Now Dr. Syn always slept with his four-poster curtains drawn back and the lead-rimmed casement set wide open, for he liked to hear the sea grinding up the beach and slapping against the sea-wall. He was a light sleeper, though, when it came to other sounds than the waves to which he was so used.
On this particular night he awoke hearing a noise of someone clambering up the old ivy roots beneath his window.
He raised himself on one elbow and from beneath the bolster he drew out a loaded pistol.
Mr. Mipps climbed the ivy easily and leaned across the window-sill into the bedroom. From this point of vantage he intended to awake and arrest the vicar's attention without alarm. But the vicar was awake, and perceiving only a shadow silhouetted against the driving white clouds, was determined to keep his visitor at that point of disadvantage and to arrest either his escape or advance, for at the moment he afforded him a very sure target.
“If you move, I'll fire,” whispered Dr. Syn. “I have you covered.”
“Don't shoot, Captain,” whispered the intruder in answer. “No, for the love of heaven, don't shoot, 'cos there'll be death enough on the Marsh this night without it.”
“Ah, Mipps, is it?” said Dr. Syn. “Now what are you doing here? Why do you talk of death on the Marsh? And why do you call me 'captain'?”
“May I come in and tell you for at the moment my back view is an excellent target for any fool's blunderbuss.”
“You may come in,” replied Dr. Syn.
“Right, sir, then I'll tell you all about it. An 'orrible affair is takin' place.”
“I can guess it, sir,” hissed Syn, as Mipps clambered over the sill and slid into the room.
“Oh, then that'll save time,” he answered in a tone of relief.
“You've disobeyed orders, eh? Is it smuggling you've been trafficking with?”
“Someone had to look after the fools,” pleaded Mipps, “and you know, Captain, you likes a drop o' brandy yourself just as I likes a bit of excitement. Well, we was landing kegs on the beach as calm as you please, when down gallops them damned Dragoons looking for Grinsley and collars the lot of us.”
“You too?” demanded the vicar angrily.
“Yes, but I had my face muffled, slipped my cables in no time, slithered off in a passing puff of mist and come 'ere for 'elp. Now, Vicar, I take it, you ain't never goin' to stand by and see the pick o' the parish strung up like mutineers, I knows. Mind you, it wouldn't have 'appened if you'd been a-leadin' of us. You 'as a way with you, you 'as. You'd soon outdo them Dragoons, even now. If there's one man what can still save the parish necks, it's you, Captain Clegg.”
The answer to this flattery came from the dark, and in such tones of finality that the sexton did not relish. “Master Carpenter, you are now sexton. In other words, Mipps, the past is past. I made that very clear to you. Leave me.”
Desperately the sexton replied, “Then the pick o' the parish goes to the scaffold, and to think it's my old commander that is sending 'em.”
“What do you mean?” demanded the vicar savagely.
“Well, since you could save 'em, and won't, stands to reason, don't it?” argued Mipps.
Mipps realised that Dr. Syn was already searching his mind for a possible way out.
“Blest if I knows,” he answered honestly, “but you knows or will if you thinks. Fancy being hung for a bit of a game like a cargo run. Makes one lose faith in a Divine Providence. But God be praised, you're the head of the parish. The captured men belongs to your flock, and God's blessed you with brains. The sheep are bleating for the shepherd, and you ain't the one to fail 'em, I knows that.”
There was a long pause, during which the vicar, still grasping the pistol, drew his knees up to his chin and clasped them with both hands. As he cudgelled his brain, he allowed the weapon to slide down the tented coverlet beyond his drawn-up toes. He then drew off his nightcap and twisted it convulsively in his fingers.
Mipps, whose eyes were now turned to the darkness of the room, could see quite plainly his master's face lighted up by the window, and he knew, by the deep concentration which he read from that white mask, that although greatly agitated, as indeed he must have been, Dr. Syn was marshalling all his faculties to think of a way out for his unfortunate parishioners and thinking, as he had been accustomed to do in days gone by, of the very longest chances which after careful weighing might promise a possible success.
So the sexton wisely held his peace.
