Mr. Curwen stepped over to my side. The sandhills stretched before us, white under the moon, and with a whisper from the grasses which crowned them. I found a cheering comfort in their very desolation. Beyond the sandhills, the sea leaped and called, tossing to and fro a hundred jewelled arms. I felt my heart leaping with the waves, answering their call, and the fresh brine went stinging through my veins.
"Northwards," I cried, reaching out an arm, "round the point there, up the coast, beyond Morecambe Bay the Swallow waits for us. It is no great distance, Mr. Curwen. God save Lord Bolingbroke, who betrayed the Catalans!" I heard my voice ring with an exultation I had not known for many a day. I strained my eyes northwards along the sea. It seemed to my heated fancies, that the barrier of the shores fell back. My vision leaped over cape and bay, and where the Esk poured into the sea by Muncaster Fell I seemed to see the Swallow, its black mast tapering across the moon; I seemed to hear the grinding of its cable as it strained against the anchor.
Then very quickly Mr. Curwen spoke at my side.
"There is my daughter. In this great hope of ours, are we not forgetting her?"
"Nay," I replied, "it is of your daughter I am thinking. You trust your captain, you say? You trust your captain will be waiting now? If so, he will be waiting a fortnight's time; he waits until I come." I drew Mr. Curwen back to the table.
"Look you, Mr. Curwen, I marched with Mr. Forster from the outset of the rising. We crossed from the Cheviots into England on the 1st of November; we proclaimed King James in Preston Market-square upon the 10th. Nine days enclosed our march, and we marched in force. There were other necessities beyond that of speed to order our advance. There was food to be requisitioned, towns to be chosen for a camp wherein our troops could quarter. At Penrith, at Appleby, we drew up for battle. All this meant delay. Some of us rode, no doubt, but our pace was the pace of those who walked. And, mark, nine days enclosed our march. A man alone and free to choose his path would shear two days from that nine, maybe three. I cannot choose my path, there will be hindrances. I must travel for the chief part by night. But I have not so far to go. Grant me nine days, then! It is the sixteenth—nay, the seventeenth. On the twenty-sixth I should be knocking at the door of Applegarth."
"Nay," said he, "you will be captured. You have risked enough for us, more than enough. Mr. Clavering, I cannot permit that you should go."
"Yet," said I, with a smile, "you will find that easier than to prevent me. You told me of a safe route between Applegarth and Ravenglass," I continued. "How long will it take a woman to traverse it?"
"I called it safe," he answered doubtfully, making dots upon the paper with the point of his pencil, "because it stretched along the watersheds. But that was in September. Now it may be there will be snow."
The winter indeed had fallen early that year. Yes, the snow might be deep on the hills. I had a picture before my eyes of Dorothy struggling through it.