The Gentleman was kneeling beside his dead. He closed her eyes, and kissed the cold muzzle.

"Adieu, ma mie," he whispered. "L'Irlande n'oubliera jamais."

Then he put on his hat, and braved the sunshine.

"Take my arm, Little Chap."

So the two faced the hill.

A question bubbled to the lad's lips. At last it blurted out.

"How did they catch you, sir?"

"They didn't catch me. They murdered her."

The arm within the boy's trembled, but the voice continued quietly.

"Yesterday I had words with some old friends of mine in the Gap yonder. We parted in a hurry, and I rode up to the Head to watch the fight—your fight."

He flashed his grey eyes on the boy.

"You were in it, weren't you?"

"Yes—a bit."

The other drew a sighing breath.

"I'd have given all I had to have been there....

"From noon to sundown I watched the fight, and never stirred. My body was asleep. I was aware of nothing but those three black dots, miles beneath me on that plain of silver, spurting flame at each other. Bonnet Rouge grazed beside me. And when she heard the guns, she neighed, shaking her bridle. For she loved brave men and War, and knew it too. Yes, she led the Green Brigade at Marengo."

He came to a halt.

"When they came right under the cliff, I couldn't see from the top. So I came down here."

He lifted his face to the sun.

"And that was how they caught me—cornered me here—while I was watching—the sea on all sides but one—and they on that."

His face was dusky now.

"Her whinny was the first thing that woke me. I turned to see her coming towards me at a stumbling canter—like a hurt child running to its mother."

His eyes were shut, his voice strangely still.

"They'd run her through—a lady—who thought them friends."

A great vein stood out blue on his temple.

"I wouldn't have believed it of an Englishman."

He sighed profoundly.

"But they paid for it."

Slanting off the shoulder, he led down towards the coombe on his right.

The boy on his arm was trembling.

In the deep bosom of the coombe was a green hollow.

On the brink they paused. Above them a lark sang.

A little circle of men lay round the saucer in the sun, the flies upon their faces. In front of the others a big man sprawled across a great black horse.

He flung forward over the saddle-bow, face down. One fat hand was crumpled on the turf. His bob-wig had slipped awry.

There was no mistaking that bald red neck with the crease across it. It was Big Jerry Ram, the riding-officer.

The Gentleman toed the body.

"It was this carrion. 'Got you this time, sir,' said he, grinning his fat beef-steak British grin. 'Clipped your wings at last, I guess.'

"I said nothing. I was mad....

"He was a brave man—an extraordinarily brave man. You English, you are brave. But he was no soldier. He rode at me alone, handling that sabre of his like a flail. We'd hardly crossed blades before he knew his fate. 'You've got me, sir,' said he, splashing about with his sword. I said nothing. 'Maybe I hadn't ought to ha stuck her,' he gasped. He wasn't whining. He wasn't that sort. He knew he had to have it. 'It was tit for tat: your blood-mare—my old Robin. 'Tain't Christian, but 'tis sweet.' Then as he saw it coming—in a kind of scream—'Through the heart if you're a gentleman, sir.'... So much I permitted him. You see he was brave."

Kit's brow was dank. The man's calm terrified him.

"The others gave little trouble. They'd sabres; but only one had a pistol, and it wouldn't go off—English-like....

"Then they formed a rallying group. Yes, they formed a rallying group. You see they were afraid....

"It was no good. I walked round them with my pistols."

Shuddering, the boy saw it all: the group of ghastly men, back to back in the hollow; silence, butterflies, and Death in breeches and boots stalking round.

"Then they broke. They couldn't run: I could. I would have spared them, mud that they were—but for her.

"You see," his voice was still again, "I loved her."

He dreamed, his eyes upon the hills.

"Yes," he said, "I was terrible."



CHAPTER XXVIII

ON THE TOP OF THE WORLD

I

The Gentleman led up the shoulder of the hill, the tails of his long riding-coat flapping about his legs.

Kit, panting behind, admired him as he had never admired even Uncle Jacko. The man seemed to know no fear, striding rapidly on, his enemy behind him.

True, the boy's dirk still flashed in the other's hand; but the lad had his jack-knife; and his eyes dwelt on the place where he could plant it home and home in that black back—there by the seam, where it was a little worn.

And the man had the scent-bottle!

Surely a fellow would be justified....

"Now's your chance, Little Chap!" came the gay voice.

Kit, betrayed to his own soul, sniggered and put the dark thought away with shuddering disgust.

The man was a gentleman, the man trusted him. Once he had saved his life; and once spared it. Should he pay his debt with the jack-knife?

The long-striding figure went up the hill as though on wings.

Kit clambered at his spurs.

Escape he knew was vain. As well might a canary attempt to escape a hawk.

The scabbard of the other's sword poking and peeping between his tails caught the boy's eye and fascinated it. It had seen plenty that sword, he would bet! What tales it could tell!

How he should like to know!...

"Have you ever fought a duel?" he blurted out.

"Used to a bit. Not now."

"Why?—d'you think it wrong?"

The other flung back a merry laugh.

"No, my little Puritan. I gave it up, because it gave me up. You see, I never quite met my match with the small-sword. Or rather I did meet my match once, but the beggar wouldn't fight."

"Do tell," panted Kit, scenting a story.

"It was in Egypt—during the occupation. He was said to be the finest sword in the British Army—Abercromby's Black Cock, they called him. He'd a standing challenge out against any man of ours who'd take it up. Killed seven of our fellows in seven days, a man a morning, in single combat, between the outpost lines—all fair and square and according to Cocker, and the staffs of both Armies looking on. Sounds like a legend, don't it?—The eighth day I appeared to do battle with him. I was twenty-one at the time, and looked seventeen. It was to have been the great day of my life—and was the bitterest. Directly he saw me—'I don't fight with children,' says he, high and mighty as a turkey-cock, and turned on his heel. I wept." He laughed joyously at the reminiscence.

"Curious how small the world is," he continued. "Five years passed— five years full of things. Then one fine day, a few weeks back, I was over yonder at Birling Gap, waiting for a friend, when who should come strolling round the corner, smelling of roast beef and Old England, but my old friend of the curly pate and ruddy cheeks. I'd a minute or two to spare. So I introduced myself, and we adjourned to the beach at once."

"What happened that time?" asked the boy keenly.

"Why, Fat George!" replied the other. "And deuced lucky for Master Black Cock too. You see, he was fat and scant o breath."

II

They had climbed to the top of the world.

It lay spread before them, wide and wonderful; head in the heavens, feet in the sea miles beneath on every side.

On the brow beside them the blackened skeleton of a building stood up stark against the light.

The charred stump of a flag-staff pricked up out of the turf. On the scorched grass lay a singed red flag and tattered pendant.

"What's this?" whispered Kit.

The ghastly desolation of the ruins amid the sea of light and living green appalled him. Moreover he smelt death.

"Signal-station," said the Gentleman, hurrying by. "Black Diamond stormed it at dusk on Saturday night—just before I came along. They took it and burnt the men inside. Black Diamond did the storming—Fat George the burning, he and old Toadie."

"Brutes!" hissed Kit.

"I don't much care for Fat George and old Toadie myself," replied the Gentleman, rather white. "They seem to me scarcely—what shall I say? —spirituels.... Black Diamond was quite a different pair of shoes. A curious nature—three parts sheer devil, one part pure gentleman. I could tell you some strange tales about him."

III

They had turned their backs on the dark scene.

Before them the land rolled away, fold upon fold, the sea encircling it.

Big Jerry's coombe lay vast and vault-like beneath them on the right, certain dark specks in the centre of it.

They were not sheep, those specks: Kit knew what they were.

Over the shoulder of the coombe, a great flat bay, the sea white along the brown edge of it, swept away scimitar-wise into the mist.

The Gentleman stopped, his hand on the boy's shoulder.

"Pevensey Bay! That is where the first Frenchman who ever conquered England landed. Hastings yonder! Battle Abbey over there!—my name on its Roll. Such a wonderful old Church!"

He stopped abruptly.

A ship, lying inshore beneath him, tiny on the plain of sea, had caught his eye.

He flashed round on the boy.

"What nationality?" fiercely, and with pointing finger.

Kit knew at a glance. Even at that distance the ship had something of the dishevelled appearance of a virago after a street-fight. She was the privateer.

"Double Dutchman."

A hand clutched his throat. Eyes of steel pierced him to the heart.

"Frenchman or English? tell, or take the consequences!"

"I couldn't tell you that," choking.

A python arm swept about him.

A face smiled into his.

"I knew you wouldn't. And I wouldn't have liked you if you had. But—"

The boy snapped his eyes. After all he couldn't blame the man!

It was no quick stab that he felt, no maddening darkness that drowned him; but a swift forward thrust that shot him down the slope of the coombe.

It was steep as the roof of a house. Down he pelted, headlong, his legs attempting to catch up his falling body. In vain: head over heels, rolling, bumping, tumbling, a ripple of mocking laughter pursuing him.

There was no danger, he knew. The bottom of the coombe was flat as a floor, the cliff running athwart it a quarter of a mile away.

At last he fetched up, battered and breathless.

Above him he could see the figure of the Gentleman tiny against the sky.

"Forgive me, Little Chap," came a far voice. "I am in a hole, and have to get out as best I can. Il faut que je file. Here is your little prodder."

His arm swung. Something flashed in the sky, fell, always flashing, and stuck in the hillside above him, quivering there.

It was the boy's dirk.



III

ABERCROMBY'S BLACK COCK



CHAPTER XXIX

THE FLAG OF HIS COUNTRY

I

The Gentleman had gone, and the scent-bottle with him.

The boy stood on a track that ran among the gorse, and looked about him.

The wind was at his back, and the sun on his cheek. Above him the brow, rough with gorse, swelled up against the light.

He rushed up the hill into the sky.

On the top, he hunted the landscape with anxious eyes. There was nothing to be seen; no round but the zig-a-zig of the heartless grasshoppers, merry all about him, and the thunder of his own heart.

He swung round. About him, above him, below him, dumb earth, blind sea, deaf heaven.

What was his agony to them?

His hopes died, and he with them. Here was the end of his mission and the end of him.

Old Ding-dong had trusted him—and now!

Mother believed in him—and now!

There would be no Lewes before breakfast; no London before night; no Nelson to-morrow morning.

A jackdaw chuckled overhead; a far sheep bleated; a great beetle, with black wing-cases flung back, roared by.

For the rest, all was silence and despair.

He had hoped greatly; he had tried hard; and failed utterly.

Above all he had not eaten for twenty-four hours.

The boy sat down and wept.

II

About him in the turf the grasshoppers kept up their accursed zig-a- zig. Little cads! At least they might be gentlemen enough not to crack their jokes just now.

The thought tickled him. He began to smile. Plucking a grass-blade, he smote one of his annoyers across the tail. It hopped gloriously. The boy laughed, and rose to his feet, his heart rising with him.

