CHAPTER XIX
THE BATTLE OF THE DUNES
Haxo and his forces were not in a condition to follow too closely after the three. The chance medley for which they had pined was come, and that without their seeking. The rascals had gone out to do one part of their master's will. The shipping of a lass over-seas was no doubt a pretty piece of work enough, and would be well paid for; but the slaying of Wat Gordon and Jack Scarlett, their ancient adversaries of the Hostel of the Coronation, was a job ten times more to the fit of their stomachs.
Thus it was with Haxo and his immediate followers.
But the fatigues of the evening and the good liquor of Lis-op-Zee had rendered most of the chief butcher's men somewhat loath to leave their various haunts and hiding-places. Moreover, their horses were stabled here and there throughout the village, so that Wat and his companions had a good start of a quarter of an hour ere Haxo, furious and foaming with anger at the delay, and burning with the desire for revenge, could finally start in pursuit with his entire company.
It was now a dewy morning, a morning without clouds, and the sparse, benty grass on the sand-hills was still spangled with diamond points innumerable. The sun rose over the woods through which they had passed, and its level, heatless rays beat upon the crescent over-curl of the sand-waves as on the foam of a breaker when it bends to the fall.
"See you any stronghold where we may keep ourselves against these rascals, if they manage to attack us?" cried Wat, from the hollow up to Scarlett, who had the higher ground.
"Pshaw!" he returned, "what need to speak of escape? They will follow the track of the horses as easily as a road with finger-posts. Find us they will. Better that we should betake us to some knowe-top, where, at least, we can keep a defence. But I see not even a rickle of stones, where we might have some chance to stand it out till the nightfall."
By the advice of Scarlett they dismounted from their horses, and taking their weapons they left their weary beasts tethered to a blighted stump of a tree which the sands had surrounded and killed. Here the animals were to some extent concealed by the nature of the ground, unless the pursuers should approach very near or ascend the summits of the highest ridges in the neighborhood.
The young girl had all along betrayed no anxiety, nor showed so much as a trace of emotion or fatigue.
"It was in such a country as this I dwelt in my youth," she said, quietly, "and I understand the ways of the dunes."
So without question on their part she led them forward carefully and swiftly on foot, keeping ever to that part of the ridge where the benty grass had bound the sands most closely together. Now they ascended so as to take the loose sandy pass between two ridges. Again they descended into the cool bottoms where the sun had not yet penetrated, and where a bite of chill air still lingered in the shadows, while the dew lay thick on the coarse herbage and slaked the surface of the sand.
The sun had fully risen when, still led by the girl, they issued out upon the outermost sea edge, and heard the waves crisping and chattering on a curving beach of pebble. The ruins of an ancient watch-tower crowned a neighboring hillock. Doubtless it had been a redoubt or petty fortalice against the Spaniards, built in the old days of the Beggars. It was now almost ruinous, and at one point the wall threatened momentarily to give way. For the wind had undermined the shifting foundations, and part of the masonry seemed actually to overhang the narrow defile of sand and coarse grass through which the little party passed.
"Think ye that tower anywise defensible?" asked Marie, pointing up at it with her finger.
Without answering at once, Scarlett climbed up to the foot of the wall and, skirting it to the broken-down gateway, he entered.
"It will make about as notable a defence as half a dozen able-bodied pioneers might throw up in an hour with their spades. But we are too like the Beggars who built it to be very nice in our choosing," said Scarlett, smiling grimly down upon his two companions from the decaying rampart.
Walter scrambled up beside him, and the Little Marie, lithe as a cat, was over the crumbling wall as soon as any of them. They found the place wholly empty, save that in one corner there was a rudely vaulted herdsman's shelter, wherein, by moving a door of driftwood, they could see sundry shovels and other instruments of rustic toil set in the angle of the wall.
"I see not much chance of holding out here," said Wat. "They can storm the wall at half a dozen points."
"True," said Scarlett, "most true – yet for all that, here at least we cannot be shot at from a distance as we sit helpless on the sand, like rabbits that come hotching out of a wood at even-tide to feed on the green. We are not overlooked. We have a spring of water – which is not an over-common thing on these dunes and so near the sea. I tell you the Beggars knew what they were about when they planted their watch-tower down in such a spot."
