Chapter XVII: Out of the Shadow and Into the Sun

"O God, it is a fearful thing
To see the human soul take wing
In any shape, in any mood."
--BYRON.

For one awful minute neither man moved; then the patrol, with the horror in his face as of one who looks upon a thing of another world, gave a hoarse scream which was swallowed up in the roar of the sea. Richard did not know what an uncanny sight he made rising up from that grave with his hair unkempt, his face like ashes, and a burial cloth still bound about his jaws. He comprehended only that detection threatened, and detection meant death. With one bound he cleared the grave between them, and grappled with the guard. Under other circumstances he would have been no match for the man, starved and weak as he was; but desperation--that fierce, mad desire to live--gave him strength. It was not so much he as that aroused demon within him that gave back the patrol's blows, struck the gun from his hands, and finally gripped him about the throat. Not a word was said, not a cry was uttered, as they tossed and swayed backward and forward, to the right or left, sank on one knee and rose again to stagger and struggle anew. If Richard could keep that strangling hold, the fight was his, and with it the liberty for which he longed; if the other man could break it, then life would pay the forfeit. Doggedly he hung on, though his fingers strained and his head reeled, while the other beat him about the body and shoulders with blows that began to lose their force, for that iron grip upon his windpipe was telling at last. Richard was literally choking the life out of him. Backward he went--backward--until the muscles in his chest swelled, and the joints of his back and shoulders cracked--still backward, with everything dark before him. Then suddenly his knees collapsed, and he went down to the sand in a shapeless huddle. But even then Richard did not let go his hold; deeper, and yet deeper his fingers sank into the flesh under them, until not a quiver was left in the insensible limbs. Then finally he stood up and looked upon his work.

God! he had committed murder.

For a long minute he stood there, trembling, horror-stricken; then the self within him cried out, and he roused up to thought and action. That dead body would tell its own disastrous tale when the relief watch came; should he bury it here in his own grave? Yes, that cheated sepulchre should have its inmate; and he reached for the board. But no; there would not be time; it would take hours to hide it, trembling and weak as he was, something else must be done, something quick. Should he run for the dunes and leave it where it lay? If found thus, search would be made for the slayer; he would be setting the watch upon his own track. He pressed his hands helplessly to his temples, staring meanwhile upon the horror there at his feet. Then suddenly the explanation came: the man's beat ended on a rock that dropped sharply into the water; he knew, for he had noticed when he came ashore before with the funeral boat. If he could throw the body down there, it would be thought the man had walked off in the fog and gloom; no suspicion would be aroused, and he would be free from pursuit.

Shivering at the contact, he seized the body and dragged it along over the shells and pebbles. Once or twice he lost his bearings in the short journey, but a rising wind blew out trailing lengths of fog before him and, aided thus, in a little while he reached his goal. But he could not see the body enter the water; it would be like a second murder, and so with eyes close shut he pushed it off and groaned in his soul to hear the splash that came from below.

"God bear witness that I did not want his blood upon my hands!"

Then he looked away to the dunes and took one step toward them. But the gun--it lay yonder by the graves; he might as well have left the body itself there. Hastily he returned, smoothed over the sand where the struggle had fallen, and seizing the man's gun and hat, he sped again to the rock, placing them near the ledge, that they might seem to have been dropped there in an attempt at self-preservation. Then he was free to go. Into the fog he plunged, making for where the sand-dunes rose; and as he tottered down into the underbrush beyond, he heard the sunset gun from the station boom out through the mist. He had lived a whole lifetime in the last half hour.

It had been his plan to cross the island and seek some means of escaping to the Jersey coast from the south-side villages, but the fog hid everything, and he seemed walking in a circle. He was weak from excitement and lack of food, and after stumbling blindly onward for a while, he turned to the left and kept on a parallel with the coast, the boom of the surf being his guide; but always he kept the sound far enough away to avoid the sentinels from the patrol. The fog had turned into a rain, cold and depressing, and so after walking an hour or two he was willing to risk something of danger for food and rest. He had passed several houses but had kept aloof through fear; now, however, he bent his steps to a tiny light burning ahead.

It was a fisherman's cottage close to an inlet that jutted in from the bay, and as good fortune would have it the old man, detained by the storm, was just getting home. Even in the little harbour the swell was unusually strong, and the man was having much difficulty in beaching his boat, so that Richard's aid was most timely.

"Who are you, my friend?" the fisherman asked, when everything was snug and taut.

"A traveller who has lost his way."

The old fellow squinted his eyes for a closer look. "A traveller? Well, 'tis enough; we never ask names, my old woman and I, for in such days as these a man's name is ofttimes his most secret possession. We know not the rights of this war, and so we take no sides, but pray that justice may conquer. Now, how can I pay you for your help?"

"By giving me food and shelter."

