Towards night the wind, which had been blowing in gusts over the hill-tops and along the valleys, gathered into a gale; and in it I could hear the distant boom of surf on an iron-bound coast. Ever and again I met country folk hurrying inland, with now and then a soldier in their company. And once, as I passed a lonely moor, there slunk past me a fellow who by his swarthy face and black flashing eyes I knew to be a Spaniard.
As hour passed hour through the night the storm raged fiercer, till presently I could scarce make head against it and sank for an hour on the turf, praying only that this weariness might befall mine enemy also.
When at dawn I struggled to the hill-top and looked out, I dreaded to find him vanished. But no. My prayer must surely have been answered, for he staggered on scarce a mile ahead of me down towards the valley.
Twas a narrow valley, with a swampy tract below, and rising again sharply to the hill opposite. Half-way along that hill, through a narrow gap, I, standing on higher ground, could catch a glimpse of the grey ocean beyond, sending its white horses in on the land, and moaning with a cry that mingled dismally with the rush of the wind. Surely our long journey was near its end now.
Looking again towards the gap, I perceived—what my enemy below must have missed—the form of a man who stood there, motionless, clear cut against the sky, with his back on us as he gazed seaward. He was too far off for me to see if he were a soldier or only a peasant. Yet I remember marking that he was great of stature; and as he stood there, with his hair floating in the wind, he seemed some image of a giant god set there to stand sentinel and brood over the wild landscape.
Then, as the sun broke out from behind the sweeping clouds, it flashed on a sword in his hand, and I concluded this must be an English soldier placed there to keep the road inland against the invading Spaniard.
’Twas a fine post of defence, verily; for, looking round, I perceived that the hills on every hand seemed to close in and stand like the walls of a basin, with no outlet save the crest on which I stood on the one hand, and a gap where he stood on the other; while betwixt us stretched the moist plain, across which the Captain was even now spurring.
So intent had I been on the solitary sentinel, and the strange form of this wild hollow, that I had forgot for a moment my quest. But I remembered it as the sun suddenly fell on the form of my enemy labouring heavily through the swamp below.
A sudden fierceness seized me as I flung myself forward in pursuit; I shouted to him with all my might to stand and face me where he stood.
I can remember seeing the form of the soldier in the gap turn quickly and look my way. Next moment there rose, below me, a yell; and I stood where I was, like a man petrified.