The Midnight Folk Read online

  “Benjamin had a mare called Dowsabel, that was trained to stop coach-horses; she would go right across the leaders and turn them into a ditch. They do say the coachmen were in with him.”

  “Do you know any of their names?”

  “Why, no. It was all so long ago.”

  “Is it all written down in a book about him?”

  “Why, no, Master Kay, who would write a book about him?”

  “I don’t know, I thought they might.”

  “Why, he was only a poor thief, Master Kay, who took what didn’t belong to him by frightening people.”

  “And he did really live up in the stables here?”

  “Yes, that was like a house, then, opening on the road. He used to lodge there and let out he was a traveller for malt; or so they say, it may be only old tales.”

  “Did your grandfather ever see him?”

  “Why, yes, Master Kay, many a time; and he was at his taking. You see, he stopped a carriage out Rugby way, and took some rings and a watch from a gentleman. The gentleman said nothing while he was being robbed, but he recognised the mare, because he’d seen her, as it happened, just in the last day or two in the Cock stable. So the gentleman thought, ‘Probably you belong near there,’ so he had a watch set.

  “By and by Benjamin came back to these parts. The watchers saw him riding to the Cock by the brook where they dip the sheep, so as to come to the back of the stable. They were all ready for him, in about the stables, and some were in the road hidden among the trees. Well, as he came down to the brook to jump it, he saw these people, for one of them raised his head to see the mare take the jump. Others say it wasn’t that, but the little girl who used to say dinner was ready waved a red handkerchief, which was their danger signal. Anyway, he saw it wasn’t safe, so he turned the mare and rode for here. But some of them were in the road, so that couldn’t be either, and they all gave him chase across the Tump, and then past Barbara’s, and along the Long Lane there, down past Hollings’s Quarry, all shooting and shouting out ‘Stop Thief,’ and lots of new people joining in; oh, they’d more than a hundred persons out.

  “My grandfather was working then for old Mr. Pullean that lived at Ley Cop. He was digging in the flower-bed, he said, when Benjamin came over the hedge. He said the mare was nearly down, for she was a little thing, he said, and not fresh when she started, and she’d come five miles best pace and been hit too, for she was bleeding from the side, poor thing. So Benjamin said, ‘Come up, old girl. Tell them I went along the road,’ he said to grandfather. But they were too close on him for anything of that.

  “So then Benjamin put the mare at the fence out of the garden. It was a big blind place with a stank of water the far side. The mare got over clear, but she didn’t land clean, she fell back, and she couldn’t get up. My grandfather said Benjamin gave a little cry, like he’d been shot through the heart. But he picked up his pistols and ran down the field along the stream to the little spinney. You will know the place well, Master Kay; it’s the big foxes’ lie where we saw what we called the shrike’s larder. It was all full of scrub and stubbed stuff, and deep, on this side, from a fall of earth. Well, Benjamin got in there and tried to load his pistols, and they all came riding up shooting at him, shouting out to surrender; and young Mr. Dog-Face, as they always called him, who was afterwards sent to Botany himself, shot him in the arm and broke it. So then they got a cord of old Mr. Pullean’s, what had the washing on it, and tied poor Benjamin with that.

  “My grandfather said he was all trembling from the fall and the ride, and the fight and from pain, but not at all from fear. He was not a big man, but middle size, and slight rather: very active, though: ran just like a hare. He’d black hair and eyes, altogether very black, yet clean-shaved, as people were then. Rather a slight, quick man, with a nice face, nothing bad in it, only bold. So then he was taken off and that was the end of him.”

  “Did they ever find his treasure?”

  “How you do run on about treasure. I believe it’s all you ever think of. He never made much by it, to leave treasure. Just barely enough to pay his horse-meat, my grandfather said.”

  “What happened to the mare?”

  “Oh, she’d broken her back. She was taken to the kennels. Old Sir Hassle had the hounds then. He used to come in all hungry from hunting and take like a ladle-full of the hounds’ broth, all dead horse and pony; but there, some men you can’t make particular. And you’ll be one of them, to judge from your stocking. Whatever have you been doing to get your stocking into that state?”

