"Now where the dooce has that boy got?" muttered the Parson, looking round.
Kit pointed.
In the darkest corner, under the slope of the roof, stood an apple-barrel. Out of it two frog-like legs thrust and kicked with the action of one swimming. A protuberance crowned the rim of the barrel. Body, head, and arms were lost.
The Parson whipped up Polly.
"One for yourself!" he roared, prodding the boy"s bad eminence, "and one for The Doxie"s Daughter!"
"Hoi! that"s Blo-ub!" yelled a m.u.f.fled voice. Two hands shot out and plastered themselves over the stimulated part. There was a wriggle.
Then Blob stood before them, touzled, pink, his ears wide, an apple tight between his teeth.
"D"you call that keeping a look-out?" thundered the Parson.
"Oi wur lookin out," said Blob, dogged and sullen.
"Then you keep your eyes where few of us do."
"Oi thart oi yerd a Frenchie in the bar"l," said Blob in the slow and undulating voice of Suss.e.x. "Oi went fur to fetch un out, when a tarrabul great oa.r.s.e-fly settled on ma b.u.t.t-end and stung her."
"It was no horse-fly," replied the Parson. "It was my dear lady.
Now, don"t bother to think of any more lies, my lad, but just take that lantern from the wall, and go below. We"ll join you in a minute."
IV
The Parson pulled aside the hanging mattress, and peeped seaward.
"Come here, boy. I want to show you the lie of the land. D"you see that chap in blue knickers in the shade of the sycamores?--he"s the Gap Gang sentry. They"re camped somewhere behind the knoll, the main of them. That"s their smoke you see among the trees."
That roaring chorus still rang in the boy"s ear.
"The drain runs to the right of the knoll, and out into the creek bang opposite the Wish. Half-way down it there"s a man-hole."
An icy pang pierced Kit"s heart.
"It"s quite small, and a bush grows over it. It"s a million to one they know nothing of it. Still you should--er--watch it."
The Parson was gnawing his under-lip.
"I"ll watch it," said the boy, the waves breaking white about his face.
It must be somewhere just about the man-hole that Fat George and Co.
were camped. Still he wasn"t going to let this soldier know he was afraid.
But the soldier knew.
Outwardly calm, his own heart was a whirlpool of doubts. How could he stop behind a wall and send this lad out into the open to face heaven knew what? Yet here surely his obvious duty lay. Should the enemy storm, what could a legless old sailor and a brace of boys do against them? And unless he was mistaken mischief was brewing. Where was the Gentleman all this time? Yesterday he had been everywhere all the time. To-day the Parson had caught but one fleeting glimpse of him.
The old soldier preferred his enemy"s activity to his quiet. Was this the lull before the storm?
"I only want you to go to the mouth of the drain, and see him off," he said with calm cheerfulness. "Once away, you"d only hamper him."
That was truth at all events. Once away, Knapp"s chance lay in his feet. With luck the little man"d be in Lewes in an hour and a half.
With luck a good man on a good horse"d be in Chatham before night, another at the Admiralty, a third at Merton,--that was, if Beau Beauchamp would leave his actress for the moment to play the man. With luck Nelson wouldn"t have sailed.
Lots of luck, true! still, who was it was on their side?
The fog of his doubts cleared away.
He turned to the boy with glowing eyes.
"Kit," he whispered, hugging the lad"s arm, "we"ll have a Gazette to ourselves yet."
THE SALLY
CHAPTER XLIX
MAKING READY
The kitchen was dim as a sick-room, and strangely hushed. No one spoke but the Parson and he in whispers, lecturing Knapp, undressing in the corner.
The gravity of the enterprise, its certain perils, the issues at stake, oppressed the room. Death was there already; as yet indeed only a ghost at each man"s elbow, in a few moments maybe to become incarnate.
Kit felt it and sickened.
Perched upon the table, his back to the boarded window, he whetted his dirk upon his shoe, and wondered if those others, those men, Knapp most of all, felt as he did.
Privately he thanked heaven that the dusk hid his face.
Through c.h.i.n.ks and splintered bullet-holes, the light stole in, making daggers across the darkness.
It splashed the walls, the great stone-flags, the black mouth of the cellar, and the dresser in the corner.
There sat Knapp, a grey ghost spotted here and there with light. The little rifleman was naked now, save for a pair of fighting drawers. A heap of clothes sprawled at his feet.
The little rifleman was like a child. Broken-hearted a minute back, now he was as a lion in leash.
There was an adventure forward, and the off chance of a fight: he brimmed at the thought of it. Without imagination, he knew no fear; with little experience of pain, he didn"t much believe in it. They wouldn"t catch _him_; they wouldn"t hit _him_!
Before him knelt the Parson with low head, swathing his feet with strips of torn towel, absorbed as a surgeon, careful as a mother.