‘True, most true,’ answered Sir Richard Glendale. ‘Let the king be first cared for.’
‘That shall be my business,’ said Redgauntlet ‘if we have but time to bring back the brig, all will be well—I will instantly dispatch a party in a fishing skiff to bring her to.’ He gave his commands to two or three of the most active among his followers. ‘Let him be once on board,’ he said, ‘and there are enough of us to stand to arms and cover his retreat.’
‘Right, right,’ said Sir Richard, ‘and I will look to points which can be made defensible; and the old powder-plot boys could not have made a more desperate resistance than we shall. Redgauntlet,’ continued he, ‘I see some of our friends are looking pale; but methinks your nephew has more mettle in his eye now than when we were in cold deliberation, with danger at a distance.’
‘It is the way of our house,’ said Redgauntlet; ‘our courage ever kindles highest on the losing side. I, too, feel that the catastrophe I have brought on must not be survived by its author. Let me first,’ he said, addressing Charles, ‘see your Majesty’s sacred person in such safety as can now be provided for it, and then’—
‘You may spare all considerations concerning me, gentlemen,’ again repeated Charles; ‘yon mountain of Criffel shall fly as soon as I will.’
Most threw themselves at his feet with weeping and entreaty; some one or two slunk in confusion from the apartment, and were heard riding off. Unnoticed in such a scene, Darsie, his sister, and Fairford, drew together, and held each other by the hands, as those who, when a vessel is about to founder in the storm, determine to take their chance of life and death together.
Amid this scene of confusion, a gentleman, plainly dressed in a riding-habit, with a black cockade in his hat, but without any arms except a COUTEAU-DE-CHASSE, walked into the apartment without ceremony. He was a tall, thin, gentlemanly man, with a look and bearing decidedly military. He had passed through their guards, if in the confusion they now maintained any, without stop or question, and now stood, almost unarmed, among armed men, who nevertheless, gazed on him as on the angel of destruction.
‘You look coldly on me, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Sir Richard Glendale—my Lord ———, we were not always such strangers. Ha, Pate-in-Peril, how is it with you? and you, too, Ingoldsby—I must not call you by any other name—why do you receive an old friend so coldly? But you guess my errand.’
‘And are prepared for it, general,’ said Redgauntlet; ‘we are not men to be penned up like sheep for the slaughter.’
‘Pshaw! you take it too seriously—let me speak but one word with you.’