“Thirty years ago I had the vision, and you know it, men and neighbours.”
“Yes, yes, true for you, Enoch Lale,” answered many a voice in the crowd; chiefly this response came from elderly persons who had doubtless heard the tale many a time.
“But I haven’t heard it. I wasn’t born then,” I remarked.
Whether Enoch Lale heard this gentle protest, or whether he was resolved not to be baulked of his story, I cannot say. “I only know,” he continued, “I had a vision of the night, and the future was revealed to me in a dream; yea, and more than a dream, for I rose up out of my bed and went down on to the rocks and there—on Carreg Gwastad—the French troops landed, and I saw them—aye, as plain as ever any of you saw them two days ago. And that was thirty years ago, yet it has come true! But wait, and listen! and ye shall hear the brass drums sounding, as I heard them sound that night! Listen! Listen!”
“Come down off that cart and be quiet, Enoch Lale, or you’ll be having a fit. We all know, you’ve told your dream often enough; why you woke me up that very night to tell it.”
And the prophet was taken possession of by a quiet elderly woman, his better half.
“Well, we got rid of old I-told-you-so rather suddenly,” I observed to Jemima. “But it is very queer about his dream.”
“There’s a many things,” replied Jemima, “as we don’t know nothing about—and dreams is one of them.”
It was marvellous to watch the gathering of troops and people. The hills to the south of the bay were covered with peasant men, and the red-whittled women who had done such good service to their country, and whose conduct has never been rewarded by any faintest token of gratitude or even of recognition by that country.
At the foot of these hills came a marsh, bounded by a road on the other side of which were the famous sands—where were stationed in a compact body the Castle Martin Yeomanry Cavalry. Ere long these men were drawn out of their trim ranks for a difficult and dangerous duty; but of that anon.