I
And it was full time.
As he stormed up the knoll, he heard upon his right the clink of arms, and the sound of a Frenchman shouting.
Down through the sheltering sycamores he plunged, and burst out into the open.
A tall Grenadier, who had been sentry upon the shingle-bank, was racing up on his right across the greensward, screaming as he ran.
His yells were of effect. Half a dozen ragged ruffians bobbed up from behind the broken wall in the rear, and seeing only the boys, made fiercely for them.
It was a race for the cottage; and the door of the cottage was shut.
That dead mask of wood stared at Kit blankly. Had it no eyes? no soul? no understanding? was it not English, heart of oak, its life sucked these centuries from the breast of the same mother? could it not feel his agony?
"Piper! Piper! the door's shut!"
"Ay, sir, but it wun't be drackly-minute," came a straining voice from within; and the boy could hear the rending of torn boards, and the splintering of terrific hatchet-work.
The Grenadier with set teeth and blue-black muzzle was launching forward with huge strides.
Kit could hear the rattle of his cartridge-pouch flopping as he ran.
Would the door open? if so, which would reach it first?
"Faster, Blob, faster!"
"Oi'd run faaster, if ma legs would," panted Blob, lumbering behind.
He was doing his best; but he was no match for the fawn-footed gentleman, who led him. Lumps of ghostly clay, inherited from a long line of furrow-following ancestors, clung to his heels, impeding him.
Kit gripped his dirk and ran.
His eyes were on the Grenadier, a black and yellow fellow, with a wart between the brows. That wart held Kit's imagination. It sickened him. It was just his luck to have to deal with a warted man, when he had always loathed warts! But for the wart he felt he could have been heroic.
At the thought the tide of his humour welled within him; and the Grenadier was amazed to see a smile in the eyes of this boy with the long face, ghastly-pale, racing against him.
Taken off his guard, he smiled too.
So each ran towards the other, whom he meant to kill, with smiling eyes.