In Direst Peril Part 6

"The same, sir," he answered, in a voice which I shall never forget. "I know from my faithful friend here, to whom I am indebted, but I cannot distinguish my friends as yet."

"This is the Honorable George Brunow, sir," I said, "and I am Captain Fyffe, at your service."

"Mr. Brunow," he responded, raising his forage-cap and bowing, "Captain Fyffe, my dear friend Corporal Hinge, I am without words to thank you.

G.o.d knows I thank you in my heart!"

His voice failed him altogether then, and we all sat silent for a time.

"What are we waiting for?" asked Brunow. "Every minute is precious. Let us push along."

"You see the ford," I answered. "It may be pa.s.sable in an hour, now that the storm has ceased; but at present--"

"Great G.o.d!" cried Brunow, with a savage impatience in his tone.

"Why didn't we cross by the bridge? We could have made four times the distance by the road!"

"It was a mistake as things have turned out," I answered; "but we both thought it best when we talked things over the night before last."

"I never thought it best!" cried Brunow, fuming. "Hark! What the devil's that?"

There was no need to call our attention to the sound, for everybody heard it. There was no need to ask what it was, for it was impossible to mistake it. It was the sound of a cannon from the fortress. We stared at each other in the uncertain light.

"That's my fault, gentlemen," said Hinge, calmly. "They've found the stable sentry, and he's told 'em what has happened. He came up, sir,"

addressing himself to me, "just as the count was climbing out o' window.

I knocked him on the 'ead of course, but they go the rounds at midnight, and they've come across him. Not a doubt about it."

Just as he finished speaking another gun sounded. We were between three and four miles away, but in the stillness of the night it seemed much nearer.

"And with a good road under us we might by this time have been within half a dozen miles of the frontier and safe."

"Safe?" said Hinge. "Quite so, sir. Safe to run into the ground at the toll-gate, sir. We're a lot better off where we are. I know Captain Fyffe's plan, sir, and it's the best whatever happens."

"Gentlemen," said the count, "let us dismount and rest our horses. We may have need of all that they can do for us."

A third gun banged from the distant battery. The river was raging before us. The clouds parted, and the full moon shone down with a light almost as clear as that of day.

CHAPTER VI

Pursuit was afoot, and what should be done to avoid it no man among us could guess. The foaming river ran in such volume that only madness would have attempted to ford it. Flight was cut off, and of course resistance was hopeless. The first place our pursuers would make for would be the bridge and the ford, since they were the only roads by which we could hope to reach the frontier. To take to the mountains would have been a purposeless folly. We could look for nothing but starvation and ultimate surrender there.

Happily for myself I was in my element again. We were forced into inaction once more, but it was a form of inaction which differed from that weary waiting which had so torn my nerves for the past eight-and-forty hours.

"I suppose, gentlemen," I said, "that, in any case, surrender is out of the question."

"I decline," cried Brunow, "to be the victim of your folly. If you had taken the road we should have been out of danger long ago. You choose to be caught like a rat in a trap, and I wash my hands of the whole business. I shall walk back to the inn."

He was already in the act of dismounting, when Hinge spoke.

"I wonder," he said, very dryly, "what them Austrians will think of the gentleman as brought the letter from the general?"

Brunow settled back in his saddle with a m.u.f.fled exclamation, and spoke no more.

"Gentlemen," said the count, "if there is any possible way of escape without me I beseech you to take it."

n.o.body answered. We sat for a long time in silence, and the river roared by. We strained our ears to listen, but not a sound reached us from the direction of the fortress. The night, late so stormy, was quite light and quiet. An intense silence reigned on the hills, and not a sound was heard but the noise of the tumbling, hurrying water near at hand.

When I had gone to look at the ford I had taken keen note of everything, for to have mistaken the spot might have been fatal to us, even if no pursuit had been started. I had noticed a rock which stood in mid-stream about a score of yards above the ford, rising some four feet above the level of the stream. When we had reached the water-side this rock had been invisible, and I could only guess how deeply it was covered. I noticed on a sudden that its forehead was bare once more, and I stared at it with my heart in my eyes until I was persuaded that it was growing above water every instant. The river ran in this spot in a perfect torrent, with an incline, I should say, of nearly three feet in a hundred. The stream bore off the rainfall of a whole net-work of hills, but at the pace at which it ran it could not take long before it would become pa.s.sable at some risk. I said nothing as yet, but the conversation I had held with Lieutenant Breschia on the morning of our first meeting filled my mind with hope. The torrent seemed no less noisy, but measuring it by the projecting arms of the rock I could see that it was falling with a greater rapidity than I had dared to hope for. Within ten minutes it had dropped six iuches, but for the next ten minutes it hung stationary; and sometimes to my fancy seemed to gain.

The thousand mountain rills and watercourses which helped to fill its bed, and which had themselves been latest to receive the rainfall, were charging down with new forces; and thinking of this I almost surrendered myself to despair. But I had not even yet given way, when the volume of water fell with an astonis.h.i.+ng suddenness, and in little more than five minutes by my watch I could see a foot of the rock clear.

