Up went the filly, fighting the air.

The boy saw her belly, her thighs, and the swish of her tail between her hocks.

Down she came in roaring ruin, the old mare an avalanche of snow burying her.

"In, Kit!" screamed the Parson.

"No, sir!" yelled the boy.

In a blinding light he saw the thing to do, and flashed to do it.

"The lynch-pins!"

Down he jumped, and dirk in hand raced for the tangle of horseflesh, black and white and heaving like an angry sea.

Swift as he was, the Gentleman was swifter.

Before the boy had touched ground, he was down from his perch, slashing at the tackle with his sword. Now he leapt to the mare's head, hurling her back into her breeching.

While Kit was yet twenty yards away, he was up again, standing on the shafts, reins in hand.

"Now, my lady!" came the high singing voice.

The brave old thing answered to it as though to a lover. She flung forward with a sob.

"I'll take the mare and the man!" panted the Parson, racing up behind, his curls almost cracking. "You go for the lynch-pins!"

He swept past, Polly in hand.

"Forgive me, Jenny!" he cried; and thrust home.

A spout of blood seemed to darken the sky, and deluge all. The wain brought up with a dreadful jerk.

"Home, sir, if you can!" shouted Piper from his loop-hole. "Here's the Grannydears!"

"Kit!" bawled the Parson. "Where are you?"

The lad crept out from under the wain.

"Got the lynch-pins?"

"Yes."

"Then come on!"

Under the fore-wheel the Gentleman was lying on his back, with closed eyes.

The boy stopped.

"Are you hurt, sir?"

The other shook a smiling head.

"Only shocked. Jerked off my box. Run, Little Chap, run!—or they'll bottle you."

"Kit, damn you!" stormed the Parson. "Will you run?"

Across the greensward half a dozen Grenadiers were hurling. The nearest dropped on his knee, and took deliberate aim at the boy.

The loop-hole clouded suddenly.

Out of it Death spoke.

The Grenadier toppled over on to his back with flapping hands. A moment he sat bolt-erect, a foolish-familiar look on his face—Kit somehow expected him to put his tongue out—then collapsed ghastly.

The boy made for the cottage.

Blob, leaning out of the dormer, chewing an apple, watched him with spiteful amusement.

"Say, Maaster Sir," he cried, as he spat and slobbered, "reck'n they'll catch you."

"Shall I unbolt the door, sir?" shouted Piper.

"You do, by God!" roared the wrathful Parson. "They're on our heels, fool!"

"How'll you manage then, sir?"

"Leave that to me, and stick to your shooting!"

A great water-butt stood at the corner, empty now.

The Parson, man of myriad resource, had trundled it beneath the dormer, and turned it upside down in a second.

"Up, boy!"

Kit was on it, and in through the window in a twinkle. The Parson followed.

The leading Grenadier came at him, bayonet at the charge. The Parson put the steel aside with his blade, and met the man fair in the face with his heel.

"Good punch!" he cried cheerily, and kicking the butt away from under him, scrambled into the loft.

He stood awhile both hands on his knees, heaving. Then he looked up, his blue eyes good and grinning.

"Prettiest thing I ever saw in my life!" he panted. "But, you young scaramouch! what the deuce d'you mean by stopping to chatter to that chap?"

"I thought he was hurt," gasped the boy panting against the wall. "He's my friend."



CHAPTER LIX

MISS BLOSSOM

"Pistol, please."

The Gentleman was standing beneath the dormer, one hand uplifted.

The Parson looked down at him.

"Well, you're a calm chap," he said with slow delight.

Better than anything in the world he loved a brave man.

"I know my man," replied the other in the same still voice.

He was far away in April twilight-land.

The fine face, gay as the morning a few minutes since, had now a wistful evening look. The shadows had fallen on it: rain was not far.

Even the Parson, blind-eyed Englishman that he was, noticed it, and was touched. After all the man was a boy, and a beaten boy.

"Are you hurt?" he gruffed.

"No—not hurt."

The Parson thought he understood.

"It was the pluckiest attempt I ever saw!" he cried with the generosity of the victor. "That black filly had never known the feel of a collar, till twenty minutes since.... I was to have broken her this autumn."

"She was the least bit awkward at the start," mused the other. "But she handled sweetly all the same."

"We had all the luck," continued the Parson. "But for that plank, you'd have brought it off. It'll be your turn next time!"

The other lifted his face swiftly.

"Ah, no," he cried, "you mistake. That's nothing! It's this!"

He pointed.

Fifty yards away the wain lay wrecked on the greensward, the old white mare crumpled in the shafts. She was stone-dead, and her muzzle, with its coarse long hairs, was resting on the quarters of her daughter.

"That's the worst of war," said the Gentleman in that remote voice of his. "We know; they don't."

"I expect it's all fairer than it seems," said the Parson huskily.

The other nodded.

"Have you a pistol?"

The filly was not dead. Lying on her side, she was lifting her head and craning back to gaze at her dead dam.

Something clutched the Parson by the throat. A veil was rent. For a moment he seemed to see the tragedy as the man beneath him saw it—the passion, the pathos of that blind suffering in the cause of another.

"Here!" he said hoarsely, handing down a pistol.

The Gentleman took it, and seeing a pale face peering behind the other's shoulder,

"She's not suffering, I think. Don't look, Little Chap."

He walked back to the filly.

Lying still now, her head along the greensward, she watched him coming; snorting through full-blown nostrils.

He knelt at her head, pulling her ear, and caressing her.

"There, then, there!—It's all over now, little woman. I've come to comfort you."



CHAPTER LX

THE TWO PRAYERS

I

The Gentleman was walking away into the sunset.

The Parson turned from the dormer, and his eyes were wet.

"And, now, my boy," he cried, "you know what a gentleman is."

The words loosed the fountains of laughter in the lad's heart.

"I thought, sir, that you said—"

"You thought wrong," snapped the Parson. "I said nothing of the sort."

He swung round on Blob and kicked him.

"What fur why?" whimpered Blob.

"Teach you!" cried the Parson. "Want some more, eh? Then behave yourself. I'm sick o your nonsense."

He reached up to the rafter.

"Eat and sleep—that's the whole duty of man just at present. Blob, take Piper his rations, and ask him to forgive an old soldier who's a bit short in the temper in action—and do the same yourself, my boy. Here, Kit."

They snatched a hasty meal.

Outside the dusk was falling.

The Parson brushed the crumbs off his cravat.

"And now will you take first watch, or shall I?"

"I will, sir. I don't feel like sleep."

"Very well. Wake me when the moon dips behind the Downs, or earlier if there's a sign of the soldiers."

Kit took his post at the dormer. The other slipped off his coat.

"I'm not much of a Parson as you may have found out," he muttered, "still I am an Englishman." And he plumped down on his knees defiantly.

His was a very short and simple prayer; the prayer tens of thousands of Englishmen were praying from their hearts at that time.

Kneeling in his shirt, Polly shining before him against the wall, he repeated it most earnestly.

The whispered words, so simple and heart-felt, reached the ears of the boy at the dormer.

"God bless our dear country; and God d—- the French."

The waters of laughter came roaring up the boy's throat, and surged over, irresistible.

The Parson rose from his knees, and scowled at the lad's shaking shoulders.

"I suppose they're too proud to pray in his Service," he sneered. "Pack o pirates!" He took off his coat and folded it with thumps. "Yet I know one sailor who's not above paying his respects to his Maker—and that's Lord Nelson, of whom you may have heard. Seen him myself in the trenches at Calvi. I remember a great buck of a Dragoon Guardsman asking him,

"'Why d'you pray, little man?' 'Why,' says Nelson, simple as a child, 'because mother taught me.' Yes, sir," fiercely, "and that's why I pray—and jolly good reason too."

"Did she teach you that prayer?" asked Kit demurely.

"Bah! blurry young tarry-breeks!" muttered the other; and curling on the floor, his rolled jacket beneath his head, the old campaigner was off to sleep, Polly fair and faithful beside him.

II

The boy had the house to himself, and the world too. At last he could retire once more upon the Love within him.

He could pray—without words.

The sea was a plain shining beneath the moon. Against the light, inky sycamores ruffled, stars entangled in their leaves. On the shingle- bank the bear-skinn'd sentinel showed black against white waters.

The plain beauty of the night stole upon his mind. All was jewelled silence, save for the jar-r-r of the familiar goat-sucker from the foot of the hills, and the wash of the sea.

How calm it was, how strong, how radiant!

He had been far away. Now he was drawing near again. It was his once more. He possessed it all, all, all, and loved it as his own.

All day he had been the prisoner of his own distraught senses. And how comfortable it was, after the darkness of that life which is death, to resume the large loveliness of Life Unending.

Space and Time had no more meaning for him. He was again eternal and infinite. All this beauty of earth and sky and moon-wan water, it was not outside him, it was himself. He reached out a hand to pluck a handful of stars, and could not—because they were too close. You cannot pluck the jewels of your own heart.

Yet however deep he plunged into Eternity, the ache of Time was still present to his mind, remote indeed, on the farthest shores of memory, but always there, an ache that would not still. He felt the pain of it, and still more the pettiness. To him, sitting at the heart of things, drinking in the great night, they seemed strangely mean and tawdry now, the excitements of the past day.

Let not your heart be troubled, came the voice of the Poet of Truth down the ages.

Was it worthy of a Son of God so to vex himself with the trivialities of this world?

What was war? what victory? what defeat?

True he must do his best for conscience' sake, but God would swing the stars across the heaven whether Napoleon landed or not. He would still march on His great way, though Nelson were lost.

Smiling to himself, the lad was wondering whether to the Maker of those stars, this earth, that sea, the issue of this business might be more than the issue of a squabble between two sparrows would be to him.

III

He crossed to the northward window.

The Downs surged before him like a wave, dull against the brilliant darkness. Overhead the slow stars trailed by, dipping, one after one, behind the dark curtain of hills. The moon climbed above the sycamores. Out on the plain something sparkled frostily. It was the bayonet of a sentinel, lonely-pacing in the moonlight.

The sight brought the lad back to earth.

How would it all end? Were these few bearskinn'd trespassers only the spray of seas to follow?

