“Beast! coward! Oh, that I had brought a man instead of thee! ’Twas gold you saw—bright, shining metal—think, thou swine, of all it will buy, and how thou may’st hereafter wallow in thy foul delights! And wilt thou forego the stuff so near? Gods! I would have a wrestle for it though it were with the devil himself! Give me the crowbar.”
Apparently the captain’s avarice was of stouter kind than the yeoman’s, for soon after this the stone upright began to give, and I saw the moment of my deliverance was near. Now, I argued to myself, these gentlemen outside are obvious rogues, and will much rather crack me on the head than share their booty with such a strange-found claimant, hence I must be watchful. Of the two under-rogues I had small fear, but the captain seemed of bolder mold, and, unless his tongue lied, had some sort of heart within him. So I waited watchful, and before long a more than usually stalwart blow set the stone off its balance. It slipped and leaned, then fell headlong outward with a heavy thud, and, turning over on its side, rolled to the edge of the slope, and there, revolving quicker and more quickly, went rumbling and crashing down through the brambles into the valley a quarter of a mile below. As it fell outward, a blaze of daylight burst upon my prison, and, with a shout of joy, the foremost of the rogues dashed into my cell. At the same moment, with such an old British battle yell as those monoliths had not heard for a thousand years, but sorely dazed, I sprang forward. We met in mid career, and the big thief went floundering down. He was up again in a moment, and, yelling in his fear that the devil was certainly there, rushed forth—I close behind him—and infected his timorous comrade, and away they both went toward the woods, racing in step and screaming in tune, as though they had practised it together for half a lifetime. The fellows fled, but their leader stood, white and irresolute, as he well might be, yet made bold by greed; and for a moment we faced each other—he in his greasy townsman finery, a strong, sullen thief from bonnet to shoe, and I, grim, gaunt, and ragged, haggard, wild, unshorn, standing there for a moment against the black porch of the old Druid grave-place—and then, wiping the sunshine from my dazzled eyes and stooping low, I ran at him! Many were the ribbons and trinkets I had taken long ago at that game. I ran at him, and threw my arms round his leather-belted middle, and, with a good Saxon twist, tossed his heels fairly into the air and threw him full length over my shoulder. He fell behind me like a tree on the greensward, while his head striking the buttress of a stone stunned him, and he lay there bleeding and insensible.
“Hoth! good fellow,” I laughed, bending over him, “I am sorry for that headache you will have to-morrow, but before you challenge so freely to the wrestle you should know somewhat more of a foeman’s prowess!”
When I turned to the little heap of spoil the ravishers of the dead had gathered and laid out on a cloth upon the stones, at once my mood softened. There in that curious pile of trinkets were things so ancient and yet so fresh that I heaved a sigh as I bent over them, and a whiff of the old time came back—the jolly wild days when the world was young rose before me as I turned them tenderly one by one. There lay the bronze nobs from a British shield, and there, corroded and thin, the long, flat blade that my rugged comrades once could use so well. There was the broken haft of a wheel-scythe from a chief’s battle-car, and, near by, the green and dinted harness of a war-horse. Hoth! how it took me back! how it made me hear again in the lap of the soft Plantagenet sea and all the insipid sounds of this degenerate countryside the rattle and hum of the chariots as we raced to war, the sparkle and clatter of the captains galloping through the leafy British woods, and then the shout and tumult as we wheeled into line in the open, and, our loose reins on the stallions’ necks and our trembling javelins quivering in our ready hands, swept down upon the ranks of the reeling foeman!
There again, in more peaceful wise, was a shoulder-brooch some British maid had worn, and the wristlet and rings of some red-haired Helen of an unfamous Troy. There lay a few links of the neck-chains of a dust-dead warrior, and there, again, the head of his boar-spear. Here was the thin gold circlet he had on his finger, the rude pin of brass that fastened his colored cloak and the buckle of his sandal. Jove! I could nearly tell the names of the vanished wearers, I knew all these things so well!
