“Let’s try at th’ back,” shouted George. “To the back, Ben. There’s a way in at th’ back, they say.”
“To the back be it,” I heard a voice within; “We’ll be there to greet you.”
And that was near the last sound I heard. I fell back from the door that had stood so well our fury and looked up at the window front. I think I raised my hand to my head to wipe away the sweat that was blinding my eyes. Then I was aware of a sharp burning boring pain in the muscle of my upper arm, and Enoch fell with a clatter into the cobbles of the yard, and I turned sick and dizzy and faint. The crowd were rushing away from the mill front round to the back, and I tried to follow them. But my eyes had a film before them, and I reeled and swayed like a drunken man, and when I tried to lift my arm a hundred daggers seemed to dig deep into my shoulder, and my arm fell useless by my side.
“He’s hit! They’n hit th’ mester,” cried ’Siah. “Here, Soldier, tha’re wanted here. Bear up, Ben, tha’ mustn’t fall. Brace thi’ legs, man. By God he’s wounded.” And everything swam around me and I knew no more.
When I came to my senses, I was, for a time, conscious only of my agony. I was stretched on a pile of straw in a lofty room with bare walls of undressed stone and great bowks and rafters crossing the arched roof. A mere slit, high up in one wall, let in a stream of light, but the corner in which I lay was almost wholly dark. Someone was kneeling by my side and when I moaned in my pain an arm was passed under my head and a mug was pressed to my lips.
“That’s reight, Ben, tha’rt better now. Tak’ a swig at this; it’ll do thee good.”
It was ’Siah’s voice, and the brandy and water that he poured down my throat set me coughing and choking, and every cough gave me awful stabs of shooting pain.
“Where are we, ’Si?” I murmured as I sank back again all faint and sick.
“Hanged if aw know, lad. But we’re safe for a bit. It’s som’dy Soldier Jack knows. We’re noan far fra’ Fixby, that’s all aw can tell thee, an’ here we’st ha’ to tarry till we can move thee.”
“An’ th’ mill? Ha’ we ta’en th’ mill? Where are all the boys? What am I doing lying here? Oh! I mind me now. I was hit i’ my arm. Where’s George an’ Thorpe, and—oh! tell me all, ’Si.”