The Gentleman was walking away into the sunset.
The Parson turned from the dormer, and his eyes were wet.
"And, now, my boy," he cried, "you know what a gentleman is."
The words loosed the fountains of laughter in the lad's heart.
"I thought, sir, that you said—"
"You thought wrong," snapped the Parson. "I said nothing of the sort."
He swung round on Blob and kicked him.
"What fur why?" whimpered Blob.
"Teach you!" cried the Parson. "Want some more, eh? Then behave yourself. I'm sick o your nonsense."
He reached up to the rafter.
"Eat and sleep—that's the whole duty of man just at present. Blob, take Piper his rations, and ask him to forgive an old soldier who's a bit short in the temper in action—and do the same yourself, my boy. Here, Kit."
They snatched a hasty meal.
Outside the dusk was falling.
The Parson brushed the crumbs off his cravat.
"And now will you take first watch, or shall I?"
"I will, sir. I don't feel like sleep."
"Very well. Wake me when the moon dips behind the Downs, or earlier if there's a sign of the soldiers."
Kit took his post at the dormer. The other slipped off his coat.
"I'm not much of a Parson as you may have found out," he muttered, "still I am an Englishman." And he plumped down on his knees defiantly.
His was a very short and simple prayer; the prayer tens of thousands of Englishmen were praying from their hearts at that time.
Kneeling in his shirt, Polly shining before him against the wall, he repeated it most earnestly.
The whispered words, so simple and heart-felt, reached the ears of the boy at the dormer.
"God bless our dear country; and God d—- the French."
The waters of laughter came roaring up the boy's throat, and surged over, irresistible.
The Parson rose from his knees, and scowled at the lad's shaking shoulders.
"I suppose they're too proud to pray inhisService," he sneered. "Pack o pirates!" He took off his coat and folded it with thumps. "Yet I know one sailor who's not above paying his respects to his Maker—and that's Lord Nelson, of whom you may have heard. Seen him myself in the trenches at Calvi. I remember a great buck of a Dragoon Guardsman asking him,
"'Why d'you pray, little man?' 'Why,' says Nelson, simple as a child, 'because mother taught me.' Yes, sir," fiercely, "and that's why I pray—and jolly good reason too."
"Did she teach you that prayer?" asked Kit demurely.
"Bah! blurry young tarry-breeks!" muttered the other; and curling on the floor, his rolled jacket beneath his head, the old campaigner was off to sleep, Polly fair and faithful beside him.
The boy had the house to himself, and the world too. At last he could retire once more upon the Love within him.
He could pray—without words.
The sea was a plain shining beneath the moon. Against the light, inky sycamores ruffled, stars entangled in their leaves. On the shingle- bank the bear-skinn'd sentinel showed black against white waters.
The plain beauty of the night stole upon his mind. All was jewelled silence, save for the jar-r-r of the familiar goat-sucker from the foot of the hills, and the wash of the sea.
How calm it was, how strong, how radiant!
He had been far away. Now he was drawing near again. It was his once more. He possessed it all, all, all, and loved it as his own.
All day he had been the prisoner of his own distraught senses. And how comfortable it was, after the darkness of that life which is death, to resume the large loveliness of Life Unending.
Space and Time had no more meaning for him. He was again eternal and infinite. All this beauty of earth and sky and moon-wan water, it was not outside him, it was himself. He reached out a hand to pluck a handful of stars, and could not—because they were too close. You cannot pluck the jewels of your own heart.
Yet however deep he plunged into Eternity, the ache of Time was still present to his mind, remote indeed, on the farthest shores of memory, but always there, an ache that would not still. He felt the pain of it, and still more the pettiness. To him, sitting at the heart of things, drinking in the great night, they seemed strangely mean and tawdry now, the excitements of the past day.
Let not your heart be troubled, came the voice of the Poet of Truth down the ages.
Was it worthy of a Son of God so to vex himself with the trivialities of this world?
What was war? what victory? what defeat?
True he must do his best for conscience' sake, but God would swing the stars across the heaven whether Napoleon landed or not. He would still march on His great way, though Nelson were lost.
Smiling to himself, the lad was wondering whether to the Maker of those stars, this earth, that sea, the issue of this business might be more than the issue of a squabble between two sparrows would be to him.
He crossed to the northward window.
The Downs surged before him like a wave, dull against the brilliant darkness. Overhead the slow stars trailed by, dipping, one after one, behind the dark curtain of hills. The moon climbed above the sycamores. Out on the plain something sparkled frostily. It was the bayonet of a sentinel, lonely-pacing in the moonlight.
The sight brought the lad back to earth.
How would it all end? Were these few bearskinn'd trespassers only the spray of seas to follow?
In a little while would England be flooded with them? Aghast, he peered seaward: and seemed to behold a black tide of men sweeping across the moon-drift. They deluged England. The fringe of them lapped about his own northern home. A man in a tree was shooting at Gwen running for her life, her hair behind her, screaming, "Kit!"
