GOLLOP MAKES A DISCOVERY
The little fellow screamed when Martin roused him, and started up in a fright.
“Hush! It’s all right,” said Martin. “The men have gone. We must get home and tell Gollop all about it. He will tell us what is best to be done.”
He reflected that if, as he supposed, the barge held stolen goods that were to form part of the cargo of the Santa Maria, it would take some time to row that clumsy craft against the tide, and it might still be possible to intervene before the vessel sailed. No doubt she would leave her moorings as soon as the tide turned, and make what headway she could against the east wind.
Martin had no idea what hour of the night it was, and he was surprised, before they had gone far on the homeward way, to notice signs of dawn in the sky. When they reached the house the sun was peering above the horizon, its beams competing with the glow of the Fire.
Descending into the basement, Martin found the old Frenchman in anxious consultation with the Gollops.
“Here’s Martin!” cried Lucy gleefully. “Oh, I am glad you’ve come home. We’ve been in such a state about you.”
“Not a wink of sleep for any of us all night,” said Susan. “Why, bless me! Here’s the blackamoor too.”
Gundra had crept in timidly behind the elder boy.
“Now what have you to say for yourself?” the woman went on. “As if there weren’t worries enough without——”
“Peace, woman!” cried the constable. “Don’t rate the lad. He’s fair foundered, by the look of him. Sit you down, Martin, and tell us what has kept you out all night.”
Martin was glad enough to rest, and Lucy had already taken possession of Gundra, placed him in a corner of the settle, and was asking eager questions about the strange girdle he wore about his body.
Without wasting words Martin related how he had followed Mr. Slocum’s handcart, been trapped in the yard, and finally carried off to the disused warehouse; how he had escaped with Gundra, and got away on the barge.
“You’re a chip of the old block,” said Gollop delightedly; “and your poor father would be proud of you.”
“That Slocum’s a wretch,” said Susan. “I always said so. Now, what are you going to do, Gollop?”
“Do! What can I do?”
“There’s a man for you! Just as bad as the Lord Mayor. What can you do, indeed! Why, just set off after that barge this very minute and stop it before it’s too late.”
“Spoken like a woman,” responded Gollop. “You don’t understand the law, Sue. Before that barge can be stopped there must be a warrant drawn up proper, saying as how Richard Gollop, constable——”
“Fiddle-diddle!” Susan broke in scornfully. “Go out and get your warrant, then, instead of talking about it.”
“I’d get never a magistrate to listen to me; they can’t think of nothing but the Fire. But I’ll tell you what I will do: I’ll go down to the river and see this vessel, Santa something or other; there’s plenty of time, for they’ve got to unload the barge. I’ll ask a question or two along the riverside, and if what I hear bears out the lad’s tale——”
“There! Get along with you,” cried his wife. “It’s a mercy the world isn’t all made of men.”
“What you can’t help, make the best of,” said Gollop, as he hurried away.
Susan quickly prepared a meal for the famished boys. While she did so she continued the conversation with Mounseer which Martin’s entrance had interrupted. It appeared that the Frenchman was becoming anxious about the safety of the house. On returning home about midnight the constable had reported that there were signs of the Fire’s working back against the wind. Already several houses eastward of Pudding Lane had been consumed by the flames, and although the danger was as yet not imminent, there was a risk that if the wind lulled or changed, the area of destruction would extend to the Tower and the adjacent streets.
“Keep your mind easy, Mounseer,” said Susan with comfortable assurance. “The neighbours will give us good warning if so be the Fire comes nigh, and you’ll have time to collect your belongings; not that you’ve got much to lose, so far as I know.”
Martin caught a strange look on the Frenchman’s face as he left the room to return to his own apartment.
“When you’ve eat your fill, Martin,” said Susan, “you’d better go to sleep. The blackamoor child has dropped off already, poor lamb!”
Martin lay down on his bed, but he found it impossible to sleep. His brain whirled with thoughts of the Fire, and the barge, and the Santa Maria; of Slocum, and Blackbeard, and the rest; and in spite of Susan’s confidence the mere suggestion that the Fire might spread to their own house and swallow it up filled him with alarm. He could not bear to think that the Gollops might presently be among the thousands of families that had lost their all.
