Mr. Barcroft thanked the man for his information and set out briskly upon his way. Twilight had already set in, to add to the difficulties of the last stage of the journey of the intrepid Peter. Ahead rose the steep hill terminating in a frowning cliff—the first of three such ridges that lay betwixt him and Scarby. Away on his left he could discern a momentary glimpse of the North Sea, now grey and sullen and mottled by patches of fog that drifted slowly with the faint westerly breeze.
At a mile from Tongby railway station he struck the fork roads. The one to the left was the cliff-path, an almost grass-grown track, marked at regular intervals by whitewashed stones—necessary guides for the coastguards on a pitch-black night when a false step might hurl the incautious pedestrian to his death over the brink of a three-hundred-foot cliff. The right-hand way was a little better, although, judging by its condition, rarely used except by country carts. On either side the ground was rugged and thickly covered with gorse.
Wilder grew the countryside as Peter breasted the first of the three hills. Stunted trees, standing out against the crimson afterglow of the sky, assumed weird and fantastic shapes. To the faint moaning of the wind and the murmur of the sea came an accompaniment in the form of the cries of countless seabirds that find a nesting-place in the frowning face of those almost perpendicular cliffs.
Inland all was darkness. The narrow valleys contained human habitations, no doubt, but there was not a sign of their presence.
Peter's thoughts turned to his son as he looked seaward. Somewhere out there—it might be a matter of a few miles or of hundreds—Billy was serving King and country, perhaps snugly sheltered in the "Hippodrome's" wardroom, or, on the other hand, cutting through the darkness at an altitude of several hundred feet. It was not a pleasant task on a late autumnal night. With his trained imagination Peter could picture his boy out there—simply because of the German Emperor's insane ambition.
"Not content to let well alone," soliloquised Peter, "even when the German Empire was on the high road to commercial success and internal prosperity, the All Highest must butt in and try to upset everything. Incidentally Wilhelm has done the British Empire a lasting service. He has cemented it far more effectively than centuries of legislation. He has welded it into a homogeneous whole; he has awakened every Briton worthy of the name to a sense of his individual responsibility to the colossal task that confronts him. And, by Jove, we mean to see this business through. No half measures. A lasting peace built upon the ruins of German militarism."
Peter's reveries were suddenly interrupted by the sound of creaking cart-wheels and the steady patter of a beast of burden.
"Wonder if that is Butterfly?" he thought. "Now, if Mr. Pattercough is of the same type as friend Stigler and a bit of a tough customer I'd best lie low. Somehow I hardly like to argue the point about the lawful ownership of a donkey in this desolate spot."
There were plenty of places of concealment. Barcroft selected the shelter afforded by a gorse-bush close to the left hand side of the road. Immediately opposite was a beaten track that evidently effected a junction with the cliff path. At any rate, it wound in that direction, following the steeply sloping sides of a narrow, rugged valley.
The cart approached slowly. The driver seemed in no hurry, for he made no attempt either by word of mouth or by the application of his whip to hasten the animal. Only when the vehicle was opposite Peter's place of concealment did the man utter a subdued "Woa."