Lochinvar: A Novel

"But have you considered, my friend, that England is a somewhat large mark to hit in the white and bring up in Poole Harbor at the first offer?" said Scarlett. "How shall one know that he is within a hundred miles or more of his aim?"

"Hearken," said Wat. "'Tis usually Jack Scarlett that is ready with plans, eager and fretful with encouragements. Upon his own adventures he fairly sweats alternatives, but on this occasion of mine he does naught but grumble. There is yet time for him to turn about and betake him to his greasy sheepfold. 'Guelderland' will even yet admit him in time for the morning muster of the fleecy ones."

Scarlett laughed good-naturedly, like one who will not take offence even when offence is meant.

"I am not in love, you see," he said. "It is love that is fertile of stratagems. I am but an old, wizened apple-jack. But so was it not ever. The days have been – ah, lad, the days have been! – when Jack Scarlett did not ride hot-foot after another man's lass."

"Hear my idea," said Wat, paying little heed to him. "We may hit or miss, it is true, but in any case the ship would be a small one, and most likely she would run for the nearest point of safety. Yet not directly across, for all the narrow seas are patrolled by the English vessels, because deadly jealousy of the Dutch still rankles deep in the heart of the king for the defeats he had of them in the days when he was Lord High Admiral of the Fleet, and attended to his mistresses' lapdogs instead of his duty."

Scarlett moved uneasily. There was, he knew, in most countries such a thing as a navy, but ships and rolling Jack Tars little concerned a soldier, save to transport him to his campaigning ground.

It was brightening to the morning as they came in sight of the high dunes of land that shut off the Northern Sea. Behind them, with the gables of its houses already threatened by the encroaching waves of sand, nestled the little village of Lis-op-Zee. A few fishing-boats were drawn up into a swallow's nest of a harbor, and beyond league on league stretched the desolate dunes, through which the river Lis felt its tortuous way among the sand-hollows to the wider levels of the sea.

Wat and Scarlett, with their attendant, were about to ride directly and without challenge through the street of the village towards the harbor, when a man came staggering out of a narrow entry betwixt two of the taller houses, so suddenly that the horse of the Little Marie almost knocked him down.

It was already the gray light of dawn, and the man, who was clad in swash-buckler array of side-breeches and broad hat, with many swords and pistols a-dangle at his belt, set his hand on his breast tragically and cried, "I thank the saints of the blessed Protestant religion that I have escaped this danger. For if I had been run over by that thing upon the horse there, before the Lord I should never have known what had struck me!"

"Get out of the way!" thundered Scarlett, savagely, for he was in no mood for miscellaneous fooling; "lie down under a bush, man, and learn to take thy liquor quietly."

The man turned instantly with a new swagger in his attitude and a straightening of his shoulders to a sort of tipsy attention. "And who, Sir Broad-Stripe, made you burgomeister of the town of Lis-op-Zee? Or may you by chance be his highness the prince in person, or his high councillor my Lord Barra, that you would drive good, honest gentlemen before you like cattle on the streets of this town?"

"Out, fellow!" shouted Scarlett, furiously, drawing his sword; "leave me to settle with him," he added, over his shoulder. Wat and Marie rode by at the side, but the man still stood and barred Scarlett's path.

Now Jack Scarlett was not exactly, as we have reason to know, a man patient to a fault. So on this occasion he spurred his horse straight at his opponent and spread him instantly abroad in the dust, sprawling flat upon his back on the highway.

"Help! Hallo, Barra's men! Here is a comrade ill-beset!" cried the rascal, without, however, attempting to rise.

And out of the houses on either side there came running a little cloud of men, all armed with swords and pistols hastily snatched, and with their garments in various stages of disarray.

Wat gave one look behind and then turned to his companion, holding his head down the while that the pursuers might not recognize him.

"Come on, thou fool, Scarlett," he cried, "we have started Barra's whole nest of wasps – there come Haxo and the rest. God help us if they have seen us!"

Scarlett turned also. But it was too late – the mischief was done.

"Stop them!" came the thunderous bellow of Haxo the Bull. "These are the fellows who outflouted and overbore us at the Inn of the Coronation."

So without waiting to parley, Wat and Scarlett, with the Little Marie well abreast of them, set spurs to their horses and rode as hard as they could gallop through the fringing woods of Lis and the sweet and flowery May glades out upon the desolate sand-hills of Noorwyk, hoping to hit upon some dell or cleft among these vast waves of sand, where they might keep themselves safe till their enemies should tire of the search and return to the city.

CHAPTER XIX

THE BATTLE OF THE DUNES

Haxo and his forces were not in a condition to follow too closely after the three. The chance medley for which they had pined was come, and that without their seeking. The rascals had gone out to do one part of their master's will. The shipping of a lass over-seas was no doubt a pretty piece of work enough, and would be well paid for; but the slaying of Wat Gordon and Jack Scarlett, their ancient adversaries of the Hostel of the Coronation, was a job ten times more to the fit of their stomachs.

Thus it was with Haxo and his immediate followers.

But the fatigues of the evening and the good liquor of Lis-op-Zee had rendered most of the chief butcher's men somewhat loath to leave their various haunts and hiding-places. Moreover, their horses were stabled here and there throughout the village, so that Wat and his companions had a good start of a quarter of an hour ere Haxo, furious and foaming with anger at the delay, and burning with the desire for revenge, could finally start in pursuit with his entire company.

