THE SANDS.
Splendor in heaven, and horror on the main!
Sunshine and storm at once--a troubled day;
Clouds roll in brightness, and descend in rain.
Now the waves rush into the rocky bay,
Shaking the eternal barriers of the land;
And ocean's face is like a battle-plain,
Where giant demons combat hand to hand.
EBENEZER ELLIOTT.
It was a wild and wicked morning, in the first red light of which,
Eadwulf, awakening from the restless and uneasy sleep into which he
had last night fallen, among the scattered brushwood growing on the
seaward slope of the sand hills of Lancashire, looked across the wide
sands, now left bare by the recess of the tide, stretching away to the
bleak coasts of Westmoreland and Cumberland, and the huge mountain
ridges, which might be seen indistinctly looming up blue and massive
in the distance inland, distinguishable from clouds only by the hard
abruptness of their outlines, as they cut sharp and clean against the
lurid sky of the horizon.
Along the sea line, which lay grim and dark in ominous repose, the
heaven's glared for a span's breadth, as it appeared to the eye, with
a wild brassy light, above which brooded a solid belt of purple cloud,
deepening into black as it rose upward, and having a distinct,
solid-looking edge, scolloped, as it were, into huge rounded masses,
as material as if they had been earthy hills, instead of mere piles of
accumulated vapor.
These volumed masses lay motionless, as yet, in the brooding calm;
but, all upward to the zenith, the sky was covered with tortured and
distracted wrack-wreaths, some black as night, some just touched by
the sun, which was arising unseen by mortal eyes behind the
cloud-banks which mustered so thick to the eastward, and some glowing
with a fiery crimson gleam, as if they issued from the mouth of a
raging furnace.
Every thing was ominous of a storm, but every thing as yet was calm,
tranquil, and peaceful. In the very quiet, however, there was
something awful, something that seemed to whisper of coming horror.
The wide sands lay gray and leaden at the feet of the observer,
reflecting the lowering clouds which overhung them, except where the
brassy glare of the horizon tinged their extreme verge with an angry
rust-colored hue, that seemed to partake the nature of shadow rather
than of light.
The face of the Saxon fell as he gazed over the fearful waste, beyond
which lay his last hope of safety; for, though he had never before
seen those treacherous sands, he had learned much of their nature,
especially from the outlaws, with whom he found his last shelter; and
he knew, that to cross them certainly and in safety, the passenger on
foot should set out with the receding tide, so as to reach the mid
labyrinth of oozy channels and half-treacherous sand banks, through
which the scanty and divided rivers of the fair lakeland found their
way oceanward, when the water was at its lowest ebb.
Instead of this, however, so heavily had he slept toward morning, the
utter weariness of his limbs and exhaustion of his body having
completely conquered the watchfulness of his anxious mind, that the
tide had so long run out, leaving the sands toward the shore,
especially at this upper end of the bay, bare and hard as a beaten
road, that it might well be doubted whether it had not already turned,
and might not be looked for, ere he could reach the mid-channel,
pouring in, unbroken, as it is wont to do in calm weather, over those
boundless flats, with a speed exceeding that of horses.
There was no time for delay, however; for, from the report of the
horseman who had overtaken him just before twilight, he could not
doubt that his pursuers had not halted for the night farther than five
or six miles in his rear; so that their arrival might be looked for at
any moment, on any one of the headlands along the shore, whence they
would have no difficulty in discerning him at several miles distance,
while traveling over the light-colored surface of the sands.
Onward, therefore, he hastened, as fast as his weary limbs could carry
him, hardly conscious whether he was flying from the greater danger,
or toward it. He had a strong suspicion that the flood would be upon
him ere he should reach the channel of Kent; and that he should find
it an unfordable river, girdled by pathless quicksands. He knew,
however, that be his chances of escape what they might by persisting
onward, his death was as certain, by strange tortures, as any thing
sublunary can be called certain, should the Normans overtake him,
red-handed from what they were sure to regard as recent murder.
On, therefore, he fled into the deceitful waste. At first, the sands
were hard, even, and solid, yet so cool and damp under the worn and
blistered feet of the wretched fugitive, that they gave him an
immediate sense of pleasurable relief and refreshment; and for three
or four miles he journeyed with such ease and rapidity as, compared to
the pain and lassitude with which on the past days he had stumbled
along, over the stony roads, and across the broken moors, that his
heart began to wax more cheerful, and his hopes of escape warmed into
something tangible and real.
