Hugh Town was little more than a straggle of thatched cottages and fish cellars clutching the shore of the island where it curved in a natural harbour. Every night the new revolving oil light on St Agnes Island, only installed three years, sent out its warning to wandering ships. Previously the light had come from an oak log fire. Although in the centre of the island and eighty feet above sea level, it had sometimes been put out by the sea. For more than a hundred years now no local man had been permitted to be in charge of it, after one wreck when the fire wasn’t kindled until the ship was on the rocks.
Dressed in old clothes, Ross was still conspicuous about the island, and at the tiny inn where he stayed conversation stopped whenever he came into the room. On the Wednesday he was rowed over to St Martin’s and spent a couple of hours up the Beacon Tower, watching the horizon for ships. From this vantage point the multiplicity of tiny islands looked like an anchored fleet.
On the Wednesday, Mr Ray Penvenen told his niece that in view of the prospect of war he thought it better to leave for London on the Friday instead of the Sunday. He had certain banking interests, and he would prefer to be in touch with them as soon as possible. But Caroline did not like this at all. Apparently she was not ready to go. Nothing would induce her to leave before Sunday morning. If he wanted to go before, he must leave without her. After argument, in which she seemed needlessly downright, he gave way. She had been so considerate to his views in other respects that he felt he must humour her in this. Nevertheless his mind was not quite easy, and several times that evening she looked up from her reading to find his eyes on her.
On the Thursday, Dwight had to go into Truro to draw some money and to obtain letters of credit for his journey. On coming out of the bank he almost bumped into a tall fair soldier in the uniform of the Scots Greys. Such figures might soon become a commonplace of countryside and town, but this man’s great moustache was familiar. Then Dwight remembered where he had seen him before – leaving the cottage of Vercoe the Customs Officer at St Ann’s. It was almost twelve months ago: sometime last spring.
On Thursday afternoon a small fishing vessel appeared in Crow Sound and presently nosed her way into the quieter waters of the Road. She was fore-and-aft rigged, but she carried a large square sail on her mainmast. After about half an hour a dinghy brought a man ashore.
Chapter Nine
They had their interview in Ross’s private room upstairs. Only in the middle of this room was it possible for either of them to stand upright. A fire burned in the tiny grate, flickering on the yellow stone walls and lighting an old needle-work sampler with ‘God Save Our Queen’ worked in red wool. The rough floor boards were covered with a home-woven rug, and threadbare heavy curtains over door and window kept out some of the draught.
A disastrous change in Mark. Once these two men, of an age and a build, had been superficially alike. Not so now. Mark’s hair was white and had worn up at the temples. He was thinner, and the enormous power had gone from his hands and shoulders. He had not been able to live with his memories.
They gripped hands and sat down and passed the ordinary talk of friends who have not met for a long time. Mark was working for a boatbuilder in Galway. He had made few friends, he said, and had not married again. I d’feel I still am married,’ he said. ‘Nought will change that.’ Ross brought out a bottle of brandy, but Mark would not touch it. ‘I keep guard on my tongue,’ he said. ‘Night an’ day. Night an’ day.’
Ross told him what he could of his family, accepted messages for them all. Although the next hour would decide so much, he found he could not rush his fences. They spoke of France and Mark’s reasons for leaving it, the crisis now. Mark was more interested in England and the scenes he had left. All this life he was living now was an uneasy dream, something from which he still hoped to wake. Ross realised that he was living only for the possibility of being able to return some day to his own home. It was not an ambition in which Ross felt he could honestly encourage him. Too many people remembered, would remember for another twenty years. If he returned, the magistrates would be forced to move against him.
At length silence fell. Ross looked at the other man, who was twisting his bony knuckles and frowning. ‘You know why I wanted you to come here?’
‘Yes. You said in your letter, sur. I got it read. Ever since, I been tryin’ to think.’
‘You don’t remember?’
‘Oh, I mind what I said well ’nough. And I mind what I saw. But ’tis hard to remember just where I saw it. I was fair crazed that day. I wandered . . .’
