"
"Then I am better off where I am."
"Did you doubt it?"
"I was beginning to. . . . How much farther must we ride?"
"Two leagues."
Tristram groaned, and they set off again, but more slowly, for the
road now was paved with bricks instead of the loose sand over which
they had travelled hitherto, and moreover it ran, without fence or
parapet, along the top of a formidable dyke, the black waters of
which far beneath him caused Tristram the most painful apprehension.
Captain Salt, guessing this, slackened the pace to a walk. The glare
still reddened the sky behind: but either the firing had ceased or
they had passed beyond sound of it. At any rate, they heard only the
water lapping in the dykes and the wind that howled over the wastes
around.
Tristram had long since lost his hat, and his nose was bleeding from
a sharp blow against his horse's neck. He was trying to stanch the
flow when the chimes of a clock pealed down the wind from somewhere
ahead and upon his right. His father halted again, and after
scanning the gloom for a minute uttered again the three calls that
were like the wailing of a gull.
Again the signal was answered, this time from their left, and the
spark of a lantern appeared. "Dismount, my son," said the Captain,
setting the example and leading his horse by the bridle towards the
light; "we leave our horses here.
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