After all he had done his best. Now he must get to Lewes and make his report.

He started.

About him the turf was bare and brown. Here a patch of tall thistles, hoary-crowned, stood out among grey bents. There a clump of gorse and bramble darkened the turf.

Before him a sea of long smooth hills, billow behind billow, rolled in on him out of Infinity. It seemed to him that a giant wind had crept beneath the carpet of green and lifted it. Smooth as water it flowed down to the sea on every side. There were no trees, no hedges, no habitations. It was the loneliest land he had ever seen, and one of the loveliest. Here Earth, the Woman, rounded and beautiful, reclined at her ease before him, naked as God had made her. How different she was from that savagely shaggy man-land in the North whence he sprang! But for a haystack like a hive on a far ridge, a fold in a hollow, and the hillsides patched here and there with plough, it might have been an uninhabited land.

Here he was alone with the Eternal.

A poet to the heart, the boy's soul rose within him. For the moment he forgot his troubles. He was walking on the back of the world, his head in heaven. Beneath him rose the sea, sheer as a wall. The sight of it, dropped from heaven, as it seemed, filled him with awe. It was so near, and yet so far.

The breeze had fallen; all was still. He could hear the rustle of the tide, and the chuckle of jackdaws. Overhead a raven flapped by with slow-skewing head.

Horror of loneliness swept upon the boy. He shrank into his body. The windows of his spirit shut with a bang. Night came down.

All was darkness, mortality, and fear.

Somewhere at the bottom of the coombe beneath lay that ring of still things. Behind rose the blackened skeleton of the signal-station—and heaven knew what inside! He glanced back fearfully. They weren't after him—yet.

He took to his heels, and ran, screaming.

A familiar face greeted him. In a flash he recognised it—a meadow- brown come all the way from Northumberland to comfort him. That was beautiful of the meadow-brown, it was Christian of the meadow-brown, seeing the war to the death that he and Gwen had waged against it at home.

The butterfly gave its message to the boy's heart and settling on a blue flower, began to sip leisurely. Dash it!—the meadow-brown wasn't afraid. Need he be?

His soul took charge again with a smile.

III

Over there on the left that sheer white bluff, thrusting out into the sea, would be Seaford Head.

Beyond it lay Newhaven; behind it somewhere Lewes. To get there he had only to keep along the highlands.

He held on at a steady jog-trot. The grass sparkled with dew; mushroom bulbs shoved through the turf at his toes; above him and beneath all was blaze.

He crossed a shoulder, threading the gorse; skirted the edge of another huge coombe, troughed out beneath him; passed an ancient withered elder, squatting crone-like on the brow, and climbed a knoll that rose up bald out of the gorse.

He topped the crest, and stopped suddenly. A little dewy-eyed pond, blue as the sky, was staring at him out of a saucer of green.

In a moment he was on his knees at the edge of it, and drinking greedily. Then he took off his coat and laid it on the edge of the saucer to dry.

That done he flung himself on his back to think.

After all there was no hurry. Young as he was, he knew his England well enough to know the reception that awaited him at Lewes. He could see them about him, that cluster of Army officers, as he told his story—stonily incredulous, grimly silent, some sniggering, others jeering openly. The boy's head had been turned by his first brush!— You'd only to look at him to see his sort—the romantic sort, commonly called liars! Great eyes like a girl! What did a chap with eyes like that want in the Service?—Scent-bottle—loss of the Tremendous —kidnapping Nelson! Lorlumme, what a yarn!

A clamour of feet close by startled his heart. He leapt up, expecting cavalry.

But no: it was a patter-footed multitude of sheep, who welled in staring yellow flood over the edge of the saucer and down to the pond. Behind them stalked Abraham, a black and white bobtail at heel.

The patriarch wore a slouch-hat and old cloak, loose as a cloud. A wild beard flamed all about him; and in his hand was a long crook. He stood on the rim of the saucer and looked down at his drinking flock.

Kit expected him to raise his hands and bless somebody. Instead he spat luxuriously, and addressed his dog in gibberish.

"Ge ou tha go!" he growled, and only the dog knew he was being desired to get out of that gorse.

Kit watched the man placidly. Instinct, which is inherited experience, reassured him. There was nothing to be feared from this chap, and nothing to be got from him. Abraham was shaggy, he was unintelligible, he was harmless.

In his few days' experience of life, the boy had already learned one great truth: that every man is exactly what he looks. The face always reveals or betrays. And in this face, wild with the wildness of storms and skies, there was nothing but the stupid innocence of one of his own sheep.

The man threw at the boy one shy glance of a woodland creature, and then ignored him. Another moment and he was stalking on his way, with floating cloak, tall crook, dog at heel, a mass of yellow backs rippling along in front of him.

IV

The boy stood on the rim of the saucer and looked down.

Dim green lowlands lay beneath him, spurs of the Downs thrusting out into them.

Beyond, the bay swept away saucer-wise, the sea white along its brown edge. From his feet a shoulder, dark with gorse, plunged seaward. Beneath the swell of it, a level plain ran away to the shore, heaving up there in a little hillock that stood out from the beach as a bump of green.

Off the hillock lay the privateer hove-to. Another boat hung at her stern. The boy recognised it at once. It was the lugger Kite.

Behind the hillock, upon the plain, stood a solitary cottage.

At that cottage, lonely in a sea of turf, the boy stared long and earnestly.

It was flying a flag out of the chimney.

And that flag—yes—no—yes—was the Union Jack.



CHAPTER XXX

AN OLD SONG

I

He was off the rim and rushing down through the gorse with thumping heart.

True, Ding-dong had ordered him with his last breath to steer clear of human habitation—"They're all in it," the old man had said. But then he possessed the scent-bottle. Now he had nothing but his skin to lose, and as things were he could afford to lose that. Here at any rate was a straw to catch at. Moreover he was in no hurry to get to Lewes to be called a liar.

Of course it might only prove to be some loyal old lady, flying her colours dauntlessly in the face of the Frenchman. Just such a thing his mother might do; and there were thousands of her like up and down the country—thank heaven for it!

On the other hand it might be a temporary signal-station. After the sacking of the station on Beachy Head, what more likely than that this cottage should be seized for Government purposes and garrisoned?—his own chaps too, sailors—not those swaggering snobs in red coats.

If so, he saw his course clear as day.

There was the privateer. Somewhere among these huge smooth hills lurked the Gentleman, primed with his fatal message. Between the two was one boat, and so far as he knew one only—the long-boat of the smugglers.

If his surmise were correct, and this should prove a blockade-house, he would take the garrison, though it consisted of only half-a-dozen men, attack the Gang, and smash the boat at all costs.

II

The boy plunged down the hill.

The sun beat fiercely on his head, but he hardly felt it.

Along a track that snaked through the gorse, he pushed his way, flies buzzing about him. A shining gossamer lay across his path, bosom-high. From it a web swung in the wind. At the centre, where the threads met, a black and yellow spider, marked like a man of war, waited its prey. The lad brushed through it with a pang. The spider's work fell about him in ruins: he rushed for the gorse, and hung there topsy-turvy, as though heart-broken. Hard lines certainly! He had upset the spider's apple-cart, as the Almighty had upset his. But he had had to— and so no doubt had the Almighty.

He turned as he ran.

"Cheer up, old chap!" he hollaed back to his friend, crouching among the ruins of his home. "It'll all come out in the washing."

III

Fluffy thistle-heads, reminding him of Gwen's young chickens, stood up out of the gorse all about him. The bunched blackberries were ripening now: he almost expected to see Gwen's face, purple-mouthed, peering at him from a bramble. All about him the silver-downed gorse-pods were snapping like pistols. A stone-chat with ruddy breast spurted out of the gorse, and flirted upwards.

The path broadened; the gorse grew scantier. His feet crushed sweetness out of the thyme. Here and there a young ash thrust up feathery.

Of a sudden he found himself again at the top of one of those almost sheer descents to which he was becoming used.

At its foot grew a hanger of beeches, already bronzing to autumn.

Down he went, slithering on hands and tail, picked himself up towards the bottom, and ran away into the shade of the wood to find himself among silver-grey beech-stems.

How refreshing it was after the glare, how rich, how dark!

Till he was out of it, he had not known how hot it had been on the bare hill-side. Now he was aware of the sweat on his forehead, and a dripping shirt.

Beech-stems rose in stately columns all about him. The floor was red and brown mosaic, the roof a tracery of leaves intertwined with light. Eastward the sun flashed as through a window. Close by a wood-pigeon was praying.

Out of the aisle once again into the glare.

Now the Downs lay behind him, barren and dun. On his left-front the rounded bosom of another beech-wood rose, in its midst a single chestnut already rusting. Across the valley, behind a ridge, a blunt church-tower and yellow-lichened roofs peeped. On the hill beyond, a windmill cocked up against the sky.

He paid little attention, making straight for the flag of his country.

The cottage stood about a quarter of a mile away, conspicuously solitary in the greensward, the Union Jack brave above it.

The boy approached, wary but swift. Out here on the open plain there was no cover. He was exposed as a fly on a sheet of paper. Still things couldn't be worse—he comforted himself with that most comfortable of thoughts.

Some two hundred yards from the cottage a ruined wall ran across the greensward. Behind it the boy took cover and spied.

The cottage was very small; yet, small as it was it was grim to a degree. The flint in rows, tier upon tier, grinned at him fiercely, reminding him of a dog showing its teeth. The colour of steel, the rows of set teeth, the shaggy roof of thatch, the flag ruffling it from the chimney, all bespoke the same sturdy fighting character. Indeed it was so small, and yet so truculent, that Kit laughed to see it.

Chained there a dumb watch-dog on the threshold of its country, it seemed to be saying as it crouched—

"You can all go to sleep: I'm watching."

Kit crossed the wall, and almost expected to hear the cottage growl.

Warily he approached. As he did so, the warrior aspect of the cottage grew upon him. It was less a cottage than a tiny fort. There were only three windows, one on each side the door, and a dormer. The lower windows though latticed were cross-barred; and the door of massive oak, iron-studded, was heavy enough for a castle. Through it, ajar, he caught the gleam of arms.

Certainly this was no peasant's cottage. What was it then?—a signal- station?—

There was no flag-staff, no signal-tackle.

Some lonely smuggler's hold?—not likely: for there was the flag.

Could the flag be a decoy?

There was nothing for it but to go and see.

He stole forward with noisy heart.

The cottage crouched; the sycamores behind it rustled; and the wind that stirred the sycamores brought to him the sound of a voice.

He stopped, fingering his dirk.

Friend or enemy?

The voice was that of a man, deeply melodious without being exactly musical, and came from beyond the cottage somewhere by the clump of sycamores behind.

It was humming a tune, and a tune the boy knew well. Holding his breath, and listening with his heart, the boy could distinguish the words—

Jesu, Lover of my Soul.



