I.

First of all you'll let me say that a bad temper is an affliction, whoever owns it, and shortening to life. I don't know what your opinion may be: but my grandfather was parish constable in these parts for forty-seven years, and you'll find it on his headstone in Manaccan churchyard that he never had a cross word for man, woman, or child. He took no credit for it: it ran in the family, and to this day we're all terribly mild to handle.

Well, if ever a man was born bad in his temper, 'twas Captain Bligh, that came from St. Tudy parish, and got himself known to all the world over that dismal business aboard the Bounty. Yes, Sir, that's the man—"Breadfruit Bligh," as they called him. They made an Admiral of him in the end, but they never cured his cussedness: and my grandfather, that followed his history (and good reason for why) from the day he first set foot in this parish, used to rub his hands over every fresh item of news. "Darn it!" he'd say, "here's that old Turk broke loose again. Lord, if he ain't a warrior!" Seemed as if he took a delight in the man, and kept a sort of tenderness for him till the day of his death.

Bless you, though folks have forgotten it, that little affair of the Bounty was only the beginning of Bligh. He was a left'nant when it happened, and the King promoted him post-captain straight away. Later on, no doubt because of his experiences in mutinies, he was sent down to handle the big one at the Nore. "Now, then, you dogs!"—that's how he began with the men's delegates—"His Majesty will be graciously pleased to hear your grievances: and afterwards I'll be graciously pleased to hang the lot of you and rope-end every fifth man in the Fleet. That's plain sailing, I hope!" says he. The delegates made a rush at him, triced him up hand and foot, and in two two's would have heaved him to the fishes with an eighteen-pound shot for ballast if his boat's crew hadn't swarmed on by the chains and carried him off. After this he commanded a ship at Camperdown, and another at Copenhagen, and being a good fighter as well as a man of science, was chosen for Governor of New South Wales. He hadn't been forty-eight hours in the colony, I'm told, before the music began, and it ended with his being clapped into irons by the military and stuck in prison for two years to cool his heels. At last they took him out, put him on board a ship of war and played farewell to him on a brass band: and, by George, Sir, if he didn't fight with the captain of the ship all the way home, making claim that as senior in the service he ought to command her! By this time, as you may guess, there was nothing to be done with the fellow but make him an Admiral; and so they did; and as Admiral of the Blue he died in the year 'seventeen, only a couple of weeks ahead of my poor grandfather, that would have set it down to the finger of Providence if he'd only lived to hear the news.

Well, now, the time that Bligh came down to Helford was a few months before he sailed for Australia, and that will be a hundred years ago next summer: and I guess the reason of his coming was that the folks at the Admiralty couldn't stand him in London, the weather just then being sultry. So they pulled out a map and said, "This Helford looks a nice cool far-away place; let the man go down and take soundings and chart the place"; for Bligh, you must know, had been a pupil of Captain Cook's, and at work of this kind there was no man cleverer in the Navy.

To do him justice, Bligh never complained of work. So off he packed and started from London by coach in the early days of June; and with him there travelled down a friend of his, a retired naval officer by the name of Sharl, that was bound for Falmouth to take passage in the Lisbon packet; but whether on business or a pleasure trip is more than I can tell you.

So far as I know, nothing went wrong with them until they came to Torpoint Ferry: and there, on the Cornish side of the water, stood the Highflyer coach, the inside of it crammed full of parcels belonging to our Vicar's wife, Mrs. Polwhele, that always visited Plymouth once a year for a week's shopping. Having all these parcels to bring home, Mrs. Polwhele had crossed over by a waterman's boat two hours before, packed the coach as full as it would hold, and stepped into the Ferry Inn for a dish of tea. "And glad I am to be across the river in good time," she told the landlady; "for by the look of the sky there's a thunderstorm coming."

