University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.
THE SANDS.

It was a wild and wicked morning, in the first red light of
which, Eadwulf, awakening from the restless and uneasy sleep
into which he had last night fallen, among the scattered
brushwood growing on the seaward slope of the sand hills of
Lancashire, looked across the wide sands, now left bare by
the recess of the tide, stretching away to the bleak coasts
of Westmoreland and Cumberland, and the huge mountain
ridges, which might be seen indistinctly looming up blue and
massive in the distance inland, distinguishable from clouds
only by the hard abruptness of their outlines, as they cut
sharp and clean against the lurid sky of the horizon.

Along the sea line, which lay grim and dark in ominous
repose, the heaven's glared for a span's breadth, as it appeared
to the eye, with a wild brassy light, above which brooded
a solid belt of purple cloud, deepening into black as it rose

upward, and having a distinct, solid-looking edge, scolloped,
as it were, into huge rounded masses, as material as if they
had been earthy hills, instead of mere piles of accumulated
vapor.

These volumed masses lay motionless, as yet, in the brooding
calm; but, all upward to the zenith, the sky was covered
with tortured and distracted wrack-wreaths, some black as
night, some just touched by the sun, which was arising
unseen by mortal eyes behind the cloud-banks which mustered
so thick to the eastward, and some glowing with a fiery
crimson gleam, as if they issued from the mouth of a raging
furnance.

Every thing was ominous of a storm, but every thing as
yet was calm, tranquil, and peaceful. In the very quiet,
however, there was something awful, something that seemed
to whisper of coming horror. The wide sands lay gray and
leaden at the feet of the observer, reflecting the lowering
clouds which overhung them, except where the brassy glare
of the horizon tinged their extreme verge with an angry
rust-colored hue, that seemed to partake the nature of shadow
rather than of light.

The face of the Saxon fell as he gazed over the fearful
waste, beyond which lay his last hope of safety; for, though
he had never before seen those treacherous sands, he had
learned much of their nature, especially from the outlaws,
with whom he found his last shelter; and he knew, that to
cross them certainly and in safety, the passenger on foot
should set out with the receding tide, so as to reach the mid
labyrinth of oozy channels and half-treacherous sand banks,
through which the scanty and divided rivers of the fair lake-land

found their way oceanward, when the water was at its
lowest ebb.

Instead of this, however, so heavily had he slept toward
morning, the utter weariness of his limbs and exhaustion of
his body having completely conquered the watchfulness of
his anxious mind, that the tide had so long run out, leaving
the sands toward the shore, especially at this upper end of
the bay, bare and hard as a beaten road, that it might well
be doubted whether it had not already turned, and might
not be looked for, ere he could reach the mid-channel, pouring
in, unbroken, as it is wont to do in calm weather,
over those boundless flats, with a speed exceeding that of
horses.

There was no time for delay, however; for, from the report
of the horseman who had overtaken him just before twilight,
he could not doubt that his pursuers had not halted for the
night farther than five or six miles in his rear; so that their
arrival might be looked for at any moment, on any one of the
headlands along the shore, whence they would have no difficulty
in discerning him at several miles distance, while traveling
over the light-colored surface of the sands.

Onward, therefore, he hastened, as fast as his weary limbs
could carry him, hardly conscious whether he was flying
from the greater danger, or toward it. He had a strong suspicion
that the flood would be upon him ere he should reach
the channel of Kent; and that he should find it an unfordable
river, girdled by pathless quicksands. He knew, however,
that be his chances of escape what they might by persisting
onward, his death was as certain, by strange tortures, as any
thing sublunary can be called certain, should the Normans

overtake him, red-handed from what they were sure to regard
as recent murder.

On, therefore, he fled into the deceitful waste. At first,
the sands were hard, even, and solid, yet so cool and damp
under the worn and blistered feet of the wretched fugitive,
that they gave him an immediate sense of pleasurable relief
and refreshment; and for three or four miles he journeyed
with such ease and rapidity as, compared to the pain and lassitude
with which on the past days he had stumbled along,
over the stony roads, and across the broken moors, that his
heart began to wax more cheerful, and his hopes of escape
warmed into something tangible and real.

