The Dew of Their Youth Part 11

It was anywhere between five minutes and a century before we heard the first stroke of the crow behind the barricade. It sounded dull and painful, as if inside of one's head. At first we heard no talking such as Agnes Anne had described at the entrance of the ice-house.

Also, as they had been a good while on the way; I believe that they had found other difficulties which they had not counted upon in traversing the pa.s.sage. But they were very near now, for presently, after perhaps twenty strokes we could hear the striker sending out his breath with a "_Har_" of effort each time he drove his crow home.

It was very dark in the cellar, for we had covered the lamp more carefully and almost ceased to breathe. But we saw through certain c.h.i.n.ks that our a.s.sailants had a light of some sort with them. We could discern a faint glimmering all round the upper portion of the stone, and stray rays also pierced at various places elsewhere.

The long line of light at the top suddenly split and seemed to break open in the middle. There came a fierce "_Hech_" from the a.s.sailant, and the point of his crowbar showed, slid, and was as sharply recovered.

Next moment it came again.

"Lever it!" cried the gruff voice, "if you have the backbone of a windlestraw, lever!"

And after a short, hard-breathing struggle, the stone door fell inwards, the aperture was filled with intense light, dazzling, as it appeared to us--and in the midst we saw two fierce and set faces peering into the dark of the cellar.

CHAPTER XII

THE FIGHT IN THE DARK

One of the peering faces was hot and angry, bearded too, which few then used to do except such as followed the sea. The other was dark and beaked like a hawk, so that the shadow of an aquiline nose fell on the man's chin as he held the lantern high above his head.

At first we could only see them to about the middle of the breast, as for a little s.p.a.ce of time they stood thus, hearkening with their heads thrust forward.

"Not a ratton--forward there, d.i.c.k!" said the man behind, and the man with the bushy beard advanced, rising as he did so till I could see the ties of tarry cord with which he looped up his corduroy small-clothes.

Now it was high time to act. The game had been played far enough.

"Hold there--stand!" I cried. "Not a step further or we fire!"

I suppose my voice was echoed and fortified by the hollow vault.

Certainly in my own ears it roared like the sound of many waters. At any rate the men stood, dumb-stricken, the tarry sailorly man a little in front with his mouth open and his yellow dog-teeth gleaming. The other, he who had given the orders, held the lantern higher in the air almost against the stones of the vault, so as to see over the barricade of boxes and barrels.

"'Tis no more than the----" he was beginning. But he never got the sentence completed. For I took good aim from a rest upon a package of cloth, and let fly with the best of the muskets--but at the clear lowe of the lantern, not at the man's face, as I had at first intended.

Somehow, a kind of pity came over me. I did not want to slay such men, who, taken in their iniquity, must go right to their accounts. But the lantern was. .h.i.t clean, and the gla.s.s went jingling to the ground in a hundred fragments.

I judge also that some of the slugs must have strayed a little, for out of the darkness came curses and the voice of the commander crying on d.i.c.k to get back--that they were too strong for only two men. But the sailor man advanced till I could hear him actually pulling himself over the breastwork, gasping (or, as we say, "pech-"ing) with the effort.

Then I ran along my battery, and directing the next two of the old muskets to the arched roof, I fired them off, bringing down with a crash handfuls of rough lime and small bits of stone, mingled no doubt with the ricocheted bullets themselves. At any rate our tarry Galligaskins soon had enough of it. He turned and made good his retreat towards the stairs up which he had forced his way.

Then Agnes Anne, who had no chivalrous ideas of sparing anybody who came a.s.saulting the house of her friends, pulled the trigger of "King George," and in a moment all lesser sounds were drowned in a roar loud as of a piece of ordnance.

The blunderbuss had been trained on the opening with some care, and it was lucky for the men that they happened to be in retreat, and so presenting their backs at the time--lucky, also, that only buckshot had been used instead of the bullets and slugs with which the other guns were loaded. But even so it was enough. She was always careless and scattery, our old "King George." And from the marks on the lintels afterwards she had sprinkled her charge pretty freely. Also there were tokens, besides the yells and imprecations of the a.s.sailants and the threats of Galligaskins to come back and do for us, that both of them (as Constable Jacky would have said) "carried off concealed about their persons an indictable quant.i.ty of my father's good lead drops."

So far, good. Better than good, indeed--better than we had the least reason to expect, all owing to my presence of mind, and the fortunate nervousness of Agnes Anne--which, however, in the case under review, Providence directed to a wise and good end. I was for running immediately back up the stairs to put the mind of Miss Irma at rest, but Agnes Anne, with that stubbornness which she will often manifest throughout this history, withstood me.

"What is it now?" I asked her, somewhat impatiently, I am bound to admit. For I was all in a sweat to tell Irma about my victory, and how I fought--and also, of course, about Agnes Anne pulling the trigger of "King George" at random in the dark.

"This is the matter," said she, "Irma can wait. But if we do not improve our victory, they will be back again with a whole army of men before we can wink."

"Well," I answered, "I will load the guns first and then go up!"

"Loading the guns is good," said Agnes Anne. "But before that we must blind up this hole by which they climbed in. We will give them something more difficult to break through in this narrow pa.s.sage than a stone door which they can make holes in with a crowbar!"

