"d.a.m.nation!" 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 G.o.d 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.
"G.o.d"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 pa.s.sed round the cottage and out of sight.
"What shall you do?" asked Kit hoa.r.s.ely 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 gra.s.s 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?