CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SECOND
John Trevanion in the Toils
With the aid of imagination's magic boots we skip now from the Towers tothe village, and see what was happening there.
The _Isaac and Jacob_ lay alongside the jetty, in charge of half-a-dozenFrenchmen who lolled lazily about the deck. Nathan Pendry, who hadsteered the vessel into harbour, reclined, the picture of scowlingdiscontent, against the bulwarks. Below, in the dark, reeking hold,trussed like fowls, lay Isaac Tonkin, Simon Mail, and two more of themost respected smugglers of Polkerran.
It appeared from Tonkin's story, told many a time in after years to thebreathless company in the parlour of the Three Jolly Mariners, that onarriving in Roscoff to purchase his Christmas cargo, he had been soughtout by Jean Delarousse, whose customer he had formerly been. TheFrenchman did not complain of Tonkin's desertion, nor did he seek arenewal of their trade relations; his sole object was to persuade theCornishman, by means of a heavy bribe, to deliver John Trevanion intohis hands. Tonkin had his grievance against Trevanion. He felt sore athaving had to play second fiddle to the younger man in recent smugglingtransactions. But being an honest fellow, and loyal in grain, herejected Delarousse's offer with indignant scorn, and refused to believewhat he understood of the tale poured into his ears in broken English,of a long course of deceit and fraud by which, as Delarousse alleged,Trevanion had enriched himself at his partner's expense. The Frenchmanhad appeared to take his refusal in good part, and Tonkin, havingfreighted his lugger, put to sea on his return voyage, intending to runhis cargo at the creek in the small hours of Friday morning as arranged.
The _Aimable Vertu_, Delarousse's privateering craft, lay in Roscoffharbour. Tonkin was only a mile or two at sea, when he noticed that theprivateer was coming up astern. This circumstance at first gave him noconcern; Delarousse was doubtless setting forth on one of his forays.But soon he began to suspect, from the course held by the larger vessel,that he was being chased, or at least dogged. The _Isaac and Jacob_ wasa very swift vessel, and, laden though she was, her master hoped to beable to maintain his lead until nightfall, and then to escape undercover of the darkness. But he was not long in discovering that hislugger was no match in speed for the privateer. The short dusk of theDecember evening was closing down upon the sea when the _Aimable Vertu_came within range. The lugger's armament consisted of one smallcarronade; the Frenchman had a broadside, which at a single dischargewould have shattered the lesser craft to splinters. When, therefore,Tonkin was hailed and bidden to heave-to, he chose the sensible, indeedthe only practicable, course, and obeyed. Delarousse and a boardingparty took possession of the lugger; in spite of vigorous protests,Tonkin and his crew were bound and laid by the board, and, room havingbeen made for them in the hold by the removal of several tubs, they werecarried below. The two vessels then in company continued on theircourse for the English coast.
Favoured by the light mist that hung over the Channel during the night,the privateer escaped discovery by any English cruisers orrevenue-cutters that might have been in the neighbourhood. When,however, she approached the rugged Cornish coast, the mist became adanger, and Delarousse had Tonkin fetched from below, and ordered him topilot the vessels into Polkerran harbour. This the humiliated marinerflatly refused to do, persisting in his refusal in spite of theentreaties, curses, and menaces of his captor. He was carried back byungentle hands to his noisome lair, and Pendry, a man of less backbone,proved to be more amenable to the Frenchman's commands. Under hisskilful pilotage, the lugger safely made the harbour, the privateerstanding some distance out at sea, to watch events.
Now Tonkin, as has already been said, was a man of enormous strength,and as the pages of this history have shown, of great courage andresolution also. Nor was he lacking in prudence or common-sense;witness his ready surrender of the lugger when refusal would have meanthis being blown out of the water. The same common-sense restrained himfrom struggling against impossible odds, both when he was trussed up,and afterwards when the vessel was manned by fifty or sixty well-armedFrenchmen. But so soon as he felt the lugger lightly graze the jetty,and knew by the rush of hurrying feet on deck that the great majority ofhis captors had gone ashore, he began to strain at his bonds. TheFrenchmen had done their work of trussing capably enough, and, in thecase of ninety-nine men out of a hundred, no doubt there would have beenno danger of its being undone. But Tonkin's muscles were hard as iron;he had the strength of a horse. After a few minutes' straining, therope about his wrists gave way; to release his legs was then easy.Delarousse having gone through his pockets before trussing him, he waswithout a knife, and had to loosen with his hands the ropes wherewithhis comrades were tied. As soon as the first man was liberated, he setto work on the bonds of another, and within a few minutes after Tonkinhad released himself, all the men were free.
