She did not answer me; she had already started her dolphin. Like shadows in the gloom, silently, without a ripple of the water as we slipped through it, we followed close after the Maagog invading army.
CHAPTER XXVIII
To Gahna. It took us a long while to get there, for the Maagog army advanced slowly. Following the lights we found ourselves descending at once to the sea-bottom. These Maagogs, lumbering and ungainly, were poor swimmers; the line of them was walking along the bottom.
It made my heart leap to realize that. What match would they be for us Marinoids in battle—our men so active in the water—our alert girls on the dolphins. We would cut them to pieces . . . would rout . . .
I whispered my thoughts to Nona.
“Be not too sure, my Nemo,” she said soberly. “It may be so but first we must do what we are now planning.”
We went on, through the forest road where the Maagogs had tramped aside the tall, tenuous growth of foliage. It was much dimmer in here. Beside us the trees and ferns spread as a dark lacework of green and brown. They met overhead, wavering, tenuous, but impenetrable to our sight.
What a spot for ambush! A thousand hiding-places all about us. An army could lurk here in ambush unseen.
It is very easy to look backwards upon life and say what should have been done. We Marinoids—how stupidly we had done things! Our army—if it had been organized and ready—could have lurked here in this dark forest . . . leaped upon the Maagogs . . . defeated them at once in one great surprise attack . . .
“What?” I whispered.