Harry's nerves were now at high tension. It was clear that he had stumbled upon a piquet or patrol, or even a more numerous party of the enemy, and the odds were in favour of his meeting the same fate as the poor fellow his guide. Unhappily his horse was beginning to flag. Bending forward to encourage it, and patting its neck, he felt that his hand was covered with blood. The horse had been struck. Harry remembered how it had quivered. The wound accounted for its laboured breathing; it was a good horse, and, not having as yet been seriously pressed, could have held its own with those of the troopers behind. But it was plain to Harry that, with the horse severely wounded, the race must now be short, and the result inevitable. The distance between himself and his pursuers was already lessening; a glance behind showed him four dark figures close upon his heels; a few seconds would decide his fate.
At the moment of danger, some men lose their heads, others are braced to the quickest exercise of their faculties. Harry, fortunately for himself, was of the latter class. He saw that to ride on must mean speedy capture; the only chance of escape was to dismount and slip away on foot. But the country here was quite open, he would instantly be seen. He peered anxiously ahead; yes, there, against the indigo sky, was a dense mass of black; it was a plantation of some kind; could he but gain that, there was a bare possibility. He dug his spurs into his panting steed, with pity for the poor wounded beast carrying him so gallantly; but he dared not spare it; apart from his own fate, another life hung in the balance. A brief effort was needed; the horse nobly responded, and by the time it reached the edge of the wood had slightly increased the gap between pursuer and pursued. Pulling up suddenly, Harry sprang from the saddle, struck the trembling animal with his scabbard, and as he slipped among the trees heard it dash forward.
Being wounded, Harry argued, the horse would certainly slacken its pace when no longer urged by the voice and spur of its rider, and must soon be overtaken. The enemy would immediately guess his device, and if the wood should be of no great extent, they would probably surround it, wait till morning, and capture him at their leisure. He waited breathlessly for the coming of the enemy; he saw them sweep past, bending low in their saddles, two men abreast, like phantom horsemen, so quietly did they ride on the turf. His heart gave a jump when he estimated them as at least half a troop. When they were past he left the wood, and ran across the open plain at right angles to his previous line of flight.
As he expected, his manoeuvre was soon discovered. He heard the Frenchmen call to one another; then the thud of returning hoofs on his right, and in a few minutes he saw several dark forms approaching. They were spreading out fanwise. Only the men at the right of the line were directly approaching him at a trot, searching the ground as they rode. The sky was lightening behind them; the moon was rising; fortunately, Harry being on foot, the pursuers could not see him so clearly as he saw them.
In a moment he perceived that it was a race between him and the man at the end of the line. If he could get beyond the point at which the trooper's present line of march would intersect his own path, he had a reasonable chance of safety. To his dismay he noticed that the man was edging still farther from his comrades, as though suspecting that he was not taking a sufficiently wide sweep. Harry was now panting with his exertions, and in a bath of sweat; he could run no faster over the heavy ground; he felt that the game was up, wondering indeed that the "view halloo!" had not already been given. Plunging blindly, despairingly, on, he was almost at his last gasp when he suddenly fell headlong. He had stumbled into an irrigation ditch. It was overgrown with weeds; in the stress of war the culture of the fields had been neglected; the bottom was dry. The weeds grew high on either side; Harry scrambled on hands and knees into the rank vegetation, and lay still, his flanks heaving, his breath coming and going in quick pants which he felt must be audible yards away.
For some seconds he heard nothing but his deep breathing and the thumping of his heart; then the beat beat of hoofs drawing nearer. A horseman passed within a few yards of him, luckily on the right. Another few seconds, and the Frenchman ejaculated an angry "Nom d'un tonnerre!" as his horse struck the ditch and stumbled. He called to his left-hand man, and Harry, cautiously peering through the enveloping weeds, saw him alight and begin to examine the ditch. But he moved away from the fugitive. As soon as he was at a safe distance, Harry, who had by this time recovered his breath, crept out and stealthily crawled along the watercourse on hands and knees. For some minutes he continued this arduous progress, rejoicing to hear the men's voices receding moment by moment. Then, judging it safe, he rose and broke into a trot, left the ditch by and by, and continued to pound over fields and paths, through hedges and over ditches, for what seemed to him miles. Then he stopped. All sounds had now ceased save the chirp of crickets, the raucous cry of the corn-crake, and the croak of frogs. He had lost his way; he knew not whether he was near a highway; he was dead tired, his knees trembling under him. But he remembered Sherebiah spending his lonely vigil in the town-house of Breda, waiting for the dawn of his last day, and he set his lips and breathed a vow that the faithful fellow should not die if the last ounce of energy would save him.
CHAPTER XIV
Harry Rides for a Life
The Hour before Dawn—A Trivial Interruption—Recollections—Another Memorandum—The Road to Breda—The Town Clock—Seven Minutes—Against Time—Orange Wins
Years afterwards, when Harry was a father and a grandfather, and the children came about his knees clamouring for a story, nothing held them more entranced, nothing caused them such delicious creepiness, as his account of the hours that followed his escape from the French.