Until the lugger reached the harbour, a number of the Frenchmen hadclustered on the companion, and at its foot. When the time came forthem to dash ashore, they scrambled in hot haste through the hatchway onto the deck, not thinking to batten down the hatch. As soon, therefore,as Tonkin was free, he rapidly planned how to escape from the hold withhis men, when they had recovered the full use of their partially numbedlimbs. He first felt about in the darkness for articles that wouldserve as effective weapons, and discovered a marlinspike, the hammer heused for driving spigots into the tubs, and several balks of timber thatwere employed for preventing the tubs from rolling. Each man armedhimself. Long experience of smuggling had taught them to move quicklywithout noise, and, led by Tonkin, whose agility seemed in no wiselessened by his bulk, they swarmed swiftly through the hatchway.
The men left in charge of the vessel were leaning over the bulwarks,smoking, and envying their comrades at the inn, who, finding that thevillagers showed no disposition to interfere with them, had seized theopportunity to refresh themselves at the expense of the innkeeper.Before the idle spectators on the deck could turn and form up to meetthe rush, Tonkin and his men were upon them. A few swift, sharp strokesof the fishers' nondescript weapons, and the Frenchmen were lyingsenseless on the deck.
Without the loss of a moment the Cornishmen leapt the bulwarks andscampered along the jetty. They were half-way to the inn before thecareless sentinels in the parlour heard their footsteps and ran out tosee what was happening. Forming in front of the door, they broughttheir muskets to the shoulder and delivered a scattered volley; butsurprise, haste, and strong liquor combined to spoil their aim, and noneof the fishers was hit except Simon Mail, who dropped his spike with ayell and sat down on the cobbles, _hors de combat_. The Frenchmen hadno time either to reload or to retreat. The fishers, burly men all,charged straight at them and struck four to the ground, the other twotaking to their heels and starting to run up the hill towards theirleader. But as if by magic the neighbourhood of the inn was suddenlyalive with figures. The fishermen and miners, who had remained hithertocowering in their cottages, rushed out the moment they could do sosafely. The fugitives were caught and held; a fierce crowd surroundedthe others; and in a few minutes all six, bruised and battered, lay in arow against the inn wall.
Meanwhile Tonkin had dashed into the inn, pulled up the trap-doorleading to the cellar, and descended into the depths. Doubledick, whomthe sound of shots had caused to shake like a jelly, heard the heavyclump of the fisher's boots, and shrank behind a large tun in a cornerof the cellar. Unaware of his presence, Tonkin hastened to the oppositecorner, where, in a cunningly contrived recess, lay a store of firearmsand ammunition, kept there for use against the King's officers whenrequired. It was now to be turned to a more legitimate purpose. Tonkinseized as many muskets as he could carry, and hurried with them up theladder, sending down for more those of his men who were not occupiedwith the Frenchmen. By the time these latter were secured, arms hadbeen served out to the fishers who had escaped from the lugger, and tothe most likely of the others. Then a compact body of thirty well-
armedmen followed Tonkin up the hill.
In order to trace clearly the course of events in that crowded hour ofPolkerran's history, it becomes necessary to glance at what had happenedat the Dower House.
John Trevanion had become so accustomed to the smuggling operations, andit was so much a part of his policy to keep himself in the background inthese matters, that it did not occur to him to rise early in order tolearn what luck had attended the run which he had expected to take placeat the creek, during the night or in the small hours of that morning.Having a perfectly easy conscience, and the comfortable expectation thathe would be richer by two hundred pounds when he awoke, he slept asplacidly as a child, and did not become aware that anything unusual wasoccurring until a repeated rapping at the door by Susan Berry, startledout of her wits, at length penetrated his slumbering intelligence.
"All right," he called drowsily. "What's the time?"
"I don't know, sir," cried poor Susan through the door. "Please, sir,there be a passel o' men firing shots at the Towers."