Ere long, the sun rose clear above the eastern fog-banks, and all
seemed still fair and tranquil; the sands, dry as yet, and firm,
smiled golden-bright under the increasing warmth and lustre of the
day, and the little rivulets, by which the fresh waters oozed to the
deep, glittered like silver ribbons, checkering the yellow expanse.
The very gulls and terns, as they swooped joyously about his head,
screaming and diving in the sunny air, or skimmed the sands in pursuit
of such small fry as might have been left by the retreat of the
waters, seemed, by their activity and happiness, to give him fresh
hope and strength to support it.
Occasionally he turned, and cast a hurried glance toward the hills he
had just left, down which the slant rays were streaming, to the limit
where the green grass and scattered shrubs gave way to the bare
sea-sands; and, as from each anxious scrutiny of the ground, he
returned to his forward progress without discovering any signs of
peril, his face lighted up anew, and he advanced with a freer and a
bolder foot.
Still so weary was he, and so worn with his past toils, that he made
but little real progress; and when he had been already an hour on the
sands, he had accomplished little more than three miles of his route.
The sands, from the point at which he had entered them, over against
the city of Lancaster, and almost due west from that city to the
nearest accessible headland of the opposite shore, were not less than
nine miles in extent, the deepest and most dangerous parts being those
nearest to the farther coast; but, measured to the place for which he
was making, a considerable distance up the estuary of the Kent, they
were at least three miles longer.
Two or three channels the fugitive had already crossed, and was
rejoiced at finding the sandy bottom, over which the fresh water
flowed some two or three inches deep, perfectly hard and beaten; at
the end of his third mile he reached a broader expanse of water, where
the sands were covered to the width of a hundred yards, and where the
current, if that might be called a current which had scarcely any
perceptible motion downward, took him nearly to the midleg. The
foothold was, moreover, less firm than before, and his heavy brogues
sank to the latchet in the yielding soil. This was the course of the
first and smaller of the two rivers which fall into the eastern side
of the bay from the county of Lancaster, and at about two miles
distant, he could see the course of the second, glittering blue among
the low sand-rollers which divided them.
Here he paused, undecided, for a few moments. He knew not what should
be the depth of the water, or what the nature of the bottom; yet
already he almost doubted, almost feared, that the time was passed,
and that the tide had turned.
He looked southward, in the direction of the sea, which lay broad in
view, though at many leagues distance; and, for the first time, it
struck him that he could hear the moaning roll of its ever restless
waves. He fancied, too, that the sands looked darker and more plashy,
and that the silvery line which marked the margin of the waters, where
the sun glinted on their quiet ripples, appeared nearer than when he
had descended from the solid strand.
But, on the other hand, the sun-lighted slopes and crags of the
opposite Lancastrian shore, near Flockborough Head, and the green
point of Westmoreland, between the mouths of Windermere and the river
Kent, lying in the full blaze of the unintercepted morning, looked
much nearer than they really were, and seemed to beckon him forward
with a smile of welcome. "Even if it be that the tide is turning," he
thought, "I have yet the time to outstrip it; and, the quicker it
mount, the wider the barrier it will place between me and my enemies."
Almost as these ideas passed his mind, a sound came to his ears, which
banished in a moment every thought of the time, the tide, the peril of
the sands.
It was the keen blast of a bugle, clearly winded on the shore from
which he had just departed, but at a point a little higher up, to the
northward, than that at which he had himself left it. In an instant,
before he had even the time to turn round and take observation, a
second bugle, yet farther to the north, took up the cadence, and, as
that died away, yet a third, so faint, and so far to the northward,
that it seemed like a mere echo of the first, replied.
He looked, and, clustered on the brink of the sands, examining the
tracks his feet had left on the moist surface, there stood a little
knot of three or four horsemen, one of whom it was easy to see, by the
glitter of his mail-hood and hauberk, was completely armed. Two miles
higher up, likewise on the shore, was another group, that which had
replied to the first bugle-note, and which was now exchanging signals
with those in the foreground, by the wafture of the pennoncelles which
adorned their long lances.