CHAPTER XXXI

THE MAN WITH THE SWORD

I

Those familiar words, so unexpected in that strange place, smote the boy's heart.

A thousand memories surged in on him.

His lips trembled. A very little, and he would have fallen on his knees.

It was as though an Angel had come to him walking through the Valley of the Shadow, to tell him all was well, and to go forward.

And forward he went with thankful heart.

The sea of turf ran right up to the wall, and broke against it. The windows, seen close, were less windows than loop-holes, barred across. On the sill of one was a pot of musk, newly watered, and very fragrant. Within upon the wall shimmered a ship's cutlass, and a brace of pistols.

The boy peered in.

A kitchen-parlour, raftered and paved with stone, formed the ground- floor. At one end was a huge fire-place; in the opposite corner a bed, piled high with clothes. A ladder led to a trap-door in the low ceiling. The sun flooded into the room through the one window in the other wall. The door on that side was half open; and behind it sat a man.

II

He was all in black, and very neat: an Englishman, a gentleman, and a parson, Kit would have sworn.

His back was turned. The boy could see nothing but a black coat, a pair of solid shoulders, and a curly head.

This was not the hymn-singer to be sure. He was otherwise engaged. There was something across his knees, and he was tending to it, and talking as he worked.

From his actions and his words, Kit would have sworn that he was bathing a child. For the man was talking as women talk to babies, and some men to the women they love—that little talk, half tender, half mocking, such nonsense, and so sweet.

Then something flashed and sparkled against the dark of the door; and Kit saw it was no babe that lay across the man's knees, but a naked blade.

He was furbishing it with a chamois leather, and caressing it with words.

Now he lifted the blade on flat hands, and kissed the point reverently.

Then he leaned forward, and peered round the half open door with extraordinary stealth.

Comic as the action was, there was yet something terrible about it.

Kit choked with laughter and fear.

The man was half child playing peep-bo! and half spider waiting for a fly.

That vision of the Eternal Child, which he had surprised in the eyes of old Ding-dong sailing into action, was manifest in this man too.

Were men only children?—Yes, surely!—the good ones, at least. Only sinners grew old. Christian never ages.

The man's head turned a trifle. There was a smile flickering about his lips; and in the smile was something of the ogre, and something of the boy.

It was clear that he meant to kill; equally clear that he took joy in his purpose.

He sat down again; and as he did so held up a finger, hushing himself.

He was playing a game, unaware that he was being watched, and enjoying it intensely.

Behind the door he sat now, blade in hand, spider-still.

Plainly he was waiting for somebody.

But for whom?—and what would happen when that somebody came?

The door opened another inch or two, and through it, Kit saw the privateer, black on the white water.

In a flash he understood.

The man was waiting for the French.

III

The humour of the thing—this lonely swordsman lying in wait behind the door for the crew of the privateer—seized the boy by the throat. The laughter poured out of him headlong.

The man leapt round, dark-faced and terrible. In a twinkle he was across the floor, wary as a panther.

The door opened.

Out he came, thrusting stealthily, his blade leading him. His flanks were covered, himself almost unseen in the dark of the door.

Whatever else the man might be, he was a soldier born.

Then he saw the boy and halted on the threshold.

A man more aggressively English Kit thought he had never seen.

Forty or thereabouts, five feet ten high, and perfectly compact: he wore no wig, and his hair broke in crisp grey curls all about his head: a ruddy face, fighting jowl, and blue eyes, kindled with equal ease to savagery or smiles.

The boy's heart leapt to those eyes, as it leapt to the first blossom starring the black-thorn after winter's desolation. There was hope in them, the hope of Spring.

The man smelt of roast beef and Old England.

Kit loved him at a glance. And was he a stranger?—Had he not fought with this man, hunted with him, died with him a thousand times of old? Had they not stood shoulder to shoulder, and back to back, in many a desperate venture in the past that haunted him? Had he not tried him time and again on the anvil of hard experience, always to find that he rang true? Would he fail him now at his need, this old comrade, who had never failed him before? No. That old sense of the familiarity of all experience swept in on him with staggering force.

Drawn as in a dream, he stepped forward and took the other's hand.

"Friend," he said.

The man lowered his point. His eyes drank in the boy's face.

"So be it," he answered, twinkling.

The blue eyes lived in the brown ones; the hands gripped.



CHAPTER XXXII

THE BROKEN SQUARE

"My name is Caryll—Christopher Caryll."

The other nodded over him.

"Christopher Caryll, called by his mother Kit: an officer of the Sea Service, eh?"

The boy's eyes brightened.

"Yes, sir. How did you know?"

"I remember a Kit Caryll by name in the Mediterranean in the nineties. And I ought to know the King's uniform, seeing I was a King's officer myself before I took orders."

"A sailor?"

"Sailor be d'd!" cried the Parson, heartily. "I'd sooner be a cod- fish. No, sir, no: I hate the sea like I hate the French. D'you think if the Almighty had meant me for the water, He'd have troubled to give me that?" He thrust forth his right leg, and dwelt fondly on the calf, contracting and relaxing it.

"But I forget my manners."

He bent over his blade with tenderest chivalry.

"Will you allow me," with a sweep, "to introduce to your ladyship a young gentleman of the sister Service? Mr. Caryll—Lady Polly Kiss-me- quick."

He averted the sword, and shielding his mouth, whispered confidentially—

"The sweetest of her sex, Mr. Caryll, but that hot after the men you wouldn't believe."

Kit threw back his head and gurgled. Only fifteen, and man enough not to be ashamed to be a boy, he still loved make-believe. And his heart went out to this man, who was after all a brother-boy.

"No, I wasn't a sailor. I had my company in the King's Black Borderers," continued the Parson—"the old Blackguards, as they call us, of whom you may have heard."

The boy's eyes flashed.

"I should think I had!" he cried. "It was a brute in the Borderers nearly killed my Uncle Jacko in a duel—in Corsica—in '94. A chap called Joy. He was a notorious bully—a cursing swearing fellow. After-wards he died of drink, mother says. Uncle Jacko was her favourite brother."

The other's face had chilled.

"And what was mother's favourite brother's name—if I may ask?"

"Gordon, sir—Jacko Gordon."

"Jacko Gordon—the Horse-Gunner!" laughed the Parson. "Ha! ha! ha!"

"Did you know him, sir?"

The Parson tossed his Polly in the air, and caught her deftly.

"Did we know him? did we not? You remember Jacko Gordon, my lady?—and the sands of Calvi?"

"That was where the bully fought him!" cried Kit. "Ran him through the fore-arm when he wasn't ready."

A dark breeze swept across the other's face.

"He was ready; and it was not the fore-arm," he replied with icy chilliness. "It was the wrist; was it not, my own?" bending over his blade.... "Yes; he had a lovely wrist—until she kissed it...." He shrugged. "But what would you?—'Calves!' says he; and it was before the mess-tent—' d'you call those things? yours calves?'—'And what d'you call em yourself?' says I, mighty polite. 'Why, cows in calf!' says he, and swaggers off with a silly guffaw.

"After that there was nothing for it but the usual of course. I ran him through the wrist. He dropped his blade....

"'D'you withdraw?' says I, she straining for his heart.

"'What I have said, I have said,' he answered, white as silver and steady as the firmament.

"Then little man Nelson knocked up my sword—

"'That'll do, Black Cock,' says he. 'A joke's a joke; but a brave man's death's a mighty bad joke. She's a little blood-sucker that lady o yours.' And nobody but Nelson'd ha dared to say it."

II

The boy was staring hard.

"Did they call you Black Cock, sir? Abercromby's Black Cock?"

"That's me, sir, at your service," replied the Parson—"Joy of Battle in the Regiment, Abercromby's Black Cock in the Army. What of it?"

"I met a man who knew you this morning."

The other's eyes leapt.

"Chap with a beak on a chestnut!—handsome young scoundrel!— Frenchified, theatrical, bit o red riband stuck on his stomach."

"That's the man, sir."

"Well, what of him?—Quick!"

Kit repeated the tale of Egypt, as the Gentleman had told it.

The other listened with rapt interest.

"It's all true," he said, "true as the Bible."

He was pacing up and down, his hands behind him.

"There was a time in my life," he began at last "when I had—er—the regrettable habit of—er—using foul language, as your Uncle Jacko may have told you. Never filthy language! never that. I always swore like a gentleman. Chucked the d's and b's and g's about a bit too merry. Well, one day—it was in Egypt—I was carrying on a bit, when a pious sort of ass I knew at home, who was standing by, said—'I wonder what your mother'd think if she heard you now, Harry Joy.' So after I'd given him some for imself, I went back to my tent and thought a bit.

"You see I'd just heard from home that poor old mother was failing. And I couldn't help thinking—Now supposing she dies, and first thing she hears when she gets to heaven is her boy loosing off on earth!...

"So I took an oath Samson-style, and I prayed I and I said—'Look here, Lord, if you'll look over what's past, and help me keep a clean tongue in future, I'll kill you a Frenchman a day for seven days....'

"So I sent a challenge into their lines. There was nothing stirring just then, and they took the thing up very readily. The business took place before reveille out in the desert, between the out-post lines at a place they got to call the cock-pit. All the bloods and bucks on both sides used to come out to see the fun. It was the regular thing— to see Black Cock breakfast....

"Well, on the seventh morning as they were carting their chap away, and I was wiping my sword, a swaggering great Cuirassier turned round and shouted,

"'To-morrow we bring David to slay your Goliath!'

"'D'you hear that, Black Cock?' says Olifant, the Guardsman. 'Are you game?'—'I'm not tired, if they ain't,' says I."

His blue eyes began to twinkle.

"Next dawn, when I got to the Cock-pit, and saw their champion, why, he was a boy!—a boy like a girl!—one of these pretty pink and white things, all eyes and legs and a silly smile. 'I am David,' says he. 'Then go back to Jesse,' says I, pretty short. 'I don't fight with kids.'... And that afternoon I sent him a bottle of milk with my compliments."

The Parson stopped his pacing, and looked the boy in the eyes.

"Next day they broke us, sir,—broke the Black Borderers in square."

"Who did?"

The Parson was breathing deep, and his eyes were smouldering.

"The Legion d'Irlande. No other regiment in the world could have got in; and once in, no other regiment in the world but ours could have got em out, though I say it as shouldn't."

Voice and eyes burst into thunder and flame.

"And who led em? Why, my boy-girl friend storming along on an old white Arab, and laughing like the devil. 'Here, they come!' yells the Colonel. 'Prepare for—Cavalree!' I jumped on to the big drum, and had a squint over the men's heads. Lor! I can see the dust of em now—like a mighty great wave sweeping across the desert, and the boy on the white Arab coming along like an earthquake six lengths before the lot. It sent me screaming mad to see em. 'Come on, ye dirty black- a-mouths!' I screeched. 'Irish stew for the rebel brigade!' 'Hullo, Black Cock!' he cried, and I saw him grinning through the dust. 'I'm going to cut your comb.' And he took the old horse by head, and rammed him at us—slap-bang, like riding at a bull-finch; and the whole blanky lot after him."

