Dennis Wheatley - The Launching of Roger Brook

" Tis discipline you need, you presumptuous young fool and I'm the man to give it to you. I'll soon show you who is master in this ship."

Next moment he had Roger by the scruff of the neck and forcing him over brought the cane down with a resounding wallop on his buttocks.

Roger let out a yell and tensed himself for another blow, but it did not come. While the stick was still raised in mid-air, the Admiral's action was arrested by three sharp, clear knocks that came out on the night on one of the panes of the conservatory door.

CHAPTER IV

THE MAKING OF A MAN

FOR a moment they remained as inanimate as though posed in tableau vivant, then with a muttered curse the Admiral released his hold on Roger and, turning, strode to the door. It was still unlocked and pulling it open he stared out into the warm darkness of the summer night.

A tall, bearded figure stood there and the Admiral's eyes, already accustomed to the gloom of the conservatory, swiftly took in the knitted stocking cap, woollen jersey, leather breeches and heavy seaboots of his belated visitor.

"E'en" Cap'n," said the man in a gruff voice, "Hearin' ye was back from the wars I thought ye could do with a keg of the best."

"Why, Dan!" exclaimed the Admiral, "I scarce knew you for the moment, but 'twas good of you to think of me. What have you brought us, brandy or schnapps?"

The smuggler tapped with his boot the little two-gallon cask that he had set down beside him. " 'Tis French cognac, and none better ever came out of the Charente."

The smuggling of wines, spirits, lace and perfume from France had been rife for the past eighty years—ever since Lord Methuen had imposed such heavy discriminating duties against the French that the British people, resenting them as an unjust imposition, had resorted to openly flouting the law and become ready buyers of illegal cargoes. For sheep stealing, a man could still be hanged and the sentences inflicted on poachers were often of a barbarous ferocity, but, despite the utmost pressure of the Government, no bench of magistrates would convict a smuggler, however strong the evidence against him.

The Admiral had now got back his breath and his good humour. "How fares it with you, these days?" he asked. "Is the old game as beset with pitfalls as ever, or are the Excise men grown slack?

Dan Izzard shook his massive head and the gold earrings in his ears glinted in the half-light. " 'Twas easier while the war were on, Cap'n. Most o' the revenue cutters were impressed for the Navy then, but now they're freed ag'in they're doing their darnedest to put us down."

"So the war was good for business, then?"

"Aye! Wars make no difference to the likes o' us on either side o' the Channel. An' all open trading being cut off put prices up. 'Tis fine pickings we've had these past few years, but a man has to take his life in his hands to run a cargo now the fighting's over."

Roger knew Dan well, but although he was now standing close behind his father he scarcely took in what they were saying. He felt ghastly and the conservatory seemed to be rolling round him as distressingly as if it were Dan's lugger in a heavy sea.

The Admiral stooped and tilting the little cask rolled it in through the open doorway, as he said: "Well, thanks, Dan. Look in and see me any time you're passing, and I'll settle up with you."

"Aye, aye, Cap'n, I'll do that. But 'twon't be for a day or two, as 'tis overlong since I made a trip. Good-night to 'e."

As the door closed Roger drew back, fearing a renewed assault from his father; and he had good cause to do so, as the Admiral suddenly said with cold wrath: "And now, Sir, I'll deal with you!"

At that instant Roger lurched forward, grasped uncertainly at the wooden staging on which stood several rows of pots, and was violently sick.

Baffled, the Admiral stared at him. He could hardly give the boy a leathering while in such a state. After a moment he turned away to bolt the door, and muttered angrily: "Oh, get to bed. I'll teach you manners in the morning."

Stuffing his handkerchief in his mouth, Roger slunk away and stumbled up to his room.

Having been up at four and it now being two hours past his usual bedtime, neither the tempestuous scene nor his unhappy physical state kept him long awake. After rinsing out his mouth, and sponging his face with cold water he pulled off his clothes and flopped into bed. Ten minutes later he was sound asleep.

From habit he woke soon after dawn and, but for a slight heaviness in his head, felt little the worse for his violent emotions of the previous night. When he had washed, dressed and done his brown hair as was his custom, by combing it off his forehead and tying the ends with a bow at the back of his neck, he left his room and went up by a short flight of steps to the roof.

That of the newer portion of the house had two triangular eaves filling the bulk of a square, but a leaded walk ran right round them and a breast-high parapet concealed the eaves from anyone looking up from the gardens below. It was a good place to laze if one favoured solitude on a sunny day and the views from it provided a never-failing interest.

To the north, farther up the slope, lay the gardens and backs of the largest houses of the old town, in which some activity was always to be seen; to the west lay open, Wooded country and to the east, beyond the double row of limes that formed the drive up to the house, lay the little harbour. But the most engaging prospect was to the south. There, through low-lying meadows and mud-flats, where in spring innumerable gulls' eggs were to be had for the collecting, the river Lym wound its way to the Solent. Across the three-mile-wide stretch of open water rose the island, sometimes so sharply visible that one felt one had only to reach out to touch it with the hand and the jetties of Yarmouth were easily discernible to the naked eye, at others with its heights shrouded in mist, so that only its tree-clad foreshore was visible and it took on the appearance of some mysterious jungle coast in a tropical sea.

This morning there was a faint haze which gave promise of another glorious day. Roger could see Hurst Castle on the low-lying spit that jutted out from the mainland, but he could only just discern Worsley's Tower, opposite it on the island. There, the Solent was at its narrowest and for over a thousand years it had been the ill-omened road to the invasion of England. Vespasian had made the crossing in his galleys before capturing Lymington and launching his Roman legions on their conquest of Britain. Right up to Queen Elizabeth's time the French had frequently held the vulnerable island for months at a stretch, and from it despatched forays that had pillaged and burnt the coast towns as far west as Devon.

It was for that reason that Baldwin de Redvers, second Earl of Devon and feudal lord of Lymington, finding this little outpost of his vast domains too expensive to defend, had granted the town its freedom in the year 1150, thus making it one of the first free Boroughs in all England. But for the past two centuries, despite frequent periods of acute alarm, the Burgesses had remained safe behind the shield of the Royal Navy; and day in day out all through the year the vista was now a never-failing reminder that the power of Britain was based upon the sea. Brigs and brigantines, frigates, sloops and great three-deckers were ever to be seen as they tacked and veered on their way to protect our commerce in distant seas, or bringing the wealth that was the envy of the world to England's shores.

But to-day, Roger had no eyes for the barque that was beating to seaward against the gentle sou'-westerly wind. Plunged in misery, his lively imagination was already conjuring up the dreaded interview with his father that was to come. That he was in for a licking, and a hard one, he had no doubt at all. It would be worse too than the spontaneous beating with a bamboo that he has escaped the previous night, since, now that he was on the way to being fully grown, his father would take a whip to him and not spare his blows. That was a foregone and nerve-shaking conclusion, but what was to befall after the licking had been administered? Should he humbly retract or risk further punishment by sticking to his guns?