slashed me free I came alive, and life and all it meant to me was
centered in a single fierce desire. Falconnet had escaped the fusillade;
was making swiftly for his horse, safe as yet from any touch of lead or
steel. So I might reach and pull him down, I cared no groat what
followed after.

It was not so to be. In the swift dash across the glade I went too near
the shambles in the midst. The corporal of the firing squad, a bearded
Saxon giant, whose face, hideously distorted, will haunt me while I
live, lay fairly in the way, his heels drumming in the death agony, and
his great hands clutching at the empty air.

I leaped to clear him. In the act the clutching hands laid hold of me
and I was tripped and thrown upon the heap of dead and dying men, and
could not free myself in time to stop the baronet.

I saw him gain his horse and mount; saw the flash of, his sword and the
skilful parry that in a single parade warded death on either hand; saw
him drive home the spurs and vanish among the trees, with his
horse-holding trooper at his heels.

And then my rescuers, or else my newer captors, picked me up hastily;
and I was hoisted behind the saddle of the nearest, and so was borne
away in all the hue and cry of a most unsoldierly retreat.




XIII