  “I say, Ellen, thank you for telling me all about Benjamin. Did you ever go into the Crowmarsh Estate? Is it very dangerous?”

  “Now don’t you go going there, Master Kay; it’s not allowed. It’s preserved; and apart from the keepers it’s full of mantraps and spring-guns; the one will blow your head off and the other will nip your ankles half in two, like they did to my Cousin Bob. He went in there, against the notice, and got caught in a mantrap; he didn’t walk the same in a twelvemonth after. Then they’ve got their bloodhounds loose there some days, able to tear a child’s head off; and always they’ve got their watchers just now, so soon before the shooting. You run off to bed now, like a good boy, and let me be sure you say your prayers; don’t gibble-gabble them, but think what you’re saying.”

  When he got into bed, the sun was nearly down; a glow from it lit the wall opposite, so that the hunting men riding at the brook in Full Cry were made most vivid. A ray touched the model of the Plunderer, so that she glowed, too, and the green stripe upon her forecastle and the scarlet rims of her tops looked beautiful against her brown and black. “I have had a jolly day,” he thought. “And tomorrow, I’ll jolly well go into the Crowmarsh Estate to see if I can’t find the J.G.Z.”

  Just before he fell asleep he was almost sure that the water in the brook in Full Cry had eddies in it; eddies, and those little clouds of dissolving earth which the water-rat makes when scared from a bank. “He must have been a jolly good painter,” he thought, “to be able to do all that.” He fell asleep soon after this, thinking that if he were a painter, he would paint, well, he did not know what he would paint; so very much was happening.

  As before, he woke up into what seemed like broad daylight, although he could see the stars through the window. He was aware at once that something very odd was happening in the print of Full Cry: the hunting men, whose red coats were flapping, were turning from the brook. And what was the matter with the brook? It was very, very full of water, and coming with such a strong current that it swished against the loose alder root. He could see not only eddies, but bright, hurrying, gleaming ripples which ran into bubbles, and yes, yes, it was coming into the room, it was running on both sides of the bed, clear, swift, rushing water, carrying down petals and leaves and bits of twig. Then there came the water-rats, who dived with a phlumphing noise when they caught sight of him. He was in an island in the midst of the stream; and the stream was so crystal clear that he could see the fish in the shallows, flapping like water plant leaves, and filmy as dead weeds.

  But what on earth was happening to the model of the Plunderer? He could see that the water had reached her on the wall: she was afloat. She seemed to be alive with little tiny men, all busy with ropes. No, they were not men, they were little mice, “water-mice, I suppose,” he thought. Now she was coming across the stream to him; and how big she was, or, no, how little he was; he was no bigger than the water-mice. There she came slowly to the edge of the bed. She had flags flying, a Blue Peter at the fore, a house-flag, with three oreilles couped proper, on the main, and a red ensign at the peak. But lovelier than the flags were the decks, with the little doors, each with a shiny brass handle and real lock and key, opening to the cabins. Then there were real lifeboats ready for use. He could see the barrels and lockers in them marked “Best Preserved Milk,” “Corned Beef,” “Ship’s Bread,” “Pemmican,” “Raisins,” “Chocolate Cream,” “Turkish Delight,” “Split Peas,” “Curr
ants,” “Hundreds and Thousands,” “Mixed Biscuits,” “Dry Ginger Beer,” etc., etc. No fear of starving in lifeboats like those. Then all the little brass cannon were shining in the sun, ready for use, with the little powder tubs all handy, and little men standing by them ready to fire them off in salute. Then as the ship came alongside the bed, each little gunner blew puff upon his match, to make it glow (some of them had red-hot pokers instead of match), just as The Sea-Gunner’s Practice described, and popped the glowing end on the touch-holes. All the little brass cannon went bang together in salute.

  Then Kay saw that the captain of the ship was his friend the water-rat. He was standing on the poop, with his telescope in his hand, telling the mate to put the gangway over for Mr. Kay. Some of the little seamen at once thrust out a gangway onto the bed.

  “Step on board, Mr. Kay,” the Captain said.

  “May I really and truly?”

  “Yes, we’re waiting for you.”