And I caught at the idea in a moment, wondering how I had not thought of it myself. But of course, though I did not actually suggest it, Agnes Anne could never have carried it through without me.

We set about the work immediately. I took the big stone they had loosened with their tools and tumbled it down the well of the stairway, where, after rebounding once, it stuck at the turn and made a good foundation for the barrels, boxes and packages we threw down till the whole s.p.a.ce was choke full, and then I danced on the top and defied the lantern-man and d.i.c.k to get through in a week.

"_Now_ go and tell your Irma!" said Agnes Anne, and I went, while she stopped behind with the lantern and a gun to watch if anything should be attempted against the cellar.

But I knew right well that no such thing was possible. Nothing short of such a charge of gunpowder as would rive the whole house of Marnhoul asunder would suffice to clear the staircase of the packing I had given it. So Agnes Anne might just as well have come her ways up-stairs with me. Still, I do not deny that it was thoughtful of her; Agnes Anne meant well.

Irma had heard the firing, and I found her with her little brother in her arms, sitting by the window of the parlour overlooking the pilasters of the front door. She held little Louis wrapped in a blanket, and kept both herself and him out of sight as much as possible behind the curtain. But she had the horse pistol I had given her on the ledge of the sill close at her hand.

She listened to my tale with a white intensity which was very pitiful.

Her eyes seemed so big that they almost overran her face, and there were little sparks of light like fairy candles lit at the bottom of each.

"Lalor Maitland--it was no other man!" she said in an awed voice. "And now he is wounded he will be furious. He has many men always in his power. For he can make or mar a man in the Low Countries, and even bad men will do much for his favour. He will gather to him all who are waiting. They will be here immediately and burst in the doors. Oh, what shall we do? My poor, poor Louis!"

"There is the woman whom Agnes Anne saw," I said. "Can you guess what she has to do with it? They said they would try her if they did not succeed."

"Why not light the beacon now?" said a voice from the door. It was Agnes Anne, who, being left to herself, the thought had come to her in the dark of the cellar, and had run up to propose it. For me, I was too much occupied with Irma, and I am sure that Irma was far too troubled concerning her brother to think about the beacon. Yet it was the obvious thing to do, and if I had had a moment to spare I would have thought of it myself. So Agnes Anne had no great credit, after all, when you come to look at it rightly.

But the effect of the suggestion on Irma was very remarkable. It was as if the voice of my sister actually raised her from the place where she had been listlessly sitting with her brother in her arms. She s.n.a.t.c.hed the lantern from the hands of Agnes Anne and put little Louis back on his pillow, bidding him stay there till the time should come for him to get up.

"Are the bad men all killed, Irma?" he asked.

"We are going to bring the good people to help us!" she cried. And with that she ran up-stairs, and I after her, in a great pother of haste. For the candle in her hand was the only bit of fire we had, and I did not want it blown out if I could help it.

CHAPTER XIII

A WORLD OF INK AND FIRE

The idea of Irma's danger on the open house-top and in the full glare of the beacon acted on me like a charm--yet people will say that there is nothing at all in such a relationship as ours. Why, I would not have been half as much concerned for Agnes Anne! And as a matter of fact, I had not been so anxious down there behind the barrels and packages in the cellar, when Lalor Maitland and Galligaskins were coming at us.

Besides which, I knew that Irma, being unused to fire-building, would only waste the excellent provision of kindling, and perhaps do us out of our beacon altogether.

So having joined her, it was not long till we had the tarred cloth off, and, through the interstices of the iron bucket, the little blue and yellow flames began chirping and chattering. But as I pulled the basket up to the height of its iron crane, the wind of the night sent the fire off with a mighty roar. The tops of the nearer trees stood out, every leaf hard and distinct, but the main body of the woods all about Marnhoul remained dark and solid, as if you could have walked upon them without once breaking through.

I stood there watching, with the chain still in my hand, though I had run the ring into the hoop on the wall. We had been very clever so far, and I was full of admiration for ourselves. But a bullet whizzing very near my head, struck the basket with a vicious "scat," doing no harm, of course, but extending to us an urgent invitation to get out of range, that was not to be disregarded.

Irma was close beside me, following with her eyes the mounting crackle of the beacon, the sudden jetting of the tall pale flames that ran upward into the velvet sky of night. For from a pale and haunting grey the firmament had all of a sudden turned black and solid. Middle shades had been ruled out instantly. It was a world of ink and fire.

But that sharp dash of danger cooled admiration in my heart. I caught Irma by the shoulders and, roughly enough, pulled her down beside me on the platform behind the stone ramparts. For a moment I think she was indignant, but the next thankful. For half-a-dozen b.a.l.l.s clicked and whizzed about, pa.s.sing through the square gaps that went all round the tower, as if the wall had had a couple of teeth knocked out at regular distances every here and there.

Very cautiously we crawled to the stair-head, leaving our invisible enemies cracking away at the fire basket, knocking little cascades of sparks out of it, indeed, but doing no harm. For the beacon was thoroughly well alight, and the chain good and strong.