In this manner Scarlett, the grumbler of the night, heartened his companions as soon as ever it came nigh the grips of fighting.
Then the men took out the shovels and the other tools, and set about putting the defences in some order, replacing the stones which had fallen down, and clearing out little embrasures, where one might lie tentily with a musket and take aim from shelter. While Wat and Scarlett were busy with these works of fortification, the Little Marie ran down into the dells again, looking wonderously feat and dainty in her boy's costume.
Scarlett, the old soldier, glanced more than once approvingly after her.
"'Tis just as well that the lady-love has not yet been found – or I should not envy you the explanation you would assuredly be called upon to make," said he, smiling over to Wat as he built and strengthened his defences.
Instinctively Wat squared himself, as though his mattock had been a sword and he saluting his general.
"Ye ken me little, John Scarlett," he replied, "if you know not that I would not touch the lass for harm with so much as the tip of my little finger."
"Doubtless, doubtless," said Scarlett, dryly, "yet it would astonish me mightily if even that would satisfy your Mistress Kate of the Lashes – aye, or in troth if such extreme continence greatly pleasures the lass herself!"
To this Wat disdained any answer, but went on piling the sand and setting the square stones in order.
Presently the Little Marie came running very fast along the bottom of the dells, which hereabouts wimpled mazily in and out with nooks and cunning passages everywhere, so that they constituted the excellentest places in the world for playing hide-and-seek. Taking both her hands, which she stretched up to him, Wat pulled the girl lightly over the new defences, and when she was a little recovered from her race, she told them that the enemy could be seen scouting by twos and threes along the edge of the forest, and even venturing a little way towards them into the sandy waste of the dunes. But they had not as yet found the horses, nor begun to explore the sandy hollows where an ambush might lie hidden behind every ridge.
"It is Haxo the Bull who leads them," she said, "for the others are none so keen on the work. But he goes among them vaunting and prating of the brave rewards which his master will give, and how the State also will pay largely for the capture of the traitor and prison-breaker."
"How near by did you see him?" asked Wat.
"He was within twenty paces of me as I lay behind a bush of broom," she said, "and had it not been for the men who were with him, and the fear that they might have marked me down as I ran, I had given him as good as I gave his master."
And with the utmost calmness the Little Marie unslung the dags or horse-pistols from her side, and took out the long keen dagger with which she had wounded Barra as he mounted at his own door to ride after his prisoner.
So, perched on this shadeless shelter they waited hour after hour, while the sun beat pitilessly down on them. The heat grew sullenly oppressive. A dizzy, glimmering haze quivered over the sand-hills, and made it difficult to see clearly more than a few hundred yards in any direction.
Wat and Scarlett desired the girl to rest a while under the shadow of the rude hut in the corner.
"But then I could not watch for the coming of your enemies, my captain," she said, as if that settled the matter.
And when Wat repeated his request, Marie looked so unhappy that they had perforce to allow her to stand on guard equally with themselves.
And indeed, as it proved, it was the Little Marie whose sharp eyes first saw their opponents tracking stealthily along the sandy bottoms between them and the forest. The pursuers seemed to be ten or twelve in number, and they came scouting cautiously here and there through the hollows, running briskly to the tops of the higher dunes, and looking eagerly all about them for the footprints of men or horses in the looser sand.
Before Scarlett or Wat could stop her – indeed, before either of them so much as suspected her intention, the Little Marie had climbed over the wall on the side farthest from the enemy but nearest to the sea. In a moment she had run deftly down among the ruts and hiding-places of the dells. With wonderful skill she threaded her way towards the approaching miscreants, without letting them catch a single glimpse of her. Indeed, even from their watch-tower on the top of the dune, it was as much as Wat and Scarlett could do to keep her in sight through the wavering glimmer of the heated air.
Presently, as they lay behind their defences, each in his own rude shelter, Wat and Scarlett could see her crouch low in a little cuplike depression upon the height of a dune overlooking the track by which the enemy must come. The girl lay motionless, with her body flat to the ground, like a cat which makes ready for the pounce; and they could see the sun of the afternoon wink on the steel barrels of her pistols as on dewy holly leaves.
