The Dew of Their Youth

by S. R. Crockett

Some few of the boxes in the front tier were already on fire, and still more were smouldering, but the straightness of the vent up which the flame was coming, together with the closeness and stillness of the vault, made the flame mount straight up as in a chimney. I therefore divined rather than saw what remained for me to do. I leaped over and began, at the risk of a severe scorching, to throw back all the boxes and packages which were in danger. It was lucky for me that the smugglers had piled them pretty high, and so by drawing one or two from near the foundation, I was fortunate enough to overset the most part of it in the outward direction.

But the fierceness of the flame was beginning to tell upon the building-stone of Marnhoul, which was of a friable nature—at least that with which the vault was arched.

Luckily some old tools had been left in the corner, and it struck me that if I could dig up enough of the earthen floor or topple over the mound of earth which had been piled up at the making of the underground passage, the fire must go out for lack of air; or, better still, would be turned in the faces of those who were digging away the barrels and boxes from the bottom of the stair-well.

This, after many attempts and some very painful burns, I succeeded in doing. The first shovelfuls did not seem to produce much effect. So I set to work on the large heap of hardened earth in the corner, and was lucky enough to be able to tumble it bodily upon the top of the column of fire. Then suddenly the terrible column of blue flame went out, just as does a Christmas pudding when it is blown upon. And for the same reason. Both were made of the flames of the French spirit called cognac, or brandy.

Then I did not mind about my burns, I can assure you. But almost gleefully I went on heaping mould and dirt upon the boxes in the well of the staircase, stamping down the earth at the top till it was almost like the hard-beaten floor of the cellar itself. I left not a crevice for the least small flame to come up through.

Then I bethought me of what might be going on above, and the flush of my triumph cooled quickly. For I thought that there was only Agnes Anne, and who knows what weakness she may not have committed. She would never have thought, for instance, of such a thing as covering in the flame with earth to put it out. To tell the truth, I did think very masterfully of myself at that moment, and perhaps with some cause, for not one in a thousand would have had the “engine” to do as I had done.

When I got to the top of the stairs, I heard cries from without, which had been smothered by the deepness of the dungeon in which I had been labouring to put out the fire. For a moment I thought that by the failure of Agnes Anne to fire off “King George” at the proper moment, the door had been forced and we utterly lost. Which seemed the harder to be borne, that I had just saved all our lives in a way so original and happy.

But I was wrong. The shouting came not from the wicked crew of the privateersman, but from the shouting of a vast number of people, most of them mounted on farm and country horses, with some of finer limb and better blood, managed by young fellows having the air of laird’s sons or others of some position. None of these had his face bare. But in place of the black highwayman masks of the followers of Galligaskins, these wore only a strip of white kerchief across the face, though, as I could see, more for the form of the thing than from any real apprehension of danger.

Indeed, in the very forefront of the cavalcade I saw our own two cart horses, Dapple and Dimple, and the lighter mare Bess, which my grandfather used for riding to and fro upon his milling business. I had not the least doubt that my three uncles were bestriding them, though I never knew that there were any arms about the house except the old fowling-piece belonging to grandfather, with which on moonlight nights he killed the hares that came to nibble the plants in his cabbage garden.

Soon the sailors and their abettors were fleeing in every direction. But, what took me very much by surprise, there was no firing or cutting down, though there was a good deal of smiting with the flat of the sword. And at the entrance of the ice-mound I saw a great many very scurvy fellows come trickling out, all burned and scorched, to run the gauntlet of a row of men on foot, who drubbed them soundly with cudgels before letting them go.