All was dark within the kitchen of the cottage.
Spears of white light piercing the gloom told of day without.
The cottage was fast as a fortress. Stout planks were nailed across either door. Heavy shutters darkened the windows. Through a loop-hole a stream of light poured in on Nelson's old foretop-man.
Horn spectacles hung on his nose. His eyes were down, the silver head erect and drawn back. At arm's length beneath him he held a great Book in a splash of light.
He was reading aloud, spelling out the words, as does a child, and following with huge finger.
Outside a musket cracked; a bullet wanged against the wall; there was the crisp trickle of dislodged mortar.
Still muttering, the old man closed his Book, and removed his spectacles. Then he slewed his chair round to the loop-hole, and felt for his musket.
The light poured in upon the moon-washed head, the noble brow, and calm eyes peering forth.
Deliberately the old man moved his head to and fro, searching the offender. Then the musket went to his shoulder, cheek hugged stock, the face grew set. The mystic had turned man of action.
There was a flash in the darkness, a smother of white in the room, and outside a sudden sobbing cry.
A hand waved in the cloud, and out of it a still voice said,
"He wun't trouble no more."
The old man leant his reeking musket against the wall, and took up hisBook tranquilly.
A clap of thunder, followed by a monstrous hissing overhead, awoke Kit from dreams of blackberrying with Gwen in the dew-white dawn.
He started up.
"What's that?" he cried, seeking his mind.
"The privateer barking good-bye, sir," came old Piper's voice from across the room. "She's stood in with the tide, and had a slap with her bow-chaser. Now she's going about."
The memories swooped back on Kit; Nelson, the despatches, the swim in the dark.
In a moment he was at the loop-hole, peering over the old man's shoulder.
On these in the sunshine he saw the brown-patched sails of the privateer lifted ladder-like from behind the shingle-bank, and strangely close. Then her bows slid into view, and he realised that she was standing out to sea:
The boy's heart soared.
They were free!
A great hand pulled him gently back from the loop-hole.
"By your leave, sir. They've a marksman on the knoll keeps on a-peckin at us."
The boy's heart sank.
"Then wearen'tfree?"
"Oh, no, sir. All round us, sir—a cord on em, Muster Joy calls it, soldier-fashion."
From above the Parson's cheery voice rang out.
"So she's left you in the lurch, my lord. That comes o trusting to aFrenchman."
Piper chuckled.
"Muster Joy and the Gentleman! Must keep on a-chaffin. At it all day yesterday they was, atween scrimmages."
A gay voice came sailing back from the open.
"Ah, Reverend Father, good morning! Yes, you must excuse her for the moment. She has an engagement to keep round the corner to-morrow."
"To-morrow!" echoed Kit, aghast. "Piper! how long have I been asleep?"
"Why, sir, you've slept round the clock and a bit more. It's nigh noon of what was to-morrow when you turned in."
No wonder he was hungry; no wonder he was fresh; no wonder that sound of hammering, which had disturbed him as he passed from a half-swoon into sleep, seemed so far off.
"Wednesday! Then to-morrow's Thursday!" he cried, rushing into his clothes. "O Nelson!" and he raced up the ladder.
The loft was full of light, dazzling after the twilight of the kitchen.
A mattress, stuffed clumsily in the seaward window, half blocked it. In the dormer looking towards the Downs, two biscuit-boxes crammed with earth sat on the sill, forming a rough head-cover.
Behind these Knapp sprawled on his stomach. Beside him was a wooden porringer full of bullets, and a basin of black powder; in his hand a musket.
In a cobweb corner by a barrel, Blob crouched covetously; while beside the mattress-curtain sat the Parson in his shirt-sleeves, furbishing Polly, and pausing every now and then to spy out through the bulges.
As Kit clambered on to the floor, the Parson turned, his blue eyes merry, and curls a-ripple.
"Ah, Kit, my boy, how are you?"
"Alive and well, sir, thanks to you. And you, sir?"
"I!" laughed the Parson. "I'm another man." A bullet whizzed by. The Parson listened sentimentally. "That's the music!" raising his face with a rapt smile. "Always makes me think of angels' wings."
He seemed to have grown, body and soul. His eyes shone, his cheeks glowed; he was crisp as a rimy apple.
Kit felt the change.
Responsibility, the searcher out of souls, had exhilarated and sobered the man. He was graver yet gayer, inspiring and inspired.
"Duck up aloft!" came a sudden roar from beneath.
The Parson smote Kit a blow on the chest that sent him staggering back against the wall.
A bullet whistled in at one window and out at the other.
The Parson crawled across to Knapp, lying on his face, and dealt him a tremendous buffet.
"Dog!" he thundered. "Why don't you shout?"
The little man's body leapt to the blow, but he made no answer.
"Go below!" ordered the Parson savagely. "What's the good of you? I set you there to warn us and all you can do is to grovel on your stomach and snivel."
The little Cockney rose without a word and crept away, his tail between his legs. Kit saw his face. One eye was black; and his face was so woebegone that but for the misery in it Kit would have smiled.
"Their shooting is exquisite," said the Parson with professional delight. "You can't show a finger…. They've nearly had Blob already —ain't they, Blob?"
Blob, cuddling in the corner, shook his head cunningly.
"Oi've had them," he said. "Three pennorth of em," pointing to the little pile of coppers at his side.
"I'm giving him a penny apiece for each Gang-er he gets, and twice the money for a Frenchman," the Parson explained. "It stimulates effort," he added, prim as a pedagogue, but with twinkling eye. "And now, Kit, your story."
Swiftly the boy told his tale.
"But for you and the soldiers," he ended….
"There were no soldiers," answered the Parson curtly.
"What, sir!—I thought!—some men in shakos behind the bank—the menKnapp brought."
