“But where do you come from—you are not of these parts, surely?” asked Nest in a puzzled and still more dubious tone.
He did not answer, but began to rip off the laughing mouths of the toadflax, and it was something about his attitude, with head bent . . . Why, the boat this morning at Porthstinian . . . the bow oar . . . yes, even that white flannel waistcoat! It came back to her; and as if to confirm her recognition she now saw, tucked into his belt, a blue cap with a tassel.
“Why, I know where you come from!” she exclaimed, before she could weigh the advisability of her words, “—from the Dutch prize! You are one of the men who came ashore for water this morning!”
At that the privateersman raised his head and looked sharply at her and then up and down the little lane. Nest’s heart jumped again with a recrudescence of alarm. “But I can always make Bran bark at him,” she thought. Indeed it was obvious that Bran was ready at any moment to renew this exercise, not having ceased for a moment to strain at the leash and to keep a lowering eye upon the stranger.
The latter however made no movement in the least threatening. “You’ll not tell anyone that, will you, miss?” he asked, and his tone was imploring, not a doubt of it. “ ’Tis true; you did see me in the boat this morning—but I can trust you, can’t I, you being a lady? And, miss, can you tell me, has she sailed, the Vrijheid?”
“Is that the Dutch prize? Yes, she left some time ago, so they told me at Rhosson farmhouse.”
“Thank God for that!” said the young man under his breath.
“Then you have run away from her?” asked Nest with more of disapproval than of interest in her voice.
“Yes, miss. That is to say, from the privateer as took her.”
“But why?”
“I . . .” He looked down and hesitated. “I could not stand the life on board; ’twas too hard.”
“Then why did you join a privateer?” inquired Miss Meredith a little scornfully. Never having experienced hardships herself, she yet considered that the other sex should look upon them, at least in time of war, as a privilege. Moreover, the Liverpool privateers shed a kind of vicarious glory upon the Welsh coast.
“I did not join one, miss,” replied the runaway to this, “I was pressed—kidnapped, you might say.”
“Perhaps then you are not really a sailor at all?”
“No more I am, miss.”
“But, even if you are not a sailor by profession,” remonstrated the (for once) warlike young lady, “you must surely feel how glorious it is to fight our enemies the French . . . and now the Dutch too . . . and to keep the seas clear for British commerce? Or perhaps you did not have to fight, but only to . . . to work the pumps or sails or something of the sort,” she concluded rather vaguely.
This time the ex-privateersman’s teeth, white and even, showed in a grin, and advancing for the first time (while Bran growled) he pulled up the loose check sleeve from his left arm, and drew Nest’s attention to a puckered red mark, nearly a foot long, on the outside of the forearm—the scar of a recently healed wound. “I had that from a French cutlass when we fought the French brig, of heavier guns than ours, off Ushant in May,” he said, and went off into a description of this action of which Nest could understand but few details, partly because she was so much surprised to see how the narrator’s eyes were sparkling, how the humility had evaporated from his manner, and—though she did not realise this till afterwards—almost every trace of country accent from his voice. This deserter must positively have enjoyed the admittedly bloody fight in which he had been wounded! Why then had he run away from the—what was it called—the Fair Penitent?
“But will not the captain of the privateer be very angry when he finds that you never returned to the prize?” she asked.
“He won’t know till he gets back to Liverpool. But I had to risk . . . what would happen to me if the rest of the boat’s crew found me . . . and what will still happen if anyone . . . splits on me,” he added in no cheerful tone.
“And what will that be?”
He did not reply.
“That was why you hid in the hay, then! . . . Did they look for you, the others?”
“Yes. I think they came into the field. If they had had a dog with them, as you had . . .” He shrugged his shoulders. “That was soon after I had given them the slip. Thank God that they have sailed . . . unless you mean to give me up to a magistrate, miss? If you don’t no one else will. Only those men who were at the landing-place this morning could know me again, and I shall keep away from there.” He looked at her with unconcealed anxiety in his grey eyes. Underneath everything he was, as Nest had by now recognised, not really rough of aspect, and even good-looking; the eyes in question, for instance, had lashes as long as her own.
But the phrase “a good-looking scamp” had come prickling into her mind. He was doubtless hoping to work upon her because of his looks and because she was a woman! Nest felt very experienced and disillusioned as she came to this conclusion. She gave a jerk at Bran’s leash, that warrior now showing after all a tendency to relax his vigilance and go to sleep.
“I see no real reason why I should not inform the authorities,” she said, with all the decision of a matron; but before she had had time to add, as she meant to do, “I do not say that I shall,” the deserter, with a short, sardonic laugh, had broken in.
“Will you undertake to come to Liverpool, then, and see me flogged or keelhauled, or both?” His tone was suddenly and curiously that of one speaking to a man, and to an equal, not to a superior. “I don’t suppose you have ever seen either process. I have; and I assure you that you would not enjoy witnessing them!”
Brutal, brutal words! Nest turned pale and shrank back once more against her gate.
“I am sorry,” said the young man curtly. “But you see, madam, that you do not like the notion. I suggest, then, that you do not take upon yourself the responsibility of procuring me five hundred lashes or so. However, if you really intend going to a justice of the peace about me, at least I need not wait for the consequences. I must look for work in some other district; and I will therefore bid you good day before you can lay your information.”
Bewildered as well as outraged—because he had so completely changed since the beginning of the interview—Nest would have let him pass without further parley, glad indeed to be relieved from the strain of this extraordinary encounter. But not so Bran, the intelligent and warmhearted. For some time he had been sitting quite quietly (until, just now, his mistress had jerked the leash), though with his eyes fixed upon the stranger; but his opinion of him was not really changed. Individuals unlawfully concealed in haycocks, who caused his mistress (and himself) alarm, and were the occasion of his being chastised for doing his plain duty, were not going to slink away like that, as long as there was a tooth in a faithful dog’s jaws, and the chance that that mistress, who had just reminded him of his duty, now had the end of his tether in her hand and not round her wrist. . . . Yes, better late than never! As the objectionable man passed, Bran launched himself like a knight in the lists, his leash flying loose behind him, got in a soul-satisfying bite through the fustian trousers somewhere in the region of the knee; was flung off; came on again, filled with the wine of battle; was caught by the throat by hands a great deal stronger than Miss Meredith’s; was choked . . . choked more . . . was down on his back in the dust, struggling, suffocating. . . .
“Don’t kill him, O, don’t kill him!” cried the terrified Nest, the tears running down her face, for every moment she expected to see the sheath knife come out. “I’ll do anything . . . help you in every way . . . give money . . . only don’t