The Dew of Their Youth - Samuel Rutherford Crockett (chromebook ebook reader TXT) 📗

in Galloway. The signal from the top of the beacon tower of Marnhoul was seen and understood in half-a-dozen parishes.
Not that the young fellows who saw the flame connected it with the two children who had taken refuge in the old place of the Maitlands. In fact, most knew nothing about their existence. But their alacrity was connected with quite another matter--the great cargo of dutiable and undutied goods stored away in the cellars of Marnhoul!
There was stirring, therefore, in remote farms, rattling on doors, hurried scrambling up and down stable ladders. Young men on the outskirts of villages might have been seen stealing through gardens, stumbling among cabbage-stocks and gooseberry bushes as they made their way by the uncertain flicker of our far-away beacon to the place of rendezvous.
Herds rising early to "look the hill" gave one glance at the red dance of the flames over the tree-tops of Marnhoul great wood, and anon ran to waken their masters.
For in that country every farmer--aye, and most of the lairds, including a majority of the Justices of the Peace--had a share in the "venture." Sometimes the value of the cargo brought in by a single run would be from fifty to seventy thousand pounds. All this great amount of goods had to be scattered and concealed locally, before it was carried to Glasgow and Edinburgh over the wildest and most unfrequented tracks.
The officers of the revenue, few and ill-supported, could do little. Most of them, indeed, accepted the quiet greasing of the palm, and called off their men to some distant place during the night of a big run. But even when on the spot and under arms, a cavalcade of a couple of hundred men could laugh at half-a-dozen preventives, and pass by defiantly waving their hands and clinking the chains which held the kegs upon their horses. The bolder cried out invitations to come and drink, and the good-will of the leaders of the Land Free Traders was even pushed so far that, if a Surveyor of Customs showed himself pleasantly amenable, a dozen or more small kegs of second-rate Hollands would be tipped before his eyes into a convenient bog, so that, if it pleased him, he could pose before his superiors as having effected an important capture.
The report which he was wont to edit on these occasions will often compare with the higher fiction--as followeth:--
"Supervisor Henry Baskett, in charge of the Lower Solway district,
reports as follows under date June 30th: Found a strong body of
smugglers marching between the wild mountains called Ben Tuthor and
Blew Hills. They were of the number of three hundred, all well
mounted and armed, desperate men, evidently not of this district,
but, from their talk and accoutrement, from the Upper Ward of
Lanerickshire. Followed them carefully to note their dispositions
and discover a favourable place for attack. I had only four men with
me, whereof one a boy, being all the force under my command.
Nevertheless, at a place called the Corse of Slakes I advanced
boldly and summoned them, in the King's name and at the peril of
their lives, to surrender.
"Whereat they turned their guns upon us, each man standing behind
his horse and having his face hidden in a napkin lest he should be
known. But we four and the boy advanced firmly and with such
resolution that the band of three hundred law-breakers broke up
incontinent, and taking to flight this way and that through the
heather, left us under the necessity of pursuing. We pursued that
band which promised the best taking, and I am glad to intimate to
your Excellencies, His Majesty's Commissioners, that we were
successful in putting the said Free Traders to flight, and capturing
twenty-five casks best Hollands, six loads of Vallenceen, etc.,
etc., as per schedule appended to be accounted for by me as your
lordship's commissioners shall direct. In the hope that this will be
noted to our credit on the table of advancement (and in this connect
I may mention the names of the three men, Thomas Coke, Edward Loval,
Timothy Pierce, and the boy Joseph McDougal, whom I recommend as
having done their duty in the face of peril), I have the honour to
sign myself,
"My Lords and Hon. Commissioners of H. M. Excise,
"Your obedient, humble servant,
"Henry Baskett (Supervisor)."
The other view of this transaction I find more concisely expressed in a memorandum written in an old note-book belonging to my Uncle Tom.
"Baskett held out for forty best French, but we fobbed him off with twenty-five low-grade Rotterdam--the casks being leaky, and some packs of goods too long left at Rathan Cave, which is at the back of the isle, and counted scarce worth the carrying farther. The night fine and business most successful--thanks to an ever-watchful Providence."
The reader of these family memoirs will perhaps agree with me that, if any one could do without an ever-watchful Providence troubling itself about him, that man was my Uncle Tom.