Something fell on the floor with a sharp tap, and stopped the shriek on the verge of his lips.
What was it?
Another tap. Something was bobbing briskly across the floor. He picked it up. It was a pebble, and must have come through the window.
Cocking his pistol, he rose.
"Down't shoot," said a low voice.
Beneath the window stood the little rifleman, white in the shadow of the house, and grinning up at him.
"How did you get through?"
"Slip through em, sir—h'easy as a h'eel."
"Don't talk so loud," whispered the boy. "Just hop on to the sill of the lower window. I'll see if I can haul you in."
"No, sir. I won't come in. I may be more usefuller outside. Keep em on the Key Whiff as the sayin is."
"Then keep still! don't jig! hug in here in the shadow of the house!I'll call Mr. Joy."
The Parson was at the window in a minute and listening to the man's story.
According to his own account Knapp had done the twelve miles to Lewes under the hour.
"Went slap away, as your orders was, sir, no foolin nor nothin, just slap bang through em—you ask Mr. Caryll."
"Never mind about your feats," said the Parson shortly. "Did you see the Commandant?"
"O yes, sir. Ran straight away through the camp to his tent, where the flag were flyin, never bothered about no sentries nor nothin. Just as I trot up, a little bit of a butterfly lady like bob out o the tent, and when she see me—'Beau, boy!' she squeals. 'Beau, boy! ere's a niked man!Docome and see!' And she jig up and down and tiddle her fingers at me, please as Punch…. Out come ole Whiskers, sword and all. 'You something something!' says he, and knocks her back into the tent. Then he run at me, roarin."
The little man was sniggering.
"I see by his eyes he meant it all, so—
"'Here, sir,' says I, 'somethin for yourself!' and chucks the note in his mug."
The Parson was breathing deep.
"And what then?"
"Why, sir, I'd nothin on me ony the dooks me God give me. So I up andI skip it."
The Parson leaned out, and smote at the man's shaven skull with the butt-end of his pistol.
"Ain't I done right, sir?" squeaked the little man, dodging back.
"You've sold us!" cursed the Parson, and he was white even in the moon.
"Hush, sir! hush!" cried Kit. "For goodness' sake, hush! They'll hear you."
"Hullo! hullo! what's all this?" came a voice from across the sward.
"Excuse me, sir!" whispered Knapp, unabashed. "I'd best be steppin it. Here are your papers, sir." He flung a packet through the window and flashed away.
The Gentleman sat on the wall in the moonlight.
"So your chap's back," he called in his friendly voice.
"Yes, sir," replied the Parson harshly, "and the soldiers on his heels two thousand strong, with a couple of Horse Batteries, and a company of Sappers to rig up a gallows for conceited young coxcombs who pose on walls in the moonlight."
"Very glad to see any friends of yours any time," replied the Gentleman. "But unless they come soon I'm afraid we shall miss. I'm off at dawn. But I'll see you again before going. Good-night."
He sauntered away.
The Parson turned, grinding his teeth.
Then he saw the boy's face, and laid a hand on his shoulder.
"Turn in, boy, and try to get a snooze. What tomorrow brings Heaven knows, but we do know we shall want all our strength to meet it."
The Parson opened his packet.
It contained a batch of newspapers dropped for him daily at Lewes by the coach, and not called for since last Saturday.
Ah, here we are!
The Times, Monday, August l9—that was the day before yesterday.
Lord Nelson is arrived at Portsmouth.
Then the Gentleman was right!
He was here, the man his country had believed barring the passage of the Combined Squadron Vigo way.
Why had the watch-dog left his post?
We may infer from the circumstance of his Lordship's coming home, that information had reached him of the Combined Squadron having got into Ferrol.
He dared say they had. Where was the man should have stopped them?
The Times, August 20.
Lord Nelson arrived at his seat at Merton in Surrey yesterday….
O, the Gentleman! the Gentleman! It was all true then!…
and will most probably attend at the Admiralty this day.
Probably attend!
And this was Nelson! his Nelson!
_Victory, Spithead, August 18, 1805.
The Victory, with the fleet under my command, left Gibraltar twenty- seven days ago….
Nelson and Bronté_.
That's right. Do the thing thoroughly if you're going to do it at all. Come home yourself, and bring your fleet with you. It might get in the way of the Combined Squadron if it stopped off Cadiz. Pity to be rude, you know!
As soon as Lord Nelson's flag was descried at Spithead, the ramparts, and every place which could command a view of the entrance of the harbour, were crowded with spectators. As he approached the shore, he was saluted with loud and reiterated huzzas, as enthusiastic and sincere as if he had returned crowned with a third great naval victory.
That third great victory, where was it now?
Poor little chap! poor little Nelson!
And what was this? TheMoniteur,Paris,August 12. Boo-woo-woo…. Bob Calder's battle. [Footnote: Sir Robert Calder had fought an indecisive action with Villeneuve in July.] Bob Calder ought to be shot. Had em and then wouldn't hammer em. Call emselves sailors!
