Dawn

by S. Fowler Wright

  The lack of female companionship did not disturb his serenity, for his solitary experience of the wiles of women had left him with a deep conviction of the depravity of all their kind. He had experienced a brief devotion for one who had fallen in love with a legacy surprisingly left to him by a great-uncle that he had never seen, and then, after a week of somewhat difficult happiness, woman and legacy had disappeared together. It was characteristic that he had made no attempt to punish the one, or to recover the other. He had gone back to his occupation as checker-in at the Larkshill works with an expression in his eyes as of a dog that had been inexplicably beaten by a friendly hand, and he had been careful to avoid any repetition of such experience.

  The events that had now fallen upon the camp were such that he did not feel that they directly concerned him, but it was in the nature of life that women should be the cause of trouble.

  It was in his own nature to prefer the present occupants of the camp rather than those who had been expelled with Rattray, or such wandering gangs as that of Bellamy, and to be loyal to those with whom he associated.

  The long summer twilight had scarcely darkened, though it was past the midnight hour, and a low moon was showing through the south-eastern clouds, when a cry disturbed the silence of the night, which sounded in Monty’s ears as though it came from the river, or perhaps from a farther distance.

  Monty knew that a watch was being kept at various points, an that the whole circumference of the camp was to be patrolled at intervals, though it had been decided that there was no probability that they would be attacked so promptly.

  Tomorrow all the women in the settlement were to be concentrated in the railway carriages, and an inner line of defence was to be constructed around them.

  The precautions for the night were only such as cannot be omitted without disquiet, though there is no anticipation that they will be needed, as a man may go the round of his shuttered rooms before retiring, to test their bolts and catches, though he have no reason to suppose that any burglar will call to try them.

  The cry did not alarm him, though it caused him to listen intently for a few moments. It was not in such a manner that a hostile force would declare its presence. There were no buildings in that direction, no scattered members of the colony who might have been surprised, and in peril.

  Miss Temple’s dog must have heard it also, for it barked sharply, but there was no further sound, and its voice soon quietened.

  Monty dozed again.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The storm which had brought the conference to its abrupt and abortive end had other consequences.

  It was soon over, but it had been very heavy while it lasted. Such rain drains quickly off the surface of a heavy marl soil, and the river rose several inches. The difference only lasted for a few hours, but it was at its height when the attacking party came along the side of the river to the point at which it crossed beneath the railway. They had made a considerable circuit so that they might approach along the bed of the stream, which they did in single file, there being a narrow path along the riverside which was six or eight feet below the level of the surrounding country.

  When Reddy had penetrated beneath the bridge, he had found a two-foot space of brick-paved, slightly sloping margin between the wall and the water, which he had passed without difficulty in the daylight. Now it was dark, and when he led the way, with his left hand on the wall, and his eyes upon the faint light of the farther end, he found it difficult to walk so that his right foot was clear of the water.

  Still he went forward confidently, with the knowledge that he had done it once already, and Rattray followed him closely.

  It was different with some of those who followed. The way was dark and strange; and they did not know but that a false step might plunge them at any moment into the river. They had been warned not to talk, so that they were without guidance from those that had gone ahead, and some of them were encumbered by miscellaneous weapons.

  Yet they traversed it safely till the hindmost had entered, and Reddy was within a few feet of the exit, moving cautiously forward, with eyes and ears alert to the possibility of any watchful antagonist, when the foot of the man who was next behind Rattray slipped into deeper water. He recovered himself without difficulty, but in doing so he overbalanced the man behind him, who had been holding on to his coat, and who now fell into the water with a loud splash, and with the cry which had startled Monty as he lay with his head out of his burrow watching the stars.

  The man was pulled out easily enough, and the file made its way clear of the tunnel without further misadventure, but the fear that the sound might have been heard, and have startled some dozing sentinel to a passing watchfulness, caused Rattray to delay his advance till he had been reassured by a sufficient period of continuing silence.

  This pause had three consequences. First, it led to the capture of two of the patrolling sentries, who, their eyes being directed outward to the boundary of the camp, almost walked into the arms of the silent band, which had halted just below the top of the inner bank of the line, where it rose from the river-level. Surrounded by the swords and pitchforks of their captors, they bought their lives by meekly surrendering the two rifles they carried, and were warned by Rattray not to show their faces in the camp again. They disappeared into the darkness, and do not concern us further.

  The second consequence was that as Rattray, his confidence increased by this episode, led his men up the line, with no further pretence of concealment, he heard a distant shot, and then several others, which told him that Bellamy had come into action before him.

  He was well content that this was so, for if that attack should draw the majority of the defending forces to the north end of the camp, then he, being nearer to its headquarters, and having already captured its sentries, might possess himself of the citadel of his opponents before they should be aware of the double danger that threatened them.

  If he could so establish himself, he would be indifferent, or even pleased, should they annihilate Bellamy in the meantime, with all his followers, providing only that he should have fought sufficiently to exhaust their strength and reduce their numbers.

