The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous Volume I Part 4

IN the morning, the wicked people into whose power I was now delivered, came and dragged me from my bed with fierce thumps, and giving me coa.r.s.e and rude apparel, forced me to dress myself like a beggar boy. I had a wretched little frock and breeches of grey frieze, ribbed woollen hose and clouted shoes, and a cap that was fitter for a chimney-sweep than a young gentleman of quality. I was to go away in the Wagon, they told me, forthwith to School; for my Grandmother--if I was indeed any body's Grandson--had left me nothing, not even a name. Henceforth, I was to be little Scrub, little Ragam.u.f.fin, little boy Jack. All the unknown Lady's property, they said, was left to Charities and to deserving Servants.

There was not a penny for me, not even to pay for my schooling; but, in Christian mercy, Mrs. Talmash was about to have me taught some things suitable for my new degree, and in due time have me apprenticed to some rough Trade, in which I might haply--if I were not hanged, as she hinted pretty plainly, and more than once--earn an honest livelihood. Meanwhile I was to be taken away in the Wagon, as though I were a Malefactor going in a Cart to Tyburn.

I was taken down-stairs, arrayed in my new garments of poverty and disgrace, and drank in a last long look at my dear and old and splendid Home. How little did I think that I should ever come to look upon it again, and that it would be my own House--mine, a prosperous and honoured old man! The undertaker's men were busied in taking down the rich hangings, and guzzling and gorging, as was their wont, on what fragments remained of the banquetings and carousals of Death, which had lasted for eight whole days. All wretched as I was, I should--so easily are the griefs of childhood a.s.suaged by cates and dainties--have been grateful for the wing of a chicken or a gla.s.s of Canary: but this was not to be. John a'Nokes or John a'Styles were now more considered than I was, and I was pushed and bandied about by fustian knaves and base mechanics, and made to wait for full half an hour in the hall, as though I had been the by-blow of a Running Footman promoted into carrying of a link.

'Twas d.i.c.k the Groom that took me to the Wagon. Many a time he had walked by the side of my little pony, trotting up the Oxford Road. He was a gross unlettered churl, but not unkind; and I think remembered with something like compunction the many pieces of silver he had had from his Little Master.

"It's mortal hard," he said, as he took my hand, and began lugging me along, "that your grandam should have died and left you nothing. 'Tis all clear as Bexley ale in a yard-gla.s.s. Lawyers ha' been reading the will to the gentlefolks, and there's nothing for thee, poor castaway."

I began to cry, not because my Grandmother had disinherited me, but because this common horse-lout called me a "castaway," and because I knew myself to be one.

"Don't fret," the groom continued; "there'll be greet enough for thee when thou'rt older; for thou'lt have a hard time on't, or my name's not d.i.c.k Snaffle."

We had a long way to reach the Wagon, which started from a Tavern called the "Pillars of Hercules," right on the other side of Hyde Park. I was desperately tired when we came thither, and craved leave to sit on a bench before the door, between the Sign-post and the Horse-trough. So low was I fallen. A beggar came alongside of me, and as I dozed tried to pick my pocket. There was nothing in it--not even a crust; and he hit me a savage blow over the mouth because I had nothing to be robbed of. Anon comes d.i.c.k Snaffle, who, telling me that the Saddler of Bawtry was hanged for leaving his liquor, and that he had no mind for a halter while good ale was to be drunk, had been comforting himself within the tavern; and he finding me all blubbered with grief at the blow I had gotten from the beggar, fetches him a sound kick; and so the two fell to fighting, till out comes the tapster, raving at Tom Ostler to duck the cutpurse cadger in the Horse-trough. There was much more sport out of doors in my young days than now.

