1 The southeasterly gale blown out, Ortho’s business went forward with a rush. In the second week in January they landed a cargo a night to make up for lost time, and met with a minor accident—Jacky’s George breaking a leg in saving a gig from being stove. This handicapped them somewhat. Anson was a capable boatsman, but haphazard in organization, and Ortho found he had to oversee the landings as well as lead the pack-train. Despite his efforts there were hitches and bungles here and there; the cogs of the machinery did not mate as smoothly as they had under the cock-sparrow. Nevertheless they got the cargoes through somehow and there was not much to fear in the way of outside interruptions; the dragoons seemed to have settled to almost domestic felicity in Penzance and the revenue cutter had holed her garboard strake taking a short cut round the Manacles and was docked at Falmouth. Ortho got so confident that he actually brought his horses home in plain daylight.
Then on the fourteenth of February, when all seemed so secure, the roof fell in.
Mr. William Carmichael was the person who pulled the props away. Mr. William Carmichael, despite his name, was an Irishman, seventeen years of age, and, as a newly-joined cornet of dragoons, drawing eight shillings a day, occupied a position slightly less elevated than an earth-worm. However, he was very far from this opinion. Mr. Carmichael, being young and innocent, yearned to let blood, and he wasn’t in the least particular whose. Captain Hambro and his two somewhat elderly lieutenants, on the other hand, were experienced warriors, and consequently the most pacific of creatures. Nothing but a direct order from a superior would induce them to draw the sword except to poke the fire. Mr. Carmichael’s martial spirit was in a constant state of effervescence; he hungered and thirsted for gore—but without avail. Hambro positively refused to let him run out and chop anybody. The captain was a kindly man; his cornet’s agitation distressed him and he persuaded one of the dimpled Miss Jagos to initiate his subordinate in the gentler game of love (the boy would come into some sort of Kerry baronetcy when his sire finally bowed down to delirium tremens, and it was worth her while). But Mr. Carmichael was built of sterner stuff. He was proof against her woman’s wiles. Line of attack! At ’em! The lieutenants, Messrs. Pilkington and Jope, were also gentle souls, Pilkington was a devotee of chess, Jope of sea-fishing. Both sought to engage the fire-eater in their particular pastimes. It was useless; he disdained such trivialities. Death! Glory!
But Hambro, whose battle record was unimpeachable, knew that in civil police work, such as he was supposed to be doing, there is precious little transient glory to be picked up and much adhesive mud. He knew that with the whole population against him he stood small chance of laying the smugglers by the heels, and if he did the county families (who were as deeply implicated as any) would never rest until they had got him broken. He sat tight.
This did not suit the martial Carmichael at all. He fumed and fretted, did sword exercise in the privacy of his bedroom till his arm ached, and then gushed his heart out in letters to his mother, which had the sole effect of eliciting bottles of soothing syrup by return, the poor lady thinking his blood must be out of order.
But his time was to come.
On the eighth of February Pilkington was called away to Axminster to the bedside of his mother (at least that is what he called her) and Carmichael was given his troop to annoy. On the morning of the fourteenth Hambro left on three days’ leave to shoot partridges at Tehidy, Jope and Carmichael only remaining. Jope blundered in at five o’clock on the same afternoon sneezing fit to split himself. He had been off Low Lee after pollack and all he had succeeded in catching was a cold. He growled about the weather, which his boatman said was working up for a blow, drank a pint of hot rum bumbo and sneezed himself up to bed, giving strict orders that he was not to be roused on any account.
Carmichael was left all alone.
To him, at seven of the clock, came Mr. Richard Curral, riding officer, a conscientious but blighted man.
He asked for Hambro, Pilkington and Jope in turn, and groaned resignedly when he heard they were unavailable.
“Anything I can do for you?” Carmichael inquired.
Curral considered, tapping his rabbit teeth with his whip handle. Mr. Carmichael was terribly young, the merest babe.
“N-o. I don’t think so; thank you, sir. No, never mind. Pity they’re away, though . . . seems a chance,” he murmured, talking to himself. “Lot of stuff been run that way of late . . . ought to be stopped by rights . . . pity!” he sighed.
“What’s a pity? What are you talking about?” said Mr. Carmichael, his ears pricking. “Take that whip out of your mouth!”
Mr. Curral withdrew the whip; he was used to being hectored by military officers.
“Er—oh! . . . er, the Monks Cove men are going to make a run to-night.”
Mr. Carmichael sat upright. “Are they, b’God! How d’you know?”
“An informer has just come in. Gives no name, of course, but says he’s from Gwithian parish; looks like a farmer. Wants no reward.”
“Then what’s his motive?”
Mr. Curral shrugged his shoulders. “Some petty jealousy, I presume; it usually is among these people. I’ve known a man give his brother away because he got bested over some crab-pots. This fellow says he overheard them making their plans in the inn there—lay under the table pretending to be drunk. Says that tall Penhale is the ringleader; I’ve suspected as much for some time. Of course it may only be a false scent after all, but the informer seems genuine. What are you doing, sir?”
