The Dark Frigate

by Charles Boardman Hawes

With that he left the road and following a copse beside a meadow entered the wood, where the two buried themselves deep in the shade of the great trees. The sun was up now and the birds were fluttering and clamouring high overhead, but to the motion and clamour of small birds they gave no heed. From his pocket Martin drew a bit of strong thread, then, looking about, he wagged his head and pushed through the undergrowth. "Hare or pheasant, I care not which. Here we shall spread our net—here—and here." Whereupon he pulled down a twig and knotted the thread and formed a noose with his fingers. "Here puss shall run," he continued, "and here, God willing, we shall eat."

Having thus set his snare, he left it, and sulkily, for the sun was getting up in the sky and they had come far without breaking their fast. So Phil followed him and they lay on a bank, with an open vale before them where yellow daffodils were in full bloom, and nursed their hunger.

After a while Martin slipped away deftly but returned with a face darker than he took, and though he went three times to the snare and scarcely stirred a leaf,—which spoke more of experience in such lawless sports than some books might have told,—each time his face, when he returned, was longer than before.

"A man must eat," he said at last, "and here in his own bailiwick and warren will I eat to spite him. Yea, and leave guts and fur to puzzle him. But there's another way, quicker and surer, though not so safe."

So they went together over a hill and down a glade to a meadow.

"Do thou," he whispered, "lie here in wait."

With a club in his hand and a few stones in his pocket he circled through the thicket, and having in his manner of knowing his business and of commanding the hunt, resumed his old bravado, he now made a great show of courage and resourcefulness; but Phil, having flung himself down at full length by the meadow, smiled to hear him puffing through the wood.

Off in the wood wings fluttered and Martin murmured under his breath. Presently a stone rapped against a tree-trunk and again there was the sound of wings.

Then the lad by the meadow heard a stone rip through the leaves and strike with a soft thud, whereupon something fell heavily and thrashed about in the undergrowth, and Martin cried out joyously.

He had no more than appeared, holding high a fine cock-pheasant, with the cry, "Here's meat that will eat well," when there was a great noise of heavy feet in the copse behind him, and whirling about in exceeding haste, he flung the pheasant full in the face of the keeper and bolted like a startled filly. Thereupon scrambling to his feet, Phil must needs burst out laughing at the wild look of terror Martin wore, though the keeper was even then upon him and though he himself was of no mind to run. He lightly stepped aside as the keeper rushed at him, and darting back to where Martin had dropped his cudgel, snatched it up and turned, cudgel in hand. He was aware of a flash of colour in the wood, and the sound of voices, but he had no leisure to look ere the keeper was again at him, when for the first time he saw that the keeper was the selfsame red-faced countryman who had brought the gun to Moll Stevens's alehouse by the Thames—that it was Jamie Barwick.