Vice-Admiral Calder stood off with thirteen ships, and left the Combined Squadron masters of the sea.
Masters of the Sea!
O good God! good God!
And what was Nelson doing?
The sudden arrival of Lord Nelson in the Metropolis, after so long an absence, and such arduous service, is a circumstance peculiarly interesting to the inhabitants, who were yesterday waiting in thousands about the Admiralty to give him a truly British reception. Many, of course, were disappointed in their object, and can only wait for another opportunity; but that, we have reason to believe, will occur this evening, as it is reported in the Naval circles, that his Lordship intends to pay a visit to Vauxhall Gardens, in honour of the birthday of the Duke of Clarence. The report is, in many points of view, entitled to consideration, for there is no other Gala in the season which affords such an infinite degree of nautical attraction.
Gala with a big G!
No other Gala in the season which affords such an infinite degree of nautical attraction.
Poor England! poor Nelson!
Kit awoke with a start.
The dormer made a patch of diamond light in the dead of the wall, and the chill of dawn sharpened the air.
Blob was bending over him.
"Nelson's a-comin," he announced, much as he might have said breakfast was in.
Kit looked up into the round pink face, fresh as a daisy, and dewy- eyed above him.
"No!" he cried, and started to his elbow.
"He is though, lad," said the Parson at the window, very quiet.
Kit was beside him in a minute.
The mattress was down, and the Parson, leaning out into the blue, both hands on the sill, munched his thoughts.
"There's his tops'ls," said he, nodding east to where far across the waters a glimmer as of an iceberg hung in the dawn. "Take the glass and have a peep at her."
Mists still swathed the waters. Through them the sun peered ghostly, twinkling on the intripping tide beyond the shingle-bank.
And—there again! far away, poised between sky and sea, that glimmer of pearls.
It was some tall ship standing across the bay, the sun making glory on her royals.
"Make her out?"
"Yes, sir. She's a frigate right enough—can't be anything else with that height of canvas."
For in those dark days there was little business on the narrow seas other than the business of war. For weeks together the Channel waters were virgin of merchant-men. Trading bottoms dared not venture. Majestic three-deckers and tall frigates paced the seas alone. Anon a privateer swooped. Then a black smuggler scuttled from shore to shore between twilights. Rarely a vast convoy, herded like sheep, drove by, the dogs of war barking at the laggards. For the rest naked waters, ship-forsaken.
"It's theMedusa" said the Parson deliberately. "How soon'll she be off here, think you, sailor-boy?"
"I hardly know, sir. With this breeze I should think she might be abreast of us in two hours, and round the Head in four."
"And into the trap in five," mused the Parson.
"And Nelson bandaged, his back to the wall, facing a French firing party—all at about six o'clock of a sweet summer evening, August 22nd, the year of Our Lord, 1805."
He began to whistle meditatively.
The fine head, a-ripple with curls, was outlined against the sky. The face was keener than a few days back; the jolly laughing look was there no more. The blue eyes were touched to steel; and nose and jowl thrust forth with ominous grimness. It was the face of the determined fighter, hard-set and terrible.
He leaned out into the morning, whistling quietly, as fair a mark as any sharp-shooter on the knoll might wish, so Kit suddenly recalled, and plucked at him.
The other's arm was iron against him. The Parson made no move, seeming neither to feel, nor understand. A man of marble, he dwelt in the mind; brooding on that glimmer of pearls in the east.
Yet after a minute, as though the message had taken just that time to reach his remote brain, he answered the boy's thought.
"That's all right, Kit," he said, deliberate as in a dream. "TheGentleman has changed his dispositions. He's withdrawn from the knoll.Where the Gang are I don't know, but he has got the main of hisGrenadiers on the landside still."
Kit peeped out of the Downs-ward window.
The old picquet on the plain, the old cordon of pacing Grenadiers, the old camp-fire with the drifting smoke and arms piled beside it; and further North, from beneath a thorn, the flash of a bayonet told of an outlying sentry posted there to watch for the relieving force no doubt.
Sick at heart, the lad turned and looked out over the Parson's shoulder.
On his right front humped the knoll, an islet set in a sea of turf, now only tenanted by dark sycamores, ruffling it in the dawn-wind.
Beneath him the greensward ran away to the shingle-bank. Beyond the crest of it, the mast of the lugger pricked up black against the sparkling water.
There was neither stir nor sound, save for the ripple of the tide, and overhead the eternal chirp of the sparrows, careless that history was being made about them.
All was still, all deserted.
As he looked, the lad's mind flamed to a thought.
"I say!" he whispered, clutching the Parson's arm. "What about the lugger?"
"Well! what about the lugger?"
"Rush her now! Here's our chance!"
The Parson turned calm eyes upon the other's splendid ones.
