Within some twenty paces of this Wentworth called a halt, and would have had Wilding's hands pinioned behind him, and his eyes blindfolded, but that Wilding begged him this might not be done. Wentworth was, as we know, impatient; and between impatience and kindliness, perhaps, he acceded to Wilding's prayer.
He even hesitated a moment at the last. It was in his mind to speak some word of comfort to the doomed man. Then a sudden volley, more terrific than any that had preceded it, followed by hoarse cheering away to eastward, quickened his impatience. He bade the sergeant lead Mr. Wilding forward and stand him on the edge of the ditch. His object was that thus the man's body would be disposed of without waste of time. This Wilding realized, his soul rebelling against this fate which had come upon him in the very hour when he most desired to live. Mad thoughts of escape crossed his mind--of a leap across the dyke, and a wild dash through the fog. But the futility of it was too appalling. The musketeers were already blowing their matches. He would suffer the ignominy of being shot in the back, like a coward, if he made any such attempt.
And so, despairing but not resigned, he took his stand on the very edge of the ditch. In an irony of obligingness he set half of his heels over the void, so that he was nicely balanced upon the edge of the cutting, and must go backwards and down into the mud when hit.
It was this position he had taken that gave him an inspiration in that last moment. The sergeant had moved away out of the line of fire, and he stood there alone, waiting, erect and with his head held high, his eyes upon the grey mass of musketeers--blurred alike by mist and semi-darkness--some twenty paces distant along the line of which glowed eight red fuses.
Wentworth's voice rang out with the words of command.
"Blow your matches!"
Brighter gleamed the points of light, and under their steel pots the faces of the musketeers, suffused by a dull red glow, sprang for a moment out of the grey mass, to fade once more into the general greyness at the word, "Cock your matches!"
"Guard your pans!" came a second later the captain's voice, and then: "Present!"
There was a stir and rattle, and the dark, indistinct figure standing on the lip of the ditch was covered by the eight muskets. To the eyes of the firing-party he was no more than a blurred shadowy form, showing a little darker than the encompassing dark grey.