Part 44 (1/2)
”Do you know, Tomlinson, I think it was a burning shame in Lovett to suffer us to be carried off like muttons, without attempting to rescue us by the way! It is all his fault that we are here; for it was he whom Nabbem wanted, not us.”
”Very true,” said the cunning policeman; ”and if I were you, Mr. Pepper, hang me if I would not behave like a man of spirit, and show as little consarn for him as he shows for you! Why, Lord now, I doesn't want to 'tice you; but this I does know, the justices are very anxious to catch Lovett; and one who gives him up, and says a word or two about his c'racter, so as to make conviction sartain, may himself be sartain of a free pardon for all little sprees and so forth!”
”Ah!” said Long Ned, with a sigh, ”that is all very well, Mr. Nabbem, but I'll go to the c.r.a.p like a gentleman, and not peach of my comrades; and now I think of it, Lovett could scarcely have a.s.sisted us. One man alone, even Lovett, clever as he is, could not have forced us out of the clutches of you and your myrmidons, Mr. Nabbem! And when we were once at-----, they took excellent care of us. But tell me now, my dear Nabbem,” and Long Ned's voice wheedled itself into something like softness,--”tell me, do you think the grazier will buff it home?”
”No doubt of that,” said the unmoved Nabbem. Long Ned's face fell. ”And what if he does?” said he; ”they can but transport us!”
”Don't desave yourself, Master Pepper!” said Nabbem: ”you're too old a hand for the herring-pond. They're resolved to make gallows apples of all such numprels [Nonpareils] as you!”
Ned cast a sullen look at the officer.
”A pretty comforter you are!” said he. ”I have been in a post chaise with a pleasanter fellow, I'll swear! You may call me an apple if you will, but, I take it, I am not an apple you'd like to see peeled.”
With this pugilistic and menacing pun, the lengthy hero relapsed into meditative silence.
Our travellers were now entering a road skirted on one side by a common of some extent, and on the other by a thick hedgerow, which through its breaks gave occasional glimpses of woodland and fallow, interspersed with cross-roads and tiny brooklets.
”There goes a jolly fellow!” said Nabbem, pointing to an athletic-looking man, riding before the carriage, dressed in a farmer's garb, and mounted on a large and powerful horse of the Irish breed.
”I dare say he is well acquainted with your grazier, Mr. Tomlinson; he looks mortal like one of the same kidney; and here comes another chap”
(as the stranger, was joined by a short, stout, ruddy man in a carter's frock, riding on a horse less showy than his comrade's, but of the lengthy, reedy, lank, yet muscular race, which a knowing jockey would like to bet on). ”Now that's what I calls a comely lad!” continued Nabbem, pointing to the latter horseman; ”none of your thin-faced, dark, strapping fellows like that Captain Lovett, as the blowens raves about, but a nice, tight little body, with a face like a carrot! That's a beauty for my money! Honesty's stamped on his face, Mr. Tomlinson! I dare says” (and the officer grinned, for he had been a lad of the cross in his own day),--”I dare says, poor innocent b.o.o.by, he knows none of the ways of Lunnun town; and if he has not as merry a life as some folks, mayhap he may have a longer. But a merry one forever for such lads as us, Mr. Pepper! I say, has you heard as how Bill Fang went to Scratchland [Scotland] and was stretched for smas.h.i.+ng queer screens [that is, hung for uttering forged notes]? He died 'nation game; for when his father, who was a gray-headed parson, came to see him after the sentence, he says to the governor, say he, 'Give us a tip, old 'un, to pay the expenses, and die dacently.' The parson forks him out ten s.h.i.+ners, preaching all the while like winkey. Bob drops one of the guineas between his fingers, and says, 'Holla, dad, you have only tipped us nine of the yellow boys! Just now you said as how it was ten!' On this the parish-bull, who was as poor as if he had been a mouse of the church instead of the curate, lugs out another; and Bob, turning round to the jailer, cries, 'Flung the governor out of a guinea, by G.o.d!--[Fact]--Now, that's what I calls keeping it up to the last!”
Mr. Nabbem had scarcely finished this anecdote, when the farmer-like stranger, who had kept up by the side of the chaise, suddenly rode to the window, and touching his hat, said in a Norfolk accent,--
”Were the gentlemen we met on the road belonging to your party? They were asking after a chaise and pair.”
”No!” said Nabbem, ”there be no gentlemen as belongs to our party!” So saying, he tipped a knowing wink at the farmer, and glanced over his shoulder at the prisoners.
”What! you are going all alone?” said the farmer.
”Ay, to be sure,” answered Nabbem; ”not much danger, I think, in the daytime, with the sun out as big as a sixpence, which is as big as ever I see'd him in this country!”
