“

Joscelyn, from my upper window I have seen a rider turn into the next street and make for the tavern. Perchance he brings news or letters. Will you come with me and see?” It was Betty’s voice under her window, and Joscelyn put her head out a moment to say she would go; then ran downstairs. And go she did in spite of her mother’s vehement protest.

“’Tis scarce three weeks gone since you were reviled in the streets as a Tory, and now you will go thrust yourself in place to receive the same treatment again. ’Tis folly—ay, worse than folly!”

But Joscelyn scarcely heard, for in the street Betty was pulling her along at such a pace.

“Methought you would be glad to get a letter from—well, from—It is something over three weeks since you last heard from—” a shy little laugh finished the sentence, and she gave Joscelyn an extra pull which set them into a run.

“How glad somebody would be to see you in such haste to get a letter written to me,” panted Joscelyn, laughing.

“Whither away so fast?” cried Mistress Strudwick from her door; but they did not stop to answer, only calling back merrily that a man, grown, yet not old, nor crippled, nor blind, had ridden into the square, and they were going to have a look at so wonderful a curiosity.

As they turned into the open space before the court-house, the town-bell struck a few resonant notes, a signal from the decrepit old ringer that there was news for somebody. In a few minutes the place was thronged with eager wives and mothers and sweethearts crying out for tidings of their loved ones. Did the man bring any? Yes, he was but now out of the north; whither he went mattered not to them, a man’s mission was his own secret, but in his pouch were letters for towns along the route, and he brought, besides, news of the dreadful massacre in Pennsylvania. And when the few letters were distributed he stood upon the steps and told the pitiful story of Wyoming Valley.

“The able-bodied men were away fighting with Washington; only the old men and women and children remained. Upon this helpless band hundreds of British and Indians, led by Butler, fell, driving them to the fort. Thence the men, shaking with age, but not with fear, sallied to the attack, were defeated and captured, and in sight of those within were tortured with every fiendish device the savages could invent. Then the fort surrendered, and in spite of Butler’s efforts tomahawk and scalping-knife did their deadly work among the helpless captives. Outraged women, spitted upon rails, saw their tender babes brained against rocks and trees. The yells of the captors were mingled with the cries for mercy and the shrieks of the dying, and night was turned into day by the light of burning villages. In all the beautiful valley not a house was spared; and where had been prosperity is now but a desolate wilderness strewn with graves and ruins.”

When he finished, women were weeping upon each other’s necks, thinking of their own little ones and those other murdered babies. And fierce was the denunciation of Butler for enlisting in his army savages whose brutality could not be controlled. This was not war; it was assassination, as cowardly as it was cruel.

So bitter was the feeling aroused, that for a while the fact that the courier had brought some letters was quite overlooked, until Mistress Nash and Janet Cameron came forward with epistles which contained messages for many of those present. Then it was remembered that the other two letters had both been for Joscelyn Cheshire, and immediately a dozen voices demanded her. But she was already well down the street, her arm linked in Betty Clevering’s.

“Come away, Aunt Cheshire will be wretched about you,” the latter had whispered to her, remembering the scene in this very place a few weeks before and dreading a repetition of it, and in her secret heart wishing that at least one of the letters in Joscelyn’s hand should not be read aloud to the public, knowing well that in it was some love-message for herself, for was not that why Eustace wrote so often to Joscelyn? And so she dragged her companion back the way they had come; but as they walked Joscelyn tore open the letter with the familiar seal, exclaiming gayly:—

“Paper is not scarce with Eustace, since he sends me three whole sheets. Let me see—Betty—Betty—Betty—just in a fleeting glance I see your name some eight times. What a fondness he hath for writing the word!”

“Let me read with you, Joscelyn,” cried Betty, her cheeks very bright; and drawing close together the two girls held the sheet between them and slackened their pace. But they were not left long to their privacy, for by the time they reached the Cheshire door a dozen neighbours were upon them.

“So, so, Joscelyn, be not running away with your tidings. Tell us what Clinton is doing in New York,” exclaimed Mistress Strudwick, who had come with the others to give the girl countenance, if so she should need it.

“Ay, do not be playing the selfish, but give us the news,” cried several voices.

“I am as ignorant as you of General Clinton’s doings,” the girl said, smiling at the first speaker; “for, as far as I have got, the letter is full of questions about somebody here at home.”

“Yes, a spying letter for information, no doubt,” sneered Amanda Bryce. “The courier said they were both from some one in New York. Who writes to you from Clinton’s army?”

“Eustace Singleton, a handsome lad whom you know right well, Mistress Bryce.”