At last the Wagon, for which we had another good hour to wait, came lumbering up to the Pillars of Hercules; and after the Wagoner had fought with a Grenadier, who wanted to go to Brentford for fourpence, and would have stabbed the man with his bayonet had not his hand been stayed, the Groom took me up, and put me on the straw inside. He paid the Wagoner some money for me, and also gave into his keeping a little bundle, containing, I suppose, some change of raiment for me, saying that more would be sent after me when needed; and so, handing him too a letter, he bade me G.o.dd'en, and went on his way with the Grenadier, a Sweep, and a Gipsy woman, who was importunate that he should cross her hand with silver, in order that he might know all about the great Fortune that he was to wed, as Tom Philbrick did in the ballad. And this was the way in which the Servants of the Quality spent their forenoons when I was young.

As the great rumbling chariot creaked away westward, there came across my child-heart a kind of consciousness that I had been Wronged, and Cheated out of my inheritance. Why was I all clad in laces and velvet but yesterday, and to-day apparelled like a tramping pedlar's foster-brat? Why was I, who was used to ride in coaches, and on ponyback, and on the shoulder of my own body-servant, and was called "Little Master," and made much of, to be carted away in a vile dray like this? But what is a child of eight years old to do? and how is he to make head against those who are older and wickeder than he? I knew nothing about lawyers, or wills, or the Rogueries of domestics. I only knew that I had been foully and shamefully Abused since my dear Grandparent's death; and in that wagon, I think, as I lay tumbling and sobbing on that straw, were first planted in me those seeds of a Wild, and sometimes Savage, disposition that have not made my name to be called "Dangerous" in vain.

We were a small and not a very merry company under the wagon tilt. There was a Tinker, with all his accoutrements of pots and kettles about him, who was lazy, as most Tinkers are when not at hard work, and lay on his back chewing straw, and cursing me fiercely whenever I moved. There was a Welsh gentleman, very ragged and dirty, with a wife raggeder and dirtier than he. He was addressed as Captain, and was bound, he said, for Bristol, to raise soldiers for the King's Service. He beat his wife now and then, before we came to Hounslow. There was the tinker's dog, a great terror to me; for although he feigned to sleep, and to snore as much as a Dog can snore, he always kept one little red eye fixed upon me, and gave a growl and made a Snap whenever I turned on the straw.

There was the Wagoner's child that was sickly, and continually cried for its mammy; and lastly there was a buxom servant-maid, with a little straw hat and cherry ribbons over a Luton lace mob, and a pretty flowered gown pulled through the placket-holes, and a quilted petticoat, and silver buckles in her shoes, and black mits, who was going home to see her Grandmother at Stoke Pogis,--so she told me, and made me bitterly remember that I had now no Grandmother,--and was as clean and bright and smiling as a new pin, or the milkmaids on May morning dancing round the brave Garlands that they have gotten from the silversmiths in Cranbourn Alley. She sat prettily crouched up on her box in a corner; and so, with the Tinker among his pots and kettles, the Welsh Captain and his lady on sundry bundles of rags, the sickly child in a basket, the Tinker's dog curled up in his Master's hat, I tossing on the straw, and a great rout of crates of crockery, rolls of cloth, tea and sugar, and other London merchandize, which the wagoner was taking down West, as a return cargo for the eggs, poultry, butcher's meat, and green stuff that he had brought up, made altogether such a higgledypiggledy that you do not often see in these days, when Servant-maids come up by Coach--my service to them!--and disdain the Wagon, and his Wors.h.i.+p the Captain wears a fine laced coat and a c.o.c.kade in his hat,--who but he!--and travels post.

The maid who was bound on a visit to her Grandmother was, I rejoice to admit, most tenderly kind to me. She combed my hair, and wiped away the tears that besmirched my face. When the Wagon halted at the King's Arms, Kensington, she tripped down and brought me a flagon of new milk with some peppermint in it; and she told me stories all the way to Hounslow, and bade me mind my book, and be a good child, and that Angels would love me. Likewise that she was being courted by a Pewterer in Panyer Alley, who had parted a bright sixpence with her--she showed me her token, drawn from her modest bodice, and who had pa.s.sed his word to Wed, if he had to take to the Road for the price of the Ring--but that was only his funning, she said,--or if she were forced even to run away from her Mistress, and make a Fleet Match of it. It was little, in good sooth, that I knew about courts.h.i.+ps or Love-tokens or Fleet Matches; but I believe that a woman, for want of a better gossip, would open her Love-budget to a Baby or a Blind Puppy, and I listened so well that she kissed me ere we parted, and gave me a pocketful of cheese-cakes.