There was now no longer a doubt. His pursuers had divided themselves
into scattered parties, the better to scour the country, two of which
had already discovered him, while there was evidently a third in
communication with these by bugle-blast, not yet discernible to the
eye, but prepared doubtless to strike across the upper portion of the
sands near the head of the bay, and to intercept his flight, should he
escape his immediate pursuers.
Another wild and prolonged flourish of the bugle, the very note which
announces to the jovial hunters that the beast of chase is afoot, rang
wildly over the sands, was repeated once and again; and then, with a
fierce shout, spurring their heavily-barbed horses, and brandishing
their long lances, the man-hunters dashed forward in pursuit.
The first party rode directly on the track of the fugitive, who toiled
onward in full view as he ran, terror lending wings to his speed,
almost directly northward, with his long shadow streaming westward
over the dank sands, cutting the bright sunshine with a blue, rippling
wake. The second, taking the passage higher up, rode at an oblique
angle to the first pursuers, laying up to the point of Westmoreland,
in order to cut off the fugitive; and, in a few moments afterward, yet
another group might be seen skirting the shore line, as if intent to
intercept him in case of his landing.
The soil and water, spurned from the feet of the heavy chargers, flew
high into the air, sparkling and plashing in the sunshine, like
showers of metallic dust. It was a fearful race--a race for life and
death, with odds, as it would seem, not to be calculated, against the
panting fugitive.
At first, the horses careered easily over the surface, not sinking the
depth of their iron-shoes in the firm substratum, while the man,
whether from fatigue and fear, or that he was in worse ground, labored
and slipped and stumbled at almost every step. The horses gained upon
him at every stride, and the riders shouted already in triumph. It
seemed, indeed, as if his escape was hopeless. The cavalry reached the
first channel; it had widened a little, yet perceptibly, since Eadwulf
had crossed it; but the horses leaped it, or dashed through it,
without an effort.
The fugitive was now nearly in the middle of the sands; but his
pursuers had already crossed, in a few minutes, one half of the space
which it had cost him a painful two hours' toil to traverse; and, with
at least five miles before him yet, what hope that he could maintain
such speed as to run in the ratio of two to three of distance, against
the strength and velocity of high-blooded horses?
But he had now reached the channel of the Beetham-water, and, as he
crossed it, he stooped to ladle up a few drops in the hollow of his
hand, to bathe his parched lips and burning brow. He saw it in an
instant. The tide had turned, the waters were spreading wider and
wider sensibly, they were running not slowly upward, they were salt to
the taste already.
His rescue or his ruin, the flood-tide was upon him; and, strange to
say, what at another time would have aroused his wildest terror, now
wakened a slight hope of safety.
If he could yet reach, yet pass, the channel of the Kent, which lay,
widening every moment, at some two miles farther yet before him, he
might still escape both the cruel waters and the more savage
man-hunters; but the distance was long, the fugitive weak with
fatigue, weaker yet with fear, and the speed of thorough-bred horses
was hard, as yet, behind him.
He paused a moment to watch, as the first party, his direct pursuers,
reached the broad river-bed--they crossed it, and that seemingly
without alarm or suspicion of danger, though their heavily-barbed
horses sank belly-deep in the treacherous ford; but having stemmed it,
as they charged onward, it was clear to Eadwulf that the horses buried
their hoofs deeper at every stride; soon they were fetlock-deep in the
heavy sands.
The second party crossed the same water-course higher up, and with
less trouble; and these were now within two miles of the panting
slave, shouting their war-cries, and spurring yet more furiously
onward, having lost, if they had ever entertained any, all idea of
danger, in the furious excitement of the chase, and taking no heed of
the tokens of imminent and awful peril; and yet those tokens were now
sufficient to appall the boldest.
One of the peculiarities of those terrible and fatal sands is, that
the first approach of those entering tides, which come on, not with
the ordinary roll and thunder of billows and flash of snowy surf, but
swift and silent as the pestilence that flies by night, is harbingered
by no outward and visible sight or sound, but by the gradual and at
first imperceptible conversion of the solid sands into miry and
ponderous sludge, into moving quicksand, into actual water.
When the sounds and sights are heard and seen, it is too late to make
an effort. Death is at hand, inevitable.
And now sights and sounds were both clear, palpable, nigh at hand. The
dull murmur of the inrolling volumes might have been heard by the ears
of any, so that they were not jangled and deafened by the clangor of
their own iron-harness; the long white line of surf might have been
seen by the eyes of any, so that they were not so riveted on some
other object, that they could take heed of naught else within the
range of their vision.
