Denys caught at Gerard, and somewhat checked his fall; but it may be doubted whether this alone would have saved him from breaking his neck, or a limb. His best friend now was the dying bear, on whose hairy carcass his head and shoulders descended1. Denys tore him off her. It was needless. She panted still, and her limbs quivered, but a hare was not so harmless; and soon she breathed her last; and the judicious2 Denys propped4 Gerard up against her, being soft, and fanned him. He came to by degrees, but confused, and feeling the bear around him, rolled away, yelling.
“Courage,” cried Denys, “le diable est mort.”
“Is it dead? quite dead?” inquired Gerard from behind a tree; for his courage was feverish5, and the cold fit was on him just now, and had been for some time.
“Behold6,” said Denys, and pulled the brute7's ear playfully, and opened her jaws9 and put in his head, with other insulting antics; in the midst of which Gerard was violently sick.
Denys laughed at him.
“What is the matter now?” said he, “also, why tumble off your perch10 just when we had won the day?”
“I swooned, I trow.”
“But why?”
Not receiving an answer, he continued, “Green girls faint as soon as look at you, but then they choose time and place. What woman ever fainted up a tree?”
“She sent her nasty blood all over me. I think the smell must have overpowered me! Faugh! I hate blood.”
“I do believe it potently11.”
“See what a mess she has made me
“But with her blood, not yours. I pity the enemy that strives to satisfy you.”'
“You need not to brag12, Maitre Denys; I saw you under the tree, the colour of your shirt.”
“Let us distinguish,” said Denys, colouring; “it is permitted to tremble for a friend.”
Gerard, for answer, flung his arms round Denys's neck in silence.
“Look here,” whined13 the stout14 soldier, affected15 by this little gush16 of nature and youth, “was ever aught so like a woman? I love thee, little milksop—go to. Good! behold him on his knees now. What new caprice is this?”
“Oh, Denys, ought we not to return thanks to Him who has saved both our lives against such fearful odds17?” And Gerard kneeled, and prayed aloud. And presently he found Denys kneeling quiet beside him, with his hands across his bosom18 after the custom of his nation, and a face as long as his arm. When they rose, Gerard's countenance19 was beaming.
“Good Denys,” said he, “Heaven will reward thy piety20.”
“Ah, bah! I did it out of politeness,” said the Frenchman. “It was to please thee, little one. C'est egal, 'twas well and orderly prayed, and edified21 me to the core while it lasted. A bishop22 had scarce handled the matter better; so now our evensong being sung, and the saints enlisted23 with us—marchons.”
Ere they had taken two steps, he stopped. “By-the-by, the cub24!”
“Oh, no, no!” cried Gerard.
“You are right. It is late. We have lost time climbing trees, and tumbling off 'em, and swooning, and vomiting25, and praying; and the brute is heavy to carry. And now I think on't, we shall have papa after it next; these bears make such a coil about an odd cub. What is this? you are wounded! you are wounded!”
“Not I.”
“He is wounded; miserable26 that I am!”
“Be calm, Denys. I am not touched; I feel no pain anywhere.”
“You? you only feel when another is hurt,” cried Denys, with great emotion; and throwing himself on his knees, he examined Gerard's leg with glistening27 eyes.
“Quick! quick! before it stiffens,” he cried, and hurried him on.
“Who makes the coil about nothing now?” inquired Gerard composedly.
Denys's reply was a very indirect one.
“Be pleased to note,” said he, “that I have a bad heart. You were man enough to save my life, yet I must sneer28 at you, a novice29 in war. Was not I a novice once myself? Then you fainted from a wound, and I thought you swooned for fear, and called you a milksop. Briefly30, I have a bad tongue and a bad heart.”
“Denys!”
“Plait-il?”
“You lie.”
“You are very good to say so, little one, and I am eternally obliged to you,” mumbled31 the remorseful32 Denys.
Ere they had walked many furlongs, the muscles of the wounded leg contracted and stiffened33, till presently Gerard could only just put his toe to the ground, and that with great pain.
At last he could bear it no longer.
“Let me lie down and die,” he groaned34, “for this is intolerable.”
Denys represented that it was afternoon, and the nights were now frosty; and cold and hunger ill companions; and that it would be unreasonable35 to lose heart, a certain great personage being notoriously defunct36. So Gerard leaned upon his axe37, and hobbled on; but presently he gave in, all of a sudden, and sank helpless in the road.
Denys drew him aside into the wood, and to his surprise gave him his crossbow and bolts, enjoining38 him strictly39 to lie quiet, and if any ill-looking fellows should find him out and come to him, to bid them keep aloof40; and should they refuse, to shoot them dead at twenty paces. “Honest men keep the path; and, knaves41 in a wood, none but fools do parley42 with them.” With this he snatched up Gerard's axe, and set off running—not, as Gerard expected, towards Dusseldorf, but on the road they had come.
Gerard lay aching and smarting; and to him Rome, that seemed so near at starting, looked far, far off, now that he was two hundred miles nearer it. But soon all his thoughts turned Sevenbergen-wards. How sweet it would be one day to hold Margaret's hand, and tell her all he had gone through for her! The very thought of it, and her, soothed43 him; and in the midst of pain and irritation44 of the nerves be lay resigned, and sweetly, though faintly, smiling.
He had lain thus more than two hours, when suddenly there were shouts; and the next moment something struck a tree hard by, and quivered in it.
He looked, it was an arrow.
