CHAPTER XIV.
HOW BY MEANS OF HER SWINE I CAME TO CIRCE.
"So saying I took my way up from the ship and the sea-shore. But on my way, as I drew near through the glades to the home of the enchantress Circe, there met me Hermes with his golden rod, in semblance of a lad wearing youth's bloom on his lip and all youth's charm at its heyday. He clasped my hand and spake and greeted me. 'Whither away now, wretched wight, amid these mountain-summits alone and astray? And yonder in the styes of Circe, transformed to swine, thy comrades lie penned and make their lairs!'"—Odyssey, bk. X.
"Prosper," said my father, seriously, "we must return to the ship."
"I suppose so," I admitted; but with a rising temper, so that my tone contradicted him.
"It is most necessary. We are no longer an army, or even a legation."
"Nothing could be more evident. You may add, sir, that we are badly scared, the both of us. Yet I don't stomach sailing away, at any rate, until we have discovered what has happened to the others." I cast a vicious glance up at the forest.
"Good Lord, child!" my father exclaimed. "Who was suggesting it?"
"You spoke of returning to the ship."
"To be sure I did. She can work round to Ajaccio and repair. She will arrive evidently from the verge of total wreck, an ordinary trader in ballast, with nothing suspicious about her. No questions will be asked that Pomery cannot invent an answer for off-hand. She will be allowed to repair, refit, and sail for reinforcements."
"Reinforcements? But where will you find reinforcements?"
"I must rely on Gervase to provide them. Meanwhile we have work on hand. To begin with, we must clear up this mystery, which may oblige us to camp here for some time."
"O-oh!" said I.
"You do not suggest, I hope, that we can abandon our comrades, whatever has befallen them?"
"My dear father!" I protested.
"Tut, lad! I never supposed it of you. Well, it seems to me we are more likely to clear up the mystery by sitting still than by beating the woods. Do you agree?"
"To be sure," said I, "we may spare ourselves the trouble of searching for it."
"I propose then, as our first move, that we step down to the ship together and pack Captain Pomery off to Ajaccio with his orders—"
"Excuse me, sir," I interrupted. "You shall step down to the ship, while I wait here and guard the camp."
"My dear Prosper," said he, "I like the spirit of that offer: but, upon my word, I hope you won't persist in it. These misadventures, if I may confess it, get me on the raw, and I cannot leave you here alone without feeling damnably anxious."
"Trust me, sir," I answered, "I shall be at least as uncomfortable until you return. But I have an inkling that—whatever the secret may be, and whether we surprise it or it surprises us—it will wait until we are separated. Moreover, I have a theory to test. So far, every man has disappeared outside the churchyard here and somewhere on the side of the forest. The camp itself has been safe enough, and so have the meadow and the path down to the creek. You will remember that Billy was roaming the meadow for mushrooms at the very time we lost Mr. Fett: yet Billy came to no harm. To be sure, the enemy, having thinned us down to two, may venture more boldly; but if I keep the camp here while you take the path down to the creek, and nothing happens to either, we shall be narrowing the zone of danger, so to speak."
My father nodded. "You will promise me not to set foot outside the camp?"
"I will promise more," said I. "At the smallest warning I am going to let off my piece. You must not be annoyed if I fetch you back on a false alarm, or even an absurd one. I shall sit here with my musket across my knees, and half a dozen others, all loaded, close around me: and at the first sign of something wrong—at the crackling of a twig, maybe—I shall fire. You, on your way to the creek, will keep your eyes just as wide open and fire at the first hint of danger."
"I don't like it," my father persisted.
"But you see the wisdom of it," said I. "We must stay here: that's agreed. So long as we stay here we shall be desperately uncomfortable, fearing we don't know what: that also is agreed. Then, say I, for God's sake let us clear this business up and get it over."
My father nodded, stood up and shouldered his piece. I knew that his eyes were on me, and avoided meeting them, afraid for a moment that he was going to say something in praise of my courage, whereas in truth I was horribly scared. That last word or two had really expressed my terror. I desired nothing but to get the whole thing over. My hand shook so as I turned to load the first musket that I had twice to shorten my grasp of the ramrod before I could insert it in the barrel.
From the gateway leading to the lane my father watched till the loading was done.
"Good-bye and good luck, lad!" said he, and turned to go. A pace or two beyond the gateway he halted as if to add a word, but thought better of it and resumed his stride. His footsteps sounded hollow between the walls of the narrow lane. Then he reached the turf of the meadow, and the sound ceased suddenly.
I wanted—wanted desperately—to break down and run after him. By a bodily effort—something like a long pull on a rope—I held myself steady and braced my back against the bole of the ilex tree, which I had chosen because it gave a view through the gateway towards the forest. Upon this opening and the glade beyond it I kept my eyes, for the first minute or two scarcely venturing to wink, only relaxing the strain now and again for a cautious glance to right and left around the deserted enclosure. I could hear my heart working like a pump.
The enclosure—indeed the whole valley—lay deadly silent in the growing heat of the morning. On the hidden summit behind the wood a raven croaked; and as the sun mounted, a pair of buzzards, winging their way to the mountains, crossed its glare and let fall a momentary trace of shadow that touched my nerves as with a whip. But few birds haunt the Corsican bush, and to-day even these woods and this watered valley were dumb of song. No breeze sent a shiver through the grey ilexes or the still paler olives in the orchard to my right. On the slope the chestnut trees massed their foliage in heavy plumes of green, plume upon plume, wave upon wave, a still cascade of verdure held between jagged ridges of granite. Here and there the granite pushed a bare pinnacle above the trees, and over these pinnacles the air swam and quivered.
The minutes dragged by. A caterpillar let itself down by a thread from the end of the bough under which I sat, in a direct line between me and the gateway. Very slowly, while I watched him, he descended for a couple of feet, swayed a little and hung still, as if irresolute. A butterfly, after hovering for a while over the wall's dry coping, left it and fluttered aimlessly across the garth, vanishing at length into the open doorway of the church.
The church stood about thirty paces from my tree, and by turning my head to the angle of my right shoulder I looked straight into its porch. It struck me that from the shadow within it, or from one of the narrow windows, a marksman could make an easy target of me. The building had been empty over-night: no one (it was reasonable to suppose) had entered the enclosure during Billy's sentry-go; no one for a certainty had entered it since. Nevertheless, the fancy that eyes might be watching me from within the church began now to worry, and within five minutes had almost worried me into leaving my post to explore.
I repressed the impulse. I could not carry my stand of muskets with me, and to leave it unguarded would be the starkest folly. Also I had sworn to myself to keep watch on the gateway towards the forest, and this resolution must obviously be broken if I explored the church. I kept my seat, telling myself that, however the others had vanished, they had vanished in silence, and therefore all danger from gunshot might be ruled out of the reckoning.
I had scarcely calmed myself by these reflections when a noise at some distance up the glade fetched my musket halfway to my shoulder. I lowered it with a short laugh of relief as our friends the hogs came trotting downhill to the gateway.