At ordinary times the ford was about a foot deep, and even then the rapid incline of the ground sent the shallow water swirling along at such a pace that it made a horse's foothold on the sliding pebbles precarious. Now it was four feet deep at least, and to cross at present was as impossible as it had been half an hour before. But as I watched it became more and more evident that the stream had received its last impetus, and the very element of speed which made the pa.s.sage dangerous would diminish danger every moment.

The river seemed to grow noisier as it fell, chafing against obstacles which it had hitherto overflowed, and listen as one might we could make out nothing but its sullen roar. I told Hinge what I had noticed about the stream, and with a few words to my companions I rode until the noise of rus.h.i.+ng water was no longer oppressive to the ear, and listened with all my might. I heard a thousand distant-seeming noises, which had in them no reality--shoutings and stealthy whispers, the thud and jingle of cantering troops of horse, lonely far-away footfalls, all manner of phantom sounds. Suddenly, in the midst of these illusions, my heart stood still for a mere half-beat at a noise which I knew in an instant to be real. A troop of cavalry at a gallop crossed the wooden bridge which spanned the river a couple of miles away. It sounded like a peal of thunder, but I knew what it meant well enough. The pursuers would be ahead of us, and every pa.s.s and pathway would be threaded, and guards would be everywhere.

Half an hour pa.s.sed away without bringing anything further, and I rode back to the ford. All three of my companions were watching it with an absorbed and gloomy interest, and the rock by which I marked the fall of the stream stood a clear three feet above its surface.

"Let us try it now," I counselled, and was heading my horse at the water, when Hinge interposed.

"What's the depth, sir?" he called out to me.

"About two feet," I answered.

"Then I shall wade," said Hinge. "It 'll give the hoss more confidence, and I'll back leather against iron for a foothold."

I saw the force of his advice, and, dismounting, I stepped cautiously down into the stream. At first the rush of water carried me off my legs, and if it had not been that I had firm hold of the reins, and that my horse still stood on dry land, my share in the enterprise would in all probability have been then and there over. As it was I succeeded in regaining a foothold; but though the stream reached only to mid-thigh, it swept along with such violence that I had all my work cut out to stand against it. My horse, encouraged by hand and voice, came tremblingly after me, and the others followed. The stiffest bit of all the crossing lay at the point where the rush of water diverted by the rock caught us, and here we were at the deepest. This spot once pa.s.sed we were under partial shelter, and from the centre of the stream the bank rose so rapidly that in half a dozen yards we were scarcely knee deep. We gained the farther bank and remounted, and then I called a council of war.

"I have already gone over the ground we shall have to travel," I began, "and we ought to be within three hours of safety. But the alarm has been given, and we shall find every pa.s.s guarded. What is to be done?"

"Sir," said the count, "I have no claim upon you or your companions.

I thank you from my heart for your brave attempt in my behalf. But the fates are against us. For my own part, I counsel that we resign the struggle, and that you do your best to cross the frontier singly. I shall not be taken alive."

"There is no going back," I answered. "It is no safer now to abandon the enterprise than to go on with it. We are not likely to be intercepted until we reach the pa.s.s. My advice is that we ride as far as we dare, and then take to the hills on foot, avoiding the pa.s.ses. We shall have a scramble for it, but life and liberty are worth that."

"Neither life nor liberty should have been in danger," said Brunow, sullenly. "It is your fault if they are, and if I lose either through your folly, on your head be it."

I reminded him that we had laid our plans together, and that they had had his full approval; but he was not in a mood to listen to reason, and I got no answer from him but a grunt of anger and disdain. The council of war had not served any very great purpose so far, and I turned away with a touch of desperation in my mind. I rode on, and the others followed. We skirted a wood which stretched from the river towards the nearest range of hills, and our horses' footfall on the turf, sodden as it was by the recent raiu, made hardly a sound. We kept well in shadow, and had advanced perhaps a couple of miles, when I made out the highway at a little distance looking like a broad ribbon in the moonlight.

Suddenly a bugle-call shrilled on the air, and while we shrank closer into the shadow of the trees a tumult of hoof-beats filled the quiet night, and a whole squadron of cavalry came in sight, riding full tilt in the direction of the fortress. We could feel the reverberation caused by the galloping ma.s.s beneath us, and in a minute they were out of sight and almost out of hearing.

"That's a curious thing, sir," said Hinge, speaking almost at my ear.

"What is a curious thing?" I asked.

"That is," he replied, stretching out a hand in the direction of the vanished body of hors.e.m.e.n. "They've left n.o.body to guard the roads."

"How do you know that?" I asked, eagerly.

"I counted 'em as they went by," he answered. "There's every mounted man they've got in the place. They're all there down to the farriers. I'm a born fool, I am," he added, in an accent of the greatest delight.