Sure enough there was, and it broke over the Hamoaze with a bang just as Captain Bligh and his friend put across in the ferry-boat. The lightning whizzed, and the rain came down like the floods of Deva, and in five minutes' time the streets and gutters of Torpoint were pouring on to the Quay like so many shutes, and turning all the inshore water to the colour of pea-soup. Another twenty minutes and 'twas over; blue sky above and the birds singing, and the roof and trees all a-twinkle in the sun; and out steps Mrs. Polwhele very gingerly in the landlady's pattens, to find the Highflyer ready to start, the guard unlashing the tarpaulin that he'd drawn over the outside luggage, the horses steaming and anxious to be off, and on the box-seat a couple of gentlemen wet to the skin, and one of them looking as ugly as a chained dog in a street fight. This was Bligh, of course. His friend, Mr. Sharl, sat alongside, talking low and trying to coax him back to a good temper: but Mrs. Polwhele missed taking notice of this. She hadn't seen the gentlemen arrive, by reason that, being timid of thunder, at the very first peal she'd run upstair, and crawled under one of the bed-ties: and there she bided until the chambermaid brought word that the sky was clear and the coach waiting.

If ever you've had to do with timmersome folks I dare say you've noted how talkative they get as soon as danger's over. Mrs. Polwhele took a glance at the inside of the coach to make sure that her belongings were safe, and then, turning to the ladder that the Boots was holding for her to mount, up she trips to her outside place behind the box-seat, all in a fluff and commotion, and chattering so fast that the words hitched in each other like beer in a narrow-necked bottle.

"Give you good morning, gentlemen!" said Mrs. Polwhele, "and I do hope and trust I haven't kept you waiting; but thunder makes me that nervous! 'Twas always the same with me from a girl; and la! what a storm while it lasted! I declare the first drops looked to me a'most so big as crown-pieces. Most unfortunate it should come on when you were crossing—most unfortunate, I vow! There's nothing so unpleasant as sitting in damp clothes, especially if you're not accustomed to it. My husband, now—if he puts on a shirt that hasn't been double-aired I always know what's going to happen: it'll be lumbago next day to a certainty. But maybe, as travellers, you're not so susceptible. I find hotel-keepers so careless with their damp sheets! May I ask, gentlemen, if you've come from far? You'll be bound for Falmouth, as I guess: and so am I. You'll find much on the way to admire. But perhaps this is not your first visit to Cornwall?"

In this fashion she was rattling away, good soul—settling her wraps about her and scarcely drawing breath—when Bligh slewed himself around in his seat, and for answer treated her to a long stare.

Now, Bligh wasn't a beauty at the best of times, and he carried a scar on his cheek that didn't improve matters by turning white when his face was red, and red when his face was white. They say the King stepped up to him at Court once and asked him how he came by it and in what action. Bligh had to tell the truth—that he'd got it in the orchard at home: he and his father were trying to catch a horse there: the old man flung a hatchet to turn the horse and hit his boy in the face, marking him for life. Hastiness, you see, in the family.

Well, the sight of his face, glowering back on her over his shoulder, was enough to dry up the speech in Mrs. Polwhele or any woman. But Bligh, it seems, couldn't be content with this. After withering the poor soul for ten seconds or so, he takes his eyes off her, turns to his friend again in a lazy, insolent way, and begins to talk loud to him in French.

'Twas a terrible unmannerly thing to do for a fellow supposed to be a gentleman. I've naught to say against modern languages: but when I see it on the newspaper nowadays that naval officers ought to give what's called "increased attention" to French and German, I hope that they'll use it bettern than Bligh, that's all! Why, Sir, my eldest daughter threw up a situation as parlour-maid in London because her master and mistress pitched to parleyvooing whenever they wanted to talk secrets at table. "If you please, Ma'am," she told the lady, "you're mistaking me for the governess and I never could abide compliments." She gave a month's warning then and there, and I commend the girl's spirit.