  The third consequence was that Monty, having heard the shots, was awake and watchful when the attacking force, now moving briskly enough, with weapons drawn and projecting at many angles from unaccustomed hands, came up the side of the line to the point at which the goods-van, at the rear of the coaches, concealed his presence beneath it. Although Monty had heard the shots, he did not immediately emerge from his lurking-place and rush northward into the battle. He had a good excuse for his delay in the fact that there had been an understanding as definite as was possible to their unorganized condition that those who were at the centre of the camp should not hastily leave it at the alarm of an outlying attack, unless it were clear that it was not in danger from other quarters.

  There was another reason that was likely to cast the “sickly hue of hesitation” over the promptings of his natural valour. Like most of us, he had a secret anxiety—an anxiety to which we have been introduced already. How could he plunge into the conflict without revealing the emptiness of the weapon on which his prestige depended? And the prestige of Monty was not such that it could afford reductions.

  As it happened (and as it so often does), the anxiety was entirely needless.

  Monty heard the advancing feet. He heard Gumbo’s furious barking, echoed, from farther distances, by the two other dogs that the camp contained.

  He lay, looking out between the wheels of the van, the bill-hook ready to his hand. He saw Reddy Teller, and knew the purpose which had brought him to the camp a few hours ago. He saw the hated form of Jim Rattray. He was not quick enough to trouble either of these, nor the one that followed. The man who fell into the water should have come next, but, fortunately for himself, he had gone home. His substitute, stumbling over a bill-hook between the legs, supposed, not unnaturally, that he suffered from the sword of the man that
followed, against the promiscuity of which he had already ejaculated some urgent protests.

  Blows would have followed words had he not been too badly hurt for such arguments. He sat on the ground and swore.

  Rattray looked round to add his own curses to the disorder, and to urge the speed on which their success might depend.

  “Stop that damned dog, somebody,” he said savagely, as Gumbo, his head through a broken window, expressed his excitement to the limit that his lungs allowed.

  A man ran forward with a long pitchfork in his hand. He made a thrust at the dog, which was dodged successfully. As he thrust again, the dog was pulled back from the window, which was too high above him for the man to see what was happening inside, but he thrust the long fork in as far as he could, and reckoned he had finished the animal as he pulled it back. Certainly one of the prongs had penetrated something. As he recovered his weapon there came an unmistakably human scream from the dark interior.

  Rattray, who had now come up, jumped on to the box which stood beneath the door and pulled it open.

  The moonlight shone through the opening, and showed the form of Mary Graham lying on the floor, her head on Muriel’s lap. Muriel had resumed the wearing of the Rector’s jacket after the drenching of her lighter garments, and he thought that he had a man to deal with, till she lifted her head, and he recognized the cool and level voice that he had heard on the previous afternoon.

  “It’s no use coming in here. You can’t undo what you’ve done.”

  A frightened Gumbo whimpered beneath the seat.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The events of the next two hours might not be uninteresting, but to narrate them fully, with such analysis of the motives and characters of the two hundred people (more or less) who contributed to them (without which the events themselves would be frequently meaningless, and sometimes incredible), would be impossible within the space of a single volume—and there are other things before us which may be more worth telling.

  The bare outlines of the progress of an ordered battle, between disciplined forces, which has taken place in open day-light, have often proved to be beyond the inquiry of the most careful historian. The accounts of eyewitnesses will have a baffling vagueness, or a bewildering inconsistency. But how much more must this be the case when confused and undisciplined fighting continues through two hours of darkness, over an indefinite area, and then breaks out again and again as the daylight nears, as groups of the defeated party are located, and attacked, and scattered.

  The first clear fact which emerges from the confusion is the success of Bellamy’s first attack. He had collected over thirty followers, about half being the regular members of his own gang, and the remainder constituting the most ruffianly elements of that fortuitous community. They had a variety of lethal weapons, though there were few firearms among them. He led them forward without subterfuge or obliquity He had a single purpose in mind—the recovery of the “red skirted wench” who had rebelled and escaped him. The others might go their own ways, but he would not be lightly turned from that purpose.

  The frontal attack, which is so dangerously costly against an entrenched and disciplined force, may dishearten the less resolute by the confidence of its own assertion. Bellamy came straight on through the moonlight, and his followers could not hesitate behind their huge and resolute leader. There were some shots from both sides as the distance narrowed, but it is doubtful if any casualty resulted. A bullet may hit the mark at which it is aimed, but there are other possible directions, and they are more numerous Very much so.

  He attacked from the north, where there was no canal-ditch to impede the advance, and the railway line was level with the surrounding country. Those who came to the aid of their companions after the first shots had warned them of the approaching danger must join themselves to men who were already retiring.

  The fact was that there was no man there who would stand up to the giant, who advanced with no lordlier weapon than a stout, rather short cudgel. If he did not rap his opponents’ heads with this implement as mechanically as a butcher might slaughter sheep, it was because they did not wait to receive his attentions. If shots were fired at him, they came from the safety of distance, or the hand shook as it pressed the trigger, and the uncertain light must be blamed that the giant was still advancing upon them.

