blind Phelim set off on their journey north. They
travelled safely in the rear of the yeomen who were searching the
country side. Neal lay hid all one day in a little wood while
Phelim, who seemed to want little rest and no sleep, wandered in the
neighbourhood and brought back tidings of the doings of the yeomen who
had passed. Before daybreak the next morning Neal left his guide behind
him and made his way to the sandhills near Port Ballin-trae. He lay in a
hollow near the mouth of the river Bush. He understood from what Phelim
had told him that Captain Twinely and his men had pushed northwards in
pursuit of him, and that he had followed in their tracks. He realised
that there must be a large force gathered in Bushmills and Ballintoy,
and that the whole country would be scoured to find him. Therefore,
though he was within a few miles of his home, he dare not stir in the
daytime. He lay in his sandy hollow through the long hot day, with the
sound of the sea in his ears. He slept for an hour or two now and then.
Once he crept among the dunes to a place where a little stream trickled
down, in order to get a drink, but he did not venture to stay beside
the stream. For some time he amused himself by plaiting the spiked grass
into stiff green rods, and then, from a razor shell which he found in
his hollow, he fashioned pike heads for the ends of the rods. Afterwards
he picked all the yellow crow-toes within reach, and the broad mauve
flowers of the wild convolvulus. He set them out in gay beds, like
flowers growing in gardens, and edged them round with borders of wild
thyme. Then, with great labour, he collected forty or fifty snail shells
and laid them in rows, making each row consist only of those like each
other in colouring. He had lines of dark brown shells, of pale yellow,
and of striped shells. These again he subdivided according to the width
and number of their stripes. Once he ventured to creep to a place from
which he could watch the sea. He saw that the tide was flowing. Below
him on the strand were a number of seagulls, strutting, fluttering,
shrieking, splashing with wing-tips and feet in the oncoming waves. He
supposed that the young fry of some fish must have drifted shorewards,
and that the birds were feasting on them. Then', at the far end of the
bay, he saw men's figures moving, near the Black Rock, among the boats
hauled up on the shore in the creek from which he and Maurice and Una
had set out to fish on Ra