Ere long, the sun rose clear above the eastern fog-banks,
and all seemed still fair and tranquil; the sands, dry as yet, and
firm, smiled golden-bright under the increasing warmth and
lustre of the day, and the little rivulets, by which the fresh
waters oozed to the deep, glittered like silver ribbons, checkering
the yellow expanse.

The very gulls and terns, as they swooped joyously about
his head, screaming and diving in the sunny air, or skimmed
the sands in pursuit of such small fry as might have been left
by the retreat of the waters, seemed, by their activity and
happiness, to give him fresh hope and strength to support it.

Occasionally he turned, and cast a hurried glance toward
the hills he had just left, down which the slant rays were
streaming, to the limit where the green grass and scattered
shrubs gave way to the bare sea-sands; and, as from each
anxious scrutiny of the ground, he returned to his forward progress
without discovering any signs of peril, his face lighted
up anew, and he advanced with a freer and a bolder foot.

Still so weary was he, and so worn with his past toils, that
he made but little real progress; and when he had been
already an hour on the sands, he had accomplished little more
than three miles of his route. The sands, from the point at
which he had entered them, over against the city of Lancaster,
and almost due west from that city to the nearest accessible
headland of the opposite shore, were not less than nine
miles in extent, the deepest and most dangerous parts being
those nearest to the farther coast; but, measured to the place
for which he was making, a considerable distance up the
estuary of the Kent, they were at least three miles longer.

Two or three channels the fugitive had already crossed, and
was rejoiced at finding the sandy bottom, over which the
fresh water flowed some two or three inches deep, perfectly
hard and beaten; at the end of his third mile he reached a
broader expanse of water, where the sands were covered to
the width of a hundred yards, and where the current, if that
might be called a current which had scarcely any perceptible
motion downward, took him nearly to the midleg. The foot-hold
was, moreover, less firm than before, and his heavy
brogues sank to the latchet in the yieding soil. This was the
course of the first and smaller of the two rivers which fall into
the eastern side of the bay from the county of Lancaster, and
at about two miles distant, he could see the course of the
second, glittering blue among the low sand-rollers which
divided them.

Here he paused, undecided, for a few moments. He knew
not what should be the depth of the water, or what the
nature of the bottom; yet already he almost doubted, almost
feared, that the time was passed, and that the tide had turned.

He looked southward, in the direction of the sea, which
lay broad in view, though at many leagues distance; and, for
the first time, it struck him that he could hear the moaning
roll of its ever restless waves. He fancied, too, that the sands
looked darker and more plashy, and that the silvery line
which marked the margin of the waters, where the sun
glinted on their quiet ripples, appeared nearer than when he
had descended from the solid strand.

But, on the other hand, the sun-lighted slopes and crags of
the opposite Lancastrian shore, near Flockborough Head, and
the green point of Westmoreland, between the mouths of
Windermere and the river Kent, lying in the full blaze of
the unintercepted morning, looked much nearer than they
really were, and seemed to beckon him forward with a smile
of welcome. “Even if it be that the tide is turning,” he
thought, “I have yet the time to outstrip it; and, the quicker
it mount, the wider the barrier it will place between me and
my enemies.”

Almost as these ideas passed his mind, a sound came to
his ears, which banished in a moment every thought of the
time, the tide, the peril of the sands.

It was the keen blast of a bugle, clearly winded on the
shore from which he had just departed, but at a point a little
higher up, to the northward, than that at which he had himself
left it. In an instant, before he had even the time to
turn round and take observation, a second bugle, yet farther to
the north, took up the cadence, and, as that died away, yet a
third, so faint, and so far to the northward, that it seemed like
a mere echo of the first, replied.

He looked, and, clustered on the brink of the sands, examining

the tracks his feet had left on the moist surface, there
stood a little knot of three or four horsemen, one of whom it
was easy to see, by the glitter of his mail-hood and hauberk,
was completely armed. Two miles higher up, likewise on the
shore, was another group, that which had replied to the first
bugle-note, and which was now exchanging signals with those
in the foreground, by the wafture of the pennoncelles which
adorned their long lances.

There was now no longer a doubt. His pursuers had divided
themselves into scattered parties, the better to scour
the country, two of which had already discovered him, while
there was evidently a third in communication with these by
bugle-blast, not yet discernible to the eye, but prepared doubtless
to strike across the upper portion of the sands near the
head of the bay, and to intercept his flight, should he escape
his immediate pursuers.