In a little while would England be flooded with them? Aghast, he peered seaward: and seemed to behold a black tide of men sweeping across the moon-drift. They deluged England. The fringe of them lapped about his own northern home. A man in a tree was shooting at Gwen running for her life, her hair behind her, screaming, "Kit!"

Something fell on the floor with a sharp tap, and stopped the shriek on the verge of his lips.

What was it?

Another tap. Something was bobbing briskly across the floor. He picked it up. It was a pebble, and must have come through the window.

Cocking his pistol, he rose.

"Down't shoot," said a low voice.



CHAPTER LXI

KNAPP'S RETURN

Beneath the window stood the little rifleman, white in the shadow of the house, and grinning up at him.

"How did you get through?"

"Slip through em, sir—h'easy as a h'eel."

"Don't talk so loud," whispered the boy. "Just hop on to the sill of the lower window. I'll see if I can haul you in."

"No, sir. I won't come in. I may be more usefuller outside. Keep em on the Key Whiff as the sayin is."

"Then keep still! don't jig! hug in here in the shadow of the house! I'll call Mr. Joy."

The Parson was at the window in a minute and listening to the man's story.

According to his own account Knapp had done the twelve miles to Lewes under the hour.

"Went slap away, as your orders was, sir, no foolin nor nothin, just slap bang through em—you ask Mr. Caryll."

"Never mind about your feats," said the Parson shortly. "Did you see the Commandant?"

"O yes, sir. Ran straight away through the camp to his tent, where the flag were flyin, never bothered about no sentries nor nothin. Just as I trot up, a little bit of a butterfly lady like bob out o the tent, and when she see me—'Beau, boy!' she squeals. 'Beau, boy! ere's a niked man! Do come and see!' And she jig up and down and tiddle her fingers at me, please as Punch.... Out come ole Whiskers, sword and all. 'You something something!' says he, and knocks her back into the tent. Then he run at me, roarin."

The little man was sniggering.

"I see by his eyes he meant it all, so—

"'Here, sir,' says I, 'somethin for yourself!' and chucks the note in his mug."

The Parson was breathing deep.

"And what then?"

"Why, sir, I'd nothin on me ony the dooks me God give me. So I up and I skip it."

The Parson leaned out, and smote at the man's shaven skull with the butt-end of his pistol.

"Ain't I done right, sir?" squeaked the little man, dodging back.

"You've sold us!" cursed the Parson, and he was white even in the moon.

"Hush, sir! hush!" cried Kit. "For goodness' sake, hush! They'll hear you."

"Hullo! hullo! what's all this?" came a voice from across the sward.

"Excuse me, sir!" whispered Knapp, unabashed. "I'd best be steppin it. Here are your papers, sir." He flung a packet through the window and flashed away.

The Gentleman sat on the wall in the moonlight.

"So your chap's back," he called in his friendly voice.

"Yes, sir," replied the Parson harshly, "and the soldiers on his heels two thousand strong, with a couple of Horse Batteries, and a company of Sappers to rig up a gallows for conceited young coxcombs who pose on walls in the moonlight."

"Very glad to see any friends of yours any time," replied the Gentleman. "But unless they come soon I'm afraid we shall miss. I'm off at dawn. But I'll see you again before going. Good-night."

He sauntered away.

The Parson turned, grinding his teeth.

Then he saw the boy's face, and laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Turn in, boy, and try to get a snooze. What tomorrow brings Heaven knows, but we do know we shall want all our strength to meet it."



CHAPTER LXII

THE PARSON MUSES

The Parson opened his packet.

It contained a batch of newspapers dropped for him daily at Lewes by the coach, and not called for since last Saturday.

Ah, here we are!

The Times, Monday, August l9—that was the day before yesterday.

Lord Nelson is arrived at Portsmouth.

Then the Gentleman was right!

He was here, the man his country had believed barring the passage of the Combined Squadron Vigo way.

Why had the watch-dog left his post?

We may infer from the circumstance of his Lordship's coming home, that information had reached him of the Combined Squadron having got into Ferrol.

He dared say they had. Where was the man should have stopped them?

The Times, August 20.

Lord Nelson arrived at his seat at Merton in Surrey yesterday....

O, the Gentleman! the Gentleman! It was all true then!...

and will most probably attend at the Admiralty this day.

Probably attend!

And this was Nelson! his Nelson!

_Victory, Spithead, August 18, 1805.

The Victory, with the fleet under my command, left Gibraltar twenty- seven days ago....

Nelson and Bronte_.

That's right. Do the thing thoroughly if you're going to do it at all. Come home yourself, and bring your fleet with you. It might get in the way of the Combined Squadron if it stopped off Cadiz. Pity to be rude, you know!

As soon as Lord Nelson's flag was descried at Spithead, the ramparts, and every place which could command a view of the entrance of the harbour, were crowded with spectators. As he approached the shore, he was saluted with loud and reiterated huzzas, as enthusiastic and sincere as if he had returned crowned with a third great naval victory.

That third great victory, where was it now?

Poor little chap! poor little Nelson!

And what was this? The Moniteur, Paris, August 12. Boo-woo-woo.... Bob Calder's battle. [Footnote: Sir Robert Calder had fought an indecisive action with Villeneuve in July.] Bob Calder ought to be shot. Had em and then wouldn't hammer em. Call emselves sailors!

Vice-Admiral Calder stood off with thirteen ships, and left the Combined Squadron masters of the sea.

Masters of the Sea!

O good God! good God!

And what was Nelson doing?

The sudden arrival of Lord Nelson in the Metropolis, after so long an absence, and such arduous service, is a circumstance peculiarly interesting to the inhabitants, who were yesterday waiting in thousands about the Admiralty to give him a truly British reception. Many, of course, were disappointed in their object, and can only wait for another opportunity; but that, we have reason to believe, will occur this evening, as it is reported in the Naval circles, that his Lordship intends to pay a visit to Vauxhall Gardens, in honour of the birthday of the Duke of Clarence. The report is, in many points of view, entitled to consideration, for there is no other Gala in the season which affords such an infinite degree of nautical attraction.

Gala with a big G!

No other Gala in the season which affords such an infinite degree of nautical attraction.

Poor England! poor Nelson!



IV

THE GENTLEMAN'S LAST CARD



CHAPTER LXIII

NELSON'S TOPSAILS

Kit awoke with a start.

The dormer made a patch of diamond light in the dead of the wall, and the chill of dawn sharpened the air.

Blob was bending over him.

"Nelson's a-comin," he announced, much as he might have said breakfast was in.

Kit looked up into the round pink face, fresh as a daisy, and dewy- eyed above him.

"No!" he cried, and started to his elbow.

"He is though, lad," said the Parson at the window, very quiet.

Kit was beside him in a minute.

The mattress was down, and the Parson, leaning out into the blue, both hands on the sill, munched his thoughts.

"There's his tops'ls," said he, nodding east to where far across the waters a glimmer as of an iceberg hung in the dawn. "Take the glass and have a peep at her."

Mists still swathed the waters. Through them the sun peered ghostly, twinkling on the intripping tide beyond the shingle-bank.

And—there again! far away, poised between sky and sea, that glimmer of pearls.

It was some tall ship standing across the bay, the sun making glory on her royals.

"Make her out?"

"Yes, sir. She's a frigate right enough—can't be anything else with that height of canvas."

For in those dark days there was little business on the narrow seas other than the business of war. For weeks together the Channel waters were virgin of merchant-men. Trading bottoms dared not venture. Majestic three-deckers and tall frigates paced the seas alone. Anon a privateer swooped. Then a black smuggler scuttled from shore to shore between twilights. Rarely a vast convoy, herded like sheep, drove by, the dogs of war barking at the laggards. For the rest naked waters, ship-forsaken.

"It's the Medusa" said the Parson deliberately. "How soon'll she be off here, think you, sailor-boy?"

"I hardly know, sir. With this breeze I should think she might be abreast of us in two hours, and round the Head in four."

"And into the trap in five," mused the Parson.

"And Nelson bandaged, his back to the wall, facing a French firing party—all at about six o'clock of a sweet summer evening, August 22nd, the year of Our Lord, 1805."

He began to whistle meditatively.

The fine head, a-ripple with curls, was outlined against the sky. The face was keener than a few days back; the jolly laughing look was there no more. The blue eyes were touched to steel; and nose and jowl thrust forth with ominous grimness. It was the face of the determined fighter, hard-set and terrible.

He leaned out into the morning, whistling quietly, as fair a mark as any sharp-shooter on the knoll might wish, so Kit suddenly recalled, and plucked at him.

The other's arm was iron against him. The Parson made no move, seeming neither to feel, nor understand. A man of marble, he dwelt in the mind; brooding on that glimmer of pearls in the east.

Yet after a minute, as though the message had taken just that time to reach his remote brain, he answered the boy's thought.

"That's all right, Kit," he said, deliberate as in a dream. "The Gentleman has changed his dispositions. He's withdrawn from the knoll. Where the Gang are I don't know, but he has got the main of his Grenadiers on the landside still."

Kit peeped out of the Downs-ward window.

The old picquet on the plain, the old cordon of pacing Grenadiers, the old camp-fire with the drifting smoke and arms piled beside it; and further North, from beneath a thorn, the flash of a bayonet told of an outlying sentry posted there to watch for the relieving force no doubt.

Sick at heart, the lad turned and looked out over the Parson's shoulder.

On his right front humped the knoll, an islet set in a sea of turf, now only tenanted by dark sycamores, ruffling it in the dawn-wind.

Beneath him the greensward ran away to the shingle-bank. Beyond the crest of it, the mast of the lugger pricked up black against the sparkling water.

There was neither stir nor sound, save for the ripple of the tide, and overhead the eternal chirp of the sparrows, careless that history was being made about them.

All was still, all deserted.

As he looked, the lad's mind flamed to a thought.

"I say!" he whispered, clutching the Parson's arm. "What about the lugger?"

"Well! what about the lugger?"

"Rush her now! Here's our chance!"

The Parson turned calm eyes upon the other's splendid ones.

"Aye, lad, aye," he said, with the crushing calm a man wields so mightily. "But give the Gentleman his due, he's not quite such a fool as you'd make him out. He knows our aim as well as he knows his own. We've got to get to Nelson. There's only one way left—the lugger. If he's left that way open it's as plain as the nose on your face it's because he wants us to take it."

