The trout-stream rose about three miles from my uncle's house, in a boggy wood full of springs. It was a very rapid brook, nowhere more than three or four feet deep, and never more than twenty feet across, even near its mouth. Below my uncle's house it was full of little falls, with great mossy boulders which checked its flow, and pools where the bubbles spun. Further down, its course was gentler, for the last mile to the sea was a flat valley, with combes on each side covered with gorse and bramble. The sea had once come right up that valley to just below my uncle's house; but that was many years before—long before anybody could remember. Just after I went to live there, one of the farmers dug a drain, or "rhine," in the valley, to clear a boggy patch. He dug up the wreck of a large fishing-boat, with her anchor and a few rusty hoops lying beside her under the ooze about a foot below the surface. She must have sailed right up from the sea hundreds of years ago, before the brook's mouth got blocked with shingle (as I suppose it was) during some summer gale when the stream was nearly dry. Often, when I was a boy, I used to imagine the ships coming up from the sea, along that valley, firing their cannon. In the winter, when the snow melted, the valley would be flooded, till it looked just like a sea, and then I would imagine sea-fights there, with pirates in red caps boarding Spanish treasure galleons.
The seacoast is mostly very bold in that part of Devon. Even where there are no cliffs, the land rises steeply from the sea, in grassy hills, with boulders and broken rock, instead of a beach, below them. There are small sandy beaches wherever the brooks run into the sea. Everywhere else the shore is "steep-to"—so much so that in many places it is very difficult to reach the sea. I mention this because, later on, that steep coast gave me some queer adventures.
CHAPTER II
NIGHT-RIDERS
When I was twelve years old, something very terrible happened, with good results for myself. The woman near Newton Abbot (I have spoken of her several times) was a Mrs Cottier, the wife of a schoolmaster. Her husband used to drink very hard, and in this particular year he was turned out of the school, and lost his living. His wife left him then (or rather he left her; for a long time no one knew what became of him) and came to live with us, bringing with her little Hugh Cottier, her son, a boy of about my own age. After that, life in my uncle's house was a different thing to me. Mrs Cottier was very beautiful and kind; she was like my mother, strangely like, always sweet and gentle, always helpful and wise. I think she was the dearest woman who ever lived. I was always proud when she asked me to do something for her. Once, I remember (in the winter after Mrs Cottier came to us), she drove to Salcombe to do her Christmas shopping. It came on to snow during the afternoon; and at night-time the storm grew worse. We put back supper, expecting her to come in at any minute, but she did not come. The hours went by, and still she did not come, and still the storm worsened. The wind was not very high, but the air was full of a fine, powdery, drifting snow; the night seemed full of snow; snow fell down the chimney and drifted in under the door. My uncle was too lame with sciatica to leave his bed; and my aunt, always a woman of poor spirit, was afraid of the night. At eight o'clock I could stand it no longer, so I said that I would saddle the pony, and ride out along the Salcombe road to find her. Hugh was for going in my place; but Hugh was not so strongly built as I, and I felt that Hugh would faint after an hour in the cold, I put on double clothes, with an oilskin jacket over all, and then lit the lantern, and beat out of the house to the stable. I put one or two extra candles in my pockets, with a flint and steel, and some bread and meat Something prompted me to take a hank of cord, and a heavy old boat-rug; and with all these things upon him old Greylegs, the pony, was heavy-laden.
When we got into the road together, I could not see a yard in front of me. There was nothing but darkness and drifting snow and the gleam of the drifts where the light of the lantern fell. There was no question of losing the road; for the road was a Devon lane, narrow and deep, built by the ancient Britons, so everybody says, to give them protection as they went down to the brooks for water. If it had been an open road, I could never have found my way for fifty yards. I was strongly built for a boy; even at sea I never suffered much from the cold, and this night was not intensely cold—snowy weather seldom is. What made the ride so exhausting was the beating of the snow into my eyes and mouth. It fell upon me in a continual dry feathery pelting, till I was confused and tired out with the effort of trying to see ahead. For a little while, I had the roar of the trout-stream in my ears to comfort me; but when I topped the next combe that died away; and there I was in the night, beating on against the storm, with the strange moaning sound of the wind from Dartmoor, and the snow rustling to keep me company. I was not exactly afraid, for the snow in my face bothered me too much, but often the night would seem full of people—laughing, horrible people—and often I would think that I saw Mrs Cottier lying half-buried in a drift.
I rode three miles or more without seeing anybody. Then, just before I reached the moor cross-roads, in a lull when the snow was not so bad, I heard a horse whinny, and old Greylegs baulked. Then I heard voices and a noise as of people riding; and before I could start old Greylegs I saw a party of horsemen crossing my road by the road from the sea to Dartmoor. They were riding at a quick trot, and though there were many horses (some thirty or forty), I could see, even in that light, that most of them were led. There were not more than a dozen men; and only one of all that dozen carried a lantern. Something told me that they were out for no good, and the same instinct made me cover my lantern with my coat, so that they passed me without seeing me. At first I thought that they were the fairy troop, and that gave me an awful fear; but a moment later, in the wind, I felt a whiff of tobacco, and of a strong, warm, sweet smell of spirits, and I knew then that they were the night-riders or smugglers. After they had gone, I forced old Greylegs forward, and trotted on, against the snow, for another half-mile, with my heart going thump upon my ribs. I had an awful fear that they would turn, and catch me; and I knew that the night-riders wanted no witnesses of their adventures in the dark.
About four miles from home, I came to an open part of the road, where the snow came down in its full fury, there being no hedge to give a little shelter. It was so thick that I could not get Greylegs to go on. He stood stock-still, and cowered, though I beat him with my hank of cord, and kicked his ribs. It was cruel of me; but I thought of Mrs Cottier, with her beautiful kind face, lying in a drift of snow, and the thought was dreadful to me. I got down from the saddle, and put my lantern on the ground, and tried to drag him forward, but it was useless. He would not have stirred if I had lighted a fire under him. When he had the instinct to stand still, nothing would make him budge a yard. A very fierce gust came upon me then. The snow seemed to whirl upon me from all sides, so that I got giddy and sick. And then, just at the moment, there were horses and voices all about me, coming from Salcombe way. Somebody called out, "Hullo," and somebody called out "Look out, behind"; and then a lot of horses pulled up suddenly, and some men spoke, and a led horse shied at my lantern. I had no time to think or to run, I felt myself backing into old Greylegs in sheer fright; and then some one thrust a lantern into my face, and asked me who I was. By the light of the lantern I saw that he wore a woman's skirt over his trousers; and his face was covered by one of those great straw bee-skeps, pierced with holes for his eyes and mouth. He was one of the most terrible things I have ever seen.
"Why, it's a boy," said the terrible man. "What are you doing here, boy?"
Another man, who seemed to be a leader, called out from his horse, "Who are you?" but I was too scared to answer; my teeth were rattling in my head.