The Dew of Their Youth

by S. R. Crockett

The reader of these family memoirs will perhaps agree with me that, if any one could do without an ever-watchful Providence troubling itself about him, that man was my Uncle Tom.

While, therefore, we in the House of Marnhoul were in the wildest alarm—at least Agnes Anne was—forces which could not possibly be withstood were mustering to hasten to our assistance. The tarry jackets of the Golden Hind would doubtless have rushed the front door with a hurrah, as readily as they would have boarded a prize, but Lalor Maitland ordered them to bring wood and other inflammable material. At least, so I judge, for presently I could see them running to and fro about the edges of the wood. They had now learned the knack of keeping in shelter most of the way. But I did not feel really afraid till I saw some of them with kegs of liquor making towards the porch. There they stove them in, and proceeded to empty the contents on the dry branches and fuel they had collected. The matter was now beginning to look really serious. To make things worse, they were evidently digging out the bottom of our cellar-stair barricade, and if they succeeded in that they would turn our position and take us in the rear.

So I sent down Agnes Anne (she not being good for much else) to the cellar to see how things were looking there, bidding her to be careful of the lantern, and to bring back as many of the five muskets as she could carry, so that I might keep the fellows in check above.

Agnes Anne came flying back with the worst kind of news. A great flame of fire was springing up out of the well of the staircase into which we had tumbled the barrels and boxes. It threatened, she said, to blow us sky-high, if there were any barrels of powder among the goods left by the smugglers.

At any rate, the flame was rapidly spreading to the other packages which had formed our breastwork of defence, and was now like to become our ruin.

For, once fairly caught, the spirit would flame high as the rigging of Marnhoul, and we should all be burnt alive, which was most likely what Lolar Maitland meant by his parting threatening.

“And it is more than likely,” Agnes Anne added, “that some of the barrels burst as we threw them down the stairs, and so, with the liquor flowing among their feet, the assailants got the idea of thus burning us out.”

At all events something had to be done, and that instantly. So I had perforce to leave Agnes Anne in charge of “King George” again, cautioning her not to pull the trigger till she should see the rascals actually bending to set fire to the pile underneath the porch of the front door. I also told her not to be frightened, and she promised not to.

Then I went down to the cellar. The heat there was terrible, and I do not wonder that Agnes Anne came running back to me. A pillar of blue flame was rising straight up against the arched roof of the cellar. I could hear the cries of the men working below in the passage.

“Hook it away—give her air—she will burn ever the brisker and smoke the land-lubbers out!”