CHAPTER I

THE TAPPING AT THE WINDOW

Looking right back to the days of my childhood, the first beginnings of things are blurred and confused, but I must disentangle them as well as I may if I am to tell my story clearly and coherently. I know now that the story began long before I was born, but I must pick up the thread of it where it first crossed my path. And even that is difficult enough. For before I was conscious to the point of memory I was already enmeshed in a net of mystery woven long since of dark and incredible things. But to me they didn't seem dark and incredible, for they were with me before I could reason and distinguish, nor had my experience any touchstone by which to test or measure them.

I think perhaps I first began to take conscious stock of my surroundings on a certain night of wind and rain. For earlier events were with me but as shapeless shadows of memory, but from this night my life began to unfold before me like a clearly written book. I had been nursed in the atmosphere of mystery, though at this time, of course, such a term would have had no meaning for me, for nothing is strange to the inexperienced. But vaguely I was becoming accustomed to a life of sudden change and hiding and swift flight. My eyes were opening with growing consciousness to a world of passing lights and shadows, with nothing definite or stationary, but all in wavering motion. The one binding and constant element, the thread as it were which gave single consistency to the whole, was the presence of my father, whose laughter and gaiety, whose thrilling stories of pirates and smugglers and treasure-trove, acted rather than narrated with a dramatic realism that left them scored in burning pictures on my imagination, and whose strong and tender companionship to a child of five or six, set him central like the sun in my little world now growing out of chaos to some semblance of form and individuality.

Why this night above all nights should live in my memory as the first clear picture there, is perhaps due to the keener suffering I was called upon to endure, or perhaps to the fact that the shadowy pursuer who kept ever on the road became this night not merely a name and a fear but a creature of flesh and blood.

The flight in the morning I don't remember distinctly, for that was much as others had been. My father had been playing with me at hide-and-seek, our favourite pastime, and one always full of thrill and strange romance, when he had crept up to me where I lay hidden, and putting his finger to his lips muttered, "Whist!"--glancing slowly round with infinite caution. All this I surmise, for it had happened so before, and I knew the procedure well. It meant that the mysterious enemy was on our trail again, and we must be away on the path without delay.

"Is it Shadow-of-Fear?" I said, creeping close to my father so as to whisper in his ear.

He nodded slowly, and looking very serious took me by the hand, and together we crawled away. It didn't seem in the least fantastic to me, for it had happened often before. It was indeed part of our game, for our hide-and-seek was no garden affair; we needed the whole of England for our playground. So once more we set out on our travels; and I didn't question how it was that everything was ready and in order, our cloaks being hidden in a bush near by, and my father's knapsack packed for the journey.

But on this occasion there was a difference, and it was probably this difference that stamped the affair on my mind. For usually we managed to cover our tracks after a day or two, but this time our pursuer seemed unusually tenacious of the scent, and for days we fled, doubling upon our path, plunging into woods, emerging at high roads where we obtained a lift on a passing cart or waggon, hiding for a day in a remote hamlet, burrowing through the twisting streets of a city, till at last it seemed to me that my whole life had been one long wandering, and I began to grow tired. It needed all my father's fun and exhaustless imagination to keep my heart tuned to the wearying adventure.

On the night I speak of I remember I was crying with fatigue and cold and hunger, dragging at my father's hand as he plodded me remorselessly onward down a drenched and dripping woodland path. His buoyant laugh, usually so exhilarating, failed to shake my drooping spirits into cheerfulness, for indeed I was bitterly miserable. My feet were numbed to solid lumps of aching cold, and the wet twigs that wisped across my face hurt cruelly. Even the hand that my father held was bitter with a throbbing half-consciousness of animation, and the other hung nerveless at my side. So I whimpered and toddled on. But I remember feeling no unkindness towards my father. Not for a moment did my heart cry blame on him; for babe as I was he had successfully impressed me with the sense of strange pursuit that ever hung upon our flight. It was something entirely beyond his power, something big like fate or death. Tired and miserable, I knew I must on, for behind us there were creatures of the dark scenting stealthily upon our track. I heard their sniffing through the pauses of the wind, and more terrible still their laughter, cackling brutally in our wake. This made me quicken my pace, though it was pain to do so, and clutch my father's hand more tightly in both my own.

