“Where shall we meet and fight?” said Mark Antony.
“Silence,” shouted Bevis, “or I’ll degrade you from your rank, and you shan’t be officers.”
They were silent, but every one was looking for Pompey and thinking just the same. There was the gate in full view now, and the smoke of Pompey’s camp, but none of the enemy were visible. Bevis was thinking and trying to make out whether Pompey was waiting by his camp, or whether he had gone round behind the hedge, and if so, which way, to the right towards the quarry, or to the left towards the copse, but he could not decide, having nothing to guide him.
But though uncertain in his own mind, he was general enough not to let the army suppose him in doubt. He strode on in silence, but keeping the sharpest watch, till they came to the waggon track, crossing the field from left to right. It had worn a gully or hollow way leading down to the right to the hazel hedge, where there was a gate. They came to the edge of the hollow way, where there were three thick hawthorn bushes and two small ash-trees.
“Halt!” said Caesar Bevis, as the bushes partly concealed them from view. “Stay here. Let no one move.”
Bevis himself went round the trees and looked again, but he could see nothing: Pompey and his army were nowhere in sight. He could not tell what to do, and returned slowly, thinking, when looking down the hollow way an idea struck him.
“Scipio, take your men,”—(“Cohort,” said Antony)—“take your cohort, jump into the road, and go down to the gate there. Keep out of sight—stoop: slip through the gate, and go up inside the hedge, dart round the corner and seize Ted’s camp. Quick! And mind, if they’re all there, of course you’re not to fight, but come back. Now—quick.”
Scipio Cecil jumped into the hollow way followed by his five soldiers, and stooping so as to be hidden by the bank, ran towards the gate in the hazel hedge. They watched him till the cohort had got through the gate.
“Now what shall we do?” said Mark Antony.
“How can I tell what to do when Pompey isn’t anywhere?” said Bevis, in a rage.