"That will I, for without you I should have lost my whole day's take and that had been a terrible mishap. Fry an extra fish, mother," he called into the cottage.

"Ay, two of them, good mother. I pray you; for I am as a ravening wolf seeking what I may devour," Richard said, putting his head in at the door; and his voice was so bonny that the old woman filled the skillet with a lavish hand. And in that firelit hut he ate the first palatable meal he had had since Monmouth day. Then he set himself artfully to persuade the fisherman to take him down the Sound in his boat.

"Nay, I never go now, the journey is too much for me; and besides I must go to-morrow to the camp to sell my fish. But the soldiers go and come between here and New York every day; if you will come with me to the camp, I will get you company."

But Richard evaded the invitation. After a while the old woman said: "There is Dame Grant who lives just over the inlet, she goes down the Sound day after to-morrow to see her people,--she hath recently heard that her niece hath a new baby (a fine girl weighing ten pounds in its skin and to be named for the dame), mayhap you could find passage with her."

But again Richard shook his head, shuddering inwardly at the thought that the old woman might recognize him and be tempted by the standing reward for escaped prisoners to give him again into captivity. He would find some other way, he said, and talked of the fishing in the Sound. When the old man's pipe was smoked out they went to bed, and in spite of that haunting scene beside the wind-swept graves, Richard slept profoundly through the night hours. Waking before the old couple in the gray morning, he crept down from the loft, and raking together the coals upon the hearth, he breakfasted on the remains of last night's supper, then stole out into the wet and sombre world.

How sweet it was to breathe the early air and feel the earth beneath his feet, and have the weeds and underbrush rap him about the knees as he pushed away to the interior! The fisherman's hut was a league behind him when he saw the east redden with the rising sun, for the besom of the storm had swept the heavens clear. What a wonderful light threaded the woods and glorified the tree-tops, sparkling and changing with every motion of the boughs! Often he had seen it among his native Carolina hills, this opaline opening of the morn, but never before with such a thrill of appreciation, such a rush of exquisite joy.

"Good morning, Joscelyn; I am a free man to-day." And he bowed as though he had been in a ball-room, and picking a bit of blossom that nodded at him, he stuck it jauntily in his ragged coat.

If it had not been for that dead face playing hide-and-seek always among the bushes about him, he could have whistled as he walked. Now and then he sighted houses and cultivated fields, but he kept to the woods; not until he reached the sea on the other side of the island would he venture to show his face at a door. There were wild grapes in the thickets and sweet beach mass to eat; and a little past noon he found a late melon in the weeds of a fence corner, and feasted like a lord.

But half a mile farther on, his pleasure was forgotten in a keen excitement, for from a slight eminence, he saw the plain stretching to the right and left white with the tents of soldiery; and not ten paces from him a sentinel, with his back this way, sat on a fallen tree and read a letter. A few more steps, and he would have been in the hornets' nest,--a helpless captive. Instantly he dropped upon his knees, and crawled into the brush as stealthily as a creature of the jungle. He had evidently come too far west in his flight, for this was a part of Clinton's army, quartered here within easy reach of New York. Far away to either side the tents reached, dotting the whole expanse of country. To turn either wing looked like an impossibility; it would take him days to skirt those picket posts to the east; and on the west, he knew from what the fisherman had said that they must reach even to the hamlet whence the boats went daily to New York. To take that route meant a sure and swift destruction, since he would be thrusting himself into the very toils he longed to avoid. His one chance seemed to be a retreat the way he came, and then to beat his way to the northeast along the coast of the Sound, and get over to the Connecticut side on some fishing-boat. He would be weeks--perhaps months--longer in reaching Washington or home, but better that a thousand times than certain capture. He reasoned it all out carefully, lying under the thicket, and then lingered a few minutes to envy the unconscious sentinel his letter, for of course it was from home. How long it had been since he had heard aught of his loved ones--three weary months!

Downcast and disheartened, he returned along his own trail, and in the early twilight heard the boom of the surf ahead of him. But he had missed his way somewhat, and came out of the brush on the side of the inlet across from the fisherman's hut. He found he would have to walk an extra mile or two to get back to that shelter for the night. He sighed and turned, but just at that moment there flashed upon his sight a light from a window some fifty yards down the inlet, and on the same side with himself.

Stay; this was Dame Grant's hut, and she went to-morrow to the Jersey shore to visit her kin.

He did not go back around the head of the cove, but turned instead into the field before this other hut, whose friendly light was winking at him through the dusk. His resolution was taken, for good or ill.