But the awkward thing for Bligh, as it turned out, was that Mrs. Polwhele didn't understand his insolence. Being a woman that wouldn't hurt a fly if she could help it, and coming from a parish where every man, her husband included, took pleasure in treating her respectfully, she never dreamed that an affront was meant. From the moment she heard Bligh's lingo, she firmly believed that here were two Frenchies on the coach; and first she went white to the lips and shivered all over, and then she caught at the seat to steady herself, and then she flung back a look at Jim the Guard, to make sure he had his blunderbuss handy. She couldn't speak to Sammy Hosking, the coachman, or touch him by the arm without reaching across Bligh: and by this time the horses were at the top of the hill and settling into a gallop. She thought of the many times she'd sat up in bed at home in a fright that the Frenchmen had landed and were marching up to burn Manaccan Vicarage: and how often she had warned her husband against abusing Boney from the pulpit—'twas dangerous, she always maintained, for a man living so nigh the seashore. The very shawl beside her was scarlet, same as the women-folk wore about the fields in those days in hopes that the invaders, if any came, would mistake them for red-coats. And here she was, perched up behind two of her country's enemies—one of them as ugly as Old Nick or Boney himself— and bowling down towards her peaceful home at anything from sixteen to eighteen miles an hour.

I dare say, too, the thunderstorm had given her nerves a shaking; at any rate, Jim the Guard came crawling over the coach-roof after a while, and, said he, "Why, Mrs. Polwhele, whatever is the matter? I han't heard you speak six words since we started."

And with that, just as he settled himself down for a comfortable chat with her, after his custom, the poor lady points to the two strangers, flings up both hands, and tumbles upon him in a fit of hysterics.

"Stop the hosses!" yells Jim; but already Sammy Hosking was pulling up for dear life at the sound of her screams.

"What in thunder's wrong with the female?" asks Bligh.

"Female yourself!" answers up Sammy in a pretty passion. "Mrs. Polwhele's a lady, and I reckon your cussed rudeness upset her. I say nothing of your face, for that you can't help."

Bligh started up in a fury, but Mr. Sharl pulled him down on the seat, and then Jim the Guard took a turn.

"Pitch a lady's luggage into the road, would you?" for this, you must know, was the reason of Bligh's sulkiness at starting. He had come up soaking from Torpoint Ferry, walked straight to the coach, and pulled the door open to jump inside, when down on his head came rolling a couple of Dutch cheeses that Mrs. Polwhele had crammed on the top of her belongings. This raised his temper, and he began to drag parcel after parcel out and fling them in the mud, shouting that no passenger had a right to fill up the inside of a coach in that fashion. Thereupon Jim sent an ostler running to the landlady that owned the Highflyer, and she told Bligh that he hadn't booked his seat yet: that the inside was reserved for Mrs. Polwhele: and that he could either take an outside place and behave himself, or be left behind to learn manners. For a while he showed fight: but Mr. Sharl managed to talk sense into him, and the parcels were stowed again and the door shut but a minute before Mrs. Polwhele came downstairs and took her seat as innocent as a lamb.

"Pitch a lady's luggage into the road, would you?" struck in Jim the Guard, making himself heard above the pillaloo. "Carry on as if the coach belonged to ye, hey? Come down and take your coat off, like a man, and don't sit there making fool faces at me!"

"My friend is not making faces," began Mr. Sharl, very gentle-like, trying to keep the peace.

"Call yourself his friend!" Jim snapped him up. "Get off, the pair of you. Friend indeed! Go and buy him a veil."

But 'twas easily seen that Mrs. Polwhele couldn't be carried farther. So Sammy Hosking pulled up at a farmhouse a mile beyond St. Germans: and there she was unloaded, with her traps, and put straight to bed: and a farm-boy sent back to Torpoint to fetch a chaise for her as soon as she recovered. And the Highflyer—that had been delayed three-quarters of an hour—rattled off at a gallop, with all on board in the worst of tempers.

When they reached Falmouth—which was not till after ten o'clock at night—and drew up at the "Crown and Anchor," the first man to hail them was old Parson Polwhele, standing there under the lamp in the entry and taking snuff to keep himself awake.