Soon the vanguard of Haxo's little army came scouting and scenting along. The men kept signalling and crying, keeping touch with one another and making believe to search the wilderness of sand and bent with marvellous exactitude and care.
The foremost of them had just passed the hillock on the top of which Marie lay when "Crack! crack!" a couple of pistol-shots rang out loudly on the slumberous air. One man pitched heavily forward on his face, while another and younger man spun round like a rabbit, bent himself double, clawed convulsively at the sand, and then slowly collapsed across the path.
The scattered trackers here and there about the mounds and hollows stood rooted to the ground with vague alarm at the sight. Some of them, indeed, put their heads down and ran up the hill of sand from which the shots had come. But when they reached the summit all they saw was the reek of burned powder lazily dispersing in the hot haze of the afternoon, while upon the dune's extremest edge were the marks of a pair of elbows in the sand, where Marie had reclined as she took aim.
But of their dangerous assailant they found no further trace. For immediately upon firing Marie had snatched her pistols and descended into the winding lane of sand at the back of the dune. Then, being perfectly acquainted with her line of communication, and mindful ever to keep upon the shady side, she glided from shelter to shelter with the silence and skill of one bred to such guerilla warfare.
Haxo and his party were manifestly discouraged by their misfortune, and still more by the immunity of their unseen foe. What had happened once might very well happen again. Nevertheless, trusting to their numbers, they came on with still more infinite pains, Haxo himself climbing a high dune and crying directions to his men how they were to advance by this pass and that dell, in which from his post of vantage he could be certain that no enemy lurked.
CHAPTER XX
CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN
Marie had made good her retreat till she halted within a few hundred yards of the little fort where Wat and Scarlett kept their watch. Here she lay crouched behind a bush of broom which had escaped the general destruction as the shifting sand advanced, and which had made good its position by associating itself with stubborn clumps of pink and sea-holly. For these are both brave, self-helpful plants, and can bind the sand together with their own proper roots without the aid of bent-grass. Behind this ambuscade Marie crouched, and Wat would have descended to her assistance but that Scarlett forcibly withheld him.
"Lie still, man; can ye not bide and watch? It is as bonny as a painted picture. Think you that our muckle clumsy bodies could run and hide as featly? I trow not! Let the lass do her own ways. She has, indeed, a very pretty notion of war – aye, far better than many of our boasted generals, and nigh hand as good as the prince himself. For, to my thinking, there is more generalship in delaying and harassing the advance of a superior force than in defeating an equal number with trumpets, drums, and all the paraphernalia of war."
So, in obedience to Scarlett, and also because the girl's quick manœuvres at once astonished and fascinated him, Wat abode still where he was. But his eyes were chained to the slight form of the Little Marie, who lay behind the broom perfectly plain to them from their fortress eminence, but wholly hidden from the line of the enemy's advance. It seemed an unconscionable time before the pursuers came near, because on this occasion they took the utmost precautions to avoid surprise; and it was not till Haxo himself had ascended the knoll within thirty feet of where the girl lay that the foremost of the approaching skirmishers came within range.
But Marie was either so careless of her life or so sure of the line of her retreat that she appeared to pick and choose deliberately among her enemies. The persons of many of them were doubtless well known to her, and it is possible that she had private scores to pay off while thus fighting the battles of Wat and Scarlett.
Presently one of her pistols spoke again and a third man fell wounded. Haxo stood up to mark the spot from which the reek of the powder floated lazily into the air, and as he did so, Marie, wheeling about on her elbows, steadied her weapon on the edge of the sand between the broom-bush and the sea-holly. It cracked, and Haxo, with a cry of anger and pain, clapped his hand upon his ankle, for all the world like a boy that runs barefoot and whose toe meets a stone unexpectedly.