For the moment I was glad; on second thoughts, vexed. They explained the noise and eased my immediate fear. They brought back—absurd as it may sound—a sense of companionship: for although half-wild, they showed a disposition to be sociable, and we had found that a wave of the arm sufficed to drive them off when their advances became embarrassing. On the other hand, they would certainly distract some attention which I could very ill afford to spare.
But again I calmed myself, reflecting that if any danger lurked close at hand, these friendly nuisances might give me some clue to it by their movements. They came trotting down to the entrance, halted and regarded me, pushing up their snouts and grunting as though uncertain of their welcome. Apparently reassured, they charged through, as hogs will, in a disorderly mob, rubbing their lean flanks against the gateposts, each seeming to protest with squeals against the crush to which he contributed.
One or two of the boldest came running towards me in the hope of being fed; but, seeing that I made no motion, swerved as though their courage failed them, and stood regarding me sideways with their grotesque little eyes. Finding me still unresponsive, they began to nose in the dried grasses with an affected unconcern which set me smiling; it seemed so humanlike a pretence under rebuff. The rest, as usual, dispersed under the trees and along the nettle-beds by the wall. It occurred to me that, if I let these gentlemen work round to my rear, they might distract my attention—perhaps at an awkward moment—by nosing up to the forage-bags or upsetting the camp-furniture, so with a wave of my musket I headed them back. They took the hint obediently enough, and, wheeling about, fell to rooting between me and the entrance. So I sat maybe for another five minutes, still keeping my main attention on the gateway, but with an occasional glance to right and left, to detect and warn back any fresh attempt to work round my flanks.
Now, in the act of waving my musket, I had happened to catch sight of one remarkably fine hog among the nettles, who, taking alarm with the rest, had winced away and disappeared in the rear of the church, where a narrow alley ran between it and the churchyard wall. If he followed this alley to its end, he would come into sight again around the apse and almost directly on my right flank. I kept my eye lifting towards this corner of the building, Waiting for him to reappear, which by-and-by he did, and with a truly porcine air of minding his own business and that only.
His unconcern was so admirably affected that, to test it, instead of waving him back I lifted my musket very quietly, almost without shifting my position, and brought the butt against my shoulder.
He saw the movement; for at once, even with his head down in the grasses, he hesitated and came to a full stop. Suddenly, as my fingers felt for the trigger-guard, my heart began to beat like a hammer.
There lay my danger; and in a flash I knew it, but not the extent of it. This was no hog, but a man; by the start and the quick arrested pose in which the brute faced me, still with his head low and his eyes regarding me from the grasses, I felt sure of him. But what of the others? Were they also men? If so, I was certainly lost, but I dared not turn my eyes for a glance at them. With a sudden and most natural grunt the brute backed a little, shook his head in disgust, and sidled towards the angle of the building. "Now or never," thought I, and pulled the trigger.
As the musket kicked against me I felt—I could not see—the rest of
the hogs swerve in a common panic and break for the gateway.
Their squealing took up the roar of the report and protracted it.
They were real hogs, then.
I caught up a second musket, and, to make sure, let fly into the mass of them as they choked the gateway. Then, without waiting to see the effect of this shot, I snatched musket number three, and ran through the drifting smoke to where my first victim lay face-downwards in the grasses, his swine's mask bowed upon the forelegs crossed—as a man crosses his arms—inwards from the elbow. As I ran he lifted himself in agony on his knees—a man's knees. I saw a man's hand thrust through the paunch, ripping it asunder; and, struggling so, he rolled slowly over upon his back and lay still. I stooped and tore the mask away. A black-avised face stared up at me, livid beneath its sunburn, with filmed eyes. The eyes stared at me unwinking as I slipped his other hand easily out of its case, which, even at close view, marvellously resembled the cleft narrow hoof of a hog. I could not disengage him further, his feet being strapped into the disguise with tight leathern thongs: but having satisfied myself that he was past help, I turned on a quick thought to the gateway again, and ran.
A second hog—a real hog—lay stretched there on its side, dead as a nail. Its companions, scampering in panic, had by this time almost reached the head of the glade. Forgetting my promise to my father, I started in pursuit. The thought in my mind was that, if I kept them in sight, they would lead me to my comrades; a chance unlikely to return.
The glade ran up between two contracting spurs of the hill. As I climbed, the belt of woodland narrowed on either side of the track, until the side-valley ended in a cross ridge where the chestnuts suddenly gave place to pines and the turf to a rocky soil carpeted with pine needles. Here, in the spaces between the tree-trunks, I caught my last glimpse of the hogs as two or three of the slowest ran over the ridge and disappeared. I followed, sure of getting sight of them from the summit. But here I found myself tricked. Beyond the ridge lay a short dip—short, that is, as a bird flies. Not more than fifty yards ahead the slope rose again, strewn with granite boulders and piled masses of granite, such as in Cornwall we call "tors"; and clear away to the mountain-tops stretched a view with never a tree, but a few outstanding bushes only. Yet from ridge to ridge green vegetation filled every hollow, and in the hollow between me and the nearest the hogs were lost.
I heard, however, their grunting and the snapping of boughs in the undergrowth: and in that clear delusive air it seemed but three minutes' work to reach the next ridge. I followed then, confidently enough—and made my first acquaintance with the Corsican macchia by plunging into a cleft twenty feet deep between two rocks of granite. I did not actually fall more than a third of the distance, for I saved myself by clutching at a clematis which laced its coils, thick as a man's wrist, across the cleft. But I know that the hole cannot have been less than twenty feet deep, for I had to descend to the bottom of it to recover my musket.
That fall committed me, too. Within five minutes of my first introduction to the macchia I had learnt how easily a man may be lost in it; and in less than half of five minutes I had lost not only my way but my temper. To pursue after the hogs was nearly hopeless: all sound of them was swallowed up in the tangle of scrub. Yet I held on, crawling through thickets of lentisk, tangling my legs in creepers, pushing my head into clumps of cactus, here tearing my hands and boots on sharp granite, there ripping my clothes on prickly thorns. Once I found what appeared to be a goat-track. It led to another cleft of rock, where, beating down the briers, I looked down a chasm which ended, thirty feet below, in a whole brake of cacti. The scent of the crushed plants was divine: and I crushed a plenty of them.
After a struggle which must have lasted from twenty minutes to half an hour, I gained the ridge which had seemed but three minutes away, and there sat down to a silent lesson in geography. I had given up all hope of following the hogs or discovering my comrades. I knew now what it means to search for a needle in a bottle of hay, but with many prickles I had gathered some wisdom, and learnt that, whether I decided to go forward or to retreat, I must survey the macchia before attempting it again.
