He kept her pace, not in response to her reckless spirit, but for fear of what might happen, with the desperate hope of averting disaster. They flew down the field toward the thunder of the sea, with the sun and the salt wind strong in their eyes; crashed through the hedge; scrambled down into a road, up the sandy bank on the other side, through the scrub-oaks with a rush, and at once the salt-meadows were before them, their skirts of cypress black on a purple sea. Over the ocean a white arm of fog extended stealthily. Its thin forefinger pointed landward. Already the first films were caught on ragged pine and crooked cypress, like flying shreds of veil.
“That’ll cut us short,” said Thair, frowning seaward.
“It won’t be in till night,” said Julia, pricking her mare till the creature bounded.
“In an hour,” Thair decided. “We won’t make the cypress plantation.”
She spurred forward. “We’ll finish by five,” she called back. “We can ride through a hedge—we can ride through a mist.”
“A ditch in a fog,” muttered Thair. “Not me!”
“We can ride like the devil and get through!” decided the M. F. H. “The damned dogs are off the scent again!”
Below, among the tussocks of the first meadow, the pack were whimpering, mingling, starting off on a false scent—returning, fawning, leaping up on Julia riding to and fro among them. The exasperated whipper-in beat at them. The four other riders came stringing over the rise among the sand-hummocks.
“What’s up?”
“Oh, dear, have they lost the scent?”