“We left the sea behind us,” said Mark. “The compass took us right away from it.”
“We began wrong somehow,” said Bevis. In fact they had walked in a long curve, so that when they thought the New Sea was on Mark’s right, it was really on his left hand. “I must put down on the map that people must go west, not east, or they will never get round.”
“It must be thousands of miles round,” said Mark; “thousands and thousands.”
“So it is,” said Bevis, “and only to think nobody ever saw it before you and me.”
“What a long way we can see,” said Mark, pointing to where the horizon and the blue wooded plain below, beyond the sea, became hazy together. “What country is that?”
“I do not know; no one has ever been there.”
“Which way is England?” asked Mark.
“How can I tell when I don’t know where we are?”
The ash sprays touching each other formed a green surface beneath them, extending to the right and left—a green surface into which every now and then a wood-pigeon plunged, closing his wings as the sea-birds dive into the sea. They sat in the shadow of the great beech, and the wind, coming up over the wood, blew cool against their faces. The swallows had left the sky, to go down and glide over the rising waves below.
“Come on,” said Bevis, incapable of rest unless he was dreaming. “If we keep along the top of the hill we shall know where we are going, and perhaps see a way round presently.”