CHAPTER XIX.
THE SECOND FIGHT.
We had entered the forest five minutes later, and be very sure, we wasted no more time in waiting for those behind to come up, since, if 'twas us they followed, we might as well be in its shadow as in the open. For if we were outnumbered the trees themselves would afford us some shelter, make a palisade from behind which we might get a shot at them if 'twas too hot for a hand-to-hand encounter. At any rate, I had sufficient military knowledge to know that 'tis best to fight against unequal odds with a base, or retreat, to fall back on, than to be without one.
Yet as we rode into this forest I loosened my blade in its sheath, and felt with my thumb to see that the priming of my pistols was ready; also bade Juan do the same; likewise to keep behind me as much as might be.
"For," said I, "if they mean attack I will give them no chance of beginning it. The first hostile word, and I force my horse between them, cutting right and left, and do you the same, following behind me. Thereby you may chance to take off those whom I miss."
And I laughed--a little grimly, perhaps--as I spoke, for I thought that if there were, indeed, six men behind us, my journey toward Flanders was already as good as come to an end. Yet, all the same, I laughed, for, strange though it may seem to those who have never known the delights of crossed steel, a fight against odds had ever an exhilarating effect upon me; which was, perhaps, as it should be with a knight of the blade.
Juan, however, did not laugh at all, though he told me he would follow my orders to the utmost, and, indeed, was so silent that I asked him if his nerves were firm. To which he replied that I should see when the moment came.
And now upon the crisp night air we heard the clang of those on-coming hoofs ringing nearer and nearer; a rough or deadened kind of sound told us the iron shoes were on the fallen leaves which covered all the track from where the wood began; the scabbards of the riders flapped noisily now against spur and horses' flanks; bridles jangled very near.
Then they were close upon us--five of them!--and a voice called out:
"Halt, there! You are Englishmen--one a sailor and a spy passing through the land."
"You lie!" rang out Juan's voice, in answer. "We are not Englishmen."
That his reply in fluent Spanish--the Spanish, too, of a gentleman, and not of a common night patrol--astonished them, I could see. The leader, he who had spoken, glanced round at his four comrades, and, an instant after, spoke again:
"Who are you, then, and why does not the big man answer?"
"He speaks French. I am Spanish. Molest us not."
"Molest! Cuerpo di Baco! We are informed you are English. Produce your papers!"
"We have none. They are lost."
"Ho! ho! ho!" the leader replied. "Very well, very well. 'Tis as I thought. That man is English; he is denounced this night. As for you, the accursed English have many possessions wherein our tongue is spoken. We understand."
And he gave, as I supposed, some order, since all advanced their animals a few paces nearer, while, as they did so, Juan whispered to me in the French: "Be ready, but do nothing yet."
"You will return to Chantada with us," the spokesman said, sitting his horse quietly enough, yet with the blade of his drawn sword glistening in the moonbeams as it lay across the creature's neck--as, I observed, did the blades of all the others. "That finishes our affair. For the rest you will answer to the Regidór."
"We shall not return. Our way lies on."
"So be it. Then we must take you," and, as he spoke, I saw a movement of his knee--of all their knees--that told me they meant to seize us.
And I knew that the time had come.
"At them!" cried Juan at the same moment. "Advance, Mervan!"
A touch to the curb, and my beast fell back--'twas a good animal, that! had, I believe, been a charger in its day, so well it seemed to know its work--then a free rein and another touch of the heel, and I was amongst them, my sword darting like lightning around. Also, at my rear, came the jennet's head; near me there flashed the steel of Juan's lighter weapon; and in a moment we had crashed through them--they fell away on either side of us like waves from a ship's forefoot!--fell away for a moment, though closing again in an instant.
"Return and charge!" I cried to Juan, still in French. "At them again! See, one has got his quietus already!" As, indeed, he had, for the great fellow was hanging over his horse's neck, in a limp and listless fashion, which showed that he was done for. But now those four closed together as we went at them, Juan stirrup to stirrup with me in this second charge, and our tactics had to be changed. We could no longer burst through them, so that it was a hand-to-hand fight now; they had pistols in their holsters, but no chance to use them; they could not spare a hand to find those holsters--could not risk our swords through their unguarded breasts; wherefore we set to work, blade to blade.
