University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.
THE PURSUIT.

Until the last glimmer of daylight had faded out in the
west, and total darkness had prevailed for several hours
through the forest, Eadwulf remained a prisoner in his hollow
trunk, unable to discover the whereabout of his enemies,
yet well-assured that they had not returned, but had taken
up some bivouac for the night, not very far in advance of his
hiding-place, with the intention of again seeking for his trail
on the morrow, when they judged that he would have once
more taken the road. But as soon as, looking up the chimney-like
aperture of his hiding-place, he discovered the foliage
silvered by the moonbeams, he scaled the inside of the trunk,
not without some difficulty, working his way upward with his
back and knees, after the fashion of a modern chimney-sweep,
and, emerging into the open air, drew a long breath, and
again lowered himself, as he had ascended, by the drooping-branches,
and once more entered the channel of the stream.

The rivulet was in this place shallow, with a hard bottom, the
current which was swift and noisy, scarce rising to his knee, so
that he waded down it without much difficulty, and at a
tolerable speed.

After he had proceeded in this manner about two miles, he
discovered a red-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, readily discovered his enemies, with the bloodhounds
in their leashes, sitting or lying around a fire which
they had kindled, ready, it was evident, to resume the search
with the earliest dawn. This he was enabled to discern without
quitting the bed of the stream, whose brawling ripples
drowned the sound of his footsteps; and as the water deepened
immediately ahead of him, he again plunged noiselessly,
and swam forward at least two miles farther; when, calculating
that he had given them a task of two or three hours at
least before they could succeed in finding where he had quitted
the water-course, if he had not entirely thrown them out, he
took land on the opposite side to that, on which they were
posted, and struck at his best pace across the waste.

It might have been ten o'clock in the evening when he left
the oak-tree, and, though weary and hungry, he plodded forward
at a steady pace, never falling short of four miles an
hour, and often greatly exceeding that speed, where the
ground favored his running, until perhaps 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 miles between
himself and his hunters, lighted a fire, cooked a portion of
his venison, and again, just as the skies began to brighten, got

under way, supposing that at about this hour his foes would
resume their search, and might probably in a couple of hours
get the hounds again upon his scent. Ere that, however, he
should have gained another ten miles on them, and he well
knew that the scent would be so cold that it would be many
hours more before they could hunt it up, if they should succeed
in doing so at all.

All day, until the sun was high at noon, he strode onward
across the barren heath and wild moors into which the forest
had now subsided, when, after catching from a hill-top a distant
view of a town and castle to the northward, which he
rightly judged to be Skipton, he reached an immense tract,
seeming almost interminable, of green, oozy morasses, cut up
by rivulets and streamlets, and often intersected by dangerous
bogs, from which flowed the interlinked tributaries of the
Eyre, the Ribble, and the Hodder. Through this tract, he
was well aware, neither horse could follow nor bloodhound
track him; and it was overgrown in so many places with
dense brakes of willow and alder, that his flight could not be
discovered by the eye from any of the surrounding eminences.
Into this dreary region he, therefore, plunged joyously, feeling
half-secure, and purposely selecting the deepest and wettest
portions of the bog, and, where he could do so without losing
the true line of his course, wading along the water-courses
until about two in the afternoon, when he reached an elevated
spot or island in the marsh, covered with thrifty underwood,
and there, having fed sparingly on the provision he had
cooked on the last evening, made himself a bed in the heather,
and slept undisturbed, and almost lethargically, until the moon
was up in the skies. Then he again cooked and ate; but,

before resuming his journey, he climbed a small ash-tree,
which overlooked the level swamp, and thence at once descried
three watch-fires, blazing brilliantly at three several spots on
the circumference of the morass, one almost directly ahead of
him, and nearly at the spot where he proposed to issue on to
the wild heathery moors of Bolland Forest, on the verge of the
counties of York and Lancaster, and within fifty miles of the
provincial capital and famous sands of the latter. By these
fires he judged easily that thus far they had traced him, and
found the spot where he had entered the bogs, the circuit of
which they were skirting, in order once more to lay the
death-hounds on his track, where ever he should again strike
the firm ground.

In one hour after perceiving the position of his pursuers, he
passed out of the marsh at about a mile north of the westernmost
watch-fire, and, in order as much as possible to baffle
them, crawled for a couple of hundred yards up a shallow
runnel of water, which drained down from the moorland into
the miry bottom land.

