“I shall be back before it’s light,” he said more cheerfully, now that he had found the relief of action. “I don’t suppose I shall be away more than two or three hours.”
They did not guess that they would never meet in that room again.
Chapter Seventy-Two
He rode first to Cowley Thorn, where he was not surprised to find an alert watch, for Jack Tolley was in charge there, and he was not one who trusted to chance.
He went on to the landing-place, and found the boats well guarded.
The sea had gone down somewhat with the falling wind, though the swell was still heavy, and it seemed probable that they would be able to venture out in the morning. This was well also.
He rode westward, above the high shore facing Upper Helford.
He looked over a broad sea-channel to a cliff-shore, along which a sentry was pacing behind the hedge of wire. Like Jack, Burman left nothing to chance.
The tide was flowing out beneath him. In a few hours the hollow of Helford Brook would be bare enough for a man to walk or wade across it, as Arter had once found, though he had made little profit from the discovery.
He turned inland from there, and rode almost up to the ruined walls of Helford Grange. All here was silent and peaceful, though he thought that a faint light shone upward, probably from a cellar-grating in the side of the old moat.
Left-hand then, in a wide curve round Larkshill, and so to the approach of the railway camp across the road from which he had first ridden up to it four months ago. But he did not cross the road. He had no wish to disturb them if all were well. It came to his mind that they would be watching (if they watched at all) for mounted men, and that he would be a cause for alarm should he approach from the southward.
The moon was bright now, and there was a white frost on the fields.
He reined up, looking over the hedge into the silent road beneath him.
All was quiet.
He recognized now that it had been a foolish thing to do to come out for such a ride in the night. There was nothing left but to go home and regret the sleep he had lost, and for which he supposed that he would suffer tomorrow night, when he would be really needed.
But he was reluctant to go. Strangely reluctant to commence the return which would be a confession of the folly which had brought him out.
And while he sat silent he saw the figure of a man that came running toward him along the hedge-side.
The man was within twenty yards before he saw him, and stopped abruptly.
“I shall fire, if you move,” he called out, and Will Carless knew his voice, and answered pantingly.
He came to the horse’s side.
“There are about thirty men coming up the road. They must be close now. I had to come round the field so that I shouldn’t be seen.”
“You must leave the camp to me now. Take the field-path to Larkshill, and warn them there. Tell them to clear out to Cowley Thorn, and not to lose a second. Never mind what they leave. They’re not to fight there, unless it’s to give the women time to get clear.”
Will Carless ran on. Martin turned his mind to his own problem. The camp was scarcely a mile away. But he could not get his horse down the bank at that point. To cross the road he must go some distance farther south, but it was the quickest way, if there, were time to do it unseen.
He rode on, his ears alert for every sound, his mind on the fact that Cooper had not only changed the night, but the direction of the attack. He was not an opponent to be regarded lightly.
He came to where the fields fell to the road-level, and the gap that he had ridden through four months ago still gave free passage.
He looked cautiously at the empty road before leaving the tall shadow of an ancient hawthorn-hedge that had grown unchecked all summer, and, though leafless now, still made a ten-foot barrier of light-proof thicket.
Something moved in the distance up the frosty centre of the moonlit road.
He turned his horse into the hedge on the farther side of the gap. He could see nothing in that position of whoever were coming up the road, but they could see nothing of him.
As they passed he would see their backs, but they would not see him, unless they should turn their heads to look—and the dark shadow of the hedge would be a good cover even then.
He waited so long that he doubted whether his sight had not misled him, and then they began to pass him, two abreast, their horses walking with muffled hoofs.
He counted them as they passed. Nearly fifty men. Seen by a better light, they might have seemed the oddest troop; that were ever assembled for a military enterprise. They were mounted on horses of very different qualities; there was no unity of clothes or accoutrements; they were armed with an extraordinary variety of weapons, ancient and modern, that a six-months’ search had accumulated. But to those whose lives were staked upon defeating them, they were sufficiently formidable.
As he counted mechanically, Martin debated in his mind if he should not fire among them, and then trust to his horse’s speed for safety. Would his shot be heard, and give warning? Would it stir this slow approach to a very different pace, which would hasten attack and give no time for flight? Should he not give a longer warning if he waited and rode rapidly to the camp after he had crossed the road? They might even wait till the dawn before they attacked, if they had no cause to suspect that an alarm had been given.
While he debated thus, Cooper passed him. He was disposed to fire then, but hesitated, and the chance was lost.
Perhaps it was best. He was not a practised shot, and the light might have betrayed him.
They had all passed now. Forty-seven—or forty-nine. In another moment he could cross the road—and then his horse neighed.
She may have recognized some old companion of Cooper’s stable, from which she came. She may simply have resented the fact that the other horses were disappearing up the road without having been made aware of her existence, and that she was not allowed to follow.
A horse answered, and she neighed again.
Martin abandoned concealment and pushed out into the road.
