CHAPTER XVII.
THE PURSUIT.
"Now tell me thy name, good fellow, said he, Under the leaves of lyne. Nay, by my faith, quoth bold Robin, Till thou have told mo thine."
ROBIN HOOD AND GUY OF GISBORNE.
Until the last glimmer of daylight had faded out in the west, andtotal darkness had prevailed for several hours through the forest,Eadwulf remained a prisoner in his hollow trunk, unable to discoverthe whereabout of his enemies, yet well-assured that they had notreturned, but had taken up some bivouac for the night, not very far inadvance of his hiding-place, with the intention of again seeking forhis trail on the morrow, when they judged that he would have once moretaken the road. But as soon as, looking up the chimney-like apertureof his hiding-place, he discovered the foliage silvered by themoonbeams, he scaled the inside of the trunk, not without somedifficulty, working his way upward with his back and knees, after thefashion of a modern chimney-sweep, and, emerging into the open air,drew a long breath, and again lowered himself as he had ascended, bythe drooping-branches, and once more entered the channel of thestream. The rivulet was in this place shallow, with a hard bottom, thecurrent which was swift and noisy, scarce rising to his knee, so thathe waded down it without much difficulty, and at a tolerable speed.
After he had proceeded in this manner about two miles, he discovered ared-light in an open glade of the forest, at a short distance ahead,on the left bank of the river; and, as he came abreast of it, readilydiscovered his enemies, with the bloodhounds in their leashes, sittingor lying around a fire which they had kindled, ready, it was evident,to resume the search with the earliest dawn. This he was enabled todiscern without quitting the bed of the stream, whose brawling ripplesdrowned the sound of his footsteps; and as the water deepenedimmediately ahead of him, he again plunged noiselessly, and swamforward at least two miles farther; when, calculating that he hadgiven them a task of two or three hours at least before they couldsucceed in finding where he had quitted the water-course, if he hadnot entirely thrown them out, he took land on the opposite side tothat, on which they were posted, and struck at his best pace acrossthe waste.
It might have been ten o'clock in the evening when he left theoak-tree, and, though weary and hungry, he plodded forward at a steadypace, never falling short of four miles an hour, and often greatlyexceeding that speed, where the ground favored his running, untilperhaps an hour before daybreak. At that darkest moment of the night,after the moon had set, he paused in a little hollow of the hills,having placed, as he calculated, at least five-and-thirty milesbetween himself and his hunters, lighted a fire, cooked a portion ofhis venison, and again, just as the skies began to brighten, got underway, supposing that at about this hour his foes would resume theirsearch, and might probably in a couple of hours get the hounds againupon his scent. Ere that, however, he should have gained another tenmiles on them, and he well knew that the scent would be so cold thatit would be many hours more before they could hunt it up, if theyshould succeed in doing so at all.
All day, until the sun was high at noon, he strode onward across thebarren heath and wild moors into which the forest had now subsided,when, after catching from a hill-top a distant view of a town andcastle to the northward, which he rightly judged to be Skipton, hereached an immense tract, seeming almost interminable, of green, oozymorasses, cut up by rivulets and streamlets, and often intersected bydangerous bogs, from which flowed the interlinked tributaries of theEyre, the Ribble, and the Hodder. Through this tract, he was wellaware, neither horse could follow nor bloodhound track him; and it wasovergrown in so many places with dense brakes of willow and alder,that his flight could not be discovered by the eye from any of thesurrounding eminences. Into this dreary region he, therefore, plungedjoyously, feeling half-secure, and purposely selecting the deepest andwettest portions of the bog, and, where he could do so without losingthe true line of his course, wading along the water-courses untilabout two in the afternoon, when he reached an elevated spot or islandin the marsh, covered with thrifty underwood, and there, having fedsparingly on the provision he had cooked on the last evening, madehimself a bed in the heather, and slept undisturbed, and almostlethargically, until the moon was up in the skies. Then he againcooked and ate; but, before resuming his journey, he climbed a smallash-tree, which overlooked the level swamp, and thence at oncedescried three watch-fires, blazing brilliantly at three several spotson the circumference of the morass, one almost directly ahead of him,and nearly at the spot where he proposed to issue on to the wildheathery moors of Bolland Forest, on the verge of the counties of Yorkand Lancaster, and within fifty miles of the provincial capital andfamous sands of the latter. By these fires he judged easily that thusfar they had traced him, and found the spot where he had entered thebogs, the circuit of which they were skirting, in order once more tolay the death-hounds on his track, where ever he should again strikethe firm ground.
In one hour after perceiving the position of his pursuers, he passedout of the marsh at about a mile north of the western-most watch-fire,and, in order as much as possible to baffle them, crawled for a coupleof hundred yards up a shallow runnel of water, which drained down fromthe moorland into the miry bottom land.