‘Would a plan of the workings help?’
‘Oh, yes. ’Twould, there’s no doubt.’
Ross lifted the model schooner off the plush-covered table and unrolled the plan he had brought. It was one he had drawn just before he left, carefully omitting any work which had been done since the mine reopened. A plan of a mine, so essentially a three-dimensional thing, is hard to put on paper; but he had tried to make it easier by using three colours of ink for the three levels which the old men had worked.
He spread the map carefully and pinned it down; then because Mark puckered his eyes he carried the table impatiently to the salt-rimed window, and they bent over it together. Now. Now. This was the moment. The preparation and the waiting . . . But Mark was still hesitant to begin, unable to get his bearings. Never a quick thinker, the years of exile had slowed him down in every way. He could have been in his sixties instead of his early thirties. Presently, having related the plan to all the familiar landmarks above ground, he began to retrace the steps he had taken on Tuesday the twelfth of August, 1789.
A hard task, fraught with all the obstacles of bitter remembrance, on which his mind for four years had been trying to close the door. And while he struggled, Ross watched, knowing all that it meant for himself and Demelza and Jeremy. Had he been a praying man, he would have prayed now, to some deity, to some patron saint, that what this man said – some magical words he would utter – would change the picture from failure to success, would make all his striving and contriving into a sensible pattern that showed adequate return for work done, a prospect of money to be earned for money spent – no more senseless searching after a hopeless mirage, no more groping and wandering in the dark.
‘I went down . . . so far as I could tell there was water; then I walked – ’twould be in the thirty level – I walked – thinkin’ to myself . . . An’ then I stopped and sat down. There was hours to spend. I thought to end everything by casting myself . . . And then I went on, bearing east so far as I recollect. There’s a deep gunnies here . . .’
‘That’s so,’ said Ross.
‘I climbed across’n – a plank, ’alf rotten . . .’ He stopped. ‘Ye’ve put a stone, sur? There was enough cash for a stone?’
‘Yes. We put a stone. With the words you said. “Keren Daniel. Wife of Mark Daniel. Age 22.”’
He rubbed a hand across his forehead. ‘Twenty-two, that’s all she was. I did ought to’ve known better. She was but a child . . . That surgeon, Enys, is he still around? I reckon ’twas he I should’ve killed.’
‘Try to remember, Mark. What did you do then?’
Mark turned his tortured eyes back to the map. ‘Well ’twas just above the gunnies, bearing right. There was an old pick down there; and to keep myself from thinking I began to cast around, just as if I was looking for a pitch to take. Soon enough, picking at the rock . . . A fine bit o’ ground it looked to me.’
‘Where was it?’ said Ross, pointing. ‘Just here?’
‘Yes, I reckon. There on. It ran at a steep inclination . . .’
‘We found it,’ said Ross. ‘It was good ground while it lasted, but there was no breadth. It was a foot wide where you saw it, but three fathoms down it ran as thin as paper, and above, of course, it had been stoped. Henshawe thinks it was an offshoot from the champion lode.’
There was silence. The wood crackled on the fire, and Mark Daniel breathed through his nose. ‘Then I went on again. C
limbin’ now all the while . . . An old air shaft—’
‘Here,’ said Ross, pointing.
‘’Twas filled in. I reckoned I was barely fifteen fathoms from grass. From there ye can turn two ways. I turned east.’
‘This way?’
‘’S, I reckon. Sixty or seventy paces on you double back ’pon yourself, and in the turn . . . There’s a cross-course. And about it, ’tis all keenly country; mostly silver lead it ’peared to me, and iron.’
A man came up the street outside carrying a bunch of glimmering fish on the end of a stick. They looked like some exotic fruit he had plucked from the sea bed. His footsteps struck musical echoes along the cobbled street.
‘You’d an amazing good eye to see it there,’ Ross said grimly.
‘Why?’ Mark frowned at him. ‘Did you . . .’
