The fences were being put up in the low grounds by Socknersh, a leasehold farm on the fringe of the Manor estate. The fence-builders were not local men, and had no idea of the ill-feeling in the neighbourhood. Their first glimpse of it was when they saw a noisy black crowd tilting down Boarzell towards them—nothing definite could be gathered from its yells, for cries and counter-cries clashed together, the result being a confused "Wah-wah-wah," accompanied by much clattering of sticks and stones, thudding of feet and thumping of ribs.
When it came within ten yards of the fences, it doubted itself suddenly after the manner of crowds. It stopped, surged back, and mumbled. "Down with the fences!" shouted someone—"Long live the Squire!" shouted someone else. Then there was a pause, almost a silence.
Suddenly a great hullish lad sprang forward, rushed up to one of the fence-stakes, and flung it with a tangle of wire into the air.
"Down wud Bardon!"
The spell of doubt was broken. A dozen others sprang towards the palings, a dozen more were after them to smite. The workmen swung their tools. The fight began.
It was a real battle with defences and sallies. The supporters of the Inclosure miraculously knotted together, and formed a guard for the labourers, who with hammers ready alternately for nail or head, bent to their work. They had no personal concern in the matter, but they resented being meddled with.
The Squire\'s party was much the weakest in numbers,[Pg 9] but luck had given it the best weapons of that chance armament. Alce of Ellenwhorne had a fine knobbed stick, worth a dozen of the enemy\'s, while Lewnes of Coldblow had an excellent broken bottle. Young Elphee had been through the bruiser-mill, and routed his assailants with successive upper-cuts. The anti-Bardonites, on the other hand, were inclined to waste their strength; they fought in a congested, rabblesome way; also they threw their bottles, not realising that a bottle is much better as a club than a missile. The result was that quite early in the conflict their ammunition gave out, and they were reduced to sticks and fists.
This made the two parties fairly equal, and the tide of battle ebbed and flowed. Now a bit of fence was put up, then it was torn down again; now it looked as if the fence-builders were going to be swept off the Moor, then it looked as if their posts were going to straggle up to Totease.
The Fair was quite deserted, the tenants of Socknersh and Totease climbed to their windows. Someone fetched the constable from Peasmarsh, but after surveying the battlefield from a distance he strategically retired. At Flightshot Manor the Squire was troubled. The Inclosure of Boarzell had been no piece of land-grabbing on his part, but a move for the good of his estate. He had always wanted to improve his tenants\' condition, but had been thwarted by lack of means. He wondered if he ought to give orders to stop the fence-building.
"Sir, that would be folly!" cried his son.
"But it seems that there\'s a regular riot going on—quite a number of people have been hurt, and two ploughlands trodden up. Kadwell went over, but says he can do nothing."
"Send to Rye, then. Let \'em swear in some special constables, and drive the fellows off. But as for[Pg 10] stopping the work—that would be to play into their hands."
So the fight raged on, the Battle of Boarzell. Unfortunately it did not rage on Boarzell itself, but on its fruitful fringe, where the great ploughfields lapped up to the base of the Moor, taking the sunset on their wet brown ridges. Poor Ginner\'s winter wheat was all pulped and churned to ruin, and the same doom fell on Ditch\'s roots. Sometimes it seemed as if the Squire\'s men would attain their object, for the fence—very tottery and uncertain, it must be confessed—had wound a bit of the way past Totease towards Odiam. Dusk had fallen, but the men still worked, for their blood was up.
However, the Squire\'s party began to feel their lack of numbers; they were growing tired, their arms swung less confidently, and then Lewnes\' bottle was broken right up at the neck, cutting his hand. He shouted that he was bleeding to death, and frightened the others. Someone sent a stone into Alce\'s eye. Then he too made a terrible fuss, threw down his stick, and ran about bleeding among the workmen.
The ground, soft with autumn rains, was now one great mud broth, and the men were daubed and spattered with it even to their hair. The attackers pressed on the wavering ring—one of the fence-builders was hit, and pitched down, taking a post and a whole trail of wire over with him—about thirty yards of fence came down with the pull, and flopped into the mud. The ring broke.
"Hop it, lads!" shouted a workman. Their protectors were gone, mixed indescribably with their assailants. They must run, or they would be lynched.
A hundred yards off a Totease barn-door gaped, and the workmen sprinted for it. In the darkness they were able to reach it without losing more than one of their number, who fell down and had the wit to pretend to be dead. The crowd seethed after them, but the door was shut, and the heavy bolts rattled behind it.
The barn was part of the farmhouse, and from one of the upper windows Ditch, furious at having his roots messed up, made pantomime to the effect that he would shoot any man who came further than the yard.
It was then for the first time that Reuben was frightened. Hitherto there had been too much violence and confusion for him to feel intensely, even rage. He had thrown stones, and had once been hit by a stone—a funny dull sore pain on his shoulder, and then the feeling of something sticky under his shirt. But he had never felt afraid, never taken any initiative, just run and struggled and shouted with the rest. Now he was frightened—it would be dreadful if the farmer fired into that thick sweating mass in the midst of which he was jammed.
Then, just because he was afraid, he flung up his arm, and the stone he had been grasping crashed into Ditch\'s window, sending the splintering glass into the room. He had no thought of doing it, scarcely knew he had done it—it was just because he was horribly frightened.
The next moment there was a bang, and Ditch\'s gun scattered duck-shot into the crowd. Men yelled, fought, struggled, stumbled about with their arms over their faces. For a moment nothing but panic moved them, but the next rage took its place. A volley of stones answered the gun, which being an old one and requiring careful loading, could not be brought into action again for some minutes.
"Burn him down!—Burn him down!—the hemmed murderer!"
Then began a regular siege. Stones showered upon the farmhouse roof, the shiver of broken glass tinkled through the dull roar of the attackers, groans and screams answered the bursting bang of the shot-gun. Men began to seize faggots from the wood-pile, and run with them towards the house. Then some tore up a haystack, but the wind caught the hay and blew it[Pg 12] everywhere, flinging swathes and streamers of it into the rioters\' faces, giving them sudden armfuls of it, making their noses and eyes smart with the dust and litter.
It was quite dark now. The hulk of Boarzell loomed black behind the struggle, its fir crown standing out against a great wall of starless sky. Then suddenly something began to blaze—no one seemed to know what, for it was behind the crowd; but it roared and crackled, and sparks and great burning strands flew out from it, threatening house and besiegers alike with destruction.
They had piled the faggots against the door of the barn. The workmen inside were tumbling about in the dark, half ignorant of what was going on.
"Bring a light!" called someone. A boy dashed up with a handful of flaming straw—it blew out of his hand and flared away over the roof, scattering showers of sparks. A man yelled out that his shirt was burning. "Bring a light!" someone called again. Then someone else shouted—"The constables from Rye!"
The crowd ebbed back like a wave, carrying Reuben, now screaming and terrified, towards where something unknown burned with horrible crackles and roaring.
"The constables from Rye!"
The crowd was like a boa-constrictor, it seemed to fold itself round him, smashing his ribs. He screamed, half suffocated. His forehead was blistered with heat. Again the crowd constricted. A dizziness came this time with the suffocation, and strange to say, as consciousness was squeezed out of him like wind out of a bellows, he had one last visit of that furious hate which had made him join the battle—hate of those who had robbed his father of Boarzell, and hate of Boarzell itself, because he would never be able to tame it as one tames a bull with a ring in its nose.
He choked, and fell into the darkness.