We spread the tidings as far as Exeter, where Mr. Blick made some pretence of handing me over to a schoolmaster, one Hubble, a red-faced, cheery clergyman, one of the most ardent rebels on our side. Indeed, the clergymen everywhere supported us, as defenders of the Protestant faith, which that dastard James would have destroyed. Mr. Hubble made some excuse for not taking me in at the instant; but gave us letters of introduction to people in towns further on, so that we could pass the militia without difficulty, to give the news in western Dorset. So after waiting for a little while in Exeter, gathering all the news we could of the whereabouts of the troops of militia, we pushed on eastward, by way of Sidmouth, to the big town of Dorchester. As we came east, we found the militia very much more suspicious than they had been on the western side of Exeter. At every little town we found a strong guard so placed that no one could enter without passing under the captain's eye. We were brought before militia captains some two or three times a day. Sometimes we were searched; sometimes, if the captain happened to be drunk, we were bullied with threats of the gaol. Mr. Blick in these cases always insisted on being brought before the magistrate, to whom he would tell a fine indignant tale, saying what a shame it was that he could not take his orphan nephew peaceably to school, without being suspected of complicity in a rebellion. He would then show Mr. Hubble's letters, or some other papers signed by the Dartmouth magistrates. These always cleared our characters, so that we were allowed to proceed; but I did not like the way in which our descriptions were taken. Once on our journey, shortly after we had left Sidmouth, where the soldiers had been very suspicious, we turned out of the highway to leave word at a town called Seaton. We spread the watchword at several villages near the sea, before we came to Seaton, so that we were rather late in arriving. Thinking no wrong, we put up at one of the inns in Seaton, intending to pass the night there. We were at supper in our inn, when some yeomanry rode up to the door, to ask the landlord if an elderly man had passed that way with a boy. The landlord, who was a good deal scared by the soldiers, showed the captain in to us at once. We were quite as much scared to see him as the landlord had been. The captain of the soldiers was the very man who had given us such a searching examination in Sidmouth that morning.
“Well,” he said to Mr. Blick, “I thought you were going to Dorchester. What brings you here?” “Sir,” said Mr. Blick, “we've been so much interrupted by soldiers that we hoped to travel away from the main-roads.”
“Well, sir,” said the captain, “I've had you watched. Since you left Sidmouth, you've been into every inn upon the road, listening to a lot of seditious talk about Argyle. That's not my point, though. You gave out to me that you were going to Dorchester. Instead of that you slink off the Dorchester road at the first opportunity. You will have to explain yourself to my superiors. You're under arrest.”
“Sir,” said Mr. Blick, “I am sorry that you should think ill of me. We will gladly come with you to answer for our conduct to the authorities. But while the horses are being saddled, perhaps you will join us at supper. Landlord, bring a couple of bottles more. The captain sups with us.”
But though the captain drank his couple of bottles of port, he did not become any gentler with us. As soon as supper was over we had to ride on again, with the troopers all round us.
“Sir,” said Mr. Blick, “may I ask you where we are going with you?”
“Axminster,” said the captain.
“Well. That's on my way,” said Mr. Blick.
“It'll probably end your way, for some time,” said the captain.
“I'm perfectly willing to abide by the decision of the authorities,” Mr. Blick answered calmly. “But what is the meaning of all these soldiers everywhere? I've asked the people; but nobody seems able to give a straight answer.”
“I think you know what the soldiers mean well enough,” answered the captain. “If you hadn't known you wouldn't have turned out of the highway.”
At about midnight we reached Axminster. We were taken before a couple of officers who sat at work by candlelight over a mass of papers, in an upper chamber of an inn. They had a wild air of having been without sleep for some time. Their muddy riding boots were drying in front of the fire. They had a map of the countryside before them, all stuck about with little flags, some red, some yellow, to show where the different troops of militia were stationed. After saluting these officers, the captain made his report about us, saying that we were suspicious persons, who had started from Sialmouth, towards Dorchester. He had waited to receive word from the troops stationed along the highway of our arrival at various points upon the road; but, failing to hear about us, he had searched for us, with the result that he had found us at Seaton, some miles out of our way. The officers questioned us closely about our plans, making notes of what we said. They kept referring to a book of letters, as though to verify what we said. Mr. Blick's answers made them take a favourable view of us; but they told him in a friendly way that the officer had done right to arrest us. They complimented the captain on his zeal. Meanwhile, they said, since we were going to Dorchester, we could not object to going with a military escort. A troop of cavalry was to start in a couple of hours; we could go with that.