Ugh, these men! the boy worshipped the man's courage and scorned his caution. He throbbed for the relief of action. Only let him be doing! anything, anything in the world was better than standing here to watch Nelson sweep doom-wards.

"And suppose," he flashed, "suppose the Gentleman makes away in his lugger now! what shall we do? Twiddle our thumbs and whistle, till the soldiers come, I suppose! And then," with the crude irony of fifteen, "then perhaps, if we're very brave, and the Gentleman has got well away to sea, we'll take a little stroll with a strong escort to the top of Beachy Head to see Nelson strung up to his own yard-arm!"

The boy's fiery insults left the other cold.

"You're young, my boy, offensively young," he said. "A bad fault, but one you may hope to grow out of. One thing I'm sure of. You do your friend a great injustice. He won't leave that despatch-bag in our hands till he's forced to at the point of the steel."

"But what can we do?" blazed the boy—"do, do, do! There's Nelson!" with flashing forefinger. "Here are we. He won't come to us. We must get to him. There's only one way—the lugger. It may be a poor chance, still if it's the only one! O, sir, sir! surely it's better to die attempting something, than stand and rot to death here!"

The words poured forth in a white-hot torrent, shaking him.

Anybody in the world but the practical Englishman would have been moved.

He only grunted.

"I wish I knew what was going on behind that shingle-bank," he grumbled, half to himself.

The boy's soul quenched, only to flame forth again.

"I'll be your eyes, sir!"

The Parson shook a dubious head.

"Oh let me! O do! sir! sir!"

He was hopping, trembling at the other's side.

The Parson with his slow and chewing mind was digesting the situation.

Beneath his calm, he was mad to know what was going on behind the shingle-bank. If he went himself, who would be left in garrison?—the old story.

Yet if he sent Kit?

Twice already he had let the boy go forth alone, and each time had barely plucked him from the jaws of death. Could he send him forth a third time to face what God should send?

Could he?

He locked his jaws.

Duty, duty, duty! a hard mistress for those who serve her, but the only one for an Englishman.

His mind made up, true man that he was, he wasted no time in excusing himself to himself or to others.

Somewhat grey about the jaws, he swung about.

"Very well," shortly. "Just a peep—no more, mind!"



CHAPTER LXIV

RUMBLINGS OF THUNDER

The boy slid down the ladder into the gloom of the kitchen.

There was no familiar silver head at its wonted place of watch by the loop-hole.

"Piper!"

"Sir!"

The old foretop-man was sitting beside the trapdoor, peering down into the blackness of the cellar, and listening intently.

"That you, Master Kit? Would you step this way, sir? There keeps on a kind of a rumbling like in the drain—a'most as though the gentlemen be running a cargo. I ca'ant justly make it out."

The boy came to his side and listened. True, there was a muffled noise of rolling in the drain, and dull banging against the door. Well, they might bang till they were blue: they would make as much impression on that door as the breeze on Beachy Head.

The old man looked up and saw the lad beside him in shirt-sleeves.

"Hullo, sir! what's forrad then?"

"I'm going to take a little trot over to the shingle-bank to have a look round," said the boy, shivering. "I want you to stand by the door to let me out and in."

The old man rolled up his sleeves, snatched his cutlass from the corner, whetted it with the easy grace of a bird whetting its beak, and spat on his hands.

"Then it's stand by to repel boarders! Rithe away, sir, when you are."

The Parson peered down.

"All's quiet," he whispered. "Ready, Kit?"

"Yes, sir."

The boy stood up pale in the gloom.

"Then ease those bolts away. Gently, Piper!"

The old man opened quietly.

A sweet wind stole in, and with it a flood of light.

Kit peeped out.

How naked it looked, how terrible!

"One moment."

He bent, untied his shoe-lace, and tied it up again.

Upstairs it had seemed such an easy thing to dare this deed, so full of the poetry and romance of war. Down here, face to face with the bare fact, it was a different matter. A plank, as it were, had been thrust out from solid earth over Eternity; it was his to walk that plank; and he didn't like the job.

Piper held the door, waiting respectfully. The old man's sleeves were rolled to the arm-pit. On one hairy fore-arm a dancing-girl was tattooed, record of the days, now forty years since, before, in his own simple phrase, he had larned Christ.

He knew no fear himself: for he knew that he was impregnable. But his heart went out to this slip of a lad, who had to face Eternity alone, and found it terrible.

The twilight of love, always in all faces the same, which comes when at a call the Christ rises from the deeps of the heart, darkened his eyes.

He gave a shy little cough.

"There's one bower-anchor'll weather any storm, by your leave, sir," he said, the sailor and the Christian quaintly commingled.

The boy felt the other's strength flow into his.

"I know," he panted, and plunged.



CHAPTER LXV

THE DOINGS IN THE CREEK

I

As he ran he seemed to himself to be a body of lead borne on watery dream-legs.

In the sally of yesterday at least he had Knapp with him. Now he was alone. And to dare alone is to be revealed to yourself, naked as you are.

A visible danger would have strengthened him. It was the horror of he- knew-not-what coming from he-knew-not-where that made his heart hammer.

The boy's body screamed to go back. His will thrust it forward. The shock and struggle of the two charged him as with electricity. A touch, he felt, and he might go off in a flash of lightning.

As he held on, and nothing happened, mind began to ride body more masterfully. The flesh, beaten, gave and gave; till in despair, abandoning its backward pull, it threw forward into the work.

What was death? was it what the parsons seemed to think—a foreign land, millions of miles away, with an old man in a temper waiting somewhere in the middle to be nasty to him?

Heaven and earth, this world and the next! Were there indeed two? a great gulf between them. Or were both one and everlasting? Was he, believing himself in Time, dwelling in Eternity now? Was he immortal now?

His heart answered, Now or never.

What then to fear?

The thought whirled him forward.

The grass felt goodly beneath his feet. The sun, still pale in mist, blessed him. A fresh wind flowed about him, flustering hair and shirt. His heart eased.

After all his rear was fairly safe, and his flank unthreatened. As to his front—well, he had his eyes and his dirk.

Gripping himself together, every hair alert, he ran.

He was nearly across the sward now. Tall grass-blades pricked sparsely through the sand. The shingle-bank, roan against the sparkle of the sea, surged before him, and behind it—what?

He was living in his eyes.

The knoll lay now to his right rear. Behind it, across the creek, rose the Wish; and on the crest a Grenadier gazing seawards.

Opposite the little hill, standing on the bank somewhere just above the entrance to the sluice, stood the Gentleman.

II

Kit dropped to his hands and knees.

The other had not seen him: for he was standing, back turned, and a short black-snouted pistol in the hand behind him; directing operations in the creek.

What did it all mean? what was that banging and business in the creek?

It was to find this out that he had come.

A sound close at hand drew his mind to his ears.

The crest of the shingle-bank was some twenty yards away. From the reverse slope came the crunch and scream of disturbed pebbles.

Somebody was scrambling up the bank towards him, the pebbles pouring noisily away beneath his feet.

What to do?—turn and bolt? He could be back across the grass before the slow-foot Frenchman had sworn himself to the crest. Lie there out in the open, to be made prisoner, or potted at thirty yards?

No, no, no! To retreat was shame: to stay death. But one course remained—the riskiest, which, as he had heard the Parson say, in a tight place is often the safest. That course was forward. Take the man unawares as he crested the rise; dirk him; one swift glimpse at the lugger and the doings in the creek; and then pelting home before the enemy had realised the situation and begun to shout.

"Francois! Francois!" came an irritable voice.

The climber stopped.

"Qu'as-tu donc, mon Caporal?"

"Nom d'un chien!" snapped the other. "Faut il me faire matelot? Aidez moi un peu avec ces satanees cordes!"

The climber slithered down on his heels, a cataract of shingle streaming behind him.

Swift to seize his chance, Kit rushed the crest, the crash of the Frenchman's retreat drowning his approach.

There, flat on his face, he peeped.

Beneath him, on the run of the shingle, lay the lugger. Her jib was flapping; the mainsail set for the hoisting; every stick and stay in place. Half a dozen burly Grenadiers, black-muzzled with a week's beard, were busy about her, stowing their kits, laughing and chattering.

A sprightly little Corporal, balancing on the stern, was spitting forth orders.

The foreign language, there on his native shore, made a discord in the boy's heart.

"Quand partirons-nous?" asked Francois, wading down the shingle, pack on back.

"Aussitot que tout sera pret la-bas," answered the corporal, casting a glance over his shoulder. "Bah! ces gueux d'Anglais! Monsieur le General en a par dessus les yeux."

Kit followed the man's eyes.

III

A track of feet led from the lugger to the creek across the wet sand. Along it a tail of smugglers were trundling barrels gingerly. At the entrance to the sluice others were hoisting and heaving. Above them stood that slight figure against the sky-line, the ominous pistol lurking behind him.

And it was clear the ruffians were smouldering to mutiny. Their heads were over their shoulders as they worked, and their eyes on the lugger. The soldiers were coming! they felt the halter tightening round their necks; and they were mad to be away.

Only one man in the world could have held them there at all, Kit felt, and he had all his work cut out. That slight figure against the sky- line, so calm, so terrible, seemed compact of power.

Kit had seen his friend in many moods; now he saw him in another. And the boy thought he loved him in this last role best, because in it he feared him most. This was not the man of poetry, charming as April, gay-hearted as a boy; this was the remorseless leader, iron for his cause, brutal, if you will, as a man who deals with brutes must be.

There was a sultry silence—the silence and horror before the storm breaks. Kit felt it and was appalled. He could almost hear the flames of mutiny roaring in those dull and darkened hearts.

For one moment the boy forgot himself and his cause. He was a play- goer, watching a drama. This man was the hero, valiant, lonely, a miracle of strength. The boy felt for him a passionate sympathy. Could he hold them?—Would they break?

Even as he watched, a man shot out of the ruck and away, scampering furiously with the shrugged shoulders and ducked head of one expecting a blow.

It came sure as fate, and as deliberate.

Out shot the Gentleman's pistol hand.

A crack, a stab of flame, and the man was flopping on the sand like a landed fish.

As the Gentleman fired, another from below stormed up the bank at him. A flash of lightning darted at him, and struck him in the chest. The fellow collapsed in a heap.

The boy had half risen to his elbow.

"Well done!" he cried with blazing enthusiasm. Then he remembered where he was, and dropped.

