Facing Death Part 12

Then Jack, with closely pressed lips and set face, turned the c.o.c.k of the nozzle.

With a hiss the scalding water leaped out in a stream. Jack stood well forward now and with the hose swept the crowd, as a fireman might sweep a burning building. Driven by the tremendous force of the internal steam, the boiling water knocked the men in front headlong over; then, as he raised the nozzle and scattered the water broadcast over the crowd, wild yells, screams, and curses broke on the night air. Another move, and the column of boiling fluid fell on those engaged on the other engine-house door, and smote them down.

Then Jack turned the c.o.c.k again, and the stream of water ceased.

It was but a minute since he had turned it on, but it had done its terrible work. A score of men lay on the ground, rolling in agony; others danced, screamed, and yelled in pain; others, less severely scalded, filled the air with curses; while all able to move made a wild rush back from the terrible building.

When the wild cries had a little subsided, Jack called out,--

"Now, lads, you can come back safely. I have plenty more hot water, and I could have scalded the whole of you as badly as those in front had I wanted to. Now I promise, on my oath, not to turn it on again if you will come and carry off your mates who are here. Take them off home as quick as you can, before the soldiers come. I don't want to do you harm.

You'd all best be in bed as soon as you can."

The men hesitated, but it was clear to them all that it had been in the power of their unknown foe to have inflicted a far heavier punishment upon them than he had done, and there was a ring of truth and honesty in his voice which they could not doubt. So after a little hesitation a number of them came forward, and lifting the men who had fallen near the engine-house, carried them off; and in a few minutes there was a deep silence where, just before, a very pandemonium had seemed let loose.

Then Jack, the strain over, sat down, and cried like a child.

Half an hour later, listening intently, he heard a deep sound in the distance. "Here come the soldiers," he muttered, "it is time for me to be off." He glanced at the steam-gauge, and saw that the steam was falling, while the water-gauge showed that there was still sufficient water for safety, and he then opened the window at the back of the building, and dropped to the ground. In an instant he was seized in a powerful grasp.

"I thought ye'd be coming out here, and now I've got ye," growled a deep voice, which Jack recognized as that of Roger Hawking, the terror of Stokebridge.

For an instant his heart seemed to stand still at the extent of his peril; then, with a sudden wrench, he swung round and faced his captor, twisted his hands in his handkerchief, and drove his knuckles into his throat. Then came a cras.h.i.+ng blow in his face--another, and another.

With head bent down, Jack held on his grip with the gameness and tenacity of a bull-dog, while the blows rained on his head, and his a.s.sailant, in his desperate effort to free himself, swung his body hither and thither in the air, as a bull might swing a dog which had pinned him. Jack felt his senses going--a dull dazed feeling came over him. Then he felt a crash, as his adversary reeled and fell--and then all was dark.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A LIFE OR DEATH STRUGGLE.]

It could have been but a few minutes that he lay thus, for he awoke with the sound of a thunder of horses' hoofs, and a clatter of swords in the yard on the other side of the engine-house. Rousing himself, he found that he still grasped the throat of the man beneath him. With a vague sense of wonder whether his foe was dead, he rose to his feet and staggered off, the desire to avoid the troops dispersing all other ideas in his brain. For a few hundred yards he staggered along, swaying like a drunken man, and knowing nothing of where he was going; then he stumbled, and fell again, and lay for hours insensible.

It was just the faint break of day when he came to, the cold air of the morning having brought him to himself. It took him a few minutes to recall what had happened and his whereabouts. Then he made his way to the ca.n.a.l, which was close by, washed the blood from his face, and set out to walk to Birmingham. He was too shaken and bruised to make much progress, and after walking for a while crept into the shelter of a haystack, and went off to sleep for many hours. After it was dusk in the evening he started again, and made his way to his lodgings at ten o'clock that night. It was a fortnight before he could leave his room, so bruised and cut was his face, and a month before the last sign of the struggle was obliterated, and he felt that he could return to Stokebridge without his appearance being noticed.

There, great changes had taken place. The military had found the splintered door, the hose, and the still steaming water in the yard, and the particulars of the occurrence which had taken place had been pretty accurately judged. They were indeed soon made public by the stories of the scalded men, a great number of whom were forced to place themselves in the hands of the doctor, many of them having had very narrow escapes of their lives, but none of them had actually succ.u.mbed. In searching round the engine-house the soldiers had found a man, apparently dead, his tongue projecting from his mouth. A surgeon had accompanied them, and a vein having been opened and water dashed in his face, he gave signs of recovery. He had been taken off to jail as being concerned in the attack on the engine-house; but no evidence could be obtained against him, and he would have been released had he not been recognized as a man who had, five years before, effected a daring escape from Portland, where he was undergoing a life sentence for a brutal manslaughter.

The defeat of the attempt to destroy the Vaughan engines was the death-blow of the strike. Among the foremost in the attack, and therefore so terribly scalded that they were disabled for weeks, were most of the leaders of the strike in the pits of the district, and their voices silenced, and their counsel discredited, the men two days after the attack had a great meeting, at which it was resolved almost unanimously to go to work on the masters' terms.

