Lost endeavour

I

I GOT my learning, such as it is, from Dr. Carter, who kept an Academy for the Sons of Gentlemen, in a great old haunted house which stood at that time (1690) near the coach road to Shooter's Hill, on the southern border of Black Heath. Dr. Carter was one of the old school, " birch and bottle men " I think they called them, because they flogged without mercy, and drank port wine without stint ; but he knew a great deal of Greek, they say, and he was always very good to me, so his faults may rest. His house, at one time, long before he came there, was one of the old, bad coaching inns. The cellar was said to be full of secret rooms, where the conspirators used to meet in the time of the Powder Plot. And we boys always heard that from somewhere in the cellar one could get into those secret passages, cut under the ground, which run all across Greenwich, and away south to Chislehurst, like the workings of great moles. I went down into the cellars one night, I remember, with a boy called Thomas Davies, but we could find no secret passages. They were ghostly, damp, vaulty places those cellars, full of empty barrels, and a melancholy noise of dripping ; I think the rats must have gone melancholy mad there. Old Carter came down for a bottle of port while we were there; so that we had to blow out our candle, and creep back to bed in the dark. We never went down again because, not long afterwards, they found a skeleton buried under a heap of rubbish in one of the darker corners. He was supposed to have been a traveller who had been murdered for his money in the old inn days, long before. I saw the skeleton when they brought it up into the light. It put us all in awe of that cellar, you may be sure. Who the traveller was, who can teU ? There was nothing to show. The Doctor said that it was the skeleton of a man of about fifty — a black-haired, well-built man, used to taking tobacco, and perhaps limping on his left leg, the bone of which had been broken and rather clumsily set. It was thought that he had lain there for seventy or eighty years. Whoever he may have been, his people had long done sorrowing for him. It made a little stir at the time. One old man came from Charlton to say that in his father's time the house had had a gallows bad name, and that it had been kept by a man called Taylor, who was afterwards hanged for horsestealing. One of our boys made up a story of a limping ghost (with long black hair), who appeared to him night after night, beckoning him to follow, as though to reveal where his treasure had been buried. He scared us all finely with this tale ; but some of our boldest spirits sat up one night to watch for the ghost, and old Carter caught us, and soundly birched the lot of us for not being in bed.

II

I had been at old Carter's for about three years when my misfortune came to me. I was then

za lo LOST ENDEAVOUR.

a lad of fourteen, rather lanky and overgrown, but stiU sturdy and comely. I was a steady boy on the whole, though rather a noisy one, and old Carter had a fondness for me, which proved my ruin in the end, as you shall hear. Every Friday afternoon, winter and summer, he used to send in to Deptford for his week's allowance of snufF. Generally, he sent the school-porter ; but if the porter were busy, he would make some excuse to send one of the boys. He did this shamefacedly, as though he thought it wrong to ask any boy to go upon an errand for him. He would bid his messenger to go to the Deptford sweetstufF shop to buy cookies for supper, and ask him, as an afterthought, to call for his parcel at the druggist's, or at the Boscobel coffee-house, whichever it might be, on his way home. The boys liked this going to Deptford ; for at other times Deptford was out of bounds to us. The messengers sometimes escaped afternoon school, which was another pleasure to them. In any case, even if they had no money for cookies, they always had the delights of Deptford streets to recompense them for the trouble of their walk.

I had fetched old Carter's snufF half a dozen

CHARLES HARDING'S STORY. ii

times before my troubles began, I liked the business very well, for Deptford streets were amusing in those days, when the naval docks were there. The river used to be full of shipping. The docks and building slips were full, too. It was one of the gayest, brightest sights in the world that little naval station. The ships with their flags and their scarlet gun-ports (all triced up in a line above the brass gun-muzzles), made a fair show from the river bank. And then to see a great ship coming up under sail, firing her guns to salute the flag, and all the other ships firing, or dipping their colours, moved one to the bone. There were sailors everywhere in Deptford, at all times ; mostly men-of-war's men ; but you must not think that I sought their company. In those days one shimned a sailor, as a sort of rough bear without a soul, who had somehow escaped hanging. Afterwards, when I came to mix with sailors, I found that people were right about them. They were a hard and vicious company, with a few good among them, but not many. Most of them were turned out of the gaols to serve in the fleet. Some of them were branded. Some of them had been under sentence of death. Some of them were deserters from other navies. The few allowed free In Deptford were old men, whose toughness had raised them to warrants, and to some little responsibility in the hulks or arsenal.

