That when the people, which had thereabout
Long wayted, saw his sudden desolation,
They gan together in tumultuous rout
And mutining to stirre up civil faction
For certain losse of so great expectation:
For well they hoped to have got great good
And wondrous riches by his innovation:
Therefore resolving to revenge his blood
They rose in armes, and all in battell order stood.
_Faery Queene_, B. V. C. III.
Rapidly as the magisterial party moved, the news of their approach had
run before them; and, on entering the north gates of Machynleth, they
found nearly all the male population in the streets. Large bodies of
smugglers were dispersed in the crowd, many of whom saw clearly that
the magistrate was in a mistake as to the person of his prisoner: but
they had good reasons for leaving him in his error. Up to the inn-door,
where it was foreseen that the carriage would draw up to change horses,
no particular opposition was offered to the advance of that or it's
escort. Hisses indeed, groans, hooting, curses, and every variety of
insult short of manual violence, continued to rise in stormy chorus all
the way to the inn-door. But the attack, which was obviously in
agitation, waited either for the first blow to be struck by some one
more daring than the rest--or for some more favourable situation.
Just as the carriage stopped, an upper window was thrown up, and forth
came the head of Mr. Dulberry the radical reformer in a perfect panic
of exultation. This was the happiest moment of his existence. No longer
in mere vision or prophetic rapture, but with his bodily eyes, he
beheld the civil authority set at nought, insulted, threatened; and a
storm rising in which he might have the honour to preside and direct.
He was suffocated with joy; and for a minute found himself too much
affected to speak.
Whilst he was yet speechless, and distracted by the choice amongst ten
thousand varieties of argument and advice for the better nursing of the
infant riot,--a drunken man advanced from the inn and laid himself
across the street immediately before the feet of the horses which were
at this moment harnessing to the carriage, loudly protesting that they
should pass over his body before he would see them carry off to a
dungeon so noble a martyr to the freedom of trade. Alderman Gravesand
directed the constables to remove the man by force. This fired the
train of Dulberry's pent-up eloquence. He "adjured the mob by those who
met at Runnymead to resist such an act of lawless power; applauded the
heaven-born suggestion of the drunkard; called upon them all to follow
his example; by Magna Charta every Englishman was entitled to stretch
himself at length in the mud when and where he would; and at the
Alderman's peril be it, if he should presume to drive over them."
Meantime the constables had seized the man, and tossed him into the
gutter. So far the system of vigour seemed to carry the day. But either
this act or the urgency of the time (the horses being now harnessed and
the postillions on the point of mounting) was the signal for the
universal explosion of the popular wrath. Stones, coals, brickbats,
whizzed on every side: the traces of the barouche were cut: the
constables were knocked down: those of them, who were seated in the
carriage, were collared and pulled out; excepting only Sampson who,
being a powerful and determined man, still kept his hold of Bertram:
and the Alderman, who was the main cause of the whole disturbance, was
happy to make a precipitate retreat into the inn; at an upper window of
which he soon appeared with the Riot Act in his hand.
At this crisis, however, from some indications which he observed below
of the state of temper in regard to himself just now prevailing amongst
the mob he thought it prudent to lay aside his first intentions; and,
putting the Riot Act into his pocket, he began to bow; most awkwardly
attempted the new part of gracious conciliator; expostulated gently;
laid his hand on his heart; and endeavoured to explain that the
prisoner was not arrested for any offence against the revenue laws, but
for high treason. Not a syllable of what he said was heard. At the
adjoining window stood Mr. Dulberry, labouring with a zeal as
ineffectual to heighten and to guide the storm which the Alderman was
labouring to lay. Like two rival candidates on the hustings, both stood
making a dumb show of grimaces, rhetorical gestures, and passionate
appeals; blowing hot and cold like Boreas and Phoebus in their contest
for the traveller; the one striving to sow, the other to extirpate
sedition: the reformer blowing the bellows and fanning the fire which
the magistrate was labouring to extinguish.
