The gun that the ship’s gunners believed themselves to have disabled had opened fire again, after a silence that had been, perhaps, but a lure to draw a sortie from her; and as it was mere destruction for the boat to attempt a landing in the face of the shot, she had orders to put back.
The position in which he was placed was now becoming clear to Hall. He was cut off from communication with the quays by the guns safely entrenched on the island, and those on Dial Hill, though out of range for the moment, would prevent him from moving nearer to the watermouth or making an attempt to get out to sea. He could not tell what was happening in the town opposite, and he had no means of finding out, for the whole of the cannon that he had been mad enough to leave by the shore was in the enemy’s possession, and would remain so unless the townspeople should rise in the Government interest for their recapture. This he was well aware they would not do.
His resentment against his luck, and the tale-bearing voice within, which told him that he had nothing to thank for it but his own carelessness, grew more insistent as his head grew clearer. He had been jerked out of sleep, heavy-headed, and with a brain still dulled by drink, but the morning freshness worked on him, and the sun warmed his senses into activity. The sight of Flemington, clean, impertinent, and entirely comprehensive of the circumstances, drove him mad; and it drove him still madder to know that Archie understood why he had been unwilling to see his report last night.
Hall’s abilities were a little superior to his looks. So far he had served his country, not conspicuously, but without disaster, and had he been able to keep himself as sober as most people contrived to be in those intemperate days, he might have gone on his course with the same tepid success. He was one who liked the distractions of towns, and he bemoaned the fate that had sent him to anchor in a dull creek of the East Coast, where the taverns held nothing but faces whose unconcealed dislike forbade conviviality, and where even the light women looked upon his uniform askance. He was not a lively comrade at the best of times, and here, where he was thrown upon the sole society of his officers, with whom he was not popular, he was growing more morose and more careless as his habits of stealthy excess grew upon him. Archie, with his quick judgment of his fellow-men, had measured him accurately, and he knew it. In the midst of the morning’s disaster the presence of the interloper, his flippant civility of word and insolence of manner, made his sluggish blood boil.
It was plain that the party on the island must be dislodged before anything could be done to save the situation, and Hall now decided to land as large a force as he could spare upon the mainland. By marching it along the road to Ferryden he would give the impression that some attempt was to be made to cross the strait nearer to the coast, and to land it between Dial Hill and the sea. Behind Ferryden village a rough track turned sharply southward up the bank, and this they were to take; they would be completely hidden from Inchbrayock once they had got over the crest of the land, and they were to double back with all speed along the mainland under shelter of the ridge, and to go for about a mile parallel with the Basin. When they had got well to the westward side of the island, they were to wheel down to the Basin’s shore at a spot where a grove of trees edged the brink; for here, in a sheltering turn of backwater among the trunks and roots, a few boats were moored for the convenience of those who wished to cross straight to Montrose by water instead of taking the usual path by the stepping-stones over Inchbrayock Island.
They were to embark at this place, and, hugging the shore, under cover of its irregularities, to approach Inchbrayock from the west. If they should succeed in landing unseen, they would surprise the enemy at the further side of the graveyard whilst his attention was turned on the Venture. The officer to be sent in command of the party believed it could be done, because the length of the island would intervene to hide their manœuvres from the town, where the citizens, crowding on the quays, would be only too ready to direct the notice of the rebels to their approach.
As the boat put off from the ship Archie slipped into it; he seemed to have lost his definite place in the scheme of things during the last twenty-four hours; he was nobody’s servant, nobody’s master, nobody’s concern; and in spite of his bold reply to Hall’s threat of arrest, he knew quite well that though the captain would stop short of such a measure, he might order him below at any moment; the only wonder was that he had not done so already. He did not know into what hands he might fall, should Hall be obliged to surrender, and this contingency appeared to be growing likely. By tacking himself on to the landing-party he would at least have the chance of action, and though, having been careful to keep out of Hall’s sight, he had not been able to discover their destination, he had determined to land with the men.
After they had disembarked, he went boldly up to the officer in charge of the party and asked for permission to go with it, and when this was accorded with some surprise, he fell into step. As they tramped along towards Ferryden, he managed to pick up something of the work in hand from the man next to him. His only fear was of the chance of running against Logie; nevertheless, he made up his mind to trust to luck to save him from that, because he believed that Logie, as a professional soldier, would be in command of the guns on the hill. It was from Dial Hill that the tactical details of the attack could best be directed, and if either of the conspirators were upon the island, Archie was convinced it would be Ferrier.
They soon reached Ferryden. The sun was clear and brave in the salt air over the sea, and a flock of gulls was screaming out beyond the bar, dipping, hovering, swinging sideways against the light breeze, now this way, now that way, their wanton voices full of mockery, as though the derisive spirits imprisoned in the ocean had become articulate, and were crying out on the land. The village looked distrustfully at the approach of the small company, and some of the fisher-wives dragged their children indoors as if they thought to see them kidnapped. Such men as were hanging about watched them with sullen eyes as they turned in between the houses and made for the higher ground.
The boom of the Venture’s guns came to them from time to time, and once they heard a great shout rise from the quays, but they could see nothing because of the intervening swell of the land. They passed a farm and a few scattered cottages; but these were empty, for their inmates had gone to the likeliest places they could find for a view of what was happening in the harbour.