"Aye, lad, aye," he said, with the crushing calm a man wields so mightily. "But give the Gentleman his due, he's not quite such a fool as you'd make him out. He knows our aim as well as he knows his own. We've got to get to Nelson. There's only one way left—the lugger. If he's left that way open it's as plain as the nose on your face it's because he wants us to take it."
Ugh, these men! the boy worshipped the man's courage and scorned his caution. He throbbed for the relief of action. Only let him be doing! anything, anything in the world was better than standing here to watch Nelson sweep doom-wards.
"And suppose," he flashed, "suppose the Gentleman makes away in his lugger now! what shall we do? Twiddle our thumbs and whistle, till the soldiers come, I suppose! And then," with the crude irony of fifteen, "then perhaps, if we're very brave, and the Gentleman has gotwellaway to sea, we'll take a little stroll with a strong escort to the top of Beachy Head to see Nelson strung up to his own yard-arm!"
The boy's fiery insults left the other cold.
"You're young, my boy, offensively young," he said. "A bad fault, but one you may hope to grow out of. One thing I'm sure of. You do your friend a great injustice. He won't leave that despatch-bag in our hands till he's forced to at the point of the steel."
"But what can wedo?" blazed the boy—"do, do, do! There's Nelson!" with flashing forefinger. "Here are we. He won't come to us. Wemustget to him. There's only one way—the lugger. It may be a poor chance, still if it's the only one! O, sir, sir! surely it's better to die attempting something, than stand androtto death here!"
The words poured forth in a white-hot torrent, shaking him.
Anybody in the world but the practical Englishman would have been moved.
He only grunted.
"I wish I knew what was going on behind that shingle-bank," he grumbled, half to himself.
The boy's soul quenched, only to flame forth again.
"I'll be your eyes, sir!"
The Parson shook a dubious head.
"Oh let me! O do! sir! sir!"
He was hopping, trembling at the other's side.
The Parson with his slow and chewing mind was digesting the situation.
Beneath his calm, he was mad to know what was going on behind the shingle-bank. If he went himself, who would be left in garrison?—the old story.
Yet if he sent Kit?
Twice already he had let the boy go forth alone, and each time had barely plucked him from the jaws of death. Could he send him forth a third time to face what God should send?
Could he?
He locked his jaws.
Duty, duty, duty! a hard mistress for those who serve her, but the only one for an Englishman.
His mind made up, true man that he was, he wasted no time in excusing himself to himself or to others.
Somewhat grey about the jaws, he swung about.
"Very well," shortly. "Just a peep—no more, mind!"
The boy slid down the ladder into the gloom of the kitchen.
There was no familiar silver head at its wonted place of watch by the loop-hole.
"Piper!"
"Sir!"
The old foretop-man was sitting beside the trapdoor, peering down into the blackness of the cellar, and listening intently.
"That you, Master Kit? Would you step this way, sir? There keeps on a kind of a rumbling like in the drain—a'most as though the gentlemen be running a cargo. I ca'ant justly make it out."
The boy came to his side and listened. True, there was a muffled noise of rolling in the drain, and dull banging against the door. Well, they might bang till they were blue: they would make as much impression on that door as the breeze on Beachy Head.
The old man looked up and saw the lad beside him in shirt-sleeves.
"Hullo, sir! what's forrad then?"
"I'm going to take a little trot over to the shingle-bank to have a look round," said the boy, shivering. "I want you to stand by the door to let me out and in."
The old man rolled up his sleeves, snatched his cutlass from the corner, whetted it with the easy grace of a bird whetting its beak, and spat on his hands.
"Then it's stand by to repel boarders! Rithe away, sir, when you are."
The Parson peered down.
"All's quiet," he whispered. "Ready, Kit?"
"Yes, sir."
The boy stood up pale in the gloom.
"Then ease those bolts away. Gently, Piper!"
The old man opened quietly.
A sweet wind stole in, and with it a flood of light.
Kit peeped out.
How naked it looked, how terrible!
"One moment."
He bent, untied his shoe-lace, and tied it up again.
Upstairs it had seemed such an easy thing to dare this deed, so full of the poetry and romance of war. Down here, face to face with the bare fact, it was a different matter. A plank, as it were, had been thrust out from solid earth over Eternity; it was his to walk that plank; and he didn't like the job.
Piper held the door, waiting respectfully. The old man's sleeves were rolled to the arm-pit. On one hairy fore-arm a dancing-girl was tattooed, record of the days, now forty years since, before, in his own simple phrase, he had larned Christ.
He knew no fear himself: for he knew that he was impregnable. But his heart went out to this slip of a lad, who had to face Eternity alone, and found it terrible.
The twilight of love, always in all faces the same, which comes when at a call the Christ rises from the deeps of the heart, darkened his eyes.
He gave a shy little cough.
"There's one bower-anchor'll weather any storm, by your leave, sir," he said, the sailor and the Christian quaintly commingled.
The boy felt the other's strength flow into his.
"I know," he panted, and plunged.
