Tom Tufton's Travels

by Evelyn Everett-Green

At one point the guide insisted upon leaving what looked like the better track, and led him round a sort of shoulder of piled up snow and rock, where walking was very laborious. Tom began to feel the need of food, and would have stopped and opened his wallet; but the man shook his head and gesticulated, and seemed to urge him onwards at some speed. Tom supposed he must obey, as the man pointed warningly to the rocks above, as though to hint that danger might be expected from them.

So on they trudged, Tom feeling a slight unaccustomed giddiness in the head, as many persons do who first try walking for some hours in the glare of sun and snow and at a high altitude. Then the path suddenly turned again under the frowning wall of rock, which rose black and stern through the covering of snow. The guide disappeared round the angle of the path; Tom followed with quick steps, and the next moment was almost felled to the earth by the terrific blow of a cudgel upon his head.

Almost, but not quite. He had been on his guard. He felt that the crisis was coming, and he was certain that the guide had betrayed him at this pre-arranged spot into the hands of his enemies. In one second Tom's rapier was out (he had carried that in spite of the hindrance it had sometimes been to him), and although he was half-blinded and half-stunned by the force of the blow received, he lunged fiercely forward, and heard a yell of pain which told him that his blade had found its billet.

But the blade could not at once be disentangled. For two seconds, perhaps, was Tom struggling with it; and in those two seconds one of his adversaries sprang behind him, and seized him round the waist with the hug of a bear.

In a second Tom had whipped out his pistols, and fired full at a dark figure in front of him; but his eyes were full of blood, and a taunting laugh told him that his shot had missed its mark. With a quick movement of his strong arm backwards he dealt the man who was holding him a terrific blow with the butt of the pistol, and discharged the other full at another dark figure looming in front.

This time there was an answering yell; but the odds were still tremendous, and Tom felt himself growing faint and giddy, and though he hit out lustily on all sides, he had no confidence that his blows told.

Every moment he expected to hear the sound of a report, and to know that his quietus had come; but at last he was aware that it was his captors' wish to take him prisoner, and not to kill him. They had closed in upon him now that he was disarmed, and were using every artifice to overpower him without further injury.

Tom felt his own struggles becoming weaker each moment, and at last he was conscious that somebody had crawled towards his feet and was passing a cord about them. In vain he sought to kick out and release himself; the next minute the cord was pulled tight. His feet were jerked from beneath him, he fell backwards heavily, and for some time he knew no more.

When he opened his eyes once again, he found himself sitting propped up against the rocks, his arms tightly pinioned to his sides, and his feet still encumbered by cords; whilst at a little distance sat his assailants in a ring, eating and drinking, and making merry together.

One had a bandaged head, and another had his arm in a rude sling. But the guide had come in for the worst of Tom's blows, and lay all his length along the ground, stiff and dead.