  He went straight ahead, for he was not searching blindly. If Reddy had told the truth—and woe to him if his information were inaccurate!—the woman was to be found in one of the isolated huts north of the cutting, on the inner side of the line.

  There were several of these huts, and Bellamy laid a heavy hand on the door of the first, which had some pretence of bolting, and forced it inward. The door had originally been part of an outhouse, and had been pressed into this hut-building service. It was neither stout nor large. Bellamy, having forced it in, must stoop and crush his bulk to enter the black gap which it left him. He had no fear of the dark interior. He growled a threat to encourage anything living to reveal itself. He bent his head forward, peering with suspicious eyes. Then he stooped toward a bed in the corner. He grasped an ankle among the blankets, and drew out a woman, who began to scream and whimper.

  He stepped backward from the hut, dragging the woman after him by the ankle which he still held.

  He saw that she was a stranger, but he kept his grip, shaking her roughly. He demanded that she should direct him to the one he sought, if her unmentionable neck were to remain untwisted. There are those who would forgive her that she gave the information in this extremity, and there are those who would hesitate to do so. But, in fact, she told it gladly, having a reason.

  It was the hut nearest the line. The one in which a fire was burning. This direction was unmistakable.

  The hut was being built, or rebuilt, of brick, and had an open gap where a window had been, or was intended. The light of the fire, which was on an open brick hearth—a hot coal fire—glowed through the gap. Bellamy looked in through the window-space. The woman stood in the centre of the hut, the firelight showing her clearly. There was a rumble of satisfaction in the giant’s chest as he eyed her. She looked sullen, but unafraid.

  “The door’s round the corner,” she said surprisingly; “you can’t come in that way.”

  That was obvious. The aperture was scarcely larger than the huge head that was gazing through it. He went round to the door.

  The door was of the kind which is usual in cowsheds or stables. The upper half could be opened separately. It was open now. The lower half was closed.

  As Bellamy appeared before it, putting a hand over to force the latch or bolt that still hindered him from his object, there came the voice of another woman from the shadow of the wall.

  “Quick, Gladys, you’ll be too late!”

  So urged, the woman in the centre of the floor stepped to the fire, and lifting from it a bucket which was about half full of boiling water she flung a part of its contents at the figure that obscured the doorway.

  It may be that the damaged and bandaged hand that steadied the bucket was unfit to control it: it may be that the woman’s heart failed as her moment of vengeance came. The boiling water which he should have received full in the face partly splashed on the floor and partly struck his arm and shoulder as he stood somewhat sideways to open the door. But it was enough. He broke into an appalling howl as he turned and ran in a blind torment, not knowing where he went.

  “Don’t shoot, Jack! He’s got his!” Tom said as the two came together, Tom from the river-fords which had been his watch, and Jack from the canal-bank, having both turned to what they supposed to be the point of the greatest danger. It was a foolish mercy, for Bellamy was not killed, nor fatally injured, whatever might be the agony of the scalded arm and neck, or from the boiling water which had run so freely down inside his shirt-collar….

  After the repulse of the giant, the tide of the northern fighting turned, and through all its fluctuant confusions we have clear evidence of repulse emergi
ng, which proved itself when the daylight-came.

  But the fighting with Rattray’s gang is more difficult to follow, and had a different issue. The morning found the most part of them an undivided force that had retired upon a position adjoining one of the disused pit-shafts, where they were still far from defeated.

  They had inflicted at least as much loss as they had suffered. They had one or two rifles and some ammunition. They had some pistols of various kinds, which had already taken a deadly toll of their opponents’ lives, and they had the swords, which, however inexpertly used, had proved a source of sufficient danger and of a larger fear.

  Reddy Teller was not with them. He was on his way to Jerry Cooper with a report of the result of the fighting as he had judged it to have gone at the first light of dawn.

  Monty was telling anyone who would listen the tale of his successful prowess. He had some cause, as well as some disposition, for boasting. On the side-track beside the railway line two men of Rattray’s party lay. They were both dead, and they had both suffered from the upthrust of a well-handled bill-hook as they passed the van in the darkness.

  They were not pleasant to look on. The bill-hook had been whetted on the stone which had been less successfully used for the razor-blades, and it had exposed its victims’ interiors somewhat freely. It cannot be said that it had operated more crudely than a motor-bus might have done any morning a couple of months earlier in a London street, but the swift descent of these derelicts of the flood from civilization to barbarism is shown in the fact that there was no hurry in the removal of the slaughtered bodies. Even a child might gaze at them unrebuked, and two did.

  Monty Beeston, a very bloodthirsty character when roused sufficiently, as mild-mannered men often are, had picked his victims from the ambush in which he had lain. They were men he knew. Men that he was quite sure were better dead. We may accept his opinion without too curious inquiry into its origins. He had remembered something about his second victim as he made the thrust, and the hook had gone deeper in consequence. Now he lay harmless enough, though even more unsightly than he had been previously, and his face gave assurance that he had not enjoyed dying.