Fortunately perhaps for both, and possibly for all the parties
concerned, arguments were now at hand more efficacious than those of
either. At this moment a trampling of horses was heard; words of
command could be distinguished in military language; and amidst a
general cry of "The red coats! the red coats!" a squadron of dragoons
was seen advancing rapidly along the street. The mob gave way
immediately, and retired into the houses and side alleys. Just as the
dragoons came up, a bold fellow had knocked the wounded constable
backwards, and was in the act of seizing firm hold of Bertram,--when
the commanding officer rode up and with the flat of his sabre struck
him so violently over the head and shoulders that he rolled into the
mud, but retained however presence of mind enough to retire within a
party of his friends.
In a few minutes the officer had succeeded in restoring order: he now
took the prisoner from the carriage and mounted him behind a dragoon.
His hands, which had been hitherto tied behind him, were for a moment
unfettered--passed round the dragoon's body--and then again confined by
cords. These arrangements made,--the whole cavalcade accompanied by two
constables drew off at a rapid pace to the city gates. Under this third
variety in the style of his escort, Bertram began to experience great
fatigue and suffering. Without any halt, or a word speaking, the
cavalry proceeded at a long trot for two hours along a well-beaten
road. On reaching a wretched ale-house, however, necessity obliged them
to make a short halt and to take such refreshments as the place
afforded. To the compassion of a dragoon Bertram was here indebted for
a dram; and he was allowed to stretch himself at length on the floor of
the house and to take a little sleep. From this however he was soon
roused by the gingling of spurs; roughly shaken up; and mounted
again in the former fashion behind the dragoon. It was now dark; a
night-storm was beginning to rise; and it appeared to the prisoner as
though the road were approaching the coast. The air grew colder and
colder, the wind more piercing, and Bertram--whose situation made all
change of posture impossible--felt as though he could not long hold out
against the benumbing rigour of the frost. So much was his firmness
subdued, that he could not forbear expressing his suffering by
inarticulate moans. The dragoon, who rode before him, was touched with
compassion and gave him a draught from his rum flask. The strength, given
by spirituous liquors to a person under the action of frost, is
notoriously but momentary and leaves the sufferer exposed to an
immediate and more dangerous reaction of the frost. This effect Bertram
experienced: a pleasant sensation began to steal over him; one limb
began to stiffen after another; and his vital powers had no longer
energy enough to resist the seductive approaches of sleep. At this
moment an accident saved him. The whole troop pulled up abruptly; and
at the same instant a piercing cry for help, and a violent trampling of
horses' hoofs, roused Bertram from his stupefaction.
The accident was this: a trooper had diverged from the line of road,
and was in the act of driving his horse over a precipice which overhung
the sea-coast just at the very moment when his error was betrayed
to him by the moving lights below. The horse however clung by his
fore-feet, which had fortunately been rough-shod, to a tablet of
slanting rock glazed over with an enamel of ice; and his comrades came
up in time to save both the trooper and his horse. Meantime the harsh
and sudden shock of this abrupt halt, together with the appalling character
of the incident which led to it, had roused Bertram; and he was still
further roused by the joyful prospect of a near termination to his
journey as well as by the remarkable features of the road on which his
eyes now opened from his brief slumber.
The road, as he now became aware, wound upwards along the extreme edge
of the rocky barrier which rose abruptly from the sea-coast. In the
murky depths below he saw nothing but lights tossing up and down,
gleaming at intervals, and then buried in sudden darkness--the lights
probably of vessels driving before wind and weather in a heavy sea. The
storm was now in its strength on the sea-quarter. The clouds had parted
before the wind; and a pale gleam of the moon suddenly betrayed to the
prisoner the spectacle of a billowy sea below him, an iron barrier of
rocky coast, and at some distance above him the gothic towers and
turrets of an old castle running out as it were over the sea itself
upon one of the bold prominences of the cliffs. The sharp lines of this
aerial pile of building were strongly relieved upon the sky which now
began to be overspread with moonlight. To this castle their route was
obviously directed. But danger still threatened them: the road was
narrow and steep; the wind blustered; and gusty squalls at intervals
threatened to upset both horse and rider into the abyss. However the
well-trained horses overcame all difficulties; at length the head of
the troop reached the castle; and the foremost dragoon seizing a vast
iron knocker struck the steel-plated gate so powerfully, that the echo
on a more quiet night would have startled all the deer in the adjacent
park for two miles round.