THE courage, like the talent, of common men, runs in a narrow groove.
Take them but an inch out of that, and they are done. Martin's courage
was perfect as far as it went. He had met and baffled many dangers in
the course of his rude life; and these familiar dangers he could face
with Spartan fortitude, almost with indifference: but he had never been
hunted by a bloodhound; nor had he ever seen that brute's unerring
instinct baffled by human cunning. Here then a sense of the supernatural
combined with novelty to unsteel his heart. After going a few steps he
leaned on his bow, and energy and hope oozed out of him. Gerard, to whom
the danger appeared slight in proportion as it was distant, urged him to
flight.
"What avails it?" said Martin, sadly; "if we get clear of the wood we
shall die cheap; here, hard by, I know a place where we may die dear."
"Alas! good Martin," cried Gerard: "despair not so quickly: there must
be some way to escape."
"Oh, Martin!" cried Margaret, "what if we were to part company? Gerard's
life alone is forfeit. Is there no way to draw the pursuit on us twain
and let him go safe?"
"Girl, you know not the bloodhound's nature. He is not on this man's
track or that; he is on the track of blood. My life on't they have taken
him to where Ghysbrecht fell, and from the dead man's blood to the man
that shed it that cursed hound will lead them, though Gerard should run
through an army, or swim the Meuse." And again he leaned upon his bow,
and his head sank.
The hound's mellow voice rang through the wood.
A cry more tunable
Was never halloed to, nor cheered with horn,
In Crete, in Sparta, or in Thessaly.
Strange that things beautiful should be terrible and deadly. The eye of
the boa-constrictor while fascinating its prey is lovely. No royal crown
holds such a jewel; it is a ruby with the emerald's green light playing
ever upon it. Yet the deer that sees it, loses all power of motion, and
trembles, and awaits his death; and even so, to compare hearing with
sight, this sweet and mellow sound seemed to fascinate Martin
Wittenhaagen. He stood uncertain, bewildered, and unnerved. Gerard was
little better now. Martin's last words had daunted him. He had struck an
old man and shed his blood, and, by means of that very blood, blood's
four-footed avenger was on his track. Was not the finger of Heaven in
this?
Whilst the men were thus benumbed, the woman's brain was all activity.
The man she loved was in danger.
"Lend me your knife," said she to Martin. He gave it to her.
"But 'twill be little use in your hands," said he.
Then Margaret did a sly thing. She stepped behind Gerard, and furtively
drew the knife across her arm, and made it bleed freely: then stooping,
smeared her hose and shoes: and still as the blood trickled she smeared
them: but so adroitly that neither Gerard nor Martin saw. Then she
seized the soldier's arm.
"Come be a man," said she "and let this end. Take us to some thick
place, where numbers will not avail our foes."
"I am going," said Martin sulkily. "Hurry avails not: we cannot shun the
hound, and the place is hard by;" then turning to the left, he led the
way, as men go to execution.
He soon brought them to a thick hazel coppice, like the one that had
favoured their escape in the morning.
"There," said he, "this is but a furlong broad, but it will serve our
turn."
"What are we to do?"
"Get through this, and wait on the other side: then as they come
straggling through, shoot three, knock two on the head, and the rest
will kill us."
"Is that all you can think of?" said Gerard.
"That is all."
"Then, Martin Wittenhaagen, I take the lead; for you have lost your
head. Come, can you obey so young a man as I am?"
"Oh! yes, Martin," cried Margaret, "do not gainsay Gerard? He is wiser
than his years."
Martin yielded a sullen assent.
"Do then as you see me do," said Gerard; and drawing his huge knife, he
cut at every step a hazel shoot or two close by the ground, and turning
round twisted them breast high behind him among the standing shoots.
Martin did the same, but with a dogged hopeless air. When they had thus
painfully travelled through the greater part of the coppice, the
bloodhound's deep bay came nearer, and nearer, less and less musical,
louder, and sterner.
Margaret trembled.
Martin went down on his stomach and listened.
"I hear a horse's feet."
"No," said Gerard. "I doubt it is a mule's. That cursed Ghysbrecht is
still alive: none other would follow me up so bitterly."
"Never strike your enemy but to slay him," said Martin, gloomily.
"I'll hit harder this time, if Heaven gives me the chance," said Gerard.
At last they worked through the coppice, and there was an open wood. The
trees were large, but far apart, and no escape possible that way.
[Illustration: SUDDENLY A HUGE DOG BURST OUT OF THE COPPICE]
And now with the hound's bay mingled a score of voices, hooping and
hallooing.
"The whole village is out after us," said Martin.
"I care not," said Gerard. "Listen, Martin. I have made the track smooth
to the dog, but rough to the men, that we may deal with them apart. Thus
the hound will gain on the men, and as soon as he comes out of the
coppice we must kill him."
"The hound? There are more than one."
"I hear but one."
"Ay! but one speaks, the others run mute; but let the leading hound lose
the scent, then another shall give tongue. There will be two dogs at
least, or devils in dogs' hides."
"Then we must kill two instead of one. The moment they are dead, into
the coppice again, and go right back."
"That is a good thought, Gerard!" said Martin, plucking up heart.
"Hush! the men are in the wood."