"Well, my love," says he, stepping forward to help his wife down and give her a kiss. "And how have you enjoyed the journey?"

But instead of his wife 'twas a bull-necked-looking man that swung himself off the coach-roof, knocking the Parson aside, and bounced into the inn without so much as a "beg your pardon."

Parson Polwhele was taken aback for the moment by reason that he'd pretty nigh kissed the fellow by accident; and before he could recover, Jim the Guard leans out over the darkness, and, says he, speaking down: "Very sorry, Parson, but your missus wasn't taken very well t'other side of St. Germans, and we've been forced to leave her 'pon the road."

Now, the Parson doted on his wife, as well he might. He was a very learned man, you must know, and wrote a thundering great history of Cornwall: but outside of book-learning his head rambled terribly, and Mrs. Polwhele managed him in all the little business of life. "'Tis like looking after a museum," she used to declare. "I don't understand the contents, I'm thankful to say; but, please God, I can keep 'em dusted." A better-suited couple you couldn't find, nor a more affectionate; and whenever Mrs. Polwhele tripped it to Plymouth, the Parson would be at Falmouth to welcome her back, and they'd sleep the night at the "Crown and Anchor" and drive home to Manaccan next morning.

"Not taken well?" cried the Parson. "Oh, my poor Mary—my poor, dear Mary!"

"'Tisn' so bad as all that," says Jim, as soothing as he could; but he thought it best to tell nothing about the rumpus.

"If 'tis on the wings of an eagle, I must fly to her!" cries the Parson, and he hurried indoors and called out for a chaise and pair.

He had some trouble in persuading a post-boy to turn out at such an hour, but before midnight the poor man was launched and rattling away eastward, chafing at the hills and singing out that he'd pay for speed, whatever it cost. And at Grampound in the grey of the morning he almost ran slap into a chaise and pair proceeding westward, and likewise as if its postilion wanted to break his neck.

Parson Polwhele stood up in his vehicle and looked out ahead. The two chaises had narrowly missed doubling each other into a cocked hat; in fact, the boys had pulled up within a dozen yards of smash, and there stood the horses face to face and steaming.

"Why, 'tis my Mary!" cries the Parson, and takes a leap out of the chaise.

"Oh, Richard! Richard!" sobs Mrs. Polwhele. "But you can't possibly come in here, my love," she went on, drying her eyes.

"Why not, my angel?"

"Because of the parcels, dearest. And Heaven only knows what's underneath me at this moment, but it feels like a flat-iron. Besides," says she, like the prudent woman she was, "we've paid for two chaises. But 'twas good of you to come in search of me, and I'll say what I've said a thousand times, that I've the best husband in the world."

The Parson grumbled a bit; but, indeed, the woman was piled about with packages up to the neck. So, very sad-like, he went back to his own chaise—that was now slewed about for Falmouth—and off the procession started at an easy trot, the good man bouncing up in his seat from time to time to blow back a kiss.

But after awhile he shouted to the post-boy to pull up again.

"What's the matter, love?" sings out Mrs. Polwhele, overtaking him and coming to a stand likewise.

"Why, it occurs to me, my angel, that you might get into my chaise, if you're not too tightly wedged."

"There's no saying what will happen when I once begin to move," said Mrs. Polwhele: "but I'll risk it. For I don't mind telling you that one of my legs went to sleep somewhere near St. Austell, and 'tis dreadfully uncomfortable."

So out she was fetched and climbed in beside her husband.

"But what was it that upset you?" he asked, as they started again.

Mrs. Polwhele laid her cheek to his shoulder and sobbed aloud; and so by degrees let out her story.

"But, my love, the thing's impossible!" cried Parson Polwhele. "There's no Frenchman in Cornwall at this moment, unless maybe 'tis the Guernsey merchant or some poor wretch of a prisoner escaped from the hulks in the Hamoaze."

"Then, that's what these men were, you may be sure," said Mrs. Polwhele.

"Tut-tut-tut! You've just told me that they came across the ferry, like any ordinary passengers."