We were in Dorchester for a few days, always under the eye of the soldiers. It was a bustling, suspicious time full of false alarms. Mr. Blick told me that the message “King Golden Cap. After six one,” meant that the Duke was to be expected off Golden Cap, a cliff a few miles from Lyme Regis, any day after the first of the sixth month. He was on tenter-hooks to be in Lyme to greet him on his arrival; but this he could not hope to do. We were watched too carefully to be able to get away to a place upon the sea-coast. We had to be very careful how we sent our secret message abroad into the country. I have never known a time so full of alarms. People would ride in to the town at night with word that Monmouth was landed, or that there was fighting all along the coast, or that King James was dead. The drums would beat; the cavalry would come out clattering. People would be crying out. The loyal would come to their doorsteps ready to fly further inland. Every night, if one lay awake, one could hear the noise of spades in back gardens where misers were burying their money. Then, every day, one would see the troopers coming in, generally two at a time, with a suspected man led by a cord knotted to his two thumbs. Dorchester gaol was full of suspected people, who were kept in prison indefinitely, without trial, in very great discomfort. King James was afraid, he did not really know of what, so he took measures not so much to prevent trouble as to avenge his own fear. Mr. Blick used to send me to the prison every morning with loaves of fresh bread for the prisoners.
At last, after midnight, in the night of the 11th of June, a memorable day for the West, riders came in with news which destroyed the night's rest of the town. Monmouth had landed at Lyme the evening before, after sailing about in sight of the town all day. That was news indeed. It made a strange uproar in the streets. The trumpets blew from every inn-door to summons the billeted soldiers. Officers ran about bawling for their sergeants; the sergeants hurried about with lanterns, rousing the men from where they slept. All the streets were full of cavalry men trying to form in the crowd. At last, when they were formed, a trumpet sounded, making everyone keep silence. Then in the stillness an officer shouted out an order, which no one, save a soldier, could understand. Instantly the kettle-drums began to pound; the swords jingled; the horses whinnied, tossing up their heads. The soldiers trotted off smartly towards Bridport, leaving the town strangely quiet, strangely scared, to discuss the great news from Lyme.
I was watching the crowd at my bed-room window when the horsemen trotted off. While I stood looking at them, Mr. Blick ran upstairs, bidding me to come down at once, as now there was a chance to get to Lyme. “Come quick,” he said. “The troops are gone. We must follow on their tracks. It'll be too late later in the morning.” In less than twenty minutes we were trotting after the soldiers at a good pace, passing some scores of men on foot who were hurrying, as they said, to see the battle. Mr. Blick wore a sword which clattered as he rode. The people hearing the noise thought that he was an officer, perhaps a colonel, riding with his servant. Many of the men asked him where the battle was to be, whether it would begin before daylight, whether Monmouth was come with the French, all sorts of questions, to which we answered at random. In the light summer night we had a fair view of things. When we dismounted to lead our horses up or down the steep hills of that road, the straggling sight-seers came all round us as we walked, to hear what we had to tell. We could see their faces all about us, strange in the dusk, like ghosts, not like real men. At the top of one hill, Mr. Blick warned them to look out for themselves. He told them that before morning the highway would be patrolled by troops who would take them in charge as suspicious characters trying to join Monmouth, which actually happened the next day when the militia officers realized that war had begun. His words scared off a number of them; but many kept on as they were going, to see the great battle, which, they said, would begin as soon as it was light.
When the sun began to peep, we turned off the highway in order to avoid Bridport, which we passed a little after dawn. A few miles further on we felt that we could turn into the road again as we were safe from the militia at that distance. Then, feeling happy at the thought of the coming contest, which, we felt sure, would be won by our side, we pressed our tired nags over the brook towards the steep hill which separates Charmouth from Lyme.