The Parson ground his teeth.
"Knapp brought no men. He got as far as the Lamb in Eastbourne on the hill yonder, and there he got playing the fool, and sneaked back here about twenty minutes after you were gone with a pair of black eyes and a pack of lies and nothing else."
All the ruddiness had left his face. It was grey as steel and dark.
"I tried him by drum-head court-martial then and there, for misconduct in the presence of the enemy. I was the President, Piper the Court. The Court found him guilty and sentenced him to be shot. I confirmed the sentence, and proceeded to carry it out."
He rapped the words out clean and clear. Kit felt himself seeing this man with new eyes, the eyes of a great respect. The fellow schoolboy of yesterday had turned into the man of war, stern and terrible. Kit was afraid of him.
"There was nothing to wait for," continued the Parson. "So I had him out and made him dig his own grave against the wall.
"'It's blanky ard,' said he.
"'You're a soldier; and this is war,' I answered. 'I'm going to count two—then fire. Make your peace with your Maker.'
"I hadn't got to two, when I heard a hubbub on the privateer, and knew you were either caught or in difficulties.
"'This can wait,' I said. 'I'll use you first, and shoot you afterwards!'"
The blood stole back to the Parson's face. His eyes lifted, twinkling now.
"It's resource that makes the soldier, you know, Kit. I slipped into my old regimentals, gave Knapp his bugle, clapped a shako on Blob's head, and put the two of them behind the shingle-bank to act as a skeleton-force…. And you know the rest."
Kit gazed at the square-set figure before him with respectful admiration.
"It must have been a close thing, sir."
The Parson shrugged.
"It would have been a mere bagatelle but for the Gap Gang cutting in on our line of retreat. That added interest, and made a bright little affair of what would otherwise have been a dull retirement."
"And how did the Gap Gang come to cut in?"
"Oh, that's easily explained….
"At midnight I went out to beat em up—crept along under the cliff past Holy Well. When I got to Cow Gap, there were my friends lying on their backs in a bunch, snoring like so many sows, and the boat beached beneath em. I believe I could have killed the lot then and there, and nobody the wiser; but I wasn't going to soil my hands with the cold blood of those swine. So I just jumped into the boat, and got to work at once—put my heel through her bottom, and was just tearing up a plank, when the noise wakes old Red Beard.
"'Who the blank's that?' he growled, sitting up in the moonlight.
"'Why,' says I, tearing away, 'the gentleman you're good enough to call the blankety Parson.'
"'Then guess we've got you, sir,' says he, and comes down the beach at me at the double.
"'Think so?' says I, jumping out to meet him.
"'Twenty to one, sir!' says he. 'Chuck it up.'
"'Pardon,' says I, 'nineteen to one, I think,' and downs him with my left. O, such a beauty! flop in the mug.
"They were all awake by this of course; and there was a little bit of trouble. I wasn't going to ask my sweet lady to soil her lips on those mucky blackguards, so I kept dodging away before them, just doing enough with my dukes to keep them amused. They were no more good than a mob of cattle, you see—drunk with sleep and liquor, the lot of em.
"'Out knives, boys, and finish the blank!' says old Toadie.
"And pon my soul they came on so hot I don't know what mightn't have happened, when all of a sudden,
"'The boat!' screams Fat George from behind. 'Some blankety blank's at the boat.'
"And sure enough there was a long-legged chap launching the boat. In he jumped, shoved her off, and lay on his oars, lookin at em, as they came running along the edge of the sea."
The Parson threw back his jolly head.
"Laugh, Kit!—I never saw a fellow laugh as he did. I roared to see him. And all the while those chaps were skipping about on the shore, howling like lunatics. You never heard such a row. Then Fat George, when he saw it was all up, tried the leary lay.
"'I know it's just a joke o the Genelman's,' says he in that greasy- wheazy voice of his.
"'That's just it, George,' the other calls across the water, 'and the best joke I've enjoyed since I saw Black Diamond brand you with the hot iron you'd just branded the lugger's kitten with.'
"'What I mean,' whines Fat George, 'you wouldn't go for to leave a lot o pore blokes on a dead foul lee-shore—what got there through trying to sarve you.'
"'Sarve me!' says the Gentleman. 'Yes, Garge, my faithful friend— sarve me in the back with two fut o carvin-knife, while I was chattin with Garge's pals.'
"At that Fat George snatches the musket and pulls.
"I heard the click of the hammer, but there was never so much as a flash in a pan.
"'Thank you, thank you, Fatty, my friend,' says the French feller. 'But you know you'd make better shooting, if I hadn't wetted your priming.'
"Then he struck his oars in the water. 'And now good-night all,' says he. 'Black Diamond was a man, if he was a devil. As to the rest of you, the best I can wish you is a long drop, and a rope that runs free. And as for you, Fat George, I won't forget you in this world, and God won't forget you in the next.'
"Then he came rowing along inside the barrier of rocks to me.
"'I don't know who you are, sir,' says he, taking off his hat in his dandified French way, 'but I'm sure I owe you my best thanks. If it hadn't been for you, I hardly know how I should have managed.'
"Well, of course I knew very well who he was, and what he was after. But I knew the boat was sinking, and I saw he couldn't row. So I never thought he'd reach the ship. Still the longer I kept him talking, the better your chance. So—
"'You're very welcome, sir,' says I. 'Won't you step ashore and thank me in person?'
"'I'm grieved to the heart,' says he, 'but I must postpone that pleasure till another day. Perhaps we shall meet again. I hope to return in a few weeks—not alone next time.'
"'Quite so,' thinks I, 'at the head of the Army of England. No you don't, my fine fellow, not if I can keep you messing about there a few minutes longer.'
"'And perhaps we have met before,' says I, taking off my hat.
