The Smuggler's Cave

by George A. Birmingham

"Three cheers for drama," shouted Tommy Whittle, waving the stick with which he had beaten the boys, and the cheers were given.

"Shakespeare——" said Mrs. Eames.

"Three cheers for Shakespeare," said old Jack Bunce, who had always hated the plays.

"Shakespeare——" said Mrs. Eames, when the shouting subsided.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said Hinton, interrupting her, "before we go further I think that the name of the immortal Shakespeare should be received by all standing, in respectful silence."

Only the boys outside broke the silence. They had not been able to hear what Hinton said.

Mrs. Eames, despairing perhaps of ever getting any further with that part of her speech, dropped Shakespeare abruptly and went on to speak of village art in general terms. The applause was loud. She repeated one after another things that she had said hundreds of times and always to people who neither would nor could understand what she meant. She was perhaps no better understood at this wonderful meeting, but what she said was certainly approved.

Her eyes gleamed with delight. Her face was flushed with excitement. She could feel her heart beating in rapid throbs. But she began to get a little hoarse from the effort to make herself heard during the cheering. When she had been talking for half an hour, about art, song and dance, all of the "folk" or superior kind, the audience began to show signs of impatience. Instead of simply cheering, the younger men at the back of the room took to shouting "Pageant! Pageant!" They pronounced the first syllable as if it rhymed with rage, but there was no doubt about what they meant. They wanted to get on, past art of all kinds, to the proper business of the meeting.

There was a good deal to say about the pageant. And Mrs. Eames had matter enough, if properly spun out, to keep her speech going for another hour. She would have enjoyed making an oration of that length and no doubt would have done it if her voice had held out. Unfortunately for her it failed. Few, if any, human voices would have done any better. The contest between a single speaker and a cheering crowd is unequal and can only have one end. Mrs. Eames sat down at last. Her final words, muttered hoarsely, were, "Smugglers"—"old days"—"Hailey Compton"—"hardy breed of seadogs."

The cheers rose in a fine crescendo to a noise which would have made a German orchestra playing Wagner's music sound restrained and soothing. The people were no doubt very glad that Mrs. Eames had reached the end of her speech, but there must have been something more than simple relief behind their cheering. The ancestors of these fishermen, their grandfathers and great grandfathers a century or so before, had been noted smugglers, famous even in an age when everyone in the south of England smuggled. The deadening tyranny of a hundred years of law and order had tamed and cowed the Bunces and Whittles of to-day, but deep down in them was the old spirit. Mrs. Eames had appealed to sub-conscious selves with atavistic memories.