It was early morning, about five o'clock, when we came to Charmouth; but the little town was as busy as though it were noon on fair-day. The street was crowded. People were coming in from all the countryside. A man was haranguing the crowd from a horseless waggon drawn up at an inn. The horses had no doubt been pressed into Monmouth's service some hours before. I should think that there must have been three hundred people listening to the orator. Men, already half drunk, with green boughs in their hats, were marching about the town in uneven companies, armed with clubs torn from the hedges. Weeping women followed them, trying to persuade their sons or husbands to come home. Other men were bringing out horses from private stables. People were singing. One man, leaning out of a window, kept on firing his pistol as fast as he could load. Waving men cheered from the hill above. The men in the town cheered back. There was a great deal of noisy joking everywhere. They cheered us as we rode through them, telling us that Monmouth had arms for all. One poor woman begged Mr. Blick to tell her man to come home, as without him the children would all starve. The crowd groaned at her; but Mr. Blick stopped them, calling the husband, who was in a sad state of drunken vainglory, to leave the ranks in which he tried to march. “We don't want fathers of families,” he cried. “We want these tight young bachelors. They're the boys.” Indeed, the tight young bachelors felt that this was the case, so the woman got her man again; lucky she was to get him. As far as I could judge, the crowd imagined us to be great officers; at any rate our coming drew away the listeners from the waggon. They came flocking to our heels as though we were the Duke himself. A drummer beat up a quickstep; the crowd surged forward. We marched across the fields to Lyme, five hundred strong. One of the men, plucking a sprig of hawthorn from the hedge, asked me to wear it in my hat as the Duke's badge, which I did. He called me “Captain.” “Captain,” he said. “We had a brush with them already, this morning, along the road here. Two on 'em were killed. They didn't stay for no more.” So fighting had begun then, the civil war had taken its first fruits of life. There could be no more shillyshallying; we had put our hands to a big business. In spite of the noise of the march, my spirits were rather dashed by the thought of those two men, lying dead somewhere on the road behind us, killed by their own countrymen.
We are said to be a sober people; but none of those who saw Lyme that morning would have had much opinion of our sobriety. Charmouth had been disorderly; Lyme was uproarious. Outside the town, in one of the fields above the church, we were stopped by a guard of men who all wore white scarves on their arms, as well as green sprays in their hats. They stopped us, apparently, because their captain wished to exercise them in military customs. They were evidently raw to the use of arms. They handled their muskets like spades. “Be you for Monmouth, masters?” they asked us, grinning. When we said that we were, this very unmilitary guard told us to pass on. “Her've got arms for all,” they said. “The word be 'Fear nothing but God.'” Some of them joked with friends among our party. They waved their muskets to us.
Inside the town, there was great confusion. Riotous men were foraging, that is, plundering from private houses, pretending that they did so at the Duke's orders. The streets were full of people, nearly all of them men, the green boughs in their hats. On the beach two long lines of men with green scarves on their arms were being drilled by an officer. Horses were picketed in a long line up the main street; they were mostly very poor cart-stock, ill-provided, as I learned afterwards, with harness. Men were bringing hay to them from whatever haystack was nearest. From time to time, there came a loud booming of guns, above the ringing of the church bells. Three ships in the bay, one of them La Reina, were firing salutes as they hoisted their colours. It was all like a very noisy fair or coronation day. It had little appearance of an armed invasion. We found the Duke busy with Mr. Jermyn enlisting men in a field above the town.
“That's not Mr. Jermyn. That's Lord Grey,” Mr. Blick said, on hearing me exclaim. “Mr. Jermyn's only the name he goes by. He's my Lord now, you must remember.”
Just then the Duke caught sight of us riding up. He took us for local gentry, coming in to volunteer. He came smiling to welcome us. It must have been a shrewd disappointment to him to find that we were not what he thought. All his hopes were in the gentry, poor man. By the time we were on our feet with our hats off he had turned his back upon us as though to speak to Lord Grey, but really, I believe, to hide his chagrin. When he turned to us again both of them welcomed us, saying that there was work enough for all, in enlisting men, making out billets, etc. So without more ado we gave our horses to the ostlers at an inn. Mr. Blick at once began to blarney the standers-by into joining, while I, sitting at a little table, in the open air, wrote out copies of a letter addressed to the local gentry. My copies were carried from Lyme by messengers that afternoon but, alas for my master, they did not bring many gentry to us.