"He peered at me in the moonlight.
"'What!' he cries—'not my old friend, Black Cock, again?'
"'The same at your service,' says I, 'still waiting to have his comb cut.'
"'This is a great happiness,' says he, very earnest, and paddles in a bit.
"'It's mutual,' says I. 'And if you've quite done posing won't you step ashore and let us consummate our joy? A sweet stretch of sand, and a lovely light.'
"Pon my soul for a moment I thought he would. Then,
"'I can't to-day, bad cess to it,' says he. 'Tell you the truth I'm in the devil's own hurry. Got an interview with his Sacred Majesty, our noble Emperor, whom may Heaven preserve, at twelve noon to-morrow. And if I don't keep it, I stand to lose a lot o little things—my head among em. I'm in disgrace, you see—always have been from a child!'
"He lifts his sword to his lips, quite the play-actor.
"'But here's to our next merry meeting, sir.'
"'And may it be soon, Monsieur le Poseur,' says I, answering his salute.
"And it's proved sooner than either of us expected. There's he: here'mI. One side this wall the first light cavalryman in Europe, 'tother—Harry Joy, ex-Captain of British infantry. Now we've got to see whichis the better man."
He squared his shoulders.
Whoever else might find the situation unsatisfactory it was not ParsonJoy.
"That is the first part of the story, and the least," said the Parson."And while I'm telling you the rest you'd better have some grub."
He reached up to a rafter.
"I keep the tackle up here out of Blob's way. The boy's all belly— ain't you, you young shark?"
Blob stroked his waist feelingly.
"She kips on a-talkin," he purred. "She dawn't get much answer though."
"Well, don't eat that candle anyway, you little glutton!"
"Oi warn't eatin it," said Blob, aggrieved. "Oi were suckin it."
The Parson arranged what food there was on the floor.
'"Honour and salt-beef—campaigners' fare!' as Nelson used to say inCorsica….
"And while you're at that, I'll get on with my story."
He went to the gable-end and took down a tarpaulin bag hanging on a staple.
"Kit, that was a great haul you made."
He took a packet from the bag.
"What d'you think this contains?" stripping the india-rubber from it.
There crept into his eyes again that steely look.
"It contains," he continued in the still voice of the man so moved that he dare hardly trust himself, "a list of all those gentlemen of Kent and Sussex who areà nous, as the paper says."
The boy dropped his knife.
"Traitors in fact!"
"That's the ugly word," said the Parson between set teeth. "And may God have mercy on them as they deserve!… When I read that list," he continued, breathing hard, "for the first time in my life I was sick,sickto call myself an Englishman…. There are men down there I've dined with, gamed with, chaffed with, may heaven forgive me for it! true men as I honestly believed, men I've seen drink the King's health and damnation to the French with three times three, as a Christian and a gentleman should. There are magistrates, squires, a peer or two, one sheriff, a deputy-lieutenant, and small fry— publicans, carriers, smugglers, and the like—by the score."
He spread squares of paper on the floor, piecing them.
"And here's a map in sections of the whole country from Pevensey to Westminster—farms, inns, cottages, all put down, see!—where guides can be got; the wells marked, bakers' shops, mills; roads, metalled and unmetalled; and in the margin here and there a Church or what-not drawn out pretty as you please for a sign-post."
The boy looked. Yes, it was the hand that had written the scent-bottle note.
"There's enough in that bag to hang some of the best names in England," continued the Parson with gloating delight. "And I hope to have that bag in Pitt's hands before many hours are out."
The colour stole back to his cheeks, and he began to rub his hands together.
"Kit, my boy, we'll have such a hanging as was never before seen inEngland—God helping us…. That's what we're here for."
The boy's eyes were raised to his.
"No, sir, please. What we're here for is to save Nelson."
The Parson staggered.
"Nelson!" he cried, ghastly.
His mind clutched in the dark at something it had lost.
"The plot, sir…. Beachy Head."
"MyGod!" cried the Parson, and died against the wall.
The despatch-bag and its contents had so possessed him that Nelson's need had for the moment slipped his mind.
"And I call myself a soldier!"
He leapt to life again.
"What's to-day?" savagely.
"Wednesday, sir."
"Is it to-morrow?"
"Yes, sir."
The life faded out of his blue eyes.
Till that moment he had been hugging the comfortable belief that Time, the soldier's best ally and worst enemy, was on his side. Sooner or later relief must come. Cosy in their tiny fortress, they could afford to wait for it. The Gentleman could not. Now for the first time the Parson learned that his anticipated ally was his foeman's.
"Talk of Knapp!—I'm the one ought to be shot."
"How soon shall we be relieved, sir?" asked the boy feverishly at his side. "When may we expect the soldiers?"
The words revived the Parson like a whip-lash. Knapp, a soldier, had betrayed his trust. He, a soldier, had let slip thirty golden hours. He was bitterly jealous for his dear Service.
"We shan't be relieved," he snarled. "How can the soldiers relieve us when they don't know we want relief? Knapp didn't get through—told you so already once."
"But the country-folk, sir! Surely they'll report."
"No, they won't," stonily. "This is Sussex. We aren't alive in Sussex: we're dead-alive…. If they did see anything was up they'd only think it was one of the ordinary rows between the blockade-men and the gentlemen, as they call the smugglers."
He looked out of the Downward window. There was little comfort. Tall men in French uniforms swaggered about England's greensward as though already it was theirs. He could catch their beastly foreign lingo. The sight and sound made him mad. Grim old watchdog that he was, he felt the bristles at the back of his neck rising. What right had these strange folk in his back-yard?—O to make his teeth meet in their gaitered legs!
Besides the Frenchmen, not a soul stirring.
English rooks cawing over English green, and an English sheepdog answering them.
