At this impudent remark the boatmen began to row with renewed vigour; the salt spray drove aboard in showers, the wind roared in our ears, the horses huddled together.
Once more we swung across the line of boats; in the craft just ahead of us I could see the marines sitting with their muskets on their knees, right hands covering the flints and pans.
As the distance slowly increased between us and the troop-boats, I began to breathe more freely. Mount stood by his horse, coolly chewing a straw from the wadded oar-locks, his fox-skin cap pushed back on his head, the fluffy tail blowing wildly in the wind.
Slowly the dark sh.o.r.e took shape before us; already I could smell the land smell, and hear the wind among the reeds.
Oh, the happiness to be free from that prison city, lying there in the gloom across the water!--the joy to tread free ground once more, to scent free winds, to move unrestrained across the world again!
Mount, too, was sniffing restlessly at the marsh, wreathed in sea-mist; I fancied his eyes glowed in the moonlight like the eyes of a waiting hound.
Something touched my hand; Shemuel came cowering to my side.
"Courage," I whispered.
"I haf done all I could," he said, in a shaking voice.
"I know that, lad," I muttered.
His wet fingers sought mine.
"I shall nefer be safe no more," he whispered.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I don"t know. I shall nefer set foot on sh.o.r.e no more. I don"t live long now, Mr. Cardigan."
He was trembling from head to foot as I laid my hand on his shoulder.
The boatmen had dropped their oars and taken to their poles once more; the tall reeds rustled as our scow drove its square nose into the shallows and grounded with a grating jar. Startled curlews, round about us, uttered their querulous cries.
"There"s a road swings northwest through the marshes," said Mount, wading out into the water and leading his horse up through the rushes.
"Follow me, lad. I should know this country from Cobble Hill to Canada."
Foxcroft had mounted; Jack climbed stiffly into his saddle; I threw Warlock around in the reeds, prepared to set foot to stirrup, when Shemuel seized my arm convulsively. A patrol of British light horse, riding in single file, came picking their way down the sh.o.r.e in the moonlight.
Mount and Foxcroft saw them and drew bridles; I slung my legs across Warlock, just as they hailed us.
"Get up behind! Quick!" I whispered to Shemuel, watching the hors.e.m.e.n riding towards Mount, who was ahead of Foxcroft.
Shemuel"s strength appeared to have left his limbs; he struggled to mount behind me; Warlock, alarmed at his contortions, began to dance restlessly.
Impatient, I stooped to grasp Shemuel, and I already had him by the collar when an exclamation and a sudden trampling of horses made me turn my head just in time to see a British officer seize Jack Mount and attempt to drag him from his saddle.
Before I could straighten up, the cavalry were upon us; I saw Foxcroft snap his pistol, wheel, and gallop into the reeds; I saw Jack Mount fling the officer off and fetch him a cracking blow with the barrel of his rifle. Two men rode at me; I raised my rifle with one hand, calling to Shemuel to mount behind me, but the frightened peddler squirmed out of my clutch and rushed off headlong into the marsh.
A horseman followed him, cursing; the other trooper, mired in the rushes, struggled to get at me.
I swung my rifle to my cheek; it flashed in the pan; the brute set his horse at a gallop, and, leaning forward, deliberately shot at the unarmed peddler. Shemuel dodged, ran a few yards, doubled on the horseman, and came rushing back towards Mount. He gained a little hillock of rising ground; he could have escaped into the fringing willows, but, to my horror, he turned and waved his arms to me, shouting:
"Ride! Ride! Mr. Cardigan! For Miss Warren"s sake, ride, sir!"
"Touch that man and I"ll brain you!" I roared at the horseman who had now drawn his sabre.
Again I tried to shoot the trooper, but the flint sparks died out in the damp pan. With a groan I rode after him, calling out to Shemuel to seek cover in the brush, but he only ran about on his hillock, dodging the infuriated trooper, and calling frantically to me that I must save myself for Miss Warren"s sake.
Then, while my horse was floundering in the marsh, slowly drawing his mired limbs to firm ground, I saw Shemuel dart towards me with a shriek, and, ere I could reach him, I saw the trooper bend down from his saddle and slash the poor, frightened creature"s head with one terrible blow of his heavy sabre.
Down into the mud plunged Shemuel; the trooper"s horse trampled and pa.s.sed over his body, then swung in a rushing circle and bore down on me, just as the other rider came splashing at me from the right.