"Nonsense!" said Trevanion.
"'Tis gospel truth, sir. There be hundreds o' men shoutin' andhollerin', and Cook be fainted dead away in kitchen."
"Fling cold water on her, Susan. There's nothing to be afraid of.They're shooting rabbits, I've no doubt."
Trevanion's thought was that the smugglers had been checkmated at thecreek, and then, in their fury, had attacked the Towers, believing thattheir discomfiture was due to an alliance between the Squire and therevenue officers. His chagrin at the loss of his expected profits wasnot so profound as his delight in the thought that the enmity he had socarefully fostered was bearing such rich fruit. Far be it from him tointerfere. But being now effectually awakened, he bade Susan to returnto the kitchen, dressed quickly, and went to an upper window whence hecould see something of what was going on. The Towers was, however, toofar away, and the air too misty, for him to observe the operations soclosely as he would have liked, and, curiosity and malicious pleasureovercoming his prudence, he determined to set forth and watch from amore convenient standpoint the mischief which he hoped was afoot. Butwishing not to attract attention, he forbade his household to leave thepremises, issued by the back door, and slunk round the inside of one ofhis high fences.
He had advanced about half-way to the Towers when he was startled tohear shots behind him, from the direction of the village. The soundbrought him to a sudden halt, and a sickening misgiving seized him. Hadthe firing begun in the village, there is little doubt that he wouldhave at once suspected the attack of which he had long been secretly indread. But the fact that the Towers was being assaulted, so soon afterthe run was to have taken place, had thrown him off his guard. Now, ina flash, he remembered what Doubledick had said about his interview withDelarousse, and the misleading information given to the Frenchman. Atthe time, and since, he had been somewhat sceptical of the innkeeper'sveracity, but he began to think that his statement had, after all, beentrue. At any rate, it was the Towers that was in danger; the DowerHouse was at present safe; and after a brief pause of hesitation, heturned about and hurried back in the direction of his own house.
But he had scarcely taken half-a-dozen steps when, from behind a bushclose by, there rose a red-capped figure, and Trevanion looked straightat the muzzle of a firelock. He stopped, and before he could collecthis wits, two other figures joined the first. "C'est lui!" cried one ofthe Frenchmen. They were three of the sentries whom Delarousse hadplaced around the village, and were hastening to rejoin their leader inadvance of the band now dashing up the hill. Trevanion was so muchtaken aback as to be incapable of resistance. All that he did when themen roughly seized him was to protest that a mistake had been made."Ah! ah!" said one of his captors. "On ne s'en trompe pas; pas detout." The other two each took one of Trevanion's arms, and marched himat a great pace through a gate in the fence towards the Towers, thethird man bringing up the rear. What happened when Trevanion andDelarousse came face to face has already been related.
Maidy Susan, when Trevanion had left the house, showed herself strangelycallous to the sad plight of Cook. Convinced that the Corsican Ogre hadat last effected his long-threatened landing, she wondered in her simplesoul why her master had not ordered the alarm bell to be rung, and themen servants to seize their arms and sally forth to defend theircountry. She peeped in at the kitchen, saw that Cook had recoveredsufficiently to fan herself and scream, and then ran upstairs to watchwhat was going on. Only a minute or two afterwards, Trevanion brokefrom his captors and fled, the yelling Frenchmen in full cry behind.
"'Tis he! 'Tis Boney!" cried Susan.
She clutched at the casement frame for support, then suddenly flewdownstairs like a young deer. It was she who held the door open, shewho was forced back by the onrush of the infuriated Frenchmen. Shecrouched behind the door until the last of them, Delarousse himself,passed, then sped to the top of the house and began frantically to pullthe bell-rope. Meanwhile the men whom Trevanion had been at such painsto drill had fled towards the village, and fallen into the hands ofDelarousse's sentries.
Trevanion darted along the passage and up the stairs like a fox seekingcover from the hounds. He flung himself into his room, slammed andbolted the door, caught up a pistol, and stood, panting from haste andterror, in the middle of the floor. He heard the loud and rapid trampof his pursuers drawing near.
"Keep out, or I'll shoot you!" he cried.
