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.
"He was within twenty paces of me as I lay behind a bush of broom," she
said, "and had it not been for the men who were with him, and the fear
that they might have marked me down as I ran, I had given him as good
as I gave his master."
And with the utmost calmness the Little Marie unslung the dags or
horse-pistols from her side, and took out the long keen dagger with
which she had wounded Barra as he mounted at his own door to ride after
his prisoner.
So, perched on this shadeless shelter they waited hour after hour,
while the sun beat pitilessly down on them. The heat grew sullenly
oppressive. A dizzy, glimmering haze quivered over the sand-hills, and
made it difficult to see clearly more than a few hundred yards in any
direction.
Wat and Scarlett desired the girl to rest a while under the shadow of
the rude hut in the corner.
[Illustration: "A COUPLE OF PISTOL-SHOTS RANG OUT LOUDLY"]
"But then I could not watch for the coming of your enemies, my
captain," she said, as if that settled the matter.
And when Wat repeated his request, Marie looked so unhappy that they
had perforce to allow her to stand on guard equally with themselves.
And indeed, as it proved, it was the Little Marie whose sharp eyes
first saw their opponents tracking stealthily along the sandy bottoms
between them and the forest. The pursuers seemed to be ten or twelve in
number, and they came scouting cautiously here and there through the
hollows, running briskly to the tops of the higher dunes, and looking
eagerly all about them for the footprints of men or horses in the
looser sand.
Before Scarlett or Wat could stop her--indeed, before either of them
so much as suspected her intention, the Little Marie had climbed over
the wall on the side farthest from the enemy but nearest to the sea.
In a moment she had run deftly down among the ruts and hiding-places
of the dells. With wonderful skill she threaded her way towards the
approaching miscreants, without letting them catch a single glimpse of
her. Indeed, even from their watch-tower on the top of the dune, it was
as much as Wat and Scarlett could do to keep her in sight through the
wavering glimmer of the heated air.
Presently, as they lay behind their defences, each in his own rude
shelter, Wat and Scarlett could see her crouch low in a little cuplike
depression upon the height of a dune overlooking the track by which the
enemy must come. The girl lay motionless, with her body flat to the
ground, like a cat which makes ready for the pounce; and they could see
the sun of the afternoon wink on the steel barrels of her pistols as on
dewy holly leaves.
Soon the vanguard of Haxo's little army came scouting and scenting
along. The men kept signalling and crying, keeping touch with one
another and making believe to search the wilderness of sand and bent
with marvellous exactitude and care.
The foremost of them had just passed the hillock on the top of which
Marie lay when "Crack! crack!" a couple of pistol-shots rang out loudly
on the slumberous air. One man pitched heavily forward on his face,
while another and younger man spun round like a rabbit, bent himself
double, clawed convulsively at the sand, and then slowly collapsed
across the path.
The scattered trackers here and there about the mounds and hollows
stood rooted to the ground with vague alarm at the sight. Some of them,
indeed, put their heads down and ran up the hill of sand from which
the shots had come. But when they reached the summit all they saw was
the reek of burned powder lazily dispersing in the hot haze of the
afternoon, while upon the dune's extremest edge were the marks of a
pair of elbows in the sand, where Marie had reclined as she took aim.
But of their dangerous assailant they found no further trace. For
immediately upon firing Marie had snatched her pistols and descended
into the winding lane of sand at the back of the dune. Then, being
perfectly acquainted with her line of communication, and mindful ever
to keep upon the shady side, she glided from shelter to shelter with
the silence and skill of one bred to such guerilla warfare.
Haxo and his party were manifestly discouraged by their misfortune, and
still more by the immunity of their unseen foe. What had happened once
might very well happen again. Nevertheless, trusting to their numbers,
they came on with still more infinite pains, Haxo himself climbing a
high dune and crying directions to his men how they were to advance by
this pass and that dell, in which from his post of vantage he could be
certain that no enemy lurked.