They left on the Wednesday at dawn. Paul Kellow had been able to come, and after hesitation Ben Carter agreed too. Demelza sometimes remarked that winter in Cornwall set in on January 18; but this year, aside from the occasional gusty wind with hail showers, nothing unkind developed such as was occurring upcountry. The air came persistently from the north-west, preventing frost; and primroses and snowdrops were out.
All the same, the sea was restless, and they kept well clear of the saw-toothed coast. As they passed Hell’s Mouth and crossed the Hayle Estuary Paul Kellow waved an ironical salute. The St Ives fishermen were out, dotted all over the bay and rising and falling in the swell. like seagulls. More vengeful cliffs with the white gauze of spray drifting at their feet; the sands of Sennen, and then the deep-tangled waters of the Land’s End.
Stephen came up beside Jeremy, as he was tightening a rope round the cleat on the mainmast. ‘At this pretty rate,’ he shouted, ‘we should be in afore dark. Jeremy…’
‘Yes?’
‘We have not decided how we shall divide coming home. Will you come with me?’
‘I had thought Paul probably. Is it important?’
‘Not important, no. But Paul has to be back by Friday at the latest. I don’t know how long…’
‘I would have thought we could have made it well before then. But I can come instead of Paul if you think that better.’
Stephen took a last bite at the pie he had brought. When his mouth was half empty he said:
‘The brandy is contraband.’
‘Of course.’
‘Also the Philippe couldn’t be brought safe into your cove, I’d guess. Also she is a prize, and your father be due home shortly. I do not know how he would look on all this. Of a certain, I’d not want to embarrass him.’
Jeremy finished securing the rope, gave it a tug. ‘What do you suggest?’
‘I had thought at first I might take her back to Bristol; but I’d rather prefer to rid meself of the cargo here; and if there was a likely buyer for the lugger, twould be better to dispose of her too. I doubt whether you or any of your friends would wish to help me sail her up there and come home by land!’
‘I’d assumed we were all coming back to Nampara … Well, there’s little enough money at St Ann’s, I agree.’
‘That’s what I thought. That’s what the Nanfans told me. But there’s St Ives, Penzance, Falmouth, Mevagissey.’
‘My father’s cousin lives in Falmouth,’ said Jeremy. ‘She is married to a retired Packet captain and he might know who would be a likely purchaser … But you’re suggesting, then…’
‘That we should take her to one of the Channel ports. Twould take us no longer than bringing her back to Nampara, and if we was lucky the business would be completed in a couple of days. Indeed, if you wanted to go home and leave me there, no doubt I could manage.’
A larger wave than they had previously seen came riding in behind them, and the little gig lurched and sidled like a restive horse. Ben Carter at the tiller brought her up a bit more to keep the wind steady on her starboard beam.
Jeremy shouted. ‘Do you have any contacts on that coast? One cannot, you know, just arrive in a port with twenty ankers – or whatever it is – of contraband brandy.’
‘I thought to try Mevagissey,’ said Stephen. ‘There’s one or two I know – by name if naught else – who’d be glad to take the stuff. What are the gaugers like in that area?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘In St Ann’s?’
‘Not easy. There’s a man called Vercoe. Been there for years. And gets ever sourer.’
‘Don’t he take a little on the side? Most of ’em do.’
‘Not as far as I know. Of course it goes on – the Trade goes on, but I have never heard of him or his men being willing to turn a blind eye.’
‘Well … that makes it all the more sense to try Mevagissey, or thereabouts. Would you be willing?’
They sighted the Isles of Scilly well before dusk, even in that short day. There being little cloud about and the sun not setting until 4.50, a long twilight followed and they were able to pick their way among the dangerous reefs and islands of Crow Sound and to tie up in the little Tresco harbour opposite the island of Bryher. This was no easy place to be with any sizeable vessel, for it was deeply tidal and was a prey to currents and Atlantic swells. But for something as small as Nampara Girl the small granite curve of the jetty offered protection enough. It was full tide at this time, and the great valley of water separating the two islands looked like a tide race, swelling and formidable.
‘At low tide,’ said Stephen, ‘I’ve waded across. Could you believe it?’ And turned. ‘There she is.’
He pointed at a vessel riding at anchor in the harbour alongside a couple of rowing-boats and a skiff.
‘Oh, she’s trim,’ said Paul, ‘if I’d been your captain, I’d have settled for her, not gone whoring after bigger game.’
‘We was eight in the crew,’ said Stephen. ‘Divide that prize up and you don’t have enough to share. That’s how he looked at it, God rest his soul.’
‘Where are your friends?’ Jeremy asked.
‘Up at that there cottage where the light is showing. Look you, will you allow me to go up on me own? I think if the four of us come knocking on the door the Hoskins may get out a musket thinking it be the French!’