The Frenchmen laughed him to scorn. He was one; they were many. Theyset their shoulders to the door; the timbers cracked, gave way; a bulletwhizzed harmlessly over their heads; and bursting into the room, theyseized their victim and dragged him out and down the stairs again.Delarousse met them at the foot. Gasping for breath, he ordered some ofhis men to bind Trevanion's arms behind his back and take him down tothe lugger, others to set fire to the house.
"Ah! scelerat!" he bellowed. "Tu es a moi!"
Scarcely had the words left his lips when one of his band, who had beenwounded by a shot from the Towers, hurried in with the news that a partyof men were in pursuit of them. Confiding Trevanion to the charge offour of his most trusty followers, Delarousse collected the rest, andled them to the front of the house, which the newcomers were said to beapproaching. At the end of the drive, where it branched from the road,was Tonkin with his company of fishermen and miners.
Tonkin had led his men up the hill with more haste than discretion.When they reached the top they were blown, and for some minutes had tomoderate their pace. They could not see from the road what washappening behind the fences, and had come midway between the Dower Houseand the Towers, at the same time as Trevanion arrived abreast of them inthe opposite direction. But the spectators on the tower had seen them.The moment Trevanion entered his door, the Squire, with Dick, Sam, andPenwarden, hurried down the stairs.
"Hang it, Dick, they're Frenchmen!" cried the Squire, his fighting bloodroused. "We must clear the rascals out."
On reaching the ground he dispatched Sam to tell Tonkin that theFrenchmen were now going in the other direction, and hurried on with theothers, intending to join the fishers at the Dower House. He arrived intime to see Tonkin's men fire a volley at the Frenchmen at the windows.Little damage was done; Delarousse did not return the fire. He hadachieved the object of his raid, and had no desire to enter into uselesshostilities. Having taken stock of the enemy, he withdrew his men intothe house, which was already filling with pungent smoke.
Tonkin halted his men for a moment in order to recover breath. Itlooked as if he would have to take the house by storm, a difficult taskin the face of odds. But he was a man of bulldog courage, if notactician. Smarting with the indignity he had suffered, and withoutstopping to think that Delarousse might have no designs except againstTrevanion, he ordered his men to reload, and prepared to lead them tothe attack.
Delarousse, however, had taken advantage of the momentary lull towithdraw his men through a long window in the wall of the house facingthe village. Th
e result was that when Tonkin, after so much delay as wasnecessary for his men to regain their breath and prime their muskets,led them at the charge up to the house and broke through the door, hefound the house deserted, and the enemy in full retreat down the hill.He rushed after them, eager to overtake them before they reached thevillage. Some of his men had noticed that the house was on fire, but intheir excitement none stayed to extinguish the flames, nor even to warnor assist the person who was still ringing the bell.
By this time the Squire, with Dick and Penwarden, skirting the groundsof the house, had joined Tonkin's party, and was hurrying with them downthe hill. The Frenchmen had more than a hundred yards start, and on thedescent proved to be as fleet of foot as their pursuers. On reachingthe first of the houses, Delarousse was met by the rest of his cordon,who, now that the matter had come to a fight, saw that they could employthemselves more usefully than in keeping guard. Now the Frenchmenturned at bay, and checked the pursuit with a scattered volley.
"Empty your muskets, then charge the ruffians!" shouted the Squire,taking command as of right.
The Cornishmen responded with a cheer. A shower of slugs flew throughthe air, but the Frenchmen having scattered, and many of them beingprotected by the angles of houses on the winding road, only one or twowere hit. There was no time for either party to reload. The pursuersdashed forward, wielding cutlasses, and their muskets as clubs. Thepursued stood to meet the charge; there were a few moments ofhand-to-hand conflict; Tonkin's burly figure was conspicuous in thethickest of the fray, wielding his musket like a flail; but the numbersof the Frenchmen prevailed, and the Squire recalled the men, to re-formthem and charge again. From this point there was a straggling fightdown the hill to the neighbourhood of the inn. The Squire, with Dick,Penwarden, and Tonkin close about him, led a series of rushes againstthe retreating enemy, whose numbers were always sufficient to give themcheck.
