With heart beating violently and nerves strung to their highest tension, Ridgeway led the way to the river. He was as confident of victory as if he were returning from the pass with the result out of doubt. Reaching the river, his men plunged into the water and swam across, not waiting for the canoes. He and the king were rowed over, meeting the swimmers as they came up from the bank, dripping and puffing. Again the march was resumed, and within fifteen minutes the band was at the foot of the hills. Here Hugh called a halt.
With Pootoo and a dozen men he went forward to take a look down the long gorge. All torches were extinguished and absolute silence was enforced. The scouting party failed to hear a sound except the cries of night birds and their own heavy breathing. All nature seemed to be resting for the struggle that was to come.
Six fleet fellows were sent over the hills to skirt the edge of the pass for its full length, a mile or more. They were to wait at the opposite end until the enemy revealed its approach and then hurry back with the alarm. Returning to the waiting army, Hugh and the king began the work of assigning the men to their places. Two hundred were stationed in the trenches and behind the breastworks at the mouth of the pass, ready to intercept those of the enemy who succeeded in escaping the boulders and spears from the hilltops. These men stacked their spears behind them and then, at the command of the king, who had been instructed by the Izor, laid themselves upon the ground to sleep. This was an innovation in warfare so great that open rebellion was threatened. The novices in civilized and scientific fighting were fully convinced that the enemy was nowhere in sight and that they would be called when the proper moment came.
Then came the manning of the four hundred boulders on the top of the hills. All along the line of heavy rocks men were stationed with instructions to roll them into the pass when the signal was given, Both sides of the pass were lined with these boulders, The king was as near in ecstasies over the arrangements as one of his nature could possibly be. He prostrated himself a dozen times before the wonderfully clever genius who was in command, twice bumping his head against exceedingly hard rocks that he had been unable to see when he began his precipitous collapse to reverence.
It was after midnight before the army in ambush was ready for the conflict. Hugh was amazed to find the men cool and submissive, obeying every order that he managed in some way to convey to them. With everything in readiness there was nothing to do but to wait for the crisis, so he threw himself on the grass at the top of the highest point on the ridge near the opening to the valley, and tried to sleep.
While he reclined there, thinking of a sweet-faced woman and her Reserves, fully eighteen hundred warriors were stealthily coming up from the sea. Six wakeful sentinels were waiting for them.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE LADY TENNYS RESERVES
The night passed. One, two, three o'clock went by on the trip to sunrise. Hugh dozed at times despite the strain on his nerves. When at last he arose to stretch himself, he saw the faint gray meeting and mingling with the black in the skies, and knew that the crisis was almost at hand.