It was quite night, and far beyond Hounslow, when I was dozing off into happy sleep again, that the Wagon came to a dead stop, and I awoke in great fright at the sound of a harsh voice asking if the Boy Jack was there. I was the "Boy Jack:" and the Wagoner, coming to the after-part of the tilt with his lantern, pulled me from among the straw with far less ado than if I had been the Tinker's dog.

I was set down on the ground before a tall man with a long face and an ugly little scratch wig, who had large boots with straps over his thighs like a Farmer, and swayed about him with a long whip.

"Oh, this is the boy, is it?" said the long man. "A rare lump to lick into shape, upon my word."

I was too frightened to say aught; but the Wagoner muttered something in the long man's ear, and gave him my bundle and money and the letter; and then I was clapped up on a pillion behind the long man, who had clomb up to the saddle of a vicious horse that went sideways; and he, bidding me hold on tight to his belt, for a mangy young whelp as I was, began jolting me to the dreadful place of Torture and Infernal cruelty which for six intolerable months was to be my home.

This man's name was Gnawbit, and he was my Schoolmaster. I was delivered over to him, bound hand and foot, as it were, by those hard-hearted folk (who should have been most tender to me, a desolate orphan) in Hanover Square. His name was Gnawbit, and he lived hard by West Drayton.

We are told in Good Books about the Devil and his Angels; but sure I think that the Devil must come to earth sometimes, and marry and have children: whence the Gnawbit race. I don't believe that the man had one Spark of Human Feeling in him. I don't believe that any tale of Man or Woman's Woe would ever have wrung one tear from that cold eye, or drawn a pang from that hard heart. I believe that he was a perfectly senseless, pitiless Brute and Beast, suffered, for some unknown purpose, to dwell here above, instead of being everlastingly kept down below, for the purpose of Tormenting. I was always a Dangerous, but I was never a Revengeful man. I have given mine enemy to eat when he was a-hungered, and to drink when he was athirst. I have returned Good for Evil very many times in this Troubled Life of mine, exposed as it has been always to the very sorest of temptations; but I honestly aver, that were I to meet this Tyrant of mine, now, on a solitary island, I would mash his Hands with a Club or with my Feet, if he strove to grub up roots; that were I Alone with him, wrecked, in a shallop, and there were one Keg of Fresh Water between us, I would stave it, and let the Stream of Life waste itself in the gunwales while I held his head down into the Sea, and forced him to swallow the brine that should drive him Raving Mad.

But this is unchristian, and I must go consult Doctor Dubiety.

Flesh and Blood! Have you never thought upon the Wrongs your Pedagogue has wrought upon you, and longed to meet that Wretch, and wheal his flesh with the same instrument with which he whealed you, and make the Ruffian howl for mercy? Mercy, quotha! did he ever show you any? A pretty equal match it was, surely! You a poor, weak starveling of a child s.h.i.+vering in your shoes, and ill-nurtured by the coa.r.s.e food he gave you, and he a great, hulking, muscular villain, tall and long-limbed, and all-powerful in his wretched Empire; while you were so ignorant as not to know that the Law, were he discovered (but who was to denounce him?), might trounce him for his barbarity. Ah! brother Gnawbit, if I had ever caught you on board a good s.h.i.+p of mine! Aha!

knave, if John Dangerous would not have dubbed himself the sheerest of a.s.ses, had he not made your back acquainted with nine good tails of three-strand cord, with triple knots in each, and the brine-tub afterwards. I will find out this Gnawbit yet, and cudgel him to the death. But, alas, I rave. He must have been full five-and-forty-years old when I first knew him, and that is nigh sixty years agone. And at a hundred and five the cruellest Tyrant is past cudgelling.