Now a little while before my tale begins, old Carter took in a new assistant to teach modern languages. This assistant was a young man, aged about twenty-three, Spanish by birth, French by education, and English by choice — a mixture of three good things. His name was Teodoro Mora. Most English boys delight in teasing their foreign masters ; but there was no teasing Teodoro. He was the strictest master in the school, and in many ways one of the best. He had travelled a great deal for a man of that rustic age. He had been in the Canary Islands, and knew a lot about ships. He once told us that he understood navigation, and could take a ship round the world. He was a man of very great physical strength, not tall exactly, but bigly made. We called him Little Theo among ourselves. I think that in some way he gave us the impression that there was a mystery about him. I know that in dormitory, when we discussed our masters, we made up romantic tales about him, instead of passing criticisms, as we did upon the others. One of us would say that perhaps he was the son of a Spanish duke, exiled for making love to a princess ; and then that he was a criminal, a romantic criminal, a political criminal — a conspirator or the like ; another that he was a spy in French pay, sent over to report on the Navy Yard, or, possibly, to creep out one night and fire it. I don't think we believed this last, quite. If we did, we had some sneaking feeling that it did him credit, as a brave, romantic man ; and although we hoped that he would not burn the Navy Yard, we hoped that, if he did, he would get away, and not get himself hanged. I shall come back to Little Theo later in my tale. I need only say at present that he was a fine, handsome, bustling figure of a man, smart at his work, an excellent teacher, and a good friend to boys in trouble. He gave us all the impression that he was a man of too much talent to be a teacher all his life.

One Friday, in March 1692, old Carter sent me off to Deptford for his snufF, with the excuse that I looked pale, and in need of a walk. " The east wind wiU do you good, boy," he said. He called me back after I had started. "Boy," he said, " I would send the porter, but the press-gangs are out all along the river, and if a man enters Deptford he is as good as pressed. They won't touch you, of course, but I'll give you a Protection, in case you should be questioned." He fumbled in his pockets, and at last produced some sealed envelopes, one of which he gave to me, " That is a Protection," he said. "You show that if anybody lays hands upon you. Be back early, because Deptford after dark is no place for a boy." He thrust his hands behind his coat-skirts, and gave the peculiar throaty snort with which he always ended a conversation. I saw him going across the lawn, deep in dreams, with his yellow handkerchief trailing out behind from his pocket. I never saw him again.

I knew that the press was hot along the river ; for all through the winter there had been talk of a war with France, to begin as soon as the winter gales were over. The French were going to invade England, to restore that bad king the second James ; that was what people said. Why a sensible people should wish to fight for a Stuart was a great puzzle to Dr. Carter ; but so it was to be. Now that the weather was getting fair, the Deptford Yards were working day and night, fitting out a squadron with sails and powder and seamen, before the French should begin the war by landing an army in Kent, and marching on London. It was a stirring time in Deptford.

I set out over Black Heath, feeling very proud of my Protection, and half hoping that I might have a chance of showing it. To my regret, it was sealed up. I was tempted to open it, to see what a Protection looked like ; for, though they were common enough in those days, and could be obtained from the lawyers by those entitled to them, I had not then seen one. If I have ever regretted anything in my life, I have regretted that I did not break the seal to examine that Protection.

Deptford was in a great bustle of preparation that windy March afternoon. The creek was full of lighters, loading provision casks for the ships in the river. The yards had double sentries at their gates with bayonets fixed, ready to challenge any one who tried to enter. A few companies of troops marched in from the camp at Kensington, all the gartered legs swinging out in time to the flute, marching swiftly, followed by the women and children, in half a dozen ordnance waggons. The river was full, almost as far as Greenwich, with a fleet of great ships and the host of victuallers engaged in giving them their stores. The flagship lay off^ Greenwich with a signal flying, which made me think that the fleet was about to sail. I did not stay long in Deptford after getting the packet of snufF; but with so much happening all about me, in a village so tiny, I could not help noticing things. I knew that my schoolfellows would want to know what I had seen. Having bought a few lollipops at a sweetstufF shop, I started back towards Black Heath, intending to rest at the top of Point Hill, looking down on the bend of the river where the ships were thickest, before going in for supper and preparation. Some naval officers, who had been dining at a tavern in Deptford, stopped me in the road, just by the bridge over the creek, to ask me if I would like to go in a ship with them to see the beautiful foreign countries. I thought at first that they were going to press me. So I said, "No, thank you, sir. I have a Protection," and out I lugged my precious envelope. They laughed at this, as though it were a good joke. "The young lawyer," they said. "He's got a Protection. Don't have anything to do with him. He'll get you into lawsuits." So they laughed, and let me go, and told me that I should be a man before my mother. They were wild young men, a little the worse for claret. In that far-off age the vice of drinking was common, almost universal. Even gentlemen got drunk. And when gentlemen set an example, who can wonder if they find many imitators ?