A lonely land at the best of times, it was a desert now.
Westward in a cloud of beeches, a grey house glimmered—George Cavendish's—empty. The Seahouses over by Splash Point—empty too. So was every house of any size for ten miles inland from Fair-light to Selsea Bill. Everybody bolted who could afford it. The old lady of Hailsham quite a proverb for pluck in these parts; and they said she looked under her bed every night to see if the French had come.
And the luck! where was the luck?
Ten days since this uttermost corner of England had stirred to the strange music of men making ready for battle: bugle-calling Cavalry in the new barracks in Eastbourne on the hill; thundering Artillery in the Circular Redoubt at Langney Point; Sea-Fencibles in the martello- towers along Pevensey Levels. Now all was still and dead again. A concentration in force had taken place at Lewes. The Cavalry had been withdrawn to the camp there. A case of cholera had emptied Langney Fort. The Sea-Fencibles had run away. Black Diamond had swept up the blockademen.
Darkness, darkness, everywhere.
Kit stole to his side.
"Wemustget a message through to Nelson," he chattered. "Wemust."
The boy felt himself at war with destiny, and crushed by it. He recalled the Man of Despair in the Iron Cage in Pilgrim's Progress. The fate of the country was in his hands. He alone had the knowledge that could save her, and he could not use it. He was a dumb thing, possessed of a vast world-secret, which he could not impart for lack of voice.
"If there's no other way, we must cut our way through."
The Parson met him with a rough,
"Nonsense."
"Why?" hotly.
"Impossible—that's why."
It was the first time he had thrown that dead-wall word across the lad's path, and it maddened the boy.
After all,hewas responsible, not this beefy soldier.
"That's a word we don't know inourService, sir," he cried with scornful nostrils.
The taunt touched the Parson on the raw.
He swung round savagely.
"YourService!" he stormed. "At a time such as this, there is only one Service for loyal hearts, and that's the Service of his country."
The lad quailed before the thunder-and-lightning of the man's wrath.
"Why can't we sally?" sullenly.
The Parson shot a hand toward the window.
The boy followed his pointing finger.
In the open, behind the wall, was a camp-fire, a group of soldiers squatting round it, arms piled. To right and left, embracing the cottage, a chain of sentries ran, tall men all in tall-plumed bear- skins.
Old Piper was right. A cordon indeed!
"Grenadiers of the Guard!" rumbled the Parson in the boy's ear, rolling his r's like afeu de joie. "Marksmen to a man; veterans all; and half of them decorated."
Grenadiers of the Guard! the men of the Bridge of Lodi, of the Battle of the Pyramids and Mount Tabor, of Hochstadt and Hohenlinden.
Kit recalled the tops of theCocotieswarming with riflemen, and old Ding-dong's surprised disgust.
Now he understood.
On the success of this venture hung Napoleon's world-projects.Coûte que coûte, he had told Mouche, he must bring off this coup. So he was employing on it the pick of the first Army the world had ever seen.
As he thought of the issues at stake, the boy's soul fainted within him.
How could he, Kit Caryll, aged fifteen, and hovering on the brink of tears, stand up against the Victor of Marengo?
The boy's long face, anxious before, grew haggard now.
It wore the look of one with the enthusiasms of a saint across whose path Sin, the Insurmountable, has fallen suddenly.
"We're done," he said, husky and white.
His words revived the other. True man that he was, despair in the boy's heart quickened the courage in his own.
"Never say die till you're dead," he cried, squaring his shoulders— "that's the Englishman's motto."
His spirit rose to meet the occasion.
"Our theatrical friend outside there's no fool. But—but—but! there's just one element he's not reckoned with."
"What?" cried Kit, hanging on his words.
The Parson dropped head and voice.
"Who saved you from theTremendous?" he whispered. "Who handed you up a cliff a goat couldn't climb?—who brought you to this house? —who put the flag-idea into your head, and brought it off?"
The Parson's words made sudden confusion in the lad's mind. It came to him with a shock of surprise to find such triumphant faith in this ruddy fighting-man.
"And why d'you think of all the houses in the world He sent you to this one?" the other continued.
"Because of you, sir."
The Parson frowned, and approached his lips to the lad's ear.
"Because it's got a secret passage!"
This most matter-of-fact explanation flashed the laughter to the boy's eyes.
"I mean it," said the other earnestly. "Ain't you noticed anything about the floor of the kitchen?"
"It sounds hollow."
"It is hollow. It's built over an old decoy-pond."
In a few words the Parson outlined the history of the secret passage.
A water-way had led from decoy-pond to sea. The sea had gone back and left the water-way and pond high and dry. Sixty years back a sly old sea-dog had built this lonely cottage over the pond. He had covered the water-way and made a drain of it. Thus he had secured a secret passage to the sea, and the cottage had become the receiving depôt of Ruxley's crew.
"Where does it lead to?" asked the boy, all eyes.
"Out into the creek we crossed on the way to the Wish."
"And how many people know about it?"
"Three. One's you; one's me; one's the son of the man who built the cottage—and that's old Piper down below there…. It's not been used for forty years. The sea went back and back, and the creek's been dry these years past."
Kit's knees invited him to prayer. This was not chance; it was not coincidence.
"You're right, sir," said the boy chokily. "He's in it."
"And what's more He's going to get us out," replied the Parson, cheerfully matter-of-fact.
The boy was slipping off his coat.
"I'd better start at once. There's not a second to lose. Nelson may sail this evening."
The Parson laid a kind hand on the lad's shoulder.
"The boy's as greedy for glory as Nelson himself," he laughed. "But the Navy can't do itall, you know. Giveusa chance…. When we've got the best pair of legs South of Thames trained to a tick, and fighting mad for their chance, we may as well use em."