“He sends you two letters by the same hand? Faith! he is an ardent correspondent.”

“Nay, this other letter is in a strange writing. I know not yet who hath sent it.”

“Break the wafer and read it to us.”

“I do not choose, Mistress Bryce, to give my letters to the public.”

“Do not choose, because you do not dare.”

“Do not dare?”

“Hush, Joscelyn, she does not mean what she says,” put in Mistress Strudwick.

“Yes, I do mean it, Martha, every word of it. She dare not read it, because it is a spying letter,—asking information, mayhap, which may give us over to a massacre like to that of Wyoming: that’s why she dare not.”

A chorus of cries and hisses arose, but the girl on the step did not quail. Her delicate lip curled with scorn. “’Tis false! You do all know I would be incapable of such wickedness.”

“Then read us the letter and prove it.”

“I will not.”

She thrust the letter into her bosom and faced them with flashing eyes, the very picture of defiance. But a touch from Mistress Strudwick quelled the storm within her. Turning swiftly, she put her arm around the old woman’s neck. “There, I am going to be good. I would not distress you and mother again for the world. But you know I have the right of it.”

“Yes,” echoed Janet Cameron, taking her place on the other side of Joscelyn. “We all know that though you are a Tory, you are no traitor; and I say, Out upon Mistress Bryce for hinting such a thing! I am a Continental, and my father is in Charleston fighting for the cause, but I would trust Joscelyn Cheshire to the end of the world!”

Out in the crowd the sentiment against the girl instantly changed, and all but Amanda Bryce applauded Janet’s words.

“Eustace Singleton writes her naught but love-letters—let her keep them!” cried another girl. “Methinks I should not want the world to be reading my sweetheart’s letters and counting the kisses he sends me.”

“No, nor those he gives you,” said Martha Strudwick, with a merry wink, and instantly there was a great laugh, for the girl had been caught kissing her lover the winter day on which the troops had marched, for which imprudence her mother had soundly boxed her ears.

“And now,” cried Joscelyn, when the laugh had passed, “to prove that there is no treason in this letter, I shall let Betty Clevering—as good a Continental as the best of you—sit down yonder on the bench and read every word of it before I myself have seen it. Here, Betty, be you the judge whether what is herein writ is of treasonable import; and mind you skip nothing, particularly the love passages.” She laughingly pushed Betty upon the bench, and leaving Eustace’s letter in her hands, came back to Janet’s side.

“My letter was from my brother, Joscelyn; and he said he knew not where Richard had been sent. He himself is in the old Sugar House in New York; what he suffers he will not say, but we can guess, since so much has been said of the place.”

Joscelyn kissed the tearful face softly. “Perchance your imagination is over-vivid. It grieves me to the quick that any of our townsfolk should suffer.”

“It will be a great relief to his mother to know that Richard is not in the Sugar House.”

“Yes, there is only one worse prison in the country, and that is for the captured seamen.”

“Do not let us talk of its horrors.”

So the conversation went on until Betty Clevering, her face like a budding rose, came forward again.

“This letter,” she said, holding up the missive, “is one of friendship merely; in it I find absolutely nothing against our cause, save a curse on the war that keeps the writer from—from her he loves.”

“Dear me, to see her blush one would think it were Betty’s love-letter, not Joscelyn’s.”

“How shy she looks!”

“Betty, was it writ so tenderly that you, who are but an outsider, are abashed to read it? Truly, I wish Master Singleton would give lessons in love writing. My man talks so much of General Washington and his doings that he quite forgets to put in the love passages.”

“And ’tis for those that a woman reads her letters,” said Mistress Strudwick. “The ‘I love yous’ and ‘dears’ and ‘kisses’ scattered through the pages mean more to her heart than the announcement of a victory. In faith, old woman as I am, I always read the last sentence first, knowing it will be the sweetest, if so the writer is in his senses.”

“That is why I wanted so much to read Joscelyn’s letter. I knew Eustace would never plot against his own town any more than she would, but an ardent love-letter makes good reading, no matter to whom it may be writ,” laughed Dorothy Graham, breaking a glowing rose from a nearby bush, and holding it playfully against Betty’s cheek, looking archly at her companions as she tapped first one and then the other with her finger, whereupon the laugh again arose, for some had long ago guessed at Eustace’s passion.

Meantime, Joscelyn, drawing somewhat apart, took the strange letter from her dress and broke the wafer. The missive covered but one scant page, but those who watched as she read saw her face grow pale and her lip tremble.

Even in the far southern towns the infamy of those prison-ships had been told, and with a sudden gesture of compassion the girl stretched her arms toward the opposite house.