A minute or two later, just as I was turning up to the hill, Little Theo came out of the barber's shop at the corner and walked over the road to join me.

" Well, Harding," he said, " we will walk home together. You've been buying lollipops, I suppose. I've been buying a new wig."

" Oh, sir," I answered, rather dashed at his daring to come so far into Deptford. "Aren't you afraid of being impressed, sir ? "

" Why, no," he answered ; " I wear a sword, and know how to use it. Aren't you afraid ? "

"No, sir," said I proudly. "I have a Protection."

"Why then," he said, "a fig for fear. Tell me what you have seen at Deptford."

After that we set off up the steep hill. When we had got to within about a hundred yards of the road to Lewisham, I noticed the figure of a little old woman standing against the wall of a garden, looking up the hill away from me. It was a lonely part of the road at the best of times ; and just now, with the press out man-hunting, and the countryside beset with drunken sailors, robbing and cutting throats, it was even lonelier than usual. I had hardly caught sight of the woman when she turned, saw us coming, and began slowly to walk towards us, leaning on a stout stick, -as though she were infirm with age. She was coughing very hard, poor creatvire. I thought that she would break a blood vessel. When she was within a dozen yards of us, she burst out coughing so violently that she staggered back against a wall. She looked so desperately ill that I ran up to her, to ask if I could help her in any way. She was a little old woman, meanly and dirtily dressed, with dirty grey hairs poking out from under a broken bonnet. Her face was small and wretched - looking, and all flushed with the coughing, which seemed to tear her in pieces.

"Ah ! " she gasped, "ah! " (pointing to a small inn along the Lewisham road), " there. Help me." I must say this, that I liked neither the woman's looks nor the thought of helping her to a tavern, from which most probably she had just issued.

for she smelt very strongly of gin. However, she was in distress, and the tavern, if not her home, might be her lodging, or the place where her husband was drinking ; and in any case, there was Little Theo at my side, so I caught her arm and bade her lean on me.

She leant on me so heavily that I found it difficult to walk with her. She clutched my arm with a force that gave me a great deal of pain. She was coughing hard, but less terribly than when I had spoken. In the intervals of coughing she made some attempt to thank me, with a sly thievish look out of the corners of her eyes, which made me sick of the creature.

" Ah ! " she gasped at last; " ah ! I'm better. To the inn, my dear. I'll be all right in the inn. A good boy. Good boy to help a poor old woman. Oh, this cough is very bad. It'll be my death. It's the dust that does it. Grinding the knives for the gentlemen."

At the inn door her coughing broke out again with great violence, till I expected to see her drop dead. She signed to me, in the storm of coughs, to knock at the door, which I did, though with difficulty, for she was clinging to me like a wrestler, and leaning most of her weight upon me. Little

Theo, walking up after us, and looking with grave distaste at the woman, also knocked. About a minute after my knock the door was opened by a very evil-looking, dirty woman, with a coarse red face much inflamed by drink. She opened fire upon us at once, with ready abuse. " Why don't yer bring 'er in .'' Don't yer see she's 'aving a fit or somethink? Don't stand starin' there. 'Ere, come on out of the street, Eliza. 'Elp 'er in, you."

She reached out for Eliza's arm, and fetched the pair of us indoors with a single tug; she must have been as strong as an ox. Little Theo, giving his support to Eliza, entered also. When we were fairly inside, the woman slammed to the door, shutting out the light.

" Wait 'ere in the dark," she said testily, " till 1 can get the settin'-room door open, I'm not goin' to 'ave the 'all door open to kill us all with the draught. I'll get you a drop o' somethink, Eliza."

After fumbling at a door which I could not see (for the passage was as dark as a tomb), she forced it open, letting in upon us a smell of sawdust, stale tobacco-smoke, and spirits — the filthy smell which pot-houses of the dirtier kind exude. She had opened the door Into a private drinking bar, one of those squalid dens " where sot meets sot in beery beastliness." A drunkard inside somewhere was talking to the pot-boy about a main of cocks, in which one called Jouncer had killed the other.