But the pursuers heard, saw nothing--nothing, unless it were the
beating of their own savage hearts, the snorting of their laboring
chargers, the clanking din of their spurs and scabbards, and the
jingle of their chain-mail--unless it were the wretched fugitive,
panting along, with his tongue literally hanging out of his parched
jaws, and his eyes bursting from their sockets, like those of an
over-driven ox, stumbling, staggering, splashing along, often falling,
through the mingled sand and water, now mid-leg deep.
The party which had taken the sands at the most northern point had now
so far over-reached upon the fugitive, that he had no longer a chance
of crossing the course of the Kent in advance of them. If he persisted
in his course, ten minutes more would have placed him under the
counters of their horses and the points of their lances. The other
body, who had followed him directly, had already perceived their
danger, had pulled up, and were retracing their steps slowly, trying
to pick their way through the dryest ground, and, coasting up and down
the side of the Beetham water, were endeavoring to find a ford
passable for their heavy horses. Lower down the bay, by a mile or two,
they were the first to be overtaken, the sands were already all
afloat, all treacherous ooze, around them; the banks, dry places there
were no longer any, were not to be distinguished from the channels of
the rivers.
Suddenly, seeing himself cut off, blinded by his immediate terrors,
and thinking only to avoid the more instant peril, Eadwulf turned
southward--turned toward the billows, which were now coming in, six
feet abreast, not two miles below him, tossing their foamy crests like
the mane of the pale-horse of the Apocalypse, with a sound deeper and
more appalling than the roar of the fiercest thunder. He saw the
hopelessness of his position; and, at the same moment, the first
horror of their situation dawned on the souls of his savage pursuers.
In that one glance, all was revealed to them; every thought, every
incident, every action of their past lives, flashed before the eyes of
their mind, as if reflected in a mirror; and then all was blank.
Every rein was drawn simultaneously, every horse halted where he
stood, almost belly-deep in the sands, snorting and panting, blown and
dead-beat by that fruitless gallop; and now the soil, every where
beneath them and about them, was melting away into briny ooze, with
slimy worms and small eels and lampreys wriggling obscenely, where a
little while before, the heaviest war-horse might have pawed long and
deep without finding water; and the waves were gaining on them, with
more than the speed of charging cavalry, and the nearest shore was
five miles distant.
Within a furlong, on a solitary black stone, which might overtop the
entering flood for an hour's space or better, lay Eadwulf, the serf.
Utterly beaten, unable to move hand or foot, unable even to raise his
head, or look the coming death in the face, where he had fallen, there
he lay.
Two minutes, and the farthest of those horsemen might have taken him,
might have speared him, where he lay, unresisting, unbeseeching. But
none thought of him--none thought of any thing but the sea--the sea.
They paused for an instant to breathe their horses, before turning to
ride that desperate race--but in that instant they saw such a sight as
chilled their very blood. The other party, which had now retreated
before the tide to within a mile of them to the eastward, had now
determined, as it seemed, at all risks, to force their way back
through the channel of the Beetham water, and entered it one by one,
in single file, the unarmed guide leading, and the mail-clad rider
bringing up the rear. Each after each, lower they sank and lower,
their horses struggling and rolling in the surge. Now their croupes,
now their withers disappeared from the eyes of the beholders; now the
necks only of the horses and the bodies of the riders were visible
above the wash. A moment of suspense, almost intolerable, for every
one of those mute gazers felt that he was looking on the counterpart
and perfect picture of what must in a few minutes, more or less, be
his own fate also! A moment, and the guide's horse struggled upward,
his withers reappeared, his croupe--he had cleared the channel, he was
safe. A light page followed him, with the like success; two half-armed
troopers followed; already, presaging safety, a shout of exultation
trembled on the lips of the spectators, when the mail-clad rider on
his heavy horse reached the mid-passage--reached the spot where his
horse should have gradually emerged--then in an instant, in the
twinkling of an eye, before one could breathe a sigh or syllable, a
last "God save him"--he sank, sheer and sudden, as if the bottom had
yawned under him, and without an effort, a cry, a struggle, was sucked
under.
