Then that sound and all others grew dim, for I was near swooning,
and when the door fell with a mighty crash near me, it might have
been the fall of a rose leaf on velvet, and I had small heed of the
fierce faces which bent over me, yet the hands extended toward my
wounds were tender enough. And I saw as in a dream, Capt. Robert
Waller, with his arm tied up, and wondered dimly if we were both
dead, for I verily believed that I had killed him, and I heard him
say, and his voice sounded as if a sea rolled between us, "'Tis the
convict tutor, Wingfield, who held the door, and unless I be much
mistaken, he hath his death-wound. Make a litter and lift him
gently, and five of you search the house for whatever other rebels
be hid herein."
And as I live, in the midst of my faintness, which made all sounds
far away as from beyond the boundary of the flesh, and beyond the
din of battle, which was still going on, though feebly, like a fire
burning to its close, I heard the dip of oars on the creek, and knew
that Mary Cavendish was safe.
A litter they fashioned from a lid of a chest while the search was
going on, and I was lifted upon it with due regard to my wounds,
which I thought a generous thing of Captain Waller, inasmuch as his
own face was frowning with the pain of the wound which I had given
him, but he was a brave man, and a brave man is ever a generous foe.
But when I was on the litter, breathing hard, yet with some
consciousness, he bent close over me, and whispered "Sir, your
wounds are bound up with strips torn from a woman's linen. I have a
wife, and I know. Who was in hiding here, sir?"
My eyes flew wide open at that.
"No one," I gasped out. "No one as I live."
But he laughed, and bending still lower, whispered, "Have no fear as
to that, Master Wingfield. Convict or not, you are a brave man, and
that which you perchance gave your life to hide, shall be hidden for
all Robert Waller."
So saying he gave the order to carry me forth with as little jolting
as might be, and stationed himself at my side lest I come to harm
from some over-zealous soldier. But in truth the militia and the
officers in those days were apparently of somewhat uncertain
quantity as regarded their allegiance to the King or the Colony.