Kit gasped.
"Nipper Knapp!" and added in a flash, "May I go with him, sir?"
"To the mouth of the drain," said the Parson. "No further."
He turned about.
"Blob, come here. Keep a sharp look-out at this window, and give a holloa if anything stirs. You can sing em a little song, if you know one to keep em quiet."
He slid down into the twilight of the kitchen. There only the old foretop-man was to be seen, patient at his post of watch.
"Where's Knapp, Piper?"
"Why, sir, in the cellar. Wanted to be alone with his trouble, I reck'n. Tarrabul down-earted, the poor lad be."
"I'll cheer him up," cried the Parson, and disappeared through an open trap-door into the night beneath. "Nipper Knapp! Nipper Knapp, my boy!"
In two minutes he was back.
Knapp was at his heel, sparring playfully at the back of the other's head.
True, for the broken heart there is no such cure as action or the hope of it.
As they emerged into the twilight of the kitchen a voice, pure as a rivulet's, poured down in song upon them from above.
From outside came a gust of laughter, and then a roaring chorus.
"By the Lord!" thundered the Parson. "It's The Doxie's Daughter."
"And the Gap Gang singing choir!" said Piper grimly. "Likely it'll be the only hymn they knaw."
"One moment, Master Blob!" muttered the Parson between clenched teeth. "I'll swab that boy's soul clean if I have to do it with a scrubbing-brush…. Now, Knapp, ready yourself, while I write a note to the Commandant."
Knapp tore off his coat, and began to fight an exhibition battle with a ghost in the corner.
"Will ye fight the lot then, Jack?" chuckled old Piper.
"Ay, and wop em, too!" cried the little man, dodging, ducking. "Ave a slap at em first, and then go through—that's my idee."
"It's not mine, though!" roared the Parson, catching him a rousing kick."Get on with your undressing, d your eyes!"
He finished his note and folded it.
"And now for the sweet little cherub that sits up aloft."
He ran nimbly up the ladder, Kit at his heels.
The chorister had ceased his song.
Through the half-stuffed dormer, light streamed in on the white-washed wall, the cobwebs, rafters, and Polly in the corner, shining demure.
"Now where the dooce has that boy got?" muttered the Parson, looking round.
Kit pointed.
In the darkest corner, under the slope of the roof, stood an apple-barrel. Out of it two frog-like legs thrust and kicked with the action of one swimming. A protuberance crowned the rim of the barrel. Body, head, and arms were lost.
The Parson whipped up Polly.
"One for yourself!" he roared, prodding the boy's bad eminence, "and one for The Doxie's Daughter!"
"Hoi! that's Blo-ub!" yelled a muffled voice. Two hands shot out and plastered themselves over the stimulated part. There was a wriggle. Then Blob stood before them, touzled, pink, his ears wide, an apple tight between his teeth.
"D'you call that keeping a look-out?" thundered the Parson.
"Oi wur lookin out," said Blob, dogged and sullen.
"Then you keep your eyes where few of us do."
"Oi thart oi yerd a Frenchie in the bar'l," said Blob in the slow and undulating voice of Sussex. "Oi went fur to fetch un out, when a tarrabul great oarse-fly settled on ma butt-end and stung her."
"It was no horse-fly," replied the Parson. "It was my dear lady. Now, don't bother to think of any more lies, my lad, but just take that lantern from the wall, and go below. We'll join you in a minute."
The Parson pulled aside the hanging mattress, and peeped seaward.
"Come here, boy. I want to show you the lie of the land. D'you see that chap in blue knickers in the shade of the sycamores?—he's the Gap Gang sentry. They're camped somewhere behind the knoll, the main of them. That's their smoke you see among the trees."
That roaring chorus still rang in the boy's ear.
"The drain runs to the right of the knoll, and out into the creek bang opposite the Wish. Half-way down it there's a man-hole."
An icy pang pierced Kit's heart.
"It's quite small, and a bush grows over it. It's a million to one they know nothing of it. Still you should—er—watch it."
The Parson was gnawing his under-lip.
"I'll watch it," said the boy, the waves breaking white about his face.
It must be somewhere just about the man-hole that Fat George and Co. were camped. Still he wasn't going to let this soldier know he was afraid.
But the soldier knew.
Outwardly calm, his own heart was a whirlpool of doubts. How could he stop behind a wall and send this lad out into the open to face heaven knew what? Yet here surely his obvious duty lay. Should the enemy storm, what could a legless old sailor and a brace of boys do against them? And unless he was mistaken mischief was brewing. Where was the Gentleman all this time? Yesterday he had been everywhere all the time. To-day the Parson had caught but one fleeting glimpse of him. The old soldier preferred his enemy's activity to his quiet. Was this the lull before the storm?
"I only want you to go to the mouth of the drain, and see him off," he said with calm cheerfulness. "Once away, you'd only hamper him."
That was truth at all events. Once away, Knapp's chance lay in his feet. With luck the little man'd be in Lewes in an hour and a half. With luck a good man on a good horse'd be in Chatham before night, another at the Admiralty, a third at Merton,—that was, if Beau Beauchamp would leave his actress for the moment to play the man. With luck Nelson wouldn't have sailed.
Lots of luck, true! still, who was it was on their side?
The fog of his doubts cleared away.
He turned to the boy with glowing eyes.
"Kit," he whispered, hugging the lad's arm, "we'll have a Gazette to ourselves yet."
The kitchen was dim as a sick-room, and strangely hushed. No one spoke but the Parson and he in whispers, lecturing Knapp, undressing in the corner.
The gravity of the enterprise, its certain perils, the issues at stake, oppressed the room. Death was there already; as yet indeed only a ghost at each man's elbow, in a few moments maybe to become incarnate.
Kit felt it and sickened.
