As he resumed his digging, the Sergeant remarked, ' That's a real aristo's coat yer got there. Should sell for a tidy sum, so I'll take it as my share of yer kit. Be a sin ter bury good clothes like yours. The others can cast lots for the rest of yer duds.'
After a minute he added, ' I bet yer got a bit o' money on yer too. I'll give you a spell from diggin' if yer'll hand it over.'
Roger's heart bounded. A ' spell' might mean anything from a few minutes to an indefinite period. The Sergeant's offer sounded like an overture to him to buy his life. On reaching Paris he had meant to draw his back pay and, should he need more, there were means by which he could draw on British Secret Service funds; so he had not brought a large sum with him. He had only fifty louis d'or to cover immediate expenses and they were in a money-belt round his waist. Yet those fifty louis, which would have done no more than see him to Paris and buy him a new uniform when he got there, would be regarded by the Sergeant as a magnificent windfall. Even if he had to give five louis apiece to his men to keep their mouths shut that would still leave twenty for him, and that was more than the pay he would receive in a whole year.
The Sergeant spoke again. ' Come on. Yer can't take it wiv yer. If yer 'and it over I can split it wiv the boys now. That'll save us a lot o' time arguing about shares when ye're a gonner, an' we'll get back to camp the sooner.'
His words instantly dashed Roger's hopes. He felt that he must be out of his mind not to have realized that they would search his body for cash and valuables before they filled in his grave. As they would come by the money anyhow, why should they risk condign punishment by letting him buy his life with it.
Yet even in his extremity it went against the grain to make the Sergeant a gratuitous present; and he thought it possible that it might not occur to them that he was wearing a money-belt. If so, they might strip him only to his underclothes and so fail to find his gold. In the hope of depriving them of it, he said tersely to the N.C.O. :
' If you've been counting on lining your pockets, Sergeant, you are unlucky. The Coastguards searched me last night and took from me every sou I had.'
' Then that's bad luck for yer, too,' the Sergeant snarled. ' I'll give yer no spell, an' if yer drop while yer work I'll have the boys jab their bayonets in yer an' finish yer off that way.'
Once more, under the N.C.O.'s threats and his baleful glare, Roger set about digging. After another ten minutes the sweat was pouring off him and he had managed to scoop out a trench, the middle of which was over two feet deep. But the sides sloped and it still required a lot more work before his body could have been laid in it and well covered.
It was now nearly half an hour since he had started on the job and the hard work had made him uncomfortably hot; but that was far from being the case with the firing party. The sun had gone in and the chill of a February afternoon had descended on the dunes. Of the group of five sitting on the slope nearby playing cards, one or more was now standing up every few minutes to stamp his feet and flail his arms to keep his circulation going.
To ease his aching arms, Roger risked a blow from the cane to pause for a breather. As he did so, the Sergeant snapped, ' Keep at it, damn yer, or we'll all freeze to death afore yer done.' Then he added as an afterthought, 'What wouldn't I give for a good tot of schnapps to warm me up! '
Instead of going on with his digging, Roger stared at him for a moment. He had just remembered that after taking a few gulps from his brandy flask while in the sea he had managed to get it back into his pocket. To the N.C.O. he said, 'The Coastguards didn't rob me of my flask and it's still three-quarters full of cognac. You'll find it in the left-hand skirt pocket of my travelling coat.'
The Sergeant's eyes widened eagerly and he exclaimed, ' Mort de Dieu! Yer may be a pig of an Englishman, but I'll see to it yer gets a quick, clean death for that.' Then he turned about and began swiftly to rummage in the coat that Roger had thrown behind him.
The guard holding his musket at the ready was standing a yard away on Roger's other side. He, too, was feeling the cold and as time had gone on he had ceased to give his whole attention to the prisoner.
Suddenly Roger lifted the spade and slashed sideways at him with it. The edge of the spade caught the man on his right hand, severing two of his fingers. With a scream of agony he dropped his musket. The Sergeant had just found the pocket in Roger's coat and, bent right over, was pulling the flask out of it. The guard's scream had hardly rent the air before Roger had turned on his heel, swung the spade high and brought its blade down with all his force on the back of the Sergeant's neck. The blow almost severed it. From the terrible wound his blood spurted out in a jet over the sand, and he collapsed without uttering a sound.
Without losing an instant, Roger threw aside the spade that had served him so well as a weapon and made a dash for the slope furthest from the other five men. With the sand slithering beneath his boots he scrambled up it. Jumping to their feet, the men ran to their stacked muskets, shouting imprecations and calling on him to halt. In their haste two of them collided, fell and rolled into the trench. The other three grabbed up their firearms and levelled them.
From the moment Roger had thought of his brandy flask and realized that it could be used as a snare by which he might possibly save his life, his wits had come back to him. It had been the apparent hopelessness of his situation that had so clouded his mind from the moment General Desmarets had ordered his execution. The germ of a plan had scarcely formed before he had a clear-cut picture of exactly how he must act. His perfect sense of timing had done#the rest and it did not now desert him.
At a glance he had measured the slope and judged that by the time he reached the crest the men would have their weapons in their hands and be ready to fire at him. Up there, against the skyline, and only some twelve yards distant, he would provide a perfect target that they could not fail to hit. Without pausing to look behind him to see if he had judged aright, he flung himself flat.
Three muskets banged in quick succession. Bullets whistled through the air a good three feet above him. He knew that there should be two more, but dared not wait where he lay for more than another few seconds. Picking himself up, he ran on, the hair now prickling on his scalp from the horrid expectation that at any moment one of those other two bullets would smack into his back.
He plunged into a dip, then breasted another slope. A furious shouting broke out behind him, but no bullets either hit him or whined past. From that he could only conclude that the muskets of the two men who had not yet fired could not have been loaded. On reaching the second crest he risked a glance over his shoulder. Three of the soldiers were leaping down the slope, twenty yards behind him, the other two were ten yards in the rear, had reached the top of the first mound and were taking aim at him.
Again he flung himself flat. Again the bullets hummed through the air above him. Again he scrambled to his feet and dashed headlong down the slope ahead. But throwing himself down, although only for thirty seconds, had cost him a good part of his lead. The three nearest men had come up to within fifteen feet of him.
Yet as he pounded on he was far from giving up hope. None of the five could reload his musket as he ran. If they halted to do so, by the time they had rammed home the charges and the bullets and primed their weapons they would have to be good marksmen to hit him. As they must know that themselves, he thought it certain that they would put their trust in running him down. But unless there were trained runners among them he felt confident that he could out-distance them; because he had shed his topcoat, whereas they were wearing theirs, and, in addition, they were weighed down by their heavy equipment.