To go forward without a clue would be folly, as well as unfair to my father, whom my two shots must have alarmed. I decided therefore to retreat, but first to mount a craggy pile of granite some fifty yards on my left, which would give me not only a better survey of the bush, but perhaps even a view over the tree-tops and down upon the bay where the Gauntlet lay at anchor. If so, by the movements on board I might learn whether or not my father had reached her with his commands before taking my alarm.
The crags were not easy to climb: but, having hitched the musket in my bandolier, I could use both hands, and so pulled myself up by the creepers which festooned the rock here and there in swags as thick as the Gauntlet's hawser. Disappointment met me on the summit. The trees allowed me but sight of the blue horizon; they still hid the shores of the bay and our anchorage. My eminence, however, showed me a track, fairly well defined, crossing the macchia and leading back to the wood.
I was conning this when a shout in my rear fetched me right-about face. Towards me, down and across the farther ridge I saw a man running—Nat Fiennes!
He had caught sight of me on my rock against the skyline, and as he ran he waved his arms frantically, motioning to me to run also for the woods. I could see no pursuer; but still, as he came on, his arms waved, and were waving yet when a bush on the chine above him threw out a little puff of grey smoke. Toppling headlong into the bushes he was lost to me even before the report rang on my ears across the hollow.
I dropped on my knees for a grip on the creepers, swung myself down the face of the crag, and within ten seconds was lost in the macchia again, fighting my way through it to the spot where Nat lay. Wherever the scrub parted and allowed me a glimpse I kept my eye on the bush above the chine; and so, with torn clothes and face and hands bleeding, crossed the dip, mounted the slope and emerged upon a ferny hollow ringed about on three sides with the macchia. There face-downward in the fern lay Nat, shot through the lungs.
I lifted him against one knee. His eyelids flickered and his lips moved to speak, but a rush of blood choked him. Still resting him against my knee, I felt behind me for my musket. The flint was gone from the lock, dislodged no doubt by a blow against the crags. With one hand I groped on the ground for a stone to replace it. My fingers found only a tangle of dry fern, and glancing up at the ridge, I stared straight along the barrel of a musket. At the same moment a second barrel glimmered out between the bushes on my left. "Signore, favorisca di rendersi," said a voice, very quiet and polite. I stared around me, hopeless, at bay: and while I stared and clutched my useless gun, from behind a rock some twenty paces up the slope a girl stepped forward, halted, rested the butt of her musket on the stone, and, crossing her hands above the nozzle of it, calmly regarded us.
Even in my rage her extraordinary wild beauty held me at gaze for a moment. She wore over a loose white shirt a short waist-tunic of faded green velvet, with a petticoat or kilt of the same reaching a little below her knees, from which to the ankles her legs were cased in tight-fitting leathern gaiters. Her stout boots shone with toe-plates of silver or polished steel. A sad-coloured handkerchief protected her head, its edge drawn straight across her brow in a fashion that would have disfigured ninety-nine women in a hundred. But no head-dress availed to disfigure that brow or the young imperious eyes beneath it.
"Are you a friend of this man?" she asked in Italian.
"He is my best friend," I answered her, in the same language.
"Why have you done this to him?"
She seemed to consider for a moment, thoughtfully, without pity.
"I can talk to you in French if you find it easier," she said, after a pause.
"You may use Italian," I answered angrily. "I can understand it more easily than you will use it to explain why you have done this wickedness."
"He was very foolish," she said. "He tried to run away. And you were all very foolish to come as you did. We saw your ship while you were yet four leagues at sea. How have you come here?"
"I came here," answered I, "being led by your hogs, and after shooting an assassin in disguise of a hog."
"You have killed Giuseppe?"
"I did my best," said I, turning and addressing myself to three Corsicans who had stepped from the bushes around me. "But whatever your purpose may be, you have shot my friend here, and he is dying. If you have hearts, deal tenderly with him, and afterwards we can talk."
"He says well," said the girl, slowly, and nodded to the three men. "Lift him and bring him to the camp." She turned to me. "You will not resist?" she asked.
"I will go with my friend," said I.
"That is good. You may walk behind me," she said, turning on her heel. "I am glad to have met one who talks in Italian, for the rest of your friends can only chatter in English, a tongue which I do not understand. Step close behind me, please; for the way is narrow. For what are you waiting?"
"To see that my friend is tenderly handled," I answered.
"He is past helping," said she, carelessly. "He behaved foolishly.
You did not stop for Giuseppe, did you?"
"I did not."
"I am not blaming you," said she, and led the way.
CHAPTER XV.
I BECOME HOSTAGE TO THE PRINCESS CAMILLA.
"Silvis te, Tyrrhene, feras agitare putasti?
Advenit qui vestra dies muliebribus armis
Verba redarguerit."
VIRGIL, Aeneid, xi.
Ahead of us, beyond the rises and hollows of the macchia, rose a bare mountain summit, not very tall, the ascent to it broken by granite ledges, so that from a distance it almost appeared to be terraced. On a heathery slope at the foot of the first terrace the Corsicans set down poor Nat and spoke a word to their mistress, who presently halted and exchanged a few sentences with them in patois; whereupon they stepped back a few paces into the macchia, and, having quickly cut a couple of ilex-staves, fell to plaiting them with lentisk, to form a litter.
While this was doing I stepped back to my friend's side. His eyes were closed; but he breathed yet, and his pulse, though faint, was perceptible. A little blood—a very little—trickled from the corner of his mouth. I glanced at the girl, who had drawn near and stood close at my elbow.
"Have you a surgeon in your camp?" I asked. "I believe that a surgeon might save him yet."
She shook her head. I could detect no pity in her eyes; only a touch of curiosity, half haughty and in part sullen.
"I doubt," she answered, "if you will find a surgeon in all Corsica.
I do not believe in surgeons."
"Then," said I, "you have not lived always in Corsica."
Her face flushed darkly, even while the disdain in her eyes grew colder, more guarded.
"What do you mean by that?" she asked.
"Why," said I, "you are not one, I believe, to speak so positively in mere ignorance. But see!" I went on, pointing down upon the bay over which this higher slope gave us a clear view, "there goes the ship that brought us here."
She gazed at it for a while, with bent brow, evidently puzzled.
"No," said I, watching her, "I shall not tell you yet why she goes, nor where her port lies. But I have something to propose to you."
"Say it."
"It leaves one man behind, and one only, in our camp below. He is my father, and he has some knowledge of surgery; I believe he could save my friend here."
She stood considering. "So much was known to me," she answered at length; "that, after you, there would be but one left. Three of my men have gone down to take him. He will be here before long."
"But, pardon me—for as yet I know not whether your aim is to kill us or take us alive—"
She interrupted me with a slight shrug of her shoulders. "I have no wish to kill you. But I must know what brings you here, and the rest can talk nothing but English. As for this one"—with a gesture of the hand towards Nat—"he was foolish. He tried to run away and warn you."
"Then, signorina, let me promise, who know my father, that you will not take him alive."
"I have sent three men."
"You had done better to send thirty; but even so you will not succeed."