“Aunt Clevering, poor Aunt Clevering!” and thrusting the letter into Mistress Strudwick’s hands, she exclaimed: “Here read it—read it aloud, then take it over yonder—I cannot.” And gathering Betty close in her arms she listened while the letter was read to the sorrowing women.

“Who are the others? Called he no names?”

“Oh, mayhap one is my son!”

“And another may be my husband!”

“Even the Sugar House had been easier than this! Mark you what we have heard of the ferocity of the jailers, the foulness of the food, the loathsomeness of the ships! They will die, our brave lads will all die there!”

“Will die?—Nay, perchance they are already dead; ’tis a month since this letter was writ, and two months since Monmouth fight.”

And the letter went the rounds of the town, carrying sorrow everywhere and a miserable dread and uncertainty into many homes, for all of the men missing from Monmouth were not yet accounted for. Whose dear ones were suffering with Richard, mine or thine, or our neighbour’s?

All the afternoon, Joscelyn paced her floor, her brows knitted, her fingers clenched. She knew best whom he loved? Yes, she knew. Every day for the past year he had let her see his heart; even in their quarrels over the war, he had not forgotten that he loved her. At first she had taken it for a passing fancy, and had treated him with laughing coquetry, fanning his love later on into the white flame of passion with that groundless jealousy of Eustace. Then it was she realized what it was with which she was playing.

And now he was lying in that loathsome ship, with the fever on one side and the harsh keepers on the other. Did she care as he wanted her to care? No, but her anger against him for his persistent assumption of her acquiescence in his suit was all forgotten; she remembered only the happy side of their friendship, and that he was Betty’s brother. She could not put aside the appeal in Colborn’s letter, for it was an appeal from Richard himself; and yet what could she, a mere girl without aid or influence, do to set him free? That was why her hands were clenched and she paced her floor with quick steps. Then at last she sat down, and opening her portfolio she wrote for half an hour, covering sheet after sheet. When they were done she gathered them up quickly and ran downstairs and crossed the street to the opposite house. There all was sadness and tears because of Colborn’s news.

“Here, Betty,” she said, placing the folded sheets upon the table; “Eustace Singleton is on Lord Cornwallis’s staff and must have influence with him, and through him, with General Clinton. I have written Eustace to use all effort and despatch in Richard’s behalf, but you must add a postscript to make the plea effective.”

“And why, I pray you, should he heed a postscript from Betty?” asked her mother, angrily, forgetful for a moment of her grief.

“Because,” Joscelyn answered, facing her calmly, “he loves her, and the few words she writes will outweigh all my pages.”

“What! That Loyalist, the son of Joseph Singleton, our old enemy, in love with my daughter? This is some mockery.”

“It is the sober truth.”

“I do not believe it; but if it be so, then will Richard and I have a word to say in the matter. Betty, put down that quill; I will not have you stoop to ask a favour of that family.”

“Not even for Richard’s life and freedom, Aunt Clevering?”

“I do not believe he has any influence. In love with my daughter—what impudence!”

“Rather what good fortune, since it may save your son.”

“Mother, it seems our one chance; bid me write.” And Joscelyn joined in the girl’s plea.

The older woman’s features worked spasmodically, but presently she nodded slowly. “For Richard’s sake, Joscelyn, yes; but mind you, Betty will set him out in short order if ever he presumes to declare himself. She knows her duty; no Singleton blood comes into my family.”

She could not see Betty’s face, for Joscelyn stood between them; but two weeks later Eustace kissed the blots where the tears had fallen just under her pleading little postscript:—

“But oh, Joscelyn, suppose he can do nothing?”

“Then, dear, we must carry our plea to Lord Cornwallis. My father and he were friends in England; perhaps we may gain his ear through that old-time acquaintance.”

“And how will you reach Cornwallis?” Mistress Clevering asked doubtfully.

“If need be, Betty and I will seek him in General Clinton’s camp.”

Betty put her cheek close to the girl’s. “Joscelyn, after all you are not indifferent to Richard,” she whispered, half wistfully, half joyously.

But Joscelyn’s face was almost stern. “This letter from Colborn is in truth a plea from Richard, since he must have bid the man write. Think you I could let such a thing pass unanswered—and from your brother, too?”

“God bless you, Joscelyn, though your heart is as hard as flint.”

CHAPTER XV.