As he ran he seemed to himself to be a body of lead borne on watery dream-legs.
In the sally of yesterday at least he had Knapp with him. Now he was alone. And to dare alone is to be revealed to yourself, naked as you are.
A visible danger would have strengthened him. It was the horror of he- knew-not-what coming from he-knew-not-where that made his heart hammer.
The boy's body screamed to go back. His will thrust it forward. The shock and struggle of the two charged him as with electricity. A touch, he felt, and he might go off in a flash of lightning.
As he held on, and nothing happened, mind began to ride body more masterfully. The flesh, beaten, gave and gave; till in despair, abandoning its backward pull, it threw forward into the work.
What was death? was it what the parsons seemed to think—a foreign land, millions of miles away, with an old man in a temper waiting somewhere in the middle to be nasty to him?
Heaven and earth, this world and the next! Were there indeed two? a great gulf between them. Or were both one and everlasting? Was he, believing himself in Time, dwelling in Eternity now? Was he immortal now?
His heart answered,Now or never.
What then to fear?
The thought whirled him forward.
The grass felt goodly beneath his feet. The sun, still pale in mist, blessed him. A fresh wind flowed about him, flustering hair and shirt. His heart eased.
After all his rear was fairly safe, and his flank unthreatened. As to his front—well, he had his eyes and his dirk.
Gripping himself together, every hair alert, he ran.
He was nearly across the sward now. Tall grass-blades pricked sparsely through the sand. The shingle-bank, roan against the sparkle of the sea, surged before him, and behind it—what?
He was living in his eyes.
The knoll lay now to his right rear. Behind it, across the creek, rose the Wish; and on the crest a Grenadier gazing seawards.
Opposite the little hill, standing on the bank somewhere just above the entrance to the sluice, stood the Gentleman.
Kit dropped to his hands and knees.
The other had not seen him: for he was standing, back turned, and a short black-snouted pistol in the hand behind him; directing operations in the creek.
What did it all mean? what was that banging and business in the creek?
It was to find this out that he had come.
A sound close at hand drew his mind to his ears.
The crest of the shingle-bank was some twenty yards away. From the reverse slope came the crunch and scream of disturbed pebbles.
Somebody was scrambling up the bank towards him, the pebbles pouring noisily away beneath his feet.
What to do?—turn and bolt? He could be back across the grass before the slow-foot Frenchman had sworn himself to the crest. Lie there out in the open, to be made prisoner, or potted at thirty yards?
No, no, no! To retreat was shame: to stay death. But one course remained—the riskiest, which, as he had heard the Parson say, in a tight place is often the safest. That course was forward. Take the man unawares as he crested the rise; dirk him; one swift glimpse at the lugger and the doings in the creek; and then pelting home before the enemy had realised the situation and begun to shout.
"François! François!" came an irritable voice.
The climber stopped.
"Qu'as-tu donc, mon Caporal?"
"Nom d'un chien!" snapped the other. "Faut il me faire matelot? Aidez moi un peu avec ces satanées cordes!"
The climber slithered down on his heels, a cataract of shingle streaming behind him.
Swift to seize his chance, Kit rushed the crest, the crash of theFrenchman's retreat drowning his approach.
There, flat on his face, he peeped.
Beneath him, on the run of the shingle, lay the lugger. Her jib was flapping; the mainsail set for the hoisting; every stick and stay in place. Half a dozen burly Grenadiers, black-muzzled with a week's beard, were busy about her, stowing their kits, laughing and chattering.
A sprightly little Corporal, balancing on the stern, was spitting forth orders.
The foreign language, there on his native shore, made a discord in the boy's heart.
"Quand partirons-nous?" asked François, wading down the shingle, pack on back.
"Aussitôt que tout sera prêt la-bas," answered the corporal, casting a glance over his shoulder. "Bah! ces gueux d'Anglais! Monsieur le Général en a par dessus les yeux."
Kit followed the man's eyes.
A track of feet led from the lugger to the creek across the wet sand. Along it a tail of smugglers were trundling barrels gingerly. At the entrance to the sluice others were hoisting and heaving. Above them stood that slight figure against the sky-line, the ominous pistol lurking behind him.
And it was clear the ruffians were smouldering to mutiny. Their heads were over their shoulders as they worked, and their eyes on the lugger. The soldiers were coming! they felt the halter tightening round their necks; and they were mad to be away.
Only one man in the world could have held them there at all, Kit felt, and he had all his work cut out. That slight figure against the sky- line, so calm, so terrible, seemed compact of power.
Kit had seen his friend in many moods; now he saw him in another. And the boy thought he loved him in this last rôle best, because in it he feared him most. This was not the man of poetry, charming as April, gay-hearted as a boy; this was the remorseless leader, iron for his cause, brutal, if you will, as a man who deals with brutes must be.
There was a sultry silence—the silence and horror before the storm breaks. Kit felt it and was appalled. He could almost hear the flames of mutiny roaring in those dull and darkened hearts.