This man had one of the prettiest houses that was to be seen in the prettiest part of England. The place was all draped in ivy, and roses, and eglantine, with a blooming flower-garden in front, and a luscious orchard behind. He had a wife too who was Fair to see,--a mild little woman, with blue eyes, who used to sit in a corner of her parlour, and shudder as she heard the boys shrieking in the schoolroom. There was an old infirm Gentleman that lodged with them, that had been a Captain under the renowned Sir Cloudesley Shovel and Admiral Russell, and could even, so it was said, remember, as a sea-boy, the Dutch being in the Medway, in King Charles's time. This Old Gentleman seemed the only person that Gnawbit was afraid of. He never interfered to dissuade him from his brutalities, nay, seemed rather to encourage him therein, crying out as the sounds of torture reached him, "Bear it! bear it! Good again! Make 'em holloa! Make 'em dance! Cross the cuts! Dig it in! Rub in the brine! Oho! Bear it, brave boys; there's nothing like it!" Yet was there something jeering and sarcastic in his voice that made Gnawbit prefer to torture his unhappy scholars when the Old Gentleman was asleep,--and even then he would sometimes wake up and cry out, "Bear it!" from the attic, or when he was being wheeled about the neighbourhood in a sick man's chair.

The first morning I saw the Old Gentleman he shook his crutch at me, and cried, "Aha! another of 'em! Another morsel for Gnawbit. More meat for his market. Is he plump? is he tender? Will he bear it? Will he dance?

Oho! King Solomon for ever." And then he burst into such a fit of wheezing laughter that Mrs. Gnawbit had to come and pat him on the back and bring him cordials; and my Master, looking very discomposed, sternly bade me betake myself to the schoolroom.

After that, the Old Gentleman never saw me without shaking his crutch and asking me if I liked it, if I could bear it, and if Gnawbit made my flesh quiver. Of a truth he did.

Why should I record the sickening experience of six months' daily suffering. That I was beaten every day was to be expected in an Age when blows and stripes were the only means thought of for instilling knowledge into the minds of youth. But I was alone, I was friendless, I was poor. My master received, I have reason to believe, but a slender Stipend with me, and he balanced accounts by using me with greater barbarity than he employed towards his better paying scholars. I had no Surname, I was only "Boy Jack;" and my schoolfellows put me down, I fancy, as some base-born child, and accordingly despised me. I had no pocket-money. I was not allowed to share in the school-games. I was bidden to stand aside when a cake was to be cut up. G.o.d help me! I was the most forlorn of little children. Mrs. Gnawbit was as kind to me as she dared be, but she never showed me the slightest favour without its bringing me (if her husband came to hear of it) an additionally cruel Punishment.

There was a Pond behind the orchard called Tibb's hole, because, as our schoolboy legend ran, a boy called Tibb had once cast himself thereinto, and was drowned, through dread of being tortured by this Monster. I grew to be very fond of standing alone by the bank of this Pond, and of looking at my pale face in its cool blue-black depth. It seemed to me that the Pond was my friend, and that within its bosom I should find rest.

I was musing in this manner by the bank one day when I felt myself touched on the shoulder. It was the crutch of the Old Gentleman, who had been wheeled hither, as was his custom, by one of the boys.

"You go into the orchard and steal a juicy pear," said the Old Gentleman to his attendant. "Gnawbit's out, and I won't tell him. Leave me with Boy Jack for five minutes, and then come back.--Boy Jack," he continued, when we were alone, "how do you like it?"

"Like what, sir?" I asked humbly.

"All of it, to be sure:--the birch, the cane, the thong, the ferula, the rope's-end,--all Gnawbit's little toys?"

I told him, weeping, that I was very, very unhappy, and that I would like to drown myself.

