The Smugglers Read online

  To the south the cliff stretched on forever, and the beach came up to meet it. Surf broke right against the base–a line of breakers I could not hope to cross.

  Dasher gained the shingle and stopped there at the edge of the mud. He went to one side and then the other, trying to find me in the shadows at the base of the cliff.

  “John!” he shouted. “John, where are you?” Then he pulled off his corks, cast them down, and went at a sprint to the south.

  I went north. I walked up to the smugglers and slipped in among them. No one challenged me; no one spoke at all. I took a barrel from the heap and fell in place with the men going up the cliff.

  They carried two each, in slings that let the barrels hang down their backs and their chests. Even boys my own age carried two barrels this way. But the one weighed me down, and I was pleased to find myself in the wake of a fat man who wheezed like a tired old horse. Up we went as others came down, while the guard stood watch on the trail.

  The path twisted back on itself and rose up again. And the line seemed to vanish ahead. Each man came to a certain point on the trail and disappeared, as though one by one–like lemmings–the smugglers were stepping from the edge of the cliff.

  With a start, I heard Dasher below me. I glanced over the edge and saw him, a pistol in his hand. He was shouting my name. “John!” he cried. “John Spencer!” And then, half winded, he asked the men around him, “Have you seen a boy dressed like a sailor? Has a boy gone by?”

  I felt every eye on my back but didn't look up. I pressed myself against the heels of the fat man and cursed him now for slowing me down. I heard Dasher start up the trail. There were oaths and grunts as he forced his way through.

  A yard ahead the fat man disappeared. In the blink of an eye he was gone. And right after him, I slipped into utter darkness. Into the mouth of a tunnel.

  It closed around me, hot with the breath and the sweat of the smugglers, and thick with a stench of burning oil. But even in the darkness I could see the feet of the man ahead of me, for an eerie light rose from the broken shells covering the floor. In the shards that crunched under our shoes was held the sea's phosphorescence, a pale and shim-mering green. The tramp of the smugglers' boots, the slosh of the brandy, echoed through the space with a sound like surf on a beach.

  The tunnel slanted down, so I felt myself pulled by the weight of my load, pushed by a breeze that blew from behind. Then it sharply turned and rose at a steeper angle; lanterns set in the wall cast thin little blades of gold. And in this smoky haze was lit the line of wretched men, bent and coughing as they trudged along.

  Dasher's shouts came louder, closer. But each time I tried to get past the fat man, it was only to meet other men coming down. Someone cuffed me on the ears and told me roughly, “Get back in line.” My fingers burned where they held the barrel; my arms felt stretched to twice their length.

  I must have gone half a mile before I felt a gust of air, as the tunnel turned once more to open at a storeroom. It was an enormous cellar built of stone, without a window anywhere. In a near corner was a staircase. In the far wall, an open door led to a ramp that climbed steeply to a village street, and the smoke from the tunnel swirled out in coils of gray. At the top was a wagon, with a pair of patient horses and a dozen men around it.

  Dasher's shouts came close behind me, loud and short of breath. “The boy!” he cried. “Stop the boy.”

  I followed the fat man toward the door. He put his barrels down on the cellar floor, but I kept on going. Another moment would get me free from there; fifty paces would take me to a road. I passed through the door and started up.

  Hands closed on my shoulder, pulling me back. “Where do you think you're off to?”

  It was the fat man. He pulled the barrel from my arms and set it down with his. “Others take them up,” he said. “You go back for another.”

  A suspicious look came to his face. He bent toward me, his hand on my collar. “Who are you?” he asked. “I've never seen you before.”

  Dasher shouted, “Stop the boy!”

  I wrenched away as Dasher came hurtling from the tunnel mouth. I ran for the door, but the guards were coming down. I wheeled away and raced for the staircase. I pounded up the wooden steps, and others came behind me.

