Haxo and his party were manifestly discouraged by their misfortune, and still more by the immunity of their unseen foe. What had happened once might very well happen again. Nevertheless, trusting to their numbers, they came on with still more infinite pains, Haxo himself climbing a high dune and crying directions to his men how they were to advance by this pass and that dell, in which from his post of vantage he could be certain that no enemy lurked.
[CHAPTER XX]
CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN
Marie had made good her retreat till she halted within a few hundred yards of the little fort where Wat and Scarlett kept their watch. Here she lay crouched behind a bush of broom which had escaped the general destruction as the shifting sand advanced, and which had made good its position by associating itself with stubborn clumps of pink and sea-holly. For these are both brave, self-helpful plants, and can bind the sand together with their own proper roots without the aid of bent-grass. Behind this ambuscade Marie crouched, and Wat would have descended to her assistance but that Scarlett forcibly withheld him.
"Lie still, man; can ye not bide and watch? It is as bonny as a painted picture. Think you that our muckle clumsy bodies could run and hide as featly? I trow not! Let the lass do her own ways. She has, indeed, a very pretty notion of war—aye, far better than many of our boasted generals, and nigh hand as good as the prince himself. For, to my thinking, there is more generalship in delaying and harassing the advance of a superior force than in defeating an equal number with trumpets, drums, and all the paraphernalia of war."
So, in obedience to Scarlett, and also because the girl's quick manœuvres at once astonished and fascinated him, Wat abode still where he was. But his eyes were chained to the slight form of the Little Marie, who lay behind the broom perfectly plain to them from their fortress eminence, but wholly hidden from the line of the enemy's advance. It seemed an unconscionable time before the pursuers came near, because on this occasion they took the utmost precautions to avoid surprise; and it was not till Haxo himself had ascended the knoll within thirty feet of where the girl lay that the foremost of the approaching skirmishers came within range.
But Marie was either so careless of her life or so sure of the line of her retreat that she appeared to pick and choose deliberately among her enemies. The persons of many of them were doubtless well known to her, and it is possible that she had private scores to pay off while thus fighting the battles of Wat and Scarlett.
Presently one of her pistols spoke again and a third man fell wounded. Haxo stood up to mark the spot from which the reek of the powder floated lazily into the air, and as he did so, Marie, wheeling about on her elbows, steadied her weapon on the edge of the sand between the broom-bush and the sea-holly. It cracked, and Haxo, with a cry of anger and pain, clapped his hand upon his ankle, for all the world like a boy that runs barefoot and whose toe meets a stone unexpectedly.
But this time it was impossible for Marie to conceal the line of her flight. She had to make a considerable detour to the right; for, in order to pick her men, she had allowed some of the enemy to pass her by, and these now bent hastily round to intercept her. The rest, following Haxo's frenzied directions as he leaped and swore with the pain of his hurt, pursued with might and main, getting glimpses of her as she ran. For on this occasion Marie took no care whatever to keep to the bottoms, but on the contrary chose the hardest surface and the most direct road for the shore, as though she had been fleeing to a boat which lay in waiting at the sea edge.