Another wild and prolonged flourish of the bugle, the very
note which announces to the jovial hunters that the beast of
chase is afoot, rang wildly over the sands, was repeated once
and again; and then, with a fierce shout, spurring their heavily-barbed
horses, and brandishing their long lances, the man-hunters
dashed forward in pursuit.

The first party rode directly on the track of the fugitive,
who toiled onward in full view as he ran, terror lending wings
to his speed, almost directly northward, with his long shadow
streaming westward over the dank sands, cutting the bright
sunshine with a blue, rippling wake. The second, taking the
passage higher up, rode at an oblique angle to the first
pursuers, laying up to the point of Westmoreland, in order to
cut off the fugitive; and, in a few moments afterward, yet

another group might be seen skirting the shore line, as if intent
to intercept him in case of his landing.

The soil and water, spurned from the feet of the heavy
chargers, flew high into the air, sparkling and plashing in the
sunshine, like showers of metallic dust. It was a fearful
race—a race for life and death, with odds, as it would seem,
not to be calculated, against the panting fugitive.

At first, the horses careered easily over the surface, not
sinking the depth of their iron-shoes in the firm substratum,
while the man, whether from fatigue and fear, or that he was
in worse ground, labored and slipped and stumbled at almost
every step. The horses gained upon him at every stride, and
the riders shouted already in triumph. It seemed, indeed, as
if his escape was hopeless. The cavalry reached the first
channel; it had widened a little, yet perceptibly, since Eadwulf
had crossed it; but the horses leaped it, or dashed
through it, without an effort.

The fugitive was now nearly in the middle of the sands;
but his pursuers had already crossed, in a few minutes, one
half of the space which it had cost him a painful two hours'
toil to traverse; and, with at least five miles before him yet,
what hope that he could maintain such speed as to run in the
ratio of two to three of distance, against the strength and
velocity of high-blooded horses?

But he had now reached the channel of the Beetham-water,
and, as he crossed it, he stooped to ladle up a few
drops in the hollow of his hand, to bathe his parched lips and
burning brow. He saw it in an instant. The tide had turned,
the waters were spreading wider and wider sensibly, they were
running not slowly upward, they were salt to the taste already.

His rescue or his ruin, the flood-tide was upon him; and,
strange to say, what at another time would have aroused his
wildest terror, now wakened a slight hope of safety.

If he could yet reach, yet pass, the channel of the Kent,
which lay, widening every moment, at some two miles farther
yet before him, he might still escape both the cruel waters and
the more savage man-hunters; but the distance was long, the
fugitive weak with fatigue, weaker yet with fear, and the speed
of thorough-bred horses was hard, as yet, behind him.

He paused a moment to watch, as the first party, his direct
pursuers, reached the broad river-bed—they crossed it, and
that seemingly without alarm or suspicion of danger, though
their heavily-barbed horses sank belly-deep in the treacherous
ford; but having stemmed it, as they charged onward, it
was clear to Eadwulf that the horses buried their hoofs
deeper at every stride; soon they were fetlock-deep in the
heavy sands.

The second party crossed the same water-course higher up,
and with less trouble; and these were now within two miles
of the panting slave, shouting their war-cries, and spurring
yet more furiously onward, having lost, if they had ever entertained
any, all idea of danger, in the furious excitement of
the chase, and taking no heed of the tokens of imminent and
awful peril; and yet those tokens were now sufficient to appal
the boldest.

One of the peculiarities of those terrible and fatal sands is,
that the first approach of those entering tides, which come on,
not with the ordinary roll and thunder of billows and flash
of snowy surf, but swift and silent as the pestilence that flies
by night, is harbingered by no outward and visible sight or

sound, but by the gradual and at first imperceptible conversion
of the solid sands into miry and ponderous sludge, into
moving quicksand, into actual water.

When the sounds and sights are heard and seen, it is too
late to make an effort. Death is at hand, inevitable.

