“That is an unusual haul; you are thinning them out fast.”
“Not half fast enough; looks as if the cursed dogs held on to life to spite us.”
“Well, ’tis said that Howe will bring back plenty of recruits from the French fleet to fill your gaps.”
“How is that? What is the news?”
But Peter was listening eagerly, hoping to catch some bit of outside information. The officer pointed to him with elevated eyebrows, and the guard drove him with imprecations to his task.
“Your shovel?—Well, there it is, you son of perdition! Go on, and mind you be quick in hiding that carrion from the crows.”
Beside the boat, with guns cocked and ready, the three men then talked over the war tidings, while thirty yards up the beach the two grave-diggers fell to their task. Rapidly the two first graves were made and the occupants laid therein with only a muttered prayer from Peter; and so were closed two human chapters in the varying story of life. The wind shrieked in from the sea, edged with foam or stinging sand caught up at the water’s edge, and the heavens were like a vast slaty canopy torn now and then by jagged lightning flashes. The scene was a fit setting for the mournful work in hand. Once or twice while the two laboured, one of the guards walked over to look at them, and then wandered back to the boat and his companions.
Over the first two graves the sand was heaped high, forming, as far as possible, a barrier for the third. Shallow that third grave was,—so shallow that a man could scarce lie therein and be concealed; but so it must be that the sand might not be too heavy on the body, and yet seem to be piled up. Tenderly Peter lifted that last silent figure and stretched it in the hollow made for it; then, while he still stooped, he broke the frail stitches of the blanket, and snatching two pieces of driftwood he put them crosswise over the head of the grave with their ends on the edges. The hollow space below might contain enough air to last a man a little while.
“Stay, here is piece of hollow cane in the sand,” said the assistant, “keep one end of it over your mouth, Richard; we will leave the other just out of the sand; in this way you can breathe longer.—So.”
“Quick, quick; the shovels! The guard is returning,” cried Peter.