No man had heard. The Grenadiers like himself were busy watching the doings in the creek. A murmur of applause rose from among them.

"Bravo, Monsieur le General! Hein! Canaille!"

In the creek all was quiet again now. The flame of mutiny was quenched; the Gang had resumed their work; and the Gentleman was wiping his blade upon his sleeve.



CHAPTER LXVI

BUGLES

I

In the loft the Parson was patting the shoulder of the lad now panting beside him.

"Another notch to the Navy," he said.... "What news, boy?"

Kit told of the lugger, ready to sail; of the business of the barrels in the creek; of the rumbling in the drain.

The Parson listened with nodding head.

"I feel like a mouse that knows it's going to have a cat jump on its back, but don't know quite when or just how," he muttered.

"Meantime there's Nelson, sir!" cried the boy, great-eyed and anxious.

"I know, my boy, I know. But while there's the lugger, there's hope."

He leaned out of the window. A sentry was now on the shingle-bank; and he could see the tall-plumed bearskins of the Grenadiers busy about the lugger.

The boy took up the telescope.

The mists were lifting, and the sun shone white upon the water. He could see the frigate, faint indeed and far, stately-pacing towards her doom; he could see the mast of the lugger, Grenadier-guarded, and those leagues of shining waste between the two.

Where was help?

An awful darkness drowned his heart.

He shut the telescope with a snap.

"We're beat," he sobbed.

The other gripped his arm.

"If we're beat, England's beat. If England's beat, the Devil's won, and the world's lost—which is absurd."

The man's stern enthusiasm fired the boy afresh.

"If you'll tell me what to do I'll do it," he said a little tremulously. "But I don't see the way."

"There is a way, Kit. There must be. And we shall find it."

The man was indomitable. There seemed no ghost of a chance; still no shadow of despair clouded that clear spirit. As the sea of difficulties rose about him, his soul rose to meet it on triumphant wings.

Yet the problem before him seemed insoluble.

Nelson there: they here: one boat between, and that boat guarded by the pick of the Army of England.

He turned those good blue eyes of his upon the boy with a drolling baffled look.

"How's it to be done?—what says the Commodore?"

The light had fled from the boy's face. Pale and still, he looked like a young saint about to be martyred.

"There's only one way I can think of, sir."

"What's that?"

The lad lifted the eyes of a woman.

"Pray."

A darkness drove across the Parson's face.

"You pray," he growled. "I'll sharpen my sword."

Turning to the corner he bowed to Polly shining among the cobwebs.

"A sweet morning, my lady," he cried. "And promise of a fair day's work."

The boy turned his face to the wall.

II

"Mr. Joy, sir!"

"Well, Piper."

"There's a man on a horse."

"Where?"

"Rithe away oop a-top o th' hill over Willingdon—on the old drove- road from Lewes."

The Parson sprang to his feet.

"Sharp work!" he said with a grin at Kit's back.

"Well done you, boy!"

Kit leapt to the window.

"Theer!" said Blob, pointing.

Far away on the rim of the world stood a tiny horseman.

What was he, that little speck of blackness on the horse without legs?—ploughboy or dragoon?—alone or the leader of a troop?

"Wave!" cried the Parson at his elbow.

Sobbing and frantic, the lad fluttered his handkerchief.

As though in answer a bugle-call rang echoing down to them.

"The soldiers!" gasped Kit, his knees fainting beneath him. "O, thank God!"

Close at hand another bugle rang out merrily.

"Nipper Knapp!" cried Piper. "Butter my wig, if it ain't!"

A shoal of silver minnows flashed and twinkled above the crest.

"Bayonets, by God!" roared the Parson. "Here they come, the little darlings!" as a black trickle of figures poured over the crest.

Others too had seen and heard.

A shot rang out in the stillness: the Grenadier under the thorn came back on his picquet at the double. The shot was answered ironically from the hill-side by the English Last Post. Here in the dawn France and England challenged each other tauntingly.

It was splendid. Kit's blood danced to it. He thought of old-time tournays, the champion riding into the ring at the last moment. He was half sob, half song. The wine of glory flushed his veins as at the moment when he stormed with the crew of the Tremendous at the heels of Lushy. His eyes ran; his voice broke. Now it was a shrill treble, now a hoarse bass.

The Parson was chewing his lip.

"Horse or foot, I wonder?"

"Foot," cried Kit, stamping up and down.

"Damnation!" grumbled the Parson. "Are they doubling?"

"Not they!" cried Kit, mad to insolence—"doing the goose-step by numbers so far as I can see. Good old leather-stocks!"

Knapp might have heard him: for the bugle close at hand blew the charge furiously.

"Now they've broken into a double. Come on, you chaps! come on!"

"Well done, Knapp!" muttered the Parson, swallowing his excitement. "Good little boy! Good little b-o-y! If he lives through this, he shall have a pint o beer to his breakfast to-morrow, by God he shall. Piper! how long'll they take getting here?"

"Why, sir, a little better'n half an hour, I reckon. Drop down by Motcombe, through Upperton, and down along Water Lane."

The Parson turned to Kit.

"How long will it be before the tide will float the lugger, think you?"

"Twenty minutes, sir."

The Parson grunted.

"Pot begins to boil," he said, and took off his coat.

"O, if they're too late!" cried Kit in swift agony, and turned to glance at the far frigate.

"God's never too late, my boy," answered the Parson, folding his coat carefully.

III

Rolling up his sleeves, he was looking through the seaward window.

The Gang were streaming across the greensward, and round the cottage, pointing, shouting.

Behind them came the Gentleman. He was swinging his sword, and chopping at the daisies. Whoever else was disturbed, it was not he.

Last the Grenadiers who formed the lugger-guard came toppling over the shingle-bank.

The Gentleman stayed them with imperious hand.

The Parson saw it and grinned. The chap, for all his high-faluting ways, was a soldier through and through. He missed no point, not the smallest. The Parson respected him.

The other, crossing the sward, raised his head and saw the man at the window. The eyes of the two met. Each smiled. Each knew the other's heart.

"No, no," cried the Gentleman with a little wave. "I give nothing away. I can't afford to. I know my opponent."

The Parson bowed, tightening his belt. And after all it was a pretty compliment from the first light cavalry-man in Europe.

The Gentleman passed round the cottage and out of sight.

"What shall you do?" asked Kit hoarsely at the Parson's elbow.

"Why, the only thing there is to be done—and that's nothing."

He sat down on a broken box, took out a handkerchief and began to furbish his blade with the delicate tenderness of a woman bathing a child.

Kit, fretted almost to tears, watched him with angry admiration. The crisis had come, and this curly grey-head sat, calm as a village Solomon in his door of summer evenings, and talked baby to his sword.

"I don't see that helps much," sneered the boy—"cleaning the plate!"

"Nor does fussing for that matter," retorted the other tranquilly. "In war, as in the world, you must do as you're done by. That mayn't be parson's truth; but it is soldier's. And I'm a soldier for the time being. The cards lie with the Gentleman. We shall have to follow suit —or trump. If he's got a card up his sleeve he must play it—now or never."

The boy turned to the window.

The Gentleman was standing upon the broken wall, hand over his eyes, taking in the situation.

He flung a finger here, an order there.

The Grenadiers threw forward across the plain in skirmishing order.

"Looks like business," muttered the Parson, tucking in his shirt. "What's it going to be?"

He had not long to wait.

The Gentleman vaulted the wall, and came swiftly across the grass towards them.



CHAPTER LXVII

THE ACE OF TRUMPS

I

He came rapidly across the lawn, the sun upon him.

Kit thought him the fairest figure of a man he had ever seen.

The Parson was comely with the comeliness of an apple, this man was beautiful with the beauty of sun and sword in one.

But the boy noticed that there was more of the sword and less of the sun than of old about him.

Was the strain telling on him too?

"Forgive me for disturbing you so early," called the gay voice. "The Reverend Father was at his devotions doubtless!"

"No, sir," retorted the Parson. "The Reverend Father was watching the Horse, Foot, and Artillery, pelting down the hill on top o you."

"I've been watching em too," replied the other. "And sorry I am I shan't be here to entertain em—I've a soft place for the soldiers myself. But I'm just off for a day on the water. A pretty morning!"

"Yes; as pretty a morning to hang a play-actor on as ever I saw."

The other waved a hand.

"Ah, but I'm not going to hang you, dear Padre. I have other views for you."

He was fascinating, but somehow he was fearful too. He was the python: they were the rabbits. He had power: and that power was none the less terrible because it was mysterious.

The Parson leaned out, bold and bluffing.

"I take you. The game's up. And you've come to surrender, eh?"

The other shook his head.

"No. I just stepped across to say good-bye, and see if I couldn't perhaps persuade you to come with me."

"No, sir, thank you all the same. I'm a land-animal myself. Besides I'm too cosy here."

The other stood silent a full minute, nodding a slow head.

"Alas, poor ghost!" he said at length half to himself, and made as though to turn.

The Parson was staggered.

Had he no card then? was he merely bluffing?

"What's it mean?" he whispered fiercely to Kit.

"It means he's going—and Nelson's last chance with him!" panted the boy. "O, make him stay!"

The Parson leaned out again.

"I hope you'll come back to see your friends hung, my lord!" he bawled.

The Gentleman turned again.

"Friends?"

"Well, aren't they your friends?—Lord Alfiriston, Sir Harry Dene, and the rest. I gathered they were from the despatch-bag you're so good as to leave in my hands."

"I'm leaving no despatch-bag in your hands."

The Parson jumped round.

What did the fellow mean? Had he somehow?...

No, there it was on the staple, the tarpaulin bag stamped with the Imperial Eagle.

He took it down.

"This is the boy I meant. Won't you leave this with us?"

The Gentleman shook his head.

"What you going to do with it?" mockingly.

"What I'm going to do with you."

Man and boy, hugging close in the window, each felt the other tauten.

"What's that?"

The other rolled his eyes heavenward.

The Parson was breathing through his nose.

"What ye mean?"

A tiny smile broke about the Gentleman's lips. He raised a finger, and drew nearer on his toes, stealthy as a child about to reveal a secret to its mother; and there was a horror about him.

"Hush, and I'll whisper you!"

The horror grew upon the man. The Parson shivered.

The very air was listening.

