“Twemlow, how glad I am that I have met you! You are the very man I wanted. There has been a sad accident in there with one of the Admiral's pistols, and the dear old man is badly wounded. I am off for a doctor, for my horse is at hand. For God's sake run in, and hold his head up, and try to staunch the bleeding. I shall be back in half an hour with the man that lives at Pebbleridge. Don't lose a moment. Particulars hereafter.”
“Particulars now!” replied Twemlow, sternly, as he planted himself before his cousin. “For years I have lived among liars, and they called a lie Crom, and worshipped it. If this is not Crom, why did you bolt the door?”
“You shall answer for this, when time allows. If the door was bolted, he must have done it. Let me pass; the last chance depends on my speed.”
Carne made a rush to pass, but Twemlow caught him by the breast, and held him. “Come back,” he said, fiercely, “and prove your words. Without that, you go no further.”
Carne seized him by the throat, but his mighty beard, like a collar of hemp, protected him, and he brought his big brown fist like a hammer upon the traitor's forehead. Carne wrenched at his dagger, but failed to draw it, and the two strong men rolled on the grass, fighting like two bull-dogs. Reason, and thought, and even sense of pain were lost in brutal fury, as they writhed, and clutched, and dug at one another, gashing their knuckles, and gnashing their teeth, frothing with one another's blood, for Carne bit like a tiger. At length tough condition and power of endurance got the mastery, and Twemlow planted his knee upon the gasping breast of Carne.
“Surrend,” he said, for his short breath could not fetch up the third syllable; and Carne with a sign of surrender lay on his back, and put his chin up, and shut his eyes as if he had fainted. Twemlow with self-congratulation waited a little to recover breath, still keeping his knee in the post of triumph, and pinning the foe's right arm to his side. But the foe's left hand was free, and with the eyes still shut, and a continuance of gasping, that left hand stole its way to the left pocket, quietly drew forth the second pistol, pressed back the hammer on the grass, and with a flash (both of eyes and of flint) fired into the victor's forehead. The triumphant knee rolled off the chest, the body swung over, as a log is rolled by the woodman's crowbar, and Twemlow's back was on the grass, and his eyes were closed to the moonlight.
Carne scrambled up and shook himself, to be sure that all his limbs were sound. “Ho, ho, ho!” he chuckled; “it is not so easy to beat me. Why, who are you? Down with you, then!”
Lord Robert Chancton, a lad of about sixteen, the eldest son of the Marquis, had lost his way inside the house, in trying to find a short-cut to the door, and coming up after the pistol was fired, made a very gallant rush at the enemy. With a blow of the butt Carne sent him sprawling; then dashing among the shrubs and trees, in another minute was in the saddle, and galloping towards the ancestral ruins.
As he struck into the main road through the grounds, Carne passed and just missed by a turn of the bridle another horseman ascending the hill, and urging a weary animal. The faces of the men shot past each other within a short yard, and gaze met gaze; but neither in the dark flash knew the other, for a big tree barred the moonlight. But Carne, in another moment, thought that the man who had passed must be Scudamore, probably fraught with hot tidings. And the thought was confirmed, as he met two troopers riding as hard as ride they might; and then saw the beacon on the headland flare. From point to point, and from height to height, like a sprinkle of blood, the red lights ran; and the roar of guns from the moon-lit sea made echo that they were ready. Then the rub-a-dub-dub of the drum arose, and the thrilling blare of trumpet; the great deep of the night was heaved and broken with the stir of human storm; and the staunchest and strongest piece of earth—our England—was ready to defend herself.