Great excitement was caused throughout the district by the publication of the details of the defence of the engine-house, and the most strenuous efforts were made by Mr. Brook to discover the person to whom he was so indebted. The miners were unanimous in describing him as a stranger, and as speaking like a gentleman; and there was great wonder why any one who had done so great a service to the mine-owners should conceal his ident.i.ty. Jack's secret was, however, well kept by the three or four who alone knew it, and who knew too that his life would not be safe for a day did the colliers, groaning and smarting over their terrible injuries, discover to whom they were indebted for them.

CHAPTER XII.

AFTER THE STRIKE.

"Well, Jack, so you're back again," Nelly Hardy said as she met Jack Simpson on his way home from work on the first day after his return.

"Ay, Nelly, and glad to see you. How have things gone on?" and he nodded towards her home.

"Better than I ever knew them," the girl said. "When father could not afford to buy drink we had better times than I have ever known. It was a thousand times better to starve than as 'twas before. He's laid up still; you nigh scalded him to death, Jack, and I doubt he'll never be fit for work again."

"I," Jack exclaimed, astounded, for he believed that the secret was known only to his mother, Harry, John Ratcliffe, Mr. Merton and perhaps the schoolmaster's daughter.

"Has Harry--"

"No, Harry has not said a word. Oh, Jack, I didn't think it of you. You call me a friend and keep this a secret, you let Harry know it and say nowt to me. I did not think it of you," and the dark eyes filled with tears.

"But if Harry did not tell you, how--"

"As if I wanted telling," she said indignantly. "Who would have dared do it but you? Didn't I know you were here an hour or two before, and you think I needed telling who it was as faced all the pitmen? and to think you hid it from me! Didn't you think I could be trusted? couldn't I have gone to fetch the redcoats for you? couldn't I have sat by you in the engine-house, and waited and held your hand when you stood against them all? oh, Jack!" and for the first time since their friends.h.i.+p had been pledged, nearly four years before, Jack saw Nelly burst into tears.

"I didn't mean unkind, Nell, I didn't, indeed, and if I had wanted another messenger I would have come to you. Don't I know you are as true as steel? Come, la.s.s, don't take on. I would have sent thee instead o'

Harry only I thought he could run fastest. Girls' wind ain't as good as lads'."

"And you didn't doubt I'd do it, Jack?"

"Not for a moment," Jack said. "I would have trusted thee as much as Harry."

"Well then, I forgive you, Jack, but if ever you get in danger again, and doant let me know, I'll never speak a word to you again."

In the years which had pa.s.sed since this friends.h.i.+p began Nelly Hardy had greatly changed. The companions.h.i.+p of two quiet lads like Jack and Harry had tamed her down, and her love of reading and her study of all the books on history and travel on Jack's book-shelves had softened her speech. When alone the three spoke with but little of the dialect of the place, Jack having insisted on improvement in this respect. With Nelly his task had been easy, for she was an apt pupil, but Harry still retained some of his roughness of speech.

Nelly was fifteen now, and was nearly as tall as Jack, who was square and somewhat stout for his age. With these two friends Jack would talk sometimes of his hopes of rising and making a way for himself. Harry, who believed devoutly in his friend, entered most warmly into his hopes, but Nelly on this subject alone was not sympathetic.

"You don't say anything," Jack remarked one day; "do you think my castles in the air will never come true?"

"I know they will come true, Jack," she said earnestly; "but don't ask me to be glad. I can't; I try to but I can't. It's selfish, but, but--"

and her voice quivered. "Every step thou takest will carry you farther up from me, and I can't be glad on it, Jack!"

"Nonsense, Nelly," Jack said angrily, "dos't think so little of me as to think that I shall not be as true to my two friends, Harry and you, as I am now?"

The girl shook her head.

"You will try, Jack, you will try. Don't think I doubt you, but--" and turning round she fled away at full speed.

"I believe she ran away because she was going to cry," Harry said.

"La.s.ses are strange things, and though in some things Nell's half a lad, yet she's soft you see on some points. Curious, isn't it, Jack?"

"Very curious," Jack said; "I thought I understood Nell as well as I did you or myself, but I begin to think I doant understand her as much as I thought. It comes of her being a la.s.s, of course, but it's queer too,"

and Jack shook his head over the mysterious nature of la.s.ses. "You can't understand 'em," he went on again, thoughtfully. "Now, if you wanted some clothes, Harry, and you were out of work, I should just buy you a set as a matter of course, and you'd take 'em the same. It would be only natural like friends, wouldn't it?"

Harry a.s.sented.

"Now, I've been wanting to give Nelly a gown, and a jacket, and hat for the last two years. I want her to look nice, and hold her own with the other la.s.ses of the place--she's as good looking as any--but I daren't do it. No, I daren't, downright. I know, as well as if I see it, how she'd flash up, and how angry she'd be."

"Why should she?" Harry asked.

"That's what I doan't know, lad, but I know she would be. I suppose it comes of her being a la.s.s, but it beats me altogether. Why shouldn't she take it? other la.s.ses take presents from their lads, why shouldn't Nell take one from her friend? But she wouldn't, I'd bet my life she wouldn't, and she wouldn't say, 'No, and thank you,' but she'd treat it as if I'd insulted her. No, it can't be done, lad; but it's a pity, for I should ha' liked to see her look nice for once."

Not satisfied with his inability to solve the question Jack took his mother into his confidence.