The Mayor of Troy Part 9

What was the Major's plan? Wait again, and you shall see it evolved in operation.

CHAPTER VI.

MALBROUCK S'EN VA.

"There is mischief of some sort brewing," said Mr. Smellie, the Riding Officer.

"You think so?" queried Mr. Pennefather, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g a quill.

"I'd stake my last s.h.i.+lling on it," said Mr. Smellie, slapping his right boot with his riding-whip. "You, a family man, now--"

"Eleven."

"Quite so. Then you must know how it is with children; when they look at you as though there was no such thing as original sin, it's time to keep your eye lifting. Ten to one they're getting round you with some new devilry. Well, that's the way with your Cornish."

Mr. Smellie came from Glasgow--he and his colleague, Mr. Lomax, the Riding Officer of the Mevagissey district which lay next to ours.

The Government, it was understood, had chosen and sent them down to us on the strength of their sense of humour--so different from any to be found in the Duchy.

It certainly was different. To Mr. Smellie, we of Troy had been at first but as children at play by the sea; in earnest over games so infantile as to excite his wondering disdain. He wondered yet; but insensibly--as might happen to a man astray in fairyland--his disdain had taken a tinge of fear. Behind "the children sporting on the sh.o.r.e," his ear had begun to catch the voice of unknown waters rolling. They came, so to speak, along the sands, these children; innocent seeming, hilariously intent on their make-believe; and then, on a sudden, not once but a dozen times, he had found himself tricked, duped, tripped up and cast on his back; to rise unhurt, indeed, but clutching at impalpable air while the empty beach rang with teasing laughter.

It baffled him the more because, of his own sort, he had a strong sense of humour. It was told of Mr. Pennefather, for instance, that during his clerks.h.i.+p at Penzance the Custom House there had been openly defied by John Carter, the famous smuggler of Prussia Cove; that once, when Carter was absent on an expedition, the Excise officers had plucked up heart, ransacked the Cove, carried off a cargo of illicit goods and locked it up in the Custom House; that John Carter on his return, furious at the news of his loss, had marched over to Penzance under cover of darkness, broken in the Custom House and carried off his goods again; and that Mr.

Pennefather next morning, examining the rifled stores, had declared the nocturnal visitor to be John Carter beyond a doubt, because Carter was an honest man and wouldn't take anything that didn't belong to him. The Riding Officer thought this a highly amusing story, and would often twit Mr. Pennefather with it. But Mr.

Pennefather could never see the joke, and would plead,--

"Well, but he _was_ an honest man, wasn't he?"

"That's the way with you Cornish," repeated Mr. Smellie; "and after a time one learns to feel it in the air, so to speak."

The little Collector looked up from his ledger, pus.h.i.+ng his spectacles high on his brow, and glanced vaguely around the office.

"Now, for my part, I detect nothing unusual," said he.

"Furthermore," the Riding Officer went on, still tapping his boot, "I met a suspicious-looking fellow yesterday on the Falmouth Road; a deucedly suspicious-looking fellow; a fellow that answered me with a strong French accent when I spoke to him, as I made it my business to do. He had Guernsey merchant written all over him."

"Tattooed?" asked Mr. Pennefather, without looking up from the ledger in which he had buried himself anew. "I had no idea they went to such lengths . . . in Guernsey . . . and fourteen is twenty-seven, and five is thirty-two, and thirty-two is two-and-eight. . . . I beg your pardon? You identified him, then?"

Mr. Smellie frowned. "I shall send up a private note to the Barracks; and meanwhile, I advise you to keep an eye lifting."

"And ten is three-and-six. . . . An eye lifting, certainly," a.s.sented Mr. Pennefather, without, however, immediately acting on this advice.

"There's that fellow Hymen, now, next door. He's not altogether the a.s.s he looks, or my name's not Smellie."

"But it is, surely?" Mr. Pennefather looked up in innocent surprise.

