Behind him the Gentleman, the wind in his hair, was feeling for his throat.
Another moment and that hub-bub of beating heart and running legs would stop for ever—skewered.
Kit could not bear it. Casting disguise aside, he leapt into the creek, and snatched a pebble.
"Chuck!" screamed the rifleman, and jinked like a hare.
Kit saw the gleam of a white waistcoat, and flung with all his might.
The pebble sped true as that which slew Goliath.
It took effect between the fourth and fifth button. Down went the Gentleman with a windy groan, as though the soul was being sucked out of his body.
Knapp, the pressure relieved, was his Cockney self again in a second. He swung on at a leisurely trot with the flick of heel, and swagger of elbow, peculiar to the crack taking his ease.
"Thank-ye!" he called, pert and patronising. "Lucky shot!"
"Run, fool, run!" yelled Kit. "The sentry!"
On the crest of the hill, against the sky-line, the sentry was kneeling as he took aim.
"What!—eh!—oh!—im?—blime!" and Knapp buckled to again in earnest.
The sentinel fired.
It was a long shot; but the man was a Grenadier of the Guard, and picked at that.
Up went Knapp's arms, and down into the creek he stumbled, there to fall on his face. Up again to run a little further; down once more; turned head over heels; up again and out of sight.
Kit's heart rose and fell with the little man.
What to make of it?—was he hard hit?—or was he at his eternal fooling once more?
He had no time for further questions. He must see to his own line of retreat.
The Gentleman was winded, and nothing more. The opening of the drain was discovered. No matter. It had done its work, or would have when once it had seen him home.
He clambered up the bank, brushed through the tamarisk, back into the comfortable darkness.
Thank heaven! Blob, the faithful, was still there.
He marked the cheerful gleam of the lantern, a tiny red spark in the darkness.
As he shuffled rapidly along he saw the patch of light on the floor beneath the man-hole.
But—was he mistaken?—or was not that patch, dim and dappled before, bright now as the moon?
He stopped. His heart was thumping so that he almost expected the covering drain to crack, and reveal him to the world.
Suddenly the patch vanished. All was darkness save the red eye ofBlob's lantern far away.
Then that too went out.
The blackness was stifling, horrible. He opened his mouth to draw breath.
Then the light at the man-hole appeared again, shining now no longer on the floor, but on a man's head, bristling, and with huge ears.
Some one was squatting in the drain.
His heart that had been racing brought up bump.
"Any one there, Toadie?" came a voice through the man-hole.
"Only the boy," rumbled the man in the drain.
The words woke Kit to his position. With a ghastly effort he confirmed his mind and faced the situation.
There was one thing for it—to make for the opening, and trust his heels.
Better to be shot down in the open, anyway, than killed in the drain like a rabbit.
He turned round.
As he did so, a hand appeared at the opening, and swept back the tamarisk. A smiling face showed at the mouth of the drain.
"Tiger, Tiger, burning brightIn the forest of the night,"
came the voice of a playful ogre. "Did you ever hear of a man called Blake, Little Chap? One of God's own."
As he said it, a door slammed violently; a great gust of wind rushed past the boy down the drain.
Blob, the faithful, had obeyed his orders.
The boy was alone in Hell, and the Devil was stalking him.
Kit turned round.
Under the man-hole squatted old Toadie. The light bathed his hunched shoulders, his receding forehead, his projecting teeth.
The horror of it, the darkness, here in the bowels of the earth, hidden from sun and wind and light of heaven, undid the boy.
He tried to scream and could not. He battered madly at the bricks, caging him like an iron destiny, and only hurt his hands.
Surely, surely God would hear him!
Toadie began to hop towards him—hop—hop—hop.
The boy was breathing stertorously through his nose, almost snorting. The saliva was dribbling down his chin. He sank in a heap against the bricks and said,
"Hullo!"
"Ello!"came a deep voice."Feel sick?"
"I don't know," giggled the boy, crouching limp on the brick-floor.
He knew now what those rabbits he and Gwen had ferreted with glee felt, old Yellow Jack worming down the burrow after them.
Yes: it was nicer to ferret than to be ferreted.
Nicest of all perhaps to be the ferret and suck blood, suck blood, suck blood, glued between the eyes of your victim.
Again the boy giggled.
The horror was passing. It was only a nightmare now, too terrible to be true, and a familiar nightmare. To be hemmed in thus in darkness, an ogre creeping in upon him, he just a throbbing heart and breathing nostrils…. Often before … in life, in death, in dreams…. He didn't know, and didn't greatly care…. Time to wake soon…. Mother or old Nan would knock in a minute…. This sort of dream always ended in that knock.
He beckoned to the hopping toad, smiling. They might just as well be friends. Mother's knock would disturb them soon enough.
A noise roused him from his waking death.
It was the shuffling of feet.
Old Toadie heard it too, and snarled across his shoulder.
"Who the hell's that?"
In the darkness there was a falling flash.