The Parson was stamping up and down, roaring out his story, his eyes laughing and battle-lusty.

"Such a hell of a hugger-mugger you never saw! They rolled in on us like the sea. Rough and tumble every man for himself—stab somebody— don't matter who!" He paused to pant. "It was the day of my life. The Colonel was down; the Majors were dead; the Captains heaven-knows- where. Our old Raven banner, that we took from their Black Horse at Dettingen was in the dust, the Junior Ensign tumbled up in it all anyhow. 'Got it, Miss B.?' I cried. 'Here!' squeals the poor little chap. 'Heave her up!' Then a horse jumped on him, and put him out of his pain.

"I got the old rag up somehow. 'Round this, men!' I yelled, jumping on the Colonel's dead charger. Get round, ye blanky blanks!' Then I saw this boy-girl chap grinning above me. 'Slash away!' I roared. 'Here's one for yourself!' and I jabbed the staff in his mug. 'No,' says he, as jolly as you like, 'I don't fight with poultry!' And dam-my-soul!— if he don't sneak his hand under the rag and tweak my nose!—this nose!" the Parson squeaked, tapping it—"this nose upon this face! this nose I'm talking to you out o now! And he jumped that wallopin old white out the way he came. 'Come along, children,' says he. 'You've had quite enough for one meal.' And away he goes, laughing like the devil, his blessed pathriots after him."



CHAPTER XXXIII

FIGHTING FITZ

The tempest in the Parson's wrathful blue eyes subsided.

"Yes, that was my first real meeting with Fighting Fitz."

"Was that Fighting Fitz?" cried the boy, ablaze.

He had heard, as who had not, of the brilliant young Irishman whom Napoleon had called the first light cavalryman in Europe after Marengo.

"That was Fighting Fitz of Green Brigade fame," said the Parson, mopping his forehead. "We knew him as the Boy Sabreur in Egypt. Even then it was said that no woman could resist him, and no man stand up against him. He went out with young de Beauharnais, Boney's step-son, and ran him through the body; and he carried on an intrigue with ... but there! there!... When he was First Consul, Boney decorated him before the Army, and disgraced him within the year. They said the little Corporal began to be jealous: the men worshipped Fitz.... Anyway I know it'll be the regret of my life that I missed my chance when I first met him." He sighed profoundly.

"But you met him again, didn't you, sir?"

The Parson nodded.

"Last month. I was up on Beachy Head with the spy-glass, when I saw the Kite beating up for Cuckmere Haven. So I ran down to Birling Gap thinking—thinking—" he coughed—"she might a—a—be bringing me a little present from France—a bit o bacca, or dallop o tea, or what not, ye know.... What ye say?"

He turned on the boy savagely.

"I didn't say anything," replied Kit, astonished.

The Parson scowled.

"Well, as I swung round into the cutting I nearly ran into a chap on a chestnut—quite the Corinthian, with a bit o red riband stuck on his stomach. I brought up sharp on my heels.

"'Well, my fine fellow,' thinks I, 'what you posing here for?—and why's that mare in a lather?' But before I could say anything—

"'Hullo!' says he, 'I think I should know that nose.'

"'What ye mean?' says I, pretty sharp.

"'Why,' says he, 'I once had the pleasure of pulling it.'

"Then he laughed. And directly he laughed of course I knew.

"I put my hand upon my sword.

"'And what you doing attitudinising in my land, my lord?' says I, the bristles at the back of my neck rising. 'Play-acting your Caesar about to conquer Britain by the look o you!'

"'Why, your Majesty,' says he, 'I'm out for a ride on your land.'

"I gave him a look.

"'Shall we adjourn to the beach?' says I.

"'Charmed,' says he—'if I'm not too young.'

"And he cocked his leg over the mare's withers, and slid down. 'Now, old lady!' says he. 'You know your own way.' And he gave her a spank; and off she went with a make-believe kick at him, up the hillside and out of sight.

"We went down to the beach, and took our coats off."

The Parson's eyes began to twinkle.

"Yes: the bully had met his match for once—and a bit more. After a very few minutes that was clear. 'How d'you feel?' says he. 'Why, right as rain,' I panted. But I knew he had me. And I knew by the look in his eyes he knew it too. 'True 'tis pity,' says he, running his eye over my shirt.

"'Get on with it,' I says, pretty gruff. 'I must play pussy-cat with my fat mouse,' says he. 'Where'd you like it?' and I must say he was mighty courteous about it. Well, I was just going to tell him, when somebody banged me over the head from behind.... I fell on my face, and a mountain seemed to fall on top of me. 'Shall I knife him, my lord?' comes a voice like a girl's. Then—'Get off, you dung! or I'll make muck o you!'—'I ony thought, my lord—'—'Think, swine! you think!' And smack—smack goes his sword! The mountain got off. The lord was kneeling by my side.

"'I hope to the deuce you're not hurt, sir,' says he, very concerned.

"I got to my knees.

"'Thanks to you, my lord, I'm not.'

"'It was Big Belly there,' says he, helping me to my feet.... 'These fellows don't understand our ways.'

"'That's the worst of dabbling in dirty water,' says I.

"'Ah, it's not the water—it's the fish you meet in it I mind,' he says.

"He picked up my sword, and gave it me.

"I was trying to walk.

"'Here, take my arm,' says he. 'You've had about two ton o bad man upset on top o you.' And he walked me up and down that beach, tender as a lady—pon my soul he did.

"Just then I heard a holloa.

"'No time to cut to waste, my lord,' sings out someone. 'We've a clear run now, but only knows how long we shall have.'

"Then I saw the Kite's long-boat beached close by, and Diamond and a couple of his chaps standing by.

"The lord took me to a rock, and made me sit down.

"I wonder if you'll excuse me,' says he. 'I'm due to dine with little Boney tonight at eight sharp, and I must be up to time. Truth is I'm not in the Little Corporal's best books just now. He caught Josephine and me amusing ourselves in the rose-walk at Malmaison last week; and he wasn't best pleased.'

"And he took off his hat in his theatrical Frenchified way and went down to the boat.

"I sat on the rock, brushing my knees.

"Diamond shoved her off.

"'Good-day, Parson,' says he, grinning.

"'So this is your smuggling, Diamond!' I roared, shaking my fist at him.

"'Yes,' says he, 'I'm about as good a smuggler as you are Parson.'

"That made me mad.

"'I'm an Englishman anyway and not a blanky traitor!' I roared. 'Here's something to remember me by!' and I snatched the pistol out o my tail-pocket, and snapped it at him.

"The ball went through the full of his shirt.

"'Ah,' says he, mighty nasty, 'I'll drop a return card on you one o' these days, Mr. Clergyman. And don't you forget it.'

"Then the lord stood up and waved.

"'Thank you for a very pleasant afternoon, Mr. Joy,' he called. 'May I say au revoir?'

"'The same to you, my lord,' I answered. 'And the sooner the better.'

"And that's the last I saw of him.... And now what I want to know is where is he?—for I'm after him."



CHAPTER XXXIV

THE FACE ON THE WALL

"It's a long story," said Kit.

The Parson took him by the arm, and led the way into the kitchen.

It was more like a guard-room than a parlour. Clearly no woman reigned here. All was wood, or stone, or steel, clean as a ship, and as comfortless. Arms on the wall; iron-barred windows; no carpets, no curtains, no fal-lals.

The only soft thing in the room was the bed in the corner, piled high with clothes; the only ornament a print above the chimney-piece.

"It looks more like a fort than a kitchen," whispered Kit, awed.

"Ah, thereby hangs a tale!" replied the Parson.

He drew up before the face on the wall.

"You know who that is?" he asked, one hand on the boy's shoulder.

Kit laughed.

It was the face that had hung in old Ding-dong's cabin, that was hanging at that hour in thousands of English homes.

"A Colonel of Marines," continued the Parson—"Nelson by name." [Footnote: In 1795 Nelson was appointed Honorary Colonel of Marines in recognition of his services in the Mediterranean.]

"Indeed," said the boy ironically. "I'd a notion he was a sailor."

The other made no answer. Indeed he did not hear. He stood before the print, worshipping it.

"Every night and morning I say my prayers before that picture," he continued quietly, all the laughter out of his voice. And there was something profoundly stirring about the solemnity with which he added,

"If it's God's will that our country shall be saved, there is the man will save it!"

The boy looked up at him.

"Sir," he said, "Nelson will save the country, if we can save Nelson."



IV

THE GARRISON



CHAPTER XXXV

THE SOLDIER'S MOTHER

Kit told his tale.

The Parson listened without a word, his hands folded, and face inscrutable.

His silence chilled the boy.

"D'you believe me, sir?" he flashed out at last.

"Believe the boy!" cried the Parson fiercely. "Why, I saw the fight. I was dancing mad at the foot of the cliff. Great heavens, sir!—didn't you hear me holloa? I should have thought they'd have heard me in France. Why, for the first and last time in my life, I wanted to be a sailor myself!"

Kit finished with a free heart, withholding nothing: the death of Black Diamond; the fight with the privateers; the end of old Ding- dong; and the scene with the Gentleman on the cliff.

The Parson drank in the lad's words. His eyes were grave; his brow furrowed. So stern he seemed, his face so smileless under those laughing curls, that Kit hardly recognised in him the boy-hearted swordsman of a few minutes since.

The story finished, he sat long unmoving; his mouth set, and eyes inward.

Then he began to pace up and down again.

"My prayer is heard," he said at last, and stopping turned to the boy.

"Kit Caryll, d'you know what I am?"

"You look like a—kind of a clergyman, sir."

"And that is what I am," replied the other a touch defiantly. "I am in Holy Orders in my own humble way."

He began pacing once more.

"We all have our weaknesses, sir.... My mother was mine.... She should have been the mother of saints rather than of a—' bully swordsman!'— I think that was the phrase?" cocking a blue eye at the boy.

"After Egypt I came home to find her dying.... Well, she entreated me to forsake my profession and become a Christian—'for my sake, Harry,' says she.... I argued it with her. I told her it was good work, God's work, to kill the French. I said I looked on myself as a Crusader fighting the Moors, as indeed I did. But she wouldn't hear of it. She said the Moors were black and the French white, and that made just all the difference.... And she begged so hard—and—and—"

His back was to the boy, and he was looking out of the window.

It was some time before he went on.

"I couldn't say her no then. So I told her I'd do as she wished and take Orders. But I made one condition. 'I won't go to the French; but if the French come to me, then,' I said, 'surely, mother, I may up and smite!' She gave me that. You see, she never thought they would come."

He cleared his throat.

