Carette of Sark Part 33

There was no sound or sign of wardership. It seemed as though what I had hardly dared to hope had come to pa.s.s,--as though, in a word, that urgent call to the other side of the enclosure, to forestall an escape or a.s.sist at the fire, had bared this side of guards.

We crouched there among the sharp points, listening intently; then, taking our lives in our hands, we dropped the hammock on the outside of the palisade and slipped gently down.

My heart was beating a tattoo as loud as that in the soldiers' quarters, as we sped across the black s.p.a.ce which had baffled us so long, and not another sound did we hear save the splashing of the rain.

My hammock helped us over the outer palisade in the same way as the other, and we stood for a moment in the rain and darkness, panting and shaking,--free men.

We made for the void in front, with no thought but of placing the greatest possible distance between ourselves and the prison in the shortest possible time. We plunged into bogs and scrambled through to the farther side, eager bundles of dripping slime, and sped on and on through the rain and darkness--free men, and where we went we knew not, only that it was from prison.

For a time the flicker of the burning house showed us where the prison lay, and directed us from it. But this soon died down, and we were left to make our own course, with no guide but the drenching rain. We had headed into it when we loosed from the palisade, and we continued to breast it.

No smaller prize than freedom, no weaker spur than the prison behind would have carried men through what we underwent that night. We ran till our breath came sorely, and then we trudged doggedly, with set teeth, and hands clenched, as though by them we clung to desperate hope. Twice when we plunged into black waters we had to swim, and Le Marchant was not much of a swimmer. But there I was able to help him, and when we touched ground we scrambled straight up high banks and went on. And the darkness, if it gave us many a fall, was still our friend.

But my recollections of that night are confused and shadowy. It was one long plunge through stormy blackness, water above, water below, with tightened breath and shaking limbs, and the one great glowing thought inside that we were free of the cramping prison, and that now everything depended on ourselves.

Scarce one word did we speak, every breath was of consequence. Hand in hand we went, lest in that blackness of darkness we should lose one another and never come together again. For the thick streaming blackness of that night was a thing to be felt and not to be forgotten. Never had I felt so like a lost soul condemned to endless struggle for it knew not what. For whether we were keeping a straight course, or were wandering round and round, we had no smallest idea, and we had not a single star to guide us.

It was terribly hard travelling. When we struck on tussocks of the wiry gra.s.s we were grateful, but for the most part we were falling with bone-breaking jerks into miry pitfalls, or tumbling into s.p.a.ce as we ran, and coming up with a splash and a struggle in some deep pool or wide-flowing ditch.

There is a limit, however, to human endurance, even where liberty is at stake. We trod air one time, in that disconcerting way which jarred one more than many a mile of travel, and landed heavily in the slime below, and Le Marchant lay and made no attempt to rise. I groped till I found him, and hauled him to solider ground, and he lay there coughing and choking, and at last sobbing angrily, not with weakness of soul but from sheer lack of strength to move.

"Go on! Go on!" he gasped, as soon as he could speak. "I'm done. Get you along!"

"I'm done too," I said, and in truth I could not have gone much farther.

"We'll rest here till daybreak, then we can see where we are."

He had no breath for argument, and we lay in the muddy sedge till our hearts had settled to a more reasonable beat, and we had breath for speech.

"How far have we come, do you think?" Le Marchant asked.

"It felt like fifty miles, but it was such rough work that it's probably nearer five. But it can't be long to daylight. Then we shall know better."

We struggled to a drier hummock and lay down again. The rain had ceased, and presently, while we lay watching for the first flicker of dawn in front or on our left, an exclamation from Le Marchant brought me round with a jerk, to find the sky softening and lightening right behind us. The ditches and the darkness and our many falls had led us astray. Instead of going due east we had fetched a compa.s.s and bent round to the north; instead of leaving our prison we had circled round it. And as the shadows lightened on the long dim flats, we saw in the distance the black ring of the stockade on its little elevation.

"Let us get on," said Le Marchant, with a groan at the wasted energies of the night.

"I believe we're safer here. If they seek us it will be farther away.

They'd never think we'd be such fools as to stop within a couple of miles of the prison."

And, indeed, before I had done speaking, we could make out the tiny black figures of patrols setting off along the various roads that led through the swamps, and so we lay still, and watched the black figures disappear to the east and south and north.

So long as we kept hidden I had no great fear of them, for the swamps were honeycombed with hiding-places, and to beat them thoroughly would have required one hundred men to every one they could spare.

"I'm not at all sure it's us they're after," I said, by way of cheer for us both. "All that turmoil last night and the fire makes me think some of the others in Number Three were on the same job."

"Like enough, but I don't see that it helps us much. Can we find anything to eat?"

