"Aha, my friend," he cried, "you handle a sword very prettily, but I am the better man at cock-shies." And shutting the door to be ran down the passage into the road.
He had seen a house that afternoon with a high garden wall about it a quarter of a mile away. Wogan ran towards it. The mist was still thick, but he now began to feel his strength failing. He was wounded in the shoulder, he was stabbed in the back, and from both wounds the blood was flowing warm. Moreover, he looked backwards once over his shoulder and saw a lantern dancing in the road. He kept doggedly running, though his pace slackened; [pg 93] he heard a shout and an answering shout behind him. He stumbled onto his knees, picked himself up, and staggered on, labouring his breath, dizzy. He stumbled again and fell, but as he fell he struck against the sharp corner of the wall. If he could find an entrance into the garden beyond that wall! He turned off the road to the left and ran across a field, keeping close along the side of the wall. He came to another corner and turned to the right. As he turned he heard voices in the road. The pursuers had stopped and were searching with the lantern for traces of his passage. He ran along the back of the wall, feeling for a projection, a tree, anything which would enable him to climb it. The wall was smooth, and though the branches of trees swung and creaked above his head, their stems grew in the garden upon the other side. He was pouring with sweat, his breath whistled, in his ears he had the sound of innumerable armies marching across the earth, but he stumbled on. And at last, though his right side brushed against the wall, he none the less struck against it also with his chest. He was too dazed for the moment to understand what had happened; all the breath he had left was knocked clean out of his body; he dropped in a huddle on the ground.
In a little he recovered his breath; he listened and could no longer hear any sound of voices; he began to consider. He reached a hand out in front of him and touched the wall; he reached out a hand to the right of him and touched the wall again. The [pg 94] wall projected then abruptly and made a right angle.
Now Wogan had spent his boyhood at Rathcoffey among cliffs and rocks. This wall, he reflected, could not be more than twelve feet high. Would his strength last out? He came to the conclusion that it must.
He took off his heavy boots and flung them one by one over the wall. Then he pulled off his coat at the cost of some pain and an added weakness, for the coat was stuck to his wounds and had roughly staunched them. He could feel the blood again soaking his shirt. There was all the more need, then, for hurry. He stood up, jammed his back into the angle of the wall, stretched out his arms on each side, pressing with his elbows and hands, and then bending his knees crossed his legs tailor fashion, and set the soles of his stockinged feet firmly against the bricks on each side. He was thus seated as it were upon nothing, but retaining his position by the pressure of his arms and feet and his whole body. Still retaining this position, very slowly, very laboriously, he worked himself up the angle, stopping now and then to regain his breath, now and then slipping back an inch. But he mounted towards the top, and after a while the back of his head no longer touched the bricks. His head was above the coping of the wall.
It was at this moment that he saw the lantern again, just at the corner where he had turned. The lantern advanced slowly; it was now held aloft, [pg 95] now close to the ground. Wogan was very glad he had thrown his boots and coat into the garden. He made a few last desperate struggles; he could now place the palms of his hands behind him upon the coping, and he hoisted himself up and sat on the wall.
The lantern was nearer to him; he lay flat upon his face on the coping, and then lowering himself upon the garden side to the full length of his arms, he let go. He fell into a litter of dead leaves, very soft and comfortable. He would not have exchanged them at that moment for the Emperor's own bed. He lay upon his back and saw the dark branches above his head grow bright and green. His pursuers were flashing their lantern on the other side; there was only the thickness of the wall between him and them. He could even hear them whispering and the brushing of their feet. He lay still as a mouse; and then the earth heaved up and fell away altogether beneath him. Wogan had fainted.
[pg 96]