Chapter XVI: How Burrough Became a Dummy Man

It was early morning when Burrough awoke. He had never intended going to sleep, but drowsiness had come, and he had succumbed to it. He blinked his eyes when the clear light met them, and wondered what was the meaning of the grey ruin which surrounded him. Then he remembered, and hastily pulled himself round. The bed of heather was empty. The little boots had disappeared from the broken hearthstone where turves still smoked and smouldered; and the satchel too was gone. Burrough looked about the ruin through the rents in its walls. A couple of horned sheep scampered away when they saw him; a shaggy pony stared with wild eyes. There was not a trace of Beatrice.

For a moment Burrough felt resentful. She might have waited for him, or at least have aroused him to say she was going, and that she preferred to depart alone. She was not the sort of girl who would care what the villagers said about her; yet for the sake of peace she would prefer they should not know how she had passed the night with him in the ruin of Steeperton Cleave. That no doubt was why she had wished to steal alone into the village before anyone would be astir. She had not disturbed him out of pity for his weariness. She had acted quite wisely. It was not her fault they had been stormbound; but the evil-thinking minds and slandering tongues of the villagers might very well determine that it had been his.

The “fulness,” as a Dartmoor dame would have called the mist, had vanished. It was difficult to imagine it in the clear sunshine of the early morning. The rain had dried off the whortleberries, and the wind was nothing but a murmur. The only distinct sound came from the river tumbling through the ruin of its bridge below.

Burrough was too lazy to think. The sensuous waves of warm gorse-scented air lulled him into a feeling of perfect peace. He tumbled upon the springy heather, and tried to imagine the future--a future with Beatrice--but did not think for long. His eyes closed and he was soon again in the land of dreams.

He woke with a muffled cry, and raised his hand to his head as though to avert a blow. It seemed to him that the pixy blacksmith had come beside him with a huge hammer and intent to murder. The phantom had indeed aimed a blow at his head, but he had dragged himself away in time, and the hammer had fallen upon the rock hard by and shivered it with a noise like thunder. The echoes were still ringing upon the moor. Before Burrough could fully awaken the noise came again. There was a furious hissing, followed by a deafening shock. The ruin trembled. Dust came down like rain, and after it a lump of peat fell upon Burrough’s chest. He was up at once, muttering, “A thunderstorm! Good Heaven! When is the weather going to be fine again?”

The next moment he was laughing, because he perceived that it was as fine a summer’s morning as the heart could desire. So Beatrice had not gone after all. She was upon the other side of the wall, and had amused herself by throwing peat over it, as a hint it was time for him to get up. As for the noise, it had probably been caused by her rolling stones down the steep descent to the river. He picked up a piece of peat and threw it over the wall. No reply came, although he persuaded himself he heard a muffled laugh. He rushed outside. Nobody was there.

In an instant Burrough was back in the ruin, as though he had been Tregeagle with the devils at his heels. What was it that had made the mysterious building a ruin and destroyed the old clapper bridge below? What had aroused him and flung that turf upon his chest? Those ugly iron cylinders scattered all over the surrounding moor gave the answer. What a fool he had been to forget the artillery. He was upon the range. A shell might fall at any moment and blow him into fragments.

“On this day of all days in my life!” he muttered with shivering lips. During the next few moments his mind worked rapidly. Was it because of the danger that Beatrice had hurried away in the first dimness of the morning? That could not be, because if the idea had occurred to her she would not have left him sleeping at the mercy of the gunners. Was it a chance shell which had fallen near the ruin? He knew the firing was sometimes erratic, and he remembered the sheep and the pony he had seen upon looking out earlier. These thoughts did not bring much consolation, because he knew the cleave was upon the Cranmere range. He had slept five hours since seeing those animals, and since then the moormen would have rounded them up and driven them off. Naturally they had not searched inside the ruin. They could not have expected to find a man sleeping there.