"Well, the Bishop wouldn't give me a cure, because I didn't know the Catechism. So I kicked my heels till the Peace was broken, and things looked up a bit. And when little Boney began to get his Army of England together on the cliffs yonder, I cheered up, and came and pitched my tent on the nearest spot I could find to be ready. And here I've been ever since.

"On calm summer evenings I've seen the cliffs of France from Beachy Head, and with the spy-glass I've thought I've made out the tents of Lannes' camp. That's been bread and meat to me these two years past. Then a month ago I had that little affair with my lord. That knocked ten years off my life. I've been in training ever since. Today I think I'm a better man than I've ever been." He inhaled a deep breath, swelling his chest.

"And this morning, when I woke and saw that ship hove-to off the Wish, and old Piper told me she was a Frenchman, I just went down on my two knees and thanked God for His great mercies."

He blew his nose boisterously.

"Then I ran up my colours to tempt em ashore. And I've been waiting in hope ever since."



CHAPTER XXXVI

THE FIGHTING MAN

He clapped on his hat.

"And now the first thing to be done is to hold a Council of War with old Piper."

The boy looked up shyly.

"Could I have something to eat first, sir? I haven't tasted food for twenty-four hours."

The Parson fussed off to the cupboard.

"Just like me. Just like a man. No thought—no consideration. All comes of there being no woman about the place."

He brought out a knuckle of ham, a loaf, a pot of jam, and a jug of milk.

As he did so there came a groaning gurgle from the corner.

The Parson whirled round and shot a denouncing finger at the piled bed.

"You dare!" he roared.

"I was ony sniffin, sir," whimpered a cockney voice.

Then for the first time Kit saw that in the bed lay a man. A shaven head, pert and pug-like, and a face shining with sweat protruded. All the rest was lost beneath that mountain of clothes.

As Kit stared, the man winked a merry brown eye at him.

The boy approached.

"Isn't it rather stuffy under all those clothes?" he asked compassionately.

"It's like a h'oven, sir—that ot!" chirped the little man.

"You'll go to a much hotter place when you die, if you so much as stir a finger out," called the Parson with firm cheerfulness. "I'm a Parson, mind you. I know what I'm talkin about."

"Ah, I know you wouldn't go for to put a pore bloke away for fetchin his thumb to mop a drop o sweat off his conk," whined the other.

"Ha! you sweat, Knapp?"

"I spouts pushpiration, sir!"

"Capital, capital!" The Parson hopped across the room and bent his ear to the bed. "I can almost hear him simmer!" He twinkled up at Kit. "It's the very weather for him. He's in a sweet muck-sweat. Lying between two feather-beds, ain't you, me boy?"

He sat down on the table beside the eating lad.

"That's Nipper Knapp. He was my batman in the Borderers. I brought him down here to train, while I was waiting for the French. Such a pretty little bit o stuff! Arms like legs, and legs like bodies. I'll strip him for you one day. Only thing is I have to sweat the meat off him so. Get a belly on him in a day, little pig, if I'd let him."

He spoke of the man much as a farmer speaks of his beasts. The boy's sensitive soul recoiled.

"He can hear every word," he whispered.

"I don't mind," replied the Parson cheerfully.

"Nor don't I," chirped the voice from the bed.

"And what are you training him for?" asked Kit—"the Church, like yourself?"

"No, sir!" retorted the Parson shortly. "I'm training him to make the best use he can of the gifts God has given him—that's his hands and his feet. He can rattle his dukes, and chuck his trotters, as I never saw man yet. Strips ten six. All good, too; all guts. You can't glut him.... I'm backing him to run ten miles in the hour against any man in England, and fight him to a finish in a 24-ft. ring at the end."

The boy shoved back his plate.

"And have you any other spiritual duties, sir?" he asked.

"I stand over Blob while Piper teaches him his prayers," replied the Parson sullenly.

"Who is Piper?"

The Parson was staring out of the window.

It was some time before he answered.

"I once asked Nelson who was the bravest man he'd ever met. He answered like a flash, 'My captain of the foretop aboard the Agamemnon—Ralph Piper. The bravest man,' said Nelson, 'because the best. He's my hero!' And I remember the voice in which he said it now."

Kit had risen to his feet.

All his life Nelson had been his hero; and now he was within touch of his hero's hero.

"Where is he?" with glowing eyes.

"Out there—under the sycamores."

Kit recalled the voice humming the hymn that had welcomed him.



CHAPTER XXXVII

THE SAINT

They passed out of the cottage.

A heavy-browed jasmine, the flowers fading now, hung about the door.

The greensward ran smoothly away to a shingle bank that rose, long- backed and brown, some three hundred yards away. The bank crossed the horizon like a low breast-work, sweeping away eastward in long roan curve. On the right it ran into a little blunt hill, green-brown and bare. Beyond the bank the sea leapt to the eye.

The Parson was walking reverently.

There was about him something of the subdued air of the schoolboy going to interview a respected master.

"Step quietly," he murmured. "We are going into the presence of a saint."

In front of the cottage, about two hundred yards from it, a little knoll, shaded with sycamores, humped up out of the greensward.

At the foot of it, in the shadow of a tree, a tall old man was sitting bolt upright in a wooden chair with wheels. A brown book had fallen open beside him; and a musket, propped against the chair, threw a black shadow across the page.

"Loaded!" muttered the Parson, pointing. "He can draw a cork from a bottle at a hundred yards."

"More than most saints could," whispered the boy.

"He's a common-sense saint, not the ordinary run," replied the Parson with a grin.

The old man's back was towards them. He was gazing intently through a long glass at the privateer. Kit could see nothing but a straight back and moon-silvered head.

"Piper, I've brought a young gentleman of your Service to see you," said the Parson in the quiet tone in which a man addresses a woman or a superior.

The old sailor dropped the glass. His great hands fumbled with the wheels of his chair, and he slewed himself about.

Kit's heart gave a jerk.

The old man ended abruptly at the thighs!

Irresistibly the boy recalled a doll of Gwen's whose china legs he had once plucked off in passion, leaving saw-dust stumps.

The Parson saw the look on the boy's face.

"Ah, I should have told you. Lost both legs in the action with the Ca Ira, wasn't it, Piper?"

The doll spoke.

"Not lost, sir—gone before."

Kit glanced at him sharply.

Was he joking?

No; in that grave face lurked no laughter. The old man had said the thing that he believed in simplest faith. And what a face it was! nobly large, worn as the earth, and as full of quiet dignity. Pale, too, but not with the pallor of ill-health. Indeed the old man looked hard and wholesome as a forest tree. Rather the boy was reminded of a cathedral seen in February sunshine.

The great upper lip was bare and stiff as clay. The wide mouth curled up at the corners, as though it often smiled. Friendly eyes, the colour of forget-me-nots, dwelt on the boy. A stiff white fringe framed all.

And the note of the whole was calm—calm invincible.

Then the boy's eyes fell on those blue bags thrusting out over the edge of the chair. A question leapt to his lips. It was out before he could stop it.

"Dud—dud—does it hurt?"

The old man's face broke up and shone. He chuckled.

A saint could laugh, then! the boy felt himself relieved.

"No, sir, thank you, ne'er a bit. And not nigh as much at the time as you might fancy—a tidy jar like to be sure.... One thing, I don't suffer from no bunions." He went off again into his deep chuckle; and again the boy felt comfort at heart.

The saint could joke!

"Tell him about it, Piper," said the Parson; "you and Nelson."

"Why, sir," said the old man, frank as a child, "the Captain were standin by my gun in the waist, where he'd no business to ha been reelly by rights. Flop I goes on the broad o my back, when it took me. He was down on his knees beside me in a second, dabbin with his little handkercher. 'Don't kneel in that, sir,' says I, 'your white breeches and all.' 'Ah, dear fellow!' says he, taking my hand, 'dear fellow! dear fellow!...' Then they carried me off to the cock-pit."

That was the whole story, but it was so simply told that the boy saw and felt it all.

"Yes, sir. There warn't a man aboard the Agamemnon but'd ha died for Captain Nelson and proud too."

He put the spy-glass to his eye to hide the fact that he was blinking.

"She's had a rare mauling, surely. I'd just like to know her story."

"Here's the young gentleman can tell you, Piper," chimed in the Parson.

There was a faint glow in the hollow of the old man's cheeks as he listened to the boy's tale, and he was rubbing his huge hands together slowly.

"Seems the powder's laid, but the match lies yet in the pocket of this here Gentleman," he said, as Kit concluded. "One thing's clear, sir! We want that boat!... Now if so be I might make so bold, if you and the young gentleman'd take the glass, and step across to the Wish there, you could see all along the shore past Cow Gap to the Head, and make out what they're up to."

"That's a good notion for a sailor!" cried the Parson briskly. "Come on, Kit."

"And I'll make my course for the cottage and see all's snug there," said the old man. "You never know what's comin next in this world. It's the wise man as is ready for the worst."

He trundled himself across the grass.

"Here's your book!" cried Kit, and bending picked it from the ground.

As he did so he saw the name.

It was Law's Serious Call.



CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE SIMPLETON

They passed out of the shadow of the sycamore into the sun-glare.

The greensward ran away into shallow creek lying between them and the little hill beyond. Crossing it, they began the ascent.

"This is the Wish," explained the Parson, climbing; "the Wash really, because the sea washed round it in old days. It's gone back along these parts. Old Piper says, when he was a boy, the creek used to fill at spring-tides."

At the top of the hill Kit looked about him.

The Wish thrust out into the brown beach, a natural watch-tower, some hundred feet high. This was no doubt the bump of green he had seen from the dew-pond.

Eastward a long sweep of shingle embraced Pevensey Bay. Westward, Beachy Head shouldered out into the sea.

It was nearly low tide. Barriers of black rocks bound the sea.

On the edge of it a boy in a blue jersey danced. In his hand was a sea-weed scourge; and as the sea toppled in tiny ripples at his feet, he spanked it, leaping back to avoid the touch of the water. As he leapt he yelled; and in the stillness his pure treble rose to them.

"Hod back, ye saucy thing! hod back, I say!"

The Parson put his hand to his mouth.

"Blob!" he holloaed.

The boy looked up, and with a parting spank came towards them.

"Who's that?" asked Kit, "and what's he doing?"

"Blob—blobbing'," replied the Parson laconically.

"Who's Blob?"

The Parson took up his tale.

"You remember I told you Black Diamond promised to look me up some time. Well, I knew he'd be as good as his word. So very next day I had the windows barred, a brace of bullet-proof doors slung, got in a barrel of powder, and made all snug....

"And just as well I did, too. A couple of days later, just about the time the bats begin to twitter, I heard the thud of feet on the grass, and a laugh. They thought they'd taken on an easy job—just walk into the house, and cop me at my supper. We let em up to within twenty yards. Then we let em have it, the three of us—Piper, Knapp, and I....