Besides the patrol and the ship’s long-boat only one other ever tied up to the prison-vessels, and that one belonged to Dame Grant, the bumboat woman, who brought such small luxuries as the prisoners were able to purchase. She herself seldom came on board, but sent up her tiny parcels by two boys who made their deliveries under the eye of the warden. This was the woman Richard had hoped to bribe to aid his escape, but with whom he had never found the smallest opportunity to speak at close range. She was corpulent and coarse of feature, and the boys who served her often felt the weight of her big hand; but Richard had once thrown her a jest over the rail, and she had laughed good-naturedly, showing that she had a soft side to her rough exterior. In the lining of his ragged boot were the few coins Colborn had given him, but not so much as a letter had he been able to bribe her to take. Often he cursed the watchfulness of the sentinel, longing to send at least some little message to those who thought of him in far-off Hillsboro’-town.

The morning of his awakening from the despairing stupor in which nearly two months had been passed, it so chanced that Dame Grant brought in her boat a basket of pears. Very luscious they looked, for sun and dew had kissed them lavishly; but only the guards could pay their price, so the prisoners feasted with their eyes only. By and by, however, one of the sentinels who had purchased some of the fruit went to attend to some duty below, and left one of the pears on the rail of the deck. So transparent was his action and so subtle the temptation, that it almost seemed he had set a delicate trap for some unwary captive. If, indeed, it was a trap, it caught its prey; for one of the prisoners, a poor old man, starving, yet too ill to eat the mouldy biscuit and rancid meat that was their daily portion, saw the tempting fruit and stole it, hoping the owner would think it had rolled off into the water with the rocking of the ship. But nothing escaped the argus-eyed watch; one of the other sentinels saw him as he ravenously devoured it, and collaring the trembling culprit carried him to the warden. He acknowledged the theft, excusing himself on the plea of extreme hunger, and begged for mercy. He might as well have asked for the sun, whose rays whitened the deck and shimmered on the restless waves.

“I will make an example of him that we may have no more thieving on this ship. Order the prisoners out that they may see,” commanded the warden, a big-thewed fellow with the face of a bulldog.

The culprit, whose age alone should have protected him, was stripped to the waist and dragged to the middle of the deck, where he stood weak, scarred, emaciated,—as pitiful an object as the sun ever shone upon. In a wide circle about him were crowded the unwilling prisoners, their faces scowling with a helpless rage; and behind these were posted the guards with levelled guns. While the warden knotted his lash, Peter and Richard, after a whispered consultation with those nearest to them, stepped forward and touched their caps.

“If you please,” said Peter, acting as spokesman, “we will all of us give something toward the price of the fruit, if you will spare this man.”

The warden wheeled suddenly upon them and struck out with his whip, barely missing Peter’s head. “Back with you, an you want not the lash upon your own backs, hounds that you are! The first man of you who stirs again shall have his share of this pastime.” The ferocity of his look and voice quelled any further attempt at conciliation, and the prisoners turned their faces sullenly away.

“So it’s delicacies your stomach craves, is it?” sneered the warden to the trembling man before him. “Well, does that taste like pears—or that—or that?” and the cruelly knotted lash swirled through the air, and fell again and again upon the quivering flesh of the helpless creature. The man staggered, screamed, reeled from place to place, and finally fell. A harsh laugh answered his cries for mercy, and the lash went on until the blood spurted from the livid welts upon his body, while his groans were horrible to hear; and the prisoners groaned in answer. But the warden’s fury was aroused, and the blows fell until insensibility mercifully came, and the man lay still in a pool of his own blood.

“So shall it fare with every thief among you!” cried the warden, throwing the whip down and facing around the scowling circle. But he saw there no intimidation, but a wrath that needed but a touch to burst into a storm, and he was quick to take the warning.

“Dismiss the prisoners below,” he thundered to the guards, and went swiftly to his own cabin.

As Richard watched the cruel scene, something had stirred and then suddenly snapped within him; the inert, despairing stupor was gone, and in its place was a wild desire for action. Every nerve within him quivered with a savage impulse to give the brutal warden blow for blow—nay, two for one; that was what he wanted to do. His fingers closed in a fierce grip, and only Peter’s firm hand held him in his place.

“The guards would riddle you with bullets before you could get to him,” the latter whispered, under cover of that other terrible noise of the flogging.

“I have but once to die. Unhand me!”

“Yes, but death here would be wasted. Wait.”

From that hour Richard was a changed man; the dulness of despondency was gone, and in its place there had come a recklessness, a demon of desperation, that nothing could still.

“I shall not stay quietly here to be flogged or to rot with the fever and starvation,” he said to Peter, and his jaw was hard and square. “I shall get away or I shall die in the attempt.”