It was Blob; Blob, the brave, who had fulfilled his orders and more. Loyal to his brother-boy, he had slammed the door as bidden, and, himself, the wrong side of it, had come to Kit's assistance.
After all he was a boy, and was not the young gentleman a boy?—and is not all the world against boys?—Boys that must hold together, or they will surely all be lost. Kit heard and lived anew.
Before him in the darkness was a muffled tumult. Out of it came Blob's plaintive squeak,
"Give over squeegin"
And the bass reply,
_"I'll squeege your eart out !"
"Hullo! hullo! hullo!—what's forrad there?"_ came the Gentleman's echoing voice, as he crept towards them.
Kit scuffled down the drain, and tripped over a tumbling mass. It writhed; it stank; it was hot; it had two voices that growled and squeaked.
"Well done, Blob!" he panted. "Which is you?"
"Oi'm me,"came a smothered treble from the heart of the tumble.
The boy's hand felt a shirt, warm and wet.
"Is that you?" prodding with his dirk.
"G-r-r, you young—"
Kit slid the dirk home. He was surprised to find how smoothly the steel ran in. It was not hard, then, to kill a man, and it was strangely pleasing.
The man shivered and relaxed.
"Is that old Toadie you've got there?"called the Gentleman, crawling leisurely along.
"It was."
"What you doing to him?"
"Killing him."
"Ah, well,"said the Gentleman,"I never cared much for old. Toadie. We weren't simpatico. If you care to wait a minute I'll—"
"Can't," gasped Kit. "No time. Now, boy, hurry!"
Blob crawled out from beneath the dead man.
"Anudder pennorth for Blo-ub!" he gurgled, and added jealously, one hand on the corpse, "He's moine. Oi killed un first."
"Never mind about that! This way."
There was one chance and one only. The door blocked one end; the Gentleman the other; the only exit was the man-hole. They must risk it.
"Here, Blob!—up here!—quick now!—give us a leg!"
Blob gave him a heave. Up he went into the light, like a cork from a bottle. Staying himself on his elbows, he hung, half in the hole, half out of it, the light dazzling him.
A roar of laughter smote him in the heart.
Blinking, he looked about him.
Above waved the sycamores, breeze-stirred and dark, and walling him round, the Gap Gang.
Kit's first thought was to drop.
Two soft arms seized him from behind; a sickening breath was on his cheek; a smooth face pressed his; and a fawning treble was saying in his ear with appalling tenderness,
"Let ole George elp you, Lovey."
The Parson stamped up and down the loft, gnawing his thumb.
Those long shots from the rear had ceased half an hour ago. A tall Grenadier drooped across the wall. How should he have known there was one in the cottage could reach out a fatal finger and tap him on the forehead at two hundred yards?
The Parson's jolly face was haggard.
Now and then he peered out of the seaward window, listening. On the knoll all was still. He could see nothing, could hear nothing. Blue Knickers had withdrawn; he could mark no prowling figures. Only among the tree-trunks a pale wisp of smoke meandered upwards, telling of a camp-fire behind.
About him was the drowsy buzz-z-z of an August noon. A cabbage butterfly sailed by. The creature's insufferable airs annoyed him. The fate of Nelson, the life of a noble lad, these were nothing to it, curse it for its callousness!
The minutes passed. The silence was so oppressive that he could hear it. It stifled him.
What an age the boy was! Good heavens!—he could have got to the mouth of the drain and back half-a-hundred times by now! What was the delay?—Things must have gone awry! Yet how could they?—It was always the way! There was no trusting any living soul but yourself! Why the devil couldn't he be in two places at once?—It wasdamnable!
He pulled himself together with a jerk.
Here he was becoming unjust, irritable, womanish; everything he had always most despised in a man of action.
A shout came to him from seaward.
A shot followed.
The perspiration started to his forehead. He ran to the ladder-head.
In the dimness below he could see the old foretop-man sitting alert beside the black square of the open trap.
Piper was stooping forward, one great hand curved at his ear, listening intently.
"Piper!"
"Sir."
"All well below there?"
"Well, sir, I'm not justly sure. A minute back I seemed to feel like a gush o wind—"
"Then hail the boy, man!"
"Boy Hoad! below there!" in stentorian tones.
The only answer was a rush of air through the open trap, and the muffled slam of a door, house-shaking.
The Parson ran down into the cellar.
Blob's lantern glimmered on the floor, but there was no Blob.
He felt the door, cold to his hands as a corpse. It was shut fast as death. The catch had snapped; but the bolts were not home.
His first impulse was to open; his second to refrain. A man with a musket anywhere in the drain could not miss him. And he once down, the door open, all was over!—the cottage stormed, the despatches taken, old man Piper slain, and Nelson lost.
His ear against the clammy iron, he listened. Yes; outside the door he could detect the sound of faint breathing.
A distance away, he could hear the scuffling of feet.
He saw it all. They had shot Blob, who lay without, breathing his last. The door, left unguarded, had slammed, and they were nabbing Kit and Knapp in the drain.
