CHAPTER XXXI

THE MAN WITH THE SWORD

I

Those familiar words, so unexpected in that strange place, smote the boy's heart.

A thousand memories surged in on him.

His lips trembled. A very little, and he would have fallen on his knees.

It was as though an Angel had come to him walking through the Valley of the Shadow, to tell him all was well, and to go forward.

And forward he went with thankful heart.

The sea of turf ran right up to the wall, and broke against it. The windows, seen close, were less windows than loop-holes, barred across. On the sill of one was a pot of musk, newly watered, and very fragrant. Within upon the wall shimmered a ship's cutlass, and a brace of pistols.

The boy peered in.

A kitchen-parlour, raftered and paved with stone, formed the ground- floor. At one end was a huge fire-place; in the opposite corner a bed, piled high with clothes. A ladder led to a trap-door in the low ceiling. The sun flooded into the room through the one window in the other wall. The door on that side was half open; and behind it sat a man.

II

He was all in black, and very neat: an Englishman, a gentleman, and a parson, Kit would have sworn.

His back was turned. The boy could see nothing but a black coat, a pair of solid shoulders, and a curly head.

This was not the hymn-singer to be sure. He was otherwise engaged. There was something across his knees, and he was tending to it, and talking as he worked.

From his actions and his words, Kit would have sworn that he was bathing a child. For the man was talking as women talk to babies, and some men to the women they love--that little talk, half tender, half mocking, such nonsense, and so sweet.

Then something flashed and sparkled against the dark of the door; and Kit saw it was no babe that lay across the man's knees, but a naked blade.

He was furbishing it with a chamois leather, and caressing it with words.

Now he lifted the blade on flat hands, and kissed the point reverently.

Then he leaned forward, and peered round the half open door with extraordinary stealth.

Comic as the action was, there was yet something terrible about it.

Kit choked with laughter and fear.

The man was half child playing peep-bo! and half spider waiting for a fly.

That vision of the Eternal Child, which he had surprised in the eyes of old Ding-dong sailing into action, was manifest in this man too.

Were men only children?--Yes, surely!--the good ones, at least. Only sinners grew old. Christian never ages.

The man's head turned a trifle. There was a smile flickering about his lips; and in the smile was something of the ogre, and something of the boy.

It was clear that he meant to kill; equally clear that he took joy in his purpose.

He sat down again; and as he did so held up a finger, hushing himself.

He was playing a game, unaware that he was being watched, and enjoying it intensely.

Behind the door he sat now, blade in hand, spider-still.

Plainly he was waiting for somebody.

But for whom?--and what would happen when that somebody came?

The door opened another inch or two, and through it, Kit saw the privateer, black on the white water.

In a flash he understood.

The man was waiting for the French.

III

The humour of the thing--this lonely swordsman lying in wait behind the door for the crew of the privateer--seized the boy by the throat. The laughter poured out of him headlong.

The man leapt round, dark-faced and terrible. In a twinkle he was across the floor, wary as a panther.

The door opened.

Out he came, thrusting stealthily, his blade leading him. His flanks were covered, himself almost unseen in the dark of the door.

Whatever else the man might be, he was a soldier born.

Then he saw the boy and halted on the threshold.

A man more aggressively English Kit thought he had never seen.

Forty or thereabouts, five feet ten high, and perfectly compact: he wore no wig, and his hair broke in crisp grey curls all about his head: a ruddy face, fighting jowl, and blue eyes, kindled with equal ease to savagery or smiles.

The boy's heart leapt to those eyes, as it leapt to the first blossom starring the black-thorn after winter's desolation. There was hope in them, the hope of Spring.

The man smelt of roast beef and Old England.

Kit loved him at a glance. And was he a stranger?--Had he not fought with this man, hunted with him, died with him a thousand times of old? Had they not stood shoulder to shoulder, and back to back, in many a desperate venture in the past that haunted him? Had he not tried him time and again on the anvil of hard experience, always to find that he rang true? Would he fail him now at his need, this old comrade, who had never failed him before? No. That old sense of the familiarity of all experience swept in on him with staggering force.

Drawn as in a dream, he stepped forward and took the other's hand.

"Friend," he said.

The man lowered his point. His eyes drank in the boy's face.

"So be it," he answered, twinkling.

The blue eyes lived in the brown ones; the hands gripped.

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