Norton, Andre - Novel 08 (18 page)

 
          
 
So Fitz found himself installed as a member in
good standing of not only the "coffee house," but also of Neagle's
own circle of young officers whose attitude toward life was an antidote to his
own worries and responsibilities of the past few days. When he returned to the
yard, Fitz found that the crew of the Retaliation had melted into the crowd,
and that each had discovered a circle of acquaintances and companions of his
own. Mike came panting up, trailed by two lads near his own age, and pounced on
Fitz with little or no reference to that officer's dignity.

 
          
 
"Lookee, sir, this be Tommy Drake!"
He pulled forward a shockheaded boy perhaps a year younger than he. "He
lives by the Sign of the Needle, back home, an' both
him
an' his uncle, Captain Drake, were taken last month by the Britishers. Tommy
an' me went t' school together. An' this here is Jock Anderson, sir, he was on
th
' Indian Queen along o' Tommy! They've got a mess o' their
own along o' Captain Drake's sir, an' they want I should join 'em. Be that all
right, sir—please!"

 
          
 
After a word or two with Captain Lucius Drake,
a rather sober man who had something of the harassed air of an unwilling
schoolmaster, Fitz agreed with Mike's arrangement and was himself free to go as
he wished. There was only one worry still in his aching head when he
laid
in his hammock that night: Where was Captain Crofts?

 
          
 
There was always a chill in the gray,
stone-walled rooms, even though it was approaching midsummer, and two days of
fine rain kept them yawning. The "coffee shop" was well patronized,
and it was difficult to find a sliver of room there in which one could insert
oneself. Neagle, who had adopted Fitz, looked about him with a wrinkled nose
one morning and said disdainfully:

 
          
 
"What a fug! And a parrot couldn't hear
itself screech in here!"

 
          
 
Fitz sighed to himself. He hoped that wasn't the
prologue to a suggestion that they seek the yard. The dampness out there cut
into him and he longed just to sit in front of a fire and toast his shins—a
longing which had no hope of being satisfied in Old Mill.

           
 
"We'll go visit the schoolmaster. He'll
like as not jaw our heads off, but he's good hearing sometimes—almost as
entertaining as a play."

 
          
 
Neagle turned smartly out of the "coffee
house" and led the way up a flight of stairs to a room from which they
heard shrill boyish voices lifted in a sort of singsong. The late first officer
of the
Washington
stopped short.

 
          
 
"Gad, it's school time! Strike me for a
lack wit!"

 
          
 
"Come
in,
come
in, please, gentlemen." The voice from the room had such a ring of command
that they both obeyed. And Fitz found himself looking over the shoulder of the
shorter N eagle at a group of rather grubby youngsters, among whom he
identified Mike, surrounding a pudgy little man who wore the rusty, severe
black coat and the limp white bands of a clergyman.

 
          
 
"Mr. Hubert Henderson," Neagle made
a leg, and Fitz noted that not a boy grinned. "This is a newcomer in our
midst, Mr. Lyon of the Retaliation."

 
          
 
"Mr. Lyon! Welcome to Old Mill
school
, sir, welcome indeed!"
Henderson
's smile was civil but restrained. "You
see us here, sir, gathered together so that the light of learning may not
wholly be erased from these young minds—even though we abide as prisoners in
the midst of our enemies. At present, sir, we are discussing the reason for our
situation here— I in broad terms, of course—not because of individual battles
and defeats. You may continue,
Jonas "

 
          
 
Neagle seated himself on an unoccupied bench
and Fitz dropped down beside him. The unfortunate Jonas, his ears scarlet with
effort and embarrassment, began again his fumbling recitation.

 
          
 
"Th' lobsters, they—"

 
          
 
"Jonas!" That sharp reproof plunged
the struggling orator deeper into the morass of public shame.

 
          
 
"Th' Britishers," he corrected
himself hastily. "Th' Britishers, they depend upon trade. Trade comes from
overseas to
England
. Our privateers spoil this trade." Warming to his subject he began
singsonging his words as if he had memorized them.

 
          
 
Fitz remembered something said to him in an
inn chamber across the sea. "Pinch the lobsters in their pockets, and
they'll know that there is a war on!"

 
          
 
He looked up startled to see all heads swing
in his direction, and he realized that he had spoken aloud. It was his turn to
color and stammer apologies under
Henderson
's reproving eye. Fortunately the
schoolmaster decided to ignore the interruption and wound up the lesson with a
brief statement of the aims for which the Americans were fighting. That done,
he relaxed some of his formal manner and Jonas was emboldened, being pushed to
his feet by several more retiring neighbors, to ask:

 
          
 
"May we have history today, sir?"

 
          
 
"Aye, sir, tell us 'bout
th
' Romans " pleaded one faction, while another
attempted to drown them out with batlike shrieks for tales of Danish raiders.

