



Produced by Charles Bowen from page scans provided by the
Web Archive (University of Alberta)










Transcriber's Notes:
   1. Page scan source the Web Archive:
      https://archive.org/details/cihm_75374
      (University of Alberta)






THE
COIL OF CARNE


BY
JOHN OXENHAM
AUTHOR OF "THE LONG ROAD"




TORONTO
THE COPP, CLARK CO. LIMITED
1911






TO

RODERIC DUNKERLEY, B.A., B.D.




"_And what are you eager for, Mr. Eager?_"

"_Men, women, and children--bodies and souls_."
     _Intra, page_ 53.

"_By God's help we will make men of them, the rest we must trust to
Providence_."
     _Intra, page_ 66.

"_Catch them young!_"
     _Intra, page_ 67.

"_No man is past mending till he's dead, perhaps not then_."
     _Intra, page_ 82.






CONTENTS


               BOOK I

CHAP.

          I. THE HOUSE OF CARNE

         II. THE STAR IN THE DUST

        III. THE FIRST OF THE COIL

         IV. THE COIL COMPLETE

          V. IN THE COIL


               BOOK II

         VI. FREEMEN OF THE FLATS

        VII. EAGER HEART

       VIII. SIR DENZIL'S VIEWS

         IX. MORE OF SIR DENZIL'S VIEWS

          X. GROWING FREEMEN

         XI. THE LITTLE LADY

        XII. MANY MEANS

       XIII. MOUNTING

        XIV. WIDENING WAYS

         XV. DIVERGING LINES

        XVI. A CUT AT THE COIL

       XVII. ALMOST SOLVED

      XVIII. ALMOST SOLVED AGAIN

        XIX. WHERE'S JIM?

         XX. A NARROW SQUEAK

        XXI. A WARM WELCOME

       XXII. WHERE'S JACK?


               BOOK III

      XXIII. BREAKING IN

       XXIV. AN UNEXPECTED GUEST

        XXV. REVELATION AND SPECULATION

       XXVI. JIM'S TIGHT PLACE

      XXVII. TWO TO ONE

     XXVIII. THE LINE OF CLEAVAGE

       XXIX. GRACIE'S DILEMMA

        XXX. NEVER THE SAME AGAIN

       XXXI. DESERET

      XXXII. THE LADY WITH THE FAN

     XXXIII. A STIRRING OF MUD

      XXXIV. THE BOYS IN THE MUD

       XXXV. EXPLANATIONS

      XXXVI. JIM'S WAY

     XXXVII. A HOPELESS QUEST

    XXXVIII. LORD DESERET HELPS

      XXXIX. OLD SETH GOES HOME

         XL. OUT OF THE NIGHT

        XLI. HORSE AND FOOT

       XLII. DUE EAST

      XLIII. JIM TO THE FORE

       XLIV. JIM'S LUCK

        XLV. MORE REVELATIONS

       XLVI. THE BLACK LANDING

      XLVII. ALMA

     XLVIII. JIM'S RIDE

       XLIX. AMONG THE BULL-PUPS

          L. RED-TAPE

         LI. THE VALLEY OF DEATH

        LII. PATCHING UP

       LIII. THE FIGHT IN THE FOG

        LIV. AN ALLY OF PROVIDENCE

         LV. RETRIBUTION

        LVI. DULL DAYS

       LVII. HOT OVENS

      LVIII. CHILL NEWS

        LIX. TOUCH AND GO FOR THE COIL

         LX. INSIDE THE FIERY RING

        LXI. WEARY WAITING

       LXII. FROM ONE TO MANY

      LXIII. EAGER ON THE SCENT

       LXIV. THE LONG SLOW SIEGE

        LXV. THE CUTTING OF THE COIL

       LXVI. PURGATORY

      LXVII. THE BEGINNING OF THE END

     LXVIII. HOME AGAIN

       LXIX. "THE RIGHT ONE"

        LXX. ALL'S WELL






THE COIL OF CARNE





BOOK I




CHAPTER I
THE HOUSE OF CARNE


If by any chance you should ever sail on a low ebb-tide along a
certain western coast, you will, if you are of a receptive humour and
new to the district, receive a somewhat startling impression of the
dignity of the absolutely flat.

Your ideas of militant and resistant grandeur may have been associated
hitherto with the iron frontlets and crashing thunders of Finisterre
or Sark, of Cornwall or the Western Isle. Here you are faced with a
repressive curbing of the waters, equal in every respect to theirs,
but so quietly displayed as to be somewhat awesome, as mighty power in
restraint must always be.

As far as eye can reach--sand, nothing but sand, overpowering by
reason of its immensity, a very Sahara of the coast. Mighty levels
stretching landward and seaward--for you are only threading a
capricious channel among the banks which the equinoctials will twist
at their pleasure, and away to the west the great grim sea lies
growling in his sandy chains until his time comes. Then, indeed, he
will swell and boil and seethe in his channels till he is full ready,
and come creeping silently over his barriers, and then--up and away
over the flats with the speed of a racehorse, and death to the unwary.
You may see the humping back of him among the outer banks if you climb
a few feet up your mast. Then, if you turn towards the land, you will
see, far away across the brown ribbed flats, a long rim of yellow sand
backed by bewildering ranges of low white hummocks, and farther away
still a filmy blue line of distant hills.

