thanked Bodlieu and went ashore with the mate, winding through the narrow streets of the town he had last walked with Watts. Harve's pastry shop was well above the wharf section, and the steps leading to the living quarters over it had been recently scrubbed. A fat and indolent cat watched them sleepily from the doorstep, refusing to move so that they had to step over it to climb the stairs. But halfway up, the passage was barred by a small woman in a very tall and much be-bowed mobcap who at their appearance let out such a torrent of excited speech that neither could hope to ask questions of their own until she ran out of breath. Then Fitz shot in an inquiry for the American officers.
That started another spate of words, out of which he gleaned the intelligence that someone was above and she would thank the good saints to remove all dirty-footed men from her establishment.
Fitz pushed past her and pounded on up the stairs, knocking at the closed door at the top. A muffled voice he could not have put name to bade him in.
The room was small and low ceilinged. Flowers
Fitz went ashore with the mate.
nodded from red pots on wide sills where two windows were open to the noises and scents of the city. But even their scarlet cheer did little to break the general air of drabness within.
Fitz hesitated in the doorway. The room's only occupant was sitting in his shirt-sleeves, his back to the door, his brown head resting on one hand. The blue, salt-stained and faded coat hanging over the back of his chair bore the single epaulette of a lieutenant. But surely that was not Matthews. . . .
"Well, what keeps you?" demanded the man in harshly accented French. "Come on and shut the door! Half the house a-gawkin' "