‘We struck it twenty fathoms below. We’ve stoped all that ground. It’s been our best find. The cross-course had thrown the old men out, and we picked up their copper vein forty-odd feet to the south of that turning . . . But something had gone awry with the lode just the same, for the quality’s indifferent. At least it is if you have an engine to run. Perhaps in the old days it might have paid its way . . .’
Mark stared out to sea. The ketch that had brought him had already left. A week might pass before it came again.
Ross said: ‘There’s no hurry. We’re marooned here. Take your time.’
‘Nay. I’ll go on now. ’Tis little more I can tell ee, I fear. I sat down an’ dozed for a while, then I woke an’ thought t’was dark time already an’ I hastened back. But goin’ back, at the big gunnies, I took the east level instead of the west. I’d went no more’n two hundred paces when I knew ’twas wrong. But I found my way back by a branch level. See here; here ’tis.’
‘Yes. Yes, I see.’
‘In this there’s two narrow gunnies, an’ betwixt them is good ground I’ll wager. Ye go down over broken steps where the lode’s been worked. But only the bottom’s been worked. All the backs is untouched. There’s fine quartzy rock, and gossan. ’Twas too high for me to get to’n, but I’d lay there was a mint o’ money in that one place alone!’
Ross did not speak for a minute. He stared at the map and then got up as if to stretch his cramped muscles. He took out a handkerchief and wiped the moisture off the palms of his hands.
‘And then after that you came up?’
‘I waited nigh the main shaft, waited for the dark and for Paul’s light to show. I thought the day would never end . . .’
‘Yes,’ said Ross. ‘It was an anxious time.’
Mark watched him as he moved across the room, stooping to avoid the beams. ‘This last place I’ve telled you of. Is it no betterer? Have ye proven it useless like the others?’
‘Let’s go for a walk, shall we? The room is close and there’s no space to breathe or straighten. Fresh air will help us both.’
Mark stood up somewhat reluctantly as Ross opened the door. ‘Aye, whatever you d’say, sur. But I’d be obliged if ye’d answer . . .’
‘What you tell me will bear investigation, Mark, I’m sure of that. There’s no doubt a deal of its promise has escaped us. I think you’ve given me several valuable hints.’
They said more on the way downstairs and out, until Mark seemed partly satisfied. He did not know how much depended on his answers, but he knew what was entailed in the opening of a mine, and he would have been grievously upset to fail his friend. So Ross’s first concern was to hide his own feelings, and that at the moment was very hard.
He did not in fact feel that Mark had failed him – only that he himself had failed those who gave him their affection and their trust. By building so much on the chance utterances of a man crazed with rage and grief, he had brought himself to this present pass. Now, as he walked along with Mark by the side of the sea, and while the cold breeze stung his face and chilled the sweat which had broken out on him during the interview, now it seemed to him that he had known for some time that this last throw would fail. The expectation was too much. At the beginning it could have been true; but experienced miners could hardly explore the old workings for months on end and not find whatever good ground was to be found. In his heart he had feared this; but it was the old story of the drowning man and the straw.
This last discovery Mark spoke of had been the first Ross’s men had found. What Mark had seen was one of those complex mixtures which abound in mineral-bearing ground; quartz in this particular case, with schorl and oxide of iron and oxide of tin. Any good miner might have expected results from it.
But the ground had hardly paid for the working.
By Saturday, Dwight had given up hope of seeing Ross again before he left. Demelza had had no word, and no one seemed to know when or where the run was expected. That was as it should be, of course. And even Mr Trencrom was dependent on wind and weather.
What Dwight did not know was that Mr Trencrom had business dealings with the owner of a farm on the windy sand dunes of Gwithian. Farrell, the master of the One and All, brought his vessel in close enough to be seen before darkness fell. Then he stood hastily away from the land again, for Hell’s Mouth was not far off; and the farmer’s son mounted an excellent pony given him by Mr Trencrom for the purpose and rode the fifteen miles to see his benefactor.
