“No! For but yesterday I was with old Sir Gavin, who’s sworn to put an end to smuggling on the coast here. Your ship was never to put to sea. Not Blunt himself would have got her from the teeth of the King’s ship. Would you be taken here?”
The four seamen muttered among themselves; I saw them drawing to the doorway—scuttling out; only the old rogues and the Barwise sons yet held their ground, and Mrs. Barwise sought still to enflame them to her purpose.
“Words—ay, but we’ve not come for words from you, master,” she burst out. “Where’s the baubles, master? Where’s the gold? Our baubles and our gold!”
“Ay, ay, ours! That’s what we’re here to know! Where’s the stuff hid?”—came the chorus.
I faced them still,—Oliver with his swinging whip beside me. I said, “Keep back! I’ve a word for you, as a word for Blunt’s men. I tell you Mr. Bradbury comes this night, with his men, and Sir Gavin’s folk, and all the gentry round. He comes to make an end here—to sweep this house clean—for me! You’ve threatened murder; you’ve robbed and broken; you’ve set every man of you his neck in reach of a rope to-night; I warn you all, for you served my grandfather, that soon, perhaps now, the house must be surrounded. You’ve escaped hanging so long, how d’ye like the prospect of swinging at the end of a rope at the end of your days? Take what you’ve looted—plate and what not?—and go! You’ll take no more. There is no treasure!”
“Lies!” screamed the woman, as they quailed and wavered. “Where’s the blunt first? Don’t go till you’ve laid hands on what’s your own.”
“Go now!” I shouted, to be heard above the instant uproar. “Go now before it is too late!”
As they wavered, she shrieked out, “Pull him down! Take him and hold him but the moment, and I’ll have the truth out of him—with the irons and the fire!”
They surged forward, but before my levelled pistol and Oliver’s uplifted hunting crop, they wavered still; having each and every man of them so little left of life, and valuing it at a price above visionary treasure. My uncle, leaning unconcerned against his father’s chair, neither incited them nor assisted us; Nick and Isaac Barwise seemed to await their orders from him, yet holding themselves apart from the old rogues.
And suddenly I saw Mr. Bradbury standing within the doorway, his hair all blown with the wind—else, as cool and unperturbed as ever I had known him; seeing him come in, with Galt and the two runners at his back, I cried out triumphantly, “Too late! Too late!”