“The rest will be on us now,” said Dyck, “and we must keep going.”
Three more natives appeared, and he shot two.
Catching a pistol from Sheila he aimed at the third native and wounded him, but did not kill him. The man ran into the wood. Presently more Maroons came—a dozen or more, and rushed for the entrance. They were met by Dyck’s fire, and now also Sheila fired and brought down her man. Dyck wounded another, and in great skill loaded again, but at that moment three of the Maroons rushed down into the ruins.
They were astonished to see Dyck there, and more astonished to receive—first one and then another—his iron in their bowels. The third man made a stroke at Dyck with his lance, and only gashed Dyck’s left arm. Then he turned and fled out into the open, and was met by a half-dozen others. They all were about to rush the entrance when suddenly four shots behind them brought three of them down, and the rest fled into the wood shouting. In another moment Dyck and the ladies were in the open, and making for the woods, the women in front, the men behind, loading their muskets as they ran, and alive to the risks of the moment.
The dresses of the ladies were stained and soiled with dust and damp, but otherwise they seemed little the worse for the adventure, save that Mrs. Llyn was shaken, and her face was pale.
“How did you know where we were, and why did you come?” she said, after they had got under way, having secured the horses which Sheila and her mother had ridden.
Briefly Dyck explained how as soon as he had dealt with the revolt of the Maroons at his own place he came straight to Salem.
“I knew you were unused to the ways of the country and to our sort of native here, and I felt sure you would not refuse to take help—even mine at a pinch. But what happened to you?” he added, turning to Sheila.
It was only yesterday Sheila had determined to cut him wholly out of her life by assenting to marry Lord Mallow. Yet here he was, and she could scarcely bear to look into his face. He was shut off from her by every fact of human reason. These were days when the traditions of family life were more intense than now; when to kill one’s own father was not so bad as to embrace, as it were, him or her who had killed that father. Sheila felt if she were normal she ought to feel abhorrence against Dyck; yet she felt none at all, and his saving them had given a new colour to their relations. If he had killed her father, the traitor, he had saved themselves from death or freed them from a shameful captivity which might have ended in black disaster. She kept herself in hand, and did not show confusion.
“We had not heard of the rising of the Maroons,” she said. “The governor was at Salem yesterday and a message came from his staff to say would he come at once. His staff were not at Salem, but at the next plantation nearer to Spanish Town. Lord Mallow went. If he suspected the real trouble he said naught, but was gone before you could realize it. The hours went by, night came and passed, then my mother and I, this morning, resolved to ride to the monastery, and then round by the road you travelled back to Salem.”