It may have been a mistake. It is possible that there might have been no disposition to inquire into what was no more than a horse’s neigh from a roadside field. But his first thought was for the warning of the camp; and if he were to be chased, he wished to be on the right side of the road.
But he found that he could not leave the road at this point on the farther side. There was an awkward ditch, and a high hedge beyond it. He did not know what the chance might be to the south, but he knew that, a little farther on, if he should ride toward the camp, there would be no obstacle whatever. Road and waste-land had no division of hedge or ditch or wall to impede him.
He turned his horse to follow the invading troop, and as he did so he became aware that Cooper was leaving nothing to chance. He was sending two of his men back to investigate the shadowy figure on the road behind him.
It was at that moment that the depression which had been weighing upon him, and against which he had been fighting for several days, was suddenly lifted. He trotted confidently forward, the automatic concealed against his horse’s neck.
Cooper had pulled his horse to the side of the road, and was looking back to see what happened.
Observing a single horseman, who rode forward to meet his men, he did not suspect an enemy, but he thought that messenger from Butcher had been sent to intercept him with news of some unexpected development.
He rode back also.
Martin quickened his pace. The men were near, and there was still this obstructing hedge on his right. If he could pass them and get up to the man behind—who he felt sure was Cooper—the way of escape was clear.
He edged his horse across the road to the right.
The two men met him.
“Is Captain Cooper here?” he demanded. “I want to speak to your Captain.”
The men were strangers to him, and he to them. They were puzzled, but this w
as not like the approach of an enemy. They gave him way, and turned their horses to follow.
He quickened pace as he passed them.
Cooper saw that they had allowed him passage, and was confirmed in his previous opinion.
He called to Martin to halt as he approached, and turned his own horse across the road to stay him.
“I am Captain Cooper,” he called out. “What have you brought?”
“This for you,” he answered curtly. He remembered the remark about “Webster’s widows,” and as he spoke he lifted his hand and fired.
But he should have fired without speaking. The tone, rather than the words, gave a warning to Cooper’s mind, so that he swerved somewhat, with a quick instinct of danger, just as the shot came.
The bullet, which might have found a deadlier lodging, struck his bridle-arm just as he pulled on the rein, and the jerk caused the horse to rear.
Doing this, it took the next bullet in its own chest, and horse and man came down in a heap together.
Martin turned his own horse as the second bullet was fired, and made off, at a rapid pace, over the waste land that lay between the road and the canal-ditch. There was some half-hearted pursuit by slower riders from a force which he had rendered leaderless for the moment, and who were unfamiliar with the way he was going. There were some random shots. But the suddenness of the event, and the covering night, gave him sufficient advantage to make retreat seem easy.
His real danger was that the chestnut should stumble on the rough waste-strewn ground, but she justified Claire’s confidence in her, and hen he rode into a camp which had been roused already to activity by the firing, he was alone and unpursued.
Chapter Seventy-Three
Martin’s attack upon Captain Cooper had succeeded by its unexpectedness, as an audacity may often do. Among its major consequences must be counted the restoration of the cool and tenacious attitude with which he was accustomed to face a conflict, but which had faltered under the working and waiting strains of the previous days. It had succeeded also in causing disorder, and a delay which was of vital importance. It had not killed Jerry Cooper, nor inflicted any disabling injury.
He had a bad fall and a bleeding arm. The fall shook him for a time, and the arm must be bound up; but he was not of a disposition to be lightly turned from his purpose, nor to give undue regard to a physical disability.
Within fifteen minutes he felt himself fit to continue, and issued his orders accordingly, without losing time even to curse the men who had let Martin pass them. His horse was dead, and he was content to take an inferior and quieter animal from one of his men, such as could be safely ridden with only one arm in working order.
Then, preferring speed to any further attempt at secrecy, he ordered John Coe to ride on with twenty men to attack Larkshill, while he advanced upon the railway camp with the remainder of the force.
It was arranged that Butcher should advance at the first sign of dawn upon the defenders of Cowley Thorn, either to capture it, if the resistance should be sufficiently feeble, thus cutting off the line of retreat to Upper Helford, or at least to hold them engaged until Cooper should have completed his own part of the programme, and could effect a junction with him.
Cooper was well informed of the condition of those upon whom these attacks were to be delivered. He knew that the women had been partly evacuated. He supposed that Martin’s plan was to place them in security while he continued to operate upon the mainland with most of the men. By attacking before this evacuation was complete, he hoped to capture some of the women. But that object was subordinate; for their fate must ultimately depend upon the result of the fighting, as it had done since the world began. It might be an actual disadvantage to be encumbered by them till the conflict was over. But he aimed to demoralize his opponents with a confused disaster, while they were themselves so embarrassed, and before they could complete their dispositions for unimpeded battle.
It was good strategy enough; and though he could not know that it was part of Martin’s own plan that he should appear to be driven back, with all his force, upon Upper Helford, the energy of his attack, and the earlier date that he had selected, might easily transform a tactical retreat into a real disaster.