Now while I was writing at the table, under the great flapping standard, with the Duke, in his purple coat, walking about in front of me, I had a pretty full view of the crowd which ringed us in. We were circled about by a crowd of gaping admirers; from whom, every minute, Mr. Blick, or the Duke, or Lord Grey, would select a sheepish grinning man to serve under our colours. Among the crowd I noticed a little old lame man with a long white beard. He was a puppet-man, who was making the people laugh by dancing his puppets almost under the Duke's nose. As he jerked the puppet-strings, he played continually on his pan-pipes the ribald tune of “Hey, boys, up go we,” then very popular. The Duke spoke to him once; but he did not answer, only bowed very low, with his hat off, which made the people think him an idiot or a jester. They laughed heartily at him. After a bit, it occurred to me that this old puppet-shaker always crept into the ring (with his hat off to receive alms) whenever the Duke spoke aside to Lord Grey, or to some other officer. I watched him narrowly to make sure, because something in his manner made me suspect that he was trying to catch what our leaders said to each other. I tried to recall where I had seen the old man; for I had seen him before. He had been at Exeter on the day we set out for Sidmouth, so much I remembered clearly; but looking at him carefully, with my head full of memories of faces, it seemed to me that he had been at Dorchester also. Surely an old man, lame in the left leg like this man, had gone down a narrow lane in front of me in Dorchester. I had not thought of it in Dorchester; but I thought of it now, with a feeling that it was strange to meet again thus in Lyme. I took good stock of the man, wondering if he were a spy. He was a dirty old man enough. His dirty fingers poked through ragged mittens. His cheeks were all swathed up in a woollen comforter. I made the mistake of looking at him so hard that I made him look at me. Seeing that I was staring at him, with a face full of suspicion, he walked boldly up to me, holding out his hat for my charity. We stared at each other, while he blew a blast on his pan-pipes, at which everybody laughed.
“Come, come, boy,” said Lord Grey to me, “we want those letters done. Never mind about the puppets. Here, old man” (giving him a penny), “you take yourself off now. Or are you going to enlist?”
The people laughed again at this, while the old man, after a flourish of his hat to me, piped up lively quickstep, called “Jockeys to the Fair.”
He disappeared after this. I did not see him again until our troubles began, later in the morning. I was finishing off the last of my letters, when some of our scouts rode in to make a grave report to the Duke. They had ridden in pretty hard, their horses were lathered all over. They themselves were in an internal lather; for they had just had their first sight of war. They had come into touch (so they declared) with the whole of Albemarle's militia, marching out to attack them. On being questioned, it turned out that they had heard this from an excited labourer who had run to them with the news, as they stood guard in a roadside field a few miles out of Lyme. They themselves had seen nothing, but the news seemed so probable that the Duke acted on it. He sent me off at once with a message to a clever, handsome gentleman who was in charge of the cavalry in the street. It was in giving the message that I saw the old man again. He was them limping up the street on the Sidmouth road, going fast, in spite of his lameness. I gave my message to the captain, who commanded his trumpeter to call to arms. The trumpeter blew nobly; but the sight of the confusion afterwards showed me how little raw troops can be trusted. There was a hasty scramble for horses rather than a setting forth. Some men quarreled over weapons; others wrestled with harness; others ran about wildly, asking what was happening, was it to be a battle, what did blowing on the trumpet mean? Some few, thinking the worst, got wisdom in those few moments. They took horses from the ranks, but instead of forming up with the regiments, they galloped off home, having had enough of soldiering at the first order. The foot behaved rather better, knowing, perhaps, that if they fought they would be behind hedges, in some sort of shelter. Even so, they seemed a raw lot of clumsy bumpkins as they marched up. Many of them were in ploughmen's smock-frocks; hardly any of them had any sense of handling their guns. They had drums with them, which beat up a quickstep, giving each man of them a high sense of his importance, especially if he had been drinking. People in the roadway cheered them, until they heard that there was to be a battle. Those who were coming in to join us found it a reason for hesitation.
After a lot of confusion, the army drew out of Lyme along the Sidmouth road, followed by a host of sightseers. Some of the best mounted rode on ahead at a trot, under the handsome man, Mr. Fletcher, who was their captain. I followed on with the foot-soldiers, who marched extremely slowly. They halted at their own discretion; nor did they seem to understand that orders given were to be obeyed. What they liked, poor fellows, was to see the women admiring them. The march up the hill out of Lyme was a long exhibition of vanity, the women waving their handkerchiefs, the men putting on all sorts of airs, jetting like gamecocks. When we got up to the top of the hill, I saw the old lame puppet-man, sitting on the edge of the wild, unenclosed, gorse-covered common-land which stretches away towards the town of Axminster. He was watching us with deep interest. Our men were spreading out into line upon this common. The horse was ranging on, bobbing about, far ahead. The foot were looking about eagerly as they got out of the ranks in which they had marched; but they could see no trace of any enemy. I caught sight of the Duke four hundred yards away, a little figure sitting alone on his horse, in front of half a dozen others. They were all scanning the country, all the way round. Presently I called out that I saw the enemy. Half a dozen cavalry were riding up a combe far off. But they were our own men, not the militia. They were some of our scouts riding off as “feelers” to spy out Albemarle's position. All the time that we were up there on the hill, the little old man portered about among the men, now listening to what they had to say, now asking the soldiers to look at his pretty puppets. When the returning scouts brought word that no troops were near us, so that we were free to march back again, he was still there, packing up his puppets in tarred canvas, as though about to march off to the next market-town. We marched past him, as he sat in the heather. I passed quite close to him, staring at him hard, for to tell the truth he was on my mind. I was suspicious of him. He took off his hat to me, with a smile; but he did not speak. Then my troops swung round, down the hill, leaving him alone there, watching the men pass.