"Powder-mine."

"A what?"

"A powder-mine."

The laughter bubbled up in his eyes, and rippled about his face. He was a child, a cruel child, who springs a carefully-prepared surprise on a comrade, and dwells wantonly on the effect.

"Not vairy nice, is it?" he bantered. "I do feel for you."

He stood beneath the window, hands clasped before him, chin down, the little maiden, demure yet malicious: the little maiden and yet—the Devil.

"So sorray. But I do not want those despatches to fall into the hands of bad men. You forgive?" winningly.

The Parson drew a great breath. It was so sudden, so aweful, so utter.

It was Piper who broke the silence from below.

"We're settin on a powder-mine, sir. Is that it?"

"That's it."

"Ah, well," came the philosophic voice. "Short and sweet—bless God. Better'n lingerin on it out."

Kit panted,

"Nelson!" and swooned.

II

When he came round the Gentleman was approaching slowly across the grass.

He bantered no more. Maiden and Devil were dead. He was man, and grey as dew.

"Captain Joy," he was saying quietly. "Let us face facts. Samson is bound. Over there," pointing to Beachy Head, "are the liers in wait. That frigate's the Medusa. Nelson's aboard of her. She can't escape."

The words stung Kit to new life.

"She can't escape perhaps," he shouted. "But can't she fight?"

The other shook his head.

"Why?" persisted Kit, hot for the honour of his Service. "Why can't she fight?"

"She can't fight," said the Gentleman slowly, "because her powder's wet."

"What!" bellowed the Parson—"more traitors!"

"The Gunner is mine," replied the Gentleman briefly.

"Oh, the Navy! the Navy!" cried the Parson, rocking.

"But, I don't believe it!" screamed Kit. "Let him prove it! Let him tell us how he's worked it."

The Gentleman walked slowly up and down before the window.

"We needn't enter into that," he said, cold as death.

The Parson launched a slow laughing sneer, terrible to hear.

"What! more gentlemanliness from our Gentleman!"

The words whipped the other's face white.

He stopped in his walk, and lifted slow eyes.

"It may be that I have loved my country better than my God," he said. A smile flashed across his face—"But what a country to be damned for!"

Slowly he came towards the cottage.

"To return to the point. Nelson is lost. No power on earth can save him now."

"I do not look to any power on earth for help," replied the Parson solemnly.

"Let us talk as men," answered the other as solemn. "You have nothing to gain by holding out, and everything to lose. All that an honourable soldier could do you have done. Is it not now the part of true courage to accept the inevitable? For the last time, will you surrender?"

The great veins started on the Parson's forehead.

"Never!" he bawled. "Do your d'dest!"

The Gentleman turned and turned again.

"The blood of those boys be on your head, Mr. Joy!"

"Let the boys answer for themselves," retorted the Parson, short and sullen.

The Gentleman paused.

"Little Chap," he called, "will you come?—France is a fair country. You shall have Monsieur Moon-calf there for squire. Myself I will see to it that you are happy."

"I would rather be dead in England than alive in France," the boy answered passionately. "What about you, Blob?"

"Here Oi be and here Oi boide," replied Blob doggedly, and dulled the romance of the statement by adding—"Oi aren't got ma money yet."

"Think twice, Little Chap!" called the Gentleman. "You are young. You are happy. The day is before you. The night is not yet. It is early to draw down the blinds."

The Parson had turned his back to the window.

"Ask the ass for time," he whispered. "We must have time."

The boy leaned out.

"May I have ten minutes to think it over, sir?"

"Two, my boy."

"Oh, sir!" pitiful, appealing.

The Gentleman glanced across his shoulder, and turned again.

"Ah, well! five be it."

He took out his watch, and sat on the wall with dangling legs.



CHAPTER LXVIII

THE BLESSING

I

"I must have a word with Piper."

The Parson was down the ladder in a flash.

The old foretop-man, humming his hymn in the eternal twilight, turned.

"Well, sir?"

"You've heard, Piper?"

"I've hard, sir. And if so be a common seaman might make so bold, there's but one thing for it, and that's the cold steel."

He laid his Bible aside and took up his cutlass.

"It's a forlorn hope, Piper."

"It's the only one, sir."

The Parson swung round.

"And there's another thing," he cried in terrible agony. "What about you, Piper? We shall take it in the open; but you, you'll have to wait for it. I can't leave you to fall alive into the hands of those—those—O my God! my God!" stamping up and down.

There was quiet thrill in the voice that answered,

"They ca'an't touch me, sir. I'm safe in Jesus." The old man seemed to shine in the darkness.

"It's not death I fear for you!" cried the Parson. "No Christian fears that for his friend. It's—it's the old game—the Gap Gang."

"Ah, they won't have no time for no larks," interposed the other with a comfortable chuckle. "They can do their muckiest. It won't last long. The soldiers'll stop that."

The words, and the way of saying them, quickened the Parson to tremendous life.

"You're right, old friend," he cried, his voice naming in the gloom. "Death to face, but nothing to fear."

"Death to face," echoed the old man, "and Christ to follow."

II

"I'm distressed to disturb you," came a cold voice from without. "But time's nearly up."

"You said five minutes, sir!" called Kit.

"You've had three, my boy. You've got two."

"And we'll make good use of em," gasped the Parson, and raced up the ladder.

Snatching the despatch-bag from the staple, he tumbled the contents on the floor, and set the whole ablaze. The papers curled and crackled; and their dreadful secret escaped joyfully in merry little flames.

"May God deal so with all traitors in his own good time!" prayed the Parson.

He trod out the flames, and turned to the boys.

"I'm goin for em."

"So'm I, sir—and Blob."

"So be it!" said the Parson, short and fierce. "Out knives. Off coats. Tighten belly-bands."

He was on his knees, stuffing his coat into the empty despatch-bag, working in a white fury.

"Now ask no questions, but listen, and obey! I'm going to undo the back door noisily. You'll undo the front door quietly. I shall sally, the despatch-bag slung across my shoulders—so—see?— Give me a good start. Choose your moment. Then follow."

The words came swift as hail. The Parson was at his best—the Englishman in action, back to the door, face to Eternity. The shock and storm of circumstance made lightning in the dark of his mind. He saw all before him clear as a landscape at night in the flashes of a thunderstorm.

"Directly they begin to close on you, you'll get a panic—a screaming panic. Bolt back for the cottage; slam the door; lock and bar; through the house, out at the front, and make for the lugger! You may not be seen—the cottage'll cover you: and I'll keep em occupied as long as I can. If all goes as I hope, you'll find the lugger unguarded. The rest I must leave to you and the Almighty. It's a poor chance, but the only one."

"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" came the warning voice from without.

III

The Parson slid down into the darkness.

"Piper," he cried, hoarse and dry. "I believe—I believe these lads will win through. It's God's battle. He must help."

"He will, sir," replied the old man, firm as faith.

"I'm a clergyman. You're a good man. This is a desperate business. Will you give us your blessing?"

He was down on his knees, in his white shirt, his sword a gleam of silver on the slabs before him.

"Kit."

The boy, swift to grasp his meaning, knelt beside him, pulling Blob after him.

An arm stole round him; his stole round Blob.

So they knelt in the twilight, hugging close in that aweful sense of loneliness that comes to men when the Gates of Death are seen to swing back to let them through.

Kit thought of his Confirmation six months ago.

Now the end was come—so soon.

Well, well, he had often died before. And how clearly it all came back to him, this final stage in the little pilgrimage, these last few steps, solemn, beautiful, and slow, up to the familiar threshold; then the old door, the old smile, and—the old forgetfulness.

He had no regrets, and was strangely calm, strangely uplifted. He could look back without shame, and forward without fear. Now he was thankful that in these days of his ordeal he had been true to himself and to his trust. He had done his best. There was little more to do. That little should be done as became the son of his father.

IV

In the gloom they knelt before this unanointed Priest of Jehovah.

His office sat upon that white old man, native to him as his soul.

He spread his great-knuckled hands above them, a patriarch, a prophet, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.

"God bless you, sir—and you, Master Kit—and you, Boy Hoad." He drew his hand across his mouth.

"So be. Amen," he added solemnly.

"Amen," said they all.

The Parson rose.

He gripped the old man's hand.

Blob he patted on the back.

"Kit," he said, and, drawing the boy towards him, kissed him.



CHAPTER LXIX

THE PARSON'S SORTIE

I

"Time!" came the stern voice from without.

The Parson slammed back the last bolt with a clang, and whipped up his sword.

"Ready?"

The man was in a white flame, roaring for battle.

"Yes."

Time had stopped: Eternity was there.

"Then God help us all to die!"

He flung back the door and plunged.

It was a venture of despair; but there was no despair in that heart of oak.

Swift as a flood, and as silent, he made for the wall, the despatch- bag flopping in the small of his back. And his silence added to the terror of his coming.

The white-hearted crew huddling behind the wall felt it. Here and there a scared head dodged up only to duck again.

One man alone left cover and went out to meet the solitary swordsman.

The Gentleman vaulted the wall, and came across the sward with steady eyes, twisting his sword-knot about his wrist.

There was a rimy look about his face, and a snarl in the voice that shouted to the crew behind him,

"Come! close in there! You've got to finish this job before you go. The soldiers are on your heels, remember."

Close at hand a sudden drum rolled.

It smote the guilty hearts of the Gang like a summons to the Last Judgment.

"What's that?"

They rose up like dead men and looked behind them. It was not much they saw, but it was sufficient.

Close in their rear, on a rise of the ground, a man stood against the sky, thundering fatally on a monster drum.

He wore a red coat; he was a soldier.

And as they gazed, he beat a furious rat-a-tan-tan and charged.

That was enough. The Gang broke.

II

The Gentleman flashed round to meet the new danger.

He saw a pair of twinkling legs, a huge drum, belly-borne, and two drum-sticks, brandished vaingloriously, driving a rout of men before them.

The humour of the thing seized him.

"Well done, Soldier!" he laughed, and was back over the wall in a trice, attempting to stop the rout.

He might as well have attempted to stay the tide. A torrent of men tumbled past him in howling tumult.

He stood like a lighthouse in the tide-way.

"What! one man lick the lot o you!" came the whipping voice. "O, good God!" with a passion of scorn—"you sweeps! you swine!"

His blade flashed and fell.