For one moment the boy forgot himself and his cause. He was a play- goer, watching a drama. This man was the hero, valiant, lonely, a miracle of strength. The boy felt for him a passionate sympathy. Could he hold them?—Would they break?
Even as he watched, a man shot out of the ruck and away, scampering furiously with the shrugged shoulders and ducked head of one expecting a blow.
It came sure as fate, and as deliberate.
Out shot the Gentleman's pistol hand.
A crack, a stab of flame, and the man was flopping on the sand like a landed fish.
As the Gentleman fired, another from below stormed up the bank at him. A flash of lightning darted at him, and struck him in the chest. The fellow collapsed in a heap.
The boy had half risen to his elbow.
"Well done!" he cried with blazing enthusiasm. Then he remembered where he was, and dropped.
No man had heard. The Grenadiers like himself were busy watching the doings in the creek. A murmur of applause rose from among them.
"Bravo, Monsieur le Général! Hein! Canaille!"
In the creek all was quiet again now. The flame of mutiny was quenched; the Gang had resumed their work; and the Gentleman was wiping his blade upon his sleeve.
In the loft the Parson was patting the shoulder of the lad now panting beside him.
"Another notch to the Navy," he said…. "What news, boy?"
Kit told of the lugger, ready to sail; of the business of the barrels in the creek; of the rumbling in the drain.
The Parson listened with nodding head.
"I feel like a mouse that knows it's going to have a cat jump on its back, but don't know quite when or just how," he muttered.
"Meantime there's Nelson, sir!" cried the boy, great-eyed and anxious.
"I know, my boy, I know. But while there's the lugger, there's hope."
He leaned out of the window. A sentry was now on the shingle-bank; and he could see the tall-plumed bearskins of the Grenadiers busy about the lugger.
The boy took up the telescope.
The mists were lifting, and the sun shone white upon the water. He could see the frigate, faint indeed and far, stately-pacing towards her doom; he could see the mast of the lugger, Grenadier-guarded, and those leagues of shining waste between the two.
Where was help?
An awful darkness drowned his heart.
He shut the telescope with a snap.
"We're beat," he sobbed.
The other gripped his arm.
"If we're beat, England's beat. If England's beat, the Devil's won, and the world's lost—which is absurd."
The man's stern enthusiasm fired the boy afresh.
"If you'll tell me what to do I'll do it," he said a little tremulously. "But I don't see the way."
"There is a way, Kit. There must be. And we shall find it."
The man was indomitable. There seemed no ghost of a chance; still no shadow of despair clouded that clear spirit. As the sea of difficulties rose about him, his soul rose to meet it on triumphant wings.
Yet the problem before him seemed insoluble.
Nelson there: they here: one boat between, and that boat guarded by the pick of the Army of England.
He turned those good blue eyes of his upon the boy with a drolling baffled look.
"How's it to be done?—what says the Commodore?"
The light had fled from the boy's face. Pale and still, he looked like a young saint about to be martyred.
"There's only one way I can think of, sir."
"What's that?"
The lad lifted the eyes of a woman.
"Pray."
A darkness drove across the Parson's face.
"You pray," he growled. "I'll sharpen my sword."
Turning to the corner he bowed to Polly shining among the cobwebs.
"A sweet morning, my lady," he cried. "And promise of a fair day's work."
The boy turned his face to the wall.
"Mr. Joy, sir!"
"Well, Piper."
"There's a man on a horse."
"Where?"
"Rithe away oop a-top o th' hill over Willingdon—on the old drove- road from Lewes."
The Parson sprang to his feet.
"Sharp work!" he said with a grin at Kit's back.
"Well done you, boy!"
Kit leapt to the window.
"Theer!" said Blob, pointing.
Far away on the rim of the world stood a tiny horseman.
What was he, that little speck of blackness on the horse without legs?—ploughboy or dragoon?—alone or the leader of a troop?
"Wave!" cried the Parson at his elbow.
Sobbing and frantic, the lad fluttered his handkerchief.
As though in answer a bugle-call rang echoing down to them.
"The soldiers!" gasped Kit, his knees fainting beneath him. "O, thankGod!"
Close at hand another bugle rang out merrily.
"Nipper Knapp!" cried Piper. "Butter my wig, if it ain't!"
A shoal of silver minnows flashed and twinkled above the crest.
"Bayonets, by God!" roared the Parson. "Here they come, the little darlings!" as a black trickle of figures poured over the crest.
Others too had seen and heard.
A shot rang out in the stillness: the Grenadier under the thorn came back on his picquet at the double. The shot was answered ironically from the hill-side by the English Last Post. Here in the dawn France and England challenged each other tauntingly.
It was splendid. Kit's blood danced to it. He thought of old-time tournays, the champion riding into the ring at the last moment. He was half sob, half song. The wine of glory flushed his veins as at the moment when he stormed with the crew of theTremendousat the heels of Lushy. His eyes ran; his voice broke. Now it was a shrill treble, now a hoarse bass.