But this time it was impossible for Marie to conceal the line of her flight. She had to make a considerable detour to the right; for, in order to pick her men, she had allowed some of the enemy to pass her by, and these now bent hastily round to intercept her. The rest, following Haxo's frenzied directions as he leaped and swore with the pain of his hurt, pursued with might and main, getting glimpses of her as she ran. For on this occasion Marie took no care whatever to keep to the bottoms, but on the contrary chose the hardest surface and the most direct road for the shore, as though she had been fleeing to a boat which lay in waiting at the sea edge.
It was soon obvious that this was the idea of the pursuers, for those on the left who had passed her place of ambush exerted themselves to reach the shingle of the beach by the narrow and deep defile in front of the wall of the fort. They paused occasionally to fire, and cheered and shouted all the time in order to encourage one another – which doubtless they were much in need of, for it must have been most discomfortable to see their comrades dropping here and there about them without so much as the pleasure of getting a shot at the assailant.
Then for the first time Wat and Scarlett perceived whither Marie was leading the enemy. Ever as she came nearer she raised her arm and waved them to be ready. But with what they were to be ready did not appear, unless with their pistols, to have a chance at the rascals as they passed under the wall. Yet it was not a place favorable for pistol practice, because at that point the wall was broken down and fully thirty feet of it completely undermined and tottering to its fall.
"The wall, the wall! Push down the wall!" cried Marie, as she came almost underneath it.
It was Scarlett who first grasped her idea. Wat on his part was too much astonished at the daring and address of this girl to be capable of more than a vague, gaping wonderment.
"Quick, Wat!" cried Scarlett; "it must be the overhanging wall she means. See you not that these fellows, being ignorant of our presence, it is a thousand chances to one that for ease of road and haste to get before the lass to keep her away from the sea, they will take the path through the ravine and pass immediately underneath the wall?"
"And what of that?" asked Wat.
"What of that? Why, man, what is come of your ancient contrivance, your wise shifts, your forethought? How will you ever find your love if your wits are so moidered, before ever ye leave this dull Dutch country?"
"Faith, and I see it not yet," cried Wat, looking over at the chase more bewildered than ever.
"Why, she means that we are to push the wall over upon them when they come, I'll wager," said Scarlett.
"And so destroy our only defences; it is, indeed, a wise ploy!" cried Wat, scornfully.
"Hush, man, and come help. We may annihilate the whole crew at a blow," said the old soldier, who had no petty scruples about ways and means; "an enemy dead is a friend the more, however he come by his end."
Scarlett and Wat stole to the wall and peeped cautiously over. The ill-laid and mouldered stones tottered even as they leaned against them; one or two rattled into the defile as they looked down. The heads of the pursuers were just appearing at the entrance of the dell. One of them was training his piece to shoot it off at the girl, who ran lightly as at a frolic a hundred yards in front.
Without a suspicion of danger the assailants came posting along.
"Now, with all your might!" cried Scarlett, when he saw the villains exactly underneath. He could plainly descry the same four men who had sat about the table in the Hostel of the Coronation, and some of the others also who had flocked in thither to join the fray.
So without further word Wat and Scarlett set their thews to the wall; and between them, panting with the long chase and grimed with powder, where the touchhole had spat up in her face, the Little Marie threw herself on the parapet to help on the catastrophe with all her feeble strength.
The wall swayed in a piece and quivered a moment on the verge ere it fell with a prodigious crash upon the straggling file of men in the deep defile below. A hoarse, confused cry was heard, running up, as the pursuers too late recognized their danger, into a shriek of agony. Then a thick cloud of dust and sand arose, which prevented those in the redoubt from seeing the effect of their stratagem. Presently from the gap they could see a few limping stragglers disentangle their disabled bodies from the ruins, and make haste to put as much space as possible between themselves and the unseen dangers which beset them on every side on these wide, unwholesome dunes.
The Little Marie stood erect in the breach. She held her pistols in her hand and marked down the survivors as they ran.
"Let them go, Marie," cried Wat; "they are powerless to harm us now!"
Wat's heart was a little turned to pity by the wholesale destruction wrought beneath his eyes by the falling of the wall; but Marie's eyes only glistened the more brightly with excitement and the light of battle.
"But they are your enemies, my captain!" said Marie, evidently surprised at his words. Then very coolly she went on loading her pistols.