"Pretty stroke!" shouted the Parson, flying the wall. "At em again, sir!" He cut in fiercely on the flank. "Come on, Knapp!—That's the style! Bellyful for once! Bellyful for the boy!"

"I'm there, sir!" cried Knapp, very brisk and bright.

He had flung aside his drum, and was tearing up, wielding his drum- sticks like battle-axes.

"Into em!" bellowed the Parson. "Give em the glory o God! Give em the Lord's own delight!"

He was hounding at the heels of the last smuggler, and the Gentleman was hounding at his.

"Ow's that-a-tat-tat? ow's that?" cried Knapp, racing up from behind, and came down with a flourish and a thump on the swordsman's head as he thrust.

Down went the Gentleman in sprawling ruin.

"That's a little bit o better, ain't it?" chirped the Cockney, and skipping over the fallen man, he was at the Parson's side, in the thick and fury of it, bringing down his drum-sticks to the battle-cry of,

"Ow's that-a-tat-tat? ow's that?"

III

The old man and the boys watched from the cottage. The door was ajar. They huddled behind it, peering. Beside them lay the table, a musket across it. In the silence they could hear each other's hearts.

"Say, Maaster Sir!" whispered Blob. "Be you fear'd?"

"Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies," replied Kit. "Be you?"

"Oi dun knaw," replied the cautious lad. "Moi insoide seems koind o swimmy loike."

"Then stand by to lend a hand with this table when I give the word," was all Kit's answer.

He was watching with all his eyes.

Parson and Gentleman were about to clash.

Then a little figure rose out of the earth, and sullen thunder smote on the silence.

Piper drew a deep breath.

"I thart so," he said, comfortably.

"Who is it?" asked Kit.

"Jack Knapp, sir," said the old man, picking his teeth. "Sneaked a drum from a travellin showman by the look on it, and tow-rowin like a rigiment. See him thump it. Ho! ho! That's joy to Jack, I knaw. Now he's for chargin em, drum and all. Ha! ha!"

Whoever else might escape there was no hope for that wingless old man. His fate was certain, his end was already come. Within five minutes at most the great doors would have slammed on him for ever. And here he sat chuckling like a boy at a fair.

It is something to be a saint, thought Kit, something to be as sure as that. This old man had built his house upon the Rock indeed.

They watched the stampede, and the Gentleman's vain attempt to stay it. Their hearts surged to the Parson's battle-cry, and sank to the Gentleman's thrust, to surge again as Knapp felled his man.

"Knapp'd him a nice un," chuckled the old man, not above a pun at death's door. "Reglar revellin in it is Knapp, I knaw."

"Our time's coming!" panted Kit. "Stand by, Blob!"

The Gentleman was down, the Gang upon the run. "Now, sir!" cried Piper. "Now's your chance."

IV

"Now, Blob!—nippy with the table there!"

Out they rushed, and dumped the table down on the left of the door.

"That'll do, sir, thank you," said the old man, trundling out after them. "That'll cover my flank nicely.... Butter-my-wig!" with kindling eyes on the battle, "but Mr. Joy's busy."

"Come on, Blob!" yelled Kit.

"Come along, boys!" roared the Parson. "Pretty work forrad, and plenty for all!"

The Gentleman rose white-faced from his knees.

"A moil a moil" he shouted, waving.

Behind him Kit heard a yell, and the crash and scatter of men storming down the shingle-bank.

Then silence as they took the grass.

He flung his head across his shoulder as he ran.

The lugger-guard, loosed at last, were hurling across the greensward at him, bayonets at the charge.

Such tall and terrible men!—and how they strode along, bearskins a- bob, savage eyes smouldering, snapping fierce phrases at each other as they came!

Kit loosed his soul in a ghastly scream.

"Back, Blob!"

It was well done, and not difficult to do. He had but to utter the horror that was in him.

"O, Kit!" came the Parson's resentful bellow.

"I'm afraid!" screamed the lad. "I can't help it. O-o-o-h!"

He ran with huddled head, clutching at the boy before him.

"Attrapez ces gaillards! Ne tirez pas!" shouted the Gentleman. "Un deux d'entre vous leur coupent le chemin! Les autres, par ici!"

"Ah, oui, mon General!" panted the Corporal. "Francois! Albert!"

Two men sprang away from the rest and raced to intercept the boys.

What a pace they ran! Their black-gaitered legs seemed to skim the ground.

The boy had not allowed for such speed.

"Toi de l'autre cote de la chaumiere. Moi ici!" called the swifter of the two.

He flashed behind the cottage, and flashed up again round the gable- end.

Kit recognised him. It was Francois, his friend of the dawn.

"Tiens! c'est toi, mon gars!" cried the man, with a quick smile.

A simple countryman, this Francois, he was a soldier because he had to be. That business beyond the wall, where the swords and shouts were, was little to his liking. This was a job after his own heart. He was a boy playing prisoner's base with another boy. Neither would be hurt.

So as he slewed round the gable-end he smiled.

Kit saw the smile and resented it. It angered him that this fellow did not take him seriously. He had not to resent it for long.

The smile died a swift and terrible death on Francois' face.

"Dame!" he screamed, and slithered back on his heels. A musket barrel was thrusting into his flank.

"Pray!" said a solemn voice.

There was a horrible plop as the man collapsed, coughing.



CHAPTER LXX

THE LAST OF OLD FAITHFUL

The old man clapped his smoking musket down, and snatched his cutlass.

"Any more for me, sir?"

"Another on your right, Piper!"

"Very good, sir."

The old man spun himself to the corner, and waited behind the wall.

The boy, running with all his might, watched fascinated.

Round the corner the doomed man whirled with a grin. The cutlass swooped. The fellow sprawled over his slayer, the shock of the onset rolling the chair back. The old man shook off the body, as he might have shaken off a cloak, and backed himself, cutlass bloody in his mouth.

"In with you, Master Kit!"

"You too!" panted Kit, thrusting the chair before him.

"No, sir, no!" fiercely. "I can do a bit o business here yet." He was loading swiftly, eyes on the battle. "Starn agin the door, larboard in the loo'th, and cutlass-room all round—what better can a seaman want?"

"But—"

"Sharp, sir!—No time to waste. Here they come."

The Gentleman had gathered his Grenadiers in his hand, and was swinging them back at the cottage.

"In with you, sir!" urged the old man, ablaze. "Bolt and bar."

"O Piper!" whimpering.

"Nelson, sir!"

The word went home. The boy shot in, and slammed the door. All again was darkness, and Blob breathing heavily at his side.

"I'm through! I'm through!" came a triumphant yell.

Kit's eye was at a crack.

The Parson had broken away from the rout, and was making for the hills, the despatch-bag flopping in his back.

The Gentleman, leading the charge at the cottage, turned.

"Abattez moi eel homme la!" he sang.

A Grenadier dropped to his knee.

Outside the door a musket cracked.

The Grenadier leapt to his feet, whirled round with floating tails, bowed to his executioner in absurdest doll-fashion, and subsided languidly into death.

The Parson was away, the Gentleman after him with sleuth-hound strides.

The bunch of Grenadiers stormed on for the cottage.

Kit shot the bolts.

He was banging the door of life on that maimed old man, and he would as soon have slammed the gate of heaven in his mother's face.

"Good-bye, dear old Piper!" he whispered.

"Good-bye, sir," cheerily. "And if I might make so bold my sarvice to Lard Nelson—Ralph Piper, old Agamemnon."

There was silence: then the patter of feet and deep breathing of men racing to kill.

Kit could see the back of the old man's head on a level with his eye, and just beyond, growing hugely on his gaze, the face of the leading Grenadier, livid beneath his bearskin.

Kit shut his eyes as he rammed the last bolt home. Close to his ear, he heard a voice, low as the sea and as deep. It was humming

Soldiers of Christ arise.

That too ceased.

Old Faithful was spitting on his hands.



CHAPTER LXXI

ON THE SHINGLE-BANK

A crash and grunt covered the noise of the front door opening.

Kit peeped out. The way was clear.

"Now, Blob! for your life."

Out the boys sped.

How still it was on this side after the other!

There was a fury of fighting in the distance and a dreadful smothered worry against the back door; here a tranquil sward, trees bowing, and the shingle-bank a roan breast-work against a background of silver.

"Run quietly, boy! On your toes like me. You run like a walrus."

"Tidn't me," gasped Blob. "It's ma legs. They keep on a-creakin."

Swiftly they fled across the grass.

Was there anybody at the lugger?—were they free?

The boy was sick with hope.

Behind him he could hear far yells and the occasional clash of steel. Kit guessed what had happened. The Parson, wary old man of war, his ruse successful, the enemy drawn off, had flung back into the fight.

So far his plan had worked to a miracle.

The boy recalled Piper's last words.

His sarvice to Lard Nelson!

Piper never doubted then. Piper had been sure.

And Piper was right. The Lord was on their side. He felt it, and his spirit began to sing.

Then the song died, and his soul with it.

He could hear voices behind the shingle-bank. A double-sentry at the least had been left over the lugger.

Well, they must go through with it now.

"Knife ready?" he croaked.

"Ye'."

The grass was growing sparse about them. He began to hear his feet. So did the men beyond the bank. There was the click of a cocking musket. The fellow was ready: the fellow would pot them at twenty yards as they came over the crest.

Thought was lost in lightning action.

"Hola, l'ami!" he yelled.

"Qui vive?" came the unseen voice.

"Ami! a moi!"

Feet crashed up the shingle. As he topped the crest, a Grenadier, all eyes and bayonet and bristling chin, was plunging up the steep, another at his heels. The first flashed his eyes up in the boy's.

"Sapristi!" he cried, and tried to come down to the ready. The shingle roared away beneath his feet. Back he slithered. And as he did so, Kit launched down on him.

"Sacre nom!" the fellow screamed, and toppled back on the bayonet of his mate.

Kit ran over his falling body into the arms of the other.

"Take the man behind!" he yelled back.

Arms wound about him: a stertorous breathing was at his ear: for a moment the two rocked, then fell.

The boy was buried alive. A stifling carcase blotted out the sun. His arms were pinioned, but his hands remained free.

Short-handling his dirk, he turned it in.

"Assassin!" muttered the man, in his ear.