At the time it seemed ages before anything happened, although later Mipps realised that the vicar must have reached his decision in a few minutes. But while standing there like a sentinel waiting for orders, Mipps lived through the many adventures he had taken part in with his old captain. The sinking of this ship and that. The taking of prisoners. The destruction of harbours and towns. The wild feasts and drinkings. The quelling of mutinies. The marooning of a dangerous mulatto upon a coral reef. And, above all, the relentless, unsuccessful search for this man's enemy, who used the seven seas as his hunting ground. And through all these wild doings Dr. Syn coldly and silently thinking out the best means of success as he devoutly hoped he was doing, as he sat so still upon the bed, with the loaded pistol lying just beyond his toes. The only movement, the convulsive twisting of the nightcap in those long, sensitive fingers. Mipps continued to live again in old times. Things happened quickly enough then. Captain Clegg did not take long to make up his mind in a crisis. Had that quick brain lost its cunning? How long would he sit there and do nothing? When would something happen?
Mipps received the vicar's screwed-up nightcap full in his face. The bedclothes were hurled up and away in an enveloping wave, and with an emphatic “Damn you” Dr. Syn leapt across the room, upset a row of calf-bound volumes from their shelf to the floor, and from behind this ambush grasped a bottle of French brandy.
After taking a long pull, he turned on Mipps with the face of a fiend, the more terrible to the sexton since he could see it so plainly in the darkness. It seemed that the long white face attracted all the light from the window. Then it was that the well-remembered and oft-dreaded voice of Clegg spoke sharply:
“From now on, Mister Sexton, your damned-fool sheep shall have a shepherd who will keep his crook about their silly necks, and the excise-man shall dance to the scarecrow's tune.”
“The scarecrow?” echoed Mipps.
“That's what I said, you little fool—the scarecrow. He stands in the Tythe field. You can see him from the casement there. Put your head out and look. He won't bite you—but he'll bite soon and he'll bite hard. Saddle my white pony, which you and your smugglers can thank God you left behind. And put the panniers aboard. In the larboard basket pack me up eggs, butter and any other nourishment for the sick you can lay hands on in the larder, and in the starboard you will put the scarecrow's rags—aye, hat and all and tarred tow wig, and lash 'em down under a white napkin. Where are those fools captured?”
“Knockholt Beach. Tied hand and foot. Sitting on our kegs and guarded by half of those damned Dragoons.”
“Waiting for the other half of his men, who've ridden to Sandgate for the Revenue cutter.”
“Take this key and unlock a bag of guineas that you'll find in the top right-hand corner of my sea-chest.”
Mipps felt vastly relieved. However angry his master might be, he still trusted him, for none knew better than Mipps how many secrets of their past, their mutual past, that sea-chest contained.
The sexton, however, with the key in his hand, hesitated. “You can't never bribe that captain of Dragoons. He's a gentleman.”
“Don't argue—obey—” ordered the vicar. “Has Mother Handaway rented her stables to anyone yet?”
The sexton shook his head. “There's no farmer what would take it. It's cut off from the road by four wide dykes, it's devilish lonely and they say she's a witch. They shun the place by day, let alone night. They say creepy things goes on there. Things that don't bear thinkin' on. The devil has queer taste in women if he visits her, which they all say he does.”
“Saddle my pony, and get me the guineas.”
Dr. Syn dressed hurriedly without lighting a candle, took another tilt of the brandy which seemed to empty the bottle, slipping the pistol in his side pocket and went down the stairs.
The pony was saddled, and with the guineas in his pocket, and the pony's baskets packed as he had directed, the doctor mounted.
Then turning to the sexton, he whispered: “Now I'm in this against my will, but I would sooner help the parish than the outside authorities. You must get as near to the prisoners as you can with safety, and then if I can draw off the Dragoons, you must free them and get those tell-tale kegs into safety. But, remember, if I get through alive, I have had no share in this night's adventure. I am now going to visit old Mother Handaway. She is sick. Remember that, will you? She is sick and has sent for the vicar.”
Saying which, he started off the fat white pony along the coast road.
Mipps followed leisurely, and called in at his cottage. When he came out, he had a pair of loaded horse pistols in his great-coat pocket, a brass-barreled blunderbuss under his arm, and the sharp knife which Dr. Syn had taken from Merry in his belt.