Once more he had secured a start of six hours over the
Normans, but with this disadvantage—that they would have
little difficulty in finding his trail on the morrow, and that the
country which he had to traverse was so open, that he dared
not attempt to journey over it by daylight.

Forward he fared, therefore, though growing very weak and
weary, for he was foot-sore and exhausted, and chilled with
his long immersion in the 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, when he began to look
about eagerly for some water-course or extensive bog, by which

he might again hope to avoid the scent of the unerring
hounds.

None such appeared, however, and desperately he plodded
onward, almost despairing and utterly exhausted, without a
hope of escaping by speed of foot, and seeing no longer a
hope of concealment. Suddenly when the sun was getting
high, and he began to expect, at every moment, the sounds
of the death-dogs opening behind him, he crossed the brow
of a round-topped heathery hill, crested with crags of gray
limestone, and from its brow, at some thirty miles distance,
faintly discerned the glimmering expanse of Morecambe Bay,
and the great fells of Westmoreland and Cumberland looming
up like blue clouds beyond them.

But through the narrow ghyll, immediately at his feet, a
brawling stream rushed noisily down the steep gorge from the
north, southerly. Headlong he leaped down to it, through
the tall heather, which here grew rank, and overtopped his
head, but before he reached it, he blundered into a knot of
six or seven men, sleeping on a bare spot of greensward, round
the extinct ashes of a fire, and the carcass of a deer, 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 a cloth-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
glance reassured him, and he saw that his fortune had again
brought him safety, in the place of ruin.

The men were Saxons, outlaws, fugitives from the Norman
tyranny, and several of them, like himself, serfs escaped from

the cruelty of their masters. One of them had joined the
party so recently, that, like Eadwulf, he yet wore the brazen
collar about his neck, the badge of servitude and easy means
of detection, of which he had not yet found the means to rid
himself.

A few words sufficed to describe his piteous flight, and to
win the sympathy and a promise of protection from the outlaws;
but when the bloodhounds were named, and their probably
close proximity, they declared with one voice that there
was not a moment to be lost, and that they could shelter him
without a possibility of danger.

Without farther words, one by one they entered the brook,
scattering into it as if they were about to pass down it to the
southward, but the moment their feet were in the water, turning
upward and ascending the gorge, which grew wilder and
steeper as they proceeded, until, at a mile's distance, they
came to a great circular cove of rocks, walled in by crags of
three hundred feet in height, with the little stream plunging
down it, at the upward extremity, small in volume, but sprinkling
the staircase of rocks, down which it foamed, with incessant
sheets of spray.

Scarcely had they turned the projecting shoulder of rock
which guarded the entrance of this stern circle, before the
distant bay of the bloodhounds came heavily down the air;
and, at the same instant, the armed party galloped over the
brow of the bare moor which Eadwulf had passed so recently,
cheering the fierce dogs to fresh exertions, and expecting, so
hotly did their sagacious guides press upon the recent trail,
to see the fugitive fairly before them.

Much to their wonder, however, though the country lay

before their eyes perfectly open, in a long stretch of five or
six miles, without a bush, a brake, or apparently a hollow
which could conceal a man if he were in motion, he was not
to be discovered within the limits of the horizon.

“By St. Paul!” exclaimed the foremost rider; shading his
eyes with his hand, to screen them from the rays of the level
sun, “he can not have gained so much on us as to have
got already beyond the range of eyeshot He must have
laid up in the heather. At all events, we are sure 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 at his old tricks again;” shouted the
leader, who was no other than Hugonet, surnamed the Black,
the brother of the murdered bailiff. “But it shall not avail
him. We will beat the brook on both banks, up and down,
to its source and to its mouth, if it needs, but we will have
him. You, Wetherall, follow it northerly to the hills with six
spears and three couple of the hounds. I will ride down toward
the sea; I fancy that will prove to be the line he has taken.
If they hit off the scent, 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 when he perceived that the hounds were at
fault, came that formidable baron; for his enormous weight
had kept him far in the rear of his lighter-armed, and less
ponderous vassals. His presence stimulated them to fresh exertions,
but all exertions were in vain.