Once more he had secured a start of six hours over the Normans, butwith this disadvantage--that they would have little difficulty infinding his trail on the morrow, and that the country which he had totraverse was so open, that he dared not attempt to journey over it bydaylight.
Forward he fared, therefore, though growing very weak and weary, forhe was foot-sore and exhausted, and chilled with his long immersion inthe waters, until the sun had been over the hills for about two hours,much longer than which he dared not trust himself on the moors, whenhe began to look about eagerly for some water-course or extensive bog,by which he might again hope to avoid the scent of the unerringhounds.
None such appeared, however, and desperately he plodded onward, almostdespairing and utterly exhausted, without a hope of escaping by speedof foot, and seeing no longer a hope of concealment. Suddenly when thesun was getting high, and he began to expect, at every moment, thesounds of the death-dogs opening behind him, he crossed the brow of around-topped heathery hill, crested with crags of gray limestone, andfrom its brow, at some thirty miles distance, faintly discerned theglimmering expanse of Morecambe Bay, and the great fells ofWestmoreland and Cumberland looming up like blue clouds beyond them.
But through the narrow ghyll, immediately at his feet, a brawlingstream rushed noisily down the steep gorge from the north, southerly.Headlong he leaped down to it, through the tall heather, which heregrew rank, and overtopped his head, but before he reached it, heblundered into a knot of six or seven men, sleeping on a bare spot ofgreensward, round the extinct ashes of a fire, and the carcass of adeer, which they had slain, and on which they had broken their fast.
Startled by his rapid and unceremonious intrusion into their circle,the men sprang to their feet with the speed of light, each laying acloth-yard arrow to the string of a bended long-bow, bidding him"Stand, or die."
For a moment, he thought his hour was come; but the next glancereassured him, and he saw that his fortune had again brought himsafety, in the place of ruin.
The men were Saxons, outlaws, fugitives from the Norman tyranny, andseveral of them, like himself, serfs escaped from the cruelty of theirmasters. One of them had joined the party so recently, that, likeEadwulf, he yet wore the brazen collar about his neck, the badge ofservitude and easy means of detection, of which he had not yet foundthe means to rid himself.
A few words sufficed to describe his piteous flight, and to win thesympathy and a promise of protection from the outlaws; but when thebloodhounds were named, and their probably close proximity, theydeclared with one voice that there was not a moment to be lost, andthat they could shelter him without a possibility of danger.
Without farther words, one by one they entered the brook, scatteringinto it as if they were about to pass down it to the sout
hward, butthe moment their feet were in the water, turning upward and ascendingthe gorge, which grew wilder and steeper as they proceeded, until, ata mile's distance, they came to a great circular cove of rocks, walledin by crags of three hundred feet in height, with the little streamplunging down it, at the upward extremity, small in volume, butsprinkling the staircase of rocks, down which it foamed, withincessant sheets of spray.
Scarcely had they turned the projecting shoulder of rock which guardedthe entrance of this stern circle, before the distant bay of thebloodhounds came heavily down the air; and, at the same instant, thearmed party galloped over the brow of the bare moor which Eadwulf hadpassed so recently, cheering the fierce dogs to fresh exertions, andexpecting, so hotly did their sagacious guides press upon the recenttrail, to see the fugitive fairly before them.
Much to their wonder, however, though the country lay before theireyes perfectly open, in a long stretch of five or six miles, without abush, a brake, or apparently a hollow which could conceal a man if hewere in motion, he was not to be discovered within the limits of thehorizon.
"By St. Paul!" exclaimed the foremost rider; shading his eyes with hishand, to screen them from the rays of the level sun, "he can not havegained so much on us as to have got already beyond the range ofeyeshot. He must have laid up in the heather. At all events, we aresure of him. Forward! forward! Halloo! hark, forward!"
Animated by his cheering cry, the dogs dashed onward furiously,reached the brink of the rill, and were again at fault. "Ha! he is athis old tricks again;" shouted the leader, who was no other thanHugonet, surnamed the Black, the brother of the murdered bailiff. "Butit shall not avail him. We will beat the brook on both banks, up anddown, to its source and to its mouth, if it needs, but we will havehim. You, Wetherall, follow it northerly to the hills with six spearsand three couple of the hounds. I will ride down toward the sea; Ifancy that will prove to be the line he has taken. If they hit off thescent, or you catch a view of him, blow me five mots upon your bugle,thus, _sa-sa-wa-la-roa_! and, lo! in good time, here comes Sir Foulke."
And thundering up on his huge Norman war-horse, cursing furiously whenhe perceived that the hounds were at fault, came that formidablebaron; for his enormous weight had kept him far in the rear of hislighter-armed, and less ponderous vassals. His presence stimulatedthem to fresh exertions, but all exertions were in vain.