"Such a panic! 'It's a trap!' screams one. 'Blockademen!' yells a second. Diamond was the only one of the lot to keep his head. ''Bout ship, boys!' he shouts. 'Call again another day.' And off they scuttled, quicker than they came....

"'Come on, Knapp!' says I, and bundles out after them, holloaing like a regiment. One or two turned, and there was a bit of a barney. I stuck one chap, and was just going to stick another—a fellow in blue jumping around in a queer kind of way—when all of a sudden he gave a jab in the back to one of his own chaps.

"Then he turned, and I saw he was a boy about your age, with a face like a pink moon.

"He came at me like a man, flashing his knife.

"'Here! who are you for?' says I.

"'Whoy, mesalf!' says he.

"'But what you at?' says I.

"'Whoy, foightin!' says he.

"'Who?' says I.

"'Whoy, the nearest!' says he, and smacks at me.

"Then Knapp tripped him from behind, and he was our prisoner....

"He's been with us ever since. Piper's been tryin to make a Christian of him."

"What's his story?"

"I don't know, and he can't tell us. He knows nothing—not even fear. I call him Blob, because blob's his nature. Piper found the name Hoad on his shirt. I daresay his people sold him to the Gap Gang; and they kept him."

"To be cruel to?" shuddered Kit.

"Not they," laughed the Parson. "He was plump as a little pig. They'd be kind to him because he wasn't right—superstition, you see. Kept him to bring em luck, probably. A kind of idol."

The boy in the blue jersey was coming up the hill towards them, slobbering at the mouth. His hands were in his pockets, and he lolloped along on his toes.

"Oi druv her back," he announced with complacent cunning. "She was creepin in on us, sloy-loike."

His face was that of a babe. Clearer eyes Kit had never seen, nor a more perfect mouth. But for the ears, large and flap, it might have been the face of a cherub, poised on the gawky body of fifteen. The expression, by no means vacant, was of slow and staring interest. Certainly this was no congenital idiot. Probably some chance blow on the head in infancy had arrested mental growth. The flesh had gone on; the mind had stopped. A baby-soul was sheathed in the body of a boy.

The two lads were much of a height, and much of an age. But what a difference between them!

The one was limp as a lolling flower, the other alert as a sword, and as keen. Experience had written nothing on the face of the simpleton. All there was blank as the moon. The haggard cheeks and anxious eyes of the other told that he had already drunk deep of the bitter waters of life.

Blob was staring at Kit with the solemn interest of a babe.

Then he pointed a finger.

"Boy!" he bleated.

"Call me 'sir'!" ordered Kit imperiously. "And take your hands out of your pockets when you talk to me."

"Go home, Blob!" said the Parson, patting him. "Home!" pointing, "Home! and stop making a blob o yourself for the present, there's a good boy. Mr. Piper wants you to help him."

Blob shook a slow head.

"Nay," he said in musical Sussex. "Oi'll boide with Maaster Sir."

Here was another boy in a land of men. In a dim way he felt their kinship.



CHAPTER XXXIX

THE FLAP OF A FLAG

The Parson was staring through the spy-glass at Beachy Head.

A mile and a half away, it lay in misty splendour, not unlike a lion sleeping.

At the foot of it a few tiny black figures moved among the rocks.

"I make out about a score of em," he said. "The boat's beached, and a man over it. I can catch the glint on his gun-barrel. We can't get at em except along the shore, hang it! They'd see us coming a mile off."

"If we can't get at the boat," said Kit, "neither can the Gentleman."

"That's truth," mused the Parson, dropping the glass.

"He'll prowl about till night-fall probably. Then he'll have a chance —if they've got liquor. The boat's his one hope. He's in a tightish place, mind!—enemy's country; wings clipped; his old friends his best enemies."

"And he doesn't know whether the privateer's a Frenchman or not," said Kit. "Though, of course, he might come down to the shore and signal her—on chance."

"Not while it's light," replied the Parson grimly; "If he signalled from anywhere it'd be from here. And here I squat till dark. After dark he can signal till he's black in the face—he hasn't got a lantern."

The boy's anxious eyes were sea-ward.

The old pain of heart, forgotten for the moment in the cottage, had returned, the old sickening sense of failure. After all, the responsibility was his, and his alone. It was in him old Ding-dong had trusted; it was to him the scent-bottle had been bequeathed; the fate of Nelson rested on his shoulders.

Hither and thither his mind darted, seeking a way of escape from the net of circumstance.

"If we could only make sure of his thinking her an Englishman!" he fretted.

"She's flying no colours," said the Parson, "that's one good thing."

"I wish she'd fly the Union Jack," replied the boy.

The remark annoyed the Parson, practical or nothing.

"What's the good of wishing what can't be?" he snarled. "You might leave that to the women."

"Why can't it be?" retorted the boy hotly.

A sound behind him caught his ears. He turned to see the flag in the cottage chimney ruffling it behind the sycamores.

It flashed a message to his heart.

"By Jove, sir!" he panted. "I've got it."

The blood had rushed to his face, and ebbed as suddenly.

"Lend me your flag, and I'll swim out with it after dark!"

The Parson stared.

"To the privateer?"

"Why not? It can't be more than a few hundred yards. I've often done more."

"Well, what if you did get there?" curt and sarcastic. "Summon her to surrender, else you'd take her by storm and put the lot to the sword, I suppose?"

"Why, board her, sir, and run the flag up! She's not a man-of-war. They'll be keeping no watch, likely as not."

The boy was in a white blaze.

"They won't see it till broad daylight!" he panted, pressing. "And by that time the Gentleman, if he's hanging about, will see it too. If they haul it down then and run up the tricolour, he'll think it's a decoy."

There was something contagious about the lad's white-hot enthusiasm.

The light was coming and going in the Parson's eyes.

The scheme was as mad as you like. Still, there was a chance of success, a fighting chance. And was it not the only one?

Himself he no more doubted the lad's story than he doubted that a month since he had crossed swords with Fighting Fitz. But who else would believe?

Of course he must send Knapp over to Lewes at once to report to Beau Beauchamp, the Commandant there; but what would come of that?

Loving his old Service with passionate jealousy, he was not blind to the weakness of its traditional logic: it was not probable; therefore it was not true; and so to sleep again, dear boys!

And Beau Beauchamp, of all men!

The Parson had not yet forgotten the reception that heavy sensualist had given to his report that Fighting Fitz was riding up and down the land just outside his lines.

"May I, sir?"

The boy was burning at his side. Perforce the Parson began to smoulder too.

The adventure had just that smack of romance about it that tickled this man of prose. Could he have run the risk himself, he who could hardly swim to the bottom, he would have ventured it with laughing heart. Was he justified in staying the sailor-boy?

No, no, no! his heart thundered the answer at him.

There must always be a risk. And was ever risk better worth running than this one? But what a boy!

He was flaming merrily now.

"May I, sir?"

He turned to the lad, pale beside him, and smacked a hand into his.

"Kit!" he cried with gusty laughter, "you should have been a soldier!"



CHAPTER XL

THE SWIM IN THE DARK

Kit awoke with the horrors.

All was black about him, and a great hand lay on his breast.

He gripped it, gurgling.

A calm voice, already strangely familiar, reassured him.

"By your leave, sir, it's about time for you to rouse and bitt."

It was Nelson's old foretop-man. The moon, slanting through the window, shone on his white head and those tranquil, big-dog eyes of his.

Kit relaxed his hold.

"That you, Piper?" he sighed. "I was dreaming of Fat George. What's the time?"

"It's a little better'n two o'clock, sir; you've had a tidy sleep. The tide's pretty near down, and the moon's a-nigh off the water. By than you get alongside there'll likely be a bit o' mist on the water crep up from the eastud with the sun."

The boy slipped off his clothes, shivering.

"Where's Mr. Joy?"

"He came in from the Wish just on midnight. 'No Knapp yet?' says he. 'Then I shall make a reconnaissance in force myself.' 'Beggin your pardon, sir,' says he, don't see the force—one man agin a score.' 'Ah,' says he, 'you forget my lady.' And he whips up his Polly, and off he pops over the grass like a lad a-courtin." The old man chuckled as he told.

"What's Knapp up to?" trembled the boy.

"Why, sir, gone over to Lewes for the soldiers, and should ha been back hours sen."

"Wonder why he's not?"

"Got fightin and foolin on the road, sir, I'll lay," chuckled the old man. "Like a lamb with the heart of a lion is Knapp, sir. Frisks into trouble, and then fights out again. This is first time he's been let out of hissalf since he went into training. So he's all of a bubble like. Bubble or bust—that's how Knapp feels."

Stripped, the boy stood up in the darkness.

"Got the flag, Piper?"

"Here it be, sir. How'll you carry it?"

"So." He wound it up in a coil and tied it about his neck, scarf-like.

"Now I'm ready."

II

The old man wheeled out to the edge of the shadow of the house.

All about was black and silver in the moon. A faint breeze ruffled the sycamores upon the knoll. Stars strewed the heavens. Beyond the shingle-bank the sea glistened like satin.

It was very still, very cold, very lonely.

Kit set his teeth to prevent them chattering. The night air kissed him coldly, and the moon, white above the inky Downs, glistened on his shoulders.

"There she lays, in the Channel off the Boulder Bank," whispered the old man, pointing to the privateer, dull-black against the glitter. "And it's my belieft there's not a sober man aboard of her. All stow'd away dead drunk under hatches—that's my belieft, sir. They kep it up from dark till midnight—dancin, drummin, fightin, and all manner. More like a cage full? wild beasties from Bedlam than a Christian ship. And for the last hour she might ha been a hulk full o corpuses."

He dropped his voice still further.

"He's in it, sure!" jerking his thumb starward. "Made em blind to the world for His own good purpose—which is as you should lay em aboard unbeknownst and knife the blessed lot if so be it was your fancy."

The boy choked a laugh brimming on the edge of being. The old man's solemnity, his profound simplicity, touched the springs of mirth within him.

"Perhaps," he panted. "I hope so."

"Ah! I'm certain sure," replied the other with firm confidence.

Faith, the most infectious quality in the world because the truest, seized the boy's heart and lifted it.

"Good-bye, Piper."

"Good luck, sir."

The lad plunged into the moonlight.

III

A moon-clad wisp, he flitted across the greensward, the fringe of the flag-scarf fluttering behind him. It was a fine thing to do, but he wished devoutly somebody else had the doing of it. On the Wish in the sunshine, the Parson at his side, when the idea first struck him, it had seemed splendid. Now, alone in the dark, with the idea to translate into reality, he saw it very differently. It gave him no thrill of glory. He felt exactly as he had felt last March on the way to the dentist to have a tooth out—a mean sense of his own mortality, and an earnest desire to run away.

The turf shaded off into long bents growing out of sand; and that again ran away into shingle. As he breasted the bank, his hands succouring his feet, he heard steps behind him.

