II
A mattress, stuffed clumsily in the seaward window, half blocked it. In the dormer looking towards the Downs, two biscuit-boxes crammed with earth sat on the sill, forming a rough head-cover.
Behind these Knapp sprawled on his stomach. Beside him was a wooden porringer full of bullets, and a basin of black powder; in his hand a musket.
In a cobweb corner by a barrel, Blob crouched covetously; while beside the mattress-curtain sat the Parson in his shirt-sleeves, furbishing Polly, and pausing every now and then to spy out through the bulges.
As Kit clambered on to the floor, the Parson turned, his blue eyes merry, and curls a-ripple.
"Ah, Kit, my boy, how are you?"
"Alive and well, sir, thanks to you. And you, sir?"
"I!" laughed the Parson. "I'm another man." A bullet whizzed by. The Parson listened sentimentally. "That's the music!" raising his face with a rapt smile. "Always makes me think of angels' wings."
He seemed to have grown, body and soul. His eyes shone, his cheeks glowed; he was crisp as a rimy apple.
Kit felt the change.
Responsibility, the searcher out of souls, had exhilarated and sobered the man. He was graver yet gayer, inspiring and inspired.
"Duck up aloft!" came a sudden roar from beneath.
The Parson smote Kit a blow on the chest that sent him staggering back against the wall.
A bullet whistled in at one window and out at the other.
The Parson crawled across to Knapp, lying on his face, and dealt him a tremendous buffet.
"Dog!" he thundered. "Why don't you shout?"
The little man's body leapt to the blow, but he made no answer.
"Go below!" ordered the Parson savagely. "What's the good of you? I set you there to warn us and all you can do is to grovel on your stomach and snivel."
The little Cockney rose without a word and crept away, his tail between his legs. Kit saw his face. One eye was black; and his face was so woebegone that but for the misery in it Kit would have smiled.
"Their shooting is exquisite," said the Parson with professional delight. "You can't show a finger…. They've nearly had Blob already —ain't they, Blob?"
Blob, cuddling in the corner, shook his head cunningly.
"Oi've had them," he said. "Three pennorth of em," pointing to the little pile of coppers at his side.
"I'm giving him a penny apiece for each Gang-er he gets, and twice the money for a Frenchman," the Parson explained. "It stimulates effort," he added, prim as a pedagogue, but with twinkling eye. "And now, Kit, your story."