And now sights and sounds were both clear, palpable, nigh
at hand. The dull murmur of the inrolling volumes might
have been heard by the ears of any, so that they were not
jangled and deafened by the clangor of their own iron-harness;
the long white line of surf might have been seen
by the eyes of any, so that they were not so riveted on some
other object, that they could take heed of naught else within
the range of their vision.

But the pursuers heard, saw nothing—nothing, unless it
were the beating of their own savage hearts, the snorting of
their laboring chargers, the clanking din of their spurs and
scabbards, and the jingle of their chain-mail—unless it were
the wretched fugitive, panting along, with his tongue literally
hanging out of his parched jaws, and his eyes bursting from
their sockets, like those of an over-driven ox, stumbling, staggering,
splashing along, often falling, through the mingled
sand and water, now mid-leg deep.

The party which had taken the sands at the most northern
point had now so far over-reached upon the fugitive, that he
had no longer a chance of crossing the course of the Kent
in advance of them. If he persisted in his course, ten minutes
more would have placed him under the counters of their
horses and the points of their lances. The other body, who
had followed him directly, had already perceived their danger,
had pulled up, and were retracing their steps slowly, trying

to pick their way through the dryest ground, and, coasting
up and down the side of the Beetham water, were endeavoring
to find a ford passable for their heavy horses. Lower
down the bay, by a mile or two, they were the first to be
overtaken, the sands were already all afloat, all treacherous
ooze, around them; the banks, dry places there were no
longer any, were not to be distinguished from the channels
of the rivers.

Suddenly, seeing himself cut off, blinded by his immediate
terrors, and thinking only to avoid the more instant peril,
Eadwulf turned southward—turned toward the billows, which
were now coming in, six feet abreast, not two miles below
him, tossing their foamy crests like the mane of the pale-horse
of the Apocalypse, with a sound deeper and more appalling
than the roar of the fiercest thunder. He saw the hopelessness
of his position; and, at the same moment, the first
horror of their situation dawned on the souls of his savage
pursuers.

In that one glance, all was revealed to them; every thought,
every incident, every action of their past lives, flashed before
the eyes of their mind, as if reflected in a mirror; and then
all was blank.

Every rein was drawn simultaneously, every horse halted
where he stood, almost belly-deep in the sands, snorting and
panting, blown and dead-beat by that fruitless gallop; and
now the soil, every where beneath them and about them, was
melting away into briny ooze, with slimy worms and small
eels and lampreys wriggling obscenely, where a little while
before, the heaviest war-horse might have pawed long and
deep without finding water; and the waves were gaining on

them, with more than the speed of charging cavalry, and the
nearest shore was five miles distant.

Within a furlong, on a solitary black stone, which might
overtop the entering flood for an hour's space or better, lay
Eadwulf, the serf. Utterly beaten, unable to move hand or
foot, unable even to raise his head, or look the coming death
in the face, where he had fallen, there he lay.

Two minutes, and the farthest of those horsemen might
have taken him, might have speared him, where he lay, unresisting,
unbeseeching. But none thought of him—none
thought of any thing but the sea—the sea.

They paused for an instant to breathe their horses, before
turning to ride that desperate race—but in that instant they
saw such a sight as chilled their very blood. The other party,
which had now retreated before the tide to within a mile of
them to the eastward, had now determined, as it seemed, at
all risks, to force their way back through the channel of the
Beetham water, and entered it one by one, in single file, the
unarmed guide leading, and the mail-clad rider bringing up
the rear. Each after each, lower they sank and lower, their
horses struggling and rolling in the surge. Now their croupes,
now their withers disappeared from the eyes of the beholders;
now the necks only of the horses and the bodies of the riders
were visible above the wash. A moment of suspense, almost
intolerable, for every one of those mute gazers felt that he
was looking on the counterpart and perfect picture of what
must in a few minutes, more or less, be his own fate also!
A moment, and the guide's horse struggled upward, his
withers reappeared, his croupe—he had cleared the channel,
he was safe. A light page followed him, with the like success;

two half-armed troopers followed; already, presaging
safety, a shout of exultation trembled on the lips of the spectators,
when the mail-clad rider on his heavy horse reached
the mid-passage—reached the spot where his horse should
have gradually emerged—then in an instant, in the twinkling
of an eye, before one could breathe a sigh or syllable, a last
“God save him”—he sank, sheer and sudden, as if the bottom
had yawned under him, and without an effort, a cry, a struggle,
was sucked under.

