After a while, the gunfire ceased.
Fragments of broken discussion reached Samuel’s ear from the other side of the embankment. Mumbled snatches of blockade men’s conversation. But what he heard was enough; they had been ordered to cross the dyke by any means.
He had to escape.
He stood awkwardly, a rush of fresh pain firing out from the wound. ‘They bain’t giving up,’ Samuel whispered, ‘we need to be a-running.’
Men rose from the ground around him with grunts and moans. Evidently, he had not been the only one to sustain an injury.
‘This way,’ Quested’s voice said definitively from the dark.
The group—numbering half a dozen—crossed the field at a fast pace, before passing through a low hedge and entering another field.
‘What way you be a-bringing us, Quested?’ one of the men barked when they reached the edge of the field to be confronted by yet another water-filled ditch. ‘Wainway Petty Sewer? If we cross this one we bain’t got no choice but to cross Lower Agney Sewer, then Horsehead Petty Sewer. This weren’t the plan, Quested. There be nobody waiting to help us cross.’
‘Then be going your own tarnal way,’ Quested shouted. ‘Go on!’
‘I just be asking because why,’ the man responded.
‘Stand whist and you be hearing why,’ Quested said.
The group fell silent, as instructed.
Samuel heard it: the unmistakable sound of the blockade men, still in pursuit.
‘They bain’t letting go this night,’ Quested said. ‘We be tarnal fortunate to make the night alive or untook. Now, I be going across here—you be a-pleasing yourselves.’ He turned his back on the men, sank down onto the bank and began to slide down into the water.
For Samuel, no decision existed. He moved to the edge of the dyke, sat and used his heels to pull himself down the bank. He retched at the foul smell rising from the disturbed water, as it clawed its way painfully up his legs and around his abdomen. The coldness—for the water was near to freezing—quickly penetrated inside him, causing an acute shaking in his limbs. Samuel continued to wade across the ditch, always checking the depth of his next step with an extended foot. The water was just a couple of inches from his injured shoulder and he knew that if its filth touched it, he would be finished.
At last, his foot met the sloping edge of the opposite bank. Quested offered his left hand and heaved Samuel to the top. He collapsed to the ground, shivering.
‘We be warm, soonest,’ Quested said, ‘when we be a-moving again.’
They waited for the other four men to join them, then followed Quested’s lead across another field.
Samuel didn’t know if the pace had been slowed for him in particular, or if the whole group was suffering as was he, but he was grateful nonetheless. Somehow, the freezing water had dulled the pain in his shoulder—perhaps masking it with the addition of an overall discomfort throughout his body.
When they reached Lower Agney Sewer, they stopped again to listen. Sure enough, the blockade officers were still in pursuit. They had no choice but to cross it.
The ditch was shallower than the previous one and only reached just above their waists. Yet, despite this, the temperature of the fetid water seemed to syphon more of the men’s energy, and once they had crossed it, progress for the next two miles was hampered by a waning, sluggish pace.
The six men reached Beacon Lane, on the outskirts of the village of Brookland, some three hours after their retreat had commenced.
‘You made it,’ a voice called from the darkness.
‘We beleft you dead or captured,’ another added.
‘Merciful Lord!’ Quested blurted at the sight of five batmen, perched at the side of the road with their blunderbusses fixed on Quested’s position. ‘There be a whole bunch of blockade officers just yards behind us. Be a-readying yourselves!’
Exhaustion consumed Samuel; his muscles were taut and his resolve weak. He spotted a low stone wall and slouched down behind it, beginning to shake all over. He touched his shoulder and held blood-wetted fingers up to his face. He knew that if medical help were not forthcoming quickly, he had seen his last sunrise. ‘I be a-needing a doctor,’ he mumbled.
‘Soonest—we only be a few mile from home, now,’ Quested answered, dropping down beside him. ‘Amputation, I don’t wonder.’
A cold realisation washed over Samuel. ‘I don’t be a-wanting no amputation,’ he said, as insistently as he could.
‘That be for the surgeon to decide.’
‘The heart-grief this be giving my Hester…’ Samuel uttered, his voice quivering.
‘The same from my Martha—I be set for such a bannocking in the morning.’
A short moment of silence that descended over the men was sharply snapped away by the firing of many guns.
Without warning, the body of a tubman fell backwards over the wall, landing lifelessly beside Quested.
‘I be thinking it’s over,’ Quested mumbled, prising the musket from the dead man’s hand. ‘Sit whist—there be more pistol shooting from the blockade men than what we got to fire back.’
Samuel tried to steady his shaking limbs and listen. Though his mind was listless, he counted the pistol cracks, estimating there to be at least twenty men from the blockade—possibly more.
‘If I get took tonight or be killed, be making sure this gang bain’t done with—you hear?’ Quested said.
Samuel, not liking his own chances of surviving the night, couldn’t entertain the idea of another smuggling run. ‘Happen it bain’t in my blood…’ he responded quietly.
‘Contrariwise—be thinking of your Hester and what you can be a-giving her. Tidy money this trade be a-bringing.’
‘But the boat?’ Samuel said. ‘There be no way she be sitting on the shore a-waiting us tomorrow.’
Quested laughed, as he fiddled with the dead man’s musket. ‘Buy another boat—heavens, buy two boats.’
The volley of
