THE SCARECROW RIDES (39 page)

And then suddenly the Marsh changed. With a suddenness he had not
expected, the moon came up over the Channel. It flooded the Marsh with
its eerie light. He could see the black shadows of the dyke hollows.
Were there corpses there? It was easy to imagine so in that still
silence. He did not know that those dykes were filled with crouching
waiting men. It spoke well for the Scarecrow's preparation that the
sentry thought he had never seen a vast track of land so desolate. So
destitute of life. If only he could see just one living man. He did not
know that his eyes were travelling over hundreds of hidden heads.

“There's only corpses floatin' in the dykes. Blast that there
sexton,” he said to himself.

He turned to the sea for comfort. He looked first in the direction
of Folkestone and the increasing moonlight showed him a sight that made
him gasp. A lugger had been run ashore some two hundred yards away.
There were men sitting upon barrels. They had their backs to him, for
they were facing the lugger and a man who leaned against the mast with
one hand steadying himself in the rigging.

What were the orders for the Regiment? “And any rank meeting with a
man dressed as a scarecrow may shoot to kill. Death to the Scarecrow.”

The sentry forgot his terror of the sexton's yarn as he dropped down
behind the sand-hill that crowned the sea-wall. He was shaking with
excitement. The man standing on the lugger was obviously dressed as a
scarecrow. He sighted his carbine upon the Scarecrow's chest. He must
wait till he could keep his sight steadier. Damn that sexton whose
story had made him jumpy.

As he dropped, the sexton whom he had already damned, slithered upon
his stomach immediately behind him and wriggled down the slope of the
sea-wall. With the silence and skill of a Red Indian from whom he had
learned much, Mr. Mipps, a sharp knife in his teeth, crawled towards
the horse lines guarded by the two drunken and sleepy Dragoons.

Along the lines he crawled, noiselessly severing the picketing
ropes.

The sentry took his time, steadying his aim. 'Death to the
Scarecrow.' Well, he must not, would not miss; and behind him crouched
two fantastically dressed men with their faces smeared with tar,
waiting for him to shoot. But the sentry took his time. It was not
pleasant to kill a man in cold blood. And yet orders protected him. The
blame would not be his. He wished to kill and yet he wavered, and in
the interim he slowly steadied his aim.

Behind him, under the shadow of the sea-wall, Mipps crawled silently
and went on with his cutting. To two horses out of every three he gave
unconscious freedom.

Suddenly one horse stampeded down the lines.

“'Ware horse,” cried an awakened guard.

The noise acted upon the nerves of the sentry's slowly squeezing
finger. With a sharp crack his carbine fired.

Immediately there arose pandemonium from the sleeping camp. The
sentry heard it for a few seconds only, for a heavy weight seemed to
drop upon him from the sky. He was bound round the legs and arms with
cord. He was lifted by two strong and dreadful-looking men. They swung
him backwards and forwards and then he was flung out from the sea-wall
down upon the sand beneath. As he went through the air he remembered
that the man who had been his target had fallen forward over the
bulwarks of the lugger. He had fired and hit. Had he killed the
Scarecrow, and would the smugglers now seek full retribution? Heavy in
cuirass and helmet, he fell hard, and for a time remembered no more.

In the awakening camp everything was in wild disorder. The majority
of the horses which had been freed by Mipps stampeded past the 'Ship
Inn' and out upon the highroad, where they were goaded into a full
stretch gallop by a dozen or so of wildly caparisoned horsemen, who, in
fantastic costume and waving lighted jack-o'-lanterns above their
heads, encouraged the frightened horses to make their escape, with wild
yells and howlings.

The remaining horses added even more to the camp's discomfiture, for
dragging the damaged lines and pegs behind them they galloped this way
and that, became entangled in tent ropes and upset the piled stacks of
carbines. Men awoke into a cursing confusion. The colonel, in night
attire, shrieked and swore and shouted for Captain Faunce to turn out
the guard.

“Stand to your horses, you fools,” he roared.

But there were no horses that his men could stand to. They were a
struggling mass of entangled rage—those that were left, and already
two-thirds of the fine animals were heading in wild stampede towards
Hythe.

Swearing, as became a colonel of Dragoons, he pulled on breeches and
boots, jammed his brass helmet on the top of his tasseled night-cap and
buckled on his sabre over his white flapping shirt.

In this incongruous costume he dashed out of his tent.

The sight which now met his infuriated gaze would have been enough
to irritate a saint, much less a roaring Dragoon. Tents were collapsing
on all sides, smothering men in a writhing mass. The canvas of his own
tent was being ripped by the lashing hoofs of an entangled charger,
while such of his men who were in the open were rushing this way and
that, some to save their own skins, and others more dutifully trying to
catch the maddened animals.

It was then that a strange apparition galloped at full speed through
the camp. A snorting black horse on whose back sat the fearsome figure
of a man dressed as a scarecrow.