“Confusion!” cried the major, “he has escaped us.”
“He is yonder,” said Paterson, pointing out Turpin moving swiftly through the steaming meadow. “See, he makes again for the road — he clears the fence. A regular throw he has given us, by the Lord!”
“Nobly done, by Heaven!” cried the major. “With all his faults, I honor the fellow’s courage and admire his prowess. He’s already ridden to-night as I believe never man rode before. I would not have ventured to slide down that wall, for it’s nothing else, with the enemy at my heels. What say you, gentlemen, have you had enough? Shall we let him go, or ——?”
“As far as chase goes, I don’t care if we bring the matter to a conclusion,” said Titus. “I don’t think, as it is, that I shall have a sate to sit on this week to come. I’ve lost leather most confoundedly.”
“What says Mr. Coates?” asked Paterson. “I look to him.”
“Then mount, and off,” cried Coates. “Public duty requires that we should take him.”
“And private pique,” returned the major. “No matter! The end is the same. Justice shall be satisfied. To your steeds, my merry men all. Hark, and away.”
Once more upon the move, Titus forgot his distress, and addressed himself to the attorney, by whose side he rode.
“What place is that we’re coming to?” asked he, pointing to a cluster of moonlit spires belonging to a town they were rapidly approaching.
“Stamford,” replied Coates.
“Stamford!” exclaimed Titus; “by the powers! then we’ve ridden a matter of ninety miles. Why, the great deeds of Redmond O’Hanlon were nothing to this! I’ll remember it to my dying day, and with reason,” added he, uneasily shifting his position on the saddle.
CHAPTER 9
EXCITEMENT
How fled what moonshine faintly showed! How fled what darkness hid! How fled the earth beneath their feet, The heaven above their head.
William and Helen.
Dick Turpin, meanwhile, held bravely on his course. Bess was neither strained by her gliding passage down the slippery hill-side nor shaken by larking the fence in the meadow. As Dick said, “It took a devilish deal to take it out of her.” On regaining the high road she resumed her old pace, and once more they were distancing Time’s swift chariot in its whirling passage o’er the earth. Stamford, and the tongue of Lincoln’s fenny shire, upon which it is situated, were passed almost in a breath. Rutland is won and passed, and Lincolnshire once more entered. The road now verged within a bowshot of that sporting Athens — Corinth, perhaps, we should say — Melton Mowbray. Melton was then unknown to fame, but, as if inspired by that furor venaticus which now inspires all who come within twenty miles of this Charybdis of the chase, Bess here let out in a style with which it would have puzzled the best Leicestershire squire’s best prad to have kept pace. The spirit she imbibed through the pores of her skin, and the juices of the meat she had champed, seemed to have communicated preternatural excitement to her. Her pace was absolutely terrific. Her eyeballs were dilated, and glowed like flaming carbuncles; while her widely-distended nostril seemed, in the cold moonshine, to snort forth smoke, as from a hidden fire. Fain would Turpin have controlled her; but, without bringing into play all his tremendous nerve, no check could be given her headlong course, and for once, and the only time in her submissive career, Bess resolved to have her own way — and she had it. Like a sensible fellow, Dick conceded the point. There was something even of conjugal philosophy in his self-communion upon the occasion. “E’en let her take her own way and be hanged to her, for an obstinate, self-willed jade as she is,” said he: “now her back is up there’ll be no stopping her, I’m sure: she rattles away like a woman’s tongue, and when that once begins, we all know what chance the curb has. Best to let her have it out, or rather to lend her a lift. ’Twill be over the sooner. Tantivy, lass! tantivy! I know which of us will tire first.”
We have before said that the vehement excitement of continued swift riding produces a paroxysm in the sensorium amounting to delirium. Dick’s blood was again on fire. He was first giddy, as after a deep draught of kindling spirit; this passed off, but the spirit was still in his veins — the estro was working in his brain. All his ardor, his eagerness, his fury, returned. He rode like one insane, and his courser partook of his frenzy. She bounded; she leaped; she tore up the ground beneath her; while Dick gave vent to his exultation in one wild, prolonged halloo. More than half his race is run. He has triumphed over every difficulty. He will have no further occasion to halt. Bess carries her forage along with her. The course is straightforward — success seems certain — the goal already reached — the path of glory won. Another wild halloo, to which the echoing woods reply, and away!
Away! away! thou matchless steed! yet brace fast thy sinews — hold, hold thy breath, for, alas! the goal is not yet attained!
But forward! forward, on they go,
High snorts the straining steed,
Thick pants the rider’s laboring breath,
As headlong on they speed!
CHAPTER 10
THE GIBBET
See there, see there, what yonder swings And creaks ‘mid whistling rain, Gibbet and steel — the accursed wheel — A murderer in his chain.
William and Helen.
As the eddying currents sweep over its plains in howling, bleak December, the horse and her rider passed over what remained of Lincolnshire. Grantham is gone, and they are now more slowly looking up the ascent of Gonerby Hill, a path well known to Turpin; where often, in bygone nights, many a purse had changed its owner. With that feeling of independence and exhilaration which every one feels, we believe, on having climbed the hill-side, Turpin turned to gaze around. There was triumph in his eye. But the triumph was checked as his glance fell upon a gibbet near him to the right, on the round point of hill which is a landmark to the wide vale of Belvoir. Pressed as he was for time, Dick immediately struck out of the road, and approached the spot where it stood. Two scarecrow objects, covered with rags and rusty links of chains, depended from the tree. A night crow screaming around the carcases added to the hideous effect of the scene. Nothing but the living highwayman and his skeleton brethren was visible upon the solitary spot. Around him was the lonesome waste of hill, o’erlooking the moonlit valley: beneath his feet, a patch of bare and lightning-blasted sod: above, the wan, declining moon and skies, flaked with ghostly clouds; before him, the bleached bodies of the murderers, for such they were.
“Will this be my lot, I marvel?” said Dick, looking upwards, with an involuntary shudder.
“Ay, marry will it,” rejoined a crouching figure, suddenly springing from beside a tuft of briars that skirted the blasted ground.
Dick started in his saddle, while Bess reared and plunged at the sight of this unexpected apparition.
“What, ho! thou devil’s dam, Barbara, is it thou?” exclaimed Dick, reassured upon discovering it was the gipsy queen, and no spectre whom he beheld. “Stand still, Bess — stand, lass. What dost thou here, mother of darkness? Art gathering mandrakes for thy poisonous messes, or pilfering flesh from the dead? Meddle not with their bones, or I will drive thee hence. What dost thou here, I say, old dam of the gibbet?”
“I