The MS. in a Red Box

by John A. Hamilton

I found Luke waiting for me with the little boat, and stepped in, bidding him stay at Sandtoft till morning, and bring me word of Mistress Goel then. He raised some objection to my going unattended, but I overruled him, and doubtless the prospect of a longer confab with Martha disposed him to obedience. He had put a lighted lantern into the boat, which would be useful, he reminded me, when I came to the will-pits. The will-pits were pools, reputed bottomless, half surrounded by very old birches, some still green, others fallen and rotting. Now the fen was under water, the trees might be plaguy unless I had a light, for the night was darker than nights are wont to be in August.

Thanking my good fellow for his care, I bade him good night, and sculled off rapidly, keeping well away from the embankment, lest there should be timbers near the foot of it. When I had gone about a mile, as I reckoned, I stopped sculling to pick up the lantern, and held it forward on the lookout for the will-pit trees. As I did so, I perceived that the boat drifted backwards and a little toward the embankment. How could there be a current in a sheet of standing water? But a current there certainly was; and running pretty strongly too. The Dutchmen could not be at work at this time of night, opening the sluice for any purpose that I could conjecture. There might be a defect in the embankment somewhere, a crack which was widening under pressure of water. Whatever might be the secret, my best course was to go an as fast as I could scull; so I took both in hand, pulling with all my might. Up to this time I had used only one scull over the stern, sparing my weaker arm. Not more than five minutes later the sculls scraped bottom and the boat stuck fast. Shipping oars, I leaned over the side, lantern in hand, and saw there were but a few inches of water all round the boat. I had not grounded on a mud-bank, but was stranded by the draining away of the water! What to do next was a question. If I could wade to the embankment, I could continue my journey on foot; but that was not to be ventured until I knew the nature of the ground, for in this part of the fen were many mire-pits, and to step into one of them meant being sucked down to a horrible death. I prodded the soil with a scull, and it went down like a spoon into porridge. I was right over a mire-pit. I tried sculling again, but that was of no use whatever. Then I attempted to thrust the boat forward, but there was nothing to thrust against. I stood up, holding the lantern above my head, peering through the mist, and saw a bush some six or seven yards ahead of me, so there was a bit of solid ground just beyond reach! If I had had a coil of rope with me, I might have thrown a loop into the bush, and so saved myself; but the painter was the only rope in the boat, and it was not more than six feet long. The only thing left for me was to wait as patiently as I could until morning, when some one might come within hail, or Luke might seek me, unless by good luck the water should rise again. 'Twas no great hardship after all: the night was not cold, but a shade chilly with the mist. As I came to this conclusion, I was startled by something which whizzed over my head and fell with a splash and a soft thud some yards beyond the boat. Somebody must be throwing from the embankment, and at me apparently. My lantern must assist his aim, so, not wishing to extinguish it, having no means of relighting it, I wrapped a thick neckerchief I wore over the horn, and stowed it in the bow. While I did this another stone crashed into the boat with such force that I judged it was hurled from a sling. Other stones followed in swift succession, but not more than one in three or four hit the boat; but one struck me such a thump on the buttock as to set me thinking what the consequence would be of receiving another blow like it in a more vital part.

I could not devise any kind of protection at the moment, but it occurred to me that a little dodge might puzzle my enemy. I pulled up one of the thwarts with no great effort, for the little craft was old and rotten, took off my coat to hide my operations from the enemy, cut a bit of the painter, and lashed the lantern to the thwart, and set it afloat on the water, trusting to the chance that it might drift away. I placed it with the horn on the side from the embankment, hoping it might go a little way before my assailant caught sight of it. To my great relief it glided gently off, not rounding until it had gone, as nearly as I could guess, some twenty yards. It drew his volleys for a while, and then it vanished, though whether he struck it, or it toppled over by chance, I knew not. While his attention was thus diverted from me, I had time to think what to do in case he contrived to discover my whereabouts again, which I was sanguine enough to consider unlikely. In this I was mistaken, my enemy was not to be so easily beaten. But I turned the temporary respite to the best advantage I could think of by tearing up the other thwart, so as to get room to stretch myself in the bottom of the boat, and rolling to one side, depressing the gunnel nearly to the surface of the water, thus shielding myself from hurt as long as the crazy boards might hold against his battery.

I had been none too quick. A faint red gleam began to show through the mist, and having some notion of what the enemy might be about, I slightly enlarged the aperture of a gaping seam, and looked toward the embankment. A fire had been kindled, and the man who had lighted it stood full in the glare of it. As I had supposed, the man was Vliet. He had a gun hanging at his back and a sling in his hand. Doubtless he had seen my departure from Sandtoft, pulled up the sluice-gate to let off the water, and followed me along the embankment. Chance had favoured him by stranding me on a spot from which I could not move. He had only to knock my boat to pieces, or even to make it unfloatable, and my fate was sealed. He could return to close the sluice, and in a few hours the water would cover both the boat and me. That was pretty safe, if he did no more than smash the boat. He would try to do more than that, I had no doubt. I could do nothing. To attempt to crawl over the slime would be to seek death. I must stick to the boat as long as the planks held together, hiding myself, if possible, and making no sound. He might imagine that I had escaped, or that I was dead, if I made no sign.

