All vexations seem trifling when they are once over; but, for full two hours of this pelted pilgrimage, I felt sensations which might have cured me of solitary sporting for the rest of my existence.
At the end of those hours, which appeared to me ten times the length, I heard the barking of a dog, the usual announcement of peasant life; and rejoicing in it, as one of the most welcome of all possible sounds, I worked, felt, and waded, my way to the door of a building, at which, without ceremony, I asked for entrance. My application was for some time unanswered but I heard a rustling within which made me repeat my request in various ways. After trying my eloquence in vain, I offered a guinea for a bed. A window was now opened above, and showed a pair of heads, which in their night-gear strongly reminded me of the grandmother wolf in Little Red Riding hood—myself, of course, being the innocent victim. I now doubled my offer, my whole purse amounting to no more; and was let in.
My hosts were two, an old woman hideous with age and ferocity of feature, but the other a young one, with a handsome but bold countenance whose bronze had been borrowed as much from free living as from the sea breeze. The house was furnished in the parti-coloured style, which, showed me at once that it belonged to something above the peasant. The women at first were rather reluctant to enter into any conversation; but when, to make my reception welcome, I paid the two guineas down on the table, their hearts became thawed at once, and their tongues flowed. My wet clothes were exchanged for the fisherman's wardrobe, and a tolerable supper was put on the table. Some luxuries which I might not have found under roofs of more pretension, were produced one after the other; and I thus had Hamburg hung beef, Westphalia ham, and even St Petersburg caviare; preserved pine apple formed my desert, and a capital glass of claret "for the gentleman," of which the ladies, however, professed themselves incapable of discovering the merit, was followed by an equally capital bottle of brandy, which they evidently understood much better.
In the midst of our festivity, the dog sprang to the door, and a sound like that of a horn or conch shell, was heard through the roar of the gale. The women started from their seats in evident consternation, swept away the remnants of the supper, and conveyed me into an adjoining closet; where they begged of me to keep close, not to speak a syllable, let what would happen, and, as I valued my life and theirs, not to mention thereafter whatever I might see or hear. It was now plain that I was in the house of smugglers; and as those were notoriously people not to be trifled with, I made my promises of non-intervention with perfect sincerity.
I was scarcely in my nook when the party arrived. They were evidently six or seven—their conversation was the common bluster and boisterousness of their trade—and between their demands for supper, their coarse jokes, and their curses at the lubberliness or loitering of their associates from the other side of the Channel, (for, with all their accompliceship, they had the true John Bull contempt for the seamanship of Monsieur,) they kept the house in an uproar. They expected a cargo from Calais that right, and the idea of losing so favourable an opportunity as the tempest offered, rendered them especially indignant. Scouts were sent out from tine to time to look for signals, but nothing appeared. At length the brandy was beginning to take effect on their brains, and their rough jokes arose into quarrel. A charge of treachery produced the drawing of cutlasses, and I heard them slashing at each other; but the right Nantz which had inflamed the quarrel rendered it harmless, until one lost his balance, rolled headlong against my door, and burst it in. There stood I, visible to all, and the sight produced a yell, in which the epithets of "spy, exciseman, custom-house shark," and a whole vocabulary of others, all equally remote from panegyric, were showered upon me. I should have been cut down by some of the blades which flashed before me, but that I had taken the precaution of carrying my gun to my closet, and was evidently determined to fight it out. This produced a parley; when I told my tale, and as it was corroborated by the women, who came forward trembling at the sight of their savage masters, and who spoke with the sincerity of fear; it saved me further encounter, and I was merely enjoined to pledge myself, that I should not betray them.
The compromise was scarcely brought to a conclusion when the discharge of a pistol was heard outside; and as this was the signal, the whole party-prepared to leave the house. I now expected to be left to such slumbers as I could find in the midst of rocking roofs, and rattling doors and windows. But this was not to be. After a short consultation at the door, one of them returned, and desired me to throw on a fisherman's dreadnought which was smoking beside the fire; and follow him. Against this, however, I vehemently protested.
"Why, lookye, sir," said the fellow, smoothing his tone into something like civility, "there is no use in that thing there against about fifty of us; but you must come along."
I asked him, could he suppose, that I was any thing like a spy, or that, if I gave my word, I should not keep it?
"No," said the fellow. "I believe you to be a gentleman; but what a story shall we have for the captain if we tell him that we left a stranger behind us—and, begging your pardon, sir, we know more about you than what the women here told us—and that after he heard all our plans for the night's work, we left him to go off to the custom-house, with his story for the surveyor."
This seemed rational enough, but I still held my garrison. The fellow's face flushed, and, with something of an oath, he went to the door, gave a whistle, and returned next minute with a dozen powerful fellows, all armed. Contest was now useless, and I agreed to go with them until they met the "captain," who was then to settle the question of my liberty, The women curtseyed me to the door, as if they rather regretted the loss of their companion, and were at least not much pleased by being cut off from further inroads on a purse which had begun by paying so handsomely, not knowing, that it was utterly stript; and we marched to the point of waiting for the bark from Calais.