 
          
 
A slap of
Henderson
's hand on the table brought them to order
however, and he announced that he would talk about
Devon
and
Dartmoor
, but only if he had instant silence—which
was granted. For the next hour Fitz found himself listening spellbound to a
teller of tales such as he had never before heard equaled.

 
          
 
Drake and Hawkins and
all of
their
half-pirate, half-patriot crew ruffed it along the Hoe—that same
Hoe which lay beyond the walls now imprisoning the listeners. Then there were
stories of the wreckers who lived along the wild crags of the coast upon the
bounty which the sea brought them, not
adverse
to
helping storm and night reduce a ship to a wreck. And he followed with
descriptions of the moor men, those strange creatures who were the descendants
of Angles, Danes, Picts, Romans,
Welsh
, half a score
of different peoples, who had been forced as outlaws into the hidden places of
the moors, either by fortune of war or transgression against the law. Made
vivid by
Henderson
's narrative magic, the moor was a fantastic
land, fit only to lie on the hidden side of the moon.

 
          
 
When he had done at last, Fitz shook himself
out of the dream. The boys were clattering off after making their manners, and
left the three men alone.

 
          
 
"Sir," Fitz paid the tribute due,
"you are a born instructor! What I wouldn't given to have sat under you
when they were trying to din the classics into
my :hick
skull!"

 
          
 
"And none of these brats realize their
good fortune,"

 
          
 
Neagle cut in. ''Half of them never even
conned their letters till you rounded them up and set them to it, sir. Now—why,
they like it!"

 
          
 
He looked so amazed at the idea that anyone
could enjoy acquiring knowledge that both Henderson and Fitz laughed. The
schoolmaster produced a small bottle and from it poured into noggins three
equal measures of what Fitz discovered to be excellent sherry.

 
          
 
"You flatter me, gentlemen. I am a teller
of tales and I do not employ the birch. On a wet day, when the yard has no
appeal, they condescend to sit still awhile— until they become bored. If a
little of what I say sticks in their heedless heads, why then all of us are the
better for it.

 
          
 
"They tell me," he continued
addressing Fitz, "that you are out of
Maryland
, Mr. Lyon."

 
          
 
"Yes. I sailed from
Baltimore
on the Retaliation. We took on supplies at
Saint Malo and then
" he
gestured to the walls
around them.

 
          
 
"You arrived here,"
Henderson
observed. "Now I was on the bark Sarah
out of
Newport
. We had a rough passage. Our captain and
the mate were swept overboard in a storm. Since I have some small knowledge of
navigation—although I was but a passenger—I was constrained by the crew to act
as sailing master. And since we voyaged under Letters of Marque, we fought when
we fell in with a schooner off Wight. Unfortunately our zeal in our country's
service was superior to our skill. Without much delay, I found myself here. It
is dull, of course, but there is a tolerable bookshop in the town.
Fortunately," he pointed to a shelf of fat volumes, "I am a man to
whom books are meat and, most always, drink. So I feast in comfort with the greatest
pleasure to amuse me—an audience for my voice. In fact, I find that I do not
even greatly regret the series of mishaps which installed me in my present
abode."

 
          
 
Neagle chuckled. "So that is why you left
it for the Black
Hole
two months ago?"

 
          
 
Henderson
answered with a slightly affronted air.

 
          
 
"I was merely engaged in making an
experiment, sir, as you well know."

 
          
 
"An experiment which almost got you out
of here, clip and clean!" There was real admiration in the younger man's
tone now.

 
          
 
"There was a parcel of visiting divines,
you see," he explained to Fitz, "who were brought in on an inspection
tour, a regular flock of black crows hovering around asking questions right and
left. And Mr. Henderson doesn't go into the yard
much,
he likes his comfort up here, so the guard doesn't know him by sight too well.
Accordingly, he slips down and joins the flock, bows politely to the prison
agent, and walks out with them—as pretty as you please! If he hadn't stopped to
look in a bookshop window and hadn't been sighted by a redcoat who used to drop
in upon the school here, he'd have got away."

 
          
 
The schoolmaster sighed. "Ah, yes, the
sins of a man will always trip him in the end. A love of fine books is my
weakness, sir, among many others. I could not resist a second glance at that
Tacitus, a magnificent piece of binding—magnificent! I lingered a moment too
long, as my young friend here has said. So was I apprehended just as any common
criminal, and restored to my cell. The stars moved in their courses against me
that day. Let my sad story be a warning to you—when busied on a mission keep
your mind strictly upon it!"

 
          
 
"Mr. Lyon! Mr. Lyon, sir!" Mike
burst in at the door. He stood with open mouth and heaving chest before he got
the rest of it out. "Mr. Lyon, sir, they're bringin' in Captain
Crofts!"