Two days later the flogged man was sewed into his blanket and carried away in the funeral-boat; and the malcontent of the prisoners broke out in angry mutterings. Here Richard, who had been brooding over a plan of escape, believed he saw his chance. By night his plan was laid; and when the hatches were beaten down and they lay in serried rows in the stinking hold, he went from man to man and told his scheme. It was to be a mutiny, a direct revolt. At a given signal they were to rise in a body, fall upon the guards, over-power them—kill them—and then pulling up the anchor they were to run the ship to the open sea, beach her somewhere on the Jersey coast if she gave signs of leaking, and take their chance to hide along the shore until they could get away into the interior. Richard was to head them, for in his voice and manner the men recognized the spirit of a leader. He longed with something akin to ferocity to strike the first blow at the warden.

“And besides,” he said, “since I have proposed the plan it is but meet that I should assume the first risk. If I fall, Peter will take my place. Jack Bangs here has been on the sea all his life, and knows the coast hereabouts as we know our farms at home. What say you to giving him charge of the ship and letting him choose his own sailing crew?”

“Good; he is the man for the place.”

“Very well,” said Bangs; “but we cannot go down the Jersey coast, for we would have to pass too many posts of the enemy, besides the guns in the New York harbour. We must steer east through the sound, and if the ship is beached, it must be on the Connecticut or Rhode Island coast.”

“Very well; that is not so convenient, since it takes us far from our army, but anywhere will be better than here.”

They counted every risk: the difficulty of disarming the guards, the proximity of the other two prison-ships, the interference of the shore patrol in their swift-sailing boat, the disabled and sailless condition of their own vessel; but nothing turned them from their purpose. Every detail of the plot was arranged when toward morning the men lay down for a little rest and sleep.

All the morning Richard scrubbed or cleaned as the guards bade, and then sat on deck with his eyes alternately upon the sun and the ship.

But toward the middle of the afternoon Richard noticed signs of dissatisfaction among a few of the men near the stern, where there was an improvised back-gammon board. They were evidently angry about something. A quarrel at this spot was a daily occurrence, and occasioned no surprise among the sentinels; but Richard guessed that some other cause was at the bottom of this, and gradually made his way to Peter’s side.

“’Tis Henry Crane,” Peter whispered, and his close-shut fists showed an emotion his face concealed. “He is jealous that the ship was given to Bangs rather than to him, and he and some of his fellows—his old crew—are threatening mischief.”

“Fool, to risk his neck and liberty for a damnable vanity!” Rising, Richard crossed to the group of players, and sinking down upon the deck gathered the dice into his hand as though to take part in the sport.

“I play to win; and the man who fouls my game—for any cause whatsoever—has me to answer to,” he said with stern emphasis, his fearless eyes fixed steadily on Crane’s face. The man flushed and began to mumble an answer, but the guard, passing, said sharply:—

“Since you cannot play without a row, break up the game.”

The players got up slowly. “You understand?” Richard said under his breath, and Crane nodded surlily.

The afternoon wore on and all remained quiet. Crane had evidently thought better of his foolish jealously. It was growing late, and there was going to be a high wind, and that was well, for it would set the tide yet stronger in its outward sweep, and their flight would be all the swifter.

It lacked only a little while before the drum-tap. Richard got up and stood with his face to the glowing west to take his last farewell of the dream-girl with whom he kept his tryst each evening at this hour.

“Good-by, sweetheart,” he said in his inner consciousness. “I love you. On your dear eyes I kiss you—so—”

“Attention! First division carry down their bedding!”

He wheeled; for he was in that first division. A quick glance about the deck showed everything quiet as usual. Crane and a few others stood at the far end of the deck awaiting their order to go down with the rest of the bedding. This would take only ten minutes, then the drum-tap for the roll-call and—death or liberty.

Swiftly the first division seized their allotment of the bedding and passed below. Knowing what was to follow, they did not lose a moment; but, quick as they were, something happened up above. There was a sound as of a struggle, a fierce cry, the report of a musket, all so close together as to seem almost blended into one sound; and then the ship writhed and quivered with the reverberation of the cannon on the upper end of the deck. Richard sprang to the ladder, but thrust only his head above deck when an order to halt, accompanied by a touch of steel to his temple, brought him up with a pull. But a look showed him what had happened. Crane and three others lay motionless upon the deck, and the other two men who had stood with them were covered by the muskets of the guards, while the warden leaned against the cannon ready to sweep the deck with another shot should so much as a hand be lifted without his orders. He was absolute master of the situation. A signal was run up to the patrol boat, the two mutineers were bound and hurried away; then the drum tapped for roll-call. But no one made any show of revolt. With the guards aroused, the patrol alarmed, and that murderous cannon ready to rake the deck, it had been the act of madmen to resist; so, scowlingly and surlily the prisoners lined up and answered to their names, and then marched below, their plans all gone wrong. Richard threw himself down and sobbed like a child. The plot had failed through the malice of one man. Crane, thinking everything was ready, and that the men would all respond to the signal, gave it while Richard was below, thinking thus to snatch the leadership and gain control of the whole vessel. But the other men, watching only for Richard’s signal, did not comprehend or respond to this unexpected whistle, only the five who stood immediately with Crane falling in with his plan. But even they were not quick enough, for the sentinel upon whom they leaped had time to cry out the alarm and discharge his gun, while the warden sprang to the ever-ready cannon.

