Bruce Alexander - Smuggler's Moon

“Well, when I got down amongst them and everything started happening at once, I could just swear that one of them who pushed the boat out and manned the oars-the passenger, I guess you’d say-”

“Yes?”

“Was wearing skirts. Could you tell better from where you were?”

“Why, 1 don’t know. Let me think about that a moment.” I sought then to call to mind exactly what I had seen. Yet all that came was a picture of confusion. At last, giving it up, I shook my head. ”I really can’t say,” I declared. ”As you yourself put it, everything was happening at once. But it would indeed seem strange if it were a woman.”

He nodded, then fell silent, though not for long. ”Another thing,” said he, ”these two horses.”

“What about them?”

“Well, that one you’re leading, he was meant to be led, no question of it. He’s big and strong and meant to carry cargo. In short, he’s a packhorse. That’s why we loaded him up with those boxes that came off the boat, whatever’s in them. An’t I right?”

“Certainly you are, but what is your point?”

“Just that this one I’m leading is a saddle horse, pure and simple, and a damn good one at that. She’s nervous and temperamental and just a bit headstrong, but those are all signs of a good animal. Now, she was all saddled and waiting there for the passenger that came off that cutter. But you know what I found out when I went to ride her? I found out she had on her a sidesaddle, a woman’s saddle, if you please. Now, what do you think of that, Jeremy?”

”I’d say it proves your point beyond argument,” said I, laughing. ”Now why didn’t you-”

I never quite finished that sentence, for behind us a great roar sounded, then above, a moment later, came a great whirring noise.

“Duck!” shouted Mr. Perkins, and duck we did. A good thing, too, for the great shower of sand that fell upon the four prisoners and two constables did miss us altogether.

“Better run for it, gents,” yelled Mr. Perkins. ”That ain’t a musket they’re shooting at us!”

“What is it, then?”

“A cannon, and that was a cannonball landed just to the north of us.”

Hard as it was to find proper footing on that sandy bluff, the entire party managed, nevertheless, to make their way to the top of it in impressively short time. The horses, too, alive to the sense of panic in the men, heaved their way up through the sand in great, bounding leaps, racing them to the summit.

Once up and over the crest, prisoners and captors stood, resting as if out of range, wheezing and coughing. But Mr. Perkins would have none of that.

“Better move it on, gents,” he urged them. ”Next time might come closer.”

There was no next time, as it happened-not on that night, in any case. The cutter fired but once, perhaps more in pique than with a true intention to destroy: the prisoners were, after all, their own people. One of them was greatly disturbed by these events. The oarsman whose pistol had misfired seemed to be praying in the Romish style, blessing himself repeatedly. But listening carefully to him (he was quite near us), I found that it was not Latin but French he spoke, and that those were not prayers but curses he raised to heaven.

A surgeon had to be roused to remove the bullet from the wounded prisoner’s shoulder. Mr. Perkins was sent by the senior constable to fetch him. I volunteered to accompany my friend, for there was yet much I wished to know. There had been little opportunity to talk while on our way to the Good King George. The constables had unwisely marched the procession through Alfred Square, perhaps eager to show off what they had accomplished in their night’s work. While they received all the attention they might have wished, even then it seemed to me to be attention of the wrong sort. At our first appearance in the square, the patrons had poured out of the Turk’s Head and the other inns, alehouses, and dives to jeer at the luckless captives. The prisoners were greeted with laughter, hoots, and cries of derision. The tenor of these calls seemed to be that the mighty had fallen, that they were finally to get what they deserved. Oddly, it had not occurred to me until then that there might be more than one party in the smuggling trade there in Deal; there might be two, three, or even more; and all might be in mortal competition, each with the other. And why not? The robber gangs of London were in such a state, were they not? Upon one fabled occasion, two gangs had fought a pitched battle in Bedford Street over the question of which of them ”owned” a certain territory below Holbourn and above the Strand.

The crowd from Alfred Square had followed us down Middle Street, creating noise and confusion all the way to the house at Number 18. We-Mr. Perkins and I-were much annoyed by these who trooped after us, most of them drunk, all of them ill-behaved. Yet far more than we, the horses we led resented their presence-and the mare, led by Mr. Perkins, most of all. She pranced and danced, so that she was difficult even for him to hold. And at one point, she planted her front hooves and kicked back with her rear. Yet she made no contact with man nor woman, which was just as well, for Mr. Perkins had told me that he had known of people who were crippled for life from the kick of a horse.

Mr. Sarton, no doubt troubled by the noise of the crowd, seemed to take a specially long time to unlock the door; he had insisted upon hearing from both his constables before showing his face. When he did, I saw Sir John to his rear, listening closely to all that was said.

And what had been said? Mr. Trotter, the senior constable, stepped forward and gave to Mr. Sarton a full report, including the number captured and the number escaped, and the fact that one of the prisoners had suffered a gunshot wound.

“Well then,” Mr. Sarton had said, ”you must get a surgeon to treat it.”

“Soon as we’ve got them put away at the inn, I’ll send off for Mr. Parker.”

“Yes, the inn,” Mr. Sarton had said in dismay. ”Ah, for a proper jail, eh, Mr. Trotter?”

“Aye, sir. Quite right, sir.”

So it was that Mr. Perkins, as the junior of the Deal constables, came to be chosen to search out and bring the surgeon, Mr. Parker, to the Good King George. They could have chosen better. Though Mr. Perkins was given an address and rough directions, he had not been in the town of Deal for a dozen years or more. He found the place much changed. And I, of course, could be of little assistance, for I was but a visitor.

The address he had been given was one in St. George’s Road. Yet in giving directions, Mr. Trotter carelessly pointed us south instead of north, starting us off in the wrong direction. Thus we began wandering about the town, looking for Mr. Parker’s surgery precisely where it was not.

Mr. Perkins was quite exasperated by the time we had searched near half an hour and found naught nor no one to

show us the way. It was by now far too late to find anyone on the street in that part of town.

“Now, this is damned annoying, Jeremy, old chum,” said he. ”I listened careful to him. I could practically repeat what he told us word for word.”

“Little good it would do,” said I, ”for he clearly misinformed us. You don’t suppose he did it a-purpose, do you?”

“No, not a bit of it. I fear it’s just that our Constable Trotter an’t too bright.”

“We must have walked up and down every street this side of Deal.” I sighed and sought to think of something which might engage him more than my comments upon our fruitless search. Surely there was something I might ask to divert him. Then I remembered the question which had been paramount in my mind when we began this bootless enterprise.

“Mr. Perkins, I’ve a matter at which I’ve wondered ever since you jumped up and ran down that hill of sand and began yelling and shouting at the smugglers down at the water.”