The Parson was chewing his lip.
"Horse or foot, I wonder?"
"Foot," cried Kit, stamping up and down.
"Damnation!" grumbled the Parson. "Are they doubling?"
"Not they!" cried Kit, mad to insolence—"doing the goose-step by numbers so far as I can see. Good old leather-stocks!"
Knapp might have heard him: for the bugle close at hand blew the charge furiously.
"Now they've broken into a double. Come on, you chaps! come on!"
"Well done, Knapp!" muttered the Parson, swallowing his excitement."Good little boy! Good little b-o-y! If he lives through this, heshall have a pint o beer to his breakfast to-morrow, by God he shall.Piper! how long'll they take getting here?"
"Why, sir, a little better'n half an hour, I reckon. Drop down byMotcombe, through Upperton, and down along Water Lane."
The Parson turned to Kit.
"How long will it be before the tide will float the lugger, think you?"
"Twenty minutes, sir."
The Parson grunted.
"Pot begins to boil," he said, and took off his coat.
"O, if they're too late!" cried Kit in swift agony, and turned to glance at the far frigate.
"God's never too late, my boy," answered the Parson, folding his coat carefully.
Rolling up his sleeves, he was looking through the seaward window.
The Gang were streaming across the greensward, and round the cottage, pointing, shouting.
Behind them came the Gentleman. He was swinging his sword, and chopping at the daisies. Whoever else was disturbed, it was not he.
Last the Grenadiers who formed the lugger-guard came toppling over the shingle-bank.
The Gentleman stayed them with imperious hand.
The Parson saw it and grinned. The chap, for all his high-faluting ways, was a soldier through and through. He missed no point, not the smallest. The Parson respected him.
The other, crossing the sward, raised his head and saw the man at the window. The eyes of the two met. Each smiled. Each knew the other's heart.
"No, no," cried the Gentleman with a little wave. "I give nothing away. I can't afford to. I know my opponent."
The Parson bowed, tightening his belt. And after all it was a pretty compliment from the first light cavalry-man in Europe.
The Gentleman passed round the cottage and out of sight.
"What shall you do?" asked Kit hoarsely at the Parson's elbow.
"Why, the only thing there is to be done—and that's nothing."
He sat down on a broken box, took out a handkerchief and began to furbish his blade with the delicate tenderness of a woman bathing a child.
Kit, fretted almost to tears, watched him with angry admiration. The crisis had come, and this curly grey-head sat, calm as a village Solomon in his door of summer evenings, and talked baby to his sword.
"I don't seethathelps much," sneered the boy—"cleaning the plate!"
"Nor does fussing for that matter," retorted the other tranquilly. "In war, as in the world, you must do as you're done by. That mayn't be parson's truth; but it is soldier's. And I'm a soldier for the time being. The cards lie with the Gentleman. We shall have to follow suit —or trump. If he's got a card up his sleeve he must play it—now or never."
The boy turned to the window.
The Gentleman was standing upon the broken wall, hand over his eyes, taking in the situation.
He flung a finger here, an order there.
The Grenadiers threw forward across the plain in skirmishing order.
"Looks like business," muttered the Parson, tucking in his shirt."What's it going to be?"
He had not long to wait.
The Gentleman vaulted the wall, and came swiftly across the grass towards them.
He came rapidly across the lawn, the sun upon him.
Kit thought him the fairest figure of a man he had ever seen.
The Parson was comely with the comeliness of an apple, this man was beautiful with the beauty of sun and sword in one.
But the boy noticed that there was more of the sword and less of the sun than of old about him.
Was the strain telling on him too?
"Forgive me for disturbing you so early," called the gay voice. "TheReverend Father was at his devotions doubtless!"
"No, sir," retorted the Parson. "The Reverend Father was watching theHorse, Foot, and Artillery, pelting down the hill on top o you."
"I've been watching em too," replied the other. "And sorry I am I shan't be here to entertain em—I've a soft place for the soldiers myself. But I'm just off for a day on the water. A pretty morning!"
"Yes; as pretty a morning to hang a play-actor on as ever I saw."
The other waved a hand.
"Ah, but I'm not going to hang you, dear Padre. I have other views for you."
He was fascinating, but somehow he was fearful too. He was the python: they were the rabbits. He had power: and that power was none the less terrible because it was mysterious.
The Parson leaned out, bold and bluffing.
"I take you. The game's up. And you've come to surrender, eh?"
The other shook his head.
"No. I just stepped across to say good-bye, and see if I couldn't perhaps persuade you to come with me."
"No, sir, thank you all the same. I'm a land-animal myself. BesidesI'm too cosy here."
The other stood silent a full minute, nodding a slow head.
"Alas, poor ghost!" he said at length half to himself, and made as though to turn.
The Parson was staggered.
Had he no card then? was he merely bluffing?
"What's it mean?" he whispered fiercely to Kit.
