For a while the jackass trotted beside them; but coming to the gate and dismounting to open it, Gunner Sobey turned him back. Possibly the mare had a notion she was being stolen, for no sooner had her rider remounted than she struck off into a lane on the right hand, avoiding the road to Polperro where her present owner dwelt; and so, fetching a circuit by a second lane—this time to the left— clattered downhill past the sleeping hamlet of Crumplehorn, and breasted the steep coombe and the road that winds up beside it past the two Kellows to Mabel Burrow. Here on the upland she pulled herself together, and reaching out into a gallant stride, started on the long descent towards Troy at a pace that sent the night air whizzing by Gunner Sobey's ears. Past Carneggan she thundered, past Tredudwell; and thence, swinging off into the road for the Little Ferry, still down hill by Lanteglos Vicarage, by Ring of Bells, to the ford of Watergate in the valley bottom, where now a bridge stands; but in those days the foot-passengers crossed by a plank and a hand-rail. Splashing through the ford and choosing unguided the road which bore away to the right from the silent smithy, and steeply uphill to Whiddycross Common, she took it gamely though with fast failing breath. She had been foaled in Troy parish, and marvellously she was proving, after thirty years (her age was no less), the mettle of her ancient pasture. While he owned her, Gunner Sobey—who in extra-military hours traded as a carrier and haulier between Troy and the market-towns to the westward—had worked her late and fed her lean; but the most of us behold our receding youth through a mist of romance, and it may be that old worn-out Pleasant conceived herself to be cantering back to fields where the grass grew perennially sweet and old age was unknown. At any rate, she earned her place this night among the great steeds of romance—Xanthus, Bucephalus, Harpagus, Black Auster, Sleipnir and Ilderim, Bayardo and Brigliadoro, the Cid's Babieca, Dick Turpin's Black Bess; not to mention the two chargers, Copenhagen and Marengo, whom Waterloo was yet to make famous. As she mounted the last rise by Whiddycross Green her ribs were heaving sorely, her breath came in short quick coughs, her head lagged almost between her bony knees; but none the less she held on down the steep hill, all strewn with loose stones, to the ferry slip; and there, dropping her haunches, slid, checked herself almost at the water's edge, and stood quivering.
Billy Bates, the ferryman at Little Ferry, had heard the clatter of hoofs, and tumbled out to unchain his boat; a trifling matter for him, since he habitually slept in his clothes.
"Hallo!" said he, holding his lantern high and taking stock of the gunner's regimentals. "I allowed you'd be a messenger from Sir Felix. They tell me her leddyship is expectin'."
"I pity her then," gasped Gunner Sobey, and waved an arm. "Man, the French be landed, an' the country's ablaze!"
Billy Bates set down his lantern on the slip and ran two trembling hands through his scanty locks.
"If that's so," he answered, "you don't get no boat of mine. There's Hosken's blue boat; you'll find her moored off by a shoreline. Take she if you will; he's a single man."
"Darn your old carcass!" swore Gunner Sobey. "I wish now I'd waited to cross over before tellin' 'ee!"
"I dare say you do. Well, good night, soce. I'm off to tell the old woman."
Man is a selfish animal. As Gunner Sobey hauled Hosken's blue boat to shore, poor Pleasant came down the slip-way and rubbed her muzzle against his sleeve, dumbly beseeching him to fetch the horse-boat that she too might cross. He struck her sharply across the nose, and, jumping aboard, thrust off from the shore.
In telling Miss Marty that the town was deserted, Cai Tamblyn had forgotten the Vicar.