"Shadow-of-Fear?" I would say.

"Yes, Tommy, yes," he would answer. "But he's lost the trail this time."

Shadow-of-Fear was the name my father had given to our secret and inexorable enemy.

I stumbled on as well as I could through the black wood and the drenching rain, and then I must have slipped, for I found myself swinging from my father's supporting arm. He tried to set me on my feet again, but I felt faint, and the little strength had quite ebbed from my limbs; and my father with boisterous tenderness stooped and lifted me on to his back, and with a "Courage, Tommy!" strode on with redoubled speed. I hung my dripping arms down his shoulders, taking care not to press them against his throat and hinder his breathing, for I had had experience in this kind of travel. And I laid my streaming cheek upon his head, and felt the jogging motion of his walk lull me to a disturbed kind of half sleep, full of waking visions and drowsy dreams, where great blazing fires and the smell of sizzling and delicious foods mingled with alarms and pattering feet and gripping hands thrust suddenly out of the dark.

At last I must have yielded to my fatigue and slept soundly, while the rain beat unheeded upon my face, for I woke to a real fire that fumed up smokily with sputtering crackles and fitful flames, bright enough to show that all around was dark. I couldn't see my father, but I heard him moving behind me, and a sudden light told me that he had lit our travelling lantern, for yellow swinging beams played round our shelter as he hung the lantern from the roof.

I looked about me sleepily. Evidently we were in some sort of hut, though where in the whole of England I hadn't the faintest notion. Outside the wind and rain were still at their old struggle, slashing and crying through the trees in great rushing gusts that grew out of nowhere and raced away again. My father seeing me move threw himself down beside me, and stripping off my sodden clothes began to arrange them round the fire. From his knapsack he pulled out a rug which he had managed to keep reasonably dry through the drenching tempest, and wrapped my naked body in its comforting folds, and the touch of its dry softness was bliss unspeakable after the soaking discomfort of the rain. I smiled up into his face with all my love, and for reward felt his arms about me, and his wet cheek pressed to mine, while he murmured, "That's my brave little boy!" So wonderful was my father that words like these were magical, and my ebbing courage flowed again. Then he took my hands between his own and chafed them vigorously back to life, and I don't think I cried at the exquisite pain as the blood flushed slowly back to my white finger-tips. And all the time he was talking in his rapid and thrilling way, making a story of the adventure we had passed through, and telling how we had baffled our pursuer at last.

I was too weary to pay much heed to his rattling talk. I know that the fire as it blazed up more strongly and brightly, triumphing over the soaked twigs and branches which my father had scrambled together, thawed my limbs deliciously. And soon I was in a glow of steamy warmth, and nodded sleepily, while my father, still chatting in his restless way, prepared some soup. The hot savoury stuff was the last touch necessary to complete comfort, and forgetting with the ease of childhood the dreary tramp through the storm I gave myself up unresistingly to the luxury of sleep. But my sleep wasn't completely unbroken. It seemed to surge over me like great waves, and whenever I floated up to the surface I became aware of my father's voice still droning out the story of our flight. He must have been talking to prevent himself from sleeping, for once I seem to remember hearing him muttering, "I must keep awake, I must keep awake," and sometimes when I awoke from my doze he was pacing the hut, or turning the clothes before the fire.

I had one longer spell of wakefulness while it was still dark. The wind had dropped, and my father had ceased to prattle. The complete silence, together with the cutting pressure of cold air against my cheek, had probably aroused me more alertly than usual, for of a sudden I felt wide-awake. I looked round for my father, but he wasn't in the hut. The lantern was no longer alight, and the fire was smouldering low. The door stood open, and the utter blackness of the woodland seemed banked up against it like a barricade. For a moment the fear of loneliness was upon me, and I would have cried out, but just then my father returned with a bundle of faggots, which he tossed on to the failing fire. There was a smother of smoke and steam and a loud hissing, before the red flames broke through again.

"What! Awake, Tommy?" said my father, seeing me rub my eyes, which were smarting from the fumes.