Other things put him out of my mind during the afternoon. I was kept busy writing orders to scouts; for we were sending out scouts in every direction, partly to protect us from surprise, partly to direct new recruits to our headquarters. Mr. Blick, who knew the ground dictated the letters, helped by Mr. Fletcher, who studied a big map with great attention; I was writing all that afternoon. Lyme grew noisier during the day, as the recruits became more drunk. Many steady men turned away from us when they saw our disorder. I myself had been brought up to abhor drunkenness. I found the state of drunken uproar very terrible. I feared that such an army would never achieve any great deed. I thought that such sin would be punished. Our soldiers were not behaving like knights sworn to a good cause; but like boors at a fair. That day we lost our only good officer, Mr. Fletcher.
I have spoken of this gentleman. He was in command of the horse under Lord Grey. He was a much better soldier than my Lord; a better officer, too; a better man. Now in the day's confusion, with everything topsy turvy, the Duke's messenger, “Old Dare,” rode into Lyme from Taunton, where he had galloped the day before to spread the news of our arrival. This Dare was a quick-tempered, not very clever, popular man with a great deal of influence in the countryside. On his way back to us from Taunton, someone lent, or gave, him a very fine horse. It may have been meant as a gift to the Duke; I do not know. Anyhow Old Dare rode in on this horse with letters from Taunton, which he handed to Mr. Fletcher to give to the Duke. Fletcher, our cavalry commander, had as yet no horse; so seeing the splendid charger on which Old Dare rode, he ordered Old Dare to give it up to him. He was the real commander of the army, with a military right, if no real right, to take what horse he liked from any subordinate officer. But Old Dare, like so many of our men, had no knowledge of what soldier's discipline meant. He saw, in Fletcher, a gentleman with whom he had lived as an equal for the last fortnight. He was not going to give up his horse like that; not he. Fletcher (speaking sharply) told him to obey without further words, at which Dare in a sudden flush of temper struck him with his riding switch. Fletcher was not a patient man. He could not let an act of gross mutiny pass unpunished, nor would he suffer an insult. He shot Dare dead upon the spot, in full view of some hundreds of us. It was all done in an instant. There was Dare lying dead, never to stir again. There was Fletcher, our only soldier, with a smoking pistol in his hand, thinking that he had taught the army a lesson in obedience. There was the army all about him, flocking round in a swarm, not looking at it as a military punishment but as a savage murder, for which he deserved to be hanged. Then the Duke hastened up to make things quiet, before the army avenged their friend. He drew Fletcher aside, though the people murmured at him for speaking to a murderer. He was unnerved by Fletcher's act. He had no great vitality. Sudden crises such as this unnerved him, by using up his forces. A crisis of this kind (a small thing in a great rebellion) was often enough to keep his brain from considering other, more important, more burning questions concerning the entire army. The end of this business was as unhappy as its beginning. Fletcher, our only soldier, was sent aboard the frigate in which the Duke had sailed from Holland. When the tide served, she set sail with him for Corunna in Spain. With him she carried all our hopes of success, together with a quantity of stores which would have been of use later in the expedition. As I left the Cobb, or pier, which makes Lyme harbour, I saw the little lame puppet-man turning away from the beach with a company of men who wore our green boughs. For a few steps I hurried towards him, so that I might overhear what he was saying; I made so sure that he was a spy. Mr. Blick, to whom I told my fears, bade me not to worry myself. “Why, boy,” he said, “there are five hundred spies in Lyme; but they can't hurt us. Before they can get off to tell our enemies all about us there won't be any enemies left. We shall be marching at once. We shall drive everything before us.” He spoke with such confidence that I believed him; yet the old man troubled me, for all that. When you see a face continually, at a time when you are excited, you connect the face with your excitement; it troubles your nerves.
