"THE RAPIDS DROVE HER ONWARDS AT A HEADLONG PACE"
All this went through his mind like a dream, for the duration of the passage was brief. When it seemed that he could endure the thunderous echoing in his ears no longer, when the crashing of the boat was most violent, when the water poured over him in a cascade, light flashed upon his eyes, a brown burned landscape spread out before him, he saw a thicket with a green bank of grass before it, a village lying in a hollow upon his right hand, a distant view of purple hills and white-misted sky. And at this he stood up again and grasped his pole, as the punt was swung gently through meadow-land.
"Prince," he cried joyfully, "we're through it now; here's the open country again!"
"What do you see?" asked the man, sitting up.
"A great stretch of burned meadow-land, and a wood upon the left bank—but halloa!"
"Well——"
"There are two soldiers lying by the river!"
XXVIII. THE HARBOUR OF THE POOL
The punt was now travelling so swiftly that the lad had scarce time to throw himself down before the whole of the danger was apparent. The two infantry-men were lying upon a bank of grass at the border of a thicket; their rifles were nesting against the trunk of a chestnut-tree; there were the embers of a fire smouldering; a couple of empty wine-bottles had rolled from the place of picnic to the very edge of the stream; but the men themselves were fast in sleep, their heads covered with their forage-caps, and their sandals showing in the grass as the shoes of men who lie flat upon their backs in the enjoyment of unbroken rest.
"Prince," said he," there are only two of them, and they're sleeping!"
"Are you sure of that?" whispered Messenger.
"There's no doubt of it. I can see their feet sticking up in the grass, and they've pulled their hats over their eyes."
"Then set the boat in the straight, and drop when you're near enough. If she's in the middle of the stream, she should go down easy. What's the river here?"
"Twenty yards, and thick with rushes," replied Fisher; "but the current's huge."
"All the better; we'll go the faster!"
He said no more, but waited expectantly while Fisher kept the craft off the reeds, and let her go swinging down the very centre of the water-way. They were now within fifty yards of the sentries; but still the sleepers lay motionless, the flies buzzing about their ears, the shade deep upon their faces. Would they wake? The lad's brain was on fire as he asked the question.
At the very foot of the thicket's bank, bush and bramble flourished, spreading upon the water. The river here ran almost at a level with the meadows, but was thick with weeds at it's shallow sides; and when the punt came quite to the place where the sentries lay, she touched the long grasses and ground over them with a sound of scraping which made the two within her shiver as men struck with cold. So loud was the noise of her passage that one of the sentries turned in his sleep, and then sat up on his hams dreamily. Had it not been for the thick bush which lay between the stream and his camping-place the voyage would have ended upon the spot; but it chanced that the tangle of weeds held the punt momentarily still; the noise ceased; the man saw nothing; he kicked his companion, swore at him, drank something from a bottle, and composed himself to sleep again. Then Fisher, who lay in the prow like a cat, used his arms with silent strength, and thrust the unwieldy tub again into the stream, where she was caught quickly and whirled onward through the meadows of maize to the heart of the great valley below the mountains.
For another hour the weary men endured the confinement of the punt and the full heat of the unclouded sun. They said little to one another, for the reaction of the excitement was strong upon them; nor did they see a single soldier, or pass any other village, until they were three or four miles from the first coming-out of the tunnel. But, an hour after noon they entered a great pool, which Fisher called a glade of the waters—a pool arched over with poplars and tropic-like leaves, and bordered with ripe green banks which were almost hid by the blue and the scarlet and the yellow of innumerable flowers. So seductive was the haven, so full of dreamy, silence, so alluring to one who could scarce stand with fatigue, that Fisher brought the punt against its banks, and, not daring to tell all its delights to a man who could see none of them, he said—
"There's a fine place to land, if yon think it's time."
"It's time enough, if the place is right," said the man. "What will there be on the banks here?"
"There's an open wood to your left hand, and a thicket upon the far shore. From what I can see of it a road should pass near the trees here."
"Let's get out, then. I shall die of cramp if I lie here another hour; but you'll have to set my feet on the banks, and you won't be leaving me—to reconnoitre or any thing like that?"
"I'll not leave you a minute," said Fisher; "it's my promise."
The man mumbled something and took the hand stretched out to him. His fear of solitude was, both then and for months afterwards, one of the most curious symptoms of his infliction. The dark in which henceforth he was to live so acted upon his nerves that he could hardly compel himself to let Fisher leave him even for the space of a minute. He slept with his companion's arm near to his; and now, when he had come ashore, and lay down upon the soft grass, he had no rest until the lad took one of his hands and held it. And so, with their heads pillowed upon the grass, and the shade of the willows to give them cool, the two, worn and weary, and very near to tears, slept though the heat of the day, and until the angelus was ringing in the villages.
XXIX. MATTERS OF HISTORY
In looking back upon the many scenes which I have been able to set about the tragedy of Arnold Messenger and his associates, I mind me that I have spoken little—nor was other course possible—of the English and the European view of this most daring emprise, and of the means which the authorities in many countries took to combat it. Yet, for the fuller understanding of the ultimate issue, and for the realization of many things now lying in mystery, it is necessary that something should be said upon pages well back in the record, and upon certain episodes which are but mentioned in the writing.
For these things English newspapers are my clearest authority, and I find in them a very exact account of much that I have dealt with, and of other matters about which Messenger himself had no complete knowledge. He, on his part, was not able, until he met the Spanish woman, to understand how pursuit first came upon him; wanting the information simply because he did not know that the Irish mate of the tug Admiral was picked up, with Conyers, whom he had freed, by the steamer that loomed upon the horizon at the very moment the little vessel cocked her stern above the North Sea. Had this been plain to him he would have anticipated the sequence. The two men, being carried by the steamer to Bergen, wired thence news of the deed to London, and the whole city was stirred almost as by the story of a war.
To Capel, Martingale & Co. the tidings came as a blow which shook the house to its foundations. The head himself, shamed at the fall of his nephew, Sydney Capel, was henceforth little else but a broken man whose wits were gone. But his partners worked like slaves to avert their loss, and to hunt down those responsible for it. All the vast influence of the great firm was brought to bear upon governments and upon police. Skilled detectives left for Lisbon, for Paris, for Monte-Video. Cruisers were sent to scour the North Sea, the common belief being that Kenner's yacht was running for Holland or for Norway; other cruisers searched the Channel; others, again, the coast of Ireland, though these were few, since no man seems to have anticipated the yacht's flight round the capes