Although the prisoners felt the warden’s anger in many petty ways, no other arrests were made; for the two captives took their punishment heroically and told no tales, and inquiry of course failed to elicit any information from the rest of the prisoners.

“I cannot stay here—I will not!” Richard cried vehemently to Peter. “I am going, and soon at that.”

“What is it you propose to do?”

“I do not yet know, but I am going, or they shall kill me with a rifle-ball instead of by slow starvation,” he said doggedly.

Then one night a month later, as they lay gasping for air in the black hold, he unfolded a plan that made Peter’s heart sick with dread and uncertainty.

CHAPTER XVI.

It was the end of September, and the delayed equinoctial storm would soon ravage the coast. For a week the sea-faring folk had been expecting it; and now at last the great gale or the forerunner of it was upon them, for all night the waves had been rolling in from the outside with the sound of thunder. The ship had pitched and tossed and strained at its moorings, while the living freight in its hold prayed that it might break away entirely. The hatches, when lifted, showed no blue sky, but gray clouds and scurrying mist wreaths. The men, coming up out of the hot and fetid air, shivered a little in the stiff breeze on the deck, then opening their mouths, drank it in like wine. The faces of the landsmen had an added ghastliness from seasickness, but they were all bad enough to look upon,—seamen and soldiers alike. In squads of six they took their breakfast, eating by sheer force of resolution what they loathed, that the hunger pains might not gnaw so hard.

“How many dead this morning?” demanded the warden.

“Two,—Drake and Cowles,” answered Jack Bangs.

“Nay, there are three, Master Warden,” said Peter Ruffin, sadly; “I found Richard Clevering lying stiff and stark beside me when I got up. The bodies are there beside the capstan.”

The three were stretched upon the deck; the corner of Richard’s blanket, as if by accident, fell over the upper part of his face, but the mouth below was blue and drawn. With an exclamation of surprise and sorrow Jack Bangs crossed the deck and, lifting the blanket for a moment, looked at the face beneath. Then, reverently replacing it, he made the sign of the cross above the body, and speaking a few low words to Peter, went away. The warden, who had watched the scene satirically, gave each corpse a shove with his foot, cursing the while.

“D—n ’em! had to die the worst day of the month, that the burial might be the more troublesome!” He glanced at them again, gave each another kick, and checked off their names in his book. “Here, fix these hounds up, and cut your work short so they’ll be in the ground before the storm breaks.”

“If you please, may I go in the boat this morning? Clevering was from my town, and I should like to pay him this last respect.”

“No.”

Peter knew better than to urge his plea, and so stepped quietly aside. But the warden, noticing the slow motions of one of the men to whom he had beckoned, shouted angrily, “Out of the way there, you infernal snail, or I’ll fix you so you’ll go in the boat and stay!”

Peter sprang into the man’s place. “I will be very quick,” he said, touching his cap; and without another word wrapped one of the bodies quickly in its coarse covering and took a few stitches with the needle his comrade held out. He was so deft, and the lightning was so vivid, that the warden grunted and let him go on. Under other circumstances he would have been put in irons for insubordination.

The stitches in Richard’s blanket were few and slight, just enough to hold it about the body.

“What was the matter with that fellow? I never heard him say he was sick,” said one of the sentinels, stopping to look on.

Peter’s pulse stood still. “He has complained for some time of a pain about the heart. All last night he tossed and rolled, and just before the hatches were opened, he said to me that his time had come. He’s hardly cold yet,” he added hastily, as the man bent as though to touch a hand left exposed by a rent in the blanket.

“Well, he’ll have time enough to get cold in the ground,” the warden said, coming up behind, and mistaking Peter’s words for a plea for more time before the burial.

“He was a sullen chap to whom I’ve been looking for trouble. I’ll warrant he gets not cold between this and the devil,” the guard said, giving the stiff body a parting kick.

