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Fifty yards back was the outer edge of a belt of dark wood that covered the flat lands and swept up the sides of the hills that lay off ten or twelve miles to the east. Against such a background nothing would be visible in the darkness. Across on the Gatcombe side were the steep sandstone cliffs, storm-washed and clean, and topped with primeval forest.
"True, admiral," answered a Gatcombe pilot; "and I trow we shall find it trying work looking for black men on a black night." "Well spoken, master pilot; but if thou canst keep our lives free of danger from shoal and sandbank, we'll e'en try to do the rest." "I'll warrant ye safe passage anywhere 'twixt Chepstow and Gloucester, Sir Francis." "I ask no more. Now, gentlemen, aboard!"
"At last?" asked Johnnie in a low tone. "At last!" was the reply. "Gatcombe jetty at nightfall, and well armed." "I'll be there." Without further words the messenger turned about and went elsewhere on his errand. Morgan at once got out his sword, put on a thick leathern doublet and boots reaching to his thighs.
At about the hour when Johnnie Morgan stepped out over his threshold to go down to the admiral at Gatcombe, Andrew Windybank stole like a thief from the Tower and went through by-paths towards Westbury-on-Severn, a fishing hamlet that lay a little farther up-stream than Newnham. Not a single man of all his servants and retainers went with him.
Johnnie Morgan had tramped up from Bristol to Berkeley, and now stood on the Severn bank at the eastern end of the ferry to Gatcombe and the snug ingle-corner of the old farmhouse. Such a crowd of thoughts, hopes, dreads, rushed into his mind that the whirl and jostle of them in his brain made him giddy. He had left Bristol at dawn; it was now late afternoon and an April day.
The dead were buried, and the tears of wives, mothers, and sisters were dried, and sad memories when they came called up only a sigh of resignation: "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away!" They humbly thanked the Lord that He had given their men honourable passage into the next world. The admiral was no longer at Gatcombe, but had gone to London, and thence to Plymouth.
Nor should she be entirely cut off from her uncle, who was a Royal chaplain; and this was some consolation to the good Doctor when he found her purpose fixed, and made arrangements for her to travel up to town in company with Lady Worsley of Gatcombe, whom she was to meet at Southampton on the 1st of July.
Great oaken logs bobbed up and down like corks, or raced with the current upstream; the product of many weeks' timber-cutting in the forest would be scattered as driftwood from Gloucester to the shores of Devon and Wales. On the high bank above Gatcombe, one other man, half hidden by the thick trees, braved the fury of the storm.
The man came slowly across from Gatcombe. Johnnie recognized his stroke before he clearly detected the body from the boat. Here was the real touch of home. Old Evan would stare at him, doubtless, but only for a moment. Then would come the affectionate cry, "Plague take me! if it b'aint Jack Morgan. Welcome home, my son; we'd given thee up for dead!" The ferryman came; his fare stepped in.
Lord Carrington of course lost his L36 and saved his honour. Mr. Ricardo said he might have done better by writing to apprise the owners of the vessel that he was ready to pay a fair price for it, and the duties. To MISS LUCY EDGEWORTH. GATCOMBE PARK, Nov. 12. We are perfectly happy here; delightful house and place for walking, riding, driving. Fanny has a horse always at her command.
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