The day wore by with all the unreality of a day of confusion. I was kept at work until the light was gone; then served at the Duke's table while he supped, then snatched a hurried supper while he talked with his officers. After supper, I had to go from billet to billet, looking for people whom the officers wished to see. Something very important was in the air. The discussion in the inn's great room was the first serious council of the war. About eleven o'clock, Lord Grey came out of the room, telling me to follow him. We went out into the street, where presently our men began to fall in, four or five abreast, about a hundred ranks of them. A few cavalry came, too, but not enough, I heard Lord Grey say, not enough to do any good with. In spite of all the efforts of those who loved us (by efforts I mean the robbing of farm-stables) we were very short of horses. Those which we had were not good; they were cart, not saddle-horses, unused to the noise of guns. Still, such as they were, they formed up in the street ahead of the foot. The force took a long time to form; for the men kept saying that they had forgotten something, their powder-horn, their cartridges, their guns, even. Then they had to run back to their billets to fetch whatever it was, while those who remained behind, puzzled at the movement so late at night, when they wished to sleep, began to get nervous. They began to ask where it was that we were going, was it to Axminster, or to Bridport.
Word was passed about that we were going to surprise the militia at Bridport at dawn. We were told to keep quiet on the march, after passing Charmouth, as the night was so still that we should be heard far off. We did not know how near the Bridport outposts might come to us under cover of the night. “You come with us, Martin,” said Lord Grey: “Take a horse. If we win Bridport you'll have to gallop back with the news.” I was made a little nervous by the thought of going into battle so soon; but gulping down my fears I mounted a marsh-mare which stood near the inn door. I hoped sincerely that no militia bullet would find any part of either of us. Then the drums began to play us out of the town with their morning roll. A fife whined out, going down to our marrows with its shrillness. Lights showed at the windows. We saw dark heads framed in yellow patches. People called to us. In the door of the great inn stood Monmouth; his face seemed very white in the glare of the torches. He raised his hand to us as we passed him. The last thing I noticed of the town, for I rode in the rear with Lord Grey, were the ranks passing the lamp on the town hall. They came up to it in waves, their cloaks showing in glimmer for an instant. Then they passed on into the night, sliding forwards slowly with a steady roll, like the moving of waves to the shore.
We were a long time riding; so long that the dawn was on us by the time we were within shot of the enemy. I don't remember very much about the ride, except that it was unreal, very unreal; for the mists came down, blotting the world from us, so that we rode in a swirl of cold grey, amid a noise of dropping. When we got to the top of the long hill after Chideock I was bidden halt at a cross-roads, with a waggon full of ammunition, while the force moved on to the attack. The hills were showing up clearly above the mist; but the valley lay like a sea, a great grey formless level, like some world of the ghosts. The troops passed down in it, moving pretty briskly, lest the mist should lift before they were in position. Most of them knew the country, so that they could well walk confidently; but their quickness had something nervous in it, as though they were ill at ease. Very soon they were out of sight, out of hearing, swallowed up in the fog.
I waited a long time (as it seemed) up there at the cross-roads. After a long wait I rode a little down the hill, from sheer anxiety. I pulled up in a bank of cloud, through which I could see dimly, in the growing light, for about a dozen yards. I was leaning well forward, listening for the sound of shooting, when something made me look down. Someone was standing at my side, slipping something into my pocket. It gave me a start. I clutched at the person. It was the old lame puppet-man who had been at Lyme the day before. “Latter for ee,” he said in a whisper. “Read en, unless you'm a fool.” His hand pressed lightly on my bridle hand for an instant; then he ducked sideways swiftly into the wilderness of ferny gorse at the side of the road, where I could not hope to follow him, even if the mist had not hidden him. Something in the voice, something in the lightness of the touch startled me into the knowledge. As he ducked, it came over me that this old man was Aurelia disguised, come to spy upon us, but bent, also, on giving me a warning, some little kind word of advice, at the beginning of my lord's war. I ought to have recognized her before. I had been blind. She had been under my eyes the whole day, yet I had never once suspected, no one, of all that army, had suspected. She had been disguised by a master-hand. She had played her part like a great actress. It was terrible to think of the risk she was running. One man's suspicion, in a time of war, would have been enough to give her to a horrible death. I tried to follow her into the jungle into which she had vanished; but my horse would not face the furze. I tried hard to see her, but it was no use; the tangle was too thick; she had gone. I called out to her softly; but I got no answer; only, at some little distance away, I heard a twig snap under a passer's foot.