The waves tossed furiously, but the long-boat was launched, and two of the guard took their places in it, while the man who was to assist Peter at the graves followed to receive the bodies; for the sentinels never touched them, partly through fear of contagion, and partly out of contempt. The first two were finally lowered, and then came the moment Peter had dreaded; those other two had been stiff and stark enough, but he wanted no prying eyes looking on when he lifted this one, and so before he bent over to Richard, he glanced down the deck and raised his hand, quite casually, it seemed, to his face. Instantly, as though he had been on the watch for a signal, Jack Bangs started a funeral hymn, loud and wailing.

“Stop that devilish howling!” roared the warden, wheeling around.

Quick as a flash Peter, signing to his assistant, lifted the prostrate figure at his feet and swung it over the side. The ropes grated on the rail, and when the warden looked again, it was all over. Peter slid instantly down one of the ropes, and he and his fellow grave-digger untied the cords from the body and rolled it over beside the other two in the bottom of the boat, the guards having their hands full to keep the little craft from swamping in the waves. Then they cast off and pulled for the shore.

“What makes you look at that carrion so confoundedly straight and scared,” one of the soldiers asked Peter, sharply, noticing how often his eyes went to the figure at his feet.

Peter cursed himself inwardly, but he had been so afraid that the blanket would rise and fall with a strong man’s involuntary breathing that he had watched it in a sort of fascination. Now he looked away, answering slowly:—

“I have known him since he was a baby; he used to play with my little boy that died, and so I keep thinking of those days.”

One of the men laughed scoutingly, but the other growled out, “Let the fool have his fling, and give me a light, Carson; my pipe’s gone out in this cursed spray.” And while their heads were close together, Peter stretched his legs out over the body, that if so it lost for a moment its rigidity, they might not see.

It seemed to him an hour before the shore was reached and the landing effected; then he and his assistant carried the bodies high up on the sand. Richard’s went first.

“He is alive,” Peter whispered, as they moved up the beach, “but if you give the faintest hint of it here or on shipboard by word, act, or look, I’ll throttle you like a viper.”

“You need not threaten—I’m no peacher; and besides, I liked the lad, and wish him well; but his chance is slim, and if he is taken, they will torture him like the incarnate fiends.”

An officer from the patrol, strolling near the boat, called out:—

“How many to-day, Carson?”

“Three.”

“That is an unusual haul; you are thinning them out fast.”

“Not half fast enough; looks as if the cursed dogs held on to life to spite us.”

“Well, ’tis said that Howe will bring back plenty of recruits from the French fleet to fill your gaps.”

“How is that? What is the news?”

But Peter was listening eagerly, hoping to catch some bit of outside information. The officer pointed to him with elevated eyebrows, and the guard drove him with imprecations to his task.

“Your shovel?—Well, there it is, you son of perdition! Go on, and mind you be quick in hiding that carrion from the crows.”

Beside the boat, with guns cocked and ready, the three men then talked over the war tidings, while thirty yards up the beach the two grave-diggers fell to their task. Rapidly the two first graves were made and the occupants laid therein with only a muttered prayer from Peter; and so were closed two human chapters in the varying story of life. The wind shrieked in from the sea, edged with foam or stinging sand caught up at the water’s edge, and the heavens were like a vast slaty canopy torn now and then by jagged lightning flashes. The scene was a fit setting for the mournful work in hand. Once or twice while the two laboured, one of the guards walked over to look at them, and then wandered back to the boat and his companions.

Over the first two graves the sand was heaped high, forming, as far as possible, a barrier for the third. Shallow that third grave was,—so shallow that a man could scarce lie therein and be concealed; but so it must be that the sand might not be too heavy on the body, and yet seem to be piled up. Tenderly Peter lifted that last silent figure and stretched it in the hollow made for it; then, while he still stooped, he broke the frail stitches of the blanket, and snatching two pieces of driftwood he put them crosswise over the head of the grave with their ends on the edges. The hollow space below might contain enough air to last a man a little while.

“Stay, here is piece of hollow cane in the sand,” said the assistant, “keep one end of it over your mouth, Richard; we will leave the other just out of the sand; in this way you can breathe longer.—So.”

“Quick, quick; the shovels! The guard is returning,” cried Peter.

It seemed to them that their shovels crawled, and yet they worked like mad. If the guard got there before they finished, all was lost. Spadeful after spadeful,—was ever a man so hard to cover? Another step and the sentinel would be upon them, and the blanket scarcely hidden, and those tell-tale boards and the cane yet in sight. It was a fearful moment. Peter’s heart stood still, and his comrade’s hands were like ice.

“What the devil are you so long about?”