"I have heard tell," she said, again with a little movement of her shoulders, "that all Englishmen are mad."
I laughed; and this laugh of mine had a singular effect on her. She drew back and looked at me for an instant with startled eyes, as though she had never heard laughter in her life before, or else had heard too much.
"Tell me what you propose," she said.
"I propose to send down a message to my father, and one of your men shall carry it with a white flag (for that he shall have the loan of my handkerchief). I will write in Italian, that you may read and know what I say."
"It is unnecessary."
"I thank you." I found in my pockets the stump of a pencil and a scrap of paper—an old Oxford bill—and wrote—
"DEAR FATHER,
"We are prisoners, and Nat is wounded, but whether past help or
not I cannot say. I believe you might do something for him.
If it suit your plans, the bearer will give you safe conduct:
if not, I remain your obedient son,"
"PROSPER."
I translated this for her, and folded the paper.
"Marc'antonio!" she called to one of the three men, who by this time had finished plaiting the litter and were strewing it with fern.
Marc'antonio—a lean, slight fellow with an old scar on his cheek— stepped forward at once. She gave him my note and handkerchief with instructions to hurry.
"Excuse me, principessa"—he hesitated, with a glance at me and another at his comrades—"but these two, with the litter, will have their hands full; and this prisoner is a strong one and artful. Has he not already slain 'l Verru?"
"You will mind your own business, Marc'antonio, which is to run, as I tell you."
The man turned without another word, but with a last distrustful look, and plunged downhill into the scrub. The girl made a careless sign to the others to lay Nat on his litter, and, turning, led the way up the rocky front of the summit, presenting her back to me, choosing the path which offered fewest impediments to the litter-bearers in our rear.
The sun was now high overhead, and beat torridly upon the granite crags, which, as I clutched them, blistered my hands. The girl and the two men (in spite of their burden) balanced themselves and sprang from foothold to foothold with an ease which shamed me. For a while I supposed that we were making for the actual summit; but on the second terrace my captress bore away to the left and led us by a track that slanted across the northern shoulder of the ridge. A sentry started to his feet and stepped from behind a clump of arid sage-coloured bushes, stood for a moment with the sun glinting on his gun-barrel, and at a sign from the girl dropped back upon his post. Just then, or a moment later, my ears caught the jigging notes of a flute; whereby I knew Mr. Badcock to be close at hand, for it was discoursing the tune of "The Vicar of Bray"!
Sure enough, as we rounded the slope we came upon him, Mr. Fett, and Billy Priske, the trio seated within a semi-circle of admiring Corsicans, and above a scene so marvellous that I caught my breath. The slope, breaking away to north and east, descended sheer upon a vast amphitheatre filled with green acres of pine forest and pent within walls of porphyry that rose in tower upon tower, pinnacle upon pinnacle, beyond and above the tree-tops; and these pillars, as they soared out of the gulf, seemed to shake off with difficulty the forest that climbed after them, holding by every nook and ledge in their riven sides—here a dark-foliaged clump caught in a chasm, there a solitary trunk bleached and dead but still hanging by a last grip.
On the edge of this green cauldron the Corsicans and my comrades sat like so many witches, their figures magnified uncannily against the void; and far beyond, above the rose-coloured crags, deep-set in miles of transparent blue, shone the snow-covered central peaks of the island.
As I rounded the corner, Mr. Fett hailed me with a shout and a vocal imitation of a post-horn.
"Another," he cried, and slapped his thigh triumphantly. "Another blossom added to the posy! Badcock, my flosculet, you owe me five shillings. Permit me to explain, sir"—he turned to me—"that Mr. Badcock has been staking upon an anthology, I upon the full basket and the whole hog. It is cut and come again with these Corsicans; and, talking of hogs—"
His chatter tailed off in a pitiful exclamation as the litter-carriers came around the angle of the ridge with Nat's body between them.
"Poor lad! Ah, poor lad!" I heard Billy say. Mr. Badcock nervously disjointed his flute. "I warned him, sir. Believe me, my last words were that, being in Rome, so to speak, he should do as the Romans did—"
"There is one more," announced the girl, to her Corsicans, "and I have sent for him. He will come under conduct; and, meanwhile, I have to say that any man who offers to harm this prisoner, here, will be shot."
"But why should we harm him, principessa?" they asked; and, indeed, I felt inclined to echo their question, seeing that she pointed at me.
"Because he has killed Giuseppe," she answered simply.
"Giuseppe? He has slain Giuseppe?" The simultaneous cry went up in a wail, and by impulse the hand of each one moved to his knife.
"Your pardon, principessa—" began one black-avised bandit, dropping the haft of his knife and feeling for the gun at his back.
She waived him aside and turned to me. "I should warn you, sir, that we are of one clan here, though I may not tell you our name; and against the slayer of one it is vendetta with us all. But I spare you until your father arrives."
"I thank you," answered I, feeling blue, but fetching up my best bow. (Here was a pleasant prospect!) "I only beg to observe that I killed this man—if I have killed him—in self-defence," I added.
"Do you wish me to repeat that as your plea?" she asked, half in scorn.
"I do not," said I, with a sudden rush of anger. "Moreover, I dare say that these savages of yours would see no distinction."
"You are right," she replied carelessly, "they would see no distinction."
"But excuse me, principessa," persisted the scowling man, "a feud is a feud, and if he has slain our Giuse—"
"Attend to me, sir," I broke in. "Your Giuseppe came at me like a hog, and I gave him his deserts. For the rest, if you move your hand another inch towards that gun I will knock your brains out." I clubbed my musket ready to strike.
"Gently, sir!" interposed the girl. "This is folly, as you must see."
I shrugged my shoulders. "You will allow me, Princess. If it come to vendetta, you have slain my friend."
She gave her back to me and faced the ring. "I tell you," she said, "that Giuseppe's death rests on the prisoner's word alone. Marc'antonio and Stephanu have gone down and will bring us the truth of it. Meanwhile I say that this one is our prisoner, like as the others. Give him room and let him wait by his friend. Does any one say 'nay' to that?" she demanded.
The scowling man, with a glance at his comrades' faces, gave way. I could not have told why, but from the start of the dispute I felt that this girl held her bandits, or whatever they were, in imperfect obedience. They obeyed her, yet with reserve. When pressed to the point between submission and mutiny, they yielded; but they yielded with a consent which I could not reconcile with submission. Even whilst answering deferentially they appeared to be looking at one another and taking a cue.
For the time, however, she had prevailed with them. They stood aside while Billy and I lifted the litter and bore it to the shade of an overhanging rock. One even fetched me a panful of water which he had collected from a trickling spring on the face of the cliffs hard by, and brought me linen, too, when he saw me preparing to tear up my own shirt to bind Nat's wound.