Perched upon the table, his back to the boarded window, he whetted his dirk upon his shoe, and wondered if those others, those men, Knapp most of all, felt as he did.
Privately he thanked heaven that the dusk hid his face.
Through chinks and splintered bullet-holes, the light stole in, making daggers across the darkness.
It splashed the walls, the great stone-flags, the black mouth of the cellar, and the dresser in the corner.
There sat Knapp, a grey ghost spotted here and there with light. The little rifleman was naked now, save for a pair of fighting drawers. A heap of clothes sprawled at his feet.
The little rifleman was like a child. Broken-hearted a minute back, now he was as a lion in leash.
There was an adventure forward, and the off chance of a fight: he brimmed at the thought of it. Without imagination, he knew no fear; with little experience of pain, he didn't much believe in it. They wouldn't catchhim; they wouldn't hithim!
Before him knelt the Parson with low head, swathing his feet with strips of torn towel, absorbed as a surgeon, careful as a mother.
"Is that easy?—now how's that?—try your foot down! Another turn round the ankle?—Remember, it'll be rough going till you strike the grass."
At the loop-hole Nelson's old foretop-man watched and waited. A gleam smote his silver hair and prophetic forehead. Kit watched him wondering.
The old man, so tranquil amid the stir and whisper of death, affected the boy as One years ago had affected other seamen tempest-tossed.
His chattering heart hushed as a sparrow hushes in the quiet of a great cathedral.
Then the world rushed in on him with a shout.
Again that gust of laughter outside, that roaring chorus.
The Gap Gang were making merry.
The contrast revolted the lad.
The table on which he sat began to rattle.
Quietly he slipped off it. But the old foretop-man had heard.
Leaving his post, he came rumbling across the uneven flags.
"The waitin time's generally always the worst time, sir," he whispered. "Sooner farty actions than wait for one—I've hard Lard Nelson say it himsalf."
"I am a bit—quaky," replied the boy, and would have admitted as much to no other man, and to few women.
"And none the worse for that, sir. It's a poor heart that can't feel fear. If a man's not a bit timersome about facin his Maker, then he ought to be. Pluck's doin your duty although you are afear'd. You'll be right enough once you're in it, surely…. And if you're not above a hint from a man before the mast, sir, you'll take them shoes off. Boardin-parties bare-fut—that was ollus the word aboard theAgamemnon…. Ah, Knapp, feelin slap?"
"Ay, fit to run for me life or fight for it," bubbled the little rifleman, prancing out of his corner.
The Parson beckoned Kit.
"You see his sort," he whispered. "The chap's as full of meat and mischief as a lion-cub." He turned again. "Knapp," he said solemnly, "this is your officer. He's coming with you to see you off. He carries the King's commission as truly as I do. You'll obey him as you would me, and no nonsense, d'you see?"
"Very good, sir," said the little man, jigging and bobbing. "I'm all of a pop like. Seems I might go off any moment."
"Any tomfoolery and you will go off," replied the Parson sternly—"out of this world into the next—pop! as you say yourself. You've only one chance against the finest marksmen in the world, and that's to show em a clean pair of heels. If you don't, you've fought your last fight, my lad! Ginger Jake's cock of the South."
The last words went home. The little rifleman became very grave. He swung round to Piper in his swift bird-like way.
"Mr. Piper, pop off a prayer for us."
The common-sense saint lifted his head.
"God elp and strengthen your legs, Nipper Knapp," he prayed.
"That's the point, O Lord!—his legs!" punctuated the Parson.
"Sometimes," continued the old foretop-man solemnly, "I have wondered why the Lard saw good to take my legs to Himsalf. Rack'n I knaw now." He reached out a huge hand, gripped the little rifleman and pulled him closer. "There's nawthin cut to waste in this world," he whispered huskily. "And it's my belieft He's been savin of em up this ten year past agin this day—to put the strength of em into your'n, Jack Knapp. May you make good use o both pairs—your own o the flesh, and mine o the sperrit!—that's my best prayer for you."
The little rifleman, as simple as the old sailor, was profoundly touched.
"I'll do me best, Mr. Piper, struth I will!" he sniffed. "Never do to mess it a'ter all His trouble."
"Give us your hand on it!" said the old man. "And you too, sir, if so be a common sailor might make so bold."
The old sailor and the young shook hands feelingly: the two soldiers followed suit.
"Don't forget you're a Black Borderer, my boy," said the Parson, one hand on the rifleman's shoulder.
"That I'll never, sir!" replied the little man, almost in tears.
Parson and Kit gripped hands: neither spoke.
Then the Parson ran up the ladder.
The little party of adventurers filed down into the dark.
Blob's lantern shone on the rusty iron door, streaked with damp, which barred the mouth of the drain.
It was very chill down there. Knapp was shivering as he played with the bolts. Blob, impassive as a jellyfish, was still sucking at his apple.
Quick and clear Kit gave his orders.
"Knapp, stop tinkering those bolts about, and stand back till I give the word! Now, Blob, listen here!—Knapp and I are going through this door down the drain. You'll stand here with the lantern, and light us, d'you see?"
"Ah!" said Blob.
"You're not to stir, d'you see, boy?"
"Aw!" said Blob.
Kit gripped his arm, and looked into his round and dewy eyes.
"Half-way down the drain there's a hole, where the light comes in." He was articulating his words with the slow precision of one addressing a deaf man.Now if, after we've passed that hole, anybody should get down through it into the drain, then you're to slam the door—and bolt!…
"Now repeat my instructions."
Blob mooned and mowed, his eyes roaming the cellar.
"Repate moi ructions," he mumbled at last.
"Ass!" snapped Kit. "Here!—stand so!—the lantern between your feet.That's right. Now don't stir. Ready, Knapp?"
