The Splendid Spur<br />Being Memoirs of the Adventures of Mr. John Marvel, a Servant of His Late Maj by Arthur Quiller-Couch (the giving tree read aloud .txt) 📖

So I determin'd to see the end of it, and paying the fellow, climb'd into the saddle. On the summit the Cornish captains were now met, and cordially embracing. 'Tis very sad in these latter times to call back their shouts and boyish laughter, so soon to be quench'd on Lansdowne slopes, or by Bristol graff. Yet, O favor'd ones!—to chase Victory, to grasp her flutt'ring skirt, and so, with warm, panting cheeks, kissing her, to fall, escaping evil days!

How could they laugh? For me, the late passionate struggle left me shaken with sobs; and for the starting tears I saw neither moors around, nor sun, nor twinkling sea. Brushing them away, I was aware of Billy Pottery striding at my stirrup, and munching at a biscuit he had found in the rebels' camp. Said he, “In season, Jack, is in reason. There be times to sing an' to dance, to marry and to give in marriage; an' likewise times to become as wax: but now, lookin' about an' seein' no haughty slaughterin' cannon but has a Cornishman seated 'pon the touch-hole of the same, says I in my thoughtsome way, 'Forbear!'”

Presently he pulls up before a rebel trooper, that was writhing on the slope with a shatter'd thigh, yet raised himself on his fists to gaze on us with wide, painful eyes.

“Good sirs,” gasp'd out the rebel, “can you tell me—where be Nat Shipward?”

“Now how should I know?” I answer'd.

“'A had nutty-brown curls, an' wore a red jacket—Oh, as straight a young man as ever pitched hay! 'a sarved in General Chudleigh's troop—a very singular straight young man.”

“Death has taken a many such,” said I, and thought on the man I had run through in our last charge.

The fellow groaned. “'A was my son,” he said: and though Billy pull'd out a biscuit (his pockets bulged with them) and laid it beside him, he turn'd from it, and sank back on the turf again.

We left him, and now, the descent being gentler, broke into a run, in hopes to catch up with Col. John Digby's dragoons, that already were far across the next vale. The slope around us was piled with dead and dying, whereof four out of every five were rebels; and cruelly they cursed us as we passed them by. Night was coming on apace; and here already we were in deep shadow, but could see the yellow sun on the hills beyond. We crossed a stream at the foot, and were climbing again. Behind us the cheering yet continued, though fainter: and fainter grew the cries and shouting in front. Soon we turn'd into a lane over a steep hedge, under the which two or three stout rebels were cowering. As we came tumbling almost atop of them, they ran yelling: and we let them go in peace.

The lane gradually led us to westward, out of the main line of the rout, and past a hamlet where every door was shut and all silent. And at last a slice of the sea fronted us, between two steeply shelving hills. On the crest of the road, before it plunged down toward the coast, was a wagon lying against the hedge, with the horses gone: and beside it, stretch'd across the road, an old woman. Stopping, we found her dead, with a sword-thrust through the left breast; and inside the wagon a young man lying, with his jaw bound up,—dead also. And how this sad spectacle happened here, so far from the battlefield, was more than we could guess.

I was moving away, when Billy, that was kneeling in the road, chanced to cast his eyes up toward the sea, and dropping the dead woman's hand scrambled on his feet and stood looking, with a puzzled face.

Following his gaze, I saw a small sloop moving under shorten'd canvas, about two miles from the land. She made a pleasant sight, with the last rays of sunlight flaming on her sails: but for Billy's perturbation I could not account, so turn'd an enquiring glance to him.

“Suthin' i' the wind out yonder,” was his answer: “What's a sloop doing on that ratch so close in by the point? Be dang'd! but there she goes again;”—as the little vessel swung off a point or two further from the breeze, that was breathing softly up Channel. “Time to sup, lad, for the both of us,” he broke off shortly.

Indeed, I was faint with hunger by this time, yet had no stomach to eat thus close to the dead. So turning into a gate on our left hand, we cross'd two or three fields, and sat down to sup off Billy's biscuits, the mare standing quietly beside us, and cropping the short grass.

The field where we now found ourselves ran out along the top of a small promontory, and ended, without fence of any sort, at the cliff's edge. As I sat looking southward, I could only observe the sloop by turning my head: but Billy, who squatted over against me, hardly took his eyes off her, and between this and his meal was too busy to speak a word. For me, I had enough to do thinking over the late fight: and being near worn out, had half a mind to spend the night there on the hard turf: for, though the sun was now down and the landscape grey, yet the air was exceeding warm: and albeit, as I have said, there breath'd a light breeze now and then, 'twas hardly cool enough to dry the sweat off me. So I stretch'd myself out, and found it very pleasant to lie still; nor, when Billy stood up and sauntered off toward the far end of the headland, did I stir more than to turn my head and lazily watch him.

He was gone half an hour at the least, and the sky by this time was so dark, that I had lost sight of him, when, rising on my elbow to look around, I noted a curious red glow at a point where the turf broke off, not three hundred yards behind me, and a thin smoke curling up in it, as it seem'd, from the very face of the cliff below. In a minute or so the smoke ceased almost; but the shine against the sky continued steady, tho' not very strong. “Billy has lit a fire,” I guessed, and was preparing to go and look, when I spied a black form crawling toward me, and presently saw 'twas Billy himself.

Coming close, he halted, put a finger to his lip and beckoned: then began to lead the way back as he had come.

Thought I, “these are queer doings:” but left Molly to browse, and crept after him on hands and knees. He turn'd his head once to make sure I was following, and then scrambled on quicker, but softly, toward the point where the red glow was shining.

Once more he pull'd up—as I judg'd, about twelve paces' distance from the edge—and after considering for a second, began to move again; only now he worked a little to the right. And soon I saw the intention of this: for just here the cliff's lip was cleft by a fissure—very like that in Scawfell which we were used to call the Lord's Rake, only narrower—that ran back into the field and shelved out gently at the top, so that a man might easily scramble some way down it, tho' how far I could not then tell. And 'twas from this fissure that the glow came.

Along the right lip of this Billy led me, skirting it by a couple of yards, and wriggling