The only difficulty Mark had was with his flannel front, because one of the tapes vanished like a worm into its hole, and nothing in his armoury was at once long enough and pointed enough to hook it out again. Finally he decided that at such an early hour of the morning it would not matter if he went out exposing his vest, and soon he was wandering in that enchanted shrubbery of rhododendrons, alternating between imagining it to be the cave of Aladdin or the beach where Sinbad found all the pebbles to be precious stones. He wandered down hill through the thicket, listening with a sense of satisfaction to the increasing squelchiness of the peaty soil and feeling when the blackbirds fled at his approach with shrill quack and flapping wings much more like a hunter than he ever felt in the nursery at Lima Street. He resolved to bring his gun with him next time. This was just the place to find a hippopotamus, or even a crocodile. Mark had reached the bottom of the slope and discovered a dark sluggish stream full of decayed vegetable matter which was slowly oozing on its course. Or even a crocodile, he thought again; and he looked carefully at a half-submerged log. Or even a crocodile . . . yes, but people had often thought before that logs were not crocodiles and had not discovered their mistake until they were half way down the crocodile's throat. It had been amusing to fancy the existence of crocodiles when he was still close to the Vicarage, but suppose after all that there really were crocodiles living down here? Feeling a little ashamed of his cowardice, but glossing it over with an assumption of filial piety, Mark turned to go back through the rhododendrons so as not to be late for breakfast. He would find out if any crocodiles had been seen about here lately, and if they had not, he would bring out his gun and . . . suddenly Mark was turned inside out by terror, for not twenty yards away there was without any possibility of self-deception a wild beast something between an ant-eater and a laughing hyena that with nose to the ground was evidently pursuing him, and what was worse was between him and home. There flashed through Mark's mind the memories of what other hunters had done in such situations, what ruses they had adopted if unarmed, what method of defence if armed; but in the very instant of the panoramic flash Mark did what countless uncelebrated hunters must have done, he ran in the opposition direction from his enemy. In this case it meant jumping over the stream, crocodile or not, and tearing his away through snowberries and brambles until he emerged on the moors at the bottom of the valley.
It was not until he had put half a dozen small streams between himself and the unknown beast that Mark paused to look round. Behind him the valley was lost in a green curve; before him another curve shut out the ultimate view. On his left the slope of the valley rose to the sky in tiers of blazing yellow gorse; to his right he could see the thickets through which he had emerged upon this verdant solitude. But beyond the thickets there was no sign of the Vicarage. There was not a living thing in sight; there was nothing except the song of larks high up and imperceptible against the steady morning sun that shed a benign warmth upon the world, and particularly upon the back of Mark's neck when he decided that his safest course was to walk in the direction of the valley's gradual widening and to put as many more streams as he could between him and the beast. Having once wetted himself to the knees, he began to take a pleasure in splashing through the vivid wet greenery. He wondered what he should behold at the next curve of the valley; without knowing it he began to walk more slowly, for the beauty of the day was drowsing his fears; the spell of earth was upon him. He walked more slowly, because he was passing through a bed of forget-me-nots, and he could not bear to blind one of those myriad blue eyes. He chose most carefully the destination of each step, and walking thus he did not notice that the valley would curve no more, but was opening at last. He looked up in a sudden consciousness of added space, and there serene as the sky above was spread the sea. Yesterday from the train Mark had had what was actually his first view of the sea; but the rain had taken all the colour out of it, and he had been thrilled rather by the word than by the fact. Now the word was nothing, the fact was everything. There it was within reach of him, blue as the pictures always made it. The streams of the valley had gathered into one, and Mark caring no more what happened to the forget-me-nots ran along the bank. This morning when the stream reached the shore it broke into twenty limpid rivulets, each one of which ploughed a separate silver furrow across the glistening sand until all were merged in ocean, mighty father of streams and men. Mark ran with the rivulets until he stood by the waves' edge. All was here of which he had read, shells and seaweed, rocks and cliffs and sand; he felt like Robinson Crusoe when he looked round him and saw nothing to break the solitude. Every point of the compass invited exploration and promised adventure. That white road running northward and rising with the cliffs, whither did it lead, what view was outspread where it dipped over the brow of the high table-land and disappeared into the naked sky beyond? The billowy towans sweeping up from the beach appeared to him like an illimitable prairie on which buffaloes and bison might roam. Whither led the sandy track, the summit of whose long diagonal was lost in the brightness of the morning sky? And surely that huddled grey building against an isolated green cliff must be grandfather's church of which his mother had often told him. Mark walked round the stone walls that held up the little churchyard and, entering by a gate on the farther side, he looked at the headstones and admired the feathery tamarisks that waved over the tombs. He was reading an inscription more legible than most on a headstone of highly polished granite, when he heard a voice behind him say:
"You mind what you're doing with that grave. That's my granfa's grave, that is, and if you touch it, I'll knock 'ee down."
Mark looked round and beheld a boy of about his own age and size in a pair of worn corduroy knickerbockers and a guernsey, who was regarding him from fierce blue eyes under a shock of curly yellow hair.
"I'm not touching it," Mark explained. Then something warned him that he must assert himself, if he wished to hold his own with this boy, and he added:
"But if I want to touch it, I will."
"Will 'ee? I say you won't do no such a thing then."
Mark seized the top of the headstone as firmly as his small hands would allow him and invited the boy to look what he was doing.
"Lev go," the boy commanded.
"I won't," said Mark.