He started to his feet. Several missiles rattled45 among the boughs46, and the wood echoed with battle-cries. Whence they came he could not tell, for noises in these huge woods are so reverberated47, that a stranger is always at fault as to their whereabout; but they seemed to fill the whole air. Presently there was a lull48; then he heard the fierce galloping49 of hoofs50; and still louder shouts and cries arose, mingled51 with shrieks52 and groans53; and above all, strange and terrible sounds, like fierce claps of thunder, bellowing54 loud, and then dying off in cracking echoes; and red tongues of flame shot out ever and anon among the trees, and clouds of sulphurous smoke came drifting over his head. And all was still.
Gerard was struck with awe55. “What will become of Denys?” he cried. “Oh, why did you leave me? Oh, Denys, my friend! my friend!”
Just before sunset Denys returned, almost sinking under a hairy bundle. It was the bear's skin.
Gerard welcomed him with a burst of joy that astonished him.
“I thought never to see you again, dear Denys. Were you in the battle?”
“No. What battle?”
“The bloody56 battle of men, or fiends, that raged in the wood a while agone;” and with this he described it to the life, and more fully8 than I have done.
Denys patted him indulgently on the back.
“It is well,” said he; “thou art a good limner; and fever is a great spur to the imagination. One day I lay in a cart-shed with a cracked skull57, and saw two hosts manoeuvre58 and fight a good hour on eight feet square, the which I did fairly describe to my comrade in due order, only not so gorgeously as thou, for want of book learning.
“What, then, you believe me not? when I tell you the arrows whizzed over my head, and the combatants shouted, and—”
“May the foul59 fiends fly away with me if I believe a word of it.”
Gerard took his arm, and quietly pointed60 to a tree close by.
“Why, it looks like—it is-a broad arrow, as I live!” And he went close, and looked up at it.
“It came out of the battle. I heard it, and saw it.”
“An English arrow.”
“How know you that?”
“Marry, by its length. The English bowmen draw the bow to the ear, others only to the right breast. Hence the English loose a three-foot shaft61, and this is one of them, perdition seize them! Well, if this is not glamour62, there has been a trifle of a battle. And if there has been a battle in so ridiculous a place for a battle as this, why then 'tis no business of mine, for my Duke hath no quarrel hereabouts. So let's to bed,” said the professional. And with this he scraped together a heap of leaves, and made Gerard lie on it, his axe by his side. He then lay down beside him, with one hand on his arbalest, and drew the bear-skin over them, hair inward. They were soon as warm as toast, and fast asleep.
But long before the dawn Gerard woke his comrade.
“What shall I do, Denys, I die of famine?”
“Do? why, go to sleep again incontinent: qui dort dine.”
“But I tell you I am too hungry to sleep,” snapped Gerard.
“Let us march, then,” replied Denys, with paternal64 indulgence.
He had a brief paroxysm of yawns; then made a small bundle of bears' ears, rolling them up in a strip of the skin, cut for the purpose; and they took the road.
Gerard leaned on his axe, and propped by Denys on the other side, hobbled along, not without sighs.
“I hate pain.” said Gerard viciously.
“Therein you show judgment65,” replied papa smoothly66.
It was a clear starlight night; and soon the moon rising revealed the end of the wood at no great distance: a pleasant sight, since Dusseldorf they knew was but a short league further.
At the edge of the wood they came upon something so mysterious that they stopped to gaze at it, before going up to it. Two white pillars rose in the air, distant a few paces from each other; and between them stood many figures, that looked like human forms.
“I go no farther till I know what this is,” said Gerard, in an agitated67 whisper. “Are they effigies68 of the saints, for men to pray to on the road? or live robbers waiting to shoot down honest travellers? Nay69, living men they cannot be, for they stand on nothing that I see. Oh! Denys, let us turn back till daybreak; this is no mortal sight.”
Denys halted, and peered long and keenly. “They are men,” said he, at last. Gerard was for turning back all the more. “But men that will never hurt us, nor we them. Look not to their feet, for that they stand on!”
“Where, then, i' the name of all the saints?”
“Look over their heads,” said Denys gravely.
Following this direction, Gerard presently discerned the outline of a dark wooden beam passing from pillar to pillar; and as the pair got nearer, walking now on tiptoe, one by one dark snake-like cords came out in the moonlight, each pendent from the beam to a dead man, and tight as wire.
Now as they came under this awful monument of crime and wholesale70 vengeance71 a light air swept by, and several of the corpses72 swung, or gently gyrated, and every rope creaked. Gerard shuddered73 at this ghastly salute74. So thoroughly75 had the gibbet, with its sickening load, seized and held their eyes, that it was but now they perceived a fire right underneath76, and a living figure sitting huddled77 over it. His axe lay beside him, the bright blade shining red in the glow. He was asleep.
Gerard started, but Denys only whispered, “courage, comrade, here is a fire.”
“Ay! but there is a man at it.”
“There will soon be three;” and he began to heap some wood on it that the watcher had prepared; during which the prudent78 Gerard seized the man's axe, and sat down tight on it, grasping his own, and examining the sleeper79. There was nothing outwardly distinctive80 in the man. He wore the dress of the country folk, and the hat of the district, a three-cornered hat called a Brunswicker, stiff enough to turn a sword cut, and with a thick brass81 hat-band. The weight of the whole thing had turned his ears entirely82 down, like a fancy rabbit's in our century; but even this, though it spoiled him as a man, was nothing remarkable83. They had of late met scores of these dog's-eared rustics84. The peculiarity85 was, this clown watching under a laden86............