Cope had got it through both lungs, and his lips were a streaming of red that frothed and bubbled. The men of Horwick and Wadsworth and Back o’ th’ Mooin pressed about him and looked down on him without lifting a hand to help. “I’sd ha’ looked to see it black, but it’s red right eniff,” one of them remarked. Again the captain bent over the man who was suffocating in his own blood; then he began to give orders.
A man stripped his scarlet coat off, and it was buttoned about two muskets to make a litter. The litter was of no great dimensions, but big enough for its purpose, and they placed Cope carefully on it. The captain told off bearers and an escort. “He refused before, but he’s little choice but to go back now,” he said.
They lifted him. “Take him to the inn; out of step, so as not to shake him. I’ll follow later.... ‘Mish,’ did he say?”
A dozen men set off with Cope to Wadsworth, and the Wadsworth men followed, whispering among themselves.
On a shale heap they found the two guns; all their searching did not produce the man who had fired them. A strong guard was left on the spot, and that afternoon the main body advanced as far as Noon Nick without further molestation. Thence they retired half a mile, placing sentries at intervals along the ledge over the rocky bottom and men at various points along the Causeway; and a camp was pitched almost within a stone’s throw of the place that the coining plant had occupied previously to its removal to Brotherton Slack.
* * * * *
The Wadsworth men who had preceded Cope reached the top of the Scout; there they assembled and held a discussion.
“Whose house is he to be ta’en to?” some asked.
“Not mine,” others replied.—“No, nor mine.”—“Nor mine.”
“What about th’ parson’s?”