While Burrough’s mind was at work his hands were busy methodically packing his knapsack. He did not lose his head, as he had lately done with Beatrice, and he managed to retain his self-restraint. He knew it was no good running wildly about the moor, like a hunted rabbit looking for a hole to dive into. He was aware that the particular part upon which the ruin stood was not visible from the firing point because of the steep slope of the cleave. It would be madness to run up the hill, stand upon the sky-line and signal. He might be mistaken for one of the dummy-men. He had been told by an artillery sergeant that at a great distance the rippling currents of air rising from the moor frequently gave an appearance of motion to the dummies and perplexed the gunners in their aim. Then he thought of the field telegraph and of the possibility of the firing being stopped if he were to cut the wire. A patrol might be sent out to discover why communication had been put a stop to. But he had no instrument except a pocket-knife, and the wire could not be cut with that. The only course open was to find a shell-proof shelter where he could hide himself until the mid-day interval.

These thoughts passed rapidly through Burrough’s brain. He slung on his knapsack. He was a practical man in some respects, and had no idea of leaving his property behind. He passed out of the ruin, and as he did so the hissing began again; he cowered like a frightened animal, and a shell burst far above, flinging masses of peat into the air. Another followed almost immediately, and then a couple passed overhead screaming like the whist hounds. He heard them burst far ahead and breathed more freely as he scrambled down.

Fear returned, however, before he reached the old bridge. He looked back and discovered a spectral dummy upon the crest of the hill. While he was looking the wooden man vanished, to the accompaniment of another terrific explosion, and the storm of stones and divots was renewed.

“Hot work,” muttered Burrough, trying to smile. “Very hot work.”

His first thought was naturally the selfish one of self-preservation. His second was gratification that Beatrice had slipped away in the early morning. It would have been terrible if she had been there, exposed to instant death or mutilation in some horrible form. The strong beautiful body of Beatrice scarred and crippled! The very thought made him shudder as his own danger had not done.

There was no shelter to be found upon the treeless moor. Reaching the river in safety Burrough rushed over the rocks like a frightened water-vole, looking for a hole to creep into. Near the old bridge he hesitated. There was a shelf of rock jutting out from the side of the cleave and overhanging the river. The bombardment continued like a tremendous thunderstorm. Burrough scrambled down, dragged himself beneath the ledge, and crouched among the ferns, with the water splashing below, and the noise of war above.

Not more than a few minutes had passed when an earthquake came. The ground shook, the great shelf which pressed upon him like the roof of a vault trembled, and some small rocks rattled overhead and plunged into the river. When peace became restored Burrough reconsidered his position by the light of a few fresh discoveries. As he dug his hands into the bracken they came in contact with something hard and round. It was a shell. As he looked down he noticed that huge masses of the river’s bank had been broken off. Some portions had not been cut away completely, but were hanging forward over the water; other parts had been blown into the stream. Burrough quickly concluded that his present position was as bad a one as he could have chosen. He noticed that the shells were falling either some way above the ruin or some way below, that is to say, across the high moor where the dummies had been stationed early that morning while he was asleep, and along the river. He remembered that the gunners were instructed to respect the stone antiquities of the moor as far as they could. They were not permitted to bombard the picturesque tors, or to drop their shells where stone avenues and kistvaens were known to exist. The ruin was therefore the safest place. It was between two fires, which was better on the whole than being in the direct line of one.

Burrough lost no time in returning to the place which had sheltered Beatrice and himself from the storm. It was a very different and far more terrible storm which was raging then. He went up the steep ascent at an astonishing speed, and tumbled into the ruin sweating and breathless. As he made for the old fireplace a small pony stampeded in a panic from the corner. Evidently the shaggy little beast had become separated from its companions, and had been overlooked by the range-clearers. Burrough called to the animal in vain. All men were its enemies. It made off to the open moor, calling for its comrades, mane and tail streaming in the breeze. Quite possibly it had been left deliberately on the range by the moorman who owned it. If it were destroyed the compensation money might amount to the value of many ponies.

