They came through the door sideways, their sweaty swords turning in
their hands as they struck, but in a moment they fell also, two by two;
and then the tumult within the house died down, but the flames roared
through the crumbling rafters, and the burning wisps of thatch lit up
the distant poplar tops where the wide road curved in the distance. So
we crept away over the burnt fields, crouching in ditches, with our
swords drawn; we had no water all day, but we passed many cottages where
no one came to the doors to stare at us nor smoke rose from the
chimneys, and there was no waving of yellow grain on the hill-tops. We
passed the bones of a horse, and after, part of the armour of a
man--rough armour--and as the sun sank we passed a woman's head-covering
lying dirty by the road. It was after the dusk, which comes stealing in
these countries, and blinds you from behind, sudden and soft, that we
smelt the sea, and we stumbled forward hastily over a charred hillside.
The ground grew softer as we descended, though now we could see nothing.
Soon we were on level, and our feet sunk in the sand, and we heard a
rustle and a whispering just before us. We ran forward and waded to our
waists in the unseen water. Ah! 'twas good. Then we crept back to the
hillside again, where we lay until morning in a hollow, covered with
dead leaves; and in the morning we were awakened before the sunrise, by
the strong salt wind in our faces, and the lashing of what last night
had been dainty with playfulness. The beach was brown with seaweed cast
up, and the spume of the light waves that broke on the shore retreated
in streamers and circles far out from the land again. The keen wind
whistled on the edges of our armour and sang round us, and we turned our
faces from it, and it blew our long hair into our eyes, stinging us.
Now, we knew that the ship lay somewhat to the north of us, for our
lord had said that she should not pass a certain great rock, round whose
top many gulls circled, but stay to the northward; so we tramped the
heavy sands the gathering wind at our backs, and we stumbled over the
piles of slippery seaweed and passed round the promontory, where was the
Gull Rock. So it came to late in the afternoon and we were very weary,
having had no meat or drink. Yet we kept on in silence, bending as we
pulled our heavy feet from the sucking sand-holes. The spume blew in our
faces now when the waves broke; the beach was narrow, and to our right