 
          
 
Fitz was off his perch and pounding down the
stairs, with even Mike a good half flight behind him, almost before the last
word was spoken by the messenger.

 
          
 
"My lord," wrote Captain Whipple
back,

            
"It seems to me it's clear

            
That if you want to hang him

            
You must catch your
privateer"

 
          
 
—THE YANKEE PRIVATEER

 
          
 
The file of redcoats who had marched the
Captain in were passing back through the gate again as Fitz came running down
the yard, unmindful of slippery pavement and the pools of dark water he
splashed through. Between the collar of his boat cloak and the cocked brim of
his hat, Crofts' face was a pale blur, but, at the sight of Fitz, the Captain
moved quickly forward, his hands out in greeting.

 
          
 
"How are you, sir? Where have they been
keeping you?" Fitz found himself babbling.

 
          
 
"Come in, come in, out of the wet—both of
you!" called a voice from the doorway. "Mr. Lyon, bring the Captain
up to my room."

 
          
 
Henderson and Neagle stood there, and it was
the schoolmaster who had given the order. So Fitz escorted his commander up to
the schoolroom of the Old Mill. Once inside, Crofts dropped his sodden cloak
across the bench and sent his hat sailing after it. There were two sharply cut
lines by his mouth, and his lips were set thinly and tightly together. He stood
for a moment blowing on his chilled fingers, as if he were at a loss how to
begin.

 
          
 
"Where have you been, sir?" Fitz
could not help asking a second time.

 
          
 
Crofts jerked at his grubby stock and
accepted, with a bow of thanks, the noggin his host offered him.

 
          
 
"Mostly on board Sir
Henry Powell's frigate.
He's a prodigious talker, is Sir Henry."
Crofts tasted his potion, and then with raised eyebrows he bowed again to
Henderson
in acknowledgment of a greater treat than
he had expected. "Questions, questions," the Captain shook his head.
"One might believe the poor man thought I had full intelligence of all the
privateering to be done in the Channel for the next six months! Such a bustle
of inquiry as I have never been plagued with before—not even from the honorable
naval commissioners—and they are wordy men at their best."

 
          
 
"How many of our men are here?" He
turned to Fitz abruptly with a question of his own.

 
          
 
"Twelve, sir.
I'm the only officer. I don't know what has become of Dr. Watts and the badly
wounded—“

 
          
 
"They are temporarily lodged at the naval
hospital," Crofts answered. "
Watts
, as a noncombatant, may be released soon.
Twelve, eh?"
He finished his drink.
"Only
twelve."
He stared at the wall, not as if he saw the gray blocks at
all. "Only twelve," he repeated dully. "It did not take them
long to whittle us down to their fancy."

 
          
 
Fitz picked up the Captain's cloak and spread
it over the bench to dry. He felt a sudden reluctance to face Crofts at that
moment, and he jumped when the other demanded harshly:

 
          
 
"What of that knock on your head,
Lyon
?"

 
          
 
Involuntarily his hand went up to the soiled
bandage which still crowned him.
"Nothing bad, sir.
I had me an almighty ache for a while, but the worst is over. In a day or two I
can rid myself of this turban."

 
          
 
"Fie, sir," that was
Henderson
breaking into the conversation. "There
is no use now looking upon the dark side of the ledger. I have learned—from our
young friend here and other sources—that you had a singularly lucky voyage
before you fetched up here with the rest of us. You cannot curse your fate too
much."

 
          
 
"And," Neagle was lounging on the
edge of the table which served the schoolmaster as a desk, cleaning his nails
with the stub of a quill pen, "there is nothing to keep a man here, y'
know. Not if he has his wits left under his hair. What're a brace of eight-foot
walls and a score or two of sentries," he chuckled, "to a determined
Yankee? Naught, naught at all, Captain. They may push us in here, but they find
it plaguely hard to keep us all nice and quiet!"

 
          
 
For the first time Crofts laughed, not his
harsh bark of irritation, but the relaxed sound of real amusement.

 
          
 
"It is very plain to see that I have
arrived among my own countrymen. And I don't doubt that there are five or six
good escape schemes being put into operation right now—even as we sit here
talking. Nor am I denying that

 
          
 
I have been working on one of my own. Only it
will need a bit of knowledge of the prison and the countryside before I can
risk it."

 
          
 
Instinctively his small audience had moved in
closer as he spoke. But now he smiled at them and shook his head. "Give me
time to get my breath and look about a bit before you have it out of me,
friends. And now— where do I
lay
my weary head?"

 
          
 
"Right here, Captain, if you will accept
of an old man's hospitality," returned
Henderson
almost instantly.