Mr. Carmichael had danced across the room, opened the door and was howling for his servant. His chance had come. Gore!
“Doing! . . . Why, going to turn a troop out and skewer the lot of ’em of course. What d’you think?” shouted that gentleman, returning. “I’d turn out the squadron, only half the nags are streaming with strangles. Toss me that map there. Now where is this Monks Cove?”
Mr. Curral’s eyes opened wide. He was not used to this keenness on the part of the military. One horse coughing slightly would have been sufficient excuse for Hambro to refuse to move—leave alone half a squadron sick with strangles. It promised to be a dirty night too. He had expected to meet with a diplomatic but nevertheless definite refusal. It was merely his three-cornered conscience that had driven him round to the billet at all—yet here was an officer so impatient to be off that he was attempting the impossible feat of pulling on his boots and buckling on his sword at the same time. Curral’s eyes opened wider and wider.
“Ahem!—er—do you mean . . . er . . . are you in earnest, sir?”
“Earnest!” The cornet snorted, his face radiant. “Damn my blood but I am in very proper earnest, Mr. What’syourname—as these dastardly scoundrels shall discover ere we’re many hours older. Earnest, b’gob!”
“But Mr. Jope, sir . . . hadn’t you better consult Mr. Jope? . . . He . . .”
“Mr. Jope be dam . . . Mr. Jope has given orders that he’s not to be disturbed on any account, on any account, sir. I am in command here at the moment, and if you will have the civility to show me where this plaguy Monks Cove hides itself instead of standing there sucking your whip you will greatly assist me in forming my plan of action.”
Curral bent over the map and pointed with his finger.
“Here you are, sir, the merest gully.”
“Then I shall charge down the gully,” said Carmichael with that quick grasp of a situation displayed by all great commanders. The riding officer coughed: “Then you’ll have to charge at a walk, sir, and in single file; there’s only a rough pack-track. Further, the track is picketed at the head; as soon as you pass a gun will be fired and when you reach the cove there won’t be a cat stirring.”
Carmichael, like all great commanders, had his alternative. “Then I shall charge ’em from the flank. Can I get up speed down this slope?”
Curral nodded. “Yes, sir. You can ride from top to bottom in a moment of time.”
“How d’you mean?”
“It is practically a precipice, sir.”
“Humph!—and this flank?”
“The same, sir.”
Carmichael scratched his ear and for the first time took thought. “Lookee,” he said presently. “If I stop the pack track here and there are precipices on either side how can they get their horses out? I’ve got ’em bottled.”
Curral shook his head. “I said practically precipices, sir. Precipices to go down, but not to come up. As you yourself have probably observed, sir, a horse can scramble up anything, but he is a fool going down. A horse falling uphill doesn’t fall far, but a horse falling down a slope like that rolls to the bottom. A horse . . .”
“Man,” snapped the cornet, “don’t talk to me about horses. My father keeps twenty. I know.”
Curral coughed. “I beg your pardon, sir. The informer tells me there are a dozen places on either side by which these fellows can get their beasts to the level. Remember it is their own valley; they’re at home there, while we are strangers and in the dark.”
“I wish you could get out of this habit of propounding the obvious,” said Carmichael. He dabbed his finger down on the map. “Look—supposing we wait for them out here across their line of march?”
“They’d scatter all over the moor, sir. We’d be lucky if we caught a couple on a thick night like this.”
Carmichael plumped down on a chair and savagely rubbed his curls.
“Well, Mr. Riding Officer, I presume that in the face of these insurmountable difficulties you propose to sit down and do nothing—as usual. Let these damned ruffians run their gin, flout the law, do exactly as they like. Now let me tell you I’m of a different kidney, I . . .”
“You will pardon me, sir,” said Curral quietly, “but I haven’t as yet been given the opportunity of proposing anything.”
“What’s your plan then?”
“How many men can you mount, sir?”
“Forty with luck. I’ll have to beat the taverns for ’em.”
“Very good, sir. Send a small detachment to stop the head of the track; not to be there before ten o’clock. The rest, under yourself, with me for guide, will ride to the top of the cliff which overhangs the village from the east and there leave the horses. The informer tells me there is a sheep-track leading down from there and they picket the top of it—an old man with a gun to fire if he hears anything. That picket will have to be silenced.”
“Who’s going to do that?” the cornet inquired.
“I’ve got a man of my own I think can do it. He was a great poacher before he got religion.”
“And then?”
“Then we’ll creep, single file, down the sheep-track, muster behind the pilchard sheds and rush the landing—the goods should be ashore by then. I trust that meets with your approval, sir?”
The cornet nodded, sobered. “It does—you seem to be something of a tactician, Mr. . . . er . . . Curral.”
“I served foreign with Lord Mark Kerr’s Regiment of Horse Guards, sir,” said the riding officer, picking up his whip.
Carmichael’s jaw dropped. “Horse Guards! . . . Abroad! . . . One of u............