CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN
Marie had made good her retreat till she halted within a few hundred
yards of the little fort where Wat and Scarlett kept their watch.
Here she lay crouched behind a bush of broom which had escaped the
general destruction as the shifting sand advanced, and which had made
good its position by associating itself with stubborn clumps of pink
and sea-holly. For these are both brave, self-helpful plants, and can
bind the sand together with their own proper roots without the aid of
bent-grass. Behind this ambuscade Marie crouched, and Wat would have
descended to her assistance but that Scarlett forcibly withheld him.
"Lie still, man; can ye not bide and watch? It is as bonny as a painted
picture. Think you that our muckle clumsy bodies could run and hide
as featly? I trow not! Let the lass do her own ways. She has, indeed,
a very pretty notion of war--aye, far better than many of our boasted
generals, and nigh hand as good as the prince himself. For, to my
thinking, there is more generalship in delaying and harassing the
advance of a superior force than in defeating an equal number with
trumpets, drums, and all the paraphernalia of war."
So, in obedience to Scarlett, and also because the girl's quick
manoeuvres at once astonished and fascinated him, Wat abode still
where he was. But his eyes were chained to the slight form of the
Little Marie, who lay behind the broom perfectly plain to them from
their fortress eminence, but wholly hidden from the line of the
enemy's advance. It seemed an unconscionable time before the pursuers
came near, because on this occasion they took the utmost precautions
to avoid surprise; and it was not till Haxo himself had ascended the
knoll within thirty feet of where the girl lay that the foremost of the
approaching skirmishers came within range.
But Marie was either so careless of her life or so sure of the line of
her retreat that she appeared to pick and choose deliberately among her
enemies. The persons of many of them were doubtless well known to her,
and it is possible that she had private scores to pay off while thus
fighting the battles of Wat and Scarlett.
Presently one of her pistols spoke again and a third man fell wounded.
Haxo stood up to mark the spot from which the reek of the powder
floated lazily into the air, and as he did so, Marie, wheeling about
on her elbows, steadied her weapon on the edge of the sand between the
broom-bush and the sea-holly. It cracked, and Haxo, with a cry of anger
and pain, clapped his hand upon his ankle, for all the world like a boy
that runs barefoot and whose toe meets a stone unexpectedly.
But this time it was impossible for Marie to conceal the line of her
flight. She had to make a considerable detour to the right; for, in
order to pick her men, she had allowed some of the enemy to pass her
by, and these now bent hastily round to intercept her. The rest,
following Haxo's frenzied directions as he leaped and swore with the
pain of his hurt, pursued with might and main, getting glimpses of her
as she ran. For on this occasion Marie took no care whatever to keep to
the bottoms, but on the contrary chose the hardest surface and the most
direct road for the shore, as though she had been fleeing to a boat
which lay in waiting at the sea edge.
It was soon obvious that this was the idea of the pursuers, for those
on the left who had passed her place of ambush exerted themselves to
reach the shingle of the beach by the narrow and deep defile in front
of the wall of the fort. They paused occasionally to fire, and cheered
and shouted all the time in order to encourage one another--which
doubtless they were much in need of, for it must have been most
discomfortable to see their comrades dropping here and there about them
without so much as the pleasure of getting a shot at the assailant.
Then for the first time Wat and Scarlett perceived whither Marie was
leading the enemy. Ever as she came nearer she raised her arm and waved
them to be ready. But with what they were to be ready did not appear,
unless with their pistols, to have a chance at the rascals as they
passed under the wall. Yet it was not a place favorable for pistol
practice, because at that point the wall was broken down and fully
thirty feet of it completely undermined and tottering to its fall.
"The wall, the wall! Push down the wall!" cried Marie, as she came
almost underneath it.
It was Scarlett who first grasped her idea. Wat on his part was too
much astonished at the daring and address of this girl to be capable of
more than a vague, gaping wonderment.
"Quick, Wat!" cried Scarlett; "it must be the overhanging wall she
means. See you not that these fellows, being ignorant of our presence,
it is a thousand chances to one that for ease of road and haste to get
before the lass to keep her away from the sea, they will take the path
through the ravine and pass immediately underneath the wall?"
"And what of that?" asked Wat.
"What of that? Why, man, what is come of your ancient contrivance, your
wise shifts, your forethought? How will you ever find your love if your
wits are so moidered, before ever ye leave this dull Dutch country?"
"Faith, and I see it not yet," cried Wat, looking over at the chase
more bewildered than ever.
"Why, she means that we are to push the wall over upon them when they
come, I'll wager," said Scarlett.
"And so destroy our only defences; it is, indeed, a wise ploy!" cried
Wat, scornfully.
"Hush, man, and come help. We may annihilate the whole crew at a blow,"
said the old soldier, who had no petty scruples about ways and means;
"an enemy dead is a friend the more, however he come by his end."
Scarlett and Wat stole to the wall and peeped cautiously over. The
ill-laid and mouldered stones tottered even as they leaned against
them; one or two rattled into the defile as they looked down. The heads
of the pursuers were just appearing at the entrance of the dell. One
of them was training his piece to shoot it off at the girl, who ran
lightly as at a frolic a hundred yards in front.
Without a suspicion of danger the assailants came posting along.
"Now, with all your might!" cried Scarlett, when he saw the villains
exactly underneath. He could plainly descry the same four men who had
sat about the table in the Hostel of the Coronation, and some of the
others also who had flocked in thither to join the fray.
