Rapidly as the magisterial party moved, the news of their approach had run before them; and, on entering the north gates of Machynleth, they found nearly all the male population in the streets. Large bodies of smugglers were dispersed in the crowd, many of whom saw clearly that the magistrate was in a mistake as to the person of his prisoner: but they had good reasons for leaving him in his error. Up to the inn-door, where it was foreseen that the carriage would draw up to change horses, no particular opposition was offered to the advance of that or it's escort. Hisses indeed, groans, hooting, curses, and every variety of insult short of manual violence, continued to rise in stormy chorus all the way to the inn-door. But the attack, which was obviously in agitation, waited either for the first blow to be struck by some one more daring than the rest--or for some more favourable situation.
Just as the carriage stopped, an upper window was thrown up, and forth came the head of Mr. Dulberry the radical reformer in a perfect panic of exultation. This was the happiest moment of his existence. No longer in mere vision or prophetic rapture, but with his bodily eyes, he beheld the civil authority set at nought, insulted, threatened; and a storm rising in which he might have the honour to preside and direct. He was suffocated with joy; and for a minute found himself too much affected to speak.
Whilst he was yet speechless, and distracted by the choice amongst ten thousand varieties of argument and advice for the better nursing of the infant riot,--a drunken man advanced from the inn and laid himself across the street immediately before the feet of the horses which were at this moment harnessing to the carriage, loudly protesting that they should pass over his body before he would see them carry off to a dungeon so noble a martyr to the freedom of trade. Alderman Gravesand directed the constables to remove the man by force. This fired the train of Dulberry's pent-up eloquence. He "adjured the mob by those who met at Runnymead to resist such an act of lawless power; applauded the heaven-born suggestion of the drunkard; called upon them all to follow his example; by Magna Charta every Englishman was entitled to stretch himself at length in the mud when and where he would; and at the Alderman's peril be it, if he should presume to drive over them."
Meantime the constables had seized the man, and tossed him into the gutter. So far the system of vigour seemed to carry the day. But either this act or the urgency of the time (the horses being now harnessed and the postillions on the point of mounting) was the signal for the universal explosion of the popular wrath. Stones, coals, brickbats, whizzed on every side: the traces of the barouche were cut: the constables were knocked down: those of them, who were seated in the carriage, were collared and pulled out; excepting only Sampson who, being a powerful and determined man, still kept his hold of Bertram: and the Alderman, who was the main cause of the whole disturbance, was happy to make a precipitate retreat into the inn; at an upper window of which he soon appeared with the Riot Act in his hand.
At this crisis, however, from some indications which he observed below of the state of temper in regard to himself just now prevailing amongst the mob he thought it prudent to lay aside his first intentions; and, putting the Riot Act into his pocket, he began to bow; most awkwardly attempted the new part of gracious conciliator; expostulated gently; laid his hand on his heart; and endeavoured to explain that the prisoner was not arrested for any offence against the revenue laws, but for high treason. Not a syllable of what he said was heard. At the adjoining window stood Mr. Dulberry, labouring with a zeal as ineffectual to heighten and to guide the storm which the Alderman was labouring to lay. Like two rival candidates on the hustings, both stood making a dumb show of grimaces, rhetorical gestures, and passionate appeals; blowing hot and cold like Boreas and Phoebus in their contest for the traveller; the one striving to sow, the other to extirpate sedition: the reformer blowing the bellows and fanning the fire which the magistrate was labouring to extinguish.
Fortunately perhaps for both, and possibly for all the parties concerned, arguments were now at hand more efficacious than those of either. At this moment a trampling of horses was heard; words of command could be distinguished in military language; and amidst a general cry of "The red coats! the red coats!" a squadron of dragoons was seen advancing rapidly along the street. The mob gave way immediately, and retired into the houses and side alleys. Just as the dragoons came up, a bold fellow had knocked the wounded constable backwards, and was in the act of seizing firm hold of Bertram,--when the commanding officer rode up and with the flat of his sabre struck him so violently over the head and shoulders that he rolled into the mud, but retained however presence of mind enough to retire within a party of his friends.
In a few minutes the officer had succeeded in restoring order: he now took the prisoner from the carriage and mounted him behind a dragoon. His hands, which had been hitherto tied behind him, were for a moment unfettered--passed round the dragoon's body--and then again confined by cords. These arrangements made,--the whole cavalcade accompanied by two constables drew off at a rapid pace to the city gates. Under this third variety in the style of his escort, Bertram began to experience great fatigue and suffering. Without any halt, or a word speaking, the cavalry proceeded at a long trot for two hours along a well-beaten road. On reaching a wretched ale-house, however, necessity obliged them to make a short halt and to take such refreshments as the place afforded. To the compassion of a dragoon Bertram was here indebted for a dram; and he was allowed to stretch himself at length on the floor of the house and to take a little sleep. From this however he was soon roused by the gingling of spurs; roughly shaken up; and mounted again in the former fashion behind the dragoon. It was now dark; a night-storm was beginning to rise; and it appeared to the prisoner as though the road were approaching the coast. The air grew colder and colder, the wind more piercing, and Bertram--whose situation made all change of posture impossible--felt as though he could not long hold out against the benumbing rigour of the frost. So much was his firmness subdued, that he could not forbear expressing his suffering by inarticulate moans. The dragoon, who rode before him, was touched with compassion and gave him a draught from his rum flask. The strength, given by spirituous liquors to a person under the action of frost, is notoriously but momentary and leaves the sufferer exposed to an immediate and more dangerous reaction of the frost. This effect Bertram experienced: a pleasant sensation began to steal over him; one limb began to stiffen after another; and his vital powers had no longer energy enough to resist the seductive approaches of sleep. At this moment an accident saved him. The whole troop pulled up abruptly; and at the same instant a piercing cry for help, and a violent trampling of horses' hoofs, roused Bertram from his stupefaction.
The accident was this: a trooper had diverged from the line of road, and was in the act of driving his horse over a precipice which overhung the sea-coast just at the very moment when his error was betrayed to him by the moving lights below. The horse however clung by his fore-feet, which had fortunately been rough-shod, to a tablet of slanting rock glazed over with an enamel of ice; and his comrades came up in time to save both the trooper and his horse. Meantime the harsh and sudden shock of this abrupt halt, together with the appalling character of the incident which led to it, had roused Bertram; and he was still further roused by the joyful prospect of a near termination to his journey as well as by the remarkable features of the road on which his eyes now opened from his brief slumber.
The road, as he now became aware, wound upwards along the extreme edge of the rocky barrier which rose abruptly from the sea-coast. In the murky depths below he saw nothing but lights tossing up and down, gleaming at intervals, and then buried in sudden darkness--the lights probably of vessels driving before wind and weather in a heavy sea. The storm was now in its strength on the sea-quarter. The clouds had parted before the wind; and a pale gleam of the moon suddenly betrayed to the prisoner the spectacle of a billowy sea below him, an iron barrier of rocky coast, and at some distance above him the gothic towers and turrets of an old castle running out as it were over the sea itself upon one of the bold prominences of the cliffs. The sharp lines of this aerial pile of building were strongly relieved upon the sky which now began to be overspread with moonlight. To this castle their route was obviously directed. But danger still threatened them: the road was narrow and steep; the wind blustered; and gusty squalls at intervals threatened to upset both horse and rider into the abyss. However the well-trained horses overcame all difficulties; at length the head of the troop reached the castle; and the foremost dragoon seizing a vast iron knocker struck the steel-plated gate so powerfully, that the echo on a more quiet night would have startled all the deer in the adjacent park for two miles round.