On coming to the inn, which was within a short distance of the jetty,Delarousse saw with alarm that his escape had been cut off. This wasnot due to any prevision on Tonkin's part. He had been too eager tofollow up the Frenchmen to consider ultimate contingencies. But hisdefect as a tactician was supplied by a man whom no one had hithertosuspected of any capacity in that direction, and who enjoyed henceforth,to the day of his death, a very exalted reputation in Polkerran on thestrength of this one achievement.
Pennycomequick, the cobbler, perceiving that the Frenchmen on the luggerwere apparently stunned, hastily got together a little party of men andboys, boarded the vessel, clapped the Frenchmen under hatches, and thenpunted out some distance from the jetty, towing the boats that had laindrawn up on the little beach. No one as yet knew that the Frenchmen hadnot sailed all the way from Roscoff in the lugger; the _Aimable Vertu_in the offing was concealed by the mist that still shrouded the sea.Finding himself thus cut off from communication with his vessel,Delarousse, who had released the men trussed up by Tonkin, with readyresource flung himself into the inn, and ordered his company to reloadand occupy the windows. The Squire, now as keen as when he had been ayoung lieutenant, saw instantly that, the superiority in force beingwith the Frenchmen, the possession of the inn gave them an additionaladvantage which would render an attack hazardous to the last degree. Hecalled a halt, to consider the next move.
At this moment the clatter of a horse's hoofs was heard from round thecorner leading to the hill, and Mr. Carlyon rode down.
"What's all this, Trevanion?" he cried.
"A pack of rascally Frenchmen have raided the place, Vicar," answeredthe Squire, "and are now holding the inn."
"Bless my life! What impudent scoundrels!"
He dismounted, nimbly for a man of his years.
"Give me a gun," he cried. "Here, you--I forget your name--get on myhorse and ride to Truro as fast as you can and bring all the able-bodiedmen and any old soldiers you can find there. You, Benjamin Pound, goround to Doubledick's stables, take a horse, ride to Portharvan, and askSir Bevil from me to call out the yeomanry."
"Please, yer reverence, I can't ride a hoss," said the young fisheraddressed.
"Can't ride! You must, or find someone who can. Off with you, or youshan't come to my dinner to-morrow. Bless my soul! Raiding on the daybefore Christmas! Can't we turn 'em out, Trevanion?"
"Impossible, Vicar, unless we're prepared to lose half our men. Andthen we'd fail. One man behind a wall is equal to four outside."
"What did Doubledick mean by letting the villains into the inn? How didthey come here? I don't see any vessel."
Tonkin was explaining the circumstances when, down the stairs beside theinn wall, came Doubledick, pale, dishevelled, and covered with dust.Becoming alarmed for his safety when the inn was invaded by theFrenchmen, he had made his way out by a secret passage leading up theslope into a house abutting on the stairway. He came up to the groupsilently and unobserved, and listened to Tonkin's explanations and thefurther account given by the Squire of the attack on the Towers and thesubsequent pursuit and capture of John Trevanion. Then he pressedforward to the Vicar's side.
"Ah! yer reverence," he said with unction, "'tis a judgment, 'tisindeed. It do cut me to the heart to say so, but Maister John be thewicked cause of this affliction."
"What do you mean, Doubledick?" asked the Vicar, with a sidelong glanceat the Squire.
"Do 'ee mind, sir, that night a while ago when the sojers wer ridin'about country arter a runaway prisoner? Well, I own 'a was for a littlesmall time in my inn; I'd never seed un afore, and didn' know he wer arunaway till 'twas too late to gie un up." (Doubledick, it will beobserved, was not over-scrupulous as to his facts.) "While he was here,Maister John came down from Dower House and seed un, and they holleredat each other in the French lingo till my ears wer drummin'. Ah! 'twasthen I first had my mispicions o' Maister John."
"Cut your story short, man," said Mr. Carlyon impatiently.
"Well, then, yer reverence, when I went over to France, the Frenchytelled me as how Maister John, Robinson by name, wer his partner for tenyear, and robbed him right and left. Ah! he was a clever rogue, too,keepin' in the background so as our Polkerran men shouldn' see un whenthey wented over to--to sell fish. And Delarousse swore to me, 'a did,that he'd take vengeance on him, and now he be come to do it, sureenough. If I may make so bold, I'd say let the Frenchy take MaisterJohn and leave us in peace. I don't want to see my inn riddled wi'shots and crumbled about my ears."