"Stand down, Marie," cried Wat, "or they will surely do you an injury. I saw a man's head behind yon highest dune."
"I care not so be they kill me outright. I do not want to be only wounded," answered the Little Marie, laughing recklessly. Nevertheless, she began obediently to descend.
Wat's warning came too late. Haxo himself, full of bitterness and foaming with the desire for vengeance, had managed to limp near enough to witness the destruction of his men in the defile. While the girl was priming her pistols, he had taken careful aim. Now he fired.
Marie gave a low, quick cry and put her hand to her breast to feel where the wound was. Then she steadied herself and attempted to go on with the preparation of her pistol.
But with a little moan of pain she sank back into Wat's arms, who gently laid her down in the shade of the wall. Scarlett brought her water in the brim of his broad hat. He sprinkled it on her face. A brief examination showed that Haxo's bullet had struck the girl an inch above the left breast. Scarlett and Wat looked squarely at each other. The significance of that single glance was not lost on the Little Marie.
A bright look of manifest joy instantly overspread her face.
"I am glad – very glad," she said, fighting a little with her utterance; "lift me up so that I may tell you. I am glad that I am to die. Yes, I know it. I wished nothing else. I tried so hard to die to-day, my captain, fighting your enemies; for I knew that I should never see you again, that you would sail away without a thought for the Little Marie who wrought so hard to take you out of prison. I knew that you were going to seek one whom you love, and that I could not come with you. But now I can keep you – keep you all, till it is time for me to go away."
She put an arm up about Wat's neck as he bent over her and drew his head down.
"Only this once," she said, smiling. "Even she would not be angry, for she has all – I nothing. And it is right – right – oh! so right. For you could not love the Little Marie – wife and mother she could not be; her life had been wicked – yet her heart was not all bad. And oh! but she loved you – yes, she loved you so dear. She could not help that – nor could you, my captain. Forgive Marie for loving you. But, then, you should not have spoken so graciously to the poor girl to whom none ever spoke kindly or gently."
Wat bent over the girl.
"You have, indeed, been brave and good," he said; "we truly love you for what you have done. Presently we will take you to a kindly house where you shall be nursed – "
"Nay, my captain," she whispered, smiling up at him gladly, "it is kind – yes, most sweet to hear you speak thus. But it is better that the Little Marie should die out here with your arm about her, and before the sun of this happy day goes quite down. Ah, if she had stayed in the fields always she might have been better, purer, perhaps – who knows? But then she had never known you, my captain. Maybe it is better as it is. At least, it is good to have known one true man."
She was silent a space. Wat tried hard to remember a prayer. Scarlett whistled a marching tune under his breath to keep from angry, rebellious weeping. The dying girl spoke again.
"Do not quite forget the Little Marie," she said; "her heart would not have been all bad – if only you had been there sooner to teach her how to be good."
She smiled up at him with eyes over which a pale, filmy haze was gathering. She put her hand a little farther about his neck and so brought her face nearer to his.
"Did I not lead them well?" she said, eagerly and gladly; "tell me – even she could not have done it better! Ah! love, but this is passing sweet," she went on, more slowly and plaintively; "it is good to be held up thus, and to watch death coming to me so softly, almost sweetly. Dear, just say once that what I did was well done, and that no one at all could have done it better for you."
"None has ever done so much for me, none so given all for me, as you have done, Little Marie!" murmured Wat, his tears dropping down on the pale face of the girl – who, if she had sinned greatly, had also greatly loved.
"It is true, and I am glad," she said again, "even your love of loves herself could do no more than die for you!"
Her smile fixed itself. Her eyes grew hazier, but their long, still look stayed intently and happily upon Wat's face. Murmuring a prayer, he bent and kissed the fair brow that was now growing cold as marble. At the touch of his lips a light, as from a paradise beyond, flamed up for a moment in the girl's eyes. Her smile grew infinitely sweeter, and the rigid lines of pain about the mouth relaxed.
"My captain – O my captain!" she whispered, sweetly as a little child that closes its eyes and nestles into sleep upon a loving shoulder.