"Did I? Then I told more than I know; for I never saw them cross."

"A couple of escaped prisoners wouldn't travel by coach in broad daylight, and talk French in everyone's hearing."

"We live in the midst of mysteries," said Mrs. Polwhele. "There's my parcels, now—I packed 'em in the Highflyer most careful, and I'm sure Jim the Guard would be equally careful in handing them out—you know the sort of man he is: and yet I find a good dozen of them plastered in mud, and my new Moldavia cap, that I gave twenty-three shillings for only last Tuesday, pounded to a jelly, quite as if someone had flung it on the road and danced on it!"

The poor soul burst out into fresh tears, and there against her husband's shoulder cried herself fairly asleep, being tired out with travelling all night. By and by the Parson, that wanted a nap just as badly, dozed off beside her: and in this fashion they were brought back through Falmouth streets and into the yard of the "Crown and Anchor," where Mrs. Polwhele woke up with a scream, crying out: "Prisoners or no prisoners, those men were up to no good: and I'll say it if I live to be a hundred!"

That same afternoon they transhipped the parcels into a cart, and drove ahead themselves in a light gig, and so came down, a little before sunset, to the "Passage Inn" yonder. There, of course, they had to unload again and wait for the ferry to bring them across to their own parish. It surprised the Parson a bit to find the ferry-boat lying ready by the shore and my grandfather standing there head to head with old Arch'laus Spry, that was constable of Mawnan parish.

"Hallo, Calvin!" the Parson sings out. "This looks bad—Mawnan and Manaccan putting their heads together. I hope there's nothing gone wrong since I've been away?"

"Aw, Parson dear," says my grandfather, "I'm glad you've come—yea, glad sure 'nuff. We've a-been enjoying a terrible time!"

"Then something has gone wrong?" says the Parson.

"As for that," my grandfather answers, "I only wish I could say yes or no: for 'twould be a relief even to know the worst." He beckoned very mysterious-like and led the Parson a couple of hundred yards up the foreshore, with Arch'laus Spry following. And there they came to a halt, all three, before a rock that someone had been daubing with whitewash. On the top of the cliff, right above, was planted a stick with a little white flag.

"Now, Sir, as a Justice of the Peace, what d'ee think of it?"

Parson Polwhele stared from the rock to the stick and couldn't say. So he turns to Arch'laus Spry and asks: "Any person taken ill in your parish?"

"No, Sir."

"You're sure Billy Johns hasn't been drinking again?" Billy Johns was the landlord of the "Passage Inn," a very ordinary man by rule, but given to breaking loose among his own liquors. "He seemed all right yesterday when I hired the trap off him; but he does the most unaccountable things when he's taken bad."

"He never did anything so far out of nature as this here; and I can mind him in six outbreaks," answered my grandfather. "Besides, 'tis not Billy Johns nor anyone like him."

"Then you know who did it?"

"I do and I don't, Sir. But take a look round, if you please."

The Parson looked up and down and across the river; and, sure, enough, whichever way he turned, his eyes fell on splashes of whitewash and little flags fluttering. They seemed to stretch right away from Porthnavas down to the river's mouth; and though he couldn't see it from where he stood, even Mawnan church-tower had been given a lick of the brush.

"But," said the Parson, fairly puzzled, "all this can only have happened in broad daylight, and you must have caught the fellow at it, whoever he is."

"I wouldn't go so far as to say I caught him," answered my grandfather, modest-like; "but I came upon him a little above Bosahan in the act of setting up one of his flags, and I asked him, in the King's name, what he meant by it."

"And what did he answer?"

My grandfather looked over his shoulder. "I couldn't, Sir, not for a pocketful of crowns, and your good lady, so to speak, within hearing."

"Nonsense, man! She's not within a hundred yards."

"Well, then, Sir, he up and hoped the devil would fly away with me, and from that he went on to say—" But here my grandfather came to a dead halt. "No, Sir, I can't; and as a Minister of the Gospel, you'll never insist on it. He made such horrible statements that I had to go straight home and read over my old mother's marriage lines. It fairly dazed me to hear him talk so confident, and she in her grave, poor soul!"