His hand was upon the catch once more. Should he go?—dared he stay?
His spirit wrought within him.
Strong man though he was, he was whimpering in the darkness.
To slink behind that iron door was eternal shame; to go was inevitable ruin. Could he save his own old skin at the cost of that boy's? And yet he could not get away from the remorseless fact that to save his own skin might be to save his country.
His agony was short but terrible. The patriot prevailed over the man. The discipline of twenty years' soldiering had taught him life's hardest lesson—to sacrifice his feelings to his duty. He made his choice, and chose the path that has always seemed best to Englishmen in such case.
He slammed the bolts home.
He was up the ramp in a moment, and had banged the trap-door behind him.
Old Piper turned from the loop-hole.
"Seems there's summat up yonder behind the trees, sir. I yeard—Ah! what'll that be?"
From behind the knoll came a sudden holloa, then an uproarious burst of laughter.
"They've got em, by God!" The old man swung his chair about with lion- like eyes. "By your leave, sir, you must go to them lads."
The Parson was tearing off coat and cravat.
"I'm going…. I'll slip out of the dormer-window so as to leave the door shut."
He sped up the ladder, and down again in a twinkling.
"Here are the despatches! If I go down, it'll take em ten minutes to rush the place and give you time to burn the papers. Here are my pistols! one for the first Frenchman, and t'other—well, you're a better man than I am, Piper, you know what's right, but—"
"I'll trust my Maker before the Gap Gang," said the old man. "He'll understand…. Good-bye, sir. God help you."
"He will," cried the Parson. "It's His battle. Good-bye, Piper. I'm cut to the heart to leave you. But—"
He was up the ladder and out of the window in a moment, stealing across the greensward, Polly in one hand, and Knapp's bugle in the other.
No spatter of fire greeted him from the knoll; no flitting figures retreated before him. All was peace, and the fair breeze ruffling the sycamores.
The Gap Gang were at some bloody business behind the trees.
Kit's life stopped short.
"That's one on em. Where's t'other?" growled Beardie.
"Oi'm here," said Blob, and thrust up, pink and impassive, in his cheek an obvious slice of apple.
"That's right," said Fat George in sleek, caressing voice. "Give the genelman your and, my dear. He'll elp you out. There you are! There's no call foryouto be scared.You'reamong old friends."
The Gang had gathered round the hole.
Beardie on his hands and knees was peering down into the drain.
Then he threw up his head with a savage roar.
"My God! they've done old Toadie."
He burst through the crowd at the boy, eyes and beard ablaze.
Kit, tight-clutched in Fat George's arms, shut his eyes.
There flashed before his mind a lonely figure, bound and buffeted in the palace of a high-priest eighteen hundred years ago. He saw it, patient among its persecutors, with the eyes of perfect vision, and grew strangely calm and comforted.
These evil men appeared to him in a clearer, a purer light. For one splendid second he was sorry for them.
"Father, forgive them," he prayed, and added aloud, "Good-bye, Blob."
The voice at his ear brought him back from heaven.
"Stidy, Beardie!—You're spiling sport. Ave the Mossoos twigged anything up?"
"Nay," said Dingy Joe. "They're a'ter the naked chap."
"Then we've got this little bit o business all to ourselves, the Genelmen o the Gap Gang ave. Let's take im up among the trees, and gag im first."
Was God in heaven? would He allow it?
As though in answer, close at hand a bugle sounded.
The boy had a vision of a winged figure, sword in hand, swooping wrathfully down upon them.
Surely he knew it—that swoop, that sword, that splendid rage.
It was St. Michael, the Archangel, in the famous picture by GuidoReni, a copy of which hung in the drawing-room at home.
"Remember the crew o the Curlew, men!" roared a mighty voice.
The arms about the boy loosened.
"The sogers!" shrilled Fat George, and bolted with a scream.
The rest followed in cataract rout. They pelted past the lad, bellowing, bleating: a tumult of arms, legs, aweful eyes in aweful faces. Only Beardie had the strength of mind to aim a smashing blow at the boy's head as he fled, and he missed.
"Make for the cottage, boys!" thundered the Parson, storming by. "Oh, Polly, my love and my lady!" and his sword flashed and sang and swept against the sky.
"Grenadiers!" rang an imperious voice from out of the ground.
Kit jumped round.
The Gentleman's head was thrust through the manhole; his eyes sweeping the greensward.
Fighting Fitz had seized the situation in a glance. Could he thrust his Grenadiers between the boys and the cottage, victory was his.
Lifting himself on his hands, his head thrown back, he sent the singing voice that the veterans of the Prussian Guard had heard at Marengo out of the cloud as Kellerman's Green Brigade roared down on them—he sent it swinging over grass and knoll,
"À la maison, mes enfants!"
Kit did not hesitate. Dirk in hand, he leapt at the head flashing in the sun. Here, in the heat and hell of battle, he had no thought of mercy.
