And doubtless it was this outbreak, or rather the suspicion of me
which it sowed in Smith's mind, that occasioned the sequel of our
adventure; for when he had cursed me for a fool and had put on his
cloak, being now ready to go out, he seemed to be in two minds about
it; as if he dared neither leave me where I was, lest I should
communicate with Sir John, nor take me with him on his immediate
errand. More than once he went to the door, and eying me askance and
sourly, came back; but in the end and after standing a while
irresolute, biting his nails, he made up his mind, and curtly bade me
follow him.
"Do you think that I am to saddle for you, you whelp?" he cried. "Be
stirring! and have a care, or I shall bore that hole in you yet. Take
that bag and go before me. By G----, I wish you were at the bottom of
the nearest horse-pond!"
His words had the effect he intended, of bringing me to my senses; but
they went farther. For in proportion as they cooled my temper they
awakened my fears; and though I obeyed him abjectly, took up my bag
and followed him, it was with a sudden and horrible distrust of his
purpose. I saw that I had not only ceased to be of use to him, but was
now in his way, and might be a danger to him, and the night--which
enveloped us the moment we crossed the threshold and seemed the more
dreary and forbidding for the ruddy light and comfort we left behind
us--reminding me of the long dark miles I must ride by his side, each
mile a terror to one and an opportunity to the other, I had much ado
not to give way to instant panic there and then. However, for the time
I controlled myself; and stumbling across the gloomy yard to the spot
where a faint gleam of light indicated the door of the stables, I went
in.
The landlord was saddling our horses; and a little cheered by the
warmth of his lanthorn, I went to help him. Smith turned aside, as I
thought, into the next stall. But Brown was sharper and more
suspicious, and in a twinkling called to him lustily, to know what he
was doing. Getting no answer, "Devil take him," the landlord cried.
"He cannot keep from that horse! Here, you! What are you doing there?"
"Coming!" Smith answered; but even as he spoke I caught the smart
click of iron falling on iron, and the horse in the distant stall
moved sharply with a hurried clatter of hoofs on the stones. "Coming!"
Smith repeated. "What is the matter with you, man?"
"You had better come," the landlord answered savagely. "Or I shall
fetch you. Here you!" this to me, "lead yours out, will you. I want to
see your backs, and be quit of you!"
I took my horse by the bridle, and led it out of the stable, while
Brown went to bit the other. And so, being alone outside, and the moon
rising at the moment over the roof of the house and showing me the
open gates at the end of the yard, the impulse to escape from Smith
while I had the opportunity came on me with overpowering force. Better
acquainted than the landlord with the villain's plans I had not a
doubt that at that very moment he was laming Sir John's horse for the
purpose of detaining him; and the cold-blooded treachery of this act,
filling me with as much terror on my own account--who might be the
next victim--as hatred of the perpetrator, I climbed softly to my
saddle, and began to walk my horse towards the gates. Doubtless Smith
was too busy, cloaking his own movements, to be observant of mine. I
reached the gates unnoticed, and turning instinctively from London--in
which direction I fancied that he would be sure to pursue me--I kicked
my mare first into a quick walk, then into a cautious trot, finally
into a canter. The beast, though far from speedy, was fresh from its
corn; it took hold of the bit, shied at a chance light in a cotter's
window, and went faster and faster, its ears pricked forward. In a
minute we had left Ashford behind us, and were clattering through the
moonlight. With one hand on the pommel and the other holding the
shortened reins I urged the mare on with all the pressure of my legs;
and albeit I trembled, now at some late-seen obstacle, which proved to
be only the shadow of a tree, thrown across the road, and now at the
steepness of a descent that appeared suddenly before me, I never
faltered, but uphill and downhill drove in my heels, and with fear
behind me, rode in the night as I had never before dared to ride in
the daylight.
I had known nothing like it since the summer day twelve years before
when I had fled across the Hertfordshire meadows on my feet. The sweat
ran down me, I stooped in the saddle out of pure weakness; if the
horse pricked its ears forward I spread mine backward listening for
sounds of pursuit. But such a speed could not be long maintained, and
when we had gone, as I judged, two miles, the mare began to flag, and
the canter became a trot. Still for another mile I urged her on, until
feeling her labour under me, and foreseeing that I must ride far, I
had the thought to turn into the first lane to which I came, and there
wait in the shadow of a tree until Smith, if he followed, should pass.