The experiences of the next few hours were blurred in the minds of those who fought or fled from Larkshill and the railway camp to the doubtful refuge of Cowley Thorn. If their memories held any clear impressions, these were rather of the events of the later hours of the group of women round the boats that waited the slow rising of the indifferent tide, while the noise of battle and pursuit pressed closer; and of the embarkation at last, the while the remnant of the little guarding force fought hand-to-hand with the horsemen who had dismounted to reach them among the fallen larches. Or, it might be, of that longer wait for the tide to fall again, so that those who had defended Cowley Thorn could retreat over the hollow of Helford Brook to the security of the barbed-wired cliff of Upper Helford—a wait under a fire from their assailants to which they could make little reply, because there were few, except Jack Tolley, who had any cartridges left.
It was here that Helen and Claire had waited, with a distracted Betty, who had good cause to believe that Phillips hat perished in the house, in which they had delayed too long. For they had been reluctant to leave it in Martin’s absence, and the advance of Butcher’s men had left them scanty time for flight to the protection of the houses in Cowley Thorn; which Martin had chosen as the first line of defence at that point. And even then Phillips had obstinately remained to test the quality of the defences which his ingenuity had provided, and had found them of such avail that Reeves, in impatience of the unexpected delay which this resistance caused, had ordered his men to set fire to the house, which the more frugal-minded Butcher was too late to prevent when he came up, and observed the folly which his lieutenant had committed.
For Butcher had intended that house for his own occupation, as he had intended Helen for his own wife. But now dense columns of yellow smoke rose upright in the frosty air—an omen, as it seemed to many on either side, that Martin’s reign was over.
But Phillips was not dead. He had not anticipated the event with accuracy, but he had known that a siege cannot long be sustained without a sufficient supply of water for the garrison, and he now owed his safety to the fact that he had filled a large hogshead with water in the cellar to which he retreated, the temperature of which never rose above a tepid warmth as he crouched within it.
It was mainly due to Jack Tolley that the final retreat to Upper Helford was achieved without loss or disorder. The few women who had retreated in this direction, and who had not been taken off in the boats in consequence, were first transferred to the other side by means of the horses, as soon as the tide had fallen sufficiently. Martin had returned Claire’s horse to her after he had united his retreating bands on the heath between Cowley Thorn and the sea; and with the two others indifferently ridden, but fastened to her own bridle on either hand, she had forded the falling channel three times before the water was low enough for pedestrian passage.
Then, when the time came that the fighting force could retreat across the lessening water, Jack Tolley had volunteered to hold back pursuit with his single rifle, and had proved equal to the occasion.
It was just before that time that Cooper had endeavoured to combine his own force with Butcher’s in a third charge, which he felt sure, if it could once reach its object, would decide the issue; but he found his men, and Butcher’s even more so, were of little heart to attempt it.
Butcher’s force had already suffered somewhat severely, being the first to encounter the prepared line of defence at Cowley Thorn, and as they wished to remain alive to enjoy the fruits of victory, they received his suggestion without enthusiasm. They had twice been driven back with loss: if their opponents were prepared to retreat without further fighting they had no objection to offer.
Cooper asked contemptuously if they would follow his leading, to which they agreed, bu
t disconcerted him somewhat by inquiring from whom they were to take orders if he were
It was Jack Tolley’s rifle that was responsible for this question. In the charges that they had made already, they had learnt that the first man to break from cover was hit immediately.
Slater, groaning on the frozen ground, with a broken knee-cap, and Prescott, still wiping the blood from his eyes as it ran down from where a bullet had scored his forehead, were the more fortunate examples of this experience.
Cooper was not a professor of heroics: he was a practical business man. He said no more about the leading of charges.
So they watched and waited till three riderless horses appeared at the cliff-top, and ran loose over the heather, when, correctly supposing this to indicate that their enemies were retreating across the hollow, and would provide an easy mark for the bullets of those above them, they made another attempt to advance, on which a single shot came from the gorse-bushes that lined the edge of the cliff, and Reeves, who was somewhat in advance of the others, pitched forward awkwardly, and lay still; on which his companions retreated too hastily for a second shot to be necessary—for Jack shot with economy.
Seeing the effect of his bullet, he judged it to be an excellent time at which to slip down the cliff and follow his companions to safety, leaving his opponents to a half-hour of further waiting, before they ventured to investigate whether he might still be there.
Chapter Seventy-Four
Captain Cooper looked across at the cliff-front of Upper Helford, and down at the intervening hollow into which the tide was flowing.
He considered that it would be passable during the night, and that the moon would still be good.
He was pleasantly aware of victory, though he was not elated beyond reason.
In the course of one day’s fighting against an unmounted but larger force, which had been worse disciplined, worse armed, and (he thought) worse handled than his own, he had captured the railway camp, the ruins of the mining village of Larkshill, and the larger and more populated Cowley Thorn—the latter with the assistance of Butcher’s force, augmented by desertions to over twenty men, and which Butcher had commanded with some discretion as to his own location, but with a businesslike ability which had increased Cooper’s respect, if not his liking, for his ally.
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