The Young Carpenters of Freiberg Part 7

'Very good, respected Herr Burgomaster,' replied Roller, and then accompanied his little daughter out of the gallery to see her safely started on her homeward way. 'Why, where is Conrad Schmidt loitering?'

he asked in surprise.

The boy was standing by his friend the Defensioner, who now sprang up from the ground and hastened to his commanding officer. 'Your excellency!' he cried, 'down in that corner the Swedes can be distinctly heard tunnelling through the earth. They are almost under the gallery now.'

'Quick, then, to countermine them!' said Schweinitz, and immediately left the gallery to give the necessary orders. Then began a severe subterranean battle. Both sides made desperate exertions in the attempt to get the upper hand, and for very plain reasons the Freibergers did their utmost to steal a march on the enemy. Although the ground was frozen so hard that it had first to be thawed by the use of fire, two hours had not pa.s.sed away before the untiring energy of the miners had driven a heading of tolerable length, the foremost man in which stood Roller.

'We too may yet find that this is our last day,' said Roller composedly to the man working behind him. 'Every man's day is coming, whether he likes it or not. And besides, if the Swedes can give up their lives for mere money, cannot we do as much for fatherland, and wife and child? Therefore to work with a will! So long as we can hear the Swedes tunnelling, there is no need to light the match.'

'Now the sounds have ceased,' he muttered to himself after a short interval. 'It will soon be all over with us.' And he picked and shovelled away with redoubled energy, lest his comrades should abate their efforts on noticing that the Swedes had ceased work.

'The earth gets loose and spongy,' he said a little later. 'We must be approaching the Swedish mine. Now then for water, and hot water first of all, so as to get through the earth the quicker!'

Some of the miners went above ground and pa.s.sed a long trough through the heading. This they sloped and kept constantly filled with water, which rushed gurgling down at the lower end, for the purpose of drowning the Swedish mine. Among those busy bringing the water in firemen's buckets and other utensils, was the miller of Erbisdorf, who had harnessed a team of his donkeys into a large sledge, loaded with steaming hot water.

'Slow and steady wins the race,' was his greeting to Roller, as he pointed to his long-eared friends. 'Our wives are brewing away yonder as though they had their coppers full of good wort instead of water out of the Munzbach. Well, the Swedish tipplers are quite welcome to have it all in their mine.'

As Roller and the miller were just in the act of lifting the heavy cask from the sledge to the trough, a dull report was heard under the earth.

The ground quivered, then opened, and a red stream of fire gushed forth, accompanied by clouds of smoke and stones. The Swedes had observed the presence of an unusual number of people at this point, and had exploded an already prepared mine. There was one loud, involuntary cry from those injured by the explosion, then all was still.

The dead might try to make their way out of the grave itself with as good hope of success as there was for the imprisoned Freibergers to force a pa.s.sage through the ma.s.s of _debris_ that covered them; indeed, they could never have done it had not many stout arms and willing hearts aided in their desperate toil.

'Thirteen men and four beasts of burden!' sorrowfully exclaimed Roller, who had himself escaped destruction as though by a miracle. 'And my brave old comrade, the miller of Erbisdorf, gone at last. We two were carrying the very same cask of water, yet here am I, while he is gone.

Ah, it is indeed true, "The one shall be taken and the other left."'

'I say, neighbour Roller!' cried a m.u.f.fled voice that seemed to come from the depths of the earth, 'help me on to my legs again, for mercy's sake. Here are clods, and stones, and bits of wood jamming me in on all sides; and here's a donkey's head, and I declare he's trying to p.r.i.c.k his ears!'

With Roller's help the worthy miller was soon landed once more on _terra firma_. He found himself severely shaken and bruised, but not otherwise injured, and begged his comrade to see him safe home.

Although his body was in pain, his spirit was by no means cast down.

When he learned that besides killing three men and severely wounding five others, the exploded mine had cost the lives of two of his donkeys, he remarked: 'Ah, ha! Then they too have died for their fatherland, and will sleep in the temple of fame. I can tell you one thing, though; if the flour does choke us millers up a bit, I'd ten times rather have to do with that than with your Freiberg earth.

There's something so big and ma.s.sive about everything belonging to war, you very soon get enough of it. What will my Anna Maria say when she sees her husband brought home like a flattened pancake?'

As soon as Roller had seen his friend safely housed, and had made himself presentable, he hastened back to the Peter Gate, which seemed, as he approached it, to be all in flames. The wood and twigs the Swedes had piled against the defensive works before the bastion, had been set on fire. The rising flames cast a dreadful glare around, destroyed several of the works in question, and set fire to parts of the tower above the gate, which, falling into the covered gallery in rear of the bastion, threatened to set that too in a blaze. The besieged were able to avert this last calamity by the steady use of water, though the enemy pressed them hard all the time with artillery-fire and hand-grenades.