"Iss, and so say I," cried Tonkin. "Delarousse telled me the self-samestory, but I didn' believe un; no, I couldn' believe as Maister Johnwere sech a 'nation rogue. I must believe it, now Doubledick hev telledus all. Let un go, sir, and be-jowned to un."
Fierce cries of approval broke from the crowd, but the Squire held uphis hand for silence.
"Let me have a word, neighbours," he said. "We're Cornishmen, every manof us, and good subjects of King George. We can't allow a Frenchraiding party to arrest a man on English soil, whatever his charactermay be. 'Tis flat treason; what do you say, Vicar?"
"I agree with you. As a magistrate, neighbours, I say we must do ourduty."
"I won't go agen Squire and pa'son," cried Tonkin. "I stand up for KingJarge."
"King Jarge for ever!" shouted the crowd.
"Well, then," said the Vicar, "we'll hold our ground here until theyeomanry come up, and then we'll storm the inn. God save the King!"
At this moment Dick pushed his way through the crowd.
"The privateer is under weigh, sir," he cried, "and standing in for theharbour."
All eyes were turned towards the sea. The _Aimable Vertu_, which hadbeen lying off the headland, almost concealed by the mist, was steeringfor the fairway, evidently with the intention of coming to theassistance of the landing-party.
"Where's Mr. Mildmay?" cried the Squire. "'Tis for him to capture thatrascally privateer."
Doubledick looked conscious; Tonkin and his fishers exchanged glances,and thought of the cargo in the hold of the _Isaac and Jacob
_.
"We can do it, sir," cried Dick suddenly. "She must pass beneath thatbig rock at the head of the Beal. It doesn't stand steady, and a goodpush would hurl it over into the fairway. Let the vessel come in, andthen block up the channel; she'd be caught then."
"A capital notion," said the Vicar. "Off with you, Dick; take two orthree men with you. Have a care not to throw yourself over too."
Dick hurried off with a few of the younger men. When they arrived at thelandward end of the Beal, the privateer was slowly threading her coursethrough the fairway towards the jetty, a man in the chains soundingbusily. She crept in, and had come within a hundred yards of the jettywhen Dick and his companions reached the boulder. They heard the rattleof her anchor; she swung broadside to the village, and the spectators onshore saw a formidable row of guns grinning from her portholes. Dickand his companions set their shoulders to the rock.
The door of the inn meanwhile had opened, and Delarousse appeared,holding aloft a musket, to which a white cloth was attached as a flag oftruce.
"I vill speak viz you," he said, pointing to the Squire, whom herecognised.
"Shall I parley with the rascal?" asked the Squire of Mr. Carlyon.
"Yes. We wish to avoid bloodshed, but it must be unconditionalsurrender, Trevanion."
The Squire stepped towards the inn, meeting Delarousse half-way.
"You speak French, monsieur?" said the latter courteously.
"Not a word, sir," replied the Squire.
"Ah! C'est dommage! I speak English, bad, monsieur. I make ameestake: I demand pardon. I not know ze house vas to you; pardon zemeestake, monsieur."
"We'll say no more about that, sir," said the Squire. "I am willing tobelieve you had no wish to attack me. But this is an act of war, sir.You must at once set your prisoner free, and surrender, every one ofyou."
"Ah, no, monsieur," returned the Frenchman with a smile. "I haf to sayyour demand is ridicule. I make vun sign: bah! ze shot from my vesselzey strike ze village all to pieces. Voyez! Ze boats come now for me.You stop me? No."
The Squire turned and looked in the direction of Delarousse'soutstretched hand. Two boats had been lowered from the deck of theprivateer, and, filled with men armed to the teeth, were now pulling forthe jetty. It was clear that under the vessel's broadside no attempt tocheck this fresh invasion could be successful.
"You see?" continued the Frenchman, who had watched the expression onthe Squire's face. "I not quarrel viz ze people here; mon Dieu, no!Zey are my friends; viz zem I haf excellent affairs, zey profit us both.Ze man zat injure me, I haf him. Vat avantage of resistance? None. ZenI depart: all is finish vizout--vizout combat sanguinaire."
