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All things were swimming away from him. The last thing he knew was that he was in somebody's arms, and the somebody was running. The boat swept shoreward. A man with a musket, standing in the bows, was about to fire at the fugitives. A sharp voice stayed him. "Ne tirez point! Nous les prendrons vivants. Ce n'est qu'un seul homme et le gosse." A bugle from the shingle-bank retorted defiantly.
The lugger, light as a bubble, swayed, slithered, crunched down the shingle, felt the greased bat, and took the water with a dip and lovely curtsey. "We're through!" roared the Parson, sprawling upon the side. The anchor was trailing down the shingle-bank after them. The Gentleman had picked it up, and came walking down the slope, leaning back a little as he came.
He could hear voices behind the shingle-bank. A double-sentry at the least had been left over the lugger. Well, they must go through with it now. "Knife ready?" he croaked. "Ye'." The grass was growing sparse about them. He began to hear his feet. So did the men beyond the bank. There was the click of a cocking musket.
The true lover of beauty will await it everywhere, will see it in the town, with its rising roofs and its bleached and blackened steeples, in the seaport with its quaint crowded shipping, in the clustered hamlet with its orchard-closes and high-roofed barns, in the remote country with its wide fields and its converging lines, in the beating of the sea on shingle-bank and promontory; and then if he sees it there, he will see it concentrated and emphasised in pictures of these things, the beauty of which lies so often in the sense of the loving apprehension of the mystery of lights and hues; and then he will trace the same subtle spirit in the forms and gestures and expressions of those among whom he lives, and will go deeper yet and trace the same spirit in conduct and behaviour, in the free and gallant handling of life, in the suppression of mean personal desires, in doing dull and disagreeable things with a fine end in view, in the noble affection of the simplest people; until he becomes aware that it is a quality which runs through everything he sees or hears or feels, and that the eternal difference is whether one views things dully and stupidly, regarding the moment hungrily and greedily, as a dog regards a plateful of food, or whether one looks at it all as a process which has some fine and distant end in view, and sees that all experience, whether it be of things tangible and visible, or of things intellectual and spiritual, is only precious because it carries one forward, forms, moulds, and changes one with a hope of some high and pure resurrection out of things base and hurried into things noble and serene.
Kit looked at him, and was shocked at the change that had come over him. He could scarcely recognise in this grey-green spectre the roaring swordsman of the shingle-bank. "I'm tired," said the Parson suddenly, "very tired." He flopped forward on his knees. "My sins have found me out," he moaned. "May mother forgive me!" His courage had faded with his colour.
It was to find this out that he had come. A sound close at hand drew his mind to his ears. The crest of the shingle-bank was some twenty yards away. From the reverse slope came the crunch and scream of disturbed pebbles. Somebody was scrambling up the bank towards him, the pebbles pouring noisily away beneath his feet. What to do? turn and bolt?
The Parson was staggering up the shingle-bank, the boy in his arms. At the top he paused, heaving like an earthquake, and looked back on his scampering pursuers. "Yes, my beauties," he panted. "You just won't do it." Knapp, keen as a terrier, bobbed up at his side. "Shall I charge em, sir?" his little brown eyes bursting with desire "me and the boy. Down the ill and into em plippety-plumpety-plop!
As they reached the summit of the shingle-bank, they could see in front of them the black line of the sea, and on the beach, where the white of the snow and the white of the roaring surf merged together, a group of men.
"That'll cover my flank nicely.... Butter-my-wig!" with kindling eyes on the battle, "but Mr. Joy's busy." "Come on, Blob!" yelled Kit. "Come along, boys!" roared the Parson. "Pretty work forrad, and plenty for all!" The Gentleman rose white-faced from his knees. "A moil a moil" he shouted, waving. Behind him Kit heard a yell, and the crash and scatter of men storming down the shingle-bank.
"I'm going to take a little trot over to the shingle-bank to have a look round," said the boy, shivering. "I want you to stand by the door to let me out and in." The old man rolled up his sleeves, snatched his cutlass from the corner, whetted it with the easy grace of a bird whetting its beak, and spat on his hands. "Then it's stand by to repel boarders! Rithe away, sir, when you are."
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