Moonfleet, John Meade Falkner [intellectual books to read txt] 📗

“Scaring rooks for Farmer Topp,” was the answer.

“Have you got a charge of powder to spare?” said Elzevir, showing his pistol. “I want to get a rabbit in the gorse for supper, and have dropped my flask. Maybe you’ve seen a flask in walking through the furrows?”

He whispered to me to lie still, so that it might not be perceived my leg was broken; and the boy replied:

“No, I have seen no flask; but very like have not come the same way as you, being sent out here from Lowermoigne; and as for powder, I have little left, and must save that for the rooks, or shall get a beating for my pains.”

“Come,” said Elzevir, “give me a charge or two, and there is half a crown for thee.” And he took the coin out of his pocket and showed it.

The boy’s eyes twinkled, and so would mine at so valuable a piece, and he took out from his pocket a battered cowskin flask. “Give flask and all,” said Elzevir, “and thou shalt have a crown,” and he showed him the larger coin.

No time was wasted in words; Elzevir had the flask in his pocket, and the boy was biting the crown.

“What shot have you?” said Elzevir.

“What! have you dropped your shot-flask too?” asked the boy. And his voice had something of surprise in it.

“Nay, but my shot are over small; if thou hast a slug or two, I would take them.”

“I have a dozen goose-slugs, No. 2,” said the boy; “but thou must pay a shilling for them. My master says I never am to use them, except I see a swan or buzzard, or something fit to cook, come over: I shall get a sound beating for my pains, and to be beat is worth a shilling.”

“If thou art beat, be beat for something more,” says Elzevir the tempter. “Give me that firelock that thou carriest, and take a guinea.”

“Nay, I know not,” says the boy; “there are queer tales afloat at Lowermoigne, how that a Posse met the Contraband this morning, and shots were fired, and a gauger got an overdose of lead⁠—maybe of goose slugs No. 2. The smugglers got off clear, but they say the hue and cry is up already, and that a head-price will be fixed of twenty pound. So if I sell you a fowling-piece, maybe I shall do wrong, and have the government upon me as well as my master.” The surprise in his voice was changed to suspicion, for while he spoke I saw that his eye had fallen on my foot, though I tried to keep it in the shadow; and that he saw the boot clotted with blood, and the kerchief tied round my leg.

“ ’Tis for that very reason,” says Elzevir, “that I want the firelock. These smugglers are roaming loose, and a pistol is a poor thing to stop such wicked rascals on a lone hillside. Come, come, thou dost not want a piece to guard thee; they will not hurt a boy.”

He had the guinea between his finger and thumb, and the gleam of the gold was too strong to be withstood. So we gained a sorry matchlock, slugs, and powder, and the boy walked off over the furrow, whistling with his hand in his pocket, and a guinea and a crown-piece in his hand.

His whistle sounded innocent enough, yet I mistrusted him, having caught his eye when he was looking at my bloody foot; and so I said as much to Elzevir, who only laughed, saying the boy was simple and harmless. But from where I sat I could peep out through the brambles in the open gap, and see without being seen⁠—and there was my young gentleman walking carelessly enough, and whistling like any bird so long as Elzevir’s head was above the wall; but when Elzevir sat down, the boy gave a careful look round, and seeing no one watching any more, dropped his whistling and made off as fast as heels would carry him. Then I knew that he had guessed who we were, and was off to warn the hue and cry; but before Elzevir was on his feet again, the boy was out of sight, over the hill-brow.

“Let us move on,” said Block; “ ’tis but a little distance now to go, and the heat is past already. We must have slept three hours or more, for thou art but a sorry watchman, John. ’Tis when the sentry sleeps that the enemy laughs, and for thee the Posse might have had us both like daylight owls.”

With that he took me on his back and made off with a lusty stride, keeping as much as possible under the brow of the hill and in the shelter of the walls. We had slept longer than we thought, for the sun was westering fast, and though the rest had refreshed me, my leg had grown stiff, and hurt the more in dangling when we started again. Elzevir was still walking strongly, in spite of the heavy burden he carried, and in less than half an hour I knew, though I had never been there before, we were in the land of the old marble quarries at the back of Anvil Point.

Although I knew little of these quarries, and certainly was in evil plight to take note of anything at that time, yet afterwards I learnt much about them. Out of such excavations comes that black Purbeck Marble which you see in old churches in our country, and I am told in other parts of England as well. And the way of making a marble quarry is to sink a tunnel, slanting very steeply down into the earth, like a well turned askew, till you reach fifty, seventy, or perhaps one hundred feet deep. Then from the bottom of this shaft there spread out narrow passages or tunnels, mostly six feet high, but sometimes only three or four, and in these the marble is