The cart set off. The mud was up to the axle-tree. It was slow work getting through it.
The rest of the party were busy dragging their tents out of the mire, and loading their own cart with their traps as fast as they could, fumbling in the dark, knee-deep in slush and mud.
As Beauty pulled his way through for an hour or more, the muddy rain diminished, the earth grew hard and dry. The children breathed more freely as the fresh sea-breeze encountered the clouds of burning dust, which seemed now to predominate over the mud.
They could hear the second cart rumbling behind them. The poor fellow who had been struck by the lightning began to speak, entreating his comrades to lay him somewhere quiet. "My head, my head!" he moaned. "Stop this shaking."
By-and-by they reached a hut. They were entering one of the great sheep-runs, where the rabbiters had been recently at work. Here the carts drew up, and roused its solitary inmate. One of the rabbiters came round and told Hal they had best part company.
"There are plenty of bold young fellows among Feltham's shepherds. We are off to the great house to tell him, and we'll give the alarm as we go. He'll send a party off to the hills as soon as ever he hears of this awful business. A lot of us may force a way. We'll take this side of the run: you go the other till you find somewhere safe to leave these children. Wake up the shepherds in every hut you pass, and send them on to meet us at Feltham's. If we are back by daylight we shall do," they argued.
"Agreed," said the old man. "We can't better that. Dilworth and the traps had best wait here. He will sleep this off," he added, looking compassionately at his stricken comrade.
Out came the shepherd, a tall, gentlemanly young fellow, who had passed his "little-go" at Trinity, got himself "ploughed" like Ottley, and so went in for the southern hemisphere and the shepherd's crook.
Pale and livid with the horror of the lone night-watch in his solitary hermitage, he caught the full import of the direful tidings at a word. His bed and his rations were alike at their service. He whistled up his horse and dog, and rode off at a breakneck gallop, to volunteer for the relief-party, and send the ill news a little faster to his master's door, for his fresh horse soon outstripped the rabbiters' cart. Meanwhile old Hal drove onward towards the sea. A shepherd met him and joined company, breathless for his explanation of all the terrors which had driven him from his bed. He blamed Mr. Lee for his foolhardiness in venturing on alone into such danger.
Freed at last from the clayey slime, Beauty rattled on apace. Cuthbert was fast asleep, and Edwin was nodding, but Audrey was wide awake. She gathered from the conversation of the men fresh food for fear. The "run" they were crossing was a large one. She thought they called it Feltham's. It extended for some miles along the sea-shore, and Audrey felt sure they must have journeyed ten or fifteen miles at least since they entered it. Thirteen thousand sheep on run needed no small company of shepherds. Many of them lived at the great house with Mr. Feltham; others were scattered here and there all over the wide domain, each in his little shanty. Yet most of them were the sons of gentlemen, certain to respond to the rabbiters' call. Again the cart drew up, and a glimmer of firelight showed her the low thatched roof of another shanty. Hal called loudly to a friend inside.