While, therefore, we in the House of Marnhoul were in the wildest alarm--at least Agnes Anne was--forces which could not possibly be withstood were mustering to hasten to our assistance. The tarry jackets of the _Golden Hind_ would doubtless have rushed the front door with a hurrah, as readily as they would have boarded a prize, but Lalor Maitland ordered them to bring wood and other inflammable material. At least, so I judge, for presently I could see them running to and fro about the edges of the wood. They had now learned the knack of keeping in shelter most of the way. But I did not feel really afraid till I saw some of them with kegs of liquor making towards the porch. There they stove them in, and proceeded to empty the contents on the dry branches and fuel they had collected. The matter was now beginning to look really serious. To make things worse, they were evidently digging out the bottom of our cellar-stair barricade, and if they succeeded in that they would turn our position and take us in the rear.
So I sent down Agnes Anne (she not being good for much else) to the cellar to see how things were looking there, bidding her to be careful of the lantern, and to bring back as many of the five muskets as she could carry, so that I might keep the fellows in check above.
Agnes Anne came flying back with the worst kind of news. A great flame of fire was springing up out of the well of the staircase into which we had tumbled the barrels and boxes. It threatened, she said, to blow us sky-high, if there were any barrels of powder among the goods left by the smugglers.
At any rate, the flame was rapidly spreading to the other packages which had formed our breastwork of defence, and was now like to become our ruin.
For, once fairly caught, the spirit would flame high as the rigging of Marnhoul, and we should all be burnt alive, which was most likely what Lolar Maitland meant by his parting threatening.
"And it is more than likely," Agnes Anne added, "that some of the barrels burst as we threw them down the stairs, and so, with the liquor flowing among their feet, the assailants got the idea of thus burning us out."
At all events something had to be done, and that instantly. So I had perforce to leave Agnes Anne in charge of "King George" again, cautioning her not to pull the trigger till she should see the rascals actually bending to set fire to the pile underneath the porch of the front door. I also told her not to be frightened, and she promised not to.
Then I went down to the cellar. The heat there was terrible, and I do not wonder that Agnes Anne came running back to me. A pillar of blue flame was rising straight up against the arched roof of the cellar. I could hear the cries of the men working below in the passage.
"Hook it away--give her air--she will burn ever the brisker and smoke the land-lubbers out!"
Some few of the boxes in the front tier were already on fire, and still more were smouldering, but the straightness of the vent up which the flame was coming, together with the closeness and stillness of the vault, made the flame mount straight up as in a chimney. I therefore divined rather than saw what remained for me to do. I leaped over and began, at the risk of a severe scorching, to throw back all the boxes and packages which were in danger. It was lucky for me that the smugglers had piled them pretty high, and so by drawing one or two from near the foundation, I was fortunate enough to overset the most part of it in the outward direction.
But the fierceness of the flame was beginning to tell upon the building-stone of Marnhoul, which was of a friable nature--at least that with which the vault was arched.
Luckily some old tools had been left in the corner, and it struck me that if I could dig up enough of the earthen floor or topple over the mound of earth which had been piled up at the making of the underground passage, the fire must go out for lack of air; or, better still, would be turned in the faces of those who were digging away the barrels and boxes from the bottom of the stair-well.
This, after many attempts and some very painful burns, I succeeded in doing. The first shovelfuls did not seem to produce much effect. So I set to work on the large heap of hardened earth in the corner, and was lucky enough to be able to tumble it bodily upon the top of the column of fire. Then suddenly the terrible column of blue flame went out, just as does a Christmas pudding when it is blown upon. And for the same reason. Both were made of the flames of the French spirit called cognac, or brandy.
Then I did not mind about my burns, I can assure you. But almost gleefully I went on heaping mould and dirt upon the boxes in the well of the staircase, stamping down the earth at the top till it was almost like the hard-beaten floor of the cellar itself. I left not a crevice for the least small flame to come up through.
Then I bethought me of what might be going on above, and the flush of my triumph cooled quickly. For I thought that there was only Agnes Anne, and who knows what weakness she may not have committed. She would never have thought, for instance, of such a thing as covering in the flame with earth to put it out. To tell the truth, I did think very masterfully of myself at that moment, and perhaps with some cause, for not one in a thousand would have had the "engine" to do as I had done.
When I