CHAPTER XIX
THE BATTLE OF THE DUNES
Haxo and his forces were not in a condition to follow too closely afterthe three. The chance medley for which they had pined was come, andthat without their seeking. The rascals had gone out to do one partof their master's will. The shipping of a lass over-seas was no doubta pretty piece of work enough, and would be well paid for; but theslaying of Wat Gordon and Jack Scarlett, their ancient adversaries ofthe Hostel of the Coronation, was a job ten times more to the fit oftheir stomachs.
Thus it was with Haxo and his immediate followers.
But the fatigues of the evening and the good liquor of Lis-op-Zee hadrendered most of the chief butcher's men somewhat loath to leave theirvarious haunts and hiding-places. Moreover, their horses were stabledhere and there throughout the village, so that Wat and his companionshad a good start of a quarter of an hour ere Haxo, furious and foamingwith anger at the delay, and burning with the desire for revenge, couldfinally 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 pointsinnumerable. The sun rose over the woods through which they had passed,and its level, heatless rays beat upon the crescent over-curl of thesand-waves as on the foam of a breaker when it bends to the fall.
"See you any stronghold where we may keep ourselves against theserascals, if they manage to attack us?" cried Wat, from the hollow up toScarlett, who had the higher ground.
"Pshaw!" he returned, "what need to speak of escape? They will followthe track of the horses as easily as a road with finger-posts. Find usthey will. Better that we should betake us to some knowe-top, where, atleast, 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 takingtheir weapons they left their weary beasts tethered to a blighted stumpof a tree which the sands had surrounded and killed. Here the animalswere to some extent concealed by the nature of the ground, unless thepursuers should approach very near or ascend the summits of the highestridges in the neighborhood.
The young girl had all along betrayed no anxiety, nor showed so much asa 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 andswiftly on foot, keeping ever to that part of the ridge where the bentygrass had bound the sands most closely together. Now they ascendedso as to take the loose sandy pass between two ridges. Again theydescended into the cool bottoms where the sun had not yet penetrated,and where a bite of chill air still lingered in the shadows, while thedew 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 issuedout upon the outermost sea edge, and heard the waves crisping andchattering on a curving beach of pebble. The ruins of an ancientwatch-tower crowned a neighboring hillock. Doubtless it had been aredoubt or petty fortalice against the Spaniards, built in the olddays of the Beggars. It was now almost ruinous, and at one point thewall threatened momentarily to give way. For the wind had underminedthe shifting foundations, and part of the masonry seemed actually tooverhang the narrow defile of sand and coarse grass through which thelittle party passed.
"Think ye that tower anywise defensible?" asked Marie, pointing up atit with her finger.
Without answering at once, Scarlett climbed up to the foot of the walland, skirting it to the broken-down gateway, he entered.
"It will make about as notable a defence as half a dozen able-bodiedpioneers might throw up in an hour with their spades. But we are toolike the Beggars who built it to be very nice in our choosing," saidScarlett, smiling grimly down upon his two companions from the decayingrampart.
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 theplace wholly empty, save that in one corner there was a rudely vaultedherdsman's shelter, wherein, by moving a door of driftwood, they couldsee sundry shovels and other instruments of rustic toil set in theangle of the wall.
"I see not much chance of holding out here," said Wat. "They can stormthe wall at half a dozen points."
"True," said Scarlett, "most true--yet for all that, here at least wecannot be shot at from a distance as we sit helpless on the sand, likerabbits that come hotching out of a wood at even-tide to feed on thegreen. We are not overlooked. We have a spring of water--which is notan over-common thing on these dunes and so near the sea. I tell you theBeggars knew what they were about when they planted their watch-towerdown in such a spot."
In this manner Scarlett, the grumbler of the night, heartened hiscompanions as soon as ever it came nigh the grips of fighting.
Then the men took out the shovels and the other tools, and set aboutputting the defences in some order, replacing the stones which hadfallen down, and clearing out little embrasures, where one might lietentily with a musket and take aim from shelter. While Wat and Scarlettwere busy with these works of fortification, the Little Marie ran downinto the dells again, looking wonderously feat and dainty in her boy'scostume.
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 Ishould not envy you the explanation you would assuredly be called uponto make," said he, smiling over to Wat as he built and strengthened hisdefences.
Instinctively Wat squared himself, as though his mattock had been asword and he saluting his general.
"Ye ken me little, John Scarlett," he replied, "if you know not that Iwould not touch the lass for harm with so much as the tip of my littlefinger."
