"I!" laughed the Parson. "I'm another man." A bullet whizzed by. The Parson listened sentimentally. "That's the music!" raising his face with a rapt smile. "Always makes me think of angels' wings."

He seemed to have grown, body and soul. His eyes shone, his cheeks glowed; he was crisp as a rimy apple.

Kit felt the change.

Responsibility, the searcher out of souls, had exhilarated and sobered the man. He was graver yet gayer, inspiring and inspired.

"Duck up aloft!" came a sudden roar from beneath.

The Parson smote Kit a blow on the chest that sent him staggering back against the wall.

A bullet whistled in at one window and out at the other.

The Parson crawled across to Knapp, lying on his face, and dealt him a tremendous buffet.

"Dog!" he thundered. "Why don't you shout?"

The little man's body leapt to the blow, but he made no answer.

"Go below!" ordered the Parson savagely. "What's the good of you? I set you there to warn us and all you can do is to grovel on your stomach and snivel."

The little c.o.c.kney rose without a word and crept away, his tail between his legs. Kit saw his face. One eye was black; and his face was so woebegone that but for the misery in it Kit would have smiled.

"Their shooting is exquisite," said the Parson with professional delight. "You can't show a finger.... They've nearly had Blob already --ain't they, Blob?"

Blob, cuddling in the corner, shook his head cunningly.

"Oi've had them," he said. "Three pennorth of em," pointing to the little pile of coppers at his side.

"I'm giving him a penny apiece for each Gang-er he gets, and twice the money for a Frenchman," the Parson explained. "It stimulates effort,"

he added, prim as a pedagogue, but with twinkling eye. "And now, Kit, your story."

CHAPTER XLVI

THE PARSON'S STORY

Swiftly the boy told his tale.

"But for you and the soldiers," he ended....

"There were no soldiers," answered the Parson curtly.

"What, sir!--I thought!--some men in shakos behind the bank--the men Knapp brought."

The Parson ground his teeth.

"Knapp brought no men. He got as far as the Lamb in Eastbourne on the hill yonder, and there he got playing the fool, and sneaked back here about twenty minutes after you were gone with a pair of black eyes and a pack of lies and nothing else."

All the ruddiness had left his face. It was grey as steel and dark.

"I tried him by drum-head court-martial then and there, for misconduct in the presence of the enemy. I was the President, Piper the Court.

The Court found him guilty and sentenced him to be shot. I confirmed the sentence, and proceeded to carry it out."

He rapped the words out clean and clear. Kit felt himself seeing this man with new eyes, the eyes of a great respect. The fellow schoolboy of yesterday had turned into the man of war, stern and terrible. Kit was afraid of him.

"There was nothing to wait for," continued the Parson. "So I had him out and made him dig his own grave against the wall.

"'It's blanky ard,' said he.

"'You're a soldier; and this is war,' I answered. 'I'm going to count two--then fire. Make your peace with your Maker.'

"I hadn't got to two, when I heard a hubbub on the privateer, and knew you were either caught or in difficulties.

"'This can wait,' I said. 'I'll use you first, and shoot you afterwards!'"

The blood stole back to the Parson's face. His eyes lifted, twinkling now.

"It's resource that makes the soldier, you know, Kit. I slipped into my old regimentals, gave Knapp his bugle, clapped a shako on Blob's head, and put the two of them behind the shingle-bank to act as a skeleton-force.... And you know the rest."

Kit gazed at the square-set figure before him with respectful admiration.

"It must have been a close thing, sir."

The Parson shrugged.

"It would have been a mere bagatelle but for the Gap Gang cutting in on our line of retreat. That added interest, and made a bright little affair of what would otherwise have been a dull retirement."

"And how did the Gap Gang come to cut in?"

"Oh, that's easily explained....

"At midnight I went out to beat em up--crept along under the cliff past Holy Well. When I got to Cow Gap, there were my friends lying on their backs in a bunch, snoring like so many sows, and the boat beached beneath em. I believe I could have killed the lot then and there, and n.o.body the wiser; but I wasn't going to soil my hands with the cold blood of those swine. So I just jumped into the boat, and got to work at once--put my heel through her bottom, and was just tearing up a plank, when the noise wakes old Red Beard.

"'Who the blank's that?' he growled, sitting up in the moonlight.

"'Why,' says I, tearing away, 'the gentleman you're good enough to call the blankety Parson.'

"'Then guess we've got you, sir,' says he, and comes down the beach at me at the double.

"'Think so?' says I, jumping out to meet him.

"'Twenty to one, sir!' says he. 'Chuck it up.'

"'Pardon,' says I, 'nineteen to one, I think,' and downs him with my left. O, such a beauty! flop in the mug.