The men quartered in our house were astir early, and perhaps their heavy footfalls had more to do with rousing me than my own excitability. Still quick-silver seemed to be running about all over me as I hastily swallowed my breakfast—which, however, I did full justice to—and then rushed out of the house to join everybody else on the road to Goodwick. What a throng there was! Every man, woman, and child in Fishguard and all the country round seemed to have turned out, and to be making for the great sands at Goodwick. The people gathered from every direction, east, west, and south, until the semi-circle of hills was dark with them. Chiefly, however, the throng came from the east and south, for Trehowel lay to the west, and there were but few of the natives left in that direction; besides which the steep white road that mounts the hill on that side of the sands was left clear for the descent of the enemy. No one wished to interfere with them needlessly; quite the contrary: at all events, till they had got within reach of our trained men. In the meantime we would give them a wide berth lest they should turn and rend us.
Suddenly a wild voice and a wild figure smote our senses—both eyes and ears.
“The dream, the dream!” it yelled. “The dream is coming true!”
“What dream? What is it?” asked every one, but there were more askers than answerers.
“Use your ears and listen!” continued the wild voice. “Use your eyes and see!”
“Whoever is he, Jemima?” I asked, finding myself near a reliable woman. Nancy stood some little way off leaning against a cart.
“Why, it’s old Enoch Lale,” said Jemima. “I know him well enough, he lives over there under Trehowel, by Carreg Gwastad, just where these blacks landed.”
Why Jemima always persisted in calling the French “blacks,” I know not; possibly because they were foreigners, possibly she meant blackguards.
“My dream! I told it to ye, unbelieving race, aye, thirty years ago!” yelled the old man.
“’Deed, that’s true for him,” remarked Jemima. “I heard him tell it many a time, years and years ago. Well, I always thought he was soft, but now he seems real raving.”