"Awake, daddy," I said, blinking up at him with a smile.

He shut the door, and carefully secured it with a stout piece of timber. I noticed too that he had hung his cloak, now dry, over the little solitary pane of glass which was all the hut possessed in the way of a window.

"Time to dress, Tommy," he said, helping me pull on my stockings, which were almost toasted by the fire and felt comfortingly warm. I reached for my shirt and breeches, and slowly drew them on, my eyes half shut, for I would willingly have lain down again for a further spell of sleep. I pushed my arms into my jacket, and looking round for my cloak saw it hanging on the wall opposite the door. I was rising to get it when my father said, "Ah, not that just yet. We won't start till morning, but best be ready." He added, "There's a big hole there, Tommy. Keeping out the wind; the cold wind, Tommy, with the sharp white teeth. It's there behind your cloak, all ready to bite."

He snapped his teeth and shuddered, while I threw my head on his arm as he sat beside me, and chuckled delightedly. For it was always in this way that he spoke of the simplest things; never to frighten, but to give just that touch of dramatic and imaginative charm which childhood thirsts for. And it was this magic spell which he cast over our life of hard wanderings and sudden flights that changed a bitter reality into a wonderful game.

He was off again with some story or other, and though I tried to keep awake so as not to miss the precious recital, yet sleep was still heavy in my eyes, and my head nodded. I must have been tired indeed, for my father could tell a story with such thrill and vigour, his expression changing with every phase and mood, that the thing became a living picture. At least it was so to me, and bed had no attraction while I was away with my father seeking treasure on far-away seas. But this night I missed the better part of the story. I only heard a word here and there. I remember there was a cave, and a conspiracy, and a terrible crime, but how the story went I couldn't follow. And then in a more wakeful moment I heard my father saying, "This is how he looked at me." I blinked a sleepy eye up at him, and suddenly started into complete consciousness, for used as I was to his extraordinary facial contortions when dramatizing his incidents, I had never seen him wear such a look of frightfulness as he wore now. His hair was standing up stupidly, with one lank lock pulled slantwise across his forehead, almost hiding one eye. His lips, usually so full of laughter, had slipped to a loose and slobbering imbecility. His cheeks were drawn in haggard lines, pulling down the flesh beneath his eyes, which contrasted raw and red with the staring whites. The whole expression was one of blank idiocy, except for a tell-tale glitter of devilish cunning which lurked in the corners of his upturned eyes.

I stared at him in horror. In all his many disguises I had seen him in nothing that had suggested that his face could be distorted to such a hideous caricature of itself. And yet it was hardly a caricature, for it was all but unrecognizable. I believe that no other eyes but mine could have penetrated that mask. It was only his even voice repeating, "This is how he looked at me," that reassured me somewhat.

"But who?" I asked, clutching him.

"Who? The Mad Captain. I was telling you, Tommy."

"Yes, yes," I said eagerly, hoping to pick up the thread of the story as he continued.

My father's face gradually righted itself as he proceeded:

"You see, Tommy, he had left them alone there to die; and that was a terrible thing." His voice was hushed and tense in a way I can't describe, but which held me in a spell of expectation. "And he knew they could never get away. And they had no food, and they would starve. And that's a horrible slow death, Tommy. And if they cried out, no one would hear them. Their voices would be like whispers from the stars."

"Ah," I said, "the treasure," trying to link on to the lost fragment without my father's needing to repeat it, for I knew he hated to return upon his narrative when once well under way. I can see now how necessary it was for him to live in his incident, and repetition spoilt his dramatic flow.

So there we sat together, gazing into the red flames, with the night outside very hushed and secret, far away from the world, with somewhere behind us our baffled pursuer scenting along a false track, and my father in his tense and vivid voice telling an old story of crime and madness and remorse.

