Hammer and Anvil: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

I felt for the letter, and my hand came in contact with the pistols in my belt. I felt a strange impulse, here upon the spot, in the midst of the smuggler-gang, and before the eyes of their drunken leader, to blow out my brains. At this moment I thought of the good Hans who was risking himself for a cause that was not a whit better. And yet he may thank heaven, I said to myself, that he is not on this expedition.

"Boat ahoy!" suddenly rang over the water as before, and the Lightning again loomed out of the dusk, and a couple of shots were fired.

This was the signal for a chase which lasted probably an hour, during which the cutter, while seeming to make every effort, by countless dexterous and daring evolutions, to escape her pursuer, drew ever nearer and nearer to that part of the coast which had been agreed upon between Pinnow and the officers, about half a mile above Zanowitz, where the depth of the water would allow her to run almost immediately upon the beach. From here one could proceed to Zehrendorf by a wagon-road which ran along the strand to Zanowitz, and from there over the heath; or one could go directly across the heath; but in the latter case there was a large and very dangerous morass to be crossed, which could only be done by secret paths known to the smugglers alone. It was ten to one that Herr von Zehren would choose the way over the moor instead of that along the coast, from the spot to which the cutter had apparently been driven.

While the chase lasted, I did not move from the spot in which I was, fully determined to take no active part in the affair, happen what might. Herr von Zehren made my passive part an easy one; often as he came near me, he never once took any notice of me. During this hour of excitement his intoxication seemed to have increased; his behavior was that of a raging madman. He shrieked to Pinnow to run the schooner down; he returned the fire of the officers with one of Pinnow's old guns, which he had found in the cabin, although the Lightning prudently kept at a distance which would have been too great for even a rifle of long range; and as the cutter, after a long tack out to sea, on which she distanced the schooner, stood in again and reached the shore unmolested, he leaped out into the shallow water, and his men had all to follow him, after each had been loaded with one of the heavy packs which were made up for this purpose. There were eleven carriers in all, as Pinnow offered the services of the boatmen he had brought from Zanowitz, saying that he could get along with the deaf and dumb Jacob alone; and thus the place of one of the two men whom I had sent home was filled. But there still remained a twelfth pack, which lay upon the deck, and would have been left, as there was no one to carry it, had I not managed to get it on my shoulders by laying it on the gunwale of the boat, and then springing into the surf, which reached to my knees. I was resolved that if I parted from Herr von Zehren that night, he should not be able to say that I had caused him the loss of a twelfth part of his property, won with so much toil and care, with the risk of the liberty, and lives of so many men, and at the price of his own honor.

A boisterous laugh resounded behind me as I left the cutter. It came from Pinnow; he knew what he was laughing about. The cutter, lightened of her lading, was now afloat, and as I gained the beach and turned, she was slowly standing out to sea. He had done his shameful work.

At this moment it flashed upon me, "He is a traitor, after all!" I do not know whether it was his laugh of malicious triumph that again aroused my suspicion, or what suggested the thought, but I said to myself, as I closed the file which was headed by Herr von Zehren and Jock Swart, "Now it will soon be decided."

CHAPTER XVIII.

We had passed the dunes, and were marching in single file across the sandy waste land on the other side. No word was spoken; each man had enough to do in carrying his heavy pack; I perhaps the most of all, although none of the men, unless it might be Jock Swart, equalled me in strength; but in such things practice is everything. And then in addition to my pack, which probably weighed a hundred-weight, I bore another burden from which the others were free, and which pressed me far more heavily--the burden of shame that my father's son was bending under this bale of silk, of which the revenue was defrauded, because I would not cause a loss of property to the man whose bread I had been eating for two months. And then I thought with what happiness my heart beat high when I left Zehrendorf in the morning, and that I was now returning deceived by the daughter, insulted by the father, contaminated by the defilement of the base traffic to which I had lent myself, and that this was the end of my visionary splendors, of my adored liberty! But the end had not yet come.

Without a moment's rest we kept on, the wet sand crunching under our feet, when of a sudden a word was given at the head of the file and passed on in an under-tone from man to man until it came to me, who being the last could pass it no further--"Halt!"

We had reached the edge of the moor. It could be entered on this side only by a narrow strip which was passable; then came a stretch of dry land, a sort of island, surrounded by the morass on every side, which closed in again at its opposite extremity, perhaps two thousand paces distant, and there was again only a narrow path which a heavily laden man could pass without sinking into the morass. After this came the heath, which extended from the lands of Trantowitz and Zehrendorf on one side to the dunes of Zanowitz on the other, and which I had already crossed three times to-day.