At that moment the shorter stranger, whose appearance had attracted the praise of Mr. Nabbem (that personage was himself very short and ruddy), and who had hitherto been riding close to the post-horses, and talking to the officers on the box, suddenly threw himself from his steed, and in the same instant that he arrested the horses of the chaise, struck the postilion to the ground with a short heavy bludgeon which he drew from his frock. A whistle was heard and answered, as if by a signal: three fellows, armed with bludgeons, leaped from the hedge; and in the interim the pretended farmer, dismounting, flung open the door of the chaise, and seizing Mr. Nabbem by the collar, swung him to the ground with a celerity that became the circular rotundity of the policeman's figure rather than the deliberate gravity of his dignified office.
Rapid and instantaneous as had been this work, it was not without a check. Although the policemen had not dreamed of a rescue in the very face of the day and on the high-road, their profession was not that which suffered them easily to be surprised. The two guardians of the d.i.c.ky leaped nimbly to the ground; but before they had time to use their firearms, two of the new aggressors, who had appeared from the hedge, closed upon them, and bore them to the ground. While this scuffle took place, the farmer had disarmed the prostrate Nabbem, and giving him in charge to the remaining confederate, extricated Tomlinson and his comrade from the chaise.
”Hist!” said he in a whisper, ”beware my name; my disguise hides me at present. Lean on me,--only through the hedge; a cart waits there, and you are safe!”
With these broken words he a.s.sisted the robbers as well as he could, in spite of their manacles, through the same part of the hedge from which the three allies had sprung. They were already through the barrier,--only the long legs of Ned Pepper lingered behind,--when at the far end of the road, which was perfectly straight, a gentleman's carriage became visible. A strong hand from the interior of the hedge, seizing Pepper, dragged him through; and Clifford,--for the reader need not be told who was the farmer, perceiving the approaching reinforcement, shouted at once for flight. The robber who had guarded Nabbem, and who indeed was no other than Old Bags, slow as he habitually was, lost not an instant in providing for himself; before you could say ”Laudamus,” he was on the other side of the hedge. The two men engaged with the police-officers were not capable of an equal celerity; but Clifford, throwing himself into the contest and engaging the policemen, gave the robbers the opportunity of escape. They scrambled through the fence; the officers, tough fellows and keen, clinging l.u.s.tily to them, till one was felled by Clifford, and the other, catching against a stump, was forced to relinquish his hold; he then sprang back into the road and prepared for Clifford, who now, however, occupied himself rather in fugitive than warlike measures. Meanwhile, the moment the other rescuers had pa.s.sed the Rubicon of the hedge, their flight, and that of the gentlemen who had pa.s.sed before them, commenced. On this mystic side of the hedge was a cross-road, striking at once through an intricate and wooded part of the country, which allowed speedy and ample opportunities of dispersion. Here a light cart, drawn by two swift horses in a tandem fas.h.i.+on, awaited the fugitives. Long Ned and Augustus were stowed down at the bottom of this vehicle; three fellows filed away at their irons, and a fourth, who had hitherto remained inglorious with the cart, gave the lash--and he gave it handsomely--to the coursers.
Away rattled the equipage; and thus was achieved a flight still memorable in the annals of the elect, and long quoted as one of the boldest and most daring exploits that illicit enterprise ever accomplished.
Clifford and his equestrian comrade only remained in the field, or rather the road. The former sprang at once on his horse; the latter was not long in following the example. But the policeman, who, it has been said, baffled in detaining the fugitives of the hedge, had leaped back into the road, was not idle in the meanwhile. When he saw Clifford about to mount, instead of attempting to seize the enemy, he recurred to his pistol, which in the late struggle hand to hand he had been unable to use, and taking sure aim at Clifford, whom he judged at once to be the leader of the rescue, he lodged a ball in the right side of the robber at the very moment he had set spurs in his horse and turned to fly.
Clifford's head drooped to the saddle-bow. Fiercely the horse sprang on.
The robber endeavoured, despite his reeling senses, to retain his seat; once he raised his head, once he nerved his slackened and listless limbs, and then, with a faint groan, he fell to the earth. The horse bounded but one step more, and, true to the tutors.h.i.+p it had received, stopped abruptly. Clifford raised himself with great difficulty on one arm; with the other hand he drew forth a pistol. He pointed it deliberately towards the officer that wounded him. The man stood motionless, cowering and spellbound, beneath the dilating eye of the robber. It was but for a moment that the man had cause for dread; for muttering between his ground teeth, ”Why waste it on an enemy?” Clifford turned the muzzle towards the head of the unconscious steed, which seemed sorrowfully and wistfully to incline towards him. ”Thou,”
he said, ”whom I have fed and loved, shalt never know hards.h.i.+p from another!” and with a merciful cruelty he dragged himself one pace nearer to his beloved steed, uttered a well-known word, which brought the docile creature to his side, and placing the muzzle of the pistol close to his ear, he fired, and fell back senseless at the exertion. The animal staggered, and dropped down dead.
Meanwhile Clifford's comrade, profiting by the surprise and sudden panic of the officer, was already out of reach, and darting across the common, he and his ragged courser speedily vanished.
CHAPTER x.x.xII
Lose I not With him what fortune could in life allot?
Lose I not hope, life's cordial?
In fact, the lessons he from prudence took Were written in his mind as in a book; There what to do he read, and what to shun, And all commanded was with promptness done.