 
          
 
So it was decided. And for almost a week
afterwards Crofts did nothing Fitz could see, except pace the yard on fine
days, chatting with this or that man, or even with small groups of the older
inhabitants, visit the "coffee house" where he was quickly accepted
as a member in good standing, and sit during the evenings jotting down on
scraps of paper what he insisted were his memoirs.

 
          
 
But on the second market day, when the
townsfolk were allowed to trade with the prisoners just within the gates, he
crooked a finger in signal to Fitz and the marine joined him eagerly. Crofts
looked him up and down with an open expression of disfavor.

 
          
 
"You're scarcely in full uniform, Mr.
Lyon." His cool voice carried easily to the ears of the sergeant of the
guard who lounged nearby. Fitz reddened as he looked down at his torn and
stained clothing.

 
          
 
"Under the circumstances," he began
somewhat heatedly, but Crofts interrupted him.

 
          
 
"I think we must remedy that, sir. After
all you are an officer bearing the commission of your country. There is no
excuse for slovenliness." He turned to the sergeant who, to Fitz's
surprise, snapped to attention as if Crofts were one of his own officers. But
noting the Captain's present manner, he could not blame the Britisher. When
Crofts was in this mood his own shoulders were back and his chin up to
parade-ground attention.

 
          
 
"I have permission, Sergeant, to deal
with the tailor, I believe?"

 
          
 
The sergeant consulted a list taken from his
pocket, and his finger moved laboriously down the page. After a long minute of
study he nodded.

 
          
 
"Yis, sir.
An'
he's a-waitin' outside noaw, sir."

 
          
 
"Come on,
Lyon
."

 
          
 
They met with the tailor under the eye of the
sergeant, and Crofts was all business, giving the small man a list which looked
suspiciously like part of the "memoirs." The tailor read it hurriedly
and then said that the package might be delivered that very afternoon if the
gentlemen wished. Crofts indicated curtly that the gentlemen did wish so, and
the transaction ended with an exchange of cash in which the sergeant was not
overlooked.

 
          
 
Back within the yard, Crofts took Fitz up to
the schoolroom. Since it was market day there was no class in session, and even
Henderson
had been drawn below to conduct some small
trading ventures of his own. Crofts seated
himself
on
one of the benches and pulled out a length of string, smoothing it out as best
he could and shaking his head over several knots in it.

 
          
 
"Off with your coat and your
waistcoat," he ordered. "We'll measure you for a new set of breeches.
I had to guess lest I set tongues a-wagging a little too soon, and I trust I
have figured it rightly."

 
          
 
Obediently Fitz stood in his shirt sleeves,
watching the Captain's antics with amazement. There was
a
certain
meticulousness about Croft's measurements with the string and
his notes on paper which hinted that the Captain had done just such a task
before.

 
          
 
Crofts had jotted down the last of his
computations and was surveying Fitz's waistcoat as it lay spread out on the
table. He glanced up and caught the other's wondering eyes and then he laughed.

 
          
 
"No, I assure you,
Lyon
, I haven't taken leave of my senses. But I
was once apprenticed to a tailor and sweated out four years in his shop. My
father was not minded to have a sailor son, you see, and we were a long family,
with
myself
close to the tail of the line. Charles and
Nick stayed with the land, and Archie went into law—he's puffing it out in
Congress now. Then Rupert was put in a counting house under one of the
Philadelphia
graycoats, and Jim took orders. So I was to
learn a good trade with my hands—only, all the good intentions in the world
cannot forge a landsman out of a sailor. As at last my father admitted
handsomely enough.

 
          
 
"Never did I think I would live to see
the day when I should be grateful for my hours with the needle. But now it is a
needle which will get us out of here. On with this waistcoat and let us see
what must be done."

 
          
 
Still mystified, Fitz played tailor's dummy
and allowed the other to push and pull him into the proper stance for measurements
which seemed endless. But after having his coat raked on and off several times,
he did demand an explanation. When it was given, the audacity of it almost
knocked him down, his mouth open and gasping like a fish out of water.

 
          
 
"But, Captain, in broad daylight,"
he protested.

 
          
 
"Don't stutter!" the other ordered.
"Didn't
Henderson
achieve almost the same sort of trick? With the cloth I have ordered I
can alter these uniforms into British ones. After all they were made from
captured British cloth. Only the lapels, the waistcoats and maybe new breeches
have to be made. I have it from the sergeant that we are to be visited in a
week's time by a naval party—one of those groups of young officers up to see
the enemy in their
den "

 
          
 
Fitz nodded. One such party of sight-seers had
come to the Old Mill the day after his arrival.

 
          
 
"Take one of these drizzly days such as
seem to be ordinary in Devon, and let us mingle with the crowd of officers and
we can walk out—as smart as you please! It is not as harebrained a plan as you
might think."