" Help me in, boy," said Eliza, coughing grievously. " Ah ! this cough. It tears me in pieces. 'Elp me in. A drop a gin. Gimme a drop a gin." We helped her into the sitting-room, where she had her drop a gin, a good big drop. Her cough ceased directly she had swallowed it. She began then to leer at us with sickening, halfdrunken ogling.

"Weren't you a kind boy," she said, "to 'elp me 'ere. I dunno as I could a got 'ome without a kind boy to 'elp me. And the kind gentleman, too. Wot a kind gentleman ! Much obliged, I'm sure, sir."

By this time we had had more than enough of her. Little Theo said that he thought that she would be aU right now that she was at home, and that we would be going. For my part I was eager to be gone. I hated being in such a place, for I had been brought up by my father to look upon a tavern as one of the devil's best recruiting sergeants. We turned out of the sitting-room, and stepped quickly into the darkness of the passage. The publican, a bloated, pasty-faced lout, with something (which looked like a duster) in his left hand, came after us from behind the bar. " I'll just open the door for you," he said.

" It's a tricky door that," said the frowsy woman who had let us in. I caught just a glimpse of her red dress in the light near the sitting-room door. Looking ahead, I saw a blacker mass in the blackness, as though some one else were in the passage. Then, before I knew what was happening, something came down, dark and stifling, round my head. I heard the woman cry out, " Got 'im, Bill ? I got 'is legs." My ankles were clutched together by a cord. I was flung down violently. Something was thrust between my teeth, my arms were pinioned. I heard a vigorous scuffling, thudding noise, which told my confused brain that Mr. Mora was being tackled also ; then I was lifted and tossed down again, a hopeless, motionless bundle, on a heap which, by the smell, seemed to be onions.

" There, my little joker," said the voice of the publican, "you'll be as right as ninepence." He laughed with the hard mirthless laughter of the townsman.

"Did 'e get 'is teeth into yer, Bill?" asked Eliza anxiously.

" No fear," said Bill, " I was too quick." "Well," said Eliza, who had a quicker eye for profit than her friend. " Rip that nice little suit from 'im. Eh, lovey. That's good broadcloth, that suit. I'll be able to get somethink

on that. Oh, and lovey, look at wot nice boots e s wearin .

At first I did not know what was happening ; it

was as though I had died suddenly, and found

the want of a body most distressing. When I

felt them stripping off my boots I realized that I

was trussed up like a fowl, so that I could not

even kick. There was a sack on my head, a

leather wad in my mouth, and rope at my wrists,

knees, and ankles. I had been trapped by a bad

gang of thieves, from whom I might expect a

thorough overhaul before being flung forth. I

could just lie still, promising myself that I would

keep calm, so that (when they came to strip me) I

might make a struggle. But what can one boy do

against three strong people ? When they stripped

me, they took very good care to run no risks of a

disturbance. I was so carefully held that they got

my clothes from me unharmed.

" There," thejr said, when they had stripped me to my underclothes ; " there, lovey. Now wot's in 'is pocket ? "

They flung away the sweets impatiently, but I heard Eliza opening the bag a moment later. As she munched at a loUipop she kept reproving Bill for having flung them aside. " You know quite well as I like a bit o' sweet," she said. " Wot d'd yer fling them away for ? "

At last Bill told her to hold her jaw. After this they examined the snuiF, and tried it critically on their own noses.

"Wot d'yer think 'e is?" asked the red-faced woman, referring to me. " A errand boy } "

" No," said Bill ; " a kid sent out by his father to bring 'is snuflF back 'ome. Wot's in this 'ere envelope ? "

In spite of the sack over my head I could hear everything, but it was all so horribly dark and unreal that it was liker a nightmare than life. I heard the coarse paper of the envelope crackle as they tore it open, and then I heard Bill whistle with delighted wonder.

"Wot is it ?" said the red-faced woman.

"Wot is it. Bill?" said Eliza.

"Look 'ere," said Bill, "that's wot's wot. A golden, great beastly banker's draft for twenty pounds. With wot we'll get for the kid, this job's a prime cut to us, I must say."

" My," said Eliza, " wot's a kid like that doing with a banker's draft ? "

"Well," answered Bill, « 'e ain't doin' nuffin' with it, that's wot."

They all laughed at this, as though it were funny. It came into my mind then that poor old short-sighted Dr. Carter had given me an envelope containing money instead of the seaman's press Protection. I could only hope that he had discovered his mistake and given word to his banker to stop the payment.

