"'Tis too late, my master!" Trecarrel called cheerfully down the trap.
"You have thirty minutes at the most to reduce us, and 'twill take you
all that time to pack up and clear. Already a body of the King's foot
are coming over the hill straight for the bridge, and your one ragged
regiment there is making haste to quit. Do I not speak the truth,
Captain Wyvern?" He flung this question to me over his shoulder.
[Illustration: "'TIS TOO LATE, MY MASTER!" TRECARREL CALLED CHEERFULLY
DOWN THE TRAP.]
"The Lord be praised, you do!" I cried. "And see--another and stronger
body making down to cross the ford to the southward!" By this time
all the troopers around me were shouting and pointing and some of
them capering for joy; and sure the morning sun has rarely looked
on blesseder sight than these gallant troops made as they descended
glittering to the river.
"Softly--softly!" Trecarrel rebuked us. "With so much noise I cannot
hear what Master Provost-Marshal is threatening. Indeed, Sir," he
called down, "your game is up. Go your ways now, and may they lead you
to the proper end of all rebels!"
I did not hear the Provost-Marshal's answer: and for a minute or
so--since the firing did not start afresh but all remained quiet--I
supposed that he had taken our advice and given up the game. But
turning for a look down into the church to assure myself, I saw
Trecarrel rise to his feet with a face deadly white.
"The villains!" he gasped out, pointing to the hatchway. "They are
bringing powder--there--right under us!"
And, while he pointed, the Provost-Marshal's voice came up to us,
cold and sneering. "I'll give you this last chance, my gentlemen," he
called. "Will you hand over my prisoner, or must I blow you all into
air? You have half a minute to decide."
"Let us go down, gentlemen," said Carminowe, stepping forward. "I thank
you sincerely: but in truth, as I have told you, I do not value life."
In an instant Trecarrel had recovered his composure. "With your leave,
Captain," he said, addressing me, "'twas I that set this game going,
and I for one am willing to play it out."
I glanced from him to Grylls, who stood against the wall with his arms
folded. He wasted no words, but answered me with a gloomy nod. Now I
turned to the troopers, from whom--as men of mean station--I confess
that I looked for no such folly of magnanimity as to lay down their
lives for an old man, who, besides, was begging us to yield him up.
Judge my amazement then when a red-bearded fellow called Wilkes spoke
up with a big oath, growling that "surrender" was no word for his
stomach. "Suppose we belonged to your own troop, Captain--what would
you look for us to answer?"
"In general," I told him, "I should look for my troop to follow where
I dared to lead. But this is a different matter----"
A man by Wilkes' side cut me short. "Wounds alive, Sir! You don't
command the only men in the army! Didn't his Majesty pick and choose us
for special service? Very well, then; tell the old devil to fire and be
damned to him!"
I ran my eyes over their faces. "I thank you all, friends," said I:
"and because of your answer I, for one, shall die--if God wills it--in
good hope for England."
"Time is up," the Provost-Marshal's voice announced from below. "Do you
submit, Sir?"
"No!" I shouted, and all shouted together with me; nor did one or two
forbear to add to their defiance words of the grossest insult.
I motioned to them to copy me and lay themselves down at full length
above the strongest beams: and, so lying, I commended my soul to God.
This waiting upon the slow-match was the worst of all. "Will it never
come?" groaned one man, clenching his hands.
But it came at last, with a jarring lift of the earth and a great wind
that took us--flat-laid as we were--and tossed us like straws in a heap
against the wall. Then the foundations of the world opened with a roar,
beating all sensation out of us--so that, had we died then, all taste
of dying was gone from us. Answering the roar, as the walls rocked with
it, the heavens seemed to split and open, letting through a downrush
of slates and stones and mortar: and overhead a great bell clanged
once. But in my memory the explosion and the answering downrush stand
separated by a dark gulf, in which time was blotted out. I had covered
my face with my cloak, and saw no flame at all. Yet when my eyes opened
they rested first upon a great rent in the belfry flooring, through
which one of the heavy beams, broken midway, thrust up two jagged
ends. I saw this through a cloud of smoke, dust, and lime. Beside
me my comrades lay under a thick coating of limewash and cobwebs. A
couple of them had been flung across my legs, and one or two were
groaning. On the far side of the chamber the man Wilkes had scrambled
to his feet unhurt, and was leaning with his elbow against the wall.
I found my voice, and, while the walls yet rocked, called to Grylls
and Trecarrel. To my amazement their two voices answered me: and to my
greater amazement one by one the heap of men disengaged themselves,
and, shaking off the dust and lime from them, rose to their feet--the
whole of them, save for a cut or two and a few bruises, unharmed. Old
Carminowe, in particular, had not taken a scratch.
But while I stared at them, and while my shaken wits little by little
took assurance that the tower stood yet and we were yet alive, in
my ears rang the note of that bell which had sounded once overhead.
I stared up with a new and horrible apprehension, mercifully till
this moment delayed. I had not thought of the bells. The wind of the
explosion had whirled two or three of their ropes aloft and flung them
over the beams: but the concussion, which had shaken cartloads of
cobwebs down upon us, had seemingly left the cage itself uninjured. My
eyes sought to pierce the gloom up there in the bells' dark throats.
It seemed to me that one of the clappers was swaying. I thought of all
that mass of metal slipping, falling; and called on the men in a panic
to fetch and lower the ladder.
Trecarrel or Grylls--I forgot which--besought me to delay: the enemy
might yet be lying in wait for us outside the church. I, possessed with
this new terror of the bells, scarcely heard them, and insisted upon
lowering the ladder with all speed. It had fallen forward from the wall
against which we had rested it, and now lay right across our heads.
Fast as they could the men obeyed us, lowering it through the hatchway
and thence guiding its descent by the rope knotted about an upper rung.
As I had been last to mount, so I was first to slip down; as I reached
the foot and steadied it for the others I heard Wilkes at the window
overhead calling out that our troops had won the bridge.
And now comes in the strangest thing in all my story. We, that had
lived in comradeship for three weeks, and had come through this extreme
peril together, parted at the ladder's foot and ran our several ways
without a word said! I took one glance around the church. A good
third of the roof had been blown away and one of the tower-piers was
evidently tottering. Two columns of the arcade along the south aisle
lay prone. I need not say that scarce a pane remained in the windows:
but I can remember marvelling that so much of the glass had fallen
inwards and lay strewn over the whole flooring, even in the nave, and
I remember it all the better through having to pick my way to the door
with shoeless feet. In the porch I overtook and ran past old Carminowe.
He did not halt to thank me, nor did I pause to receive his thanks.
Yet I saw him once again. From the church I ran to meet our troops, now
re-forming at the bridge-end to clear the town. Half an hour later,
as we drove the retreating rebels beyond the suburbs and out into the
dusty lanes towards Fowey, almost by the last cottage we passed a
corpse huddled under the hedgerow to the left of our march. It was the
body of Carminowe, killed by a chance shot of the men from whom we had
lately saved him. But with what purpose he had pursued them and invited
it, I cannot tell.