Kit pressed and slowly pressed. The man writhed and tried to rise. The boy's lithe young arms, though they could not squeeze to death, could hold; and hold they did. The man saw it, ceased to struggle, and hugged.

Thank God the boy had the under-grip. His arms protected him. Else he must have burst.

A groan was squeezed out of him.

"Quittez donc!" in his ear.

"Jamais," faintly.

He pressed and pressed. The man hugged and hugged. One must give. Which should it be? Not he, not he, not he, though he fainted. Piper had been sure.

A warm gush spouted out upon his fingers, and trickled down his fore- arm.

It was horrible. He felt it to be murder, not war. Yet that python- embrace was squeezing the heart out of his mouth.

Great heavens!—was the man made of iron?—would he never have enough?

Then he felt a prick in his own flesh. Perforce he stayed his hand.

Well, he had done his best. And even at that moment, his brain swimming to a death-swoon, his humour flashed out of the darkness to his succour.

If that didn't stop the chap, hang it! he deserved victory.

But it did.

Gently, very gently, the arms relaxed. He could feel the man fading away and away in his embrace. All that power and stress of life was pouring out into infinity. The man was dying at his ear. Lying his length upon the boy, he shuddered from head to heel.

"Marie," he sighed.

There was a last ripple of life, and the boy knew he was holding earth.

He wriggled out into the light with throbbing temples.

His hand and shirt-cuff caught his eye. He started back. They followed him. He tried to fling his hand away. It would not be flung. He stared, breathing like a frightened horse.

His jaw dropping, he looked at his handiwork.

The fellow was lying on his face, long legs wide. But for the hilt of the dirk sticking out of his loins, he looked much as other men. Yet— he was not. Think! A minute ago—and now! How wonderful it all was, and how terrible! The mystery of it made chaos in his brain.

He was frightened at himself, even more than at the dead man, or his deed.

Leaning back on his hands, the man he had killed at his feet, those instant questions which oppress us all in the rare moments when we stand still and are compelled by the shock of circumstance to look inward on ourselves, drummed at his brain.

What was he?—where was he?—why was he?

He staggered to his feet, pressing his hands to his eyes, to try to recollect his meaning.

He failed, only recalling his mission of the moment.

Shutting his eyes, he grasped the dirk.

"Awful sorry," he whispered hoarsely. "I must," and plucked it forth with a shudder.

Then he looked up.

The first Grenadier lay spread-eagled on the slope above him.

Blob was crawling out from beneath him, his pink muzzle thrust up with an air of grave and innocent amazement.

Kit pointed a finger.

"Ha! ha! you do look funny!" he laughed madly. "You're like one of Magic's puppies poking out to have a first peep at the world."

"Oi loike killin better'n bein kill'd," Blob announced solemnly, and crept out on hands and knees, a tip of pink tongue travelling about his lips. Then he turned to his dead.

Kit wound up again.

"Never mind about him," he said, staggering to his feet. "He'll keep. This way. Bring his musket along. Quick!"

He picked up the musket of his own dead, and swayed blindly down towards the lugger.

Blob followed at first reluctantly. Then some memory amused him, and he began to brim slow mirth.

"Er says—'Dear! dear!' and Oi says—'Theer! theer!' and plops it in, and plops it in."

Still adrift on the sea of his emotions, Kit paid no heed.

He was swimming down the shingle-bank, aware of nothing but the tip of his nose and vague bad dreams at the back of his heart.

The lugger was lying on the steep of the shingle, poised as though for launching.

The swarthy jib was bellying seaward. She was yearning for the water.

Kit rallied.

The slope was with them; the wind was with them; the very boat was with them. And the tide, running in with a splash, already flopped about her keel.

How soon would she float?

Two minutes might do it—or twenty.



CHAPTER LXXII

THE RACE FOR THE LUGGER

I

There was not a moment to be lost.

"Throw your musket aboard her!" cried Kit, bringing up against the lugger. "Now put your shoulder to and heave with a will! heave!"

They might as well have tried to move a mountain. Yet even as the boy strained, a wave shot up and sluiced his feet. And how that cold clasp warmed his heart!

The tide was tumbling in, the Lord God thrusting it. A minute, a little minute, and they would be away.

"Aboard her, Blob!" he panted. "That's right, clumsy! Noisy does it! Now chuck every single thing you can lay hands on, overboard—except the muskets, idiot!"

Fiercely the boys set to work. Kits and cans, ballast and blocks, spare spars and tackle, higgledy-piggledy overboard they went, some on the shingle, some splashing into the tide, to be snatched and tumbled and ducked.

As yet they were not discovered. Kit working madly in the belly of the boat could see nothing; but afar he could hear the Parson's terrible roar, and Knapp's crisp,

"Ow's that-a-tat, ow's that?"

Somehow, only the Lord knew how, those two inspired warriors still kept the ring.

It was great, but it could not last. The end must come, and it must come soon.

Anxiously the boy peeped over the side. The tide seemed to mock them. With what a swoop it rushed to their rescue, and with what a scream of derision it withdrew again! Kit compared it unconsciously to the to and fro of the emotions in his heart, now surging him heaven-high, now leaving him stranded.

Then he spied a greased bat for launching lying on the slope. In a trice he was overboard, had seized it, and racing down the streaming shingle as a wave withdrew, thrust the bat beneath the keel. The wave curled, stemmed by the advancing water, and swept about him to the knee.

As it clasped the lugger, a puff of wind leapt from the land, and skirmished across the sea.

The jib filled to it, and strained seaward.

Was he wrong?—or did she stir and tremble, like a girl to her lover?

How to help her?

If they could hoist the main-sail!

He was back over the side in a moment.

The boat was clean-swept now of everything but the muskets and a mess of shingle for ballast at the bottom. The anchor had gone over the stern and trailed on the slope. Even Blob had disappeared.

Kit pushed at the boom to thrust it over.

"Blob! Blob! where are you?"

"Here Oi be!" panted a voice forward.

Kit turned to see Blob, his shoulders rounded, and arms taut, heaving at the main-mast.

"She wun't budge!" he cried, his face crimson with honest effort. "Seems she's grow'd in loike."

"Fool!" he cried. "Lend a hand with the boom here! Shove, boy, shove! —Now on to the main-brace! No, fool, no!—Here—on to this! Now all together—heave! heave! heave!"

The great sail rose, groaning terribly.

Heaven send the smugglers hadn't heard!

But they had.

II

So much a far scream told them.

"We're seen!" panted Kit. "Now whistle for the wind, my boy, and hand me that musket."

The water was slopping all about the lugger. Empty as a barrel she began to rock to the rocking of the tide. A puff would launch her.

The boy glanced seaward.

Over there was that white glimmer, clearer now. It was like the arm of a drowning woman flinging up for help. The glimpse of it inspired the boy.

"I'm coming, sir," he called across the waters. "One more fight first."

He hitched his belt. Now he had no doubt of the issue. Here his friend, the sea, was beside him, whispering to him, loving him, taunting him. She was his hope, his heart, his strength. And for the first time it flashed upon the lad what the fight was really for. It was for her, the World's Woman. She went to the Victor, and she was on his side: for he was England, and England had won her first, and, true woman that she was, she clove to her first conqueror.

III

They were coming.

He thrilled to them.

"Now, Blob! you take that side. I'll take this. Pick off a man as he comes over the crest. Then out knives, and do your best!"

He leapt on to the taffrail, balancing by the mizzen. Tiptoeing so, he could just see over the crest of the shingle-bank.

And he was never to forget the sight he then saw.

Towards him across the greensward, a torrent of men streamed like a tide-race, silent all.

A huge Grenadier led them. Behind in a bunch came the smugglers, Fat George shambling along in the midst with a fury of arm-work. As his swifter comrades passed him, he clutched at them covetously.

"Ands off!" screamed a lanky lad.

The fat man's knife flashed. The lad fell.

The others raced on. What was it to them?

As they came, they tossed up tormented faces. Their eyes were peep- holes. Through them he stared into the bottomless pit, and there beheld things not meant for human vision.

His eyes passed with relief to the wholesome ugliness of the little Englishman pounding at the smugglers' heels.

Knapp had dropped his drumsticks, and was limping along now naked- fisted. His eyes were shut, and his running drawers red in patches as his tunic. He was merry no more, his head on one shoulder, labouring painfully in his stride. It was clear that he was hard-hit, and just as clear that he meant going through to the finish.

Behind him three Grenadiers, one behind the other, strung out across the green. The Parson coursed the last of them; the Gentleman coursed the Parson.

They were all running swiftly, but the last two were the swiftest.

The Parson was gaining on the Grenadier, and the Gentleman on the Parson.

It was such a race as Kit had never seen before.

Which would reach his man first?

On that, it seemed to his prophetic vision, hung all.

He tried to yell,

"Come on, sir!"

But his voice stuck as in a nightmare, and seemed to suffocate him.

A blade soared and swooped.

"One!" came the Parson's voice, clear across the green, as he took the falling man in his stride.

The Gentleman, hard at his heels, tripped over the dead man.

Collected as always, he snatched the fellow's musket, and sprawling on his face, fired at the Parson's back.

A smuggler fell.

"Thank ye!" gasped the Parson. "Two!" as the second Grenadier went down.

Then the flight of men, pursuer and pursued, dipped out of sight; but Kit could hear the stampede of feet behind the bank racing towards him, then a hiss and stumbling fall.

"Three!" panted the Parson's voice, and in a dying roar, "Mind yourselves, boys! They're on you."

IV

"Ready, Blob!"

The boy was white as steel.

He had no body. He was not afraid.

Nelson was calling him, and he should not call in vain.

Over the crest stormed the leading Grenadier, monstrous-seeming against the sky.

Kit fired at the man's cross-belts.

Down the shingle the fellow sprawled, whether dead or alive, wounded or whole, Kit knew not till he splashed into the water, and lay still in the flop of the tide.

Behind him came the smugglers.

As they topped the crest a star hung above their heads, then fell, flashing.

"Four—and—five!" came the Parson's voice.

"He's on us!" screamed Dingy Joe. "Sword and all!"

They broke away to right and left along the ridge like a covey of partridges when the hawk swoops.

Anything to get away from that avenging voice roaring out of a whirlwind of lightnings!

"After em, Knapp!"

Slung along by his own impetus, the Parson hurled down the steep.