The Gentleman heard the patter of his coming, and swept about.
"Sold again, Little Chap!" he laughed, and bobbed underground.
The chance was gone. There was not a second to be lost.
"This way, Blob!" yelled the boy, and dashed up the knoll, making for the cottage.
And it was full time.
As he stormed up the knoll, he heard upon his right the clink of arms, and the sound of a Frenchman shouting.
Down through the sheltering sycamores he plunged, and burst out into the open.
A tall Grenadier, who had been sentry upon the shingle-bank, was racing up on his right across the greensward, screaming as he ran.
His yells were of effect. Half a dozen ragged ruffians bobbed up from behind the broken wall in the rear, and seeing only the boys, made fiercely for them.
It was a race for the cottage; and the door of the cottage was shut.
That dead mask of wood stared at Kit blankly. Had it no eyes? no soul? no understanding? was it not English, heart of oak, its life sucked these centuries from the breast of the same mother? could it notfeelhis agony?
"Piper! Piper! the door's shut!"
"Ay, sir, but it wun't be drackly-minute," came a straining voice from within; and the boy could hear the rending of torn boards, and the splintering of terrific hatchet-work.
The Grenadier with set teeth and blue-black muzzle was launching forward with huge strides.
Kit could hear the rattle of his cartridge-pouch flopping as he ran.
Would the door open? if so, which would reach it first?
"Faster, Blob, faster!"
"Oi'd run faaster, if ma legs would," panted Blob, lumbering behind.
He was doing his best; but he was no match for the fawn-footed gentleman, who led him. Lumps of ghostly clay, inherited from a long line of furrow-following ancestors, clung to his heels, impeding him.
Kit gripped his dirk and ran.
His eyes were on the Grenadier, a black and yellow fellow, with a wart between the brows. That wart held Kit's imagination. It sickened him. It was just his luck to have to deal with a warted man, when he had always loathed warts! But for the wart he felt he could have been heroic.
At the thought the tide of his humour welled within him; and the Grenadier was amazed to see a smile in the eyes of this boy with the long face, ghastly-pale, racing against him.
Taken off his guard, he smiled too.
So each ran towards the other, whom he meant to kill, with smiling eyes.
The cottage door began to open slowly, so slowly.
The boy could see the old foretop-man in the darkened passage. A hatchet was in his mouth; he was handling the door with one hand, and his chair with the other.
So easy for a whole man to open the door, so hard for the disabled seaman!
The Grenadier, hounding with huge strides, was already almost there.
"Man on your left, Piper!" the boy screamed.
"All right, sir!" mumbled the old seaman. "Give me cutlass room—all I ask!"
He put both hands to the wheels of his chair, and spun out into the open, hatchet in mouth.
As he did so, round the corner of the cottage swooped half a dozen yelling cut-throats.
"Take the Frenchman, sir!" roared the old man. "I'll tackle these—"
With a wrench, he slewed his chair, spun the wheels furiously, and shocked into the cloud of them.
The Grenadier launched at his back, bayonet at the charge.
"Coward!" gasped Kit, still five yards away, and flung his dirk.
It stuck in the ground at the man's feet, and tripped him. He plunged forward on hands and knees, and gathered himself as a wave about to break.
As he rose, Kit leapt on him, naked-handed.
The man was hurled through the open door, and brought up against the inner wall with an appalling shock.
For a moment man and boy hugged cheek to cheek.
Kit's legs were round the other's hips, his arms about the other's neck.
"Beast! don't bite!" he gurgled, as the man munched his shoulder; and the image of Gwen, who when hard-driven used her teeth effectively, rose before him.
The image faded. The man had the under-grip, and was squeezing his soul out. Another moment, and his ribs must go.
"Blob!" he choked.
A dark something shot through the door and shocked against theFrenchman.
"Where'll Oi kill him?" asked a voice.
"Where you like," muttered Kit, swooning.
A hand rose and fell.
The man relaxed his grip. Kit could feel him fading and fading away, as the life oozed out of him. He was a-horse on Death.
"Assez," muttered the Frenchman sleepily, swayed and fell.
Dazed and dizzy, Kit staggered to his feet.
A shadow darkened the door; a strange voice cried in horrible triumph:
"Our'n!"
Two pistols lay on the table. Blindly the boy snatched both.
"Now!" he said, as one in a dream, and, shoving a pistol against the man's bare and shaggy bosom, fired.
Blindly he stepped over the fellow's body, and out into the open.
A man, on hands and knees, was crawling away round the corner of the cottage; another lay dead on his face across the way.
Before him he saw a little cloud of men, and the gleam of a silver head thrusting out moon-like from among them.
Blindly he fired into the brown, and blindly followed up.
One man fell; others slunk away, snarling.
The whole thing was over.
Buzzing August prevailed again.
"Are you hurt?" sobbed Kit.