"Your proposal----" began the Squire, but at this moment a dull splashwas heard from the direction of the Beal. Dick and his assistants haddisplaced the rock, which rolled over the edge, bounded on to the ledgewhence Dick had made his dive, and then plunged almost into the middleof the fairway. Even at that distance a few feet of it could be seenprojecting above the surface.
"Sacre nom d'un chien!" cried Delarousse, startled out of hisequanimity. "Vat is zis?"
"Some of my men have blocked up the fairway with a large rock," repliedthe Squire. "It is now impossible for your vessel to clear theharbour."
"But zis is perfidy, monsieur!" cried the furious Frenchman. "Ve speakas parlementaires; zere is arrest of hostilities; ma foi! zis is zeperfidy of English."
"Not at all, sir. The men had already gone to do their work; I couldnot stop them. You see your position, sir. I advise you to consultwith your men and surrender at discretion."
They parted. Delarousse, livid with anger, returned to the inn; theSquire rejoined his party.
"We have the rascals," said Mr. Carlyon gleefully.
"I axe yer pardon, sir," said Tonkin, "but don't 'ee think we'd betterlet the Frenchies go in peace arter all? They guns 'ud knock thevillage to dust, and there's the women and childer to think of."
"Ah! that's true," said the Vicar, and taking Mr. Trevanion aside, hebegan to discuss the matter with him. While they were still earnestlytalking, there was a shout. They broke apart, and turning, saw thatDelarousse had solved the problem in his own way.
The inn fronted the jetty, but on its southward side a narrow lane ranbetween the blind walls of the pilchard fishers' salting-houses. Thefurther end of this was nearer by a few yards to the sea. Rendereddesperate, the Frenchman saw in the conversation between the twogentlemen an opportunity for making a dash. He ordered four of his mento throw open a low window giving on the lane, and to rush JohnTrevanion as quickly as possible down to the jetty, while he maintainedhis position with the rest at the front windows. Then, as soon as hewas informed that the four men had arrived at the end of the lane, hegave the word for all to follow. Before the besiegers were aware ofthis sudden movement, the Frenchmen had gained a start of more thanfifty yards.
"After them, my men!" cried the Squire, when he saw them rushing frombehind the wall of the salting-house towards the jetty.
The whole party poured in pursuit. But by the time they reached theshoreward end of the jetty, John Trevanion had been lowered into thefirst of the privateer's boats. The second had towed back a number ofthe craft which Pennycomequick had removed from the shore, the luggeritself, however, with the cobbler and his helpers aboard, still lying inthe harbour on the inner side of the reef. Into these boats Delarousseand his men leapt, and pulled off swiftly to the privateer. They had nosooner left the jetty than a puff of smoke issued from one of thevessel's portholes; there was a roar, and a round shot crashed into theplanking, smashing several yards of it, and sending up splinters almostinto the eyes of the Squire.
"'Tis no good, Trevanion," cried the Vicar. "We shall all be slaughteredif we line up and fire at them. They've got your cousin, and we can'thelp it."
"But they can't get out of the fairway, and there's no water on thereef," said the Squire. "If only Mildmay were here!"
He was soon to see that he had not reckoned with the seamanship of JeanDelarousse. The first of the boats pulled at full speed towards thefairway, receiving from the deck of the privateer a sounding-line as shepassed. From the second boat Delarousse climbed to the deck of hisvessel. The pilot crew, having sounded and measured the width of thechannel between the fairway and the cliff, signed to their captain thathe might proceed. It seemed to Dick impossible that the vessel shouldwin through, and he watched with unstinted admiration the Frenchman'sskilful seamanship. Delarousse ordered the anchor to be tripped, andthe vessel moved slowly towards the fairway, close-hauled on thestarboard tack. When she reached the rock, she seemed to graze thecliff as she passed into the narrow channel; but with Delarousse himselfat the helm she passed safely through. Then, there being a fair wind onher starboard quarter, Delarousse hauled up his courses, mainsail andforesail, and threw his foreyard aback. The check on the ship's waygave him time to take aboard the boat, which had been moored to therock, the rest of his crew having already clambered up the side from theother boats. These were then cast adrift; the foreyard filled, and the_Aimable Vertu_ stood out to sea.