The other three made the vessel good for the night, having heeded Stephen’s warning that by midnight it would be sprawling on its elbow in the sand, then went ashore and sat on the stone jetty smoking and talking to some islanders who emerged from the shadows curious to know what their business was. They were reticent, again on Stephen’s instructions. Time passed and the inhabitants drifted away and they put on their cloaks against the chill wind. It was an hour before Stephen returned, carrying a storm lantern.
‘All is well. We shall spend the night with the bastards, leave at dawn. Watch your step, I think I disturbed an adder.’
Jeremy said: ‘You wouldn’t come across an adder at this time of year.’
‘All right. All right.’ Stephen’s voice was gruff, with a trace of anger in it; as if his meeting with the Hoskins had not gone too smoothly. This was borne out when they reached the cottage. A filthy old man with tin-grey hair stood at the door, watched them suspiciously as they trooped in. A single tallow candle guttered beside another old man who had a growth the size of a goose egg on his forehead and who was counting coins. Neither spoke to the new arrivals. The first brother slammed the door after them and put up the bar. The room smelt of urine and stale tobacco. There’ll be bugs in here, thought Jeremy: we’ll all be spotted pink before morning.
‘Well, sit you down, sit you down,’ said Stephen heartily, his own temper recovered. ‘We can have the use of this room, but they’ve no food. Small blame to them as they wasn’t expecting us. We have some of our own left, Ben?’
‘In this bag,’ said Ben Carter. ‘Two loaves and some butter that Mrs Poldark gave us. Three smoked pilchards. An apple. A square o’ cheese.’
‘Good. Good. Now, old men, leave us be, eh? We’ll not steal your house, nor your money. I’ll wake you at dawn so as you can count your spoons before we leave.’ Stephen laughed. ‘It’s warmer in here than out in that wind. You’re not all froze, I hope. Right, Nick and Simon, that’s all.’
The man with the tumour tied his bag, and the coins clinked. ‘I doubt ye’ve the right,’ he said.
‘Never mind that, never mind that, it’s all settled,’ said Stephen. ‘Night, Nick.’
The grey-haired man by the door shuffled towards another door. ‘Aye, it’s settled. For good or ill, it’s settled. Come, Simon.’
The two brothers went slowly out. As they left Simon said whiningly to the other: ‘I doubt if he’s the right, Nick, I doubt if he’s the right.’
They left to return just as dawn was splitting open a bonegrey sky. While they slept, and scratched and slept, the tide had sucked itself out of the great channel and had again filled up, so there was little to suggest it had ever changed. Only the observant would have noticed the seaweed a foot higher on the sandy beach than it was yesterday evening. The observant – among them Jeremy – also noticed the swell had grown.
Paul Kellow and Ben Carter in Nampara Girl left first. Then Jeremy and Stephen Carrington in Philippe, watched by the two glowering Hoskin brothers who had come down to the jetty to see them off. ‘Bastards,’ said Stephen, we’re ten tubs of brandy short. I tackled ’em but they would admit nothing.’
Jeremy was not attending. What interested him most was to see how this French-built lugger responded to sail and helm. It was like trying a new horse. He had no fears for Nampara Girl with Ben aboard; he was a better sailor than any of them. For him the appeal was to bring Philippe home, which had made him instantly agreeable to Stephen’s suggestion.
About an hour after dawn clouds assembled and the wind backed south-west and began to pipe up. For the course they were on this could not have been better, and the rain that soon began to fall kept the sea down. They soon lost Nampara Girl, and until they sighted the Manacles there was no other craft to be seen. Then a couple of Newlyn fishing-boats, intermittently visible between the waves, fell behind them as they raced up the Channel.
Somehow Stephen had cajoled a few eggs out of the dour Hoskin brothers, and these, boiled in a pan before they left, they now ate cold, with a tot of white brandy – of which there was still plenty – to wash them down. The lugger was a heavier boat to handle than she should have been, and in the increasing wind she was as much as they could manage. ‘She’ll be all right unladen,’ shouted Stephen. ‘Which’ll be soon, I pray to God.’
Off Falmouth they sighted a British frigate which made some signal to them, which they pretended not to see. Jeremy was aware that they should have brought a flag or some other evidence of their nationality. However, with this wind increasing to a half gale, it was unlikely anyone would have the attention to spare for them. By noon the clouds had come down to sea level, drifting in dense masses across the tips of the waves. Philippe was sluggish and instead of riding the waves began to ship water over her stern. Stephen altered course to try to get a lee from the land.
Both young men were soaked to the skin, and water was swilling around in the bilge among the casks of brandy. Stephen made gestures to Jeremy to shorten sail.
‘I don’t want to make Mevagissey much before dark,’ he shouted.
