As lightly as I could
(my boots being heavy, as the long service required of them
demanded) I darted through the doorway, my right hand clasping my
knife, hid behind my back. Running to the side of the horse nearest
me I set to a-hacking with all my strength at the leathern trace.
Thank Heaven my knife was new and unblunted! But I had not
succeeded in cutting the leather through when the pistol cracked
and the lock burst. The startled horses immediately began to rear
and plunge, so violently that the single man at the wheelers' heads
could not hold them. Vetch ran to assist him; none of them had
noticed that the violence of the horses' straining had completed my
unfinished work: the trace snapped in two.
Pulling itself free the horse swung round, and plunged more
violently than before, keeping the man Tom employed and serving
also to screen me from view. Now was my opportunity. I wrenched
open the shuttered door, and saw a man leaning with his body out of
the other door, watching the movements of Vetch. And between us,
shrinking back on the seat, was Mistress Lucy. She turned her head
as I pulled the door open, and holding on to it to preserve my
balance, for the coach was being swerved this way and that by the
frantic horses, I whispered:
"'Tis I, Mistress Lucy: jump out!"
And quick as thought--'tis a blessing when a woman's wits are
keen--she made one spring for the roadway, by a hair's breadth
eluding the grasp of Dick Cludde, who had turned about at my
whisper.
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