Here and there a fisherman's cottage accentuates the loneliness of it
all. At one point, as the sun dips in the west, a blaze of light
flashes out as though a hidden battery had suddenly unmasked itself;
and if you ask your skipper what it is, he will tell you that is
Carne. Then, if he is a wise man, he will upsail and away, to make
Wytham or Wynsloe before it is dark, for the shifting banks off Carne
are as hungry as Death, and as tricky as the devil.

For over three hundred years the grim gray house of Carne has stood
there and watched the surface of all things round about it change with
the seasons and the years and yet remain in all essential things the
same. When the wild equinoctials swept the flats till they hummed like
a harp, the sand-hills stirred and changed their aspects as though the
sleeping giants below turned uneasily in their beds. For, under the
whip of the wind, grain by grain the sand-hills creep hither and
thither and accommodate themselves to circumstances in strange and
ghostly fashions. So that, after the fury of the night, the peace of
the morning looked in vain for the landmarks of the previous day.

And the cold seabanks out beyond were twisted and tortured this way
and that by the winds and waves, and within them lay many an honest
seaman, and some maybe who might have found it difficult to prove
their right to so honourable a title. But the banks were always there,
silent and deadly even when they shimmered in the sunshine.

And generations of Carrons had held Carne, and had even occupied it at
times, and had passed away and given place to others. But Carne was
always there, grim and gray, and mostly silent.

The outward aspects of things might change, indeed, but at bottom they
remained very much the same, and human nature changed as little as the
rest, though its outward aspects varied with the times. What strange
twist of brain or heart set its owner to the building of Carne has
puzzled many a wayfarer coming upon it in its wide sandy solitudes for
the first time. And the answer to that question answers several
others, and accounts for much.

It was Denzil Carron who built the house in the year Queen Mary died.
He was of the old faith, a Romanist of the Romanists, narrow in his
creed, fanatical in his exercise of it, at once hot- and cold-blooded
in pursuit of his aims. When Elizabeth came to the throne he looked to
be done by as he had done, and had very reasonable doubts as to the
quality of the mercy which might be strained towards him. So he
quietly withdrew from London, sold his houses and lands in other
counties, and sought out the remotest and quietest spot he could find
in the most Romanist county in England. And there he built the great
house of Carne, as a quiet harbourage for himself and such victims of
the coming persecutions as might need his assistance.

But no retributive hand was stretched after him. He was Englishman
first and Romanist afterwards. Calais, and the other national
crumblings and disasters of Mary's short reign, had been bitter pills
to him, and he hated a Spaniard like the devil. He saw a brighter
outlook for his country, though possibly a darker one for his Church,
in Elizabeth's firm grip than any her opponents could offer. So he
shut his face stonily against the intriguers, who came from time to
time and endeavoured to wile him into schemes for the subversion of
the Crown and the advancement of the true Church, and would have none
of them. And so he was left in peace and quietness by the powers that
were, and found himself free to indulge to the full in those religious
exercises on the strict observance of which his future state depended.

His wife died before the migration, leaving him one son, Denzil, to
bring up according to his own ideas. And a dismal time the lad had of
it. Surrounded by black jowls and gloomy-faced priests, tied hand and
foot by ordinances which his growing spirit loathed, all the
brightness and joy of life crushed out by the weight of a religion
which had neither time nor place for such things, he lived a narrow
monastic life till his father died. Then, being of age, and able at
last to speak for himself, he quietly informed his quondam governors
that he had had enough of religion to satisfy all reasonable
requirements of this life and the next, and that now he intended to
enjoy himself. Carne he would maintain as his father had maintained
it, for the benefit of those whom his father had loved, or at all
events had materially cared for. And so, good-bye, Black-Jowls! and Ho
for Life and the joy of it!

He went up to London, bought an estate in Kent, ruffled it with the
best of them, married and had sons and daughters, kept his head out of
all political nooses, fought the Spaniards under Admiral John Hawkins
and Francis Drake, and died wholesomely in his bed in his house in
Kent, a very different man from what Carne would have made him.

And that is how the grim gray house of Carne came to be planted in the
wilderness.

Now and again, in the years that followed, the Carron of the day, if
he fell on dolorous times through extravagance of living--as
happened--or suffered sudden access of religious fervour--as also
happened, though less frequently--would take himself to Carne and
there mortify flesh and spirit till things, financial and spiritual,
came round again, either for himself or the next on the rota. And so
some kind of connection was always maintained between Carne and its
owners, though years might pass without their coming face to face.

The Master of Carne in the year 1833 was that Denzil Carron who came
to notoriety in more ways than one during the Regency. His father had
been of the quieter strain, with a miserly twist in him which
commended the wide, sweet solitude and simple, inexpensive life of
Carne as exactly suited to his close humour. He could feel rich there
on very little; and after the death of his wife, who brought him a
very ample fortune, he devoted himself to the education of his boy and
the enjoyment, by accumulation, of his wealth. But a short annual
visit to London on business affairs afforded the boy a glimpse of what
he was missing, and his father's body was not twelve hours underground
before he had shaken off the sands of Carne and was posting to London
in a yellow chariot with four horses and two very elevated post-