‘If we don’t make it soon,’ said Jeremy, ‘I’m not sure we shall make it at all.’
‘I’ve been looking at me chart.’ Stephen fumbled a piece of damp parchment from under his coat, which was at once torn at by the wind. He folded it into a small square and, steadying himself against the swaying mast, contrived to put his finger on the coastline. ‘See here. That’s Dodman Point. You can see it ahead. We’ll have to weather that if we want to reach Mevagissey, and this wind, blowing full inshore … There’s these two or three inlets first. Know you if there’s any place safe to anchor in any of ‘em?’
‘I’ve never sailed in this part before. We’d do better to put about and try to slip into Portloe. There’d be shelter of a sort.’
‘Couldn’t do it. She’s too sluggish. I reckon we’ve got to take a chance.’
This was a different coast from the one they had skirted on the outward journey. Here there were no giant cliffs stranded like monuments and dropping their deep precipices into the sea. But these cliffs, though a quarter the size, with green fields running down to the sea’s edge, were almost as dangerous, with submerged reefs of rock jutting out among the waves, sharp enough to tear the keel out of any vessel that ran foul of them. It was the dagger instead of the broadsword.
For some time they ran across the wind, closing the land. Now the inlets were clearly to be seen, but it was a matter of luck whether one chose wisely. If the one selected turned out to offer nothing but submerged rocks there would then be no chance of beating out again.
To port as they came in was a largish, mainly sandy beach, on which the waves were pounding. To starboard a smaller one with little ridges of bursting water where the rocks lay. In between there were three rocky inlets with no evidence of harbour or jetty but the looks of a few yards of navigable water partly protected from the wind. Stephen chose the third, which indented furthest into the land. Jeremy at the tiller steered his way between fins of rock, Stephen let go the main sail, then the lug sail; for moments they were on a switchback of swell and broken waves, control lessening with momentum. Stephen snatched up an oar, shoved at a rock that rose like a sealion on their port bow; just in time they swung past it and were into the inlet.
They were lucky: there was a minimal stretch of quay half broken with storm and age, a stone-built hut from which half the slate roof was gone; a pebbly stretch beyond on which were some lobster-baskets. The lugger bobbed and lurched as the swell came round and swung them broadside. Jeremy took up another oar. There was a nasty jar as the lugger took the ground, then they were free again. Stephen flung a rope, missed, flung it again and it caught on a granite post; he hauled and pulled the stern round. Jeremy jabbed his oar down, found bottom, pushed. The lugger, so sluggish recently in the open sea, was now like a riderless horse that would not come to rein; it plunged and Jeremy, off balance, had to drop his oar and cling to the side to keep aboard. Another harsh collision of keel and rock, and then Jeremy got a second rope ashore and the vessel was brought heaving and grating against the cork mat that Stephen had interposed between gunnel and jetty.
Stephen pulled off his cap and with it wiped the rain and spray from his face. His mane of yellow hair clung dankly to his skull.
‘We’re safe, Jeremy boy. Though it’s a misbegotten hole we’ve come into.’
Jeremy was fishing for the lost oar with a marlin spike. The oar floated tantalizingly near him with every swell, then with each recession it slid out of reach again. Presently an extra wave brought it within range and he hauled it up dripping water and seaweed.
‘She’ll be aground when the tide goes out.’
‘It has to rise yet, from the look of the rocks. I doubt this inlet is ever dry.’
They made the lugger as safe as they could. The broken jetty was not ideal but it did offer protection.
They were suddenly in haven, quiet, after all the tossing and pitching of the last hours. Wind still blew, rain fell, the sea still surged inshore foaming at the mouth. But here they were quiet, safe from its worst reach, almost surrounded by low-growing trees, their black branches massed for protection, creaking and hissing in the wind. Nothing human to be seen.
Stephen jumped ashore. ‘We can wait a couple of hours, maybe more. Dark’d be better. I didn’t like the look of that frigate we passed.’
‘You’ll not get out of here till the wind drops.’ Jeremy followed his friend.
Stephen cast a speculative eye at the hut. ‘There’s no one about. Though they must come down here – those pots. God’s blood, I’m as hungry as the grave! We’ve nothing left to eat?’
‘Not a cursed crumb.’
They moved slowly towards the hut. ‘D’you know,’ said Stephen, ‘if we could get help, this’d be a good enough place to unload the spirit. I wonder how far it is to Mevagissey overland?’
‘Five miles, I’ll bet.’
‘D’you know, it’s far from a bad idea.’
Jeremy had come to know Stephen’s quick change of mood, his tendency to have a thought and instantly to believe in it.
‘What is?’ he asked cautiously.