  Kay walked from his bed onto the deck. He was amazed at the neatness of everything: all the rows of buckets, the sponges and rammers for the cannon, the capstans that worked, the compasses that pointed, the cask, painted red, for salt meat, and the other cask, painted blue, for fresh water; and all the rigging, with little ladders on it for going aloft. Then there was a ship’s kitchen on the deck close to him, with a real little cook, with a wooden leg, making plum duff for dinner at a real fire.

  “Welcome on board, Mr. Kay,” the Captain said. “I thought we might stand over to the westward to see what we can find of the old Plunderer. We’ve got a cabin prepared for you, with a hammock slung in it; and here are some nice long sea-boots to pull over your pyjamas, and a double-breasted pea-jacket to keep out the seas and keep in the plum duff. And now, my hearties, cast loose forward, let go aft. The tug has got her. Hurray, lads, for the westward.”

  Kay noticed now, what he had not noticed before, that on the other side of the Plunderer was a tug-boat under steam. Long before, he had had a beautiful tug-boat with a scarlet funnel. She had gone by real steam made by methylated spirit, which you lit under the boiler in a little lamp. But after two voyages, she set forth across the Squire’s pond on a windy day, and in the draught of the gale she caught fire, blazed for a few minutes from stem to stern, and then went down head first in deep water. Yet now here she was, repainted, and with powerful new engines in her, which were threshing the water as they towed the Plunderer clear of the bed.

  Soon they had swung round clear of the sofa, and headed to the west, through the open window, into the night. Side lights and towing lights were lit; she plunged on beside her tug, casting streaks of coloured light upon the water. Soon she was in the stream where Kay had so often seen the water-rat. Someone in the Plunderer turned a strong searchlight onto the water ahead. Look-out men went aloft to watch the water: they called to the helmsmen from time to time to do this or that to dodge the rocks. “A bit anxious, this reach of the stream,” the water-rat said, “but there’s lots of water tonight.”

  The ship went faster and faster over rapids and shallows: soon she was in the big, quiet pool where the stream entered the river. An otter looked out at them and wished them good luck. A moorhen came out and swam ahead of them to show them the best passage. Dawn was now breaking; but all the world of men was asleep. Kay saw the deserted quay of the river bank where he had so often watched people coming to hire skiffs. A light was burning there, although morning was growing everywhere. Kay saw the tug stand away from the Plunderer’s side and cast loose the tow-ropes. The Plunderer’s men ran aloft and cast loose the sails. When Kay next looked back, the river wharf was far astern; the ship was running swiftly down the river under a press of sail.

  “But come, Master Kay,” the Captain said, “breakfast is on the table. Step down the ladder with me to the cabin.”

  He led the way down to a passage where there were a great many doors labelled First Mate, Second Mate, Third Mate, Captain’s Stores, Instrument Room, Chart Room, Steward’s Pantry, Bullion Room, warranted iron-lined, Captain’s Bath, Mates’ Bath, Jam Room, Sardine Room, etc., as well as one big open door leading to the cabin, where the table was set for breakfast. They had for breakfast all the things that Kay was fondest of: very hot, little, round loaves of new white bread baked in the embers of a wood-fire, very salt butter, a sardine with a lot of olive oil, some minced kidneys, a poached egg and frizzled bacon, a very fat sausage all bursting out of its skin, a home-made pork-pie, with cold jelly and yolk of egg beneath the crust, a bowl of strawberries and cream with sifted sugar, a bowl of raspberries and cream with blobs of sugar-candyish brown sugar that you could scrunch, some nice new mushrooms and chicken, part of a honeycomb with cream, a cup of coffee with crystals of white sugar candy for a change, a yellow plum, a greengage and then a ripe blue plum of Pershore to finish off with.

  “That’s the way, Master Kay,” the Captain said. “I always believe in a good breakfast: something to do your work on and start the day with. And now, if you’ve finished, as you haven’t had much sleep lately, perhaps you’d like to keep the next watch in your hammock. Come up on deck for a moment first, though, we are now in the open sea.”

  The wonder of it was that they were in the open sea, out of sight of land, with the ship under full sail flying westward. One or two of the water-mice were at work far aloft: others on deck were washing their clothes and hanging them out to dry on clothes-lines, or fishing with hooks and lines, or feeding the sparrows (which they kept for the eggs) in the hencoops, or polishing the brass on the ship’s bells and railings. The sea was all blue and bright, the hot sun was shining, not a cloud could be seen. The ship was flying faster and faster.