"Who's that?" he snarled, crouching.

Blob was standing at gaze a little way behind him.

"What ye want?"

The boy made no answer, staring with round moon-eyes.

"He's noiked," came a musing voice. "Oi dew loike to see un."

He shot out a finger, and, flinging back his head, gurgled laughter.

"Here, boy!" called Kit. "As you are there, you can carry me over these pebbles."

He leapt on the other's back, and Blob, sturdy as he looked limp, crashed down the shingle and across the stretch of wet sand at a loose-jointed canter.

"That'll do, my boy, thank you," said Kit, slipping down at the edge of the tide. "I'd give you a penny, only I've not got one. No, you can't come any further. It's too dangerous. This is a job for officers."

He began to paddle out, the ripples playing about his ankles.

Blob's presence braced him to his task. It called to his spirit of a gentleman. He would just show this lout what blood meant.

Blob followed him with awed eyes.

"She's aloive," he warned his brother-boy. "She'll swallow ee."

"No, she won't," Kit replied. "She's an old friend of mine."

IV

The boy could swim at an age when to most lads walking is still an accomplishment. Now he waded quietly down a sandy reach between black rocks.

The water was warmer than the air. When it clasped his waist, he trusted himself to it faithfully.

The sea was his mother, and the mother of his race. Her arms were about him; her spirit entered into his. How pure she was, how strong, how good! He kissed her cool brow and dropped his head upon her bosom. Turning on his back, he saw the wall of the Downs, black beneath glorious stars. On the top of the wall poised the moon, peeping over the brim of the world at him. He waved to her, laughing: she too was a friend. And the moon, wise as innocent, smiled back.

He swam leisurely, without splash, almost without ripple, quiet as the tide.

He had the world to himself, and loved the loneliness.

Out here, the sea about him, the night above, he could feel the slow tides of God pushing onwards through the dark of Time.

Wars and tumults and all the tiny irritations and griefs of life, what were they to that immense-moving flood? And he was one with that flood. Stealing through the water with cleaving arms, he was assured of it.

V

Something rose shadowy and gaunt before him. It was the privateer.

The sight tumbled him out of Eternity into Time. His heart began to clamour, as though it would force its way out of his body.

No longer one with God, seeing all things with His large eyes, and loving them—he was a little boy, mortally afraid, alone in the vast and callous night.

In his flurry be began to splash about: then recollected himself, and trod water quietly.

The moon was deserting him, the sardonic moon he had thought of as a friend. Her silver rim glimmered behind the Downs and was gone. He missed her. Cold she was, still she had been company. He thought she might have stayed—just this one night! He felt aggrieved, and very much alone. And those stars strewing the night above him were so far, and had such hard little eyes.

The water grew dull and dark about him, and of a sudden greatly colder. The flag hung like a clammy halter about his neck. Verdun was not far, and death very near. But for the cold he would have cried. He wished he'd never come.

It flashed in upon him to hail the ship, and ask them for a cup of coffee. The thought amused him and saved the situation. He began to chuckle.

Squeezing the fear out of his mind, he set himself to the accomplishment of his task.

The thought of old Piper, calm invincibly, confirmed him in his purpose.

Yet he couldn't help reminding himself with a snigger, that old Piper was safe in an arm-chair on land, while he was out there in the water with the work to do.

Still, now if ever was his time. The moon was gone. In another hour the dawn would begin to glimmer. Between the two his chance lay.

Treading water a cable's-length away, he observed the ship intently.

She lay upon the water like a dead thing. The great dark hull, seen against the living night, appeared carcass-like. Her stillness was almost terrible.

Not a spar creaked, not a match glowed. She was dark as death, and as silent.

As he watched, a humming noise, rising and falling, came to him across the water. He held his breath. Then he recognised it, with a gasp of relief.

Somebody was snoring.

That domestic sound cheered him amazingly.

At least the ship was not a sepulchre. Her crew were neither dead nor devils. They were human. They snored.

He swam round the ship, stealthy as an otter in the Coquet.

So far as he could see there was not a soul on deck.

Then, as he came under her stern, he noticed for the first time that another vessel lay alongside.

A thought, swift as a dagger, struck at his heart.

Could it be that the Gentleman had somehow picked up a lugger, and so won aboard? Was he too late?

Then with a gasp of thankfulness he remembered.

It was the Kite, of course.

The tide had set her alongside; and now she lay scraping the side of the privateer. A handier stepping-stone he could not have asked.



CHAPTER XLI

PIGGY, THE PRIVATEERSMAN

I

In a minute he had clambered aboard the lugger.

The privateer had dropped a hawser over her side as buffer. The boy was up it in a moment, and on to the deck, his heart beating high.

The deck was empty.

No! a figure was leaning over the side, his back to Kit. No sailor, obviously. He was wearing a great bearskin, and Kit caught the glimmer of a bayonet. A sentinel, and not asleep, nor drunk; for he was humming Ca Ira.

La Coquette too then carried soldiers!

Stealthy as a cat, the boy drew away along the deck. Piper, weather- wise old man, had told him truth. Thin wisps of mists were sweeping over the sea, veiling the stars.

How God helps His little children who help Him!

Up the shrouds of the foremast. The ratlines seared his feet. A little wind licked his body. The mist was chill as a winding-sheet.

There was no danger of being seen. He was nearer the stars than the deck. Between him and it now lay a blanket of mist.

But what was that in the East?

It was the whitening of the dawn.

There was no time to be lost.

He swarmed up the top-gallant mast, unwound the flag, and made it fast.

How it fluttered!—what a rollicking tow-row!—had ever flag rampaged so boisterously!

The man below stopped humming. Kit could not see him; so he could not see the flag.

Down he slid, the mast scraping his knees as he went; but he scarcely felt the pain. His heart was swelling. The privateer was flying British colours. She was his. Single-handed he had taken a French ship. He was half in tears, half laughing. It seemed so dream-like, so ridiculous.

Down the shrouds, and back to the deck.

II

Not a soul stirred. Forward somewhere a man shouted in his sleep. Aft the sentinel was whistling now.

Swift as an eel, the boy flashed to the side, and poised for his plunge.

No! the splash would be heard.

Swiftly along the deck, making for his steppingstone, the lugger.

His work done, his heart brimming, the boy was ripe for mischief as a happy girl.

As he stole along the deck, his eyes never left the soldier's back. The fellow was leaning over the bulwark, his trousers tight, and their contents rounded and tempting. Should he, should he spank him?

A moment the boy struggled with his imp-self, and prevailed.

Nelson! Duty!

He slipped over into the lugger. The tide had shifted her position. Now she bumped under the stern of the privateer.

The port of the stern-cabin was open, and light poured from it. Standing on the weather-boarding, Kit peeped in.

A little fat man was sitting at a table, dead asleep, and snoring stertorously. His arms were on the table, and his head on his arms. He was quite bald, and very red. His lips pouted, and the under one thrust up towards his nose. The little round body rose and fell, bladder-like. His nose was a snout, short and cocked. A more pig-like little person Kit thought he had never seen.

A great bottle stood on the table before him, and beside it a scratch- wig and guttering candle. On the table a pistol pinned down a chart, and under the sleeper's head was a sheet of paper and a pen.

Piggy had fallen asleep writing.

Flung into a corner was a cocked hat. Beside it lay a much-mounted sword, and on a chair a blue frock-coat, with tawdry epaulettes.

The boy lifted his eyes. An obscene print decorated the bulk-head. It smote him in the face like a handful of filth. He snatched his eyes away. They fell upon a tarpaulin-bag hung on the door. On the bag was an eagle, beneath it a large

N.

That settled it.

The boy meant to have that bag.

III

He was through the port in a twinkling.

The man was sleeping like the dead, his head askew on his hands, and lips compressed in pouting content. For the time being the body had mastered invincibly any soul there might be within. The man was so much slow-heaving earth.

The naked boy leaned over the sleeper. The pen had fallen from Piggy's hand, and left a little scrawl across the letter he had been writing.

The character was flourishing, self-complacent, and, above all, easy to read.

It was written in French, and ran, translated,

_Sire,

I have to inform your Majesty that Sunday dawn I was lying off Seaford Head, waiting to escort the lugger Kite, according to your Majesty's instructions. As I was on my knees inviting the good God to shower blessings on the sacred head of you, His so faithful servant, a sail was seen.

I bore up for her immediately. She was an English ship of the line.

I engaged her at once, fearless of the odds, knowing that the good God is always on your Majesty's side. Desperate valour was displayed by your Majesty's seamen. We were out-numbered four to one.

She carried 120 guns in three tiers and was alive with men—all sent by me to answer before the Great Judge for being in arms against your anointed Majesty. May He deal with them as they deserve!

The Englishman was towing the lugger Kite. Knowing the vital importance of the mission on which she was engaged, I cut her out from under the enemy's stern, leading the boat attack myself, under a terrific fire from her stern-galleries.

The Kite had two dead men aboard, one of them, helas! the brave Monsieur de Diamond, so devoted to your Majesty's interests. He was sitting upon the despatch-bag, which thus had escaped the vigilance of his murderers.

My lord the General was not on board. I am lying off Beachy Head waiting for him. Should he not appear by tomorrow noon, I shall not dare to wait longer, but shall make all sail with the despatches I have captured.

I permit myself to congratulate your Majesty upon my victory, and sign myself with effusion,

Your Majesty's humble and adoring servant,

EGALITE LAGLOIRE.

P.S.—I have prepared, and now send, the chart for which your Majesty asked. As your Majesty's eye will see at a glance all is in order. We do but wait the last word from my lord the General. The red crosses mark the stations...._

Here the pen had dropped from the writer's hand.

IV

The boy turned with beating heart: he had struck gold indeed.

Unshipping the despatch bag, he slung it about his shoulders.

Lifting the pistol, he snatched the chart, and thrust it under the flap of the locked bag.

The action set the candle swaling. It shot out a snake-like flame that licked the bald pate of the sleeping privateersman.

He awoke with a start and a sacre, clapping his hand to his singed head.

Then through drink-and-sleep-blurred eyes, he saw the naked figure by the door.

He half rose, little fat man, so pleased.

"Mon ange!" he cried, and fluttered both arms, much as Gwen's young canaries fluttered their wings when seeking food from their mother.

In a flash the boy had turned the key in the lock behind him, and flung it through the open port.

Then he swung the despatch-bag.

Many a pillow-fight with Gwen up and down the twisting passages of their attic nursery had made him expert. Crash it came down on Piggy's bald skull.

"One from your ange!" cried the lad, and followed up with a left-hander between the eyes.

Down crashed the amorous gentleman, spluttering.

A foot, planted fair on his mouth, stifled his cry.

Before he could recover, the boy was through the port, on to the lugger, and had slipped into the sea, quiet as a water-rat.

Behind him a dreadful scream woke the ship.