In a momentary clearing of the mist, I pulled out my letter. It was written in a fine, firm hand, with signature. It was a short, purposeful letter, which kept sharply to the point. It only contained two lines. “Your Duke's cause is hopeless. He has no possible chance. Take the Axminster road to safety.” That was the whole letter. It gave me a feeling of uneasiness; but it did not tempt me to desert. I thought that if I deserted I might very well be tortured into betraying all that I knew of the Duke's plans, while I doubted very much whether the Duke's body-servant would find mercy from the merciless, frightened King. What was I to do, even if I escaped from the King's party? I was too young for any employment worthy of my station in life. I had neither the strength nor the skill for manual labour. Who would employ a boy of my age on a farm or in a factory? All that I could hope would be to get away to sea, to a life which I had already found loathsome. As to going back to my uncle's house, I doubt if I would have gone, even had I had the certainty of getting to it safely. When a boy has once taken to an adventurous life, nothing but very ill health will drive him back to home-life. Yet there was the thought of Aurelia. Somehow the thought of her was a stronger temptation than any fear of defeat. I would have liked to have seen that old enemy of mine again.
I was thinking over the letter, wondering what would come to the Duke's cause, when the valley below me began to ring with firing. A heavy fire had begun there. It thundered in a long roll, which died down, momentarily, into single sputterings through which one could hear shouting. About twenty minutes after the beginning of the shots, when all the party on the hill-top were edging nearer to the battle, taking a few steps at a time, on tenter-hooks to be engaged, we heard a great gallop of horses' hoofs coming to us at full tilt. At first we were scared by this, for the noise was tremendous, too great, we inexperienced soldiers thought, to be caused by our little troop of cavalry. We thought that it was the Bridport militia charging down on us, after destroying our friends. The mist by this time was all blowing clear, though wisps of it clung along the hedgerows in unreal rolling folds. The day above was breaking in the sultry blue summer dimness. We could see, I suppose, for a quarter of a mile, straight down the road.
We had swung round, facing towards Lyme, when the noise of the hoofs first came to us. When the turn of the road showed us a squad of cavalry coming to us at the charge, led by half a dozen riderless horses, we waited for no more. We spurred up our nags in a panic, till we, too, were going full tilt for Lyme, shouting out as we went any nonsense which came to our heads. We were in a panic fear; I believe that the horses in some way felt it too. We galloped back to Chideock as though we were chased by witches, while the gun-firing at Bridport steadily grew less, till at last it stopped altogether. At Chideock, some of the cavalry came up with us. They were our own men, our own troop of horse, not an enemy after all. The riderless horses were a few of the militia charges which had been seized from a cavalry outpost to the west of the town. We had bolted from our own crazy terror. But we were not the only fleers. Our cavalry had bolted first, at the first volley outside the town. It is unjust to say that they were afraid. Lord Grey was not a coward; our men had stout hearts enough; but they had not reckoned on the horses. The first discharge of guns scared the horses almost frantic. They swung about out of action in a couple of seconds. Another volley made them all bolt. It was when they were bolting that the men began to grow alarmed. Fear is a contagious thing; it seems to pass from spirit to spirit, like a flame along a powder train, till perhaps a whole army feels it. Our horsemen pulled up among us in Chideock in as bad a scare as you ever saw; it was twenty minutes before they dared walk back to find out what had happened to the foot at Bridport, after their retreat.
Our foot came back very angry with the horse. They had fired away a lot of powder to very little purpose, before orders reached them, bidding them retire. They had not wished to retire; but at last they had done so sullenly, vowing to duck Lord Grey for deserting them. We had taken about a dozen horses without harness, instead of the two hundred equipped chargers which we had promised ourselves.
We had killed a few of the militia, so everybody said; but in the confusion of the powder-smoke who could say how many? They were certain that none of our own men had been killed; but in a force so newly raised, who could say for certain which were our own men? As a matter of fact several of our men had been taken by the royalists, which is as much as to say that they had been killed. Altogether the affair had been a hopeless failure from the very beginning. The foot had learned to despise the horse. The horses had learned to be afraid of gun-fire. The cavalrymen had learned to despise Lord Grey. The militia had learned to despise us. The only valuable lesson that our men had learned was that a battle was not so terrible a thing. You knelt down, fired your gun, shouted, borrowed your neighbour's drinking bottle, took a long swig, then fired again, with more shouting, till somebody clapped you on the shoulder with orders to come away. But this lesson, precious as it was did not console our men for their beating. They were cross with the long night-march as well as with Lord Grey's desertion. We dragged our way back to Lyme very slowly, losing a good fifty of our number by desertion. They slipped away home, after falling out of the ranks to rest. They had had enough of fighting for the Duke; they were off home. The officers were strict at first, trying to stop these desertions; but the temper of the men was so bad that at last they gave it up, hoping that some at least would stay. That was another evil consequence of fighting for the crown with an undisciplined mob; they could sustain defeat as ill as they could use victory. We did not trail into Lyme until after noon; for we marched like snails, fearing that the militia would follow us. When we got into camp, the men flung their arms from them, careless of the officer's orders. All that they wanted was sleep (we had eaten a late breakfast at Charmouth), they were not going to do any more soldier's foolery of drill, or sentry-go. As for Lord Grey, whom everybody called a coward, the Duke could not cashier him, because he was the best officer remaining to us. Poor Fletcher, who might have made something of our cavalry, was by this time far away at sea. The other officers had shown their incapacity that morning. For my own part, I chose out a snug billet on a hearthrug in the George Inn, where I slept very soundly for several hours. While I slept, the Duke held a melancholy council to debate what could be done.
