“God knows ’tis vile enough,” said I, scarce able to refrain from blowing his brains out. “So you were to follow the Earl’s army, and work the signals. Which are they?” For a quick resolve had come into my head, and I was casting about to put it into execution.
“A green light if we won: if not, a red light, to warn the sloop away.”
I picked up the packet that had dropp’d from his hand when first I sprang upon him. It was burst abroad, and a brown powder trickling from it about the ledge.
“This was the red light—to be sprinkled on the burning charcoal, I suppose?”
The fellow nodded. At the same moment, Billy (who as yet had not spoke a word, and of course, understood nothing) thrust into my hand another packet that he had found stuck in a corner against the rock.
“Now tell me—in case the rebels won, where was the landing to be made?”
“In the cove below here—where the road leads down.”
“Aye, the road where the wagon stood.”
Captain Luke Settle blink’d his eyes at this: but nodded after a moment.
“And how many would escort her?”
He caught my drift and laughed softly—
“Be damn’d, sir, but I begin to love you, for you play the game very proper and soundly. Reuben, Jeremy, and Black Dick alone are in the plot; so why should more escort her? For the skipper and crew have their own business to look after.”
“Then, Master Settle, though it be a sore trial to you, those three Knaves you must give me, or I play my Ace,” and I pressed the ring of my pistol sharply against his ear as a reminder.
“With all my heart, young sir, you shall have them,” says he briskly.
“And this is ‘honor among thieves,’ ” thought I: “You would sell your comrade as you sold your King:” but only said, “If you cry out, or speak one word to warn them—”
Before I could get my sentence out, Billy Pottery broke in with a voice like a trumpet—
“As folks go, Jack, I be a humorous man. But sittin’ here, an’ ponderin’ this way an’ that, I says, in my deaf an’ afflicted style, ‘Why not shoot the ugly rogue, if mirth, indeed, be your object?’ For to wait till an uglier comes to this untravel’d spot is superfluity.”
How to explain matters to Billy was more than I could tell: but in a moment he himself supplied the means. For the rocks here were of some kind of slate, very hard, but scaly: and finding two pieces, a large and a small, he handed them to me, bawling that I was to write therewith. So giving him my pistol, I made shift to scribble a few words. Seeing his eyes twinkle as he read, I stood up.
The charcoal by this time was a glowing mass of red: and threw so clear a light on us that I feared the crew on board the sloop might see our forms and suspect their misadventure. But the lantern still hung steadily: so signing to Billy to drag our prisoner behind a tamarisk bush, I open’d the second packet, and poured some of the powder into my hand.
It was composed of tiny crystals, yellow and flaky: and holding it, for a moment I was possessed with a horrid fear that this might be the signal to warn the sloop away. I flung a look at the Captain: who read my thoughts on the instant.
“Never fear, young sir: am no such hero as to sell my life for that tag-rag. Only make haste, for your deaf friend has a cursed ugly way of fumbling his pistol.”
So taking heart, I tore the packet wide, and shook out the powder on the coals.
Instantly there came a dense choking vapor, and a vivid green flare that turned the rocks, the sky, and our faces to a ghastly brilliance. For two minutes, at least, this unnatural light lasted. As soon as it died away and the fumes clear’d, I look’d seaward.
The lantern on the sloop was moving in answer to the signal. Three times it was lifted and lower’d: and then in the stillness I heard voices calling, and soon after the regular splash of oars.
There was no time to be lost. Pulling the Captain to his feet, we scrambled up the gully, and out at the top, and across the fields as fast as our legs would take us. Molly came to my call and trotted beside me—the Captain following some paces behind, and Billy last, to keep a safe watch on his movements.
At the gate, however, where we turned into the road, I tethered the mare, lest the sound of her hoofs should betray us: and down toward the sea we pelted, till almost at the foot of the hill I pull’d up and listen’d, the others following my example.
We could hear the sound of oars plain above the wash of waves on the beach. I look’d about me. On either side the road was now bank’d by tall hills, with clusters of bracken and furze bushes lying darkly on their slopes. Behind one of these clusters I station’d Billy with the Captain’s long sword, and a pistol that I by signs forbade him to fire unless in extremity. Then, retiring some forty paces up the road, I hid the Captain and myself on the other side.
Hardly were we thus disposed, before I heard the sound of a boat grounding on the beach below,