It was now a dewy morning, a morning without clouds, and the sparse, benty grass on the sand-hills was still spangled with diamond points innumerable. The sun rose over the woods through which they had passed, and its level, heatless rays beat upon the crescent over-curl of the sand-waves as on the foam of a breaker when it bends to the fall.

"See you any stronghold where we may keep ourselves against these rascals, if they manage to attack us?" cried Wat, from the hollow up to Scarlett, who had the higher ground.

"Pshaw!" he returned, "what need to speak of escape? They will follow the track of the horses as easily as a road with finger-posts. Find us they will. Better that we should betake us to some knowe-top, where, at least, we can keep a defence. But I see not even a rickle of stones, where we might have some chance to stand it out till the nightfall."

By the advice of Scarlett they dismounted from their horses, and taking their weapons they left their weary beasts tethered to a blighted stump of a tree which the sands had surrounded and killed. Here the animals were to some extent concealed by the nature of the ground, unless the pursuers should approach very near or ascend the summits of the highest ridges in the neighborhood.

The young girl had all along betrayed no anxiety, nor showed so much as a trace of emotion or fatigue.

"It was in such a country as this I dwelt in my youth," she said, quietly, "and I understand the ways of the dunes."

So without question on their part she led them forward carefully and swiftly on foot, keeping ever to that part of the ridge where the benty grass had bound the sands most closely together. Now they ascended so as to take the loose sandy pass between two ridges. Again they descended into the cool bottoms where the sun had not yet penetrated, and where a bite of chill air still lingered in the shadows, while the dew lay thick on the coarse herbage and slaked the surface of the sand.

The sun had fully risen when, still led by the girl, they issued out upon the outermost sea edge, and heard the waves crisping and chattering on a curving beach of pebble. The ruins of an ancient watch-tower crowned a neighboring hillock. Doubtless it had been a redoubt or petty fortalice against the Spaniards, built in the old days of the Beggars. It was now almost ruinous, and at one point the wall threatened momentarily to give way. For the wind had undermined the shifting foundations, and part of the masonry seemed actually to overhang the narrow defile of sand and coarse grass through which the little party passed.

"Think ye that tower anywise defensible?" asked Marie, pointing up at it with her finger.

Without answering at once, Scarlett climbed up to the foot of the wall and, skirting it to the broken-down gateway, he entered.

"It will make about as notable a defence as half a dozen able-bodied pioneers might throw up in an hour with their spades. But we are too like the Beggars who built it to be very nice in our choosing," said Scarlett, smiling grimly down upon his two companions from the decaying rampart.

Walter scrambled up beside him, and the Little Marie, lithe as a cat, was over the crumbling wall as soon as any of them. They found the place wholly empty, save that in one corner there was a rudely vaulted herdsman's shelter, wherein, by moving a door of driftwood, they could see sundry shovels and other instruments of rustic toil set in the angle of the wall.

"I see not much chance of holding out here," said Wat. "They can storm the wall at half a dozen points."

"True," said Scarlett, "most true – yet for all that, here at least we cannot be shot at from a distance as we sit helpless on the sand, like rabbits that come hotching out of a wood at even-tide to feed on the green. We are not overlooked. We have a spring of water – which is not an over-common thing on these dunes and so near the sea. I tell you the Beggars knew what they were about when they planted their watch-tower down in such a spot."

In this manner Scarlett, the grumbler of the night, heartened his companions as soon as ever it came nigh the grips of fighting.

Then the men took out the shovels and the other tools, and set about putting the defences in some order, replacing the stones which had fallen down, and clearing out little embrasures, where one might lie tentily with a musket and take aim from shelter. While Wat and Scarlett were busy with these works of fortification, the Little Marie ran down into the dells again, looking wonderously feat and dainty in her boy's costume.

Scarlett, the old soldier, glanced more than once approvingly after her.

"'Tis just as well that the lady-love has not yet been found – or I should not envy you the explanation you would assuredly be called upon to make," said he, smiling over to Wat as he built and strengthened his defences.

Instinctively Wat squared himself, as though his mattock had been a sword and he saluting his general.

"Ye ken me little, John Scarlett," he replied, "if you know not that I would not touch the lass for harm with so much as the tip of my little finger."

"Doubtless, doubtless," said Scarlett, dryly, "yet it would astonish me mightily if even that would satisfy your Mistress Kate of the Lashes – aye, or in troth if such extreme continence greatly pleasures the lass herself!"

To this Wat disdained any answer, but went on piling the sand and setting the square stones in order.

Presently the Little Marie came running very fast along the bottom of the dells, which hereabouts wimpled mazily in and out with nooks and cunning passages everywhere, so that they constituted the excellentest places in the world for playing hide-and-seek. Taking both her hands, which she stretched up to him, Wat pulled the girl lightly over the new defences, and when she was a little recovered from her race, she told them that the enemy could be seen scouting by twos and threes along the edge of the forest, and even venturing a little way towards them into the sandy waste of the dunes. But they had not as yet found the horses, nor begun to explore the sandy hollows where an ambush might lie hidden behind every ridge.

"It is Haxo the Bull who leads them," she said, "for the others are none so keen on the work. But he goes among them vaunting and prating of the brave rewards which his master will give, and how the State also will pay largely for the capture of the traitor and prison-breaker."

"How near by did you see him?" asked Wat.