We could not trace the course of the bullet, and judged it best to spare meddling with a hurt we could not help. So, having bathed away the clotted blood and bandaged him, we strewed a fresh bed of fern, and watched by him, moistening his lips from time to time with water, for which he moaned. The sun began to sink on the far side of the mountain, and the shadow of the summit, falling into the deep gulf at our feet, to creep across the green tree-tops massed there. While it crept, and I watched it, Billy related in whispers how he had been sprung upon and gagged, so swiftly that he had no chance to cry alarm or to feel for the trigger of his musket. He rubbed his hands delightedly when in return I told the story of my lucky shot. In his ignorance of Italian he had caught no inkling of the peril that lucky shot had brought upon me, nor did I choose to enlighten him.
The shadow of the mountain was stretching more than halfway across the valley, and in the slanting light the rosy tinge of the crags appeared to be melting and suffusing the snow-peaks beyond, when my father walked into the camp unannounced. He carried a gun and a folding camp-stool, and was followed by Marc'antonio, who fluttered my white handkerchief from the ramrod of his musket.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen!" said my father, lifting his hat and looking about him.
I could see at a glance that his stature and bearing impressed the Corsicans. They drew back for a moment, then pressed around him like children.
"Mbe! E bellu, il Inglese," I heard one say to his fellow.
After quelling the brief tumult against me, and while I busied myself with Nat, the girl had disappeared—I could not tell whither. But now one of the band ran up the slope calling loudly to summon her. "O principessa, ajo, ajo! Veni qui, ajo!" and, gazing after him, I saw her at the entrance of a cave some fifty feet above us, erect, with either hand parting and holding back the creepers that curtained her bower.
She let the curtains fall-to behind her, and, stepping down the hillside, welcomed my father with the gravest of curtsies.
"Salutation, O stranger!"
"And to you, O lady, salutation!" my father made answer, with a bow. "Though English," he went on, slipping easily into the dialect she used with her followers, "I am Corsican enough to forbear from asking their names of gentlefolk in the macchia; but mine is John Constantine, and I am very much at your service."
"My men call me the Princess Camilla."
"A good name," said my father, and seemed to muse upon it for a moment while he eyed her paternally. "A very good name, O Princess, and beloved of old by Diana—
"'Aeternum telorum et virginitatis amorem
Intemerata—'
"But I come at your bidding and must first of all apologize for some little delay; the cause being that your messenger found me busy patching up a bullet-hole in one of your men."
"Giuseppe is not dead?"
"He is not dead, and on the whole I incline to think he is not going to die, though you will allow me to say that the rogue deserved it. The other three gentlemen-at-arms despatched by you are at this moment bringing him up the hill, very carefully, following my instructions. He will need care. In fact, it will be touch-and-go with him for many days to come."
While he talked, my father, catching sight of me, had stepped to Nat's couch. Nodding to me without more ado to lift the patient and cut away his shirt, he knelt, unrolled his case of instruments, and with a "Courage, lad!" bent an ear to the faint breathing. In less than a minute, as it seemed, his hand feeling around the naked back came to a pause a little behind and under the right arm-pit.
"Courage, lad!" he repeated. "A little pain, and we'll have it, safe as a wasp in an apple."
The Corsicans under his orders had withdrawn to a little distance and stood about us in a ring. While he probed and Nat's poor body writhed feebly in my arms, I lifted my eyes once with a shudder, and met the Princess Camilla's. She was watching, and without a tremor, her face grave as a child's.
With a short grunt of triumph, my father caught away his hand, dipped it swiftly into the pan of water beside him, and held the bullet aloft between thumb and forefinger. The Corsicans broke into quick guttural cries, as men hailing a miracle. As Nat's head fell back limp against my shoulder I saw the Princess turn and walk away alone. Her followers dispersed by degrees, but not, I should say, until every man had explained to every other his own theory of the wound and the operation, and how my father had come to find the bullet so unerringly, each theorist tapping his own chest and back, or his interlocutor's, sometimes a couple tapping each other with vigour, neither listening, both jabbering at full pitch of the voice with prodigious elisions of consonants and equally prodigious drawlings of the vowels. For us, the dressing of the wound kept us busy, and we paid little attention even when a fresh jabbering announced that the litter-bearers had arrived with Giuseppe.
By-and-by, however, my father rose from his knees and, leaving me to fasten the last bandages, strolled across the slope to see how his other patient had borne the journey. Just at that moment I heard again a voice calling to the Princess Camilla: "Ajo, ajo! O principessa, veni qui!" and simultaneously the voice of Billy Priske uplifted in an incongruous British oath.
My father halted with a gesture of annoyance, checked himself, and, awaiting the Princess, pointed towards an object on the turf—an object at which Billy Priske, too, was pointing.
It appeared that while his comrades had been attending on Giuseppe, the third Corsican (whom they called Ste, or Stephanu) had filled up his time by rifling our camp; and of all our possessions he had chosen to select our half-dozen spare muskets and a burst coffer, from which he now extracted and (for his comrade's admiration) held aloft our chiefest treasure—the Iron Crown of Corsica.
"Princess," said my father, coldly, "your men have broken faith.
I came to you under no compulsion, obeying your flag of truce.
It was no part of the bargain that our camp should be pillaged."
For a while she did not seem to hear; but stood at gaze, her eyes round with wonder.
"Stephanu, bring it here," she commanded.
The man brought it. "O principessa," said he, with a wondering grin, "who are these that travel with royal crowns? If we were true folk of the macchia, now, we could hold them at a fine ransom."
She took the crown, examined it for a moment, and turning to my father, spoke to him swiftly in French.
"How came you by this, O Englishman?"
"That," answered my father, stiffly, "I decline to tell you. It has come to your hands, Princess, through violation of your flag of truce, and in honour you should restore it to me without question."
She waved a hand impatiently. "This is the crown of King Theodore, O Englishman. See the rim of mingled oak and laurel, made in imitation of that hasty chaplet wherewith the Corsicans first crowned him in the Convent of Alesani. Answer me, and in French, for all your lives depend on it; yet briefly, for the sound of that tongue angers my men. For your life, then, how did you come by this?"
"You must find some better argument, Princess," said my father, stiffly.
"For your son's life then."
I saw my father lift his eyes and scan her beautiful face.
"My son is not a coward, Princess; the less so that—" Here my father hesitated.
"Quickly, quickly!" she urged him.
He threw up his head. "Yes, quickly, Princess; and in no fear, nor upon any condition. You are islanders; therefore you are patriots. You are patriots; therefore you hate the Genoese and love the Queen Emilia, whose servant I am. As I was saying, then, my son has the less excuse to be a coward in that he hopes, one day, with the Queen Emilia's blessing, to wear this crown bequeathed to him by the late King Theodore."
"He?" The girl swung upon me, scornfully incredulous.
"Even he, Princess. In proof I can show you King Theodore's deed of gift, signed with his own hand and attested."
For the first time, then, I saw her smile; but the smile held no correspondence with the tone of slow, quiet contempt in which she next spoke.