As I watched his doings, he gave me a ray of hope. He lifted a bottle to his mouth, and he did not tilt it high. How fervently I hoped that he had enough to get drunk on! His next move showed he was not by any means drunk at present. He walked away from the fire, often stopping down, as I supposed, to pick up stones. He evidently meant to spare powder and shot as long as he could, and to do his work as silently as possible. When he came back to the fire, he lighted a torch and descended the embankment, looking carefully, at the soil of the fen, as if he sought to get nearer to the boat, but he had too much prudence to venture. Then he ascended the bank and resumed his sling. He had found where the boat lay, for he managed to hit about once in three times. His aim was so bad that it would have been laughable under other circumstances, but I had no inclination to laugh, as plank after plank cracked and started. I turned over, and lay with my back to him, grinding my teeth with rage to be so ignominiously stoned and so utterly helpless. At length, perhaps after an hour of continuous firing, came a pause, and I turned over to look at my enemy. It was only too easy to see him through gaping seams and holes broken in the planking. He sat between the fire and me, so that his every movement was clearly discernible. If I had had a gun I could have shot him wherever I chose. He rubbed his right shoulder with his left hand, as if it ached with his exercise. Then he drank from his bottle, tilting it higher this time. He sat so long that I began to hope he imagined he had made an end of me; but by-and-by he rose to his feet, took his gun in hand, and prepared to fire. I rolled to the very edge of the gunnel now, and the water and ooze flowed softly in on me. It was well I did, for Vliet's aim with a gun was another matter than his aim with a sling. Shot after shot struck and riddled the heap of boards which had been a boat, but as by a miracle, shot after shot missed me. Vliet plainly believed that there could be no one in the wreck except a dead man, for he began to sing. Never have I listened to music, even the best, with more pleasure than I had in hearing that thick and drunken voice yelling a tuneless song! I watched him finish his bottle, scatter the fire, and heard by the diminishing noise that he was going back to Sandtoft.

It was not until he had gone, that I knew how cold and wet I was, and then discovered that the half of the boat on which I lay had sunk into the mire. At first I fancied that I had to do with nothing more serious than the ooze, which had flowed in when I lay on the edge of the boat; but by dipping my fingers straight down into the mud, I found that the pit was swallowing my raft and me slowly, but surely, at the rate, it might be, of a barleycorn a minute. I could not be sure of that, for I had no certainty about time. The one certainty was that the mud was gaining on me. I feared to move about, lest my weight should make worse of the wreck; but I could not lie still in the dark to be steadily sucked under, so I rolled over in a very gingerly manner, and by degrees pressed down the holed and shattered planking on to the surface of the mire, thus upheaving the side on which I had before lain. For a wonder it did not go utterly to pieces, and I lay on it some time before it began to be overflowed by the mud, when I turned gently over to the other side which had been raised by my weight. This gave way more quickly than before, but it held me up for perhaps ten minutes, and then I repeated the performance, and continued this kind of see-saw for, I should think, an hour or more, but on the seventh or eighth turning, with a great cracking, the one side parted from the other, the line of breakage being not far from the keel, as I made out by groping. For a second or two, I fell into despair, but soon perceived that my chances of escape were perhaps improved by the splitting of the boat. Kneeling on the less broken half, with my legs as far apart as I could stretch them, I tried to pull the other half upwards and forwards. It was hard work, for the mire held it fast, and my half sank at least half a foot while I tugged at the other, but at length I had the mass in front of me, and crawled on to it. My arms felt as if they were pulled half out of their sockets, but there was no time to rest. I must try to get the piece of the wreck on which I had knelt out of the mire and before the other. This proved a tougher job still.

Before the thing was done, I was up to the middle of my thighs in the pit, and almost spent, but done it was at last, and as I pushed it forward, it encountered some solid obstacle. There was dry ground, or a tree, not more than three yards or so ahead of me. That assurance gave me the strength of madness. I dragged myself a little out of the mud, and threw myself on the piece of wreckage with such force, that it sank beneath my weight so deeply that I was swallowed up in the mire, shoulder high. But the other end of my raft remained firm, and by clutching, writhing, pulling, I got inch by inch out of the slough, and, while doing so, to my unspeakable joy I perceived a faint glimmer of dawn. That showed me a down-drooping branch of birch above my head, which at last I reached, and clung to it trembling lest it should break. It held, and by its aid I gained solid ground. I threw my arms round the trunk of the tree as though it had been a human friend, laughing and sobbing in a breath. Then I vowed Sebastian Vliet should answer to me for his dastard trick before he was many hours older. After that, I remembered to thank God for my deliverance, and fell asleep over my thanksgiving. I must have slept an hour or more, for the sun was above the horizon when I awoke cold and shivering.

It would be wearisome to relate how I got home, for nothing happened by the way; though I have the keenest recollection of the effort it cost to walk the two miles, which were as long as twenty, my clothing being caked with mire even to my shirt, and my limbs shaking with cold and exhaustion.

But by the usual breakfast hour I had eaten and drunk, washed and changed, and was my own man again. I had need of all my strength, for my father came into the room with suppressed fury in face and voice.

"At last you have condescended to honour me," he began. "Have you come to say you will save Temple from the hammer, or that you choose beggary for yourself and disgrace for your father? Quick: let me know your mind."