"Yes, treasure, Tommy," he answered me. "They were there with the gold and the rubies and the diamonds, trapped in the cave, with twenty tons of rock at its mouth, and with nothing to eat, and hunger gnawing like wolves inside them, and no one to hear them crying day after day; and their voices growing weaker and dryer, just like croaking birds, Tommy, till one by one they dropped down to die. It must have been terrible all alone there, Tommy. Can't you see them, with bruised torn hands, beating at the rock, tugging and beating? And the gold lying quiet there, how it must have said to them, 'Fools! Fools! Fools!' And the last man, Tommy, when the rest were all dead! I think he must have gone mad. Can you see him, groping from body to body, and crying pitifully because they wouldn't move or speak to him; all lying so sad and still and saying not a word? And how he must have sprung away from them and hammered at that rock, and fallen down faint and beaten, and wrung his battered hands, laughing like a madman, pulling at his hair. The last man, all alone, with the treasure and the secret and the dead men; till he grew thin and faint and tired, and lay down with the rest."

"And the Mad Captain?" I asked, thirsting for details.

"Ah, he!"--and my father's face, which had softened, became rightful again, till for very face I crept closer to him, and gripped him convulsively. He went on in his hushed, tense voice: "It was like this he looked at me when he told me the story. For you see, Tommy, he could hear the voices calling to him; and if he shut his ears against them, there were terrible curses screaming inside his head, for he knew he had left them there to die. And in the night he saw them there, growing thinner and whiter and all wasted with hunger. And he counted the days, and said, 'Now they must be dead!' But still he heard them crying to him; most terrible and piteous it was. And he knew they were dead and were following him, and he couldn't hide from them anywhere. And sometimes they screamed at him, and sometimes they laughed; a hollow wicked laughter, he told me, and wondered I couldn't hear it. And then he knew he could never rest again, but must up and away day after day and night after night, with the dead men chasing him and crying to him and mocking his madness. And so he was whipped on from place to place, never resting. For the terrible voices broke into his sleep like a cry of hounds, and the dead faces peered horribly at him through the dark, and the room was always full of moaning and knocking and a shuffling of feet."

If I felt frightened at this strange recital in the gloom of our wayside hut, lit fitfully as it was by the red leaping flames of the fire, which threw distorted shadows on the walls which a boy's imagination might work into terrible fantasies--if I felt frightened it was with a pleasing fear; for I delighted to feel the stirring of unseen things about me, when safe in the comforting security of my father's presence. I remember glancing cautiously around me into the shadowy corners, half hoping to see some white and horrible face gazing out at me; and I strained my ears to catch some echo of the cryings and moanings which my father had been speaking of. The wind had quite dropped, and the night was perfectly still, with a sort of waiting uneasy stillness; and I thought I could hear a movement in the darkness outside. But my father was continuing: "And when he lit his lamp the blackness through the window was full of beckoning hands, and when he blew the lamp out for very fear the room was alive with creeping feet. And sometimes he felt cold fingers on his neck, and sometimes breath in his hair, and sometimes...."

At this moment there was a tapping at the window.

My father looked round sharply, and the words died on his lips. He clutched my arm with a hard grip, and I knew my part was to be perfectly still. And then suddenly he let out a bitter cry, and under cover of it had pushed me behind my cloak and through the hole in the wall. The cloak followed, and he hung his own coat in its place; and a moment later the knapsack was bundled after me. I crouched motionless in the cold, with my cloak pulled about my shoulders; and still my father was crooning in a kind of unearthly sob, broken now and again by short little dry chucklings. I summoned courage to widen with my fingers a slit in his coat through which I could peep into the hut. I caught one glimpse of my father's face in the firelight; again it was drawn with haggard madness, but I thought the cunning in the eye was sharper than before. He was sitting in front of the fire with his knees huddled up to his chin, peering slantwise behind him towards the door. I looked towards the door; the barrier was down.

Again there was a tapping at the window. The sound came to me from the outside. And then I heard a low wail, "For the mercy of heaven, let me in, let me in." My father moaned in reply, hugging himself convulsively, and finishing on a shriek that broke into a hideous laughter.

All this was a new game on me, and curiosity rather than fear was the uppermost feeling in my mind. Indeed, the most frightening thing was the stillness of the woodland behind me. It seemed as though a great hand had the world in its grip, and a loosening of the fingers would set the air into sudden and startling motion.

I heard a shuffling at the other side of the hut, and the wall shook as though a body had fallen against it. I looked through the slit in the coat; the door was slowly opening.