Presently he could not endure inaction any longer. He sprang up.
“I am going out,” he said. “I must see for myself where the Fire has got to. I won’t be very long.”
At the top of the stairs he banged into Gollop, red-faced and panting through haste.
“Bless my eyes! Here’s a wonder!” gasped the man.
“What is it? Has the Fire got to us?” said Martin.
“The Fire! What’s the Fire to you? Martin, my lad, never did I think I’d live to see this day.”
“Tell me—what is it?” asked Martin in wonder.
“Why, call me a Dutchman if that there Portugal ship ain’t the Merry Maid, your father’s own vessel what never came home, to his ruin, poor old captain of mine. The moment I set eyes on her I rubbed ’em, ’cos I couldn’t believe it. But I knowed them lines; I knowed the pretty creature, though they’d done something to alter the look of her. She’s the captain’s ship as sure as I’m alive. And now you must come with me; we’ll go to the Lord Mayor or somebody and get a warrant. She’s ready to slip her moorings; we must arrest her; what’s your father’s is yours; that’s the law, and soon they’ll know it!”
Waiting just long enough to tell his wife of his amazing discovery, the constable hurried away with Martin in his quest of the Lord Mayor. But that magnate was not to be found; nor were any of the sheriffs discovered in the devastated city. Gollop, distracted, was beating his wits to recall the name and address of some magistrate in a district still untouched when Martin suddenly caught sight of Mr. Pemberton, the customer of Slocum’s whom he had met on two occasions. The gentleman was standing among a group of his friends, to whom he was pointing out the site of his own ruined dwelling.
“He must be a magistrate,” thought Martin, remembering how Mr. Pemberton had interfered when the crowd was molesting the Frenchman. “I’ll ask him.”
He ran up to the group, pushed his way among them without much ceremony, and said:
“Sir, may I speak to you?”
Mr. Pemberton stared at the eager boy, displeased at what appeared to be an unmannerly intrusion. Then his brow cleared; he smiled and said:
“My friend the fighter, isn’t it? Well, what have you been fighting about now?”
Martin coloured as he felt the eyes of the group focussed on him. But he recovered his composure in a moment, and began to pour out his story. At first the gentlemen listened with smiles of amusement or toleration, but as he proceeded their interest was awakened, and Mr. Pemberton himself watched him with keen attention.
“Stay,” he said at one point. “Your father was Reuben Leake?”
“Yes, sir, that was his name.”
“I have heard of him; a sound mariner. Go on.”
Martin continued his story, doing his best to make its complications clear.
“Now let me understand,” said Mr. Pemberton when he had finished. “This vessel, the Santa Maria, once the Merry Maid, is on the point of sailing with a cargo which you suspect to consist of stolen goods, some of them the property of the respected goldsmith Mr. Greatorex. You say that Mr. Slocum, Mr. Greatorex’s man, is concerned in this crime with the captain of the vessel, whom you call Blackbeard, and a man named Seymour. The crew is mainly foreign; they have held an Indian boy as a slave, and they kidnapped him when you had rescued him from them, and shut you up with him in a warehouse at Deptford. Have I the story right?”
“Yes, sir; all that is true.”
“Well, let me say—and my friends will agree with me—that you have shown uncommon intelligence and courage and resource. Your running off with the barge was an admirable device and deserved to succeed. And now I understand that you wish to have a warrant for the arrest of the vessel before she leaves the river. But you must have someone in authority to execute the warrant, and in the present state of the city——”
“There’s me, your worship,” broke in Gollop, who had stood at hand. “Being a man of law in the shape of a constable——”
“Ah! Well, we must lose no time. But I have no paper, no pen—— Stay, is that a half-burnt ledger I see among the ashes there?”
Martin leapt to the spot and picked up the book. Mr. Pemberton tore out a page, hurriedly wrote a few lines upon it with a pencil, and handed it to the constable.
“There, my man,” he said, “that is the best I can do for you. I cannot swear that the phraseology is absolutely in form, but it will serve. I don’t know what you will do if your Blackbeard shows fight. There is no available force to put at your disposal; you must do the best you can. I wish you success. I shall be glad to learn the issue of this strange affair.”