The COURAGEOUS EXPLOITS OF DOCTOR SYN - Thorndike Russell - Страница 36

curse loudly. At the same time one of the sailors standing by seized a tankard and half filling it with the precious

stream took a gulp, and cried out, “Best Hollands, sweet and strong.”

“Don’t waste a drop, men,” ordered the Bos’n, “for we’ll need it for proof and tasting in the Court.”

As soon as the Captain was sufficiently recovered to take up the command, he ordered his men to rig an old sail

that they had been mending across a corner of the barn, and behind it the old woman was ordered to remove the

other bladder of Hollands, and to push it intact under this temporary curtain.

The Bos’n whispered to the Captain that she would most likely attempt to empty it.

“Oh no, I won’t,” replied Katie proudly, who had overheard. I ain’t one to squeal. I’m caught, and I may as well

be hung for the death of a parcel of miserable sailors as for a couple of sheepskins.”

“What do you mean by that?” demanded the Captain.

“Just this, you wretched fellow,” answered Katie in triumph. “You have been here a good while, you and your

sweepings from Chatham, and yet you ain’t done nothing till now. And what have you done? As far as you know,

arrested a poor old harmless woman for making an honest penny or two by retailing Hollands to poor folk what

can’t afford to buy it in duty tax in order to provide for the bloody-minded members of the dirty House of

Commons. Mind you I says nothing against His Blessed Majesty, King George, God bless him. I only rails against

them Commons, supposed to be elected by us, but who never stands by us. A lot of jumped-up puppets what orders

your precious Navy and Army about I’ll surprise you by handing over the undamaged sheepshskins full of good

liquor you have stolen form the poor I gives it to, just to prove in Court that I gave ‘em of the best. But I’ll surprise

you a good deal more in a minute or so, and that I will, but you first get paper and ink and pen so that you can write

down what I says in evidence, and if it don’t show you all up as a parcel of fools, well I’ve not been called ‘Old

Katie’ all these years.”

True to her word the full bladder was pushed under the screen of sail-cloth, and a few minutes later ‘Old Katie’

appeared in her tight figure. No semblance of dropsy about her. The only bulk she carried was hard muscle. The

real Katie was hard, slim and virile, and her face, though still colored like a russet apple, was set in the grimmest

expression. But her bright eyes still laughed as she walked proudly towards the Captain.

The Bos’n instinctively drew his cutlass and stood guard beside his chief. This seemed to amuse ‘Old Katie,’

“You’ve caught me red-handed with the goods on me, Captain,” she laughed, “and for that I am willing to take

consequence. But I am about to give you the surprise of your life. However, Mister Captain Boils and Blains, as

they say in the ‘Oly Scriptures when talking of them plagues in Egypt, which, if I may say so, you so closely

resembles, there’s a little duty (and I knows how you values duty in the King’s Navy), a very little piece of duty,

what I owes to myself, and as it can’t be you, since I has some sort of respect to an officer of King George, though

only for his uniform, it just happens to be this dropsy-limbed Bos’n of yours whom I despises like this.”

Quick as lighting her left should er swung round. Quick as thunder in a close-reefed storm came up her old

gnarled fist right under the Bos’n’s jaw, and down he went, cutlass and all, unconscious on the wooden floor of the

vicarage barn. “and the blessed Lords of the Level will agree at my trial that I owed him that for his dirty sauce and

followings of me about. And now for the surprise, Captain Boils. Ask me my name. Oh yes, I has a better name

than ‘Old Katie’.”

“Yes, woman, I demand that,” cried the astounded Captain. “If you were ever married I demand your married

name so that I can charge you not only with the offense of smuggling, which can hang you, but with another

grievous offence of striking a servant of the King when in execution of his duty.”

“Well, Captain Boils or Blains or Blain, I’ll tell you,” replied the unruffled Katie. “My real name and the name I

glories in is not Missus So and So, but the name you longs to get. I am the Scarecrow.”

“Nonsense,” ejaculated the Captain.

“It ain’t nonsense,” replied ‘Old Katie.’ “And that you and you sweepings from the dirty dockyards will find to

your cost. You will try me as the Scarecrow, but my followers will rescue me, by popping your corpses one by one

upon the Dymchurch scaffold.”

“And what do you suppose is the good of a lie like that?” he demanded.

“You’re disappointed that I ain’t a man, eh?” jeered the old woman. “But it was I that outrode the Prince of

Wales when he hunted with the Romney foxhounds, and it was I who scored off you and a hundred better men than

you who served the dirty Government. Being an old woman was my salvation. No one suspected me. But you

must own that I’m powerful by the way I tapped out that fat old Bos’n of yours just now. I see the old bladder is

recovering. So you’d best attend to him and then send a messenger to the admiralty that you have succeeded where

so many have failed.”

“I don’t mind who the Scarecrow is so long as I hang him,” cried the Captain. “I’ll put you under guard and do

as you wish. I’ll call for Doctor Syn. You may confess to him, and on that evidence my work here is done. But

what is your legal name?”

“Haven’t one,” replied Katie. “Only what you calls an illegal one. My name is THE SCARECROW.”

And that was all that Captain Blain could get out of ‘Old Katie.’

An hour later she was brought under escort to the Vicarage, and the Vicar of Dymchurch received her full

confession that she was indeed the Scarecrow. She was then placed under Naval guard and locked in the cells of the

Court House, while Sir Antony Cobtree, as First Magistrate of Romney Marsh, ordered her to be held till he could

summon the Lords of the Level for her trial.

Doctor Syn seemed very upset that the Scarecrow should turn out to be one that he had always had some regard

for, and had viewed only as a dear, quaint, queer old character. He was more upset that he had been ordered to

attend the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth, who wished him to bring his wisdom of Ecclesiastical Law to the

meetings of the House of Convocation. So after a long interview with Katie he departed by coach, but promised to

be back to support her at her trial at the Court House, and to do what he could to save her neck.

“I cannot believe she is the Scarecrow,” he declared to Captain Blain before taking his departure.

“She says she is, and as she is a remarkable old woman I take her word for it in thankfulness,” he answered. “I

want to catch the Scarecrow, and I have every reason to think I have. For my own credit I shall not be sorry to see

her condemned.”

Perhaps Doctor Syn’s hurried exodus to London was not understood by all at Dymchurch. Perhaps the silence of

the Scarecrow was misunderstood by his followers. ‘Old Katie’s’ trial was due, and the Vicar, usually the most

sympathetic of parsons, was not at hand to comfort the old soul in her trial. Also it seemed that since the Scarecrow,

whom so many knew to be a virile man beneath his mask, had found another to suffer in his stead, he had taken no

steps to effect her rescue.

And thus it was that for the first time in their history the Nightriders agreed to act without orders from their

chief. In the early hours of the morning before the first day of trial, the Beadle was seized by a party of the