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Updated: May 31, 2025
"Oh, it's all right," I said gayly, "it's all right. You've to stand by Veronica. I've no one to my back. Good-night, good-by." I pulled my horse's head round and galloped down the hill. The main body had halted before setting out over the shingle to the shore. Rangsley was waiting to conduct us into the town, where we should find a man to take us three fugitives out to the expected ship.
He began to make a set speech, anathematizing runners. He moved to tie our feet, and hang us by our finger-nails over the quarry edge. A hubbub of assent and dissent went up; then the crowd became unanimous. Rangsley slipped from his horse. "Blindfold 'em, lads," he cried, and turned me sharply round. "Don't struggle," he whispered in my ear; his silk handkerchief came cool across my eyelids.
It withdrew itself a little from my ear and called, "'Now then, ready with them. When I say three...." I heard groans and curses, and began to shout for help. My voice came back in an echo, despairingly. Suddenly I was dragged backward, and the bandage pulled from my eyes, "Come along," Rangsley said, leading me gently enough to the road, which was five steps behind. "It's all a joke," he snarled.
Then he waited, and against the light of the window I could see him mopping his forehead with the sleeve of his coat; my heart began to beat softly and insistently out of sympathy. Suddenly, from the deep shadow of the cloud above the sea, a yellow light flashed silently cut very small, very distant, very short-lived. Rangsley heaved a deep sigh and slapped me heavily on the shoulder.
After I had made it clear that I wanted to go with Carlos, and could pay for my passage, I was handed down into the steerage, where a tallow candle burnt in a thick, blue atmosphere. I was stripped and filled with some fiery liquid, and fell asleep. Old Rangsley was sent ashore with the pilot. It was a new and strange life to me, opening there suddenly enough.
A voice called up through the hatch, "Here's your uncle, Squahre Jack," and a husky murmur corroborated. "Be you drunk again, you old sinner?" Rangsley asked. "Listen to me.... Here's three men to be set aboard the Thames at a quarter after eleven." A grunt came in reply. Rangsley repeated slowly. The grunt answered again.
I could feel Carlos' eyes upon us, looking out of the thick darkness. A slight rustling came from the corner that hid Castro. "She passes down channel to-night, then?" Rangsley said. "With this wind you'll want to be well out in the Bay at a quarter after eleven." An abnormal scuffling, intermingled with snatches of jovial remonstrance, made itself heard from the bottom of the ladder.
There was nothing to be done but talk and wait. "No; England," he answered in a tone full of meaning "things in England people there. One person at least." To me his words and his smile seemed to imply a bitter irony; but they were said very earnestly. Castro had hauled the helpless form of old Rangsley forward. I caught him muttering savagely: "I could kill that old man!"
"He'll be the man to do your errand." He called to one of the men behind. "Here, Joe Pilcher, do you go into the White Hart and drag my Uncle Tom out. Bring 'un up to me to the nest." Three doors further on we came to a halt, and got down from our horses. Rangsley knocked on a shutter-panel, two hard knocks with the crop and three with the naked fist.
After a period of turmoil we seemed to come out of the crowd upon a very rough, descending path; Rangsley had called out, "Now, then, the rest of you be off; we've got enough here"; and the hoofs of heavy horses sounded again. Then we came to a halt, and Rangsley called sharply ïrom close to me: "Now, you runners and you, John Kemp here you be on the brink of eternity, above the old quarry.
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