My rifle a third time flashed in the pan; the priming had been wet with spray. I struck Warlock on the flanks, whirled him head on against Shemuel"s murderer, and, whipping out my war-hatchet, aimed a furious blow at the fellow"s head. The keen hatchet blade sank into the trooper"s shoulder; he tumbled out of his stirrups and landed heavily among the cat-tails.
Instantly I checked Warlock, poised myself in my stirrups, and launched the hatchet straight at the other horseman, striking him full in the chest, but whether with blade-edge, handle, or flat, I know not, for, as his horse swerved wide, pa.s.sing me at a tearing gallop, Mount and Foxcroft flew past, calling out that Shemuel was dead and that I must follow them for my life.
Up the sh.o.r.e we crashed through the rushes, driving straight out into the marsh, our horses floundering, and the light hors.e.m.e.n firing their pistols at us from the firmer ground above.
A ball grazed Warlock; his neck was wet with blood.
"They"ll murder us all here!" cried Foxcroft; "charge them, in G.o.d"s name!"
Mount heard him and bore to the left; I followed; knee to knee we lifted our crazed horses out of the marsh and hurled them into the little patrol of light horse, bursting upon them ere they could wheel to meet us.
In the moonlight their sabres flashed before our eyes, but no lunging point found its billet of flesh, though their blades rang out on our rifle-barrels; then we were on them, among them, plunging through them, and pounding away northward over a hard gravel road.
They discharged their pistols at us; a few of them followed us, but all pursuit ceased below Prospect Hill; we galloped, unmolested, into the old Charlestown and West Cambridge Road, and flew onward through the night.
In lonely stretches of road, which ran rivers of moonlight, I could see Mount riding, head on his breast, square jaw set, and I knew he was brooding on Shemuel"s dismal end.
The swift murder of the little peddler shocked me terribly; Shemuel"s strange premonition of his own approaching death fairly made me shiver in my stirrups as I rode. Like a doomed man the Jew had gone to his end, with what courage G.o.d had lent him. He had been a friend to me.
For all his squalid weakness of limb, his natural fear of pain, his physical cowardice, he had not swerved from the service of his country, nor had he faltered or betrayed the confidence of men whose peril imperilled himself. Nothing save his fidelity to us had forced him to leave the city with us; nothing save the innate love of liberty in his grotesque and dirty body had lured this errant child of Israel to risk his life in bearing messages for those who watched the weighted hours creep on towards that b.l.o.o.d.y dawn already gathering under the edges of the sleeping world.
Now, as we rode, from behind us the sound of bells came quavering across dim meadows; out of the blue night bells answered; we heard the reports of guns, the distant clamour of a horn blowing persistently from some hidden hamlet.
"The alarm!" panted Foxcroft, at my elbow, as we pounded on. "Hurrah!
Hurrah! The country lives!"
"Jack!" I called, through the rushing wind, "the whole land is awaking behind us! Do you hear? Our country lives!"
"And England dies!" cried Mount, pa.s.sionately. With both hands uplifted, and bridle flung across his horse"s neck, he galloped in the lead. On his huge horse, towering up in the saddle, he swept on through the night, a gigantic incarnation of our people militant, a colossal shape embodying all that we had striven for and suffered for from the hour when the first pioneer died at the stake.
On he swept astride his rushing horse, the fox-tail on his cap streaming, the thrums on his sleeves blowing like ripe grain; and ever he tossed his arms towards the sky and shook his glittering rifle above his head, till the moonshine played on it like lightning.
"Ring! Ring out your bells!" we shouted, as we tore through a sleeping village; and behind us we could see candle-light break out from the dark houses, and, ere the volleying echoes of our horses" hoofs struck the last spark from the village streets, the meeting-house bell began swinging, warning the distant farms that the splendid hour had come.
And now, unexpectedly, we encountered a check in our course. Full in the yellow moonlight, on a little hill over which our road lay, we caught sight of a body of hors.e.m.e.n drawn up, and we knew, by the moon shining on their gorgets, that we had before us a company of dragoons with their officers.
At a word from Jack I dismounted and pulled the rails from the road fence on our right. Through the aperture we filed, out into a field of young winter wheat well sprouted, and then west, as quietly as we might, with watchful eyes on the dragoons.
But the British hors.e.m.e.n had also turned, and were now trotting along parallel to our course, which manoeuvre drove us off eastward again across the meadows, deep starred with dandelions. For us to alarm Lexington was now impossible. We could already see the liberty-pole on the hill and make out where the village lay, by a gilt weather-vane shining in the moonlight above the trees. But there were no lights to be seen in Lexington, and we dared not ride through the dark town, not knowing but that it might be swarming with dragoons.