They say that he ought to have marched that morning to Exeter, where Lord Albemarle's militia (all of them ripe for rebellion) would have joined him.
Exeter or Bristol, one or the other, would have been a fine plume in his cap, a strong, fortified town, full of arms, where he could have established himself firmly. I do not know why he decided against marching to Exeter. He may have had bad reports of troops being on the road waiting for him; or he may have thought that his friends (who were plentiful on the Bristol road) would rally to him as soon as he appeared. He was deceived by those protesting gentry, his friends, who had welcomed him so warmly only a few months before. He thought that all the countryside was ready to join him. He had been deceived, as perhaps a cleverer man would have been deceived, by the warmth of his welcome on his earlier visit. An Englishman is always polite to a Duke when he meets him in a friendly gathering. But when the Duke says, “Lend me all your ready money, together with your horses, or rather give them to me, since I am the King,” his politeness leaves him; he gets away to London to warn the police as fast as his horse will take him. Thus it was with the Duke's friends scattered about along the main-road from Lyme to Bristol.
I know not who persuaded the Duke to march; probably it was Grey; it may have been Venner; it may have been a momentary mad resolution caused by a glass of wine. They say that he was solemn about it, as though he expected to fail. Perhaps he would have gone back to Holland if the ship had been still in the harbour, but of course she had gone away. He would not go in La Reina; for she was sluggish from barnacles, having been long un-careened. The Channel at this time was full of ships looking for him; how he escaped them when he sailed from Holland I cannot think. He hesitated for a long time, poor man, before deciding; no man could have acted more like a Stuart, at such a time. When the decision was made he gave word to start early on the following morning. But this I did not know till one A.M, when Lord Grey routed me out from my berth on the hearth-rug, so that I might go from house to house, calling up our officers.
I suppose that all our officers were out of bed by two o'clock, yet it took them eight hours to get their men together, into some sort of order. We were hardly ready for the road at ten A.M. when the drums beat up to play us out of the town. As I was the Duke's servant, I was allowed to ride by my master; I daresay people thought that I was the young Prince. We marched up the hill gaily, with a multitude flocking all about us, but there were many of that crowd who looked doubtfully at my master's sad face, thinking that he looked over-melancholy for a conquering king.
We marched out of Lyme into a valley, through a sort of suburb called Uplyme. After that we marched steadily up hill, a long climb of two miles, having a great view of the countryside on our left hand. Our right was shut from us by a wooded hill. It was a warm, sunny June day: the grass just ripe for hay harvest; the country at its best; everything at its full flower, so that you wondered at the world's abundance. We sent out scouts, when we were about a mile from Lyme; but when we were at the top of the hill we could see for ourselves, without putting scouts abroad. We could see horsemen on the high ground away to the left, two or three hundred of them. Besides these there were some companies of foot drawn up in good order in the fields outside Axminster, at some distance from the town. When this army caught sight of us, it began to file off towards the town, as though to dispute it with us, so our advanced guard pushed on to drive them out of it. The sight of so many men in order, was a very moving one. To see them advance their colours, to see the light on the shifting steel, to hear the low beating hum of the feet was stirring to the heart. Word ran along the line that there was going to be a battle. Our foot left the road, so as to spread out into line in the open, where they could take up positions behind hedges. I was sent back to the rear at this instant, to order up the ammunition waggons, so that I missed some part of the operations; but I shall never forget how confidently our men spread out; they marched as though they were going into the fields for partridges. The drums began again, to hearten them, but there was no need for drums in that company; they began to sing of their own accord, making a noise which drowned the drums altogether. I gave my orders to the ammunition waggons, which were blocked in a jumble of sightseers, camp-followers, etc., etc., so that they could hardly move. The drivers got me to charge my horse through the mob to make a path, which I did, with a good deal of pain to myself, for the people thus thrust aside struck at me. The drivers struck out at them in return; we had a little fight of our own, while Axminster was being won.