His impulse was to draw his own pistol, and to shoot the spy dead, but Archie recovered his balance, and was grappling with him so that he could not get his arm free. The strength of the slim, light young man astonished him. He was as agile as a weasel, but James found in him, added to his activity, a force that nearly matched his own.
There was no possible doubt of Logie’s complete enlightenment, though he kept his crooked mouth shut and uttered no word. His eyes wore an expression not solely due to the violent struggle going on; they were terrible, and they woke the frantic instinct of self-preservation in Flemington. He knew that James was straining to get out his own pistol, and he hung on him and gripped him for dear life. As they swayed and swung to and fro, trampling the bents, there rose from behind the graveyard a yell that gathered and broke over the sound of their own quick breaths like a submerging flood, and the bullets began to whistle over the rising ground.
Archie saw a change come into James’s eyes; then he found himself staggering, hurled with swift and tremendous force from his antagonist. He was flung headlong against the jutting bend round which he had come, and his forehead struck it heavily; then, rolling down to the track at its foot, he lay stunned and still.
[CHAPTER XIII
THE INTERESTED SPECTATOR]
AS James Logie dashed back to his men to meet this unexpected attack, he left Flemington lying with his face to the bank and his back towards the river; he was so close to the edge of the island that his hair rested on the wet sand permeated by the returning tide coming up the Esk. James’s whole mind had gone back like a released spring to its natural preoccupation, and he almost forgot him before he had time to join the brisk affray that was going on.
But though Archie lay where he fell, and was as still as a heap of driftwood, it was only a few minutes before he came to himself. Perhaps the chill of the damp sand under his head helped to revive him; perhaps the violence of the blow had been broken by the sod against which he had been hurled. He stirred and raised himself, dazed, but listening to the confused sounds of fighting that rang over Inchbrayock. His head hurt him, and instinctively he grubbed up a handful of the cold, wet sand and held it to his brow. His wits had not gone far, for there had been no long break in his consciousness, and he got on his feet and looked round for the best means of escape.
James knew all. That was plain enough; and on the issue of the skirmish his own liberty would depend if he did not get clear of the island at once. He went back round the bend, and looking up the shore he saw a couple of the stepping-stones which were only half covered by the tide. In the middle of the channel they had disappeared already, but at either edge they lay visible, like the two ends of a partly submerged chain. Blood was trickling down his face, but he washed it off, and made hastily for the crossing, wading in.
The Esk was not wide just there, though it was far deeper than he had fancied it, and he stumbled along, churning up the mud into an opaque swirl through which he could not see the bottom. He climbed the further bank, wasting no time in looking behind him, and never stopped until he stood, panting and dizzy, on the high ridge of land from which he could overlook Inchbrayock and the harbour and town. He was a good deal exhausted, for his head throbbed like a boiling pot, and his hands were shaking. He lay down in a patch of whins, remembering that he was on the sky-line. He meant to see which way the fortunes of war were going to turn before deciding what to do with himself. Thanks to chance, his business with Captain Hall was not finished, nor even begun; but as things seemed at present, Captain Hall might be a prisoner before the leisure which had been the subject of his own gibes that morning should arrive. The vessel’s guns had roared out again as he struggled up the steep, but there had been silence on the island, and even the rattle of musketry had now stopped. Something decisive must have taken place, though he could not guess what it was, and he was too far away to distinguish more than the moving figures in the graveyard.