Part 31 (1/2)

”Only bread-and-b.u.t.ter and ham, and summer apples. It's a picnic.”

”A picnic. What's that ribbon for?” Bevis wore the blue ribbon round his arm.

”O! that's nothing.”

”I've half a mind to tell--I don't believe you're up to anything good.”

”Pooh! don't be a donk,” said Bevis. ”I'll give you a long piece of this ribbon when I come back.”

Off he went, having bribed Scylla, but he met Charybdis in the gateway, where he came plump on the Bailiff.

”What's up now?” he gruffly inquired.

”Picnic.”

”Mind you don't go bathing; the waves be as big as cows.”

”Bathing,” said Bevis, with intense contempt. ”We don't bathe in the evening. Here, you--” donk, he was going to say, but forebore; he gave the Bailiff a summer apple, and went on. The Bailiff bit the apple, muttered to himself about ”mischief,” and walked towards the rick-yard.

In a minute Mark came to meet Bevis.

”You did him?” he said.

”Yes,” said Bevis, ”and Polly too.”

”Hurrah!” shouted Mark. ”They're all there but one, and he's coming in five minutes.”

Bevis found his army a.s.sembled by the gate leading to the New Sea. Each soldier wore a blue ribbon round the left arm for distinction; Tim, who had been sent by Pompey to be with them till all was ready, wore a red one.

”Two and two,” said Caesar Bevis, taking his sword and instantly a.s.suming a general's authoritative tone. He marshalled them in double file, one eagle in front, one halfway down, where his second lieutenant, Scipio Cecil, stood; the basket carried in the rear as baggage. Caesar and Mark Antony stood in front side by side.

”March,” said Bevis, starting, and they followed him.

The route was beside the sh.o.r.e, and so soon as they left the shelter of the trees the wind seemed to hit them a furious blow, which pushed them out of order for a moment. The farther they went the harder the wind blow, and flecks of brown foam, like yeast, came up and caught against them. Rolling in the same direction as they were marching, the waves at each undulation increased in size, and when they came to the bluff Bevis walked slowly a minute, to look at the dark hollows and the ridges from whose crests the foam was driven.

But here leaving the sh.o.r.e he led the army, with their brazen eagles gleaming in the sun, up the slope of the meadow where the solitary oak stood, and so beside the hedge-row till they reached the higher ground.

The Plain, the chosen battle-field, was on the other side of the hedge, and it had been arranged that the camps should be pitched just without the actual campaigning-ground. On this elevated place the gale came along with even greater fury; and Mark Antony said that they would never be able to light a camp-fire that side, they must get through and into shelter.

”I shall do as I said,” shouted Bevis, scarcely audible, for the wind blew the words down his throat. But he kept on till he found a hawthorn bush, with brambles about the base, a detached thicket two or three yards from the hedge, and near which there was a gap. He stopped, and ordered the standard-bearer behind him to pitch the eagle there. The army halted, the eagles were pitched by thrusting the other end of the rods into the sward, the cloaks, coats, and rug thrown together in a heap, and the soldiers set to work to gather sticks for the fire. Of these they found plenty in the hedge, and piled them up in the shelter of the detached thicket.

Bevis, Mark Antony, and Scipio Cecil went through the gap to reconnoitre the enemy. They immediately saw the smoke of his camp-fire rising on the other side of the Plain, close to a gateway. The smoke only rose a little above the hedge there--the fire was on the other side--and was then blown away by the wind. None of Pompey's forces were visible.

”Ted, I mean Pompey, was here first,” said Mark Antony. ”He'll be ready before us.”

”Be quick with the fire,” shouted Caesar.

”Look,” said Scipio Cecil. ”There's the punt.”

Behind the stony promontory at the quarry they could see the punt from the high ground where they stood; it was partly drawn ash.o.r.e just inside Fir-Tree Gulf, so that the projecting point protected it like a breakwater. The old man (the watcher) had started for the quarry to get a load of sand as usual, never thinking, as how should he think? that the gale was so furious. But he found himself driven along anyhow, and unable to row back; all he could do was to steer and struggle into the gulf, and so behind the Point, where he beached his unwieldy vessel.

Too much shaken to dig sand that day, and knowing that he could not row back, he hid his spade and the oars, and made for home on foot. But the journey by land was more dangerous than that by sea, for he insensibly wandered into the high road, and came to an anchor in the first inn, where, relating his adventures on the deep with the a.s.sistance of ardent liquor, he remained.