He spoke with a settled assurance, strange to remark in a man who was even then riding a desperate race with fortune; and as we journeyed he continued to talk in the same strain. Day was breaking behind the wild hills as we rode into Porlock. Winter had gone in the night; the soft air, filled with the noise of running waters, savoured of the spring; and the sky was faintly touched with hues of rose. We broke our fast at the inn, and Mr Murch ate more than you would think possible.
“I don’t know how it is,” said he. “I’m as hungry as a boy, and it’s not my habit, neither. Why, I feel younger to-day than I have done this many a year, Mr Winter. Is it English air and Exmoor mutton? At this rate, I shall live for ever.”
And his eye was bright as a young man’s as he got into the saddle again, despite the pain it must have cost him, as I knew from my own sufferings.
We had taken fresh horses, and so rode from out the cup of the valley and came upon the summit of the moorland, where the wind blew keen. We halted, and gazed to seaward. The sea, a brilliant blue, spread away into a bright haze, dotted here and there with sails of ships; but I could not tell, at that distance, if the schooner were among them. Murch, who knew the look of the ship better than I, might have made her out; but if he did, he kept the discovery to himself; and we jogged on without a word. Presently Mr Murch began to talk again, and all he said was pitched in the same key of moralism. He told of his voyages, and the strange countries he had explored, and the foreign cities he had visited; and to hear him talk, you would think the old buccaneer had spent his life as the peaceablest explorer in the world, journeying in the interests of the Royal Society. Yet his narrative continually inferred misfortune or disaster, or something of a darker name, requiring immediate repentance. The word was always on his lips; for want of repentance, it appeared, all his old companions had perished in one way or another; by means of this singular operation, himself had survived danger and escaped judgment, to devote himself at last to the study of the ancients.
“Their bones lie scattered far and wide—the bones of my good shipmates,” said Murch, “I shall think upon them as I sit beside the winter fire, with the claret warming before the blaze. Some lie fathoms deep; the skeletons of some are whitening on sandy Cays; the hanged men are melted to the four winds, sinew and bone. What a troop of ghosts, to come at my signal as I sit snug by the fire, the rain dashing on the windows.... But would you believe it, Mr Winter,” cried Murch, breaking off suddenly, “I’m hungry again—actually famished.”
It was at this point that I began to regard the old buccaneer with a tincture of fear. There was something not right about the man. What was it? Not merely was his ordinary strain of talk heightened as by a touch of fever, which might have been caused by the excitement of his enterprise, but there was something new and daunting in him, though I could not put a name to it. I did not like his look. It might easily be that his late disastrous voyage, coming upon him on the top of a long life of sailing and fighting in hot climates, had unsettled his wits. It would be an ill moment for me if Mr Murch went mad on these desolate hills; and I kept a wary eye upon my travelling companion. And yet there was nothing of madness in his talk, and his manner held the same strong composure.
We must needs halt at Lynton for another meal, though it was scarce two hours since we had breakfasted at Porlock. Murch took his food standing, in a greedy haste. Then we were in the saddle again, making a long stage of it to Ilfracombe, for the going was extremely heavy. Yet Murch never lost his patience, but held steadily onward, with the same bright-eyed composure, the same intermittent talk, the same complaints of hunger. So, mile after mile, we ploughed our way across the unending wastes of moorland, high above the sea, and still the next hill rose in soft undulations before us, and still the wind blew with a constant force in our faces. It was long past noon when we rode down into Ilfracombe, where we had another full meal.
The sun was sinking as we came out upon the bare heights above Morte Point, the northern horn of Morte Bay, of which Baggy Point, beneath which lay the ship, made the southern; and there, some five miles out to seaward, was a little ship beating up against the wind. Now, Morte Bay is scarce four miles round the bend, all level sand, rising landward into grassy dunes. The schooner—if indeed that little craft were she—had nearly double that distance to make, against a head wind. There, beyond the long, brown reach of sand, hid in the purple shadow of the rocky point, lay the Blessed Endeavour. Murch halted, staring to seaward under his hand, the level sunlight striking upon the lower part of his face, revealing every wrinkle of his netted skin, every hair of his great white beard. So I see him now, staring to seaward under his hand, sitting motionless on his horse.
He struck spurs in and clattered down the rocky and steep descent to the sea-shore. Halfway down his horse stumbled and fell, Murch avoiding the animal and coming unhurt to his feet. The poor beast had broken his leg—a glance told us that.
Without a word, Murch drew a pistol and shot the animal through the head; and the smoke had not cleared, or the echoes done leaping from rock to rock, before he had mounted my horse—for I had incautiously dismounted—and was picking his way down the hill at the best pace he could. Slow as he went, ’twas faster than I could travel. But I had a pistol, too, and now was the time to use it; there was no scruple to prevent my shooting my own horse, at least, and I hauled out the weapon, looked to the priming, and dragged myself to a stumbling run. We came to the belt of rolling sand-dunes, and the little, steep ascents checked Mr Murch’s jaded nag, already oppressed with a rider near double the weight he had been carrying hitherto. I lay down and took a steady rest, and when horse and rider forged upon the reddening sunset sky, I pulled the trigger. ’Twas a long shot, but the ball struck the wretched animal somewhere; he stumbled and fell. By the time Murch had disengaged himself, and was lashing savagely at his horse, I had loaded afresh, and the second shot told also. Murch dropped the bridle, facing about, and fired in my direction; but I was hid in the long dry grass, and the bullet sang harmlessly overhead. I thought he would have made at me then; but no, he turned about; I saw his great figure for an instant, black upon the red flush of the sky, as he crossed the summit of the hillock. As he dropped into the hollow I rose to pursue him. We were on equal terms now, so far as two such different men might be; but, I began to think that Harry Winter, in the words of old Dawkins’s chanty, might cry farewell to earth and sky. Nothing seemed easier than for Murch to plant a bullet in him among the sand-hills.