"Les depeches! Les depeches!"



CHAPTER XLII

THE MAN IN THE BOAT

I

The ship awoke suddenly from her swoon.

An appalling clamour boiled up from the still waters.

Bugle-calls split the air; drums rolled furiously; a carronade went off with a shattering roar; there was a rush of feet and tumult of voices. Above the confusion could be heard Piggy thumping at the door and squealing,

"Les depeches! Les depeches!"

Kit, sliding through the water, was thankful for the flash of insight that had made him lock the door, and throw away the key. That action meant minutes gained; these minutes might mean life.

The tide was with him now. But for that, and this merciful mist, his chances would be nil.

His ears behind him, he swam like a hunted otter.

Aboard the privateer things were moving fast. The confusion abated; order began to reign; with it the danger grew. Somebody was at work with an axe on the door. It came down with a crash. There was a shrill command and the scamper of feet.

Piggy was on deck.

"Feu, imbecile! par la! dans le brouillard!"

A bullet plopped into the water wide on the boy's right.

"Au bateau!"

Again that scamper of feet: then the rattle of blocks and creak of pulleys. Besides all was swiftness, and fierce silence; and that silence terrified the lad far more than the preceding tumult.

"Depechez vous donc, gredins!"

They were lowering a boat; and he was getting done.

The despatch-bag was heavy between his shoulders. His hold upon himself was relaxing: dissolution was setting in. The firm mind, which at all times and in all places means salvation, was dissipating. He tried not to think. All there was of him he needed for his swimming. Thought was waste; so was fear. And swim he did, and swim, through endless water, with sickening brain and failing arms.

Behind him he heard a splash, as the privateer's boat took the sea.

They'd be coming soon now. He didn't mind much: he was too tired. And they couldn't hurt him: he was too far away.

He heard the splash of oars, and thumping rowlocks.

Here they came—straight towards him!

Then with a start he recollected: the privateer's boat would be pursuing; this was coming to meet him.

Had he been swimming round and round like a drowning dog?

No. Behind him he could hear shouts and orders on the privateer as the crew jumped into the boat.

This must be some other craft.

It was coming from the land, and a landsman was rowing it. He could tell by the uneven splash of the oars, the slish along the surface as a crab was caught, and the muffled curse as the man recovered himself.

Could it be the Parson come to his assistance?

The question answered itself.

The bows of a boat thrust on him through the mist. He saw a man's back, giving to his stroke.

"Hi!" he gasped, the boat's nose hard on top of him.

The rower glanced round.

There was no mistaking that falcon-face.

It was the Gentleman.

II

"Who's there?" peering suspiciously.

"Boy Hoad, powder-monkey o the Dreadnought."

"Is that the Dreadnought?" sharply.

"Dreadnought, forty-four. Oi'm drownin, sir. Take us in."

His hand was on the boat's gunwale.

"What the deuce you doing here?"

"Desartin, sir. They was for floggin me at sun-up."

"What for?"

"For—for fun."

"For what?"

"For funk, sir," panted the boy, recovering. "Oi don't care for being shotted. So when the guns begins to bang, Oi goos to bed."

The Gentleman threw back his head and ran off into laughter.

"You're the right sort, Mr. Toad. Come on board by all means. But for you and your likes the world'd be a dull place."

Kit clambered in.

"What's that bag?" asked the Gentleman, swift as a sword.

"Duds," replied the boy as swift.

The Gentleman, sitting still as death, stared. It was an appalling moment. The boy could not face those eyes. He looked behind him. As he did so, the mist above drifted away, and the Union Jack at the foretop of the privateer floated out.

"There's her colours!" he panted.

"By Jove, you're right," cried the Gentleman, and began to row the boat clumsily about. "Stop that hole in the bottom with your foot, will you?"

The boat was water-logged and filling fast. The water was already over the Gentleman's spurs.

Down on his knees the boy baled for his life.

Behind him he heard a word of command: then the splash of oars, and the regular thump of rowlocks. The privateer's boat was away—a ten- oared galley from the sound of her, and they were driving her.

"Row, sir, row!" urged the boy. "They're after us!"

The Gentleman flung back into his oars.

Kit could not but admire him. He was rowing, as he believed, against death. The boat was sodden; he could not row; and the pursuers were coming up hand over hand. Yet his eyes danced, as he gasped,

"This is life."

The boy was looking behind him. He could not see the pursuing boat, but he could hear the sizzle of foam under her keel as she slipped through the water, and the rhythmical sweep of oars.

There was a terrible beauty about it—this swooping of Death on them out of the fog. He could hear the wings he could not see. She was close now, the Angel of the Swarthy Pinions.

On the thwart lay a pistol. He snatched it.

"Good boy!" panted the Gentleman.

Kit glanced forward.

He could see the loom of the land.

"There's the shore, sir!" he cried.

"And here are they!" gasped the other. "Pretty thing, by Jove!"

A boat's bows shot up behind them. A figure was standing in the stern.

"Les voila!" screamed a voice.

The Gentleman threw up his oars.

"French!"

Kit clapped the pistol to his head.

"Row!" he screamed. "Row!"

The other tumbled back into his oars. Up sprang his foot. The pistol was kicked out of the boy's hand, and the Gentleman was on him.

"O, you are a villain, Little Chap!" chuckled a voice in the lad's ear.

For a moment they hugged, the boat rocking beneath them.

"Can you swim?" came the voice at his ear.

"Yes," gurgled the lad, and as he felt the boat going sucked in a breath.

"Then shift for yourself. I can't."

As the waters closed about them the arms of the Gentleman loosed their hold.



CHAPTER XLIII

A BLACK BORDERER TO THE RESCUE

I

A boy was wading shoreward dizzily. As he surged through the water, his body made long rippling waves. He watched them with dull fascination, pointing.

Then he began to whimper peevishly. He was tired, he was cold. The shore waved up and down before his eyes. He knew he couldn't do it.

From behind him a yell penetrated his dying mind.

It stopped him dead.

He was a little child, nightmare-bound.

Waving to and fro, the water to his knees, he stretched both arms shoreward.

"Mother!" he wailed.

A shout answered him.

Some one was crashing down the shingle, racing across the sand, and plunging through the water towards him.

The boy began to titter.

"Come on, Kit! come on!" came a rousing voice. "Don't look behind you! That's the style! Come on!"

What was this black splashing figure, sword in hand? Was it the Angel of Death in full regimentals? Surely he recognised the face beneath the shako?

"You aren't mother," the boy giggled, swaying.

A strong arm was round him; a body, firm and full of life, was pressed against his dying one; a voice, quickening as the Spring, was in his ear.

"Splendid, Kit! Well done indeed! Lean on me. Lots o time."

"Have the soldiers come?" sobbed the boy, struggling forward.

"One has," came the sturdy voice—"a Black Borderer."

They waded through the shallows, the ripples breaking prettily about them.

Behind them a fierce voice sang out an order.

The galley, which had brought up with a bump against the submerged longboat, had hoisted the Gentleman on board, and was swooping in pursuit.

The boy heard the beat of the oars, and sank on his knees at the edge of the sea.

"I can't, sir. Take the bag. O go on!"

Two strong arms clutched him, and he was hoisted up.

All things were swimming away from him.

The last thing he knew was that he was in somebody's arms, and the somebody was running.

II

The boat swept shoreward.

A man with a musket, standing in the bows, was about to fire at the fugitives.

A sharp voice stayed him.

"Ne tirez point! Nous les prendrons vivants. Ce n'est qu'un seul homme et le gosse."

A bugle from the shingle-bank retorted defiantly.

"Halte!"

The boat stopped short.

The crew looked over their shoulders.

"Les soldats!"

Upon the ridge a shako bobbed up.

A figure in uniform rose and ran at it

"Keep your eads down there all along the line!" it shouted. "Wait till I give the word, Royal Stand-backs."

The Gentleman sprang up in the boat.

"Ramez toujours, mes enfants!" he cried. "C'est une ruse!"

The men hung on their oars.

"Laches!" cried the Gentleman, smote the man on the foremost thwart a buffet, and leaping overboard floundered through the water.

The man in the bows fired.

There was no reply from the shingle-bank.

The men of the galley took courage. The boat swished through the shallows, and bumped ashore.

Out tumbled her crew, and stormed across the sand at the heels of the Gentleman.

The Parson was staggering up the shingle-bank, the boy in his arms.

At the top he paused, heaving like an earthquake, and looked back on his scampering pursuers.

"Yes, my beauties," he panted. "You just won't do it."

Knapp, keen as a terrier, bobbed up at his side.

"Shall I charge em, sir?" his little brown eyes bursting with desire— "me and the boy. Down the ill and into em plippety-plumpety-plop! O for God's sake, sir!" whimpering, dancing. "Ave mercy as you ope for it. Let me ave me smack if it's only for the glory of the old rigiment."

"Certainly not," said the Parson sternly. "This is war, not tomfoolery."

The little man collapsed sullenly.

"From the right—retire by companies—on your sup-ports!" shouted the Parson in measured regimental voice.

From his manner he might have been addressing a Brigade and not merely Blob, disguised in an ancient shako, lying on his stomach, and armed with a hay-rake.

III

He plunged down the bank.

As he reached the greensward a warning shout from the cottage reached him.

"Ha! what's this?" joggled the Parson sharply. "Flank attack! who the pest? Oh, Gap Gang—I forgot."

A stream of fierce dark figures with running legs poured down the Wish and across the greensward at him.

"Hold tight round my neck, Kit!" he panted, taut to meet the new attack. "I want my sword-arm free. What! the boy's fainted!" He gave the limp body a hoist on his shoulder. "Now, Knapp! Let's see these guts o yours!"

Knapp shot by him, his arms working like piston-rods.

"Come on, Blob, me boy. Slaughder for somebody!" He pranced into action, throwing his legs like a hackney trotter. "Pray, duckie darlins, pray!" he called. "I'm a-comin! I'm a-comin! I'm a-comin!"

The life was bursting out of him. It made him laughing-mad. He was lusty as a young lion.

"Here they come!" muttered the Parson, labouring behind.

And come they did at a hound-slink, bunched together, and babbling. It was clear they were uncertain of each other and of success. Sin, the mighty Disintegrator, was at work upon their spirits. A more half- hearted crew of blackguards never attempted murder. They needed Black Diamond. He, and he alone, might have held them and swung them, as a fine horseman holds and swings a refuser at a fence.

And what dark faces! what dreadful eyes! what voices popping up like foul bubbles from a sewage pond!

_"Them three all?"

"Enough too, ain't it?"

"I'm for gain back. Look at the face on that buster with the sword!"

"H'into em!"_ came a shrill treble from the rear. _"Cheerily, chaps, cheerily!"_

A crack from the cottage, the crack of doom.

The leading ruffian, a lumbering great horse-faced fellow, clapped his hand to his side.