He was there—he was gone; never more to be seen above
the face of the waters. At the same instant, just as they
uttered one wild cry of horror and despair, or ere they could
turn their horses' heads landward, a deep, cold, wet wind
breathed upon them; a gray mist swept down on them, outrunning
the trampling squadrons of the foamy waves; a fierce
hail storm smote them; and, in an instant, every thing—
shores, billows, skies—evanished from them, wrapped in utter
gloom. Then they dispersed, each struggling through the
rapidly-mounting waters in that direction which he fancied, in
his blindness, should be shoreward. No one of them met
other, more, in this world.

Strange it is to tell, but truths are ofttimes very strange,
stranger than fiction, at that sharp, awful cry, wrenched by
the horrible catastrophe of their comrade from the souls of his
pursuers, aroused from the stupor which had fallen upon him,
between the excess of weariness and the extremity of despair,
Eadwulf raised his head. He saw the white surf tossing and
breaking furiously in the distance; he saw the long line of
deep, unbroken, swelling water, which had not been driven
up from the sea, but had gushed and welled upward through

the pores of the saturated sand, rolling in five feet abreast, far
in advance of the white rollers; swifter than either, darker
and more terrible, he saw the ink-black, ragged hail-storm,
a mere mist on the waters' surface—but, above, a contorted
pile of solid, convoluted clouds, driving in, like a hurricane,
before the breath of the rushing southeaster.

But, in that one lightning glance, he saw also, on the dark
polished surface of the smooth water, in advance of the breakers,
under the storm-cloud, a long black object, hurrying down
before wind and tide, with speed exceeding that of the fleetest
race horse, right upon the spot where he sat, despairing. He
recognized it, at once, for one of the leathern coracles, as they
were called, or rude fishing-boats of the natives of those wild
and stormy shores; the rudest perhaps, but at the same time
the most buoyant and seaworthy of boats. She was empty,
he saw that at a glance, and rode the waves, outstripping the
breakers, gallantly. Could he reach her, he might yet be
saved.

He sat erect on his rock, resolute, with every nerve quivering
with intense excitement, with every faculty braced,
ready for the last exertion.

The cloud fell on him black as midnight; the fierce wind
smote his elf-locks, making them stream and shiver in its currents;
the cutting hail lashed him with arrowy keenness.
Quickly as it came, it passed; and a gleam of troubled sunshine
shimmered through a rent in the black storm, and
glanced like a hopeful smile upon the waters. In that momentary
brilliance, the wretch caught a glimpse of the black
boat, floating past his solitary rock, and without an instant's
hesitation, rushing waist deep into the frothy eddies, fought

his way, he never well knew how, through surge and quicksand,
till he had caught her by the gunwale. Then, spurning
the yielding sands with a tremendous effort, he leaped, or
hurled himself rather, into her, and lay for a breathing-space
motionless, and stunned by the very perception of the strange
vicissitude to which he owed his safety.

But it was no time for self-indulgence; and, ignorant as he
was, semi-barbarous, and half-brutalized, he perceived the nature
of the crisis. The oars or paddles by which the coracle
was impelled were lashed by thongs to her row-locks, and,
getting them out at once, Eadwulf plied them vigorously,
keeping her right stern before the entering tide, and pulling
with all his might, to outstrip the combing of each successive
roller.

For a short space, the glimmer in the air continued; then
the mist gathered down again, and all was gloom, except the
white caps of the breakers, tossing and shivering in the twilight.
But it was now mist only; the wind had sunk, and the
storm-cloud been driven landward.

And now, so dexterously had the serf managed his little
vessel, that, as he shot away from each combing sea-cap, the
surges had swept under instead of over him, and he found himself
riding buoyantly on the long, gentle swell, while the surf,
gradually subsiding, ran up the sands, murmuring hoarsely far
before him.

Suddenly, close ahead of him, not as it seemed ten yards
from the bow of the boat, there arose an angry clash of steel,
a loud cry, “Jesu! Jesu Maria!” and a deep groan; and, the
next instant, the body of a riderless horse, with its head half
submerged, panting and snorting out its last agonies, was

swept so close to his vessel that he could have touched it with
the oar. One other minute, and a light air was felt sensibly;
the mist began to lift and shiver; the darkness seemed to melt,
and to be penetrated and imbued with the sunbeams, till it resembled
a gauzy screen interposed before a strong light.