I did this, sprang down, and standing by my panting horse, in a marshy
hollow, some two hundred paces from the road, listened intently, for
twenty minutes, it may be, but they seemed to be hours to me. After
the life I had been leading in London, this loneliness in the night in
a strange and wild place, and with a relentless enemy on my track,
appalled my very soul. I was hot and yet I shivered, and started at
the least sound. The scream of a curlew daunted me, the rustling of
the rushes and sedge shook me, and when a sad wail, as of a multitude
of lost souls passed overhead, I cowered almost to my knees. Yet,
inasmuch as these sounds, doleful and dreary as they were, were all I
heard, and the night air brought no trampling of distant hoofs to my
ear, I had reason to be thankful, and more than thankful; and my mare
having by this time got her wind again, I led her back to the road,
climbed into the saddle and plodded on steadily; deriving a wonderful
relief and confidence from the thought that Smith had followed me
London-wards.
Moreover, I had conceived a sort of horror of the loneliness of the
waste country-side, and to keep the highway was willing to run some
risk. I took it that the road I was travelling must bring me to
Romney, and for a good hour and a half, I jogged with a loose rein
through the gloom, the way becoming ever flatter and wetter, the wind
more chill and salt, and the night darker, the moon being constantly
overcast by clouds. In that marshy district are few hamlets or farms,
and those of the smallest, and very sparsely scattered. Once or twice
I heard the bark of a distant sheep dog, and once far to the left I
saw a tiny light and had the idea of making for it. But the reflection
that a dozen great ditches, each wide enough and deep enough to
smother my horse, might lie between me and the house, availed to keep
me in the road; the more as I now felt sure from the saltness of the
night air that Romney and the sea were at no great distance in front
of me. Presently indeed, I made out in front of me two moving lights,
that I took to be those of ships riding at anchor, and my weary mare
quickened her pace as if she smelt the stable and the hayrack.
For five minutes after that I plodded on in the happy belief that my
journey was as good as over, and I saved; and I let my mind dwell on
shelter and safety, and a bed and food and the like, all awaiting me,
as I fancied, in the patch of low gloom before me where my fancy
pictured the sleeping town. Then on a sudden, my ear caught the dull
beat of a horse's hoofs on the road behind me; and my heart standing
still with terror, I plucked at my reins, and stood to listen. Ay, and
it was no fancy; a moment satisfied me of that. Thud-thud, thud-thud,
and then squash-squash, squish-squish! a horse was coming up behind
me; and not only behind me, but hard upon me--within less than a
hundred paces of me. The soft wet road had smothered the sound up to
the last moment.
The rider was so close to me indeed, and I was so much taken by
surprise that the moon sailing at that instant into a clear sky,
showed me to him before I could set my horse going; and, as I started,
whipping and spurring desperately, I heard the man shout. That was
enough for me; plunging recklessly forward along the wet, boggy road,
I flogged my horse into a jaded canter, and leaning low in the saddle
in mortal fear of a bullet, closed my eyes to the dangers that lay
ahead, and thought only of escape from that which followed on my
heels.
Suddenly, and while I was still kicking and urging on my horse, before
the first flush of fear had left me, I heard a crash and a cry behind
me; but I did not dare at the moment to look back. I only leaned the
lower, and clung the more tightly to my horse's mane and still pressed
on. By-and-by, however, hearing nothing, it flashed on me that I was
riding alone, that I was no longer pursued; and a little later taking
courage to draw rein and look back wearily, I found that I could see
nothing, nor hear any sound save the heavy panting of my own horse. I
had escaped. I had escaped and was alone on the marsh. But as I soon
satisfied myself, I was no longer on the causeway along which I had
been travelling when the man surprised me. The wind which had then met
me was now on my right cheek; the lights for which I had been heading
were no longer visible. The track, too, when I moved cautiously
forward, seemed more wet and rough; after that it needed little to
convince me that I had strayed from the highway, probably at the point
where my pursuer had fallen.
This, since I dared not return by the way I had come, terribly
perplexed me. I dismounted, and wet and shivering stood by my horse,
which hung its head, and restlessly lifted its feet by turns as if it
already felt the engulfing power of the moss. Peering out every way I
saw nothing but gloom and mist, the dark waste and unknown depths of
the marsh. It was a situation to try the stoutest, nor did it need the
mournful sough of the wind as it swept the flats, or the strange
gurgling noises that from time to time rose from the sloughs about me
to add the last touch of fear and melancholy to the scene.