"You ought to have demanded his name."

"I did, Sir; naturally I did. And he told me to go to the naughty place for it."

"Well, but what like is he?"

"Oh, as to that, Sir, a man of ordinary shape, like yourself, in a plain blue coat and a wig shorter than ordinary; nothing about him to prepare you for the language he lets fly."

"And," put in Arch'laus Spry, "he's taken lodgings down to Durgan with the Widow Polkinghorne, and eaten his dinner—a fowl and a jug of cider with it. After dinner he hired Robin's boat and went for a row. I thought it my duty, as he was pushing off, to sidle up in a friendly way. I said to him, 'The weather, Sir, looks nice and settled': that is what I said, neither more nor less, but using those very words. What d'ee think he answered? He said, 'That's capital, my man: now go along and annoy somebody else.' Wasn't that a disconnected way of talking? If you ask my opinion, putting two and two together, I say he's most likely some poor wandering loonatic."

The evening was dusking down by this time, and Parson Polwhele, though a good bit puzzled, called to mind that his wife would be getting anxious to cross the ferry and reach home before dark: so he determined that nothing could be done before morning, when he promised Arch'laus Spry to look into the matter. My grandfather he took across in the boat with him, to look after the parcels and help them up to the Vicarage: and on the way they talked about a grave that my grandfather had been digging—he being sexton and parish clerk, as well as constable and the Parson's right-hand man, as you might call it, in all public matters.

While they discoursed, Mrs. Polwhele was taking a look about her to make sure the country hadn't altered while she was away at Plymouth. And by and by she cries out:

"Why, my love, whatever are these dabs o' white stuck up and down the foreshore?"

The Parson takes a look at my grandfather before answering: "My angel, to tell you the truth, that's more than we know."

"Richard, you're concealing something from me," said Mrs. Polwhele. "If the French have landed and I'm going home to be burnt in my bed, it shall be with my eyes open."

"My dear Mary," the Parson argued, "you've a-got the French on your brain. If the French landed they wouldn't begin by sticking dabs of whitewash all over the parish; now, would they?"

"How in the world should I know what a lot of Papists would do or not do?" she answered. "'Tis no more foolish to my mind than eating frogs or kissing a man's toe."

Well, say what the Parson would, the notion had fixed itself in the poor lady's head. Three times that night she woke in the bed with her curl-papers crackling for very fright; and the fourth time 'twas at the sound of a real dido below stairs. Some person was down by the back door knocking and rattling upon it with all his might.

The sun had been up for maybe an hour—the time of year, as I told you, being near about mid-summer—and the Parson, that never wanted for pluck, jumped out and into his breeches in a twinkling, while his wife pulled the counterpane over her head. Down along the passage he skipped to a little window opening over the back porch.

"Who's there!" he called, and out from the porch stepped my grandfather, that had risen early and gone to the churchyard to finish digging the grave before breakfast. "Why, what on the earth is wrong with ye? I made sure the French had landed, at the least."

"Couldn't be much worse if they had," said my grandfather. "Some person 've a-stole my shovel, pick, and biddicks."

"Nonsense!" said the Parson.

"The corpse won't find it nonsense, Sir, if I don't get 'em back in time. I left 'em lying, all three, at the bottom of the grave overnight."

"And now they're missing?"

"Not a trace of 'em to be seen."

"Someone has been playing you a practical joke, Calvin. Here, stop a moment—" The Parson ran back to his room, fetched a key, and flung it out into the yard. "That'll unlock the tool-shed in the garden. Get what you want, and we'll talk about the theft after breakfast. How soon will the grave be ready?"

"I can't say sooner than ten o'clock after what has happened."

"Say ten o'clock, then. This is Saturday, and I've my sermon to prepare after breakfast. At ten o'clock I'll join you in the churchyard."