"You are trustful, O sciu Johann Constantine. I have heard that all
Englishmen tell the truth, and expect it, and are otherwise mad."
"I trust to nothing, Princess, until I have the Queen Emilia's word.
That I would trust to my life's end."
She nodded darkly. "You shall go to her—if you can find her."
"Tell me where to seek her."
"She lies at Nonza in Capo Corse; or peradventure the Genoese, who hold her prisoner, have by this time carried her across to the Continent."
"Though she were in Genoa itself, I would deliver her or die."
"You will probably die, O Englishman, before you receive her answer; and that will be a pity—yes, a great pity. But you are free to go, you and your company—all but your son here, this King of Corsica that is to be, whom I keep as hostage, with his crown. Eh? Is this not a good bargain I offer you?"
"Be it good or bad, Princess," my father answered, "to make a bargain takes two."
"That is true," said I, stepping forward with a laugh, and thrusting myself between the Corsicans, who had begun to press around with decided menace in their looks. "And therefore the Princess will accept me as the other party to the bargain, and as her hostage."
Again at the sound of my laugh she shrunk a little; but presently frowned.
"Have you considered, cavalier," she asked coldly, "that Giuseppe is not certain of recovery?"
"Still less certain is my friend," answered I, and with a shrug of the shoulders walked away to Nat's sick-couch. There, twenty minutes later, my father took leave of me, after giving some last instructions for the care of the invalid. In one hand he carried his musket, in the other his camp-stool.
"Say the word even now, lad," he offered, "and we will abide till he recovers."
But I shook my head.
Billy Priske carried an enormous wine-skin slung across his shoulders; Mr. Fett a sack of provender. Mr. Badcock had begged or borrowed or purchased an enormous gridiron.
"But what is that for? I asked him, as we shook hands.
"For cooking the wild goose," he answered solemnly, "which in these parts, as I am given to understand, is an animal they call the mufflone. He partakes in some degree of the nature of a sheep. He will find me his match, sir."
One by one, a little before the sun sank, they bade me farewell and passed—free men—down the path that dipped into the pine forest. On the edge of the dip each man turned and waved a hand to me. The princess, with Marc'antonio beside her, stood and watched them as they passed out of sight.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE FOREST HUT.
"Then hooly, hooly rase she up,
And hooly she came nigh him,
And when she drew the curtain by—
'Young man, I think you're dyin'.'"
Barbara Allan's Cruelty.
Evening fell, of a sudden filling the great hollow with purple shadows. As the stars came out the Corsicans on the slope to my left lit a fire of brushwood and busied themselves around it, cooking their supper. They were no ordinary bandits, then; or at least had no fear to betray their whereabouts, since on the landward side on so clear a night the glow would be visible for many miles.
I watched them at their preparations. Their dark figures moved between me and the flames as they set up a tall tripod of pine poles and hung their cauldron from the centre of it, upon a brandice. The princess had withdrawn to her cave and did not reappear until Stephanu, who seemed to be head-cook, announced that supper was ready, whereupon she came and took her seat with the rest in a ring around the fire. Marc'antonio brought me my share of seethed kid's flesh with a capful of chestnuts roasted in the embers; a flask of wine too, and a small pail of goat's milk with a pannikin, for Nat. The fare might not be palatable, but plainly they did not intend us to starve.
Marc'antonio made no answer when I thanked him, but returned to his seat in the ring, where from the beginning of the meal—as at a signal—his companions had engaged in a furious and general dispute. So at least it sounded, and so shrill at times were their contending voices, and so fierce their gesticulations, that for some minutes I fully expected to see them turn to other business the knives with which they attacked their meal.
The Princess sat listening, speaking very seldom. Once only in a general hush the firelight showed me that her lips were moving, and I caught the low tone of her voice, but not the words. Not once did she look in my direction, and yet I guessed that she was speaking of me: for the words "ostagiu," "Inglese," and the name "Giuseppe" or "Griuse"—of the man I had shot—had recurred over and over in their jabber, and recurred when she ceased and it broke forth again.
It had lasted maybe for half an hour when at a signal from Marc'antonio (whom I took to be the Princess's lieutenant or spokesman in these matters, and to whom she turned oftener than to any of the others, except perhaps Stephanu) two or three picked up their muskets, looked to their priming, and walked off into the darkness. By-and-by came in the sentinels they had relieved, and these in turn were helped by Stephanu to supper from the cauldron. I watched, half-expecting the dispute to start afresh, but the others appeared to have taken their fill of it with their food; and soon, each man, drawing his blanket over his head, lay back and stretched themselves to sleep. The newcomers, having satisfied their hunger, did likewise. Stephanu gave the great pot a stir, unhitched it from the brandice, and bore it away, leaving the Princess and Marc'antonio the only two wakeful ones beside the fire.
They sat so long without speaking, the Princess with knees drawn up, hands clasping them, and eyes bent on the embers into which (for the Corsican nights are chilly) Marc'antonio now and again cast a fresh brand—that in time my own eyes began to grow heavy. They were smarting, too, from the smoke of the burnt wood. Nat had fallen into a troubled sleep, in which now and again he moaned: and always at the sound I roused myself to ease his posture or give him to drink from the pannikin; but, for the rest, I dozed, and must have dozed for hours.
I started up wide awake at the sound of a footstep beside me, and sat erect, blinking against the rays of a lantern held close to my eyes. The Princess held it, and at Nat's head and feet stood Marc'antonio and Stephanu, in the act of lifting his litter. She motioned that I should stand up and follow. Marc'antonio and Stephanu fell into file behind us. Each carried a gun in a sling.
"I will hold the light where the path is difficult," she said quietly; "but keep a watch upon your feet. In an hour's time we shall have plenty of light."
I looked and saw the sickle of the waning moon suspended over the gulf. It shot but the feeblest glimmer along the edges of the granite pinnacles, none upon the black masses of the pine-tops. But around it the darkness held a faint violet glow, and I knew that day must be climbing close on its heels.
There was no promise of day, however, along the track into which we plunged—the track by which my comrades had descended to cross the valley. It dived down the mountain-side through a tunnel of pines, and in places the winter streams, now dry, had channelled it and broken it up with land-slides.
"You do not ask where I am leading you," she said, holding her lantern for me at one of these awkward places.
"I am your hostage, Princess," I answered, without looking at her, my eyes being busy just then in discovering good foothold. "You must do with me what you will."
"If I could! Ah, if I could!"
She said it hard and low, with clenched teeth, almost hissing the words. I stared at her, amazed. No sign of anger had she shown until this moment. What cause indeed had she to be angered? In what way had my words offended? Yet angry she was, trembling with such a gust of wrath that the lantern shook in her hand.
Before I could master my surprise, she had mastered herself: and, turning, resumed her way. For the next twenty minutes we descended in silence, while the dawn, breaking above the roofed pines, filtered down to us and filled the spaces between their trunks with a brownish haze. By-and-by, when the slope grew easier and flattened itself out to form the bottom of the basin, these pines gave place to a chestnut wood, and the carpet of slippery needles to a tangled undergrowth taller than a very tall man: and here, in a clearing beside the track, we came on a small hut with a ruinous palisade beside it, fencing off a pen or courtyard of good size—some forty feet square, maybe.
