Volume Three—Chapter Thirteen.
A Brace of Body-Snatchers.
What with the high hills that shut in the valley of the Wye, and the hanging woods that clothe their steep slopes, the nights there are often so dark as to justify the familiar saying, “You couldn’t see your hand before you.” I have been out on some, when a white kerchief held within three feet of the eye was absolutely invisible; and it required a skilful Jehu, with best patent lamps, to keep carriage wheels upon the causeway of the road.
Such a night has drawn down over Rugg’s Ferry, shrouding the place in impenetrable gloom. Situated in a concavity—as it were, at the bottom of an extinct volcanic crater—the obscurity is deeper than elsewhere; to-night alike covering the Welsh Harp, detached dwelling houses, chapel, and burying-ground, as with a pall. Not a ray of light scintillates anywhere; for the hour is after midnight, and everybody has retired to rest; the weak glimmer of candles from cottage windows, as the stronger glare through those of the hotel-tavern, no longer to be seen. In the last every lamp is extinguished, its latest-sitting guest—if it have any guest—having gone to bed.
Some of the poachers and night-netters may be astir. If so they are abroad, and not about the place, since it is just at such hours they are away from it.
For all, two men are near by, seemingly moving with as much stealth as any trespassers after fish or game, and with even more mystery in their movements. The place occupied by them is the shadowed corner under the wall of the chapel cemetery, where Captain Ryecroft saw three men embarking on a boat. These are also in a boat; but not one in the act of rowing off from the river’s edge; instead, just being brought into it.
Soon as its cutwater strikes against the bank, one of the men, rising to his feet, leaps out upon the land, and attaches the painter to a sapling, by giving it two or three turns around the stem. Then facing back towards the boat, he says:—
“Hand me them things; an’ look out not to let ’em rattle!”