Page:Moonfleet - John Meade Falkner.pdf/128

 But now a new thing happened; for before the echoes of that pistol-shot had died on the keen morning air, I thought I heard a noise of distant shouting, and looked about to see whence it could come. Elzevir looked round too, forgetting to upbraid me for making him miss his aim, but Maskew still kept his face turned up towards the cliff. Then the voices came nearer, and there was a mingled sound as of men shouting to one another, and gathering in from different places. 'Twas from the cliff-top that the voices came, and thither Elzevir and I looked up, and there too Maskew kept his eyes fixed. And in a moment there were a score of men stood on the cliff's edge high above our heads. The sky behind them was pink flushed with the keenest light of the young day, and they stood out against it sharp cut and black as the silhouette of my mother that used to hang up by the parlour chimney. They were soldiers, and I knew the tall mitre-caps of the 13th, and saw the shafts of light from the sunrise come flashing round their bodies, and glance off the barrels of their matchlocks.

I knew it all now; it was the Posse who had lain in ambush. Elzevir saw it too, and then all shouted at once.

"Yield at the King's command: you are our prisoners!" calls the voice of one of those black silhouettes, far up on the cliff-top.

"We are lost," cries Elzevir; "it is the Posse; but if we die, this traitor shall go before us," and he makes towards Maskew to brain him with the pistol.

"Shoot, shoot, in the devil's name," screams Maskew, "or I am a dead man."