  At the top was a hallway, wooden-floored, even darker than the smugglers' tunnel. Not the faintest glimmer of light showed me which way I should go. With my back pressed to the wall, I shuffled along until I came to a corner, and around it to another flight of stairs set deep in a narrow doorway, rising to a second floor. But the boards creaked horribly under my weight, and I dared not make another sound. I crouched at the bottom and waited.

  Dasher was first up the steps from the cellar. His voice boomed down the hall. “Where are you?” And then, in a whisper, “Lord love me, I don't like the darkness.”

  Others thundered up behind him, and then the glow of lanterns spread along the walls, painting them yellow and gold. I could hear the smugglers breathing. Their boots tapped and scuffed on the floor. They were sure to find me.

  But Dasher cried, “This way!” And I could hear that they took the wrong turn at the top of the stairs.

  For a long time I crouched there, listening. A door opened, and then another. The footsteps stopped, but the voices didn't, and I crept from my doorway and poked my head round the corner. At the end of the hall was a kitchen, and there the smugglers stood in a half circle, their backs toward me as they huddled at a counter. Halfway between us, on the far side of the hall, an open door spilled the lanterns' light onto a street.

  I wanted to run, but I dared not do it. Instead I crept along, close to the wall to keep the floorboards from squeaking. I moved slowly but steadily. I made no sound at all, and I kept my eyes on the smugglers.

  I was only yards from the door when a voice called out from the kitchen. It was reedy and old, a woman's voice.

  “Is that you, Flem?”

  I was too surprised to move. The huddle of men broke open, and old Mrs. Pye came out from behind them. “Fleming?” she asked in that broken voice. “Is that you, Fleming? Is that you at last?”

  She tottered toward me, smiling grotesquely, preening her thin bits of hair.

  I would never have guessed I'd come back to the Baskerville Inn. But as I stood there, utterly helpless, I felt the same waft of air through the tunnel that I'd felt here what seemed like a lifetime ago. I remembered the smell that came with it, the one of the sea.

  “My darling,” said Mrs. Pye. “At last you've come home.”

  It was Dasher who spoke. “It isn't Fleming, you old dish-clout. It's a boy,” said he. “An informer. A rat of a boy.”

  He barged past her and grabbed me. The others came after, and the old woman spun and staggered along, groping for the wall. If the smugglers had had their way, they would have killed me right there; they would have bashed me to death with the clubs they carried. But Dasher said, “No! He's mine. I've waited long for this.” And he hauled me out through the door, dragging me into the street.

  “I'll kill him!” he shouted. “I'll shoot him down like the dog that he is.”

  Dasher pulled me and pushed me to the banks of a little stream. He whirled me round, and his hands filled with pistols. “I'll blow his head off!” he shouted. “I'll put a ball through his heart.”

  And he fired the guns.

  What they say is true: Your life flashes before you. But mine was a short little life, and I saw myself grow in an instant from a baby to a boy. I saw myself on my father's shoulders with my hands pulling at his hair. I saw my mother's deathbed and her horrid, twisted face. I saw the Isle of Skye, and then Mary's kind face, her sweet smile. And last I saw the towering waves of the Tombstones. I felt them close over me as cold as ice, and I tumbled backward into the rushing stream.

  Chapter 16

  A GANG OF MEN

  The water was fast and bubbly, not salty at all. It shocked me with its coldness and its blackness, as deep as all etern
ity. I seemed to fall forever, though the stream was not much more than a foot in depth.

  Dasher hauled me out. He slid me up the grassy slope, on my back, until I lay with only my legs in the water. He looked worried; I thought he might be crying.

  “You're all right, aren't you?” he whispered.

  “I don't know,” I told him.

  “Sure you are.” He grinned. Then he lifted his head and shouted back at the inn. “Still alive! Damn me, the boy's still alive.” And he pulled another two pistols out of his belt.

  They were bright with gold that flashed in his hands. Larson's pistols. He aimed them down and cocked the hammers.

  “No,” I said. “Please.”