"And you really think it justifies calling in the Dragoons?"

"On the face of it, no; I've no evidence. And yet, I repeat, there's some mischief afoot. This new game of Hymen's, for instance--Before coming down to these parts"--Mr. Smellie threw a fine condescension into this phrase--"I should have thought it impossible that anyone in the shape of a man, let alone of a Major of Artillery, could solemnly propose to test a neighbouring corps by a night attack, and then as solemnly give warning on what night he meant to deliver it."

Mr. Pennefather took off his spectacles and polished them with his silk handkerchief. "But without that precaution he would find n.o.body to attack."

"I tell you, it's absurd! And yet," the Riding Officer went on irritably, "if one could count on its being absurd, I wouldn't mind.

But there's just a chance that, with all this foolery, Hymen and Pond are covering up a little game. Why have they chosen Talland Cove, now?"

"I suppose because, for a night attack on Looe, there's no better spot."

"Nor for running a cargo. I tell you, I shall keep the Dragoons on the alert."

"You don't suggest that you suspect--"

"Suspect? I suspect everybody. It's the rule of the service; and by following it I've reached the position I hold to-day."

"True." The Collector readjusted his spectacles and returned to his figures. There may have been just a hint of condolence in his accent, for the Riding Officer looked up sharply.

"If you lived in the north, Pennefather, do you know what we should say about you? We should say that you were no very gleg in the uptake."

"I once," answered the Collector, gently, without lifting his head from the ledger, "began to read Burns, but had to give him up on account of the dialect."

Meanwhile, all unaware of these dark suspicions, the Major and his Gallants were perfecting their preparations for the great surprise.

And what preparations! In the heat of them we had almost forgotten the Millennium itself!

For weeks the band had been practising a selection of tunes appropriate (1) to invasions in general and (2) to this particular invasion. There was "Britons, Strike Home!" for instance, and "The Padstow Hobby-horse," and "The Rout it is out for the Blues,"

slightly amended for the occasion:

"As I was a-walking on Downderry sands, Some dainty fine sport for to view, The maidens were wailing and wringing their hands-- Oh, the Rout it is out for the Looes, For the Looes, Oh, the Rout it is out for the Looes."

The very urchins whistled and sang it about the streets. On the other hand, the Major's chivalrous proposal to hymn _The George of Looe_ came to nothing, since Captain Pond could supply him with neither the words nor the air.

"Notwithstanding all my researches," he wrote, "the utmost I can discover is the following stanza which Gunner Israel Spettigew-- vulgarly termed Uncle Issy--one of my halest veterans, remembers to have heard sung in his youth:

"'Oh, the _George of Looe_ sank Number One; She then sank Number Two; She finished up with Number Three: And hooray for the _George of Looe_'!"

"Dammy!" said the Major, "and I dare say that pa.s.ses for invention over at Looe."

We in Troy were no paupers of invention, at any rate. Take, for example, the Major's plan of campaign. First of all you must figure to yourself a _terrain_ shaped like a triangle--almost an equilateral triangle--with its base resting on the sea. At the western extremity of this base stands Troy; at the eastern, Looe, with Talland Cove a little to this side of it. For western side of the triangle we have the Troy River; and for apex the peaceful village of Lerryn, set in apple-orchards, where the tidal waters end by a narrow bridge.

For the eastern side we take, not the Looe River (which doesn't count), but an ancient earthwork, known as the Devil's Hedge, which stretches across country from Looe up to Lerryn. Who built this earthwork, or when he did it, or for what purpose, no one can tell; but the Looe folk will quote you the following distich,--

"One day the Devil, having nothing to do, Built a great hedge from Lerryn to Looe."

(Invention again!)

Of these things, then (as Herodotus puts it), let so much be said.

But thus we get our triangle: the sea coast (base), the Troy River and the Devil's Hedge (sides), meeting at the village of Lerryn (apex) among the orchards.