"No, sir, I'm bravely, thank you. Properly shook up, though." The old man was heaving like the sea. "They'd no knives nor nothin, only one on em, and Boy Hoad stuck him as he passed. They hurt emselves more'n me. I bluv I'm a better man above the waist nor ever I were. All the juice like goes to my arms now I've no legs—that's how I reck'n it be."
"We must get in before they come again. Quick!"
"Ah, they won't come again, sir. Easy satisfied, the Gap Gang. Got no guts because they got no God…. Ah, here's Mr. Joy!"
The Parson was coming across the greensward, high and mighty as a turkey-cock.
The Gentleman was standing among the sycamores, laughing.
He waved his hand to the boy.
"Congratulations, Little Chap," he called.
"Don't accept em," snarled the Parson. "Posing impostor!—coxcomb!— cad!"
"What! has he wounded you, sir?" asked old Piper.
"Pinked me in the calf, the coward!" snapped the Parson. "He's not a gentleman. I always knew he wasn't!—Frenchified feller!"
He looked round with grim satisfaction.
"So you've been busy, too. I reckon they're half a dozen short o what they were before the sally. And we've got our man through, too!"
He pointed across the plain.
From the foot of the Downs a string of Grenadiers were coming back at the double.
They had no prisoner.
The door was shut, and all once again darkness in the cottage of the kitchen.
Something slithering along the floor caught Kit's ear.
Then he saw that Blob had by the collar the Grenadier he had killed, and with groanings and pantings and strange animal noises, was hauling his victim towards the dark mouth of the cellar.
"Leave him alone," called Kit sternly. "D'you call that a respectable way to treat the dead?" He laid a piece of sacking over the corpse, adding—"That'll do to cover him up till we can bury him properly."
"But Oi don't want un buried," whined Blob. "Oi be goin to keep un agin the fifth o Novambur—guy for Bloub!"
"You're going to do no such thing, you disgusting little beast. You'll get your tuppence, and you don't deserve that."
"Ah," said Blob cunningly, "this un'll be worth a little better'n tuppence surely. You knaw who he be, Maaster Sir?"
"Who then?"
Blob dropped his voice to a mysterious whisper.
"Squoire Nabowlin. Mus. Poiper tall me."
"Who?"
"Squoire Nabowlin," reiterated the boy. "Nabowlin Bounabaardie—the top Frenchie. See the legs on him! red and gold and buttons and all."
The Gentleman was sauntering across the grass towards the cottage, his hands behind him.
The Parson brushed aside the mattress, and thrust out, snarling.
"Keep your distance, sir, or take the consequences."
The Gentleman strolled forward.
"Ah, there you are, Padre. I came to have a little chat."
"Stand fast then, and state your business!—This is war, not play- acting. I hate your silly swagger."
"Well, in the first place I thought you might care to know that your man's through."
"Thank you for nothing. Knew that already."
"But you know—there's always a little but in this world—hateful word, isn't it?—but, but, but—he's too late."
"What ye mean?"
"I mean that Nelson reached Dover last night, and sails this afternoon. TheMedusa'll be off here at dawn if this breeze holds."
Dover!
The Parson had forgotten Dover. Chatham, the Admiralty, Merton! in his note he had urged Beauchamp to send messengers post-haste to all three; but Dover!
"That's all right," he called calmly. "I've a galloping express half- way there by now, thank ye."
The other shook his head with a grave smile.
"It's sixty miles in a bee-line from Lewes to Dover, and plenty of public-houses on the road. No Englishman could do it under eight hours on a hot day. If your romance-man gets there by midnight, he'll do well—and still be hours too late."
The Parson remained unmoved.
"It makes no odds," he called loftily. "If you want to know, Nelson's not in England."
"Is he not? where is he then?"
"Why, where he ought to be—hammering the Combined Squadron somewhereSt. Vincent way."
"How d'you know?"
"He's my cousin on my father's side. I heard from his mother only— only—"
"By last night's mail!" suggested the Gentleman. "May I ask then why you trouble to send a galloping express to Dover to stop him?"
The Parson's face darkened. He thrust forward.
"And may I ask howyouknow Nelson got to Dover last night?"
The other shrugged.
"I have agents."
The Parson nodded grimly.
"Yes; I've a list of em."
"Yourcountrymen,myfriends"—with a malicious little bow—"the Friends of Freedom."
The Parson leaned out, black as night.
"Friends of Freedom be d——-d!" he thundered—"bloody traitors!"
The other raised a shocked hand.
"Holy Padre! Reverend Father!Virginibus puerisque, if you please."
The Parson turned to find Kit at his elbow.
"I'm only a deacon," he grumbled. And it's only what you French gentry call afashion de polly."
"I am not French—or only on my mother's side," replied the other gently.
"Well, Frenchified then—it's all the same, ain't it?—all that bowin and scrapin and humbuggin business—you know what I mean."
"Yes, yes, I know, my polished friend…. And as to these samecouleur-de-rosegentry I understand your feelings entirely, and for the very good reason that I share them. And I don't mind telling you in confidence that as to the bulk of them your description is not too highly-coloured."