"Doubtless, doubtless," said Scarlett, dryly, "yet it would astonishme mightily if even that would satisfy your Mistress Kate of theLashes--aye, or in troth if such extreme continence greatly pleasuresthe lass herself!"
To this Wat disdained any answer, but went on piling the sand andsetting the square stones in order.
Presently the Little Marie came running very fast along the bottom ofthe dells, which hereabouts wimpled mazily in and out with nooks andcunning passages everywhere, so that they constituted the excellentestplaces 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 newdefences, and when she was a little recovered from her race, she toldthem that the enemy could be seen scouting by twos and threes along theedge of the forest, and even venturing a little way towards them intothe 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 hiddenbehind every ridge.
"It is Haxo the Bull who leads them," she said, "for the others arenone so keen on the work. But he goes among them vaunting and pratingof the brave rewards which his master will give, and how the State alsowill 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," shesaid, "and had it not been for the men who were with him, and the fearthat they might have marked me down as I ran, I had given him as goodas I gave his master."
And with the utmost calmness the Little Marie unslung the dags orhorse-pistols from her side, and took out the long keen dagger withwhich she had wounded Barra as he mounted at his own door to ride afterhis prisoner.
So, perched on this shadeless shelter they waited hour after hour,while the sun beat pitilessly down on them. The heat grew sullenlyoppressive. A dizzy, glimmering haze quivered over the sand-hills, andmade it difficult to see clearly more than a few hundred yards in anydirection.
Wat and Scarlett desired the girl to rest a while under the shadow ofthe rude hut in the corner.
"A COUPLE OF PISTOL-SHOTS RANG OUT LOUDLY"]
>
"But then I could not watch for the coming of your enemies, mycaptain," she said, as if that settled the matter.
And when Wat repeated his request, Marie looked so unhappy that theyhad perforce to allow her to stand on guard equally with themselves.
And indeed, as it proved, it was the Little Marie whose sharp eyesfirst saw their opponents tracking stealthily along the sandy bottomsbetween them and the forest. The pursuers seemed to be ten or twelve innumber, and they came scouting cautiously here and there through thehollows, running briskly to the tops of the higher dunes, and lookingeagerly all about them for the footprints of men or horses in thelooser sand.
Before Scarlett or Wat could stop her--indeed, before either of themso much as suspected her intention, the Little Marie had climbed overthe 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-placesof the dells. With wonderful skill she threaded her way towards theapproaching miscreants, without letting them catch a single glimpse ofher. Indeed, even from their watch-tower on the top of the dune, it wasas much as Wat and Scarlett could do to keep her in sight through thewavering glimmer of the heated air.
Presently, as they lay behind their defences, each in his own rudeshelter, Wat and Scarlett could see her crouch low in a little cuplikedepression upon the height of a dune overlooking the track by which theenemy must come. The girl lay motionless, with her body flat to theground, like a cat which makes ready for the pounce; and they could seethe sun of the afternoon wink on the steel barrels of her pistols as ondewy holly leaves.
Soon the vanguard of Haxo's little army came scouting and scentingalong. The men kept signalling and crying, keeping touch with oneanother and making believe to search the wilderness of sand and bentwith marvellous exactitude and care.
The foremost of them had just passed the hillock on the top of whichMarie lay when "Crack! crack!" a couple of pistol-shots rang out loudlyon the slumberous air. One man pitched heavily forward on his face,while another and younger man spun round like a rabbit, bent himselfdouble, clawed convulsively at the sand, and then slowly collapsedacross the path.
The scattered trackers here and there about the mounds and hollowsstood 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 whichthe shots had come. But when they reached the summit all they saw wasthe reek of burned powder lazily dispersing in the hot haze of theafternoon, while upon the dune's extremest edge were the marks of apair of elbows in the sand, where Marie had reclined as she took aim.
But of their dangerous assailant they found no further trace. Forimmediately upon firing Marie had snatched her pistols and descendedinto the winding lane of sand at the back of the dune. Then, beingperfectly acquainted with her line of communication, and mindful everto keep upon the shady side, she glided from shelter to shelter withthe silence and skill of one bred to such guerilla warfare.
Haxo and his party were manifestly discouraged by their misfortune, andstill more by the immunity of their unseen foe. What had happened oncemight very well happen again. Nevertheless, trusting to their numbers,they came on with still more infinite pains, Haxo himself climbing ahigh dune and crying directions to his men how they were to advance bythis pass and that dell, in which from his post of vantage he could becertain that no enemy lurked.