Evening fell on the wide purple moorlands, and they had

found no track of him they sought. Wetherall, after making
a long sweep around the cove and the waterfall, and tracing
back the rill to its source, in a mossy cairn among the hills,
at some five miles' distance, descended it again and rejoined
the party, with the positive assurance that the serf had not
gone in that direction, for that the hounds had beaten both
banks the whole way to the spring-head, and that he had not
come out on either side, or their keen scent would have detected
him.

Meantime, the other party had pursued the windings
of the stream downward, with the rest of the pack, for
more than ten miles, at full gallop, until they were convinced
that had he gone in that direction, they must long ere this
have overtaken him. They were already returning, when
they were met by Wetherall, the bearer of no more favorable
tidings.

Sorely perplexed how their victim should have thus vanished
from them, in the midst of a bare open moor, as if he
had been swallowed up by the earth, aut tenues evasit in
auras, and half suspecting witchcraft, or magic agency, they
lighted fires, and encamped on the spot where they had lost
his track, intending to resume the research on the morrow,
and, at last, if the latest effort should fail of recovering
the scent, to scatter over the moors, in small parties or
troops, and beat them toward the Lancaster sands, by which
they were well-assured, he meditated his escape.

In the interval, the band of outlaws quickening their pace
as they heard the cry of the bloodhounds freshening behind
them, arrived at the 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 the chief. “Up with thee! There is no time to lose.
We must swear him when we have entered the cave. Forward
comrade; this way lies your safety.” And, with the
words, he pointed up the slippery chasm of the waterfall.

Up this perilous ladder, one by one, where to an unpracticed
eye no ascent appeared possible, the outlaws straggled
painfully but in safety, the spray effacing every track of their
footsteps, and the water carrying off every trace of the scent
where they had passed, until they reached the topmost landing-place.
There the stream was projected in an arch from
the rock, which jutted out in a bold table; and there, stooping
under the foamy sheet, the leader entered a low cavern,
with a mouth scarce exceeding that of a fox earth, but expanding
within into a large and roomy apartment, where they
ate and caroused and slept at their ease, during the whole day
and all the succeeding night; for the robbers insisted that no
foot must be set without their cavern by the fugitive, until
they should have ascertained by their spies that the Normans
had quitted their neighborhood. This they did not until late
in the following day, when they divided themselves into three
parties, and struck off northwesterly toward the upper sands
at the head of the bay, for which they had evidently concluded
that Eadwulf was making, after they had exhausted
every effort of ingenuity to discover the means of his inexplicable
disappearance, on the verge of that tiny rivulet, running
among open moors on the bare hill-sides.

So soon as they were certain of the direction which the

enemy had taken, and of the fact that they had abandoned
the farther use of the bloodhounds, as unprofitable, the whole
party struck due westerly across the hills, on a right line for
Lancaster, guiding their companion with unerring skill across
some twenty miles of partially-cultivated country, to the upper
end of the estuary of the Lon, about one mile north of the
city, which dreary water they reached in the gloaming twilight.
Here a skiff was produced from its concealment in the rushes,
and he was ferried over the frith, as a last act of kindness, by
his entertainers, who, directing him on his way to the sands,
the roar of which might be heard already in the distance, retreated
with all speed to their hill fastnesses, from which they
felt it would be most unsafe for them to be found far distant
by the morning light.

The distance did not much exceed four miles; but, before
he arrived at the end, Eadwulf met the greatest alarm which
had yet befallen him; for, just as it was growing too dark to
distinguish objects clearly, a horseman overtook him, or rather
crossed him from the northward, riding so noiselessly over the
sands, that he was upon him before he heard the sound of his
tread.

Though escape was impossible, had it been a foe, he started
instinctively to fly, when a voice hailed him friendly in the familiar
Saxon tongue.

“Ho! brother Saxon, this is thou, then, is it?”

“I know not who thou art,” replied Eadwulf, “nor thou
me, I'll be sworn.”

“Ay! but I do, though, bravely. Thou art the Saxon
with the price of blood on thy head, whom the Normans have
chased these three days, from beyond Rotherham. They lie

five miles hence on the hither side the Lon, and inquired after
thee at twilight. But fear not for me. Only cross the sands
early; the tide will answer with the first gray glimmer; 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, and there in the last brushwood he laid him down, almost
too weary to be anxious for the morrow.