"That's wrong, that's wicked," observed the Old Gentleman with a chuckle; "you mustn't drown yourself, because then you'd lose your chance of being hanged. Gregory has as much right to live as other folks."[H]

I did not in the least understand what he meant, but went on sobbing.

"I tell you what it is," pursued the Old Gentleman; "you mustn't stop here, because Gnawbit will skin you alive if you do. He's bound to do it; he's sworn to do it. He half-skinned Tibb; and was going to take off the other half, when Tibb drowned himself like a fool in this hole here.

He was a fool, and should have followed my advice and run away. 'Tibb,'

I said, 'you'll be skinned. Bear it, but run away. Here's a guinea.

Run!' He was afraid that Gnawbit would catch him; and where is he now?

Skinned, and drowned into the bargain. Don't you be a Fool. You Run while there's some skin left. Gnawbit's sworn to have it all, if you don't. Here's a guinea, and run away as fast as ever your legs can carry you."

He gave me a bright piece of gold and waved me off, as though I were to run away that very moment. I submissively said that I would run away after school was over, but asked him where I should run to.

"I'm sure I don't know," the Old Gentleman said somewhat peevishly.

"That's not my business. A boy that has got legs with skin on 'em, and doesn't know where to run to, is a jacka.s.s.--Stop!" he continued, as if a bright idea had just struck him; "did you ever hear of the Blacks?"

"No sir," I answered.

"Stupid oaf! Do you know where Charlwood Chase is?"

"Yes, sir; my schoolfellows have been nutting there, and I have heard them speak of it."

"Then you make the best of your way to Charlwood Chase, and go a-nutting there till you find the Blacks; you can't miss them; they're everywhere.

Run, you little Imp. See! the time's up, and here comes the boy who stole the juicy pear." And the boy coming up, munching the remains of one of Gnawbit's juiciest pears, my patron was wheeled away, and I have never seen him from that day to this.

That very night I ran away from Gnawbit's, and made my way towards Charlwood Chase to join the "Blacks," although who those "Blacks" were, and whereabouts in the Chase they lived, and what they did when they were there, I had no more definite idea than who the Emperor Prester John or the Man in the Moon might be.

FOOTNOTE:

[H] In my youth ancient persons as frequently spoke of the hangman as "Gregory"--and he was so named at the trial of the Regicides in 1660-61--as by his later t.i.tle of "Jack Ketch."--J. D.

CHAPTER THE SIXTH.

THE HISTORY OF MY GRANDFATHER, WHO WAS SO LONG KEPT A PRISONER IN ONE OF THE KING'S CASTLES IN THE EAST COUNTRY.

AT the time when his Majesty Charles II. was so happily restored to the throne of these kingdoms, there was, and had been, confined for upwards of ten years, in one of his Majesty's Castles in the eastern part of this kingdom, a certain Prisoner. His Name was known to none, not even to the guards who kept watch over him, so to speak, night and day,--not even to the gaoler, who had been told that he must answer with his Head for his safe custody, who had him always in a spying, fretful overlooking, and who slept every night with the keys of the Captive's cell under his pillow. The Castle where he lay in hold has been long since levelled to the earth, if, indeed, it ever had any earth to rest upon, and was not rather stayed upon some jutting fragment of Rock washed away at last by the ever-encroaching sea. Nay, of its exact situation I am not qualified to tell. I never saw the place, and my knowledge of it is confined to a bald hearsay, albeit of the Deeds that were done within its walls I can affirm the cert.i.tude with Truth. From such shadowy accounts as I have collected, the edifice would seem to have consisted but of a single tower or donjon-keep very strong and thick, and defying the las.h.i.+ngs of the waves, almost as though it were some Pharos or other guide to mariners. It was surrounded by a low stone wall of prodigious weight of masonry, and was approached from the mainland by a drawbridge and barbican. But for many months of the year there was no mainland within half a mile of it, and the King's Castle could only be reached by boats. Men said that the Sun never shone there but for ten minutes before and ten minutes after a storm, and there were almost always storms lowering over or departing from that dismal place.