Part 39 (2/2)
”You are wicked! You are evil! You are a devil!” said Nance through her little white teeth, and looked so as though she might fly at her that Julie drew off.
”Aha--spitfire!--wildcat!--you would bite?”
Nance, all ashake with disgust, stooped suddenly and picked up a lump of rock.
”Go!” she said, in a voice of such concentrated fury that it was little more than a whisper. ”Go!--before I do you ill;” and she looked so like it that Julie turned and fled, expecting the rock between her shoulders at every step.
But the rock was on the ground, and Nance was intent again on L'Etat.
She stood there watching, until she saw the boats put off, and then she turned and sped like a rabbit--across the waste lands--across the Coupee--over Clos Bourel fields into Dixcart--over Hog's Back to the Creux.
She ran through the tunnel just as the boats came up, and her eyes were wide with expectant fear, as they swept them hungrily.
”What have you done then, out there, Philip Vaudin?” she cried, as his boat's nose grated on the s.h.i.+ngle.
”Pardi, ma garche, we have done nothing.”
”But the shooting?”
”Some one shot at the shelter to see if he was inside, and the rest shot because they thought there must be something to shoot at.”
”And you have not got him?” asked another disappointedly.
”Never even seen him.”
”Ah ba!”
”Either he's gone or he's under cover, though, ma fe, I don't know where he'd find it on L'Etat,” and Nance's heart beat hopefully. ”However, John Drillot and Peter Vaudin are stopping the night in case he is still there and ventures out of his hole,” and her heart sank again, and kicked rebelliously that a man should be hunted thus, like a rabbit.
She spent a night of misery, wondering what was happening on L'Etat, and was at her post above Breniere as soon as it was light.
She saw Philip Vaudin come round from the Creux in his boat and run across to the rock, and almost as soon as he had disappeared round Quette d'Amont, he came speeding back, alone, and not to the harbour, but straight to the fishermen's rough landing-place inside Breniere.
”What is it then, Philip?” she asked anxiously, as he hauled himself up the rocks on to the turf.
”I've come for two miners,” he panted, for he had come quickly. ”They've run him to earth in a hole, but they won't either of them go in after him, and they want some one who will.”
”Ah, then!”
”Yes. He came out in the night, and they chased him, but he got into his hole, and they're sitting on it ever since,” and he hurried away through the waste of gorse and bracken to the miners' cottages.
Volunteers were evidently not over plentiful. It was a considerable time before he came back with a Welshman, Evan Morgan, and a young Cornishman, John Trevna, and neither of them seemed over eager for the job.
”For, see you,” had been Morgan's view, ”coing in a hole after a man what ha.s.s a gun iss not a nice p.i.s.sness, no inteet!” and the Cornishman agreed with him.
However, they put off, and Nance crouched in the bracken and watched all their doings.
She had long since caught sight of John Drillot and Peter Vaudin sitting on the rock wall, and wondered what kind of a hiding-place Gard could possibly have found therein. A poor one, she feared, and that the end would be quick.
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