But it was only the angry voice that reached them; a blinding lightning flash ripped the heavens wide open, and the wind with a demoniacal shriek rushed down the beach, throwing the sand in a swirling cloud about the on-coming man, making him stagger with its force and snatching away his hat and rain coat. Half blinded, he raced down the sloping stretch to regain his garments which more than once eluded him. Then in the lull he came back swearing furiously; and finding the men leaning on their shovels, he stuck his bayonet into each of the three mounds. Into the third it penetrated only a little way; but he did not notice, for the wind was again gathering itself for a fresh burst of fury.

“Now then, get you to the boats!” he cried, standing behind them.

Peter paused a moment and crossed himself reverently, saying in a loud voice, “Your bodies to the earth, your souls to God’s care; and may you pass to liberty in the folds of the in-rolling fog.”

“Pass to hell and the devil! Get on, I say!” cried the guard, angrily, as he struck Peter across the shoulders with his bayonet. And Peter, having said his say, ran nimbly to the boat; and pushing it off, they leaped in, and were soon toiling amid the breakers to reach the ship’s side.

It seemed to Richard that long months passed while he lay motionless under that weight of sand, breathing spasmodically through the bit of reed. The drift-boards kept the pressure partially from his chest so that he suffered very little. The guard’s bayonet had grazed his leg without piercing it, but the thirst in his throat was something terrible. Peter’s voice had penetrated through the boards and their thin covering of sand, so that he knew the fog was following the wind from the sea. It was for this he had hoped, and it was this Peter meant to tell him in those last words. Dear old Peter; how he had tried to dissuade him from this mad plan, and when that was impossible, how he had risked his own safety to aid him. Richard felt the tears on his face as he recalled his friend’s unselfish offices. Several times during the wait for a stormy day he had been on the point of giving up the whole plan, lest it work a mischief for Peter; but the latter had said it would mean only a day in irons for him, and that he was willing to risk that much for his friend’s liberty; it was for Richard himself that he feared. But even death had a smiling face for Richard, compared to a winter spent in the vile ship; and so the plan had gone on, and by Peter’s care he was lying here in his grave, accounted of the world as dead.

By and by his limbs began to cramp and ache. Through strong will power he had kept them rigid during those terrible moments of examination and removal from the ship. He would not have dared assay the plan had he not known how superficial, through repetition, had become the warden’s inspection of the corpses—just a few questions and that savage kick. Each time there had been a death during the past fortnight, he had studied the details of the preparation and burial, until he was convinced that he could carry his scheme to a successful close if only Peter was allowed to be one of his sextons.

As the minutes now passed, the ache in his limbs increased, for the pressure of the sand was stopping the circulation. Then the dryness in his throat grew and grew, until he could bear it no longer. Had he lain there a year, or only a day? Slowly and cautiously he drew his hands up to his breast, then higher, and finally placed the palms against the board over his head. The first movement brought the sand in a shower upon his shoulders; but after a while he worked it far enough back to leave a crack between it and its fellow. This he could only feel, for knowing the sand would strangle and blind him, he had not as yet taken the blanket from his face, since moving it ever so little to receive the reed into his mouth. Next, he slowly pushed the other board downward until a rush of cold air told him he was once more in the world of humanity, not forever sealed in the haunt of ghouls. Cautiously he shoved the blanket from his face and looked up into the storm-hung heavens. It was mid-afternoon, and he had thought it must be midnight. Eagerly he drew in the air, cool and laden with moisture, and tried to forget his aching limbs. He dared not stir yet lest the patrol should see him. He must wait; and while he waited, how the moments lagged!

The wind had fallen, but the waves still thundered on the shore, and the lightning now and then raced along the clouds. Afraid to raise his head, he could only lie still and stare straight above him into the square of mist and clouds. With a great throb of joy he watched the gloom deepen. He had not heard the sunset gun from the station down the beach, but the fog would befriend him; so when he could no longer bear the straitened position, he lifted his head and shoulders and looked around. The fog was everywhere; scarcely could he see the tumultuous waves that shattered themselves along the sand. He need wait no longer, no one could see him now; and painfully and carefully he finally drew his stiff limbs from under the sand. To stand at full length was not to be thought of, but he rolled over and rubbed and stretched himself until the cramp was relieved. Then he set himself to fill in and round up his vacated grave; for Peter’s sake he must do this, that no suspicion might be aroused when the funeral boat brought its next cargo ashore. Swiftly he worked, using a piece of the drift-board for a shovel, and crawling from head to foot to be sure that all was right. His heart was full of gratitude when at last it was finished, and, with a sigh of relief, he threw the board aside and stood up straight,—a free man.

But at this moment something came out of the fog from the shore side, and as he steadied himself upon his feet, he found himself face to face with a man.

CHAPTER XVII.