" Now, Jane," said Bill, " wot you got to do is to wash your mug, put on your togs, and take a coach to this 'ere Mr. Banker for to lift this money before the paper's proclaimed,"

" Ow," said Jane, " an' suppose it is proclaimed, and I'm took, wot '11 'elp me from being 'anged?"

" Your beauty," said Bill. " So run along, or I'll flat your jaw with a batten."

They argued the point for a time, but at last Jane decided to run the risk of being caught (and hung) for two pounds more than her third share of the booty. I heard her stumping about, growling sour-temperedly as she dressed for the adventure. Then I heard her clumping out of the house, slamming the door behind her. I remember trying to guess, from the noise of the shutting door, how I lay with regard to it, so that, if a chance offered, I might make a dash for liberty. It lay to my left, along the passage, and probably, by the noise it made in closing, it opened by a spring catch of which I did not know the secret. Altogether, I decided with a sick heart that I was in a bad way. My gaolers had the whip hand of me. I had to wait their pleasure.

Bill began to talk with Eliza about the chance of getting enough for a " small keg " out of the pawning of my clothes. They argued it "back and to " for about ten minutes, with the pertinacity of brutes. I concluded that a " small keg " was some measure of gin. I sincerely hoped that they might get a small keg, and that it might choke them. I was not frightened all this time. They say that a man caught by a tiger is not frightened, but curious, full of interest in the tiger's doings, and strangely calm, so that he can reckon up his past life like a sum in addition. If I thought at all, I thought of old Carter losing all that money, and of the letter which I should write to my father, telling him of my adventure. I remember that, long afterwards, in the Indies, when I was sickening for a fever, I had just such a clear mind, and much such thoughts, not anxious thoughts, but troubled and uncomfortable. If I longed for anything it was for the night to come, so that I might be turned out of that filthy house, which seemed to be contaminated in every particle. 1 did not think of the black-haired skeleton in the schoolhouse ; he never crossed my mind. Had he done so I might have been less easy. I gathered, but was not quite certain about it, that Little Theo had been put in another part of the house. My mind was confused about it ; but I seemed to have heard a blow, which ended that scuffling in the passage. I wondered vaguely whether he had been killed.

Presently Bill began another conversation. At first I did not understand it, as much of it was in that vile debased jargon called thieves' patter ; but when I began to pick up little bits of it, my blood ran cold with terror ; for now, for the first time, I realized what these ruffians were planning to do with me. Having made a good booty of me, they could not afford the risk of my informing upon them. If taken they would, all three, be hanged without mercy, so much I had realized from the first. I now learned that they were going to get me well out of the way, not by knocking me on the head, and shoving me down a manhole into the river, as was a common method in the infamous dens near the water, but by another way which would bring them in a comfortable sum. At first I thought that they meant to sell us to the press, with a drugged drunkard or two to bear us company, for the few shillings which naval officers paid to the innkeepers for hands taken from their premises. But when they began to quarrel about the prices then being paid in Virginia for white slaves (convicts or others) by the tobacco planters near the Chesapeake, I knew that we were to be " kidnapped," or " trepanned " — that is, carried across the sea to be sold as slaves for whatever we would fetch ; perhaps ten pounds, perhaps more. My heart sank, when the talk of that infamous couple warned me of my fate. I thought of my poor father and his anxiety. He would never know what had happened to me. I thought of poor old Dr.

Carter, and of the efforts he would make to find us. When I thought of what it would be to these people, and of their agony, and of my own utter ruin and wretchedness, I felt myself going mad. The worst despair of all was thinking that they would think me dead, and perhaps mourn for me, while all the time I should be alive and in misery, and unable to send a word to them, not so much as to say that I was alive. I remember thinking sometimes that it must all be a nightmare, and that I should wake up in bed presently, and be thankful that the dream was over. Then I thought that such wickedness would never be allowed on this earth, as for me to be dragged away thus, and sold into savage lands, in a free country, to the ruin of the life prepared for me. Hope kept burning up in me that I should be rescued on the road to the ship, or sent home by the captain, when he heard my tale ; for I knew that my father would gladly pay more than my price as a slave to have me safe at home with him. Then some words from Bill about getting me to the ship unobserved, and about the certainty of the Virginian convoy's sailing the next morning, if the northerly wind held, dashed my hope down again, till I was nearly delirious. I fear that my misery made me very selfish. I did not think much of poor Mr. Mora, nor of what it might be to him. 1 think that I felt that he was a man, grown up and strong, and that nothing very bad could possibly happen to him. The tragedy, I felt, was all for me.