It was now a dewy morning, a morning without clouds, and the sparse, benty grass on the sand-hills was still spangled with diamond points innumerable. The sun rose over the woods through which they had passed, and its level, heatless rays beat upon the crescent over-curl of the sand-waves as on the foam of a breaker when it bends to the fall.
"See you any stronghold where we may keep ourselves against these rascals, if they manage to attack us?" cried Wat, from the hollow up to Scarlett, who had the higher ground.
"Pshaw!" he returned, "what need to speak of escape? They will follow the track of the horses as easily as a road with finger-posts. Find us they will. Better that we should betake us to some knowe-top, where, at least, we can keep a defence. But I see not even a rickle of stones, where we might have some chance to stand it out till the nightfall."
By the advice of Scarlett they dismounted from their horses, and taking their weapons they left their weary beasts tethered to a blighted stump of a tree which the sands had surrounded and killed. Here the animals were to some extent concealed by the nature of the ground, unless the pursuers should approach very near or ascend the summits of the highest ridges in the neighborhood.
The young girl had all along betrayed no anxiety, nor showed so much as a trace of emotion or fatigue.
"It was in such a country as this I dwelt in my youth," she said, quietly, "and I understand the ways of the dunes."
So without question on their part she led them forward carefully and swiftly on foot, keeping ever to that part of the ridge where the benty grass had bound the sands most closely together. Now they ascended so as to take the loose sandy pass between two ridges. Again they descended into the cool bottoms where the sun had not yet penetrated, and where a bite of chill air still lingered in the shadows, while the dew lay thick on the coarse herbage and slaked the surface of the sand.
The sun had fully risen when, still led by the girl, they issued out upon the outermost sea edge, and heard the waves crisping and chattering on a curving beach of pebble. The ruins of an ancient watch-tower crowned a neighboring hillock. Doubtless it had been a redoubt or petty fortalice against the Spaniards, built in the old days of the Beggars. It was now almost ruinous, and at one point the wall threatened momentarily to give way. For the wind had undermined the shifting foundations, and part of the masonry seemed actually to overhang the narrow defile of sand and coarse grass through which the little party passed.
"Think ye that tower anywise defensible?" asked Marie, pointing up at it with her finger.
Without answering at once, Scarlett climbed up to the foot of the wall and, skirting it to the broken-down gateway, he entered.