We should have won, I do believe. Already I had thrust through and through one man's arm--as luck would have it, 'twas not the sword arm--already they backed before our rain of blows and cuts and thrusts, when, by untoward fate, my horse stumbled on the frosty road and came down; came down upon his haunches, slipping me from the saddle over the cantle and so to the earth; then regained its hind legs once more and dashed out from the fray.
And now our position was mighty perilous. Above I saw Juan on the jennet fencing well with two of the men; over me were the two others cutting down at my head, though, since by God's mercy I had retained my weapon, their blows were up to now unavailing. Yet I knew this could not be for long--nor last--wherefore I cried:
"Save yourself, Juan, save yourself; disengage and flee."
Under my own blade, under those two others that beat upon it so that I wondered it shivered not in my hand, I saw the boy manfully holding his own--once, too, I saw him rip up the jerkin of one of his opponents, and heard the latter give a yell of pain--then, "Great God!" I thought, "what has happened now?"
For there was a fifth man upon the scene. A man, tall and stalwart, mounted on a great, big boned, black horse, who had suddenly sprung from out a chestnut copse by the side of the track; a man in whose hands there gleamed a sword that a second later was laced and entwined with those attacking Juan; a man who hurled oaths in Spanish and French at them--I heard carambas and por Diôs's and other words--which sounded like the rolling of some great cathedral organ as they came from his deep throat--tonneres, ventre-bleus and carrognes I heard.
Heavens! who was this man who beat back those others as a giant might push back a handful of children; whose sword--even as with one hand he grasped Juan round the waist--went through an adversary's neck so that he fell groaning upon me, his blood spurting as if from a spigot? Who was he who laughed loud and long as, with one accord, all those still alive turned and fled back upon the road they had come? Fled, leaving us, thanks be to God and this new arrival, the victors of the fray.
He sat his horse calmly now, looking after their retreating figures, his great sombrero slouched across his face, wiping his blade upon the coal-black creature's mane; then, as their figures disappeared from our view, he said in French:
"Warmer work this, Señor Belmonte, than twanging viols and singing love songs, n'est-ce pas?" and from his throat there came again that laugh.
Glancing up, I saw that which caused me to start, even as I heard Juan say: "You! You here! And in this garb!"--saw that which made me wonder if I had gone demented. For this man who had so suddenly come to our rescue, this fine lame whose thrusts had won the fray for us, was none other than the monk I had seen on board La Sacra Familia, the holy man known there as Father Jaime.
And swiftly as I gazed up at him there came to my recollection old Admiral Hopson's suspicions as to having seen him before, also the imitation pass he had made across the table with the quill at his brother-admiral, and his words:
"'Twas not always the cowl and gown that adorned his person--rather instead the belt and pistols--the long, serviceable rapier, handy."
What did it mean?
Ere he answered either Juan's startled enquiries or my stare of amazement, which he must very well have seen in the moon's rays as I regarded him, he cantered off after my horse, which was standing quietly in the forest side by side with that other animal on whose neck the first wounded man had fallen--he was now lying dead upon the ground!--and brought both back to where we were, leading them by their reins.
"You will want your horse, monsieur," he said, "to continue your journey. Bon Dieu! you both made a good fight of it, though they would have beaten you had I not come up at the moment."
"Believe us, we both thank you more than words can express," I said, while Juan sat his jennet, still breathing heavily from his exertions, yet peering with all the power of those bright eyes at the man before him, "but your appearance is so different from what it was when last we met that--that I am lost in amazement. You were, sir, a holy monk then."
"Cucullus non facit monachum," he replied, in what I recognised to be very good Latin, then added, with a laugh: "In journeying through dangerous places we are not always what we seem to be. To wit: Monsieur was either an English soldier or sailor when I saw him last--an enemy to Spain and France--hating both, as I should suppose. Yet now he is a private gentleman, and, I imagine, desires nothing less than that his real position should be known."
"But you--you," Juan interposed, "you were monk from the first moment I set eyes on you, from the hour when we left Hispaniola. Are you not one?"