"And ifthey'rethat, what areyou, I'd like to know?" shouted the Parson.
"I am an Irishman. I serve my country—I do not sell her."
"And are all Irishmen traitors?"
A gleam came into the other's eyes. He smiled frostily.
"All who are worthy of the name," he said….
"But to return to our sheep. They have served me, these sanguinary gentlemen, so I can't stand by and see them hanged, when I can save em. And to put it shortly—I want that despatch-bag, please!"
He came forward like a child, hand outstretched, and smiling charmingly.
The Parson flung out a finger and volleyed laughter.
"And he thinks he's going to get it! Ask pretty; don't forget to say please; and he shall have everything he wants, he shall, he shall. There's a lambkin! there's a little lovey!" He leaned out again. "And what you going to give us for it?"
"Why, a free pass-out, with all the honours of war."
"Thank you for nothing. Seems to me I can have a free pass-out whenever I like. I've just free-passed out a man. And I'm only a minute or two back myself from a little stroll with a lady."
The Gentleman sauntered forward.
"I am sorry to be so importunate," he said gravely, "but Imusthave those despatches and I mean to have them."
He stopped.
"The position is this: Nelson ismine." He brought down his right fist on his left. "Nothingcan save him now—nothing. This time to-morrow, so sure as that sun will rise, he will be dead or on the way to Verdun. That has been arranged."
"How?" thundered the Parson. "Howhas it been arranged?"
The Gentleman was pacing to and fro before the window; and his eyes were down.
"It's enough for you to know," he said at last, "that I—I have influence with a lady, who—who has influence with Nelson."
"Whatdoeshe mean?" whispered Kit.
The Parson had turned very white.
He knew that woman, by nature so noble; and he knew something of her history—the history of the shame of man.
"D'you mean to tell meShe'sgoing to sellherNelson to that organ-grinder's monkey from Corsica?" he roared. "Because if you'll tell me that, I'll tell you you're a liar."
The Gentleman still paced before the window.
"I'll tell you nothing of the sort," he said. "She believes herself to be serving her country." He was speaking very slowly, almost mincing his words. "She has—has come into possession of information…."
The man, usually so self-possessed, stuttered and stopped dead.
"And how did she come into possession of that information, I wonder?" asked the Parson, slow and white.
The Gentleman flashed his face up.
"I'll put it in brutal English so that evenyoucan understand.I made a fool of a woman who thought she was making a fool of me."
There was a lengthy silence.
"And they call him the Gentleman!" came the Parson's voice at last— "theGentleman!"
The other had resumed his pacing.
"He sneaks himself into the confidence of a lady," continued theParson quietly. "He conceals his identity—"
Again the other flashed his eyes up.
"I did not!" he shouted, hammering with his hand. "The first words I ever spoke to her in the drawing-room at Merton were to tell her who I was. That night she told Pitt over his port. And Pitt told her—but there!—I needn't go into that…. And when she asked me what brought me to Merton, I answered truthfully—'Love of adventure and the fairest face in Europe.'"
The Parson leaned out.
"I understand you now. You take advantage of that face of yours; you worm yourself into the confidence of a woman, a noble woman; and you—"
The Gentleman blazed appalling eyes up at him.
"Andyouhave not seen my Ireland suffer!"
The Parson quailed before the white blast of the other's anger. It was as though a hail of lightnings had struck him.
"HisIreland! ass!" was the only retort he could think of.
"Nelson then let us put aside," continued the other, cold again. "There remain—you and the despatches. I want the despatches. You want yourselves. Shall we exchange?"
"No, we shan't," snapped the Parson.
"I know your straits," continued the other. "You're short of provisions—"
"Short of provisions!" guffawed the Parson. "Why, step this way, andI'll show you a boy with the bellyache."
"And short of men," the other continued, quite himself again. "What does your garrison consist of?—one holy padre, one half an old sailor, Monsieur Mooncalf, and Little Chap."
"And what's your own lot?" bellowed the Parson—"one dozen of sweepings of France, one dozen of the picked scum of our country, and one conceited young whipper-snapper, who swaggers about in breeches and boots all dayand was never on a horse in his life to my certain knowledge!"
The Gentleman waved his hand.
"Take the consequences then," he said. "A rivederci."
"Take the consequences yourself!" roared the Parson—"you and your river dirties. I'll see your friends hung high as Haman yet."
The other shook his head.
"You won't live to see that, dear man," he said quietly, and turned away.
Kit was in the cellar stripping his belt and cartridge-pouch fromBlob's Grenadier.
As he rose from his knees Piper hailed him.
"Mr. Joy callin you, sir."
The boy ran up the ramp. The old man, handling his musket, was peering through the Northward loop-hole.
"What is it?"
"Summat up yonder, sir."
The boy raced up the ladder.
The Parson was at the dormer looking towards the Downs, shimmering now in the fair evening.
"What's the meaning of this?" he said, pointing.