Evening fell on the wide purple moorlands, and they had found no trackof him they sought. Wetherall, after making a long sweep around thecove and the waterfall, and tracing back the rill to its source, in amossy cairn among the hills, at some five miles' distance, descendedit again and rejoined the party, with the positive assurance that theserf had not gone in that direction, for that the hounds had beatenboth banks the whole way to the spring-head, and that he had not comeout on either side, or their keen scent would have detected him.
Meantime, the other party had pursued the windings of the streamdownward, with the rest of the pack, for more than ten miles, at fullgallop, until they were convinced that had he gone in that direction,they must long ere this have overtaken him. They were alreadyreturning, when they were met by Wetherall, the bearer of no morefavorable tidings.
Sorely perplexed how their victim should have thus vanished fromthem, in the midst of a bare open moor, as if he had been swallowedup by the earth, _aut tenues evasit in auras_, and half suspectingwitchcraft, or magic agency, they lighted fires, and encamped on thespot where they had lost his track, intending to resume the researchon the morrow, and, at last, if the latest effort should fail ofrecovering the scent, to scatter over the moors, in small parties ortroops, and beat them toward the Lancaster sands, by which they werewell-assured, he meditated his escape.
In the interval, the band of outlaws quickening their pace as theyheard the cry of the bloodhounds freshening behind them, arrived atthe basin, into which fell the scattered rain of the mimic cataract,taking especial care to set no foot on the moss or sand, by the brink,which should betray them to the instinct of the ravening hounds.
"Up with thee, Wolfric," cried one of the men to one who seemed thechief. "Up with thee! There is no time to lose. We must swear himwhen we have entered the cave. Forward comrade; this way lies yoursafety." And, with the words, he pointed up the slippery chasm of thewaterfall.
Up this perilous ladder, one by one, where to an unpracticed eye noascent appeared possible, the outlaws straggled painfully but insafety, the spray effacing every track of their footsteps, and thewater carrying off every trace of the scent where they had passed,until they reached the topmost landing-place. There the stream wasprojected in an arch from the rock, which jutted out in a bold table;and there, stooping under the foamy sheet, the leader entered a lowcavern, with a mouth scarce exceeding that of a fox earth, butexpanding within into a large and roomy apartment, where they ate andcaroused and slept at their ease, during the whole day and all thesucceeding night; for the robbers insisted that no foot must be setwithout their cavern by the fugitive, until they should haveascertained by their spies that the Normans had quitted theirneighborhood. This they did not until late in the following day, whenthey divided themselves into three parties, and struck offnorthwesterly toward the upper sands at the head of the bay, for whichthey had evidently concluded that Eadwulf was making, after they hadexhausted every effort of ingenuity to discover the means of hisinexplicable disappearance, on the verge of that tiny rivulet, runningamong open moors on the bare hill-sides.
So soon as they were certain of the direction which the enemy hadtaken, and of the fact that they had abandoned the farther use of thebloodhounds, as unprofitable, the whole party struck due westerlyacross the hills, on a right line for Lancaster, guiding theircompanion with unerring skill across some twenty miles ofpartially-cultivated country, to the upper end of the estuary of theLon, about one mile north of the city, which dreary water they reachedin the gloaming twilight. Here a skiff was produced from itsconcealment in the rushes, and he was ferried over the frith, as alast act of kindness, by his entertainers, who, directing him on hisway to the sands, the roar of which might be heard already in thedistance, retreated with all speed to their hill fastnesses, fromwhich they felt it would be most unsafe for them to be found fardistant by the morning light.
The distance did not much exceed four miles; but, before he arrived atthe end, Eadwulf met the greatest alarm which had yet befallen him;for, just as it was growing too dark to distinguish objects clearly, ahorseman overtook him, or rather crossed him from the northward,riding so noiselessly over the sands, that he was upon him before heheard the sound of his tread.
Though escape was impossible, had it been a foe, he startedinstinctively to fly, when a voice hailed him friendly in the familiarSaxon tongue.
"Ho! brother Saxon, this is thou, then, is it?"
"I know not who thou art," replied Eadwulf, "nor thou me, I'll besworn."
"Ay! but I do, though, bravely. Thou art the Saxon with the price ofblood on thy head, whom the Normans have chased these three days, frombeyond Rotherham. They lie five miles hence on the hither side theLon, and inquired after thee at twilight. But fear not for me. Onlycross the sands early; the tide will answer with the first grayglimmer; and thou art safe in Westmoreland. And so God speed thee,brother."
A mile or two farther brought him to the verge of the wet sands, andthere in the last brushwood he laid him down, almost too weary to beanxious for the morrow.
Wager of Battle: A Tale of Saxon Slavery in Sherwood Forest Page 19