He was there--he was gone; never more to be seen above the face of the
waters. At the same instant, just as they uttered one wild cry of
horror and despair, or ere they could turn their horses' heads
landward, a deep, cold, wet wind breathed upon them; a gray mist swept
down on them, out-running the trampling squadrons of the foamy waves;
a fierce hail storm smote them; and, in an instant, every
thing--shores, billows, skies--vanished from them, wrapped in utter
gloom. Then they dispersed, each struggling through the
rapidly-mounting waters in that direction which he fancied, in his
blindness, should be shoreward. No one of them met other, more, in
this world.
Strange it is to tell, but truths are ofttimes very strange, stranger
than fiction, at that sharp, awful cry, wrenched by the horrible
catastrophe of their comrade from the souls of his pursuers, aroused
from the stupor which had fallen upon him, between the excess of
weariness and the extremity of despair, Eadwulf raised his head. He
saw the white surf tossing and breaking furiously in the distance; he
saw the long line of deep, unbroken, swelling water, which had not
been driven up from the sea, but had gushed and welled upward through
the pores of the saturated sand, rolling in five feet abreast, far in
advance of the white rollers; swifter than either, darker and more
terrible, he saw the ink-black, ragged hail-storm, a mere mist on the
waters' surface--but, above, a contorted pile of solid, convoluted
clouds, driving in, like a hurricane, before the breath of the rushing
southeaster.
But, in that one lightning glance, he saw also, on the dark polished
surface of the smooth water, in advance of the breakers, under the
storm-cloud, a long black object, hurrying down before wind and tide,
with speed exceeding that of the fleetest race horse, right upon the
spot where he sat, despairing. He recognized it, at once, for one of
the leathern coracles, as they were called, or rude fishing-boats of
the natives of those wild and stormy shores; the rudest perhaps, but
at the same time the most buoyant and seaworthy of boats. She was
empty, he saw that at a glance, and rode the waves, outstripping the
breakers, gallantly. Could he reach her, he might yet be saved.
He sat erect on his rock, resolute, with every nerve quivering with
intense excitement, with every faculty braced, ready for the last
exertion.
The cloud fell on him black as midnight; the fierce wind smote his
elf-locks, making them stream and shiver in its currents; the cutting
hail lashed him with arrowy keenness. Quickly as it came, it passed;
and a gleam of troubled sunshine shimmered through a rent in the black
storm, and glanced like a hopeful smile upon the waters. In that
momentary brilliance, the wretch caught a glimpse of the black boat,
floating past his solitary rock, and without an instant's hesitation,
rushing waist deep into the frothy eddies, fought his way, he never
well knew how, through surge and quicksand, till he had caught her by
the gunwale. Then, spurning the yielding sands with a tremendous
effort, he leaped, or hurled himself rather, into her, and lay for a
breathing-space motionless, and stunned by the very perception of the
strange vicissitude to which he owed his safety.
But it was no time for self-indulgence; and, ignorant as he was,
semi-barbarous, and half-brutalized, he perceived the nature of the
crisis. The oars or paddles by which the coracle was impelled were
lashed by thongs to her row-locks, and, getting them out at once,
Eadwulf plied them vigorously, keeping her right stern before the
entering tide, and pulling with all his might, to outstrip the combing
of each successive roller.
For a short space, the glimmer in the air continued; then the mist
gathered down again, and all was gloom, except the white caps of the
breakers, tossing and shivering in the twilight. But it was now mist
only; the wind had sunk, and the storm-cloud been driven landward.
And now, so dexterously had the serf managed his little vessel, that,
as he shot away from each combing sea-cap, the surges had swept under
instead of over him, and he found himself riding buoyantly on the
long, gentle swell, while the surf, gradually subsiding, ran up the
sands, murmuring hoarsely far before him.
Suddenly, close ahead of him, not as it seemed ten yards from the bow
of the boat, there arose an angry clash of steel, a loud cry, "Jesu!
Jesu Maria!" and a deep groan; and, the next instant, the body of a
riderless horse, with its head half submerged, panting and snorting
out its last agonies, was swept so close to his vessel that he could
have touched it with the oar. One other minute, and a light air was
felt sensibly; the mist began to lift and shiver; the darkness seemed
to melt, and to be penetrated and imbued with the sunbeams, till it
resembled a gauzy screen interposed before a strong light.