  Kay’s cabin was a charming room, with mahogany lockers, and a porthole covered with red curtains. A telescope hung on a rack ready for use. A canvas hammock swung from hooks in the wall, it had a pillow, mattress, sheets and blankets. The Captain showed him how to get in and tuck himself up. In a minute he was fast asleep.

  He was wakened half an hour later by the ship anchoring in calm water. On going on deck he found that she was not far from a low, tropical shore, blindingly white, from the surf bursting on it. Palm trees grew here and there on the shore: there was no sign of man. The water, bright blue to seaward, with vivid green streaks, was clear as crystal.

  “Now Master Kay,” the Captain said, “we will get into the diving-bell and go down to see what we can see. We are now just over the wreck of the old Plunderer.”

  “How do you know?” Kay asked.

  “We can always get directions about wrecks, we underwater folk,” the Captain said. “We ask the otters, and they get into touch with all sorts of sea-folk, mermaids and sirens, not to speak of dolphins and these other fellows. Some of them are very old and have astonishing memories. It was a mermaid who told Tom Otter about the Plunderer, and he told me.”

  The diving-bell was a tight little room, just big enough for two nice comfortable armchairs. It was built of iron framing, with floor and side windows of strong clear glass. Air-pipes and speaking-tubes were let into the walls and through the roof. When Kay and the Captain had taken their seats in the armchairs, the crew closed the door very carefully so that no water could possibly squeeze in. Then they hoisted the bell up and began to lower it carefully into the water. Kay found that he could see quite clearly through the glass of the sides and the floor. The fish came to the windows and sucked at them with their mouths. Presently, when the Captain called through the speaking-tube to stop lowering, he turned on a searchlight which pointed through the floor. Kay could see the bottom of the sea, growing like a garden with white and red coral, weeds, anemones and sponges, all seeming to dilate in the light. Some gaily-coloured fish came poking to the light, to find if it were good to eat; a few big fish, some of them like shadows, others like round collapsing bags with suckers waving from them, drifted or finned by, all noiseless; there was no whisper of sound, except a drumming in the ears. “There’s what is left of the Plunderer,�
� the Captain said.

  Lying on the bottom, partly on white sand, partly among coral and weed, was the wreck of an old wooden ship. All that remained in sight of her was her stern post, her name-plate, marked Plunderer, a part of her keel, and a few ribs fallen out of place. All these timbers had been blackened by years under the sea. White and blue barnacles were growing on them; sprays of red and white coral had thrust up among them. The sunlight made all these things so glorious suddenly that the Captain turned out the light. Kay could see even the eyes of the lobsters peering into the crannies of the coral.

  A mermaid floated to the side of the diving-bell. She was young and merry-looking, with bright, big brown eyes and very white teeth. She wore a gold crown over her long brown hair. Her cheeks and lips were full of colour. She put her mouth to the glass and smiled at them. “That’s Sea-Flower,” the Captain said. “Say good-morning to her.”

  “Good-morning, Miss Sea-Flower,” Kay said. “Can you tell us how this ship came here?”

  “Yes,” she said. “She was upset in a squall, long ago, and all her men were drowned. They were making merry at the time. You can still see one of them: that scarlet coral is he. But open the door and come with me.”

  Three other mermaids had swum to the diving-bell: together they opened the door. In an instant, Kay was swimming with them in the warm water that was so like green light. All the floor of the sea shone. Here and there were patches of a green plant which had flowers like flames, they were so bright. At first he thought that everything there was dead; but when he had been twenty seconds in that tingling water he knew that it was full of life. The white sand of the sea-floor was alive with tiny, scurrying, glittering creatures, little beings looked at him from the branches of the coral, flowers poked out eyes at him upon stalks like snails’ horns, he could see the leaves of the seaweeds shine with joy at every good suck-in of light. All these living forms were swaying gently as the swell lifted and fell: all were glistening and tingling with joy; a kind of drowsy song of delight moved through the water, everything was singing, or murmuring or sighing because life was so good.