Joan, the Curate

by Florence Warden

Instead of going straight up to the hall, he walked along at the bottom of the hill, by the side of the stream, keeping his eyes upon the building. And it was with a strange excitement that he heard, when he had come well in sight of the gray barn, a dull sound, repeated at intervals, like the noise of a descending flail.

At the same time he became aware of a faint and flickering light, which was just visible through certain slits and gaps in the boarding with which the original chapel windows of the barn had been filled up.

There was not a living creature in sight, though the slight noises made by the animals in the farmyard came to Tregenna’s ears as he went slowly and cautiously up the slope towards the barn.

The wall was high, but easy to climb; he crossed the straw of the yard quickly and without noise, while the muffled sounds from inside the barn grew louder and more distinct. It was not until he was close under the south wall of the barn that a hoarse murmur of men’s voices reached his ears, deadened, muffled, scarcely audible above the steady sound of blows.

He looked about for some means of getting up to the level of the slits in the boarding of the windows, by which the barn now received ventilation and light. Only a sailor would have been able to avail himself of such means as he found. A bit of straggling creeper, that gave way under the touch of the foot; part of a wooden drain-pipe rotten and broken; the crevices between the rough stones: such were the footholds by which he was able to scramble up to the old east window; and once at this level, he climbed by the help of the stone tracery to the rose heading at the top, where there was a gap in the boarding large enough for him to see the interior of the barn from end to end.

It was a weird sight that met his astonished eyes. By the flaring light of some half-dozen smoking torches, which threw a fantastic glare upon the stone walls, upon the still perfect arcade at the base, upon fragments of arch and pillar, corbel and broken groin, a dozen men were at work upon the building of a boat some thirty feet long, which lay, like some huge sprawling creature, on the floor below.

Tregenna watched with fascinated eyes. He had heard of the secret shipbuilding yards, where the smuggling craft were manufactured, and whence they were drawn down to the sea on the farm wagons in the darkest hours of the night; but no suspicion of the gray barn in connection with such doings had ever entered his head; and it was clear that even the country folk had been kept out of the secret.

Clash! clash! upon his ears, in his place of vantage, came the sound of the driving in of the iron bolts. He saw the brawny bare arms of the men go up above their heads, hammer in hand, to come down with a thud upon the ship’s groaning sides. He saw the great skeleton monster shiver under the blows; heard the hoarse laugh, the muttered oaths, which the men, cautious even at their toil, exchanged as they worked. And presently, as he got used to the din, to the waving, smoking lights, to the excitement of his strange position, he began to distinguish the words they uttered, and presently to discover that he himself was one of the subjects of their conversation.

“Curse me if I think the boat’ll ever swim, with all these eyes afore and behind us what we’ve got now!” cried one voice, which Tregenna knew that he had heard before.

It was a difficult matter to recognize faces and figures so much foreshortened as they were from the lofty perch he occupied: but he presently perceived that the speaker was the little mean-looking man with the pimply face, who had taken part in the last fray, and who was known as “Bill Plunder.”