CHAPTER 10

THE ESCAPE

            ...  How fearful
And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low!
   ...  Ill look no more
Lest my brain turn—­Shakespeare

The while chalk was a bulwark between us and the foe; and though one or two of them loosed off their matchlocks, trying to get at us sideways, they could not even see their quarry, and ’twas only shooting at a venture.  We were safe.  But for how short a time!  Safe just for so long as it should please the soldiers not to come down to take us, safe with a discharged pistol in our grasp, and a shot man lying at our feet.

Elzevir was the first to speak:  ’Can you stand, John?  Is the bone broken?’

‘I cannot stand,’ I said; ’there is something gone in my leg, and I feel blood running down into my boot.’

He knelt, and rolled down the leg of my stocking; but though he only moved my foot ever so little, it caused me sharp pain, for feeling was coming back after the first numbness of the shot.

‘They have broke the leg, though it bleeds little,’ Elzevir said.  ’We have no time to splice it here, but I will put a kerchief round, and while I wrap it, listen to how we lie, and then choose what we shall do.’

I nodded, biting my lips hard to conceal the pain he gave me, and he went on:  ’We have a quarter of an hour before the Posse can get down to us.  But come they will, and thou canst judge what chance we have to save liberty or life with that carrion lying by us’—­and he jerked his thumb at Maskew—­’though I am glad ’twas not my hand that sent him to his reckoning, and therefore do not blame thee if thou didst make me waste a charge in air.  So one thing we can do is to wait here until they come, and I can account for a few of them before they shoot me down; but thou canst not fight with a broken leg, and they will take thee alive, and then there is a dance on air at Dorchester Jail.’

I felt sick with pain and bitterly cast down to think that I was like to come so soon to such a vile end; so only gave a sigh, wishing heartily that Maskew were not dead, and that my leg were not broke, but that I was back again at the Why Not? or even hearing one of Dr. Sherlock’s sermons in my aunt’s parlour.

Elzevir looked down at me when I sighed, and seeing, I suppose, that I was sorrowful, tried to put a better face on a bad business.  ’Forgive me, lad,’ he said, ’if I have spoke too roughly.  There is yet another way that we may try; and if thou hadst but two whole legs, I would have tried it, but now ’tis little short of madness.  And yet, if thou fear’st not, I will still try it.  Just at the end of this flat ledge, farthest from where the bridle-path leads down, but not a hundred yards from where we stand, there is a sheep-track leading up the cliff.  It starts where the under-cliff dies back again into the chalk face, and climbs by