[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
when mine sank into the joint in his neck. He fell
against the statue, like Caesar against Pompey's,
hanging on to the iron rail; his sword was already
broken. When I saw the blood from that deadly
wound, everything else went from me; I dropped my
sword and ran as if to lift him up. As I bent toward
him something happened too quick for me to follow. I
do not know whether the iron bar was rotted with rust
and came away in his hand, or whether he rent it out
of the rock with his apelike strength; but the thing
was in his hand, and with his dying energies he swung
it over my head, as I knelt there unarmed beside him.
I looked up wildly to avoid the blow, and saw above
us the great bulk of Britannia leaning outward like the
figurehead of a ship. The next instant I saw it was
leaning an inch or two more than usual, and all the
skies with their outstanding stars seemed to be
leaning with it. For the third second it was as if the
skies fell; and in the fourth I was standing in the quiet garden,
looking down on that flat ruin of stone and bone at
which you were looking to-day. He had plucked out
the last prop that held up the British goddess, and she
had fallen and crushed the traitor in her fall. I turned
and darted for the coat which I knew to contain the
package, ripped it up with my sword, and raced away
up the garden path to where my motor bike was
waiting on the road above. I had every reason for
haste; but I fled without looking back at the statue
and the. body; and I think the thing I fled from was
the sight of that appalling allegory.
"Then I did the rest of what I had to do. All
through the night and into the daybreak and the
daylight I went humming through the villages and
markets of South England like a traveling bullet, till I
came to the headquarters in the West where the
trouble was. I was just in time. I was able to placard
the place, so to speak, with the news that the
government had not betrayed them, and that they
would find supports if they would push eastward
against the enemy. There's no time to tell you all that
happened; but I tell you it was the day of my life. A
triumph like a torchlight procession, with torchlights
that might have been firebrands. The mutinies
simmered down; the men of Somerset and the
western counties came pouring into the market
places; the men who died with Arthur and stood firm
with Alfred. The Irish regiments rallied to them, after
a scene like a riot, and marched eastward out of the
town singing Fenian songs. There was all that is not
understood, about the dark laughter of that people, in
the delight with which, even when marching with the
English to the defense of England, they shouted at the
top of their voices, 'High upon the gallows tree stood
the noble-hearted three . . . With England's cruel cord
about them cast.' However, the chorus was 'God
save Ireland,' and we could all have sung that just
then, in one sense or another.
"But there was another side to my mission. I
carried the plans of the defense; and to a great
extent, luckily, the plans of the invasion also. I won't
worry you with strategics; but we knew where the
enemy had pushed forward the great battery that
covered all his movements; and though our friends
from the West could hardly arrive in time to intercept
the main movement, they might get within long
artillery range of the battery and shell it, if they only
knew exactly where it was. They could hardly tell
that unless somebody round about here sent up some
sort of signal. But, somehow, I rather fancy that
somebody will."
With that he got up from the table, and they
remounted their machines and went eastward
into the advancing twilight of evening. The levels of
the landscape Were repeated in flat strips of floating
cloud and the last colors of day clung to the circle of
the horizon. Reced. ing farther and farther behind
them was the semicircle of the last hills; and it was
quite suddenly that they saw afar off the dim line of
the sea. It was not a strip of bright blue as they had
seen it from the sunny veranda, but of a sinister and
smoky violet, a tint that seemed ominous and dark.
Here Horne Fisher dismounted once more.
"We must walk the rest of the way," he said, "and
the last bit of all I must walk alone."
He bent down and began to unstrap something
from his bicycle. It was something that had puzzled [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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when mine sank into the joint in his neck. He fell
against the statue, like Caesar against Pompey's,
hanging on to the iron rail; his sword was already
broken. When I saw the blood from that deadly
wound, everything else went from me; I dropped my
sword and ran as if to lift him up. As I bent toward
him something happened too quick for me to follow. I
do not know whether the iron bar was rotted with rust
and came away in his hand, or whether he rent it out
of the rock with his apelike strength; but the thing
was in his hand, and with his dying energies he swung
it over my head, as I knelt there unarmed beside him.
I looked up wildly to avoid the blow, and saw above
us the great bulk of Britannia leaning outward like the
figurehead of a ship. The next instant I saw it was
leaning an inch or two more than usual, and all the
skies with their outstanding stars seemed to be
leaning with it. For the third second it was as if the
skies fell; and in the fourth I was standing in the quiet garden,
looking down on that flat ruin of stone and bone at
which you were looking to-day. He had plucked out
the last prop that held up the British goddess, and she
had fallen and crushed the traitor in her fall. I turned
and darted for the coat which I knew to contain the
package, ripped it up with my sword, and raced away
up the garden path to where my motor bike was
waiting on the road above. I had every reason for
haste; but I fled without looking back at the statue
and the. body; and I think the thing I fled from was
the sight of that appalling allegory.
"Then I did the rest of what I had to do. All
through the night and into the daybreak and the
daylight I went humming through the villages and
markets of South England like a traveling bullet, till I
came to the headquarters in the West where the
trouble was. I was just in time. I was able to placard
the place, so to speak, with the news that the
government had not betrayed them, and that they
would find supports if they would push eastward
against the enemy. There's no time to tell you all that
happened; but I tell you it was the day of my life. A
triumph like a torchlight procession, with torchlights
that might have been firebrands. The mutinies
simmered down; the men of Somerset and the
western counties came pouring into the market
places; the men who died with Arthur and stood firm
with Alfred. The Irish regiments rallied to them, after
a scene like a riot, and marched eastward out of the
town singing Fenian songs. There was all that is not
understood, about the dark laughter of that people, in
the delight with which, even when marching with the
English to the defense of England, they shouted at the
top of their voices, 'High upon the gallows tree stood
the noble-hearted three . . . With England's cruel cord
about them cast.' However, the chorus was 'God
save Ireland,' and we could all have sung that just
then, in one sense or another.
"But there was another side to my mission. I
carried the plans of the defense; and to a great
extent, luckily, the plans of the invasion also. I won't
worry you with strategics; but we knew where the
enemy had pushed forward the great battery that
covered all his movements; and though our friends
from the West could hardly arrive in time to intercept
the main movement, they might get within long
artillery range of the battery and shell it, if they only
knew exactly where it was. They could hardly tell
that unless somebody round about here sent up some
sort of signal. But, somehow, I rather fancy that
somebody will."
With that he got up from the table, and they
remounted their machines and went eastward
into the advancing twilight of evening. The levels of
the landscape Were repeated in flat strips of floating
cloud and the last colors of day clung to the circle of
the horizon. Reced. ing farther and farther behind
them was the semicircle of the last hills; and it was
quite suddenly that they saw afar off the dim line of
the sea. It was not a strip of bright blue as they had
seen it from the sunny veranda, but of a sinister and
smoky violet, a tint that seemed ominous and dark.
Here Horne Fisher dismounted once more.
"We must walk the rest of the way," he said, "and
the last bit of all I must walk alone."
He bent down and began to unstrap something
from his bicycle. It was something that had puzzled [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]