'The Swedes have set all the elements to work against us,' said Roller to himself. 'They have cut off our water supply, made war on us under the earth, tried to blow us up into the air, and now they turn against us the might of fire. And side by side with these great powers of nature stalks the pale phantom of death.'

CHAPTER IX.

DIVERSE HUMAN HEARTS.

'The miner Roller waits without, respected Herr Burgomaster!' announced Juchziger, the town servant.

'Bid him come in,' said Schonleben. 'Yes, colonel,' he continued, turning to Schweinitz, who was with him; 'I a.s.sure you, if confidence may be put in any human being, you may trust this man. He is brave, faithful, and yet shrewd. He will come back as surely as a dove returns to its young. You may send him without hesitation.'

'Would you like to earn three ducats, my good fellow?' Schweinitz asked Roller as the latter entered the room.

'How, your excellency?' inquired the miner.

'You are to take despatches from us to Marshal Piccolomini in Bohemia, lay our condition before him in full, and get him to hasten to our a.s.sistance. The service is not without some danger, for you will have to make your way twice through the enemy's lines, and die rather than betray your secret.'

'So I should suppose,' replied Roller dryly.

'Well, what do you say? are you willing to do it, or not?' inquired Schonleben and Schweinitz together.

'This is no question of a reward,' said Roller. 'You command, and I obey.'

'You are a fine fellow,' said Schonleben heartily; 'and I will myself give you a couple of ducats extra if you do your business satisfactorily.'

'I crave your pardon, respected Herr Burgomaster!' replied Roller, 'I do not sell my life for silver or gold, for if so I should take sides with friend or foe, according to which would give me the highest pay.

But it seems to me that we all make up, as it were, one body in what we have to do, to defend town, wife and child, from the enemy. Very well, then; you are the head, and I am one of the least members, that has to do just what the head bids it. That is what I believe, and I try to fight bravely and do my duty because I believe it.'

Schweinitz shook the brave miner heartily by the hand, saying: 'With men like you I can hold the mountain-city for a long time indeed, but we must not neglect means that may help rid us of the enemy. Come with me, my good fellow, while I make out your papers.'

The same day several children, with Roller's Dollie among them, were crouching round the air-holes of the cellar under the town hall. 'Oh, we do so want to see the Swedish prisoners!' said the child to Conrad, who happened to be pa.s.sing on the way to his mother's house. 'One of them has such a dreadful great beard,' Dollie continued; 'I am sure he must be General Wrangel's bagpiper. Only think, if he had his pipes here, he could play to us! Just peep in there; sometimes one of them comes to the window and looks up at us.'

Conrad complied with the child's wish, kneeling down beside her.

Suddenly a heavy hand was laid on his shoulder, and a voice he always dreaded to hear said, this time, however, in very friendly tones: 'Hallo, Conrad, and what may you be doing here?'

It was into the face of his stepfather that the startled boy stared as he rose hastily to his feet.

'Come along, my son,' said Juchziger very blandly. 'I have something to tell you.' So saying, he drew the boy aside into the pa.s.sageway of the town hall. 'Listen to me,' he went on good-humouredly; 'I want you to do something for your mother.'

'For my mother!' said Conrad cheerfully. 'Oh yes; I shall be so glad to do it!'

'And for you and me at the same time,' said Juchziger. 'I just want you to go out to our house beyond the Peter Gate.'

'But it's pulled down,' objected Conrad.

'Yes, of course, I know that; but the cellar is there still, and in one corner of that cellar your mother buried a little box with all sorts of precious things in it. I want you to go and dig it up, and bring it to me.'

'But the Swedes are all round out there. They will be sure to kill me, and take the box; they are most tremendous thieves.'

'You needn't trouble yourself about that. I take care of the Swedish prisoners, and one of them has given me a safe-conduct' (he p.r.o.nounced this word very carefully),--'a safe-conduct that I shall give to you.

You are only to get it out if you meet a Swede, and then they'll not only not hurt a hair of your head, but be very kind indeed to you. But you must be sure and not let another soul see the safe-conduct, or else it will all be of no use.'

'Why did mother never say anything about the box?' asked Conrad.

'H'm!' said Juchziger; 'she--well--she--in fact, she didn't quite trust me, I'm sorry to say, and wanted to keep all the things in it for you.

But now she sees how wrong that was, and she has confessed all about it to me. I don't want the box for myself; all I want is to see it out of danger.'

'But how can I get out?' asked Conrad again. 'n.o.body may leave the town.'

'In about an hour's time there is to be a sortie from the Donat Gate, and you can manage to creep out with the men. Roller the miner is going out with them as well; he and Wahle are going all the way to General Piccolomini in Bohemia, but on no account show the safe-conduct to him.'

'I should like just to run home to mother,' said Conrad, 'to tell her about the box, and say good-bye to her.'

'Now would you really be so unkind to a poor, frightened, blind woman as that?' said his stepfather. 'Why, there's Roller; he has not even told his wife, though he is going all the way to Bohemia, and you want to make your mother unhappy because you're going a few yards outside the city wall.'