Gerard now gave his orders in a whisper.
"Stand you with your bow by the side of the coppice--there, in the
ditch. I will go but a few yards to yon oak-tree, and hide behind it;
the dogs will follow me, and, as they come out, shoot as many as you
can, the rest will I brain as they come round the tree."
Martin's eye flashed. They took up their places.
The hooping and hallooing came closer and closer, and soon even the
rustling of the young wood was heard, and every now and then the
unerring bloodhound gave a single bay.
It was terrible! the branches rustling nearer and nearer, and the
inevitable struggle for life and death coming on minute by minute, and
that death-knell leading it. A trembling hand was laid on Gerard's
shoulder. It made him start violently, strung up as he was.
"Martin says if we are forced to part company, make for that high
ash-tree we came in by."
"Yes! yes! yes! but go back, for Heaven's sake! don't come here, all out
in the open!"
She ran back towards Martin; but, ere she could get to him, suddenly a
huge dog burst out of the coppice, and stood erect a moment. Margaret
cowered with fear, but he never noticed her. Scent was to him what
sight is to us. He lowered his nose an instant, and the next moment,
with an awful yell, sprang straight at Gerard's tree, and rolled
head-over-heels dead as a stone, literally spitted by an arrow from the
bow that twanged beside the coppice in Martin's hand. That same moment
out came another hound and smelt his dead comrade. Gerard rushed out at
him; but ere he could use his cudgel, a streak of white lightning seemed
to strike the hound, and he grovelled in the dust, wounded desperately,
but not killed, and howling piteously.
Gerard had not time to despatch him: the coppice rustled too near: it
seemed alive. Pointing wildly to Martin to go back, Gerard ran a few
yards to the right, then crept cautiously into the thick coppice just as
three men burst out. These had headed their comrades considerably; the
rest were following at various distances. Gerard crawled back almost on
all fours. Instinct taught Martin and Margaret to do the same upon their
line of retreat. Thus, within the distance of a few yards, the pursuers
and pursued were passing one another upon opposite tracks.
A loud cry announced the discovery of the dead and wounded hound. Then
followed a babble of voices, still swelling as fresh pursuers reached
the spot. The hunters, as usual on a surprise, were wasting time, and
the hunted ones were making the most of it.
"I hear no more hounds," whispered Martin to Margaret, and he was
himself again.
It was Margaret's turn to tremble and despair.
"Oh! why did we part with Gerard? They will kill my Gerard, and I not
near him."
"Nay, nay! the head to catch him is not on their shoulders. You bade him
meet us at the ash-tree?"
"And so I did. Bless you, Martin, for thinking of that. To the
ash-tree!"
"Ay! but with less noise."
They were now nearly at the edge of the coppice, when suddenly they
heard hooping and hallooing behind them. The men had satisfied
themselves the fugitives were in the coppice; and were beating back.
"No matter," whispered Martin to his trembling companion. "We shall have
time to win clear and slip out of sight by hard running."
"Ah!"
He stopped suddenly; for just as he was going to burst out of the
brushwood, his eye caught a figure keeping sentinel. It was Ghysbrecht
Van Swieten seated on his mule; a bloody bandage was across his nose,
the bridge of which was broken; but over this his eyes peered keenly,
and it was plain by their expression he had heard the fugitives rustle,
and was looking out for them. Martin muttered a terrible oath, and
cautiously strung his bow, then with equal caution fitted his last arrow
to the string. Margaret put her hands to her face, but said nothing. She
saw this man must die or Gerard. After the first impulse she peered
through her fingers, her heart panting to her throat.
The bow was raised, and the deadly arrow steadily drawn to its head,
when at that moment an active figure leaped on Ghysbrecht from behind so
swiftly, it was like a hawk swooping on a pigeon. A kerchief went over
the burgomaster, in a turn of the hand his head was muffled in it, and
he was whirled from his seat and fell heavily upon the ground, where he
lay groaning with terror; and Gerard jumped down after him.
"Hist, Martin! Martin!"
Martin and Margaret came out, the former open-mouthed, crying, "Now fly!
fly! while they are all in the thicket; we are saved."
At this crisis, when safety seemed at hand, as fate would have it,
Margaret, who had borne up so bravely till now, began to succumb, partly
from loss of blood.
"Oh, my beloved! fly!" she gasped. "Leave me, for I am faint."
"No! no!" cried Gerard. "Death together, or safety. Ah! the mule! mount
her, you, and I'll run by your side."
In a moment Martin was on Ghysbrecht's mule, and Gerard raised the
fainting girl in his arms and placed her on the saddle, and relieved
Martin of his bow.
"Help! treason! murder! murder!" shrieked Ghysbrecht, suddenly rising on
his hams.
"Silence, cur," roared Gerard, and trode him down again by the throat as
men crush an adder.
"Now, have you got her firm? Then fly! for our lives! for our lives!"
But even as the mule, urged suddenly by Martin's heel, scattered the
flints with his hind hoofs ere he got into a canter, and even as Gerard
withdrew his foot from Ghysbrecht's throat to run, Dierich Brower and
his five men, who had come back for orders, and heard the burgomaster's
cries, burst roaring out of the coppice on them.