CHAPTER LIV

THE PARSON'S AGONY

I

The Parson stamped up and down the loft, gnawing his thumb.

Those long shots from the rear had ceased half an hour ago. A tall Grenadier drooped across the wall. How should he have known there was one in the cottage could reach out a fatal finger and tap him on the forehead at two hundred yards?

The Parson's jolly face was haggard.

Now and then he peered out of the seaward window, listening. On the knoll all was still. He could see nothing, could hear nothing. Blue Knickers had withdrawn; he could mark no prowling figures. Only among the tree-trunks a pale wisp of smoke meandered upwards, telling of a camp-fire behind.

About him was the drowsy buzz-z-z of an August noon. A cabbage butterfly sailed by. The creature's insufferable airs annoyed him. The fate of Nelson, the life of a noble lad, these were nothing to it, curse it for its callousness!

The minutes passed. The silence was so oppressive that he could hear it. It stifled him.

What an age the boy was! Good heavens!--he could have got to the mouth of the drain and back half-a-hundred times by now! What was the delay?--Things must have gone awry! Yet how could they?--It was always the way! There was no trusting any living soul but yourself! Why the devil couldn't he be in two places at once?--It was _damnable!_

He pulled himself together with a jerk.

Here he was becoming unjust, irritable, womanish; everything he had always most despised in a man of action.

A shout came to him from seaward.

A shot followed.

The perspiration started to his forehead. He ran to the ladder-head.

In the dimness below he could see the old foretop-man sitting alert beside the black square of the open trap.

Piper was stooping forward, one great hand curved at his ear, listening intently.

"Piper!"

"Sir."

"All well below there?"

"Well, sir, I'm not justly sure. A minute back I seemed to feel like a gush o wind--"

"Then hail the boy, man!"

"Boy Hoad! below there!" in stentorian tones.

The only answer was a rush of air through the open trap, and the muffled slam of a door, house-shaking.

II

The Parson ran down into the cellar.

Blob's lantern glimmered on the floor, but there was no Blob.

He felt the door, cold to his hands as a corpse. It was shut fast as death. The catch had snapped; but the bolts were not home.

His first impulse was to open; his second to refrain. A man with a musket anywhere in the drain could not miss him. And he once down, the door open, all was over!--the cottage stormed, the despatches taken, old man Piper slain, and Nelson lost.

His ear against the clammy iron, he listened. Yes; outside the door he could detect the sound of faint breathing.

A distance away, he could hear the scuffling of feet.

He saw it all. They had shot Blob, who lay without, breathing his last. The door, left unguarded, had slammed, and they were nabbing Kit and Knapp in the drain.

His hand was upon the catch once more. Should he go?--dared he stay?

His spirit wrought within him.

Strong man though he was, he was whimpering in the darkness.

To slink behind that iron door was eternal shame; to go was inevitable ruin. Could he save his own old skin at the cost of that boy's? And yet he could not get away from the remorseless fact that to save his own skin might be to save his country.

His agony was short but terrible. The patriot prevailed over the man. The discipline of twenty years' soldiering had taught him life's hardest lesson--to sacrifice his feelings to his duty. He made his choice, and chose the path that has always seemed best to Englishmen in such case.

He slammed the bolts home.

He was up the ramp in a moment, and had banged the trap-door behind him.

Old Piper turned from the loop-hole.

"Seems there's summat up yonder behind the trees, sir. I yeard--Ah! what'll that be?"

From behind the knoll came a sudden holloa, then an uproarious burst of laughter.

"They've got em, by God!" The old man swung his chair about with lion- like eyes. "By your leave, sir, you must go to them lads."

The Parson was tearing off coat and cravat.

"I'm going.... I'll slip out of the dormer-window so as to leave the door shut."

He sped up the ladder, and down again in a twinkling.

"Here are the despatches! If I go down, it'll take em ten minutes to rush the place and give you time to burn the papers. Here are my pistols! one for the first Frenchman, and t'other--well, you're a better man than I am, Piper, you know what's right, but--"

"I'll trust my Maker before the Gap Gang," said the old man. "He'll understand.... Good-bye, sir. God help you."

"He will," cried the Parson. "It's His battle. Good-bye, Piper. I'm cut to the heart to leave you. But--"

He was up the ladder and out of the window in a moment, stealing across the greensward, Polly in one hand, and Knapp's bugle in the other.

No spatter of fire greeted him from the knoll; no flitting figures retreated before him. All was peace, and the fair breeze ruffling the sycamores.

The Gap Gang were at some bloody business behind the trees.

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