The Princess halted, and I halted a few paces from her, studying the hut. It was built of pine-logs sawn lengthwise in half and set together with their untrimmed bark turned outwards: but the most of their bark had peeled away with age. It had two square holes for windows, and a doorway, but no door. Its shingle roof had buckled this way and that with the rains, and had taken on a tinge of grey which the dawn touched to softest silver. Lines of more brilliant silver criss-crossed it, and these were the tracks of snails.
"O King of Corsica"—she turned to me—"behold your palace!"
Her eyes were watching me, but in what expectation I could not tell. I stepped carelessly to the doorway and took a glance around the interior.
"It might be worse; and I thank you, Princess."
"Ajo, Marc'antonio! Since the stranger approves of it so far, go carry his friend within."
"Your pardon, Princess," I interposed; "the place is something too dirty to house a sick man, and until it be cleaned my friend will do better in the fresh air."
She shrugged her shoulders. "Your subjects, O King, have left it in this mess, and they will help you very little to improve it."
I walked over to the palisade and looked across it upon an unsightly area foul with dried dung and the trampling of pigs. For weeks, if not months, it must have lain uninhabited, but it smelt potently even yet.
"My subjects, Princess?"
"With Giuse lying sick, the hogs roam without a keeper: and my people have chosen you in his room." She paused, and I felt, rather than saw, that both the men were eyeing me intently. I guessed then that she was putting on me a meditated insult; to the Corsican mind, doubtless a deep one.
"So I am to keep your hogs, Princess?" said I, with a deliberate air.
"Well, I am your hostage."
"I am breaking no faith, Englishman."
"As to that, please observe that I am not accusing you. I but note that, having the power, you use it. But two things puzzle me: of which the first is, where shall I find my charges?"
"Marc'antonio shall fetch them down to you from the other side of the mountain."
"And next, how shall I learn to tend them?" I asked, still keeping my matter-of-fact tone.
"They will give you no trouble. You have but to pen them at night and number them, and again at daybreak turn them loose. They know this forest and prefer it to the other side: you will not find that they wander. At night you have only to blow a horn which Marc'antonio will bring you, and the sound of it will fetch them home."
"A light job," said Stephanu, with a grin, "when a man can bring his stomach to it."
"Not so light as you suppose, my friend," I answered. "The sty, here, will need some cleansing; since if these are to be my subjects, I must do my best for them. It may not amount to much, but at least my hogs shall keep themselves cleaner than some Corsicans, even than some Corsican cooks."
"Stephanu," said Marc'antonio, gravely, "the Englishman meant that for you: and I tell you what I have told you before, that yours are no fitly kept hands for a cook. I have travelled abroad and seen the ways of other nations."
"The sty will need mending too, Princess," said I: "but before nightfall I will try to have it ready."
"You will find tools in the hut," she answered, with a glance at Marc'antonio, who nodded. "For food, you shall be kept supplied. Stephanu has brought, in his suck yonder, flesh, cheese, and wine sufficient for three days, with milk for your friend: and day by day fresh milk shall be sent down to you."
Her words were commonplace, yet her cheeks wore an angry flush beneath their sun-burn; and I knew why. Her insult had miscarried. In accepting this humiliation I had somehow mastered her: even the tone she used, level and matter-of-fact, she used perforce, in place of the high scorn with which she had started to sentence me. My spirits rose. If I could not understand this girl, neither could she understand me. She only felt defeat, and it puzzled and angered her.
"You have no complaint to make?" she asked, hesitating in spite of herself as she turned to go.
I laughed, having discovered that my laugh perplexed her.
"None whatever, Princess. Am I not your hostage?"
When they were gone I laughed again, with a glance at Nat who lay with closed eyes and white still face where Marc'antonio and Stephanu had made a couch of fern and some heather for him under the chestnut boughs. The sight of the heather gave me an idea, and I walked back to where, at the end of the chestnut wood, a noble clump of it grew, under a scarp of rock where the pines broke off. With my knife I cut an armful of it and returned to the hut, pausing on my way to gather some strings of a creeper which looked to be a clematis and sufficiently tough for my purpose. My next step was to choose and cut a tolerably straight staff of ilex, about five feet in length and close upon two inches thick. While I trimmed it, a blackbird began to sing in the undergrowth behind the hut, and, listening, my ears seemed to catch in the pauses of his song a sound of running water, less loud but nearer and more distinct than the murmur of the many rock-streams that tinkled into the valley. I dropped my work for a while and, passing to the back of the hut, found and followed through the bushes a foot-track—overgrown and tangled with briers, but still a track—which led me to the water. It ran, with a murmur almost subterranean, beneath bushes so closely over-arched that my feet were on the brink before I guessed, and I came close upon taking a bath at unawares. Now this stream, so handy within reach, was just what I wanted, and among the bushes by the verge grew a plant—much like our English osier, but dwarfer—extremely pliant and tougher than the tendrils of the clematis; so, that, having stripped it of half a dozen twigs, I went back to work more blithely than ever.
But for fear of disturbing Nat I could have whistled. It may even be that, intent on my task, I did unwittingly whistle a few bars of a tune: or perhaps the blackbird woke him. At any rate, after half an hour's labour I looked up from my handiwork and met his eyes, open, intent on me and with a question in them.
"What am I doing, eh? I am making a broom, lad," I held it up for him to admire.
"Where is she?" he asked feebly.
"She?" I set down my broom, fetched him a pannikin-ful of milk, and knelt beside him while he drank it. "If you mean the Princess Camilla, she has gone back to her mountain, leaving us in peace."
"Camilla?" he murmured the word.
"And a very suitable name, it seems to me. There was, if you remember, a young lady in the Aeneid of pretty much the same disposition."
"Camilla," he repeated, and again but a little above his breath.
"Your father . . . he is helping her?"
"Helping her?" I echoed. "My dear lad, if ever a young woman could take care of herself it is the Princess. . . . And as for my father helping her, she has packed him off northwards across the mountains with a flea in his ear. And, talking of fleas—" I went on with a glance at the hut.
He brought me to a full stop with a sudden grip on my arm, astonishingly strong for a wounded man.
"Nay, lad—nay!" I coaxed him, but slipped a hand under him as he insisted and sat upright.
"She needs help, I tell you," he gasped. "Needs help . . . it was for help I ran when—when—"
"But what dreaming is this? My dear fellow, she makes prisoners of us, shoots you down when you try to escape, treats me worse than a dog, banishes us to this hut which—not to put too fine a point on it—is a pigs'-sty, and particularly filthy at that. I don't blame her, though some little explanation might not come amiss: but if she has any need of help, you must admit that she dissembles it pretty thoroughly."
