The Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea Part 72

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 G.o.d!" 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. G.o.d 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 b.l.o.o.d.y business behind the trees.

CHAPTER LV

PRETTY POLLY-KISS-ME-QUICK

Kit's life stopped short.

"That's one on em. Where's t'other?" growled Beardie.

"Oi'm here," said Blob, and thrust up, pink and impa.s.sive, in his cheek an obvious slice of apple.

"That's right," said Fat George in sleek, caressing voice. "Give the genelman your and, my dear. He'll elp you out. There you are! There's no call for _you_ to be scared. _You're_ among old friends."

The Gang had gathered round the hole.

Beardie on his hands and knees was peering down into the drain.

Then he threw up his head with a savage roar.

"My G.o.d! they've done old Toadie."

He burst through the crowd at the boy, eyes and beard ablaze.

Kit, tight-clutched in Fat George's arms, shut his eyes.

There flashed before his mind a lonely figure, bound and buffeted in the palace of a high-priest eighteen hundred years ago. He saw it, patient among its persecutors, with the eyes of perfect vision, and grew strangely calm and comforted.

These evil men appeared to him in a clearer, a purer light. For one splendid second he was sorry for them.

"Father, forgive them," he prayed, and added aloud, "Good-bye, Blob."

The voice at his ear brought him back from heaven.

"Stidy, Beardie!--You're spiling sport. Ave the Mossoos twigged anything up?"

"Nay," said Dingy Joe. "They're a'ter the naked chap."

"Then we've got this little bit o business all to ourselves, the Genelmen o the Gap Gang ave. Let's take im up among the trees, and gag im first."

Was G.o.d in heaven? would He allow it?

As though in answer, close at hand a bugle sounded.