Highway Pirates; or, The Secret Place at Coverthorne

by Harold Avery

The next stage was not accomplished quite so successfully as the previous part of the journey. After a time one of the wheelers went lame. On examination, it proved to have been badly shod, and at the end of another mile Tom pulled up at a wayside blacksmith's to have the offending nail extracted. Here we had to wait some little time while the smith, who had stopped work for the day, was fetched from his cottage, which was down a dark lane, and not easy to find. It was during this pause in the journey, after the coach had remained stationary for about twenty minutes, that a man thrust his head out of the window and demanded, in loud and peremptory tones, the reason of the delay.

"See here, guard," he cried, "this sort of thing won't do! I'm due aboard one of the king's ships to-morrow!"

The convicts sent up a shout of laughter at this reference to the hulk for which they were bound, and I was soon aware that the speaker was not the warder, as I had at first imagined, but the man Rodwood of whom Tom had spoken. He kept up the joke with a few more sentences of a similar kind, until the gruff command, "Stow that!" from the warder caused him to subside once more into his seat. He spoke like an educated gentleman, and with the air of one accustomed to command. Indeed, I afterwards learned that he had once held a commission in the army, but owing to gambling debts had been obliged to sell out, whereupon he had entered upon a career of crime, which had terminated in a sentence of transportation for life. At length George Woodley and the smith put in their appearance; the injured horse was attended to, and we were enabled to resume our journey. Bowling along mile after mile in the darkness, it was difficult to judge how time was passing; but Tom, glancing at his old, turnip-shaped watch as we left the smithy, muttered,—

"Blessed if it ain't quarter-past eight, and we ain't got to Tod's Corner."

The mention of the crossroads, where at the beginning of the summer holidays we had been met by the gig from Coverthorne, caused my thoughts to fly off to the old house and the fun I had had with Miles, both at the commencement of the previous holidays and during that long friendship which had been brought to such an untimely end. Musing over the events of the holiday naturally led me back to a remembrance of the man with whom I had just been speaking. There he sat, bound for the opposite side of the globe; yet within half an hour we should pass within three miles of Rockymouth, that native village which he might never behold again. If it had been daylight, we should by this time have caught a glimpse of the sea from the highway along which we were travelling, and the night air seemed flavoured with the salt odour of the ocean.

Though cold and weary, the convicts had once more commenced their song, as though, being debarred the free use of their limbs, they were determined to keep themselves warm with the exercise of their lungs. I had grown by this time so much accustomed to their presence as to hardly notice their shouting; tired out with the day's adventures, only the fear of falling from my lofty perch prevented my dropping off to sleep. Even the sharp tingling of my ears would not have kept me awake. My chin kept falling with a jerk upon my breast, and the clatter of hoofs and the song of the prisoners mingled strangely with momentary fancies that I was back at school, or was talking with the loved ones at home.

At length I was roused up broad awake by the coach stopping. The road was very dark, owing to its being overshadowed by a number of tall trees. I peered about me, and catching sight of a ruined cottage with half of its thatched roof fallen in, I recognized the spot at once, and knew that we were come to within about a mile of Tod's Corner. Just beyond the glare of our lamps was the brow of a steep and dangerous hill, and we had pulled up while George jumped down and put on the drag.

In fancy I can see now the dark figure of Tom Barker beside me, reins in one hand and whip in the other, waiting for the signal to proceed. The convicts had ceased their singing, and all was quiet except for the impatient scrape of one of the leader's hoofs. I heard the tinkle of the drag as Woodley loosed the chain; then on the roof behind some one gave a short, sharp whistle.

Exactly what happened next I did not fully realize till later. Two men suddenly seized Tom Barker from behind, and a desperate struggle ensued. The silence was broken by an outburst of horrible threats and cursing, while, to make matters worse, the horses, startled by the noise and the fall of the coachman's whip on the backs of the wheelers, sprang forward, and, as though knowing instinctively that something was wrong, gave every sign of commencing to bolt.

I fear I cannot claim for myself any particular presence of mind: it was more the natural impulse of self-preservation which prompted me to act; for once let the horses start to gallop down that hill, and all our necks were as good as broken. Fortunately, although I had never enjoyed the privilege of handling the ribbons on a stage-coach before, I was accustomed to horses. I seized the reins in the nick of time, just as they were slipping over the splashboard, and bracing myself for the effort, succeeded in bringing the team to a standstill.