"My boy," he said, and as he spoke he touched Juan on the sleeve as they both sat their horses side by side--I being also mounted again by this time--"my boy, I replied to your companion just now with a proverb. I answer you with another: 'Look not a gift horse in the mouth.' I have saved your life, at least, if not this gentleman's. And----"
But Juan stammering forth some words of regret for the curiosity he had shown, he stopped him with still another touch on the sleeve, and said:
"Briefly, let me tell this: I had reasons to be in Spain, to quit the Indies and accompany the galleons, get a passage by some means. It suited me to come disguised as a monk; there was no other way. For, rightly or wrongly, both Spain and France are my enemies; in my own proper character I could never have reached here. Being here, I am still in danger if discovered; to avoid that discovery I have now doffed the monkish garb, so that all traces of me are lost. Enough, however; I am on my road to Lugo. Does your way lie the same road?"
We both answered that it did, whereon he said, speaking quickly and, as I noticed, in the tone of one who seemed very well used to issuing orders, as well as accustomed to deciding for himself and others:
"So be it. Let us ride together--and at once. Every moment we tarry here makes our position more dangerous. Those men will no sooner have returned to Chantada than every available soldier will be sent forward to arrest us, even though we be in Lugo itself. You will be recognised without doubt if you stay an instant in the town. Your one chance is to get into it and out again as soon as may be.
"And you?" I asked, as now we put spurs to our horses and dashed along the forest track. "And you? If any of those who were in this affray return with the soldiers you speak of, it will be hard for you, too, to escape recognition. Your form cannot be disguised."
"It will be disguised again," he answered very quietly, "when I have once more resumed the monk's garb. I have it here," and he tapped the great valise strapped on his horse's back. "It has not been worn since I got ashore at Vigo, and that's far behind this by many leagues. There are none here like to recognise me."
"You stay, then, in Lugo?"
"I must stay. I have affairs."
He said this so decidedly that we neither of us ventured to ask him any more questions, though, a moment or two afterward, he volunteered to us the statement that, if another horse he had previously bought when he landed at Vigo had not broken down, he would long ere this have been in Lugo. Only the finding of a fresh animal--the one he now bestrode--had taken him some time, and thereby caused him to be late on his road, which, as we said gratefully enough, was fortunate for us.
"Ay," he replied, "it was; and also that I was breathing my animal in the forest at the time those others overtook you. But, nom d'un chou! I have been a fighter in my day myself, and, since I could not see two men set upon by five, my old instincts were aroused; though," he added, with extreme sang froid, "had it been an even fray, I might have left you to it."
And now it seemed to both Juan and myself as though this man's assistance to us necessitated us showing some confidence in him; wherefore, very briefly, we gave him some description of why we were travelling together, and of how, because Juan had naught else of much importance to do at the outset of his arrival in Europe, he had elected to be my companion as far as Flanders.
"Humph!" he exclaimed at this, "he is a young knight errant, as I told him oft enough in the galleon, when he talked some rhodomontade about being on his way to Europe to seek out and punish a villain who had wronged him. Well, sir, even if he finds not the man, he is likely enough to meet with sufficient adventures in your company ere he reaches Flanders."
"He thinks he has found him already," I said quietly, in reply.
"What!" and he turned his great eyes on both of us. "Found him. Here in Spain!" and he laughed incredulously.
"He thinks nothing of the kind," Juan cried hotly, roused more, I thought, by that scornful laugh than by my doubting words. "He is sure of it!"
And then he told the whole story of our having seen the old man's coach in the inn, of the black's insolent reply, of his departure at night, and of the little doubt there could be that he it was who had betrayed us to the people of Chantada; also he added:
"But I have him. Have him fast. He is but a league or so ahead of us, must stop some hours, at least, in Lugo. And then--then, James Eaton, look to yourself!"
As he uttered those words the black horse which the other bestrode plunged forward, pricked, as I thought, by some unintentional movement of the rider's spur, while that rider turned round in his saddle and gazed at Juan, his face, as it seemed to me, livid beneath the moonlight.
"Who? What name is that on your lips?"
"The name of a damned villain. The name of James Eaton."
"James Eaton. James Eaton--what is he to you, then? What evil has he done to you?"
"What evil?" Juan replied, with a bitter laugh. "What evil? and what is he to me? Only this: He was left guardian to me by my dead father, and--and--he ill-treated and robbed me. No more than that!"
"You! You! You!" this mysterious man said, his hand raised to his eyebrows, his dark, piercing eyes gleaming beneath that hand--upon his face a look I could not fathom. "You!"