The ball had struck him in a tender place; and not seriously hurt, but very much frightened, he fell headlong with a groan of—fear!
While the demon was carrying off Will he lay still and made use of his wits.
He reflected logically as follows: “Whatever Will loaded my pistols with, it certainly wasn’t a genuine bullet![179] So it would be useless for me to fire this pistol at the demon—useless—wicked—and against the laws!”
Gentle reader, mark that; read it carefully two or three times; muse on it; and remember that you yourself were once a boy—or, if not, your father was.
“Oh, how my side smarts! There’ll be a blister, surely!” Henry groaned. “Well, the best way to help Will will be to lie here perfectly still till the demon gets entirely out of sight, and then hop up and scramble away. Where shall I go? To the road? I must look for help somewhere, or Will may be killed! It won’t do to yell for help here, for no one except the demon could hear me. Yes, I must keep still a little while!”
As soon as the demon was well out of sight, Henry arose. But he found himself more bruised than he had thought.
“Now, to save Will—and myself,” he muttered. “What a capital idea,” he chuckled, as a happy thought struck him. “They think I’m dead, very likely, and so the demon won’t be on the watch for me! Of course; and if I can’t get help, I’ll swoop down on him and do the rescuing myself.”
As fast as he could he went back to the path, thinking to climb the hill and hurry to the road. A lingering fear that the demon might return and look for him lent speed to his feet, and he walked with long swift steps. In his generous heart he resolved to liberate Will at all hazards; and if he could devise no other means of doing so, he would return and “beard the lion in his den.”
When he reached the foot of the hill he chanced to look back, and saw a man standing by the tree. It was the demon, looking for him. To his intense relief, the man turned and went slowly back towards the cave.
“I am safe now,” he thought. “He won’t come to look for me again. But does he think I am dead, or carried off? Well, at any rate he will see me before long!”
Eagerly he turned to climb the hill, thinking meanwhile:—“Poor Will! No telling what that cruel demon may do with him! Oh, dear! we are both in a very bad scrape! O my pistols!—I must hurry!”
[180]
What with scrambling up hills and rushing down them, Henry’s limbs were already becoming stiff, and he found it hard work to climb. He succeeded, after making great and desperate struggles, in getting nearly to the top of the hill; when he took a false step, slipped, was thrown off his feet, and—in spite of all his efforts to save himself—slid headlong down to the very bottom. An avalanche of stones and dirt thundered down in his train.
A little mound of earth brought him to a standstill, and a cry of pain escaped his lips.
In spite of the pain he suffered, his first words were characteristic of him. “Well,” he said, grimly, “I’ve blotted out the demons path up that hill! His nice little path is now in ruins in this valley!”
But, with a groan of agony, he ejaculated: “Oh! my foot is broken all to pieces! Oh! O—o—h!”
For a little time it was difficult for him to keep from screaming with the pain.
As soon as he felt a little better, he took off his boot and stocking, and carefully examined the injured foot, muttering meanwhile between his groans: “Oh, I hope the demon didn’t hear that noise! How the stones rattled and thundered! If he heard, he will come rushing out to attack me, and I am not able to help myself a bit! Oh, what a catastrophe this is!”
Poor Henry! That time-honored accident, which, in romance, befalls all heroes of the chase, had befallen him. “He had sprained his ankle!”
Only, in this instance, no lovely huntress was to find him, and have him tenderly conveyed to her dwelling. No sporting companions were with him, hastily to construct a litter, and smuggle him into the castle of some incarcerated maiden, whom, making light of his suffering, he would release from her “turret prison;” and then, drawing the wicked jailer—her scheming, hunch-backed uncle—out of his concealment, he would fall upon him, and slay him, without mercy.
No; no love-marriage was fated to result from that adventure; Henry was to lie there all alone; and suffer.
It was sad, but our hero bore it patiently and philosophically.[181] He believed that he should not be molested by the demon, and that was some consolation. But Will? Alas! All hope of rescuing him, so far as Henry was concerned, was at an end. That grieved him more than anything else.
Slowly the time wore away. As the demon did not come out again, Henry thought that the noise made by the falling stones had not been heard in the cave. He was full of anxious and remorseful thoughts for himself as well as for his cousin; and, much as he revolved the affair in his mind, he could hit upon no feasible plan of deliverance.
“If I had only told our folk where we were going,” he reflected, “they would hunt for us when they find us missing. But now they will be uneasy, and not know where on earth we are! No; they won’t have the slightest clue to track us! Oh, dear! What is going to become of us? How is this spree to end? What about my ankle? What on earth! Well, now are we to stay here all night? Will in the cave, and I here? ‘So near, and yet so far!’ My stars! I’ve read that in stories, but I never guessed what it meant! ‘So near, and yet so far!’ The man that wrote those words knew more than I ever shall, anyway! Oh! What will the demon do to poor Will?”
Henry could reason logically, and now, as well as his aching ankle would permit, he reviewed the whole scheme of visiting the Demon’s Cave. In the light he now had it seemed very foolish, whichever way he looked at it.
“It was a humbug,” he acknowledged to himself; “but after all it is just what all heroes do, and I don’t see why we should not have managed it better.”
His sprained ankle pained him intensely; he began to feel the effects of his involuntary ride down hill; the place where the “bullet” struck him smarted and itched in a manner to make him writhe. In a word, he was miserable in both body and mind.
He reverted to the scene of conflict! “What could have been wrong with that pistol?” he asked himself angrily. “Something struck me—but what? Certainly,[182] not a bullet. My father says that a big dose of powder will drive almost anything hard and solid into the flesh. Now, this struck me, and hurt me; but it didn’t punch a hole through my vest. Well, if I could only unload this other pistol, I should know to a certainty.—What became of the pistol Will fired? If he carried it off with him, he may suddenly scare the demon out of his wits!—Now, I wonder whether Will loaded my pistols wrong on purpose!—Well, this is rum old sport, sitting here like a dying gladiator, and not able to turn over for fear of howling with pain! No; I can’t budge from this spot!—Botheration! I won’t take Will to see any more curiosities!—Surely, the demon won’t hurt him!”
Thus the boy continued, speaking disjointed sentences just as the spirit moved him.
As no help came to him, he, the irrepressible, began to despond. It seemed to him that Death only would come to his release. Suddenly, he thought of the glass ink bottle hidden behind “Robinson Crusoe” in his drawer. He dwelt on it for the space of three minutes, and then, between a sigh and a groan, he said: “I wish I knew whether she would care if I should die here—alone, and in pain! Would she be sorry, or would she go to school as light-hearted as ever, and let some other boy sharpen her pencil? I wonder whether she would borrow Johnny Jones’ history! Oh! how I despise that boy! I wish I could see him leave the country! I wish now that I had given her my history out and out; that would keep my memory green in her eyes.”
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