  “It's all right,” he told me. “They're not loaded. Not a one of them's loaded.” And he fired them both. “That will show you!” he shouted fiercely. “That's you done for!” He pulled pistols from his belt and his bandolier; he stuffed them back as the smoke still swirled from the barrels. With each shot, a shout: “Take that, you devil. Take that, you rogue!” Then he winked at me. “Oh, isn't this grand?”

  He put on quite a show for the smugglers, who hadn't moved from the doors of the inn. And he reveled in the noise and the smell of the powder, in the sudden flare of orange that lit him each time against the black of the sky. But there were still half a dozen pistols untouched in his belt when the smugglers called out and told him to stop. “They'll hear you in Ashford,” they shouted. “You'll have the whole preventive here.”

  Dasher put his guns away. “I'll just cut his throat, then,” he said, and came down to crouch beside me.

  I was nearly deafened, and half blinded by the glare and the smoke. But I wasn't hurt at all, and I realized now why my father had come away with only a burn on his coat.

  “I couldn't harm you,” said Dasher. “I could never hurt a soul.” He got me sitting on the bank; he told me to rest for a while. “Then slip away to London. You'll get the coach at St. Vincent.”

  “London?” I said. “And leave the Dragon with Captain Crowe?” I shook my head. “My father's fortune is in that ship.”

  “It's lost at any rate,” said Dasher.

  We heard voices coming nearer, and lantern light flashed across the ground. Dasher thrust his head up over the banks and shouted out, “You lot stay where you are! I'll just turn out his pockets!” Then he bent to me again. “I have to go,” he said. “But here, take this.”

  He reached inside his coat and pulled out a dark little bundle. I stared in astonishment at Larson's oil-skinned packet. “I found this on Harry,” Dasher said. “Lord knows how he got it. I told Captain Crowe not to trust that one.” He pressed the envelope into my hands. “Take it to London. Straight to the Old Bailey. Find one of those gents with a cauliflower on his head–you know those white wigs they wear. Put that straight in his hands and tell him, 'Here you go, sir. Here's a present from Dashing Tommy Dusker.' ” He chuckled. “I guess that will bring an end to old Haggis. And to a whole lot of others who put on the airs when they see me.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “But one other thing.” He looked at me with his rakish grin. “Go through it yourself. Look for my name in there. And make sure that – ”

  “I'll cut it out,” I promised. “Or I'll blotch it, or something.”

  “No,” he said. “If you see I'm not there, will you write me in? Will you do that, John?”

  It was the strangest thing I'd ever been asked, but of course it was just what he'd want. “There'll come a day you'll hear of me,” he'd said. “They might have to hang me first, but hear of me you will.”

  “Promise?” he asked.

  “I promise,” I told him.

  Dasher gave me a clap on the shoulder, then left me there at the stream. He climbed up the bank and posed at the top for a moment, with the breeze in his coat. Then he swaggered off toward the Baskerville, already boasting of his deed. “You should have seen the way he squirmed. Should have heard him beg.”

  I lay hiding for a long time, until the moon was nearly down. But the little village never fell silent. Wagons rumbled over the bridge; the inn door opened and closed. When I crawled up the bank and peered over the edge, I saw a gilded old hearse draw up at the inn and go off with a load of barrels. And behind it, to my chagrin, came the coach I'd ridden in with Father, the same driver hopping down from his seat to open the doors for the tubmen. It was no wonder, I thought, that he'd found his way to the Baskerville. No wonder he'd known poor Mrs. Pye.

  I knew Dasher was right. The Dragon might be lost already, and with her my father's fortune. But I couldn't brave the thought of facing Father as I told him how I'd left the ship with Captain Crowe. He'd put all his trust in me alone, and I couldn't let him know how badly I had failed. I watched the moon, and when it touched the trees I started down the stream. Back toward the sea.

  I waded through the water, which tumbled along, over shelves of rock, going steadily down and always faster. It had worn a gully into the cliffs, but in places it fell a fathom straight, in a foaming, roaring fury. I slid and splashed and stumbled, with one hand to keep my balance, one to hold Larson's packet safe within my shirt. And I slipped down past the edge of a cataract.