Evidently the dame had company, for there was the sound of voices and laughter on the water front of the little house; and Richard stood still with a tingling sense of pleasure,--it had been so long since he had heard people laugh joyously and heartily, that the sound came like the echo of something loved but almost forgotten. Between a hayrick and the fence he finally lay down to wait; and while he waited he slept, for when he awoke the hut was silent, although the light still burned at the window. The chill of autumn was in the air, and he shivered as he crossed the enclosure and stood looking into the lighted room. It was a pleasant scene: the two boys slept upon a wooden bench, but the dame sat by the table, busy with a piece of bright-hued patchwork, and Richard took heart of grace that she smiled as she sewed. From his ragged boot-leg he had taken Colborn's gold piece, and now he used it to tap lightly on the small, diamond-shaped pane. The dame looked up in surprise to see a hatless man at her window; but he smiled cheerily and beckoned, holding the gold piece against the glass that she might see it. For a moment she looked at him frowningly, then the glitter of the gold won her, and she got up and opened the door.

"What want you at this hour of the night at an honest woman's house?"

"I want an honest conversation with an honest woman, therefore came I to your door, knowing where to find both. In all true faith and respect I am here; so come, good mother, ask me in. Without your bidding I will not enter, for I would not wilfully intrude upon the privacy of a lady." He bowed low, clicking his heels as neatly as though he were her partner in a minuet.

"Go along with your fine ways," she said, but she laughed.

"No ways can be too fine for a lady." And he took her hand and kissed it with the air of a prince, clicking his heels again in that military salute.

"You young impudence! leave go my hand--you'll find it heavy enough on your ear presently. I'll warrant you have it in mind to fleece me out of something, so say your say and be done with it," but there was no real anger in her voice.

"Nay, I am no highwayman nor money beggar; for that which you do for me I will pay you well," he answered, again holding up the gold piece. "But would you not be more comfortable sitting?" He waved his hand toward the chair she had quitted, and the fine courtesy of his tone again called forth her laugh; but she took the hint and, turning, bade him enter.

"Well, where do we begin?" she said, when they were seated.

"My mother always begins by asking a stranger to have something to eat--and you have bonny blue eyes like hers," he answered, with boyish audacity, pushing back her loose sleeve and patting the fat arm.

"'Tis a good place to start," she answered, shoving him off; and would have called the boys to serve him, but he held her back.

"I wish no one but you to hear what I have to say. You may trust me--I swear it." So she opened the cupboard herself and brought out plenty of cold food. Richard ate ravenously, praising everything (for in truth it had a heavenly taste), and telling her how blue her eyes were, and how pretty her patchwork--just like what his own mother used to make.

"A bit of a quilt for a bairn just born," she said, and smoothed it with her great hands.

And Richard asked the child's name, and said it had a sweet sound, and hoped it would have blue eyes with a twinkle in them like her own. And while he ate and talked she watched him narrowly. He knew it, but he did not care. Presently she said, as one asserting a fact:--

"You are from one of the prison-ships."

He nodded, smiling; and his frankness evidently pleased her, for she nodded back. "That's right; no use to lie about it. I knew I had seen your face somewhere. How did you get away?"

"That is the one thing I cannot tell you, good mother, for it would implicate the man who helped me, and not even for your favour--though God knows I want it bad enough--will I betray my friend."

"Right again; hold fast to the man who holds to you; I like to see folk grateful."

Then he told her how he wanted to go in her boat to the Jersey shore, and how it was he happened to know her plans. But she shook her head; the risk was too great.

"There will be no risk at all. You are so well known to the soldiers at the different posts that you will never be questioned. It would be but natural for you to take some one stronger than your boys to help you in making so long a voyage. Find me but a coat and hat, and no one will give me a thought, for I know how to hold my tongue when occasion calls."

But still she refused. Her passport called but for three, and she was not going to run her head into a noose for all his fine speeches and petting ways--for he had squeezed her hand and patted her gray hair while he talked.

He would not listen to her refusal; if she did not take him, he was lost. And he got hold of her other hand, and in pathetic words described to her the agony he had suffered on the vessel; and then he dropped his head on the table and almost sobbed as he told her of Joscelyn and his yearning to see her.

"Oho, a sweetheart, is it?" asked the old woman, with aroused interest.

"Yes, as bonny a girl as you ever set eyes upon. And think you, good dame, of your own young days, of the time when the lads were at your beck and call,--for I warrant me those blue eyes broke many hearts,--would you not have been grateful if your lover had been in peril and some one had saved him for you?"

The dame chuckled. "Ay, ay, I had my fling with the lads, I did."

"It goes without the saying. And there was one among them whom you loved?" The brown face grew suddenly very tender as with the shadow of a memory. "Then for the sake of him save Joscelyn's sweetheart for her."

But still she shook her head, and for a minute Richard was in despair. Then he began all over again, adding the gold piece to his argument. Thus for half an hour the plea went on, and just as he felt that he had failed, she suddenly nodded her head decisively, that softened light again shining in her face.

"One of the boys shall bide at home, and you may go in his stead, since you are so set on it; but mind, you help with the boat, and I have the gold."