But we had come away too hurriedly to make any provision, and we knew too little of the roots among which we lay to venture any of them. So we lay, hungry and sodden, in spite of the sun which presently set the flats steaming, and did not dare to move lest some sharp eye should spy us. We could only hope for night and stars, and then sooner or later to come across some place where food could be got, if it was only green grain out of a field, for our stomachs were calling uneasily.

Twice during the day we heard guns at a distance, and that confirmed my idea that others besides ourselves had escaped, and by widening the chase it gave me greater hopes. But it was weary work lying there, and more and more painful as regards our stomachs, which from crying came to clamour, and from clamour to painful groanings, and a hollow clapping together of their empty linings.

Not till nightfall did we dare to move, and very grateful we were that the night was fine with a glorious show of stars. By them we steered due east, but still had to keep to the marsh-lands and away from the roads. And now, from lack of food, our hearts were not so stout, and the going seemed heavier and more trying. It brought back to me the times we had in the Everglades of Florida, and I told Le Marchant the story, but it did not greatly cheer him.

Once that night, in our blind travelling, we stumbled out into a road, and while we stood doubtful whether we might not dare to use it for the eas.e.m.e.nt of our bodies, there came along it the tramp of men and the click of arms, and we were barely in the ditch, with only our noses above water, when they went noisily past us in the direction of the prison.

We made a better course that night, in the matter of direction at all events, but our progress was slow, for we were both feeling sorely the lack of food, and our way across the flats was still full of pitfalls, into which we fell dully and dragged ourselves out doggedly. We had been thirty hours without a bite, and suffered severe pains, probably from the marsh water we had drunk and had to drink.

"Two hundred kegs of fine French cognac we dropped overboard outside Poole Harbour," groaned Le Marchant one time, "and a mouthful of it now--!" Ay, a mouthful of it just then would have been new life to us. We stumbled on like machines because our spirits willed it so, but truly at times the weariness of the body was like to master the spirit.

"We must come across something in time," I tried to cheer him with--feeling little cheer myself.

"If it's only the hole they'll find our bodies in," he said down-heartedly.

And a very short while after that, as though to point his words, we fell together into a slimy ditch, and it seemed to me that Le Marchant lay unable to rise.

I put my arms under him, and strove to lift him, and felt a shock of horror as another man's arms round him on the other side touched mine, and I found another man trying to lift him also.

"Bon Dieu!" I gasped in my fright, and let the body go, as the other jerked out the same words, and released his hold also, and the body fell between us.

"Dieu-de-dieu, Carre! But I thought this was you," panted Le Marchant in a shaky voice.

"And I thought it was you."

We bent together and lifted the fallen one to solid ground, but it was too dark to see his face.

"Is he dead?"

"He is dead," I said, for I had laid my hand against his heart, and it was still, and his flesh was clammy cold, and when we found him he was lying face down in the mud.

"He escaped as we did, and wandered till he fell in here and was too weak to rise. Let us go on;" and we joined hands, for the comfort of the living touch, and went on our way more heavily than before.

We kept anxious look-out for lights or any sign of humanity. And lights indeed we saw at times that night, and cowered shivering in ditches and mudholes as they flitted to and fro about the marshes. For these, we knew, were no earthly lights, but ghost flares tempting us to destruction--stealthy pale flames of greenish-blue which hovered like ghostly b.u.t.terflies, and danced on the darkness, and fluttered from place to place as though blown by unfelt winds. And one time, after we had left the dead man behind, one such came dancing straight towards us, and we turned and ran for our lives till we fell into a hole. For Le Marchant vowed it was the dead man's spirit, and that the others were the spirits of those who had died in similar fashion. But for myself I was not sure, for I had seen similar lights on our masts at sea in the West Indies, though indeed there was nothing to prove that they also were not the spirits of drowned mariners.

CHAPTER XXVI

HOW WE FOUND A FRIEND IN NEED

But--"pas de rue sans but!" as we say in Sercq--there is no road but has an ending. And, just as the dawn was softening the east, and when we were nigh our last effort, we stumbled by sheerest accident on shelter, warmth, and food,--and so upon life, for I do not think either of us could have carried on much longer, and to have sunk down there in the marsh, with no hope of food, must soon have brought us to an end.

It was Le Marchant who smelt it first.

"Carre," he said suddenly, "there is smoke," and he stood and sniffed like a starving dog. Then I smelt it also, a sweet pleasant smell of burning, and we sniffed together.

Since it came to us on the wind we followed up the wind in search of it, and nosed about hither and thither, losing it, finding it, but getting hotter and hotter on the scent till we came at last to a little mound, and out of the mound the smoke came.