  Right into the arms of a man.

  He lunged up from the darkness, from the side of the stream where it pooled below the falls. He forced my face down and held me there, his knee on my back, with the water almost touching my nose. “And where are you off to?” he asked.

  I didn't answer quickly enough. He plunged my head under the surface, and I heard the roar from the falls as I struggled against him. His hand in my hair, he pulled me up again. “Where?” he shouted.

  I gasped for breath. “The Dragon,” I said. “Back to the Dragon.”

  “I thought as much,” said he. “But you'll not be doing that, my boy.”

  With a twist of my arm he rolled me onto my back, and I stared up at a man in a mud-dabbled uniform. An officer's clothes. I was so shocked, so pleased, that I blurted out, “Good God! The revenue!”

  “Yes,” he said, and shook me. “And what's your name? Who are you, boy?”

  “Spencer,” I said. “John Spencer. And I know where the smugglers are. I can take you there.”

  He laughed. “You hear that? The boy's a turncoat.”

  From the bushes and the rocks came a gang of men. They all wore the same blue jackets, dark neckerchiefs, and battered hats with ribbons at the crowns. They filled the space at the bottom of the falls.

  “Up you get,” the officer said. “You're coming along with us.”

  “Wait!” I cried. “I'm not a smuggler.”

  “Course you're not.” He dragged me to my feet. “You lot are all the same. No one's a smuggler when the revenue's there.”

  “It's true,” I said. “Just listen. I can take you where they are.”

  “And where is that?”

  “The Baskerville,” said I.

  He snorted. “That's half a mile from the sea.”

  “There's a tunnel,” I said. “It comes out at the inn.”

  I was hardly aware that we'd been shouting over the noise of the falls. But now the beating water was all I heard as the revenue men stared at me in astonishment.

  “I have a book.” I fished the packet from my shirt. “All their names – ”

  “Damn your book,” the officer said. He shoved my hand rudely away. “It's a fine story, boy, a tunnel up from the sea. We'll just see about that. We'll see if it's true.”

  “I have to get to the Dragon,” I said.

  “And send us off on a goose chase? I think not, my boy.” He took my arm and hauled me up the slope. “You'll come along with us, you will.”

  There were more than a dozen men; I had no choice but to lead them back. Each one carried a cutlass, and most had a pistol or two. They pulled them out and examined the flints, and in the darkness it was a sinister thing to see.

  The officer sent two men down to the beach, to watch for an
y smugglers who might come from the tunnel. Then he told me, “Show us the way. And for your own sake, boy, we'd best find the smugglers there.”

  I put the packet back in my shirt and led them, as fast as I could, up through the gully and over the ground at the top. They followed behind in a line, grunting up the steepest parts, their cutlasses clanging on stones. And then the Baskerville rose above us, black and hulking, with not a single bit of light in any of its windows.

  “Empty,” said the officer. “I might have guessed as much.”

  “They're in the cellar,” I said. “They're taking the barrels out to the street.” And even as I spoke, the hearse came jangling back down the road, its four black horses all in a run.

  “They'll put barrels in there,” said I. “Brandy straight from France.”

  We circled the inn and came out at its front. We looked in through the open doors to the hazy glow of the lantern-lit cellar. The hearse stood outside, its rear doors open. Around it lounged the black guard. And in the pool of golden light that came through the door, I saw Burton himself with his stick and his fine-looking clothes.

  “There,” I said, and pointed. “That's Burton, the head of it all.”

  “So it is,” the officer said. “I'll tell you, boy, I've waited years for this. Years and years I've waited.”

  He spread his men out in an arc, to the left and the right, by hedgerows and trees. And for a long, long moment we waited.

  I said, “There's a woman in there. Old Mrs. Pye. She's – ”

  “Blind?” he asked. “Sure, we all know Sally Pye. She won't be harmed, boy. No fear about that.”

  He turned his head to look at me. “You can stay right here,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “I can't. They nearly killed me; they nearly drove my father from his business. I have to go with you. I have to.”