Another moment, and it rose bodily from the water, floated upward into
the skies, and left all below laughing, clear in the sunlight. There
was no sand now to be seen, save a narrow yellow stripe on the edge of
the soft verdant points, which stretched out from the shores of
Westmoreland, sparkling in the sun and glittering in the rain-drops,
into the broad bosom of Morecambe Bay, which was now filled with the
tide, though it had not as yet nearly risen to its highest mark--but
here and there, at intervals, dark spots showed in the expanse of
waters, where the tops of the highest sand-banks were scarcely
submerged at all, on which the gentle eddies rippled and sparkled, as
wavelet after wavelet rolled in by its own mounting impulse, but
hastened by no angry gust or turbulent billow.
On one of these sand-banks, having so long escaped, Heaven knows how,
quicksands and breakers, and having made his way thus far landward,
sat a tall, powerful man-at-arms, sheathed from head to heel in a
complete panoply of chain mail. His horse was likewise caparisoned in
the heaviest bardings--chamfront and poitrel, steel demipique and
bard proper--nothing was wanting of the heaviest caparison with which
charger or man ever rode into the tilt-yard or mêlée.
The tide was already above the horse's belly, and the rider's plated
shoes and mail hose were below the surface. Deep water was around him
on every side, the nearest shore a mile distant, and to swim fifty
yards, much less a mile, under that weight of steel, was impossible;
still he sat there, waiting his doom, silent and impassive.
He was the last of the pursuers; he alone of the two parties, who but
three short hours before had spurred so fiercely in pursuit of the
wretched slave, had escaped the fate of Pharaoh and his host, when the
Red Sea closed above them. He alone breathed the breath of life; and
he, certain of death, awaited it with that calm composure, which comes
to the full as much of artificial training as of innate valor.
As the clouds lifted, this solitary man saw, at once, the boat
approaching, and saw who rowed it--saw rescue close at hand, yet at
the same time saw it impossible. His face had hardly the time to relax
into one gleam of hope, before it again settled down into the iron
apathy of despair.
The coracle swept up abreast of him, then paused, as Eadwulf, half
unconsciously, rested on his oars, and gazed into the despairing and
blank features of his enemy. It was the seneschal of Waltheofstow, the
brother of the man whom he had slain in the forest.
Their eyes met, they recognized each other, and each shuddered at the
recognition. For a moment, neither spake; but, after a short, bitter
pause, it was the rider who broke silence.
"So, it is thou, Saxon dog, who alone hast escaped from this
destruction!"
"It is I, man-hunter. Where are thy boasts and threats now? Why dost
not ask the serf, now, for life, for mercy?"
"Because thou couldst not give it, if thou wouldst; and wouldst not,
if thou couldst. Go thy way, go thy way! We shall meet one day, in
that place whither our deeds will carry us. Go thy way, unless thou
wouldst stay, and look how a Norman dies. I fear neither death, nor
thee. Go thy way, and the fiend go with thee."
And, with the word, he went his way, coldly, sternly, pitilessly, and
in silence; for he felt, in truth, that the seneschal had spoken
truly, that he could not save him if he would, unless he would save
his own sworn destroyer. Sullenly, slowly, he rowed onward, reached
the land; and still, as he looked back, with his horse's neck and his
armed trunk eminent above the level waters, glittering in his bright
mail, sat the fearless rider. Wearied and utterly exhausted, both in
mind and body, the serf gazed, half-remorsefully, at the man whom he
had so mercilessly abandoned to his fate, and who bore it so sternly,
awaiting the last inevitable moment with more than a stoic's fortitude
and pride. For a moment he hesitated whether he should pursue his
journey; but an irresistible fascination compelled him to sit down and
await the end, and he did so.
And there those two sat, face to face, at a mile's distance, for a
long half hour, in plain view, each almost fancying that he could
peruse the features, almost fancying that he could read the thoughts
of his enemy--each in agony of soul, and he, perhaps, in the greater
anguish who had escaped, as it would seem, all peril, and for whom
death seemed to wait, distant and unseen, at the end of a far
perspective.
At the termination of half an hour, there was a motion, a strife--the
water had reached the nostrils of the charger. He tossed his head a
few times, angrily; then, after rearing once or twice, with his rider
yet erect in his saddle, subsided into deep water, and all was over.
Eadwulf crept away up the bank, found a thick dingle in the wood, and,
coiling himself up in its densest spot, slept, dreamless and
unrepentant, until the morrow's sun was high in heaven.