The Adventures of Dick Trevanion: A Story of Eighteen Hundred and Four

by Herbert Strang

"Hang it, Dick, they're Frenchmen!" cried the Squire, his fighting blood roused. "We must clear the rascals out."

On reaching the ground he dispatched Sam to tell Tonkin that the Frenchmen were now going in the other direction, and hurried on with the others, intending to join the fishers at the Dower House. He arrived in time to see Tonkin's men fire a volley at the Frenchmen at the windows. Little damage was done; Delarousse did not return the fire. He had achieved the object of his raid, and had no desire to enter into useless hostilities. Having taken stock of the enemy, he withdrew his men into the house, which was already filling with pungent smoke.

Tonkin halted his men for a moment in order to recover breath. It looked as if he would have to take the house by storm, a difficult task in the face of odds. But he was a man of bulldog courage, if no tactician. Smarting with the indignity he had suffered, and without stopping to think that Delarousse might have no designs except against Trevanion, he ordered his men to reload, and prepared to lead them to the attack.

Delarousse, however, had taken advantage of the momentary lull to withdraw his men through a long window in the wall of the house facing the village. The result was that when Tonkin, after so much delay as was necessary for his men to regain their breath and prime their muskets, led them at the charge up to the house and broke through the door, he found the house deserted, and the enemy in full retreat down the hill. He rushed after them, eager to overtake them before they reached the village. Some of his men had noticed that the house was on fire, but in their excitement none stayed to extinguish the flames, nor even to warn or assist the person who was still ringing the bell.

By this time the Squire, with Dick and Penwarden, skirting the grounds of the house, had joined Tonkin's party, and was hurrying with them down the hill. The Frenchmen had more than a hundred yards start, and on the descent proved to be as fleet of foot as their pursuers. On reaching the first of the houses, Delarousse was met by the rest of his cordon, who, now that the matter had come to a fight, saw that they could employ themselves more usefully than in keeping guard. Now the Frenchmen turned at bay, and checked the pursuit with a scattered volley.

"Empty your muskets, then charge the ruffians!" shouted the Squire, taking command as of right.

The Cornishmen responded with a cheer. A shower of slugs flew through the air, but the Frenchmen having scattered, and many of them being protected by the angles of houses on the winding road, only one or two were hit. There was no time for either party to reload. The pursuers dashed forward, wielding cutlasses, and their muskets as clubs. The pursued stood to meet the charge; there were a few moments of hand-to-hand conflict; Tonkin's burly figure was conspicuous in the thickest of the fray, wielding his musket like a flail; but the numbers of the Frenchmen prevailed, and the Squire recalled the men, to re-form them and charge again. From this point there was a straggling fight down the hill to the neighbourhood of the inn. The Squire, with Dick, Penwarden, and Tonkin close about him, led a series of rushes against the retreating enemy, whose numbers were always sufficient to give them check.

On coming to the inn, which was within a short distance of the jetty, Delarousse saw with alarm that his escape had been cut off. This was not due to any prevision on Tonkin's part. He had been too eager to follow up the Frenchmen to consider ultimate contingencies. But his defect as a tactician was supplied by a man whom no one had hitherto suspected of any capacity in that direction, and who enjoyed henceforth, to the day of his death, a very exalted reputation in Polkerran on the strength of this one achievement.

Pennycomequick, the cobbler, perceiving that the Frenchmen on the lugger were apparently stunned, hastily got together a little party of men and boys, boarded the vessel, clapped the Frenchmen under hatches, and then punted out some distance from the jetty, towing the boats that had lain drawn up on the little beach. No one as yet knew that the Frenchmen had not sailed all the way from Roscoff in the lugger; the Aimable Vertu in the offing was concealed by the mist that still shrouded the sea. Finding himself thus cut off from communication with his vessel, Delarousse, who had released the men trussed up by Tonkin, with ready resource flung himself into the inn, and ordered his company to reload and occupy the windows. The Squire, now as keen as when he had been a young lieutenant, saw instantly that, the superiority in force being with the Frenchmen, the possession of the inn gave them an additional advantage which would render an attack hazardous to the last degree. He called a halt, to consider the next move.

At this moment the clatter of a horse's hoofs was heard from round the corner leading to the hill, and Mr. Carlyon rode down.