A great Sussex wain, top-heavy with hay, was drawing out of a farmyard among trees, a quarter of a mile away. A white horse was in the shafts, and a black in the lead. Two Grenadiers were at the head of the black leader, who was giving trouble. Others in shirt-sleeves were mounting to the top of the load.
"Old Gander's wain," said the Parson. "That's old mare Jenny in the shafts, and her three-year-old daughter in the lead. Ha, Miss Blossom!—That's your sort!—Knock em sprawling!—Teach the Mossoos to handle an English lady!"
A tall man ran out of the farmyard, a snow-storm of white-frocked children pursuing him; and even at that distance Parson and boy could hear them screaming laughter. The tall man snatched up one and kissed her. Then he took off his hat with an enormous sweep to the others, and turned.
"Humph! posing rather prettily this time!" muttered the Parson, watching kind-eyed.
On the top of the wain, clear against the sky, a tall figure now rose, and gathered the rope-reins in his hand.
The men at the leader's head jumped aside.
Up she went, sky-high.
The coachman handled her as a mother handles a wilful child. The wind was towards them, and they could hear him singing to her.
"Hum! he can handle the ribands a bit," muttered the Parson, watching intently. "Miss Blossom's never tasted a bit before."
The filly dropped, and flung forward with the shock of a breaking wave.
The slope was with them. The old mare, with snarling head and backward ears, broke into a lumbering trot, snatching at her daughter's tail. The wain began to gather weigh, creaking, jolting, jerking along.
The filly was tearing into her collar; the old mare, swept along by the pursuing wain, broke into a heavy gallop. The Gentleman, holding them hard, was singing to them as they came.
"Mean mischief, sir," called Piper from below.
"Jove, they do!" muttered the Parson, chin forward, and eyes flaming as he watched. "Like a Horse Artillery battery coming into action."
The wain leapt and swung and bounced along like a live thing.
"Ah, I thought so…. Pace too good…. He's dropping his load….Ah!—there goes another!"
A Grenadier was seen to fall with flapping tails, and another, and another; till the track of the thundering wain was strewn with men, who picked themselves up and pursued.
Only the intrepid coachman, his feet set deep, held his place, swaying to the swing of the wain.
The Parson gnawed his lip as he watched.
"What's it all mean, Piper?"
"Don't justly know what to make of it, sir."
"You can't get a line on him?"
"No, sir. He's slewed aside out o my range."
And indeed the Gentleman had swung his team to the left, as though to avoid the old man's fire. They were lurching along at a thundering gallop. It seemed as though the horses were fleeing from the wain.
The Parson was leaning far out of the window to watch.
"Round he comes!"
As he spoke, the Gentleman flung back with all his strength, and wrenched to the right.
Round came the leader; the wheeler, slithering, jerking, almost swept off her legs, as the wain came on top of her. Then the whole came thundering across the greensward at the gable-end of the cottage.
"Ca'ant be going to ram us, sir, surely?" shouted Piper.
The old man could see nothing now, but he could hear the roar of the approaching wain.
"I believe he is!" cried the Parson.
It was the boy's swift mind that first leapt to the Gentleman's plan.
"No, sir!" he screamed. "Don't you see?—He'll bring the waggon alongside at a gallop, jam it against the wall, and then——"
And then! the Parson saw it in a flash:—axemen at work on the door beneath the wain, and stormers through the dormer-window over the top.
"By God, you've got it!"
It must be stopped at all costs.
But how?
The wain was coming at the cottage from the flank. A shot from the left shoulder at an impossible angle at a galloping target—was that their only hope?
The Parson glanced wildly round.
The thunder of the wain and the singing voice of the coachman was in his ears.
An old plank was lying in the loft.
"Plank Caponier!" he yelled, pounced on it, and thrust it out of the window. "Now, Kit!—You're lightest!—There's your musket—loaded!— Blob, sit on this end with me!"
Kit, musket in hand, ran out on the plank.
He was standing on air.
"Steady!" hoarsed the Parson, blue eyes gleaming through the window. "Don't look down! Aim at her chest! Wait till you can see the roll of her eye!"
Kit heard nothing, saw nothing, but a foam-splashed breast, a nodding head, racing knees, and reaching feet.
All the world for him was in that black and shining bosom. It grew upon him as he looked. It was no more a chest. It was a cloud, about to burst on the world. He fired into the heart of it, sure he could not miss.
Up went the filly, fighting the air.
The boy saw her belly, her thighs, and the swish of her tail between her hocks.
Down she came in roaring ruin, the old mare an avalanche of snow burying her.
"In, Kit!" screamed the Parson.
"No, sir!" yelled the boy.
In a blinding light he saw the thing to do, and flashed to do it.
"The lynch-pins!"
Down he jumped, and dirk in hand raced for the tangle of horseflesh, black and white and heaving like an angry sea.
Swift as he was, the Gentleman was swifter.