"On the boil, sir," bobbing and blowing on his fists.
"Then come on."
Kit drew the wheezing bolts, and flung back the door. A chill breeze entered.
Before the boy could stop him, the little rifleman was through the door and away down the drain.
"Come back!" ordered Kit in a fierce whisper.
The man, stooping in the drain, turned and grinned.
"InmyService, sir, Borderers lead."
"InmyService, officers do…. Come back!"
The boy had nothing but his dirk; but that he pointed resolutely; and the lantern-light glimmered in the darkness as on a steel-barrel.
Knapp crawled back, delighted.
"You're the sort," he chuckled, patting the lad on the back. "Quite the little man o war."
"Get to heel," snarled Kit. "Hold your tongue. Keep your paws to yourself. And address me respectfully and properly."
The drain ran away before them, a long black tunnel, focussing in a remote jewel of light. It was like the Alley of Life, cramped and dark, and at the far end of it a little door opening on heaven. And across the door the boy seemed to see written the one word
Nelson.
He advanced into the breathing darkness, his eye on that guiding light. Half-way down the drain a dim patch brightened the black floor. There was the man-hole; there was the danger-point.
He crept forward with groping hands. The bricks were cold and sweating, the atmosphere that of the grave. It seemed to smell of dead men. The boy felt as though a mountain was smothering him. He found himself breathing deep as though in difficulties.
Even Knapp, crawling at his heels, appeared affected.
The man was humming something in a dirge-like monotone. At first Kit thought it was some sort of a Litany; then he caught the words:
"Two little corpseses goes for a walkIn a church-yard under the sea,Says the one to the other—'I'll squeak if you'll squawkTo keep me company.'"
The humming ceased, and Kit missed it.
"Are you there, Knapp?"
"Yes, sir. Smotherified feelin, ain't it?"
"Do you hear anything?"
"Only me own teeth chatter."
"Hush, then."
They were drawing near the man-hole.
The boy was sweating, shivering. He was living in death.
A very little, and he would have had one of his old screaming panics of the night-nursery. Then that tiny diamond of light, hanging in the blackness before him, the one word written across it, steadied him. It was a star, his star. It sang to him the Song of Faith.
Besides, how could he run away?—he, an officer, a gentleman, a sailor, run away before a private soldier? No. It is easier to lead somebody who believes you to be brave than to let him know you are a coward—especially if he's a soldier. The thought tickled him, and his heart surged upward.
They were very near the man-hole now.
Kit turned and pointed.
Knapp put out his tongue in reply.
The patch of light on the floor was dim and chequered. The old bush then was in its place. The boy thanked heaven for it, and stopped dead.
Above the tumult of his heart he could hear a voice: so close too that had he prodded upwards through the thin crust of earth he would have stabbed the speaker.
And how well he knew that ghastly treble!
_"Where's Bandy?"
"Where we'll all be afore we're much older—in ell this alf our."
"What ye mean?"
"Ave a peep in the creek yonder. You'll see sharp enough what I mean."_
Another voice, dark and brooding, joined in:
_"Who stuck him?"
"The Genelman."
"What for?"
"Back-answerin him."_
A fourth voice, very black and bitter, flared up:
_"That's im!—bangs you up in the firin line, then sticks you if you look at him. If it's storm, we got to do it. If it's sally, we got to meet it. If it's neether, we got to set round and take Piper's pot- luck, while he and his chaps lay safe out o range and, shoots us if we bolt."
"Where's the good in boltin?"came the brooding voice."Nowhere to bolt to. Jack Ketch's our only friend this side the water."_
There was a stony silence.
"How long's this —— game goin to last?—that's what I want to know," came the black and bitter voice at last.
The ghastly treble chimed in:
"That's what I says to im last night when e come his rounds. 'We're only poor chaps, my lord,' says I. 'We've lost alf the number of our mess in your service. And now I'd make bold to ask how long you're goin to keep us here?'
"'Why,' says he, suckin his hanky, 'that depends on your sweet selves. You may go as soon as you've took the cottage.'
"'And what if the sogers come first?' I says. 'There's a camp at Lewes, you know, my lord.'
"'Why then,' says he, and I lay he thought he was funny, 'I'll leave you to the hands of your beloved compatriots. And what can a good man want more'n that?'
"'We're the Gap Gang, my lord,' says I.
"'Well,' says he, 'if that don't suit you, hurry up and take the cottage and have done with it. I'm gettin tired o this messin about business.'
"'Beg pardon, my lord,' says I, 'but what are we to ave for our trouble, when we ave took it?'
"'Why,' says he, very pleasant, 'if you're good, Friend George, when the job's done, per-raps,' says he, 'per-raps I'll give you a lift back to France in my lugger layin on the beach there.'
"'Ourlugger, sure-ly, my lord,' says I.
"'No, my friend,' says he, 'it was the late lamented Diamond's. Now it's our noble Emperor's, Gorblessim!—a derelict picked up on the igh seas by one of His Majesty's frigates.'"
The treble ceased.
"Pretty position for the genelmen o the Gap Gang, ain't it?" came the black and bitter voice. "Shot takin the place, or hung if you don't."
"Ah," came the treble again, "it wouldn't take me long to do somethin to him. See. Sow!"
"Only you'd ave to get somebury to old is ands first," grumbled Red Beard.
"Scream!" said the fat man, unheeding. "I'd make his soul talk."
The brutal Toadie rumbled off into laughter.
Brutes!
But—they knew nothing of the man-hole they were clustered round.
The boy's heart soared.
He passed on, as quiet as a mole.
Burrowing beneath the lowest hell, he had heard the voices of those in torment within hand's touch of him.