So in the early dusk there was unaccustomed movement in a number of cottages and farmhouses of the district, a quiet preparing for a night of strenuous but stealthy work. An emptying of sacks and a saddling of mules, a coiling of ropes and a fetching out of black-tarred lanterns. Here and there, too, a pistol was primed or a flintlock taken down from the wall.
But this was not the whole of the preparations going on. At St Ann’s, about a cottage separated a little from the rest and overlooking the bay, other men were quietly gathering; and inside, in the living-room, the three leaders were making final arrangements: Captain McNeil, Customs Officer Vercoe, and his assistant Bell. Vercoe was titular head of this expedition, but McNeil by virtue of his rank was deferred to on all decisions of importance. He also commanded the largest part of the men at their disposal, seven dragoons.
Vercoe said: ‘Well, sir, ’twill be safer to be off soon, for it would never do to be seen moving about later on when the tub-carriers are round. ’Tis a long cold time, I know.’
‘It was a long cold time last night,’ said McNeil. ‘The colder for being fruitless. Your informer is reliable, I suppose?’
‘He has been times before. He said he’d no means of knowing whether the run would be last night, tonight, or tomorrow.’
‘With this latest news from London, I see no prospect of keeping my men longer than the end of the week – or of staying myself. So this is really the last chance. It would aggrieve me if this run took place elsewhere while we were watching an empty cove.’
Vercoe grunted and rubbed his beard. ‘’Twould grieve me more. For upwards of thirty months I’ve been waiting for a chance such as this, to make a big haul. If all goes well tonight or tomorrow, the whole Trade in these parts may be stamped out for a generation. That’s what I’d want more than aught else!’
McNeil looked at him interestedly, wondering what inner compulsions drove the man to make a crusade of his daily task. Then he shrugged his shoulders and rose. ‘So be it. Bell, ye’ve impressed on your men that they do not stir till they hear Mr Vercoe’s whistle? We do not want the trap to go off half cock.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
‘I’ll answer for my own men, of course. And I’ve impressed upon them there must be no unnecessary bloodshed. Don’t forget these smugglers are our own countrymen, and very soon there will be plenty of blood to let in another cause. The same dispositions as last night.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
‘Very well. We had best be starting.’
As the time for his leaving drew near, Dwight grew more and more restless. For the twentieth time he looked at the clock. It was half past nine. He had arranged to be at Killewarren at
eleven. Ninety minutes to spend. There would be no possible excuse for starting for another forty-five minutes yet.
He rang for Bone, and when the young man came asked him a half dozen unnecessary questions and then dismissed him, not knowing how often before he had done the same thing. Nerves. Elopement nerves. At this moment what was Caroline doing? Would she suffer in the same way? Not from the goads of a conscience never easy for four years, but perhaps from nerves of another kind. The strong control she had of herself did not delude him into supposing her anything but highly strung.
All today Dwight had been unable to get the face of Keren Daniel out of his head. The interview with Demelza, and knowing Ross was meeting Mark, had suddenly brought Keren to the forefront of his mind. This was only a change of position, he realised that now; she had never been far away.
Sixteen minutes to ten. For Caroline he would willingly give up anything. The trouble was he was giving up nothing material; instead he was bettering himself. Self-flagellation . . . Well, that was all right to a point, but beyond that point neurotic. In two hours he would be in a coach with her. Would any of his friends deny him the right to happiness? He fancied not one. In two hours he must draw a curtain across his past life.
Bone had come into the room again. Had he rung once more in his agitation?
‘If you please, sur, there’s Parthesia Hoblyn at the door. Says her sister’s took queer. She asked for you to go see her, but I said you was busy tonight.’
Dwight glanced at the clock. Lottie Kempthorne quite recovered. No other cases had followed, and that little short of a miracle; even May had escaped. But Rosina. How long ago? Was it possible? He counted. It was still possible. He went through into the hall and found little Parthesia slumped in a chair getting her breath. Three miles from Sawle, and she had probably run all the way in the dark.