"It means he's going—and Nelson's last chance with him!" panted the boy. "O,makehim stay!"
The Parson leaned out again.
"I hope you'll come back to see your friends hung, my lord!" he bawled.
The Gentleman turned again.
"Friends?"
"Well, aren't they your friends?—Lord Alfiriston, Sir Harry Dene, and the rest. I gathered they were from the despatch-bag you're so good as to leave in my hands."
"I'm leaving no despatch-bag in your hands."
The Parson jumped round.
What did the fellow mean? Had he somehow?…
No, there it was on the staple, the tarpaulin bag stamped with theImperial Eagle.
He took it down.
"This is the boy I meant. Won't you leave this with us?"
The Gentleman shook his head.
"What you going to do with it?" mockingly.
"What I'm going to do with you."
Man and boy, hugging close in the window, each felt the other tauten.
"What's that?"
The other rolled his eyes heavenward.
The Parson was breathing through his nose.
"What ye mean?"
A tiny smile broke about the Gentleman's lips. He raised a finger, and drew nearer on his toes, stealthy as a child about to reveal a secret to its mother; and there was a horror about him.
"Hush, and I'll whisper you!"
The horror grew upon the man. The Parson shivered.
The very air was listening.
"Powder-mine."
"A what?"
"A powder-mine."
The laughter bubbled up in his eyes, and rippled about his face. He was a child, a cruel child, who springs a carefully-prepared surprise on a comrade, and dwells wantonly on the effect.
"Not vairy nice, is it?" he bantered. "Idofeel for you."
He stood beneath the window, hands clasped before him, chin down, the little maiden, demure yet malicious: the little maiden and yet—the Devil.
"So sorray. But I do not want those despatches to fall into the hands of bad men. You forgive?" winningly.
The Parson drew a great breath. It was so sudden, so aweful, so utter.
It was Piper who broke the silence from below.
"We're settin on a powder-mine, sir. Is that it?"
"That's it."
"Ah, well," came the philosophic voice. "Short and sweet—bless God.Better'n lingerin on it out."
Kit panted,
"Nelson!" and swooned.
When he came round the Gentleman was approaching slowly across the grass.
He bantered no more. Maiden and Devil were dead. He was man, and grey as dew.
"Captain Joy," he was saying quietly. "Let us face facts. Samson is bound. Over there," pointing to Beachy Head, "are the liers in wait. That frigate's theMedusa. Nelson's aboard of her. She can't escape."
The words stung Kit to new life.
"She can't escape perhaps," he shouted. "But can't she fight?"
The other shook his head.
"Why?" persisted Kit, hot for the honour of his Service. "Why can't she fight?"
"She can't fight," said the Gentleman slowly, "because her powder's wet."
"What!" bellowed the Parson—"more traitors!"
"The Gunner is mine," replied the Gentleman briefly.
"Oh, the Navy! the Navy!" cried the Parson, rocking.
"But, I don't believe it!" screamed Kit. "Let him prove it! Let him tell us how he's worked it."
The Gentleman walked slowly up and down before the window.
"We needn't enter into that," he said, cold as death.
The Parson launched a slow laughing sneer, terrible to hear.
"What! more gentlemanliness from our Gentleman!"
The words whipped the other's face white.
He stopped in his walk, and lifted slow eyes.
"It may be that I have loved my country better than my God," he said. A smile flashed across his face—"But what a country to be damned for!"
Slowly he came towards the cottage.
"To return to the point. Nelson is lost. No power on earth can save him now."
"I do not look to any power on earth for help," replied the Parson solemnly.
"Let us talk as men," answered the other as solemn. "You have nothing to gain by holding out, and everything to lose. All that an honourable soldier could do you have done. Is it not now the part of true courage to accept the inevitable? For the last time, will you surrender?"
The great veins started on the Parson's forehead.
"Never!" he bawled. "Do your d'dest!"
The Gentleman turned and turned again.
"The blood of those boys be on your head, Mr. Joy!"
"Let the boys answer for themselves," retorted the Parson, short and sullen.
The Gentleman paused.
"Little Chap," he called, "will you come?—France is a fair country. You shall have Monsieur Moon-calf there for squire. Myself I will see to it that you are happy."
"I would rather be dead in England than alive in France," the boy answered passionately. "What about you, Blob?"
"Here Oi be and here Oi boide," replied Blob doggedly, and dulled the romance of the statement by adding—"Oi aren't got ma money yet."
"Think twice, Little Chap!" called the Gentleman. "You are young. You are happy. The day is before you. The night is not yet. It is early to draw down the blinds."
The Parson had turned his back to the window.
"Ask the ass for time," he whispered. "We must have time."
The boy leaned out.
"May I have ten minutes to think it over, sir?"
"Two, my boy."
"Oh, sir!" pitiful, appealing.
The Gentleman glanced across his shoulder, and turned again.
"Ah, well! five be it."
He took out his watch, and sat on the wall with dangling legs.