Nat would not listen. "You did not see? You did not see?—And yet you know her language and have talked with her! Whereas I—O blind!" he broke out passionately, "blind that you could not see!"
A fit of coughing seized and shook him, and as I eased him back upon his fern pillow, blood came away upon the handkerchief I held to his lips.
"Damn her!" I swore viciously. "Let her need help if she will, and let her ask me for it! She has tried her best to kill you; and what's more, she'll succeed if you don't lie still as I order. Help? Oh yes, I'll help her—when I have helped you!"
He moved his head feebly, as if to shake it: but lay quiet, panting, with closed eyes: and so, the effusion of blood having ceased, I left him and fell to work like a negro slave.
By the angle of the hut there stood a pigs' trough of granite, roughly hewn and hollowed, and among the tools within I found a leaky wooden bucket which, by daubing it with mud from the brink of the stream, I contrived to make passably watertight. A score of times I must have travelled to and fro between the hut and the stream before I had the cistern filled. Then I fell-to upon the foul walls within, slushing and brooming them. Bats dropped from the roof and flew blundering against me: I drove them forth from the window. The mud floor became a quag: I seized a spade and shovelled it clean, mud and slime and worse filth together. And still as I toiled a song kept liddening (as we say in Cornwall) through my head: a song with two refrains, whereof the first was the old nursery jingle—"Mud won't daub sieve, sieve won't hold water, water won't wet stone, stone won't edge axe, axe won't cut rod, rod won't make a gad, a gad to hang Manachar who has eaten my raspberries every one." (So ran the rigmarole with which Mrs. Nance had beguiled my infancy.) The second refrain echoed poor Nat's cry, "She needs help, needs help, and you could not see! Blind, blind, that you could not see!"
How should she need help? Little cared I though she needed it, and sorely! But how had the notion taken hold of Nat?
Weakness? Delirium? No: he had been running to get help for her when they shot him down. I had his word for that. . . . But she had pursued with the others. For aught I knew, she herself had fired the shot.
If she needed help, why was she treating us despitefully—putting this insult upon me, for example? Why had she used those words of hate? They had been passionate words, too; spoken from the heart in an instant of surprise. Then, again, to suppose her a friend of the Genoese was impossible. But why, if not a friend of the Genoese, was she a foe of their foes? Why had she taken to the macchia with these men? Why were they keeping watch on the coast while careless that their watchfire showed inland for leagues? Why, if she were a patriot, had the sight of King Theodore's crown awakened such scorn and yet rage against me, its bearer? Why again, at the mere word that my father sought the Queen Emilia, had she let him pass on, while redoubling her despite against me?
On top of these puzzles Nat must needs propound another, that this girl stood in need of help! Help? From whom?
As my mind ran over these questions, still at every pause the old rigmarole kept dinning—"Mud won't daub sieve, sieve won't hold water, water won't wet stone . . ." on and on without ceasing, and still I toiled and sweated.
By noon the hut was clean, at any rate tolerably clean; but its soaked floor would certainly take many hours in drying, and Nat must spend another night under the open sky. I left the hut, snatched a meal of bread and cheese, and, after a pull at the wine flask, turned my attention to the sty. To cleanse it before nightfall was out of the question. I examined it and saw three good days' labour ahead of me. But the palisading could be repaired and made secure after a fashion, and I started upon it at once, sharpening the rotten posts with my axe, driving, fixing, nailing, binding them firmly with osier-twists, of which I had fetched a fresh supply from the stream-side. I had rolled my jacket into a pillow for Nat, that he might lie easily and watch me.
The sun was sinking beyond the mountain, staining with deep rose the pinnacles of granite that soared eastward above the pines, when a horn sounded on the slope and Marc'antonio came down the track driving the hogs before him. He instructed me good-naturedly enough in the art of penning the brutes, breaking off from time to time to compliment me on my labours, the sum of which appeared to affect him with a degree of wonder not far short of awe. "But why are you doing it? Perche? perche?" he broke off once or twice to ask, eyeing me askance with a look rather fearful than unfriendly.
"The Princess laid this task upon me," I answered cheerfully, indeed with elation, feeling that so long as I could keep my tyrants puzzled I still kept, somehow, the upper hand.
"I have travelled, in my time," said Marc'antonio with a touch of vainglorious pride. "I have made the acquaintance of many continentals, even with some that were extremely rich. But I never crossed over to England."
"You would have found it full of eccentrics," said I.
"I dare say," said he. "For myself, I said to myself when I took ship, 'Marc'antonio,' said I, 'you must make it a rule to be surprised at nothing.' But do Englishmen clean hogs'-sties for pleasure?"
"And the Princess? She has also travelled?" I asked, meeting his question with another.
For the moment my question appeared to disturb him. Recovering himself, he answered gravely—
"She has travelled, but not very far. You must not do her an injustice. . . . We form our opinions on what we see."
"It is admittedly the best way," I assented, with equal gravity.
At the shut of night he left me and went his way up the mountain path, and an hour later, having attended to Nat's wants, tired as in all my life I had never been, I stretched myself on the turf and slept under the stars.
The grunting of the hogs awakened me, a little before dawn. I went to the pen, and as soon as I opened the hatch they rushed out in a crowd, all but upsetting me as they jostled against my legs. Then, after listening for a while after they had vanished into the undergrowth and darkness, I crept back to my couch and slept.
That day, though the sun was rising before I awoke again and broke fast, I caught up with it before noon: that is to say, with the work I had promised myself to accomplish. Before sunset I had scraped over and cleaned the entire area of the sty. Also I had fetched fern in handfuls and strewn the floor of the hut, which was now dry and clean to the smell.
In the evening I blew my horn for the hogs, and they returned to their pen obediently as the Princess had promised. I had scarcely finished numbering them when Marc'antonio came down the track, this time haling a recalcitrant she-goat by a halter.
He tethered the goat and instructed me how to milk her.
The next evening he brought, at my request, a saw. I had cleaned out the sty thoroughly, and turned-to at once to enlarge the window-openings to admit more light and air into the hut.
Still, as I worked, my spirits rose. Nat was bettering fast. In a few more days, I promised myself, he would be out of danger. To be sure he shook his head when I spoke of this hope, and in the intervals of sleep—of sleep in which I rejoiced as the sweet restorer—lay watching me, with a trouble in his eyes.
He no longer disobeyed my orders, but lay still and watched. My last rag of shirt was gone now, torn up for bandages. Marc'antonio had promised to bring fresh linen to-morrow. By night I slept with my jacket about me. By day I worked naked to the waist, yet always with a growing cheerfulness.
It was on the fourth afternoon, and while yet the sun stood a good way above the pines, that the Princess Camilla deigned to revisit us. I had carried Nat forth into the glade before the hut, where the sun might fall on him temperately, after a torrid day—torrid, that is to say, on the heights, but in our hollow, pight about with the trees, the air had clung heavily.