"Warm work!" he panted, grinning luridly at the boy, and he brought up with a bang against the lugger.

As he shocked against the boat, the great tan sail filled. Shock and wind together gave the necessary impulse. The lugger, light as a bubble, swayed, slithered, crunched down the shingle, felt the greased bat, and took the water with a dip and lovely curtsey.

"We're through!" roared the Parson, sprawling upon the side.



CHAPTER LXXIII

NOBLESSE OBLIGE

I

The anchor was trailing down the shingle-bank after them.

The Gentleman had picked it up, and came walking down the slope, leaning back a little as he came.

He was smiling the brave man's wistful smile.

He had lost and he knew it.

Blob snatched a musket and aimed at his waistcoat.

The Parson struck up the barrel.

"Your friends are safe, sir," he called, hoarse and quiet. "I've burnt the despatches."

"They don't deserve to be, but thank you all the same," replied the other as quiet.

He let the anchor go. It fell with a splash into the water.

"I salute a gallant soldier, a gallant sailor, and my friend Monsieur Moon-calf!" he said, and stood, the water to his ankles, and hilt to his lips.

II

On the ridge the man-pack was at the worry.

Suddenly a face gleamed up through the thick of them.

"Sir!" screamed a voice.

The Parson started round.

"Knapp!" he cried, with sickening face. "Put back!"

A hand was on his shoulder. It was Kit.

The boy did not speak; he did not weep; he pointed seaward to where a topsail flashed white on the horizon.

The Parson looked at the green waters swinging by.

"And I can't swim!" he groaned. "God forgive me!"

An inspiration seized him.

He leapt on to the taffrail.

"Sir," he shouted, pointing, "that's a brave man!"

The Gentleman turned and saw the bloody business going on behind him.

"I am the servant of the brave," he cried, and stormed back.

The Parson sat down, and broke into tears.



BOOK IV

NELSON



I

H.M.S. MEDUSA



CHAPTER LXXIX

NATURE, THE COMFORTER

I

The crash of the waves on the shingle grew faint behind.

The lugger began to prattle, as she took the water bobbingly. Overhead the sky was blue, with wisps of snow. Kit hugged the tiller, shivering in spasms.

On his right Beachy Head, rusty of hide, waded white-footed into the deep. Before him opened the sea, a plain of palest blue, blurred with wind and patched here and there with silver. Eastward a road of twinkling light ran across the water. Pevensey Levels lay behind him, brown beyond the shingle. At back of them a range of dim hills rose and launched into the sea; and Northward a vague gloom in the sky told of man's great camping-place by the Thames.

The great sea lolled about the boy, breathing in sleep.

How soothing was the slow large life of the waters after the hubbub and horror of those last few minutes, already so remote!

Above him a kittiwake dreamed. The boy let himself drift, his mind rocking to the rock of the sea.

The waters swung by, singing to themselves. They poured peace upon his troubled spirit. Their strong life entered into his, a resistless tide. Feebly he tried to stay it. He wanted to go back to his distress, to dwell upon it, to worry it, as a young dog frets to go back to the kill.

Nature, the Comforter, would have none of it. She loved her ailing little one over well to let him have his way. She had him in her arms, and would not let him go. She sang in his ear; she rocked his spirit to sleep. The floodgates were open; and that tide of healing stole in upon his being. In his mind it made religious music. He could not resist it. Half reluctant he let himself drift on those sweet waters.

The sea roamed blindly by. He watched her as a sick child watches his mother. Sense was alive; self was dead. His body was the eye of his soul, the avenue of spirit. It had no life of its own to cloud his clear vision.

The tide of healing swept forward, smoothing the rough surfaces, washing away the jagged edges of pain. As it flowed on, that squabble on the beach a few minutes back receded, ultimately to be lost to view. It had been drowned by the incoming waters.

He was walking backwards on himself towards the centre that some call Christ; withdrawing from the Circumference, where the winds of the World moan always. And in that Centre, always for all men the same, there was Peace and Love and Life Eternal, as on that Circumference there had been War and Darkness and Discord.

Lying on the bosom of the mother-deep, watching her breathe, the boy smiled.

II

The Parson at his side was stroking his calves.

The boy watched him with dreamy eyes.

"Are you hurt, sir?" he asked in a far-away voice.

It came from the depths of no-where. It seemed no longer his. He listened to it with awe.

"Nothing that matters," replied the Parson. "Thank God for His great mercies, and my dear lady here."

Lifting his sword, he kissed the hilt.

"She was inspired," he said in reverent whisper. "I never saw the like and never shall again." He wiped the blade upon his knee-breeches. "Their beastly hairs stick yet—see!"

The boy heard no word. He sat quite still, his eyes on that twinkling waste beneath the boom. The sun, which had been shining through mist, now blazed hot upon his face. He eased the boat away, and the shadow of the great brown lug fell upon him comfortably.

"It's all very wonderful," he said, his eyes on the musing waters.

"It's a miracle—nothing less," replied the Parson, unslinging the despatch-bag. "This bag did me yeoman service. Look!" It was slashed to ribands, the rolled coat within gashed through and through; and as he shook it a bullet fell out of the folds. "I owe my life to it and Piper's shooting. The old man dropped a chap dead at two hundred yards as he was braining me."

The boy woke at last.

"What of him—old Piper?"

"Ah, what?" said the Parson, grey and grave beneath the sweat.

Neither spoke again.

III

Beyond the Boulder Bank the wind freshened. The lugger began to breast the water merrily, plumping into the swells with a delicious shock, shooting the water aside in spurts of foam, and ploughing a furrow white behind her.

The Parson stared about him with startled eyes.

"Good Lord!" he said, breathing deep, as one just awaking to a new and terrible danger.

Kit looked at him, and was shocked at the change that had come over him. He could scarcely recognise in this grey-green spectre the roaring swordsman of the shingle-bank.

"I'm tired," said the Parson suddenly, "very tired."

He flopped forward on his knees.

"My sins have found me out," he moaned. "May mother forgive me!"

His courage had faded with his colour.

Collapsing, he lay like a dead thing in a slop of sand and water at the bottom of the boat.

Kit heard his voice as in a dream.

The boy was sitting quite still, the smell of the sea in his nostrils, the wind in his hair, the hiss and flop of the waters in his ears.

The life of the body was coming back to him. The good salt breeze flushed his veins. The tiller began to pull at his hand. The lugger swung and curtseyed, graceful as a dancing girl. She was alive. She was careering over the swells, snatching for her head. She knew her mission, and revelled in it.

Nelson, Nelson, Nelson! she whispered, hissed, and sang the word.

The boy began to hand her over the seas, as a man hands his lady down a ball-room. She was so swift so strong: throbbing-full of life. He loved her, and began to live again.

Blob was sitting cocked up in the bows, pink as ever and as impassive.

At the sight of the boy Kit felt a certain resentment, and, with the swift self-knowledge peculiar to him, was glad to feel it, for it told him he was coming round. He wished the boy to collapse alongside the Parson. Why didn't he, the silly little land-lubber? Kit, the one sailor aboard, here on his own element, wished to lord it out alone.

"How d'you feel, Blob?" he called, hoping for the best.

"Whoy," said Blob, the breeze in his teeth, "Oi'm that empty Oi can hear me innuds rollin. Oi could just fancy a loomp o porruk—fatty-loike."

The Parson raised himself.

"Swine," he moaned, "have you no soul?"

He turned on his elbow.

"Can't you take her where it's flatter?" he snarled.

"I like a bit of a bobble myself, sir," answered Kit.

"Calls himself a sailor!" sneered the other, and collapsed again.

IV

The frigate was drawing near, the lily flag of a Vice-Admiral of the White at her foretop-gallant mast-head.

A tide of delicious tears surged up in the lad's heart as he beheld her. She was England; she was his own. He possessed her, and was she not beautiful?

Stately lady, she walked the waters, swaying them, her breasts splendid in the sunshine. Her head was in the heavens, a stir of snow at her feet. She was mistress of the seas, and mother of them. And with what noble mirth she lorded it in this her nursery! The turbulent little folks swarmed to clutch her skirts as she swept by. She moved among them, their play-fellow and yet their sovereign lady: here a mocking bow, there a laughing curtsey; anon a stoop, a swift kiss, and she rose, an armful of blossom-babies smothering her.

The boy's heart went out to her in a passion of worship.

She was a tall Princess, stone-blind and beautiful, walking to her doom; and he a boy-knight bucketing across the moor on his pony to save her and the burthen she bore so preciously in her arms—her little son.

And he would save her. Nay, he had saved her.

He was so proud he could have shouted; he was so moved he could almost have wept.

The lugger thumped through the seas, tugging at her tiller, eager as himself. She reminded him of the scuttling haste with which old Trumps, his pony, bustled along, head set for home; and he laughed merrily. The fuss and fury of the little thing contrasted so ludicrously with the majestic calm of the swan-lady sweeping towards him.

The frigate was close on him now.

As the lugger topped the ridges, Kit, peering beneath the boom, could see the black and yellow of the Nelson chequer on her sides.

Clouds of canvas, tier on tier, towered above him.

He could see the shine of her bows as she lifted, dripping. The water spurted from her foot in foaming cataracts as she plunged.

He steered as though to cross her bows. When he heard the swish of the green waters cleaving before her keel, he put his helm hard down.

"Hail them, Blob!" he screamed, and scrambling forward brought the lug-sail down with a rattle.

"Boat ahoy_" a voice from the frigate "_who are you_?"

Blob stood in the bows, one hand on the flapping jib. "Oi'm Blob Oad what killed Nabowlin Bownabaardie," he yelled.

The frigate, standing stately on, swung up alongside. Kit, rushing to the side, fended her off, as she slid past, huge above him.

"Heave to!" he screamed, bumping against the sliding side. "Heave to!"

A deep voice above him spoke.

Kit looked up. A man, leaning over the side, was watching him bump stern-wards with a sardonic grin.

"Bye-bye," he murmured deeply. "My love to the little gurls."

Was he mad? was he mocking?

Kit thought he had never seen so striking a face. The man was a giant with moon-splendid eyes. There was a power about the face, the power of darkness. The sun never shone upon it—only the moon, the moon. But for her wan glimmer it was without light. Kit thought of a wild night at sea, the moon gleaming fitfully on savage waters. The moon, always the moon!