‘We could stay here – go over – one of us could go over, get in touch with the right people, deliver the brandy here, on the spot. Mevagissey, I know, has an active band of Brothers; but I’ll lay a curse the Brethren don’t bring all their cargoes into the port; maybe this is one of the coves they use. Twould be easier, safer, better to sell it and unload it here; then bring Philippe into port unladen, an innocent prize, for sale, all above board and legal and who’s to say nay?’
‘Stephen,’ Jeremy said, ‘to hell with the brandy. What is it in all – twenty ankers? The lugger is your prize. The spirit was in the lugger when you captured her. Let’s take it in, tell the Preventive men how it came about, let ’em decide what to do with it. We’re at war. You capture a French prize and whatever is in her. You get a third of the valuation, don’t you? Who’s to say that would be much less than you’d get from the Brethren? The lugger will sell just the same.’
Stephen said: ‘Is that a cottage – up the hill – there, back behind those trees? I reckon so. Let’s see if there’s folk can ease our stomachs first.’
Some of the thatch was missing from the cottage, and the way to it was overgrown with saplings and rank weed; but when they knocked a cloth was pulled from a window and an old woman peered at them. Behind her an arthritic hand held a blunderbuss which wavered in a haphazard way as they bargained for food. But when Jeremy produced silver the old man in the background lowered his gun and they were allowed in. They sat on boxes, their feet on a floor that hadn’t been resanded for a year or more and was slippery with mice droppings. They wolfed cold rabbit, watery cabbage soup, four half-mouldy apples, drank a glass of cider.
While they were eating Stephen said: ‘Look you, those are not ankers in the boat, they’re tubs, which weigh what? – fifty-six pounds. Half the size of ankers and more negotiable, as you might say. There’s not twenty – there’s forty-eight of them. Each one, give or take, holds four gallons of white brandy. Diluted to the right strength and some burnt sugar to add the colouring, that makes, give or take, twelve gallons a tub. I was never one to be good at arithmetic but I’d guess that adds to something like six hundred gallons. The Brethren can sell it to householders at 20s. the gallon. They should pay us 10s., I’d say. We couldn’t make much less than £300. Is that money you want to throw away?’
‘No, you great oaf! My share of that would come in very convenient at the moment. But we take all the risk for how much extra profit? The other way we’re on safe ground.’
Stephen hiccupped. ‘I reckon we’re on safe ground anyway, Jeremy. Safe enough. We’ll never get Philippe out again while this wind holds – you’ve said so yourself. Why don’t I leave you here, in charge, and go overland; these folk’d know the way, could direct me. With luck – if I met willing men early enough and there was a mule train available – I could come back with them; they’d unload through the night, this coming night, and be all clear away before dawn.’
Jeremy rubbed a hand through his drying hair and yawned. The two old people were out at the back somewhere, you could hear them scrabbling around but one could only guess whether they were within hearing distance – even, if they heard, whether they could understand. Jeremy knew the type in the scattered hamlets round Nampara, old and infirm, toothless, scarcely articulate, but somehow scraping enough from land or sea or charity to avoid the ultimate separation of the poorhouse.
He said: ‘I don’t know if you have the measure of the people in the Trade, Stephen. They’re suspicious – have to be. I mentioned this before. If a stranger, like you – and non-Cornish – turns up in a village and starts whispering about the brandy he’s brought in to a nearby cove, they’ll look at him all ways before they’ll move. Might even sharpen their knives. Who’s to say you’re not from the Customs House, leading them into a trap?’
‘I have two names. Stoat and Pengelly. They were given me by a shipmate, who’s now dead, God rest his soul; but he said they was big in the Trade and would know his name. That’s all I can do. D’you know of a better plan?’
‘If you’re set on running the brandy,’ said Jeremy, ‘I’d rather try to unload the stuff first, hide it in some bushes. Then at least you’re not such a sitting target for any Preventive men who happen to be strolling past.’
Stephen thought around it, then shook his head. ‘You’re right, lad, but not yet. If that’s done at all it must be done in the dark. There’s always eyes in Cornwall. The lugger looks innocent as she is; let her lie there, no one knowing what she carries … What’s the time now?’
Jeremy took out his watch, listened to see that it was still going. ‘Just after four.’
‘There’s an hour of daylight, then. If I go now I’ll be in Mevagissey soon after dark. Just right. Is there a moon tonight? No, I remember. That’s right too; they’d never risk a moon. With fair luck I should be back here by midnight with men to do the unloading for us! Will you stop here? These cottagers’ll no doubt let you sleep here for the price of an extra coin.’
‘No. I’ll stay in the lugger. Better to keep an eye on her.’
‘Good man.’ Stephen rose. ‘Then I’ll be off. But first to press these old folk to tell me the shortest route. Can you understand ‘em, Jeremy? I’m poxed if I can.’