"That and Joscelyn's love shall be yours, you dear, bonny dame!" he cried rapturously, seizing her about the shoulders and kissing her heartily on either red cheek.

"Get out! Of all the lads I ever saw, you have the freest manners." But the shove she gave him had in it no roughness. He had set her to thinking of her own youth and of a lad who had gone to sea one morning, kissing his hand to her, but had never come home again, though she had waited for him for many a day through shine of sun and wail of storm. Through all her life a woman's first love is a touchstone to her sympathy, an open sesame to her tenderness; neither as maid, nor yet as wife, does she ever quite forget that first sweet spell upon her heart. Dame Grant scarcely saw the man beside her, but for sake of that other lad, whom nobody had been able to help far back in the years that were dead, she would save this other girl's lover.

In an hour their preparations were made. From the loft of her hut the dame brought down a leather jerkin and a battered hat, and after her scissors had gone over Richard's head, he was metamorphosed so that even she herself would scarcely have recognized him.

"You'd be a fine figure of a man if those wretches on the ship had not starved the shape out of you."

"My mother always said that in the way of beauty Providence had done more for my legs than for my face," Richard laughed.

"Well, the warden hath undone the job, for thy breeches hang like a scarecrow's. Now up into the loft with you, and find some straw whereon to sleep. 'Tis close upon midnight, and we start with the sun."

But Richard was too full of joy and excitement to sleep much, and so when the dame and her boys came out the next morning, they found him sitting beside the boat, pulling on his boots after a plunge into the cold salt water. The feeling in his breast was indescribable when at last, after many injunctions to the boy who was left, they drew out of the cove into the open bay, in the pearl and purple morning, and he knew his journey was begun.

They went somewhat out of their way that Dame Grant might leave some parcels at the patrol station, their course taking them within a hundred yards of the three prison-ships rocking in the bay. At first Richard turned his eyes away with a sickening sense of pain and rage, then looked eagerly to see if he might recognize Peter on the deck. Yes, there he was, near the stern; Richard knew him from his height and from the cap he wore, and he had to hold his teeth clenched to keep from crying out to him. How dismal and condemned the three hulks looked, despite the transfiguring touch of the morning! And over there on the strand was his grave, the spot to which his mother's thoughts would make many a sorrowful pilgrimage if so the news of his death should outrun him to the Carolina hills.

At the station one of the guards remarked on the fact that the dame had a new hand aboard.

"Yes; Henry's stomach's apt to go back on him in rough weather, and at this season o' the year we are like to get into a blow any time, so I left him and brought a stronger man. It turns my blood to see Henry heaving and gagging when he ought to be shortening sail."

"Well, yon fellow hasn't much the look of a sailor," said the man, eying Richard suspiciously as he was making awkward attempts to pull in a flapping sail.

"Oh, he isn't showing off, but he suits me well enough," the dame answered, with a warning side look at Richard, who instantly gave better heed to his task. Nothing but her coolness saved him, for the guard's word, coming so suddenly, had made him go very white.

Then a paean of praise went singing itself through his heart, for the parcels were delivered, and pushing off from shore the boat sailed out of the bay and turned her nose to the west. Down the narrow waterway between Long Island and the city of New York they sailed all the morning, stopping here and there at signals from patrol stations to show their passports. But at none of these places were they detained very long, for Dame Grant had looked carefully to such matters, and so noon found them in a wide bay to the south of the city. No misfortune had befallen Richard, for he had kept a still tongue at every stopping place. In the afternoon the breeze quickened, and they went racing away before it toward the ever growing shore-line ahead, and in the gloaming they landed at a little hamlet on the Jersey side of the bay.

High up on the beach the boat was pulled and tied to a stake, and then while the boy was gaping about him, Richard went back to the boat side and took the dame's big hand in his:--

"You have kept your contract, and the gold is yours; God bless you for a good, true woman!" he said, leaving the coin in her palm.

But she thrust it back vigorously: "Nay, I will none of it; I but put it in the bargain to test you. You have paid me twofold by your labour and your good gratitude. Tell your Joscelyn that I send you to her as a gift, and bid her use you well."

Nothing could prevail upon her to touch the coin, and so at last Richard turned away.

"Hist!" she said, holding him a moment, "'tis said there is a Continental force near Brunswick; keep to the southwest."

"Thank you, and God keep you!" And the gathering shadows swallowed him up.

At that very moment, on board the prison-ship _Good Hope_, Eustace Singleton was listening to the story of his death from the obsequious warden, and wondering how he was to write it to Betty.

And far away in Hillsboro' Joscelyn and Betty were going slowly home in bitter disappointment, after seeing the post-rider distribute his few letters, and finding there was nothing for them. How many and how long had been the weeks since they wrote to Eustace; for then it was summer-time, and now the red and ochre tints of the autumn flamed in the woodlands. And still Betty cried, and still Joscelyn counselled patience.