"Then open the gate, and be quick about it," I snapped.
"Let us wait until Sov comes," he suggested. "There will be time enough
then."
"There is no time to be lost, fellow. Open up, as I command. The
Vepajan prisoner has just escaped, and Sov and I are going out with a
party of warriors to search for him."
Still the obstinate fellow hesitated; and then we heard a great
shouting from the direction from which we had come, and I guessed that
the fellow who had passed us in the corridor had discovered the dead
body of Moosko and given the alarm.
We could hear men running. There was no more time to be lost.
"Here comes Sov with the searching party," I cried. "Throw open
the gates, you fool, or it will go ill with you." I drew my sword,
intending to run him through if he did not obey.
As finally, he turned to do my bidding, I heard the excited voices of
the approaching men grow louder as they neared us. I could not see them
yet for the rain, but as the gate swung open I glimpsed the oncoming
figures through the murk.
Taking Duare by the arm I started through the gate. The sentry was
still suspicious and wanted to stop us, but he was not sure of himself.
"Tell Sov to hurry," I said, and before the man could bolster his
courage to do his duty, Duare and I hastened into the outer darkness
and were lost to his view in the rain.
It was my intention to reach the coast and follow along it until
daylight, when, I hoped and prayed, we should sight the Sofal off shore
and be able to contrive a means of signaling to her.
We groped our way through the darkness and the rain during all that
terrible night. No sound of pursuit reached our ears, nor did we come
upon the ocean.
The rain ceased about dawn, and when full daylight came we looked
eagerly for the sea, but only low hills and rolling country dotted with
trees and a distant forest where we had thought the sea to be rewarded
our straining eyes.
"Where is the sea?" asked Duare.
"I do not know," I admitted.
Only at sunrise and at sunset, for a few minutes, is it possible to
differentiate between the points of the compass on Venus; then the
direction of the sun is faintly indicated by a slightly intensified
light along the eastern or the western horizon.
And now the sun was rising at our left, when it should have been upon
our right were we going in the direction that I believed the ocean to
be.
My heart sank in my breast, for I knew that we were lost.
V