Part 15 (2/2)
At length one sound--not a voice--broke the silence: the man who had thrown himself down was getting to his feet. But when he had stood up he made no further movement; he stood motionless, like the others, and the silence began again and again it lasted for ever and ever.
All sorts of tremors began to creep over my body; the muscles of my back jerked of their own accord. The suspense was driving me mad. I had to move, I had to see, if only to hinder myself from leaping to my feet and making a headlong rush. Very slowly I turned my head sideways; I looked backwards along the ground, until I saw. The moon had swum out from the clouds, and the five men were standing in arrested att.i.tudes with their eyes fixed upon something that glittered very bright upon the ground. I could see it myself through the gorse glittering and burning white, like a delicate flame, and my heart gave a great leap within me as I understood what it was. It was a big silver shoe-buckle that shone in the moonlight, and the shoe-buckle was on my foot.
The game was up. I thought that I might as well make a fight of it at the last, and I jumped to my feet suddenly, with a faint hope that the suddenness of the movement might startle them and let me through.
But there was to be no fighting for me that night. It is true that the men all scattered from about me, but a voice a few yards to my right thundered, ”Stand!” and I stood stock-still, obedient as a charity-school boy.
For Peter Tortue was standing stock still too, with his right arm stretched out in a line with his shoulder and the palm of his hand upturned. On the palm of that hand was balanced a long knife with an open blade, and the moonlight streaked along that blade in flame, just as it had burned upon my shoe-buckle.
George Glen rubbed his hands together.
”You will lie down, Mr. Berkeley,” said he, with his most insinuating smile. ”You will down, 'flat on my face,' says you.”
”But I have only just got up,” said I.
Glen t.i.ttered nervously, but no one else showed any appreciation of my sally. I thought it best to lie down flat on my face.
”Cross your hands behind your back,” said George Glen, and I knew he was winking.
”Any little thing like that, I am sure,” I murmured, as I obeyed.
”Only too happy,” and in a trice I was nothing more than a coil of rope. It cut into my wrists, it crushed my chest, it snaked round my legs, it bit my ankles.
”To be sure,” said I, ”they mean to send me somewhere by the post.”
Mr. George Glen sn.i.g.g.e.red and mentioned my destination, which was impolite, though he mentioned it politely; but Roper thumped me in the small of the back, and thrust my handkerchief into my mouth. So I had done better to have kept silence.
Two of the men lifted me up on their shoulders and staggered up hill.
In a moment or two they descended a small incline, and I saw that I was being carried into the hollow where the shed stood. Glen pushed at the door of the shed and it fell open inwards. A great cavern of blackness gaped at us, and they carried me in and set me down unceremoniously on the floor.
”Brisk along with that lantern, Nat Roper,” said Glen, and the young fellow who had flung himself down on the gra.s.s struck a light and set fire to the candle. The shed was divided by a wooden part.i.tion, in which was a rickety door hardly hanging on its hinges.
”In there!” said Glen, swinging the lantern towards the inner room. My bearers picked me up again and carried me to the door. One of them kicked at the door, but it did not yield.
”It's jammed,” said the other, ”there's some-thing 'twixt it and the floor,” and raising a great sea boot, he kicked with all his might.
I heard a metallic clinking, as though a piece of iron was hopping across the stone floor, and the door flew open.
They carried me into the inner room and set me down against the part.i.tion. There was no furniture of any sort, not even a bucket to sit upon; there was no window either, a thatched roof rested upon heavy beams over my head. They placed the lantern at my feet, four of them squatted down about me, the fifth went out of the shed to keep watch.
It was, after all, not in the inn kitchen of the Palace Inn that any bargain was to be struck. I could not deny that they had chosen their place very well. Not a man in Tres...o...b..t would give this shed the widest of berths, and if he saw the glint of this lantern through a c.h.i.n.k, or heard, perhaps, as he was like to do, one loud cry--why, he would only take to his heels the faster. The ropes, too, made my bones ache.
I would have preferred the kitchen at the Palace Inn.
CHAPTER XII
I FIND AN UNEXPECTED FRIEND
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