Though, for my own part, I sank in no farther than my ankles, the
horse by its restlessness evinced a strong sense of danger, and I
dared not stand still. But as clouds had again obscured the moon and
the darkness was absolute, to advance seemed as dangerous as to
remain. However, in fear that the horse, if I stood where I was, would
break loose from me, I led it forward cautiously: and then the track
growing no worse but rather better, and the beast seeming to gain
confidence as it proceeded, I presently took courage to remount again,
and dropping the reins allowed it to carry me whither it would. This
it did slowly and with infinite caution, smelling rather than feeling
the way, and often stopping to try a doubtful spot. Observing how
wonderfully the instinct of the beast aided it, and remembering that I
had once been told that horses feared nothing so much as to be smoored
(as the fenmen call it), and would not willingly run that risk, I
gained confidence myself; which the event justified, for by-and-by I
caught the dull sound of sea-waves booming on a beach, and a few
minutes afterwards discerned in the sky before me the first faint
streaks of dawn.
Heaven knows how welcome it was to me! I was wet, weary and shivering
with cold and with the aguish air of that dreary place; which is so
unwholesome that I am told the natives take drugs to stave off the
fever, as others do ale and wine. But at the sight I pricked up, and
the horse too; and we moved on briskly; and presently by the help of
the growing light, and through a grey mist which trebled the size of
all objects, I saw a huge wall or bank loom across my path. I was
close to it when I discerned it; and I had no more than time to
despair of surmounting it, before the horse was already clambering up
it. Scrambling and slipping among the stones, in a minute or so and
with a great clatter we gained the summit; and saw below and before us
the smooth milky surface of the sea lifting lazily under the fog.
So seen it had a strangely weird and pallid aspect, as of a dead sea,
viewed in dreams: and I stood a moment to breathe my horse and admire
the spectacle; nor did I fail to thank God that I was out of that
dreary and treacherous place. Then, considering my future movements
and not knowing which way I ought to take--to right or left along the
beach--to gain the more quickly help and shelter, I was reining my
mare down the sea side of the bank when a welcome sound caught my ear.
It was a man's voice giving an order. I halted and peered through the
sea-haze; and by-and-by I made out a boat, lying beached at the edge
of the tide, some hundred and fifty yards to my left. There were men
standing in it, I could not see how many; and more were in the act of
pushing it off the strand. Their voices came to me with singular
clearness; but the words were unintelligible.
The sight gave me pause: and for a moment I stood reconnoitring the
men. To advance or not was the question, and I was still debating it,
and striving to deduce something from the men's appearance, when
something, I never knew what--perhaps some noise ill-apprehended--led
me to turn aside my head. Whatever the cause of the movement, it
apprised me of something little suspected. Not fifty paces behind me I
saw the figure of a giant horseman looming out of the mist. He was
advancing along the summit of the sea-wall below which I stood; hence
I saw him before he made me out: and this gave me the start and the
advantage. I had time to take in the thing, and seize my horse by the
head, and move eight or ten paces towards the boat before he took the
cue. Then on neither side was there any concealment. With a cry, a
yell rather, the mere sound of which flung me into a panic, the man
urged his horse down the bank shouting fiercely to me to stand; I in
utter terror spurred mine across the beach towards the men I had seen.
I have said that I had some sixty yards of start, and two hundred or
so to cross, to reach the boat; but the horses were scarcely able to
trot; a yard was a furlong; and the sand swallowing up the sound of
hoofs, it was a veritable race of ghosts, of phantoms, labouring
through the mist across the flat, with the oily Stygian sea lapping
the shore beside us. He cried out in the most violent fashion, now
bidding me stay and now bidding the men stop me. And for all I know
they might be in his pay, or at best be some of the reckless
desperadoes who on that coast live by owling and worse practices. But
they were my only hope and I too cried to them; and with joy I saw
them put in again--they had before got afloat. Believing Smith to be
gaining, I cried pitifully to them to save me, and then my horse
stumbling, I flung myself from the saddle, and plunged through the
sand towards them. At that, two sprang out to meet me and caught me
under my arms; and in a moment, amid a jargon of cries in a foreign
tongue whipped me over the side into the boat. Then they pushed it off
and leaped in themselves, wet to the thighs; and as my pursuer came
lurching down the beach, a pistol drawn in his hand, a couple of
powerful strokes drove the boat through the light surf. Waving
frantically he yelled to the men to wait, and rode to his boot-soles
into the water; but with a jeering laugh and a volley of foreign words
the sailors pulled the faster and the faster, and the mist lying thick
on the water, and the boat sitting low, in half a minute we lost the
last glimpse of him and his passion, and rode outward on a grey
boundless sea.