Soon Burrough became positively elated. Hidden away in the chimney he felt that the odds were very much in his favour. It had stood through many a summer’s war; and though no doubt it was only a question of time before a badly-aimed shell fell and demolished it, there was no good reason why such a disaster should occur upon that particular day. Burrough tried to forget that portions of the old stone building had been shattered by misdirected efforts. Broken blocks were close to his feet; there was an ugly rent in the jagged wall opposite; through that hole he perceived a shallow pit which could not have been made by anything except one of those huge new projectiles--but it was foolish to think of such things. He turned to other matters. He wondered whether the pony would escape and rejoin its herd that evening, with a tale of its wonderful adventures, including the stupid frightened man who had driven it out of its shelter--or whether it would be lying dead or horribly wounded upon the high moor between the dummies. That was another unpleasant thought, and others followed. Burrough remembered the tales that were current concerning the recklessness of the artillerymen. How they had been known to take aim at pedestrians wandering upon the moor, and to attribute any fatal consequence to accident. Well, that need not trouble him, because he was completely hidden. What was much more disquieting was the fear lest some raw beginner might be firing presently. Such a one was as likely to drop a projectile upon the ruin as upon Cranmere.

From his position in the chimney upon the remains of last night’s fire Burrough could look upon the corner where he and Beatrice had spent those happy hours. He could see her bed of heather. The pony had trampled upon it and defiled it, but it was still the place where she had rested. He could see the exact spot where her head had been. He thought of the wild evening--the whirling mists, the savage wind, the pitiless rain; of Beatrice sitting upon the heather, toasting her damp feet, full of her west-country folk-lore; of himself full of his passion for her. He saw her saucy face, her mocking eyes, her wilfully lisping lips, sometimes quivering over the woes of Tregeagle, sometimes laughing at them. He thought of his own words, “You witch-girl! You gipsy!” Of his kisses not refused. Of his wild promises apparently accepted. Of her sweet murmurs which might have meant everything, or little, or nothing--just her everyday nonsense, but softer, sweeter, sillier than ever before.

Folk-lore and passion in the white mists and weird wind of Dartmoor had given place to sheer commonplace day with the horrible reality of its war-game.

“If I were to be killed here, what a haunted ruin this would be!” said Burrough. “Every night a poor lonely ghost, bending over an imaginary fire, kneeling to take off imaginary boots--but very real to the ghost--listening to a fairy-tale, then rushing out with yells. The gunners would be requested to sweep the place off the face of the moor.”

Burrough had neglected to wind his watch the preceding evening, and the next time he looked at it he found it was not going; but by the position of the sun he guessed it was not far off noon. The firing would therefore not continue much longer, and before it would be renewed he could easily place himself in a position of perfect safety. As the shells were bursting at a considerable distance he left the chimney, and sitting upon a rock watched the whirling clouds and the fountain of peat and stones flung upward. Then he heard a weird hissing, and rushed back to his place of shelter. A shell exploded beside the river, just above the old bridge, and some stones fell on the very spot where Burrough had been standing. The ruin trembled, and dust rained down the chimney.

After that there was peace. Burrough sat huddled upon the hearthstone, not venturing to stir outside for close upon half-an-hour, but not another shot was fired. At length he came out and waited several minutes in the open. Then he shouted at the top of his voice, and ran out of the ruin, like a boy released from school with a half-holiday to spend.

His shortest way back was along the range, across the field of battle where the dummy corpses were lying grievously wounded. One at least had survived. Burrough saw the grey shape leaning upon the crest of the hill as he came up. He walked straight towards it; and he was about two hundred yards away, and still some little distance below, when that catastrophe occurred which shivered the dummy soldier into fragments. It was the last shot and a well-aimed one. The wooden splinters were hurled in all directions; and where the dummy had stood appeared a dark hole in the peat.

One of the splinters caught Burrough just above the right eye. He staggered, spun round, then fell upon his back and lay still upon the heather.