Between moonrise and sunset I was stumbling through the bracken of the
little copse that was like a tuft of hair on the brow of the great white
quarry. It was quite dark, in among the trees. I made the circuit of the
copse, whistling softly my three bars of “Lillibulero.” Then I plunged
into it. The bracken underfoot rustled and rustled. I came to a halt.
A little bar of light lay on the horizon in front of me, almost
colourless. It was crossed again and again by the small fir-trunks that
were little more than wands. A woodpigeon rose with a sudden crash of
sound, flapping away against the branches. My pulse was dancing with
delight--my heart, too. It was like a game of hide-and-seek, and yet it
was life at last. Everything grew silent again and I began to think I
had missed my time. Down below in the plain, a great way off, a dog was
barking continuously. I moved forward a few paces and whistled. The
glow of adventure began to die away. There was nothing at all--a little
mystery of light on the tree-trunks.
I moved forward again, getting back towards the road. Against the
glimmer of dead light I thought I caught the outlines of a man’s hat
down among the tossing lines of the bracken. I whispered loudly:
“Carlos! Carlos!”
There was a moment of hoarse whispering; a sudden gruff sound. A shaft
of blazing yellow light darted from the level of the ground into my
dazed eyes. A man sprang at me and thrust something cold and knobby
into my neckcloth. The light continued to blaze into my eyes; it moved
upwards and shone on a red waistcoat dashed with gilt buttons. I
was being arrested.... “In the King’s name....” It was a most sudden
catastrophe. A hand was clutching my windpipe.
“Don’t you so much as squeak, Mr. Castro,” a voice whispered in my ear.
The lanthorn light suddenly died out, and I heard whispers.
“Get him out on to the road.... I’ll tackle the other ...
Darbies.... Mind his knife.”
I was like a confounded rabbit in their hands. One of them had his fist
on my collar and jerked me out upon the hard road. We rolled down the
embankment, but he was on the top. It seemed an abominable episode, a
piece of bad faith on the part of fate. I ought to have been exempt from
these sordid haps, but the man’s hot leathery hand on my throat was like
a foretaste of the other collar. And I was horribly afraid--horribly--of
the sort of mysterious potency of the laws that these men represented,
and I could think of nothing to do.
We stood in a little slanting cutting in the shadow. A watery light
before the moon’s rising slanted downwards from the hilltop along the
opposite bank. We stood in utter silence.
“If you stir a hair,” my captor said coolly, “I’ll squeeze the blood out
of your throat, like a rotten orange.”
He had the calmness of one dealing with an everyday incident; yet the
incident was--it should have been--tremendous. We stood waiting silently
for an eternity, as one waits for a hare to break covert before the
beaters. From down the long hill came a small sound of horses’ hoofs--a
sound like the beating of the heart, intermittent--a muffled thud on
turf, and a faint clink of iron. It seemed to die away unheard by the
runner beside me. Presently there was a crackling of the short pine
branches, a rustle, and a hoarse whisper said from above:
“Other’s cleared, Thorns. Got that one safe?”
“All serene.”
The man from above dropped down into the road, a clumsy, cloaked figure.
He turned his lanthorn upon me, in a painful yellow glare.
“What! ’Tis the young ’un,” he grunted, after a moment. “Read the
warrant, Thorns.”
My captor began to fumble in his pocket, pulled out a paper, and bent
down into the light. Suddenly he paused and looked up at me.
“This ain’t------ Mr. Lilly white, I don’t believe this ain’t a
Jack Spaniard.”
The clinks of bits and stirrup-irons came down in a waft again.
“That be hanged for a tale, Thorns,” the man with the lanthorn said
sharply. “If this here ain’t Riego--or the other--I’ll ...”