Before the boy had touched ground, he was down from his perch, slashing at the tackle with his sword. Now he leapt to the mare's head, hurling her back into her breeching.
While Kit was yet twenty yards away, he was up again, standing on the shafts, reins in hand.
"Now, my lady!" came the high singing voice.
The brave old thing answered to it as though to a lover. She flung forward with a sob.
"I'll take the mare and the man!" panted the Parson, racing up behind, his curls almost cracking. "You go for the lynch-pins!"
He swept past, Polly in hand.
"Forgive me, Jenny!" he cried; and thrust home.
A spout of blood seemed to darken the sky, and deluge all. The wain brought up with a dreadful jerk.
"Home, sir, if you can!" shouted Piper from his loop-hole. "Here's theGrannydears!"
"Kit!" bawled the Parson. "Where are you?"
The lad crept out from under the wain.
"Got the lynch-pins?"
"Yes."
"Then come on!"
Under the fore-wheel the Gentleman was lying on his back, with closed eyes.
The boy stopped.
"Are you hurt, sir?"
The other shook a smiling head.
"Only shocked. Jerked off my box. Run, Little Chap, run!—or they'll bottle you."
"Kit, damn you!" stormed the Parson. "Willyou run?"
Across the greensward half a dozen Grenadiers were hurling. The nearest dropped on his knee, and took deliberate aim at the boy.
The loop-hole clouded suddenly.
Out of it Death spoke.
The Grenadier toppled over on to his back with flapping hands. A moment he sat bolt-erect, a foolish-familiar look on his face—Kit somehow expected him to put his tongue out—then collapsed ghastly.
The boy made for the cottage.
Blob, leaning out of the dormer, chewing an apple, watched him with spiteful amusement.
"Say, Maaster Sir," he cried, as he spat and slobbered, "reck'n they'll catch you."
"Shall I unbolt the door, sir?" shouted Piper.
"You do, by God!" roared the wrathful Parson. "They're on our heels, fool!"
"How'll you manage then, sir?"
"Leave that to me, and stick to your shooting!"
A great water-butt stood at the corner, empty now.
The Parson, man of myriad resource, had trundled it beneath the dormer, and turned it upside down in a second.
"Up, boy!"
Kit was on it, and in through the window in a twinkle. The Parson followed.
The leading Grenadier came at him, bayonet at the charge. The Parson put the steel aside with his blade, and met the man fair in the face with his heel.
"Good punch!" he cried cheerily, and kicking the butt away from under him, scrambled into the loft.
He stood awhile both hands on his knees, heaving. Then he looked up, his blue eyes good and grinning.
"Prettiest thing I ever saw in my life!" he panted. "But, you young scaramouch! what the deuce d'you mean by stopping to chatter to that chap?"
"I thought he was hurt," gasped the boy panting against the wall."He's my friend."
"Pistol, please."
The Gentleman was standing beneath the dormer, one hand uplifted.
The Parson looked down at him.
"Well, you're a calm chap," he said with slow delight.
Better than anything in the world he loved a brave man.
"I know my man," replied the other in the same still voice.
He was far away in April twilight-land.
The fine face, gay as the morning a few minutes since, had now a wistful evening look. The shadows had fallen on it: rain was not far.
Even the Parson, blind-eyed Englishman that he was, noticed it, and was touched. After all the man was a boy, and a beaten boy.
"Are you hurt?" he gruffed.
"No—not hurt."
The Parson thought he understood.
"It was the pluckiest attempt I ever saw!" he cried with the generosity of the victor. "That black filly had never known the feel of a collar, till twenty minutes since…. I was to have broken her this autumn."
"She was the least bit awkward at the start," mused the other. "But she handled sweetly all the same."
"We had all the luck," continued the Parson. "But for that plank, you'd have brought it off. It'll be your turn next time!"
The other lifted his face swiftly.
"Ah, no," he cried, "you mistake.That'snothing! It'sthis!"
He pointed.
Fifty yards away the wain lay wrecked on the greensward, the old white mare crumpled in the shafts. She was stone-dead, and her muzzle, with its coarse long hairs, was resting on the quarters of her daughter.
"That's the worst of war," said the Gentleman in that remote voice of his. "Weknow;theydon't."
"I expect it's all fairer than it seems," said the Parson huskily.
The other nodded.
"Have you a pistol?"
The filly was not dead. Lying on her side, she was lifting her head and craning back to gaze at her dead dam.
Something clutched the Parson by the throat. A veil was rent. For a moment he seemed to see the tragedy as the man beneath him saw it—the passion, the pathos of that blind suffering in the cause of another.
"Here!" he said hoarsely, handing down a pistol.
The Gentleman took it, and seeing a pale face peering behind the other's shoulder,
"She's not suffering, I think. Don't look, Little Chap."
He walked back to the filly.
Lying still now, her head along the greensward, she watched him coming; snorting through full-blown nostrils.
He knelt at her head, pulling her ear, and caressing her.
"There, then, there!—It's all over now, little woman. I've come to comfort you."