So without further word Wat and Scarlett set their thews to the wall;
and between them, panting with the long chase and grimed with powder,
where the touchhole had spat up in her face, the Little Marie threw
herself on the parapet to help on the catastrophe with all her feeble
strength.
The wall swayed in a piece and quivered a moment on the verge ere it
fell with a prodigious crash upon the straggling file of men in the
deep defile below. A hoarse, confused cry was heard, running up, as the
pursuers too late recognized their danger, into a shriek of agony. Then
a thick cloud of dust and sand arose, which prevented those in the
redoubt from seeing the effect of their stratagem. Presently from the
gap they could see a few limping stragglers disentangle their disabled
bodies from the ruins, and make haste to put as much space as possible
between themselves and the unseen dangers which beset them on every
side on these wide, unwholesome dunes.
The Little Marie stood erect in the breach. She held her pistols in her
hand and marked down the survivors as they ran.
"Let them go, Marie," cried Wat; "they are powerless to harm us now!"
Wat's heart was a little turned to pity by the wholesale destruction
wrought beneath his eyes by the falling of the wall; but Marie's eyes
only glistened the more brightly with excitement and the light of
battle.
"But they are _your_ enemies, my captain!" said Marie, evidently
surprised at his words. Then very coolly she went on loading her
pistols.
"Stand down, Marie," cried Wat, "or they will surely do you an injury.
I saw a man's head behind yon highest dune."
"I care not so be they kill me outright. I do not want to be only
wounded," answered the Little Marie, laughing recklessly. Nevertheless,
she began obediently to descend.
Wat's warning came too late. Haxo himself, full of bitterness and
foaming with the desire for vengeance, had managed to limp near enough
to witness the destruction of his men in the defile. While the girl was
priming her pistols, he had taken careful aim. Now he fired.
Marie gave a low, quick cry and put her hand to her breast to feel
where the wound was. Then she steadied herself and attempted to go on
with the preparation of her pistol.
But with a little moan of pain she sank back into Wat's arms, who
gently laid her down in the shade of the wall. Scarlett brought her
water in the brim of his broad hat. He sprinkled it on her face. A
brief examination showed that Haxo's bullet had struck the girl an inch
above the left breast. Scarlett and Wat looked squarely at each other.
The significance of that single glance was not lost on the Little Marie.
A bright look of manifest joy instantly overspread her face.
"I am glad--very glad," she said, fighting a little with her utterance;
"lift me up so that I may tell you. I am glad that I am to die. Yes,
I know it. I wished nothing else. I tried so hard to die to-day, my
captain, fighting your enemies; for I knew that I should never see you
again, that you would sail away without a thought for the Little Marie
who wrought so hard to take you out of prison. I knew that you were
going to seek one whom you love, and that I could not come with you.
But now I can keep you--keep you all, till it is time for me to go
away."
She put an arm up about Wat's neck as he bent over her and drew his
head down.
"Only this once," she said, smiling. "Even _she_ would not be angry,
for she has all--I nothing. And it is right--right--oh! so right. For
you could not love the Little Marie--wife and mother she could not be;
her life had been wicked--yet her heart was not all bad. And oh! but
she loved you--yes, she loved you so dear. She could not help that--nor
could you, my captain. Forgive Marie for loving you. But, then, you
should not have spoken so graciously to the poor girl to whom none ever
spoke kindly or gently."
Wat bent over the girl.
"You have, indeed, been brave and good," he said; "we truly love you
for what you have done. Presently we will take you to a kindly house
where you shall be nursed--"
"Nay, my captain," she whispered, smiling up at him gladly, "it is
kind--yes, most sweet to hear you speak thus. But it is better that the
Little Marie should die out here with your arm about her, and before
the sun of this happy day goes quite down. Ah, if she had stayed in the
fields always she might have been better, purer, perhaps--who knows?
But then she had never known you, my captain. Maybe it is better as it
is. At least, it is good to have known one true man."
She was silent a space. Wat tried hard to remember a prayer. Scarlett
whistled a marching tune under his breath to keep from angry,
rebellious weeping. The dying girl spoke again.
"Do not quite forget the Little Marie," she said; "her heart would not
have been all bad--if only you had been there sooner to teach her how
to be good."
She smiled up at him with eyes over which a pale, filmy haze was
gathering. She put her hand a little farther about his neck and so
brought her face nearer to his.
"Did I not lead them well?" she said, eagerly and gladly; "tell
me--even _she_ could not have done it better! Ah! love, but this is
passing sweet," she went on, more slowly and plaintively; "it is good
to be held up thus, and to watch death coming to me so softly, almost
sweetly. Dear, just say once that what I did was well done, and that no
one at all could have done it better for you."
"None has ever done so much for me, none so given all for me, as you
have done, Little Marie!" murmured Wat, his tears dropping down on the
pale face of the girl--who, if she had sinned greatly, had also greatly
loved.
"It is true, and I am glad," she said again, "even your love of loves
herself could do no more than die for you!"
Her smile fixed itself. Her eyes grew hazier, but their long, still
look stayed intently and happily upon Wat's face. Murmuring a prayer,
he bent and kissed the fair brow that was now growing cold as marble.
At the touch of his lips a light, as from a paradise beyond, flamed up
for a moment in the girl's eyes. Her smile grew infinitely sweeter, and
the rigid lines of pain about the mouth relaxed.
"My captain--O my captain!" she whispered, sweetly as a little child
that closes its eyes and nestles into sleep upon a loving shoulder.