But it was no use hanging over the pile like this. The ruffian I had felled was beginning to move, and it served no purpose to remain: therefore—and muttering to myself that I was a nearer heir to the treasure than any among those thieves—I selected some dozen of the fairest, most valuable trinkets, and put them in my wallet. Then, feeling cold—for the fresh morning air was thin and cool here, above the sea—the best coat from the ragged pile the rogues had thrown aside, to be the lighter at their work, was chosen, and, with this on my back, and a stout stave in my hand, I turned to go. But ere I went I took a last look round—as was only natural—at a place that had given me such timely shelter overnight. It was strange, very strange; but my surroundings, as I saw them in the white daylight, matched wondrous poorly with my remembrance of the evening before! The sea, to begin with, seemed much farther off than it had done in the darkness. I have said that when I swam ashore my well-remembered British harbor had, to my eyes, silted up wofully, so that the knoll on which Blodwen’s stockades once stood was some way up the valley. But small as the estuary had shrunk last night, I had, it seemed, but poorly estimated its shrinkage. ’Twas lesser than ever this morning, and some kine were grazing among the yellow kingcups on the marshy flats at that very place where I could have sworn I came ashore on the top of a sturdy breaker! The greedy green and golden land was cozening the blue channel sea out of beach and foreshore under my very eyes; the meadow-larks were playing where the white surf should have been, and tall fern and mallow flaunted victorious in the breeze where ancient British keels had never even grated on a sandy bottom. I could not make it out, and turned to look at the tomb from which I had crept. Here, too, the turmoil of yestere’en and my sick and weary head had cheated me. In the gloom the pile had appeared a bare and lichened heap washed out from its old mound by rains: but, Jove! it seemed it was not so. I rubbed my eyes and pulled my peaked beard and stared about me, for the crypt was a grassy mound again, with one black gap framed by a few rugged stones jutting from the green, as though the slope above it had slipped down at that leveler Nature’s prompting, and piled up earth and rubbish against the rocks, had escaladed them and marched triumphant up the green glacis, planting her conquering pennons of bracken and bramble, mild daisy and nodding foxglove, on that very arch where, by all the gods! I thought last night the withering lightning would have glanced harmless from a smooth and lichened surface. Well, it only showed how weary I had been; so, shouldering my cudgel, and with a last sigh cast back to that pregnant heap of rusty metal, I turned, and with fair heart, but somewhat shaky limbs, marched off inland to give my wondrous news.
How pleasant and fair the country was, and after those hot scenes of battle, the noise and sheen of which still floated confusedly in my head, how sweetly peaceful! I trod the green, secluded country lanes with wondrous pleasure, remembering the bare French campagnas, and stood stock-still at every gap in the blooming hedges to drink the sweet breath of morning, coming, golden-laden with sunshine and the breath of flowers, over the rippling meadow-grass! In truth, I was more English than I had thought, my step was more elastic to tread these dear domestic leas, and my spirits rose with every mile simply to know I was in England! And I—a tough, stern soldier, with arms still red to the elbow in the horrid dye of war, and on a hasty errand, pulled me a flowering spray from the coppices, and smiled and sang as I went along, now stopping in delighted trance to hear out the nightingale that, from a bramble athwart the thicket path, sang most enrapturedly, and then, forgetful of my haste, standing amazed under the flushed satin of the blooming apples. “Jove!” I laughed, “here is a sweeter pavilion than any victor prince doth sleep in! Fie! to fight and bleed as we do yonder, while the sweetness of such a tent as this goes all to waste upon the wind!” and I sat and stared and laughed until the prick of conscience stirred me and, reluctant, I passed on again. Then over a flowery mead or two, where the banded bees swung in busy fashion at the lilac cuckoo-flowers, and the shining dewdrops were charged with a hundred hues, down to a sunny, babbling brook that sparkled by a yellow ford. There I would stand and watch the silver fingers of the stream toy and tug the great heads of nodding kingcup, watch the flash of the new-come swallow’s wing, as he shot through the byways between the mallows, and be so still that e’en the timid water-hen led out her brood across the freckled play of sunshine on the water, and the mute kingfisher came to the broken rail and did not fear me. “Surely a happy stream,” I thought, “not to divide two princely neighbors! What a blessed current that can keep its native color and chatter thus of flowers and sunshine, while yon other torrent runs incarnadine to the sea—a corpse-choked sewer of red ambition!”
Then it was a homestead that, all unseen, I paused by, watching the great sleek kine knee-deep in the scented yellow straw, the spangled cock defiant on the wall, the tender doves a-wooing on the roof-ridge, and presently the swart herdsman, with flail and goad, come out from beneath his roses and stoop and kiss the pouting cherry lips of the sweet babe his comely mate held up to him. “Jove!” I meditated, “and here’s a goodly kingdom. Oh that I had a realm with no politics in it but such as he has!” and so musing I went along from path to path and hill to hill.
At one time my feet were turned to a way-side rest-house, where a jug of wine was asked for and a loaf of bread, for you will remember that saving a handful of dry biscuit, which I broke in my gauntlet palm and ate between two charges, I had not broken fast since the morning before Crecy. The master of the tavern took up the coin I tendered and eyed it critically. He held it in the sun, and rung it on a stone and spat upon it, then, taking a little dust from the road, rubbed diligently until he came down through the green sea-slime to the metal below. It was true-coined, plump, and full, though certainly a trifle rusty; and this and my grim, commanding figure in his doorway carried the day. He brought me wine and cheese and bread, whereon I sat on a corner of the trestle table munching them outside in the sun under shadow of my broad felt yokel hat, with the quaint inn sign gently creaking overhead, and my moldy, sea-stained legs dangling under me.
I was in a good mood, yet thoughtful somehow, for had not the King especially warned me not to part lightly with the precious news wherewith I was freighted? And if so be that I must be reticent in this particular, yet again my heart was surely too full of my victorious errand to let me gossip lightly on trivial matters; thus my bread was broken in abstracted silence, and, when my beaker went now and again into the shade of my hat-brim, I drank mutely and proffered no sign of friendship to those other country wayfarers who stood about the honeysuckled doorway eyeing me askance after the manner I was so used to, and whispering now and then to one another.