Now heaven opened its far door. He crawled towards the light. It was no longer a star; it was an eye, the eye of a soul, the Soul of Souls. And it was loving him.
The boy crawled on.
The great earth, warm and dark about him, gave him strength. She was a friendly great beast, breathing and blowing all round him. He could hear her, and feel her. On Beachy Head he had been a fly crawling on her hide; now he was the same fly swallowed. He was creeping along her gullet towards her mouth. Motherly old thing, she covered him well, and he was grateful to her. That good thick flesh of hers stood between him and that which he did not care to contemplate. As he crawled he kicked her in the ribs to show he recognized that she meant well.
The light was growing on him now. The wind blew on his damp forehead.He could see the round of sky, blue against the black arch of brick.
Warily he peeped through the screen of tamarisk that veiled the opening.
The creek lay a few feet below. Across it, the smooth side of the Wish flowed upward.
A sentinel crowned the little hill, but his face was seaward.
Otherwise the coast was clear.
No!
On the slope of the Wish, facing him, a man was lying.
The man was lying on his back half-way up the slope, reading a little brown book.
Kit could not see his face; but he had no need.
Well he knew those buck-skin breeches, those mud-spattered tops, those tall knees.
"Who's that bloke?" whispered a voice at his ear.
"The officer commanding the French. Hush!"
"Crikey!" whispered Knapp, much impressed, and peering through the tamarisk. "Ain't he got a pair o legs on him neether?"
Before Kit could stop him, he had brushed past and dropped into the creek, light as a feather.
For a moment he squatted there, monkey-fashion, blinking after the darkness.
The sun shone on his naked back, ridged and rippling. A little man, he was solid as a boulder: thighs tremendous, shin-bones great and bowed. Such fists too! such feet!
Kit leaned out. For better or worse, the thing was done now. No good calling him back, no good cursing him. Better make the best of it.
"You've got a clear run," whispered the boy. "Hug the far bank, so the sentry on the Wish can't see you; stick to the creek as far as you can; and when you leave the shore, take a wide sweep towards the Downs, to avoid their sentries; and thenrun, man!—runas you never ran before!"
"I'll run, man, run fast enough soon as you done talkin," replied the Cockney cheekily, hopping across the creek to the shelter of the far bank. "Be in Lewes afore you're back to the guv'nor, I'll lay. Ta-ta."
He was away down the creek, running like a monkey, finger-tips touching the ground.
Kit, thankful to tears, watched the sun on the man's ridged back, as he stole away.
Surely, he was through now.
A sound made him look up.
The Gentleman had not stirred. He was reading aloud, and loving what he read.
"Little lamb, who made thee?Dost thou know who made thee?"
Heaven send Knapp had not heard; but he had.
Up bobbed the black shaven pate out of the creek, much as Kit had often seen the head of a coot bob up in one of the moorland tarns of his own Northumberland.
The little man stood listening, the sun on his shoulders, careless of discovery.
The voice on the hill, loving and laughing, drew him like a syren's.
Was the man mad?
He was climbing up out of the creek on to the grass.
Kit swept the tamarisk aside, and waved at him furiously. The little man soothed him with mocking hand, and crept on.
Kit dared not shout; he could not catch the other. What could he do?Watch and pray, with sickening heart.
"Little lamb, I'll tell thee,Little lamb, I'll tell thee:He is called by thy name."
Beautiful as it was, the boy could not listen. His soul was in his eyes, and his eyes on Knapp.
The little man was now behind the reader, and stalking him on hands and knees.
What on earth was he up to?
A horrible thought wrenched the boy's heart.
Would Knapp stab the other as he lay?
If so, could he stand by and see that little baboon-thing with the hairy bosom and leg-of-mutton fists murder in cold blood a noble gentleman to whom he owed his life?
Then he remembered thankfully that Knapp had no weapons.
"Little Lamb, God bless thee!Little Lamb, God bless thee!"
Knapp had stopped now, and seemed bending over the other. Then he deliberately thrust his hand into the face beneath him.
The Gentleman sat up, snatching for his sword.
"Tweak his conk!" popped a Cockney voice—"the conk of a lord!" And he was up and away, and down the slope with the merriest spurt of laughter.
The Gentleman was on his feet in a second, pursuing, a smear of blood at his nose.
Knapp heard him.
"Chise me!" he called, and came swinging down the slope at his ease, a smug grin on his face.
He was the fastest man but one South of Thames that day, and how was he to know that one was after him?
If he was not aware of it, Kit, watching with all his eyes, was.
The Gentleman was hounding at the other's heels, swift, silent, terrible.
"Run!" screamed the boy.
The rifleman glanced over his shoulder.
"God A'mighty!" he yelled. "E's catchin me."
The light went out of his face. Fists and knees woke to sudden life and began to hammer furiously. The long easy swing became a terrific pitter-patter. Flinging back his head, he set himself to run the race of his life.
Knapp was naked, and trained to a tick.
The Gentleman was the faster, and the slope helped his long legs; but he was booted and spurred.
Kit watched the smooth swoop of the one, and the terrific bob-a-bob- bob of the other. He was reminded of an eagle he had once seen stooping at a rabbit on the Cheviots.
Each was running for his all, and each knew it; but the Gentleman was having the best of it.
Knapp, running with his head as well as with his heels, was making straight for the creek.
On the flat, among the boulders, he, naked-nimble, would be on better terms with the booted Gentleman.
But—he would never get there. Kit saw it at a glance.
Down the hill he came with pounding fists, and great knees going. His head was flung back, his face screwed tight.
He had the lion's heart, this naughty little man. Death, swift and terrible, cast the shadow of its wings over him. He could not see it, but he could feel it overhead, swooping, swooping. He would not look back. His mistake made, he would do his desperate best to retrieve it. At least he would show the world how a Borderer can die.