“The boat. Run!”
Bart was, as a rule, rather slow of comprehension; but at that moment the same idea was filling his mind. That is to say, it was already charged, and Abel’s words were as so many sparks struck from steel to fire that charge. Consequently, as the young fellow struck the constable to the left, Bart did the same to the right, and they dashed off as one man towards where, just round the western point of rock which helped to form the little bay, they knew that their boat was lying, swinging with the tide to a grapnel lying on the sands.
As they dashed off, running swiftly over the hard sand, the head constable raised his old brass-mounted pistol and fired, when the shot might have been supposed to have struck Mary Dell, so sharp a start did she give as she clapped one hand to her side, and then peered at the rising smoke, and drew a long breath full of relief.
For, as the smoke rose, she could see the fugitives still running, and that quite a cloud of sea-birds had risen from the mew-stone, a hundred yards from shore, to fly circling round, screaming querulously, as they slowly flapped their black-tipped wings.
“They’ll escape—they’ll escape!” cried Mary, clapping her hands joyously. “The coward, to fire! And they’re afraid to run hard and catch them now they are out in the open. Yes, they’ll escape!” she cried again, as she saw the distance increasing between pursuer and pursued. “They’ll get to the boat; the sail’s in, and there’s a good breeze. Oh, if I were only with them!”
A sudden thought struck her, and she caught up a sun-bonnet from where it lay on the open window-sill.
“I’ll go,” she thought. “They’ll sail west. I could reach Mallow’s Cove across the fields, and signal to them. They’d come in and pick me up, and we could escape together far, far from here.”
All this with her cheeks flushing, her handsome eyes sparkling, and her breast rising and falling in the height of her emotion.
Then a change came over her. Her eyes looked heavy; her forehead wrinkled again.
“Escape! Where?” she said, half aloud. “I’d gladly go—away from all this torture; but they think I betrayed them, and would not come in.”