Another moment, and it rose bodily from the water, floated
upward into the skies, and left all below laughing, clear in
the sunlight. There was no sand now to be seen, save a narrow
yellow stripe on the edge of the soft verdant points, which
stretched out from the shores of Westmoreland, sparkling in
the sun and glittering in the rain-drops, into the broad bosom
of Morecambe Bay, which was now filled with the tide, though
it had not as yet nearly risen to its highest mark—but here
and there, at intervals, dark spots showed in the expanse of
waters, where the tops of the highest sand-banks were scarcely
submerged at all, on which the gentle eddies rippled and
sparkled, as wavelet after wavelet rolled in by its own mounting
impulse, but hastened by no angry gust or turbulent
billow.

On one of these sand-banks, having so long escaped, Heaven
knows how, quicksands and breakers, and having made his
way thus far landward, sat a tall, powerful man-at-arms,
sheathed from head to heel in a complete panoply of chain
mail. His horse was likewise caparisoned in the heaviest
bardings—chamfront and poitrel, steel demi-pique and bard
proper—nothing was wanting of the heaviest caparison with
which charger or man ever rode into the tilt-yard or mêlée.

The tide was already above the horse's belly, and the
rider's plated shoes and mail hose were below the surface.
Deep water was around him on every side, the nearest shore

a mile distant, and to swim fifty yards, much less a mile,
under that weight of steel, was impossible; still he sat there,
waiting his doom, silent and impassive.

He was the last of the pursuers; he alone of the two
parties, who but three short hours before had spurred so
fiercely in pursuit of the wretched slave, had escaped the fate
of Pharaoh and his host, when the Red Sea closed above them.
He alone breathed the breath of life; and he, certain of death,
awaited it with that calm composure, which comes to the full
as much of artificial training as of innate valor.

As the clouds lifted, this solitary man saw, at once, the
boat approaching, and saw who rowed it—saw rescue close at
hand, yet at the same time saw it impossible. His face had
hardly the time to relax into one gleam of hope, before it
again settled down into the iron apathy of despair.

The coracle swept up abreast of him, then paused, as
Eadwulf, half unconsciously, rested on his oars, and gazed
into the despairing and blank features of his enemy. It was
the seneschal of Waltheofstow, the brother of the man whom
he had slain in the forest.

Their eyes met, they recognized each other, and each shuddered
at the recognition. For a moment, neither spake; but,
after a short, bitter pause, it was the rider who broke silence.

“So, it is thou, Saxon dog, who alone hast escaped from
this destruction!”

“It is I, man-hunter. Where are thy boasts and threats
now? Why dost not ask the serf, now, for life, for mercy?”

“Because thou couldst not give it, if thou wouldst; and
wouldst not, if thou couldst. Go thy way, go thy way!
We shall meet one day, in that place whither our deeds will

carry us. Go thy way, unless thou wouldst stay, and look
how a Norman dies. I fear neither death, nor thee. Go thy
way, and the fiend go with thee.”

And, with the word, he went his way, coldly, sternly,
pitilessly, and in silence; for he felt, in truth, that the seneschal
had spoken truly, that he could not save him if he
would, unless he would save his own sworn destroyer. Sullenly,
slowly, he rowed onward, reached the land; and still,
as he looked back, with his horse's neck and his armed trunk
eminent above the level waters, glittering in his bright mail,
sat the fearless rider. Wearied and utterly exhausted, both
in mind and body, the serf gazed, half-remorsefully, at the
man whom he had so mercilessly abandoned to his fate, and
who bore it so sternly, awaiting the last inevitable moment
with more than a stoic's fortitude and pride. For a moment
he hesitated whether he should pursue his journey; but an
irresistible fascination compelled him to sit down and await
the end, and he did so.

And there those two sat, face to face, at a mile's distance,
for a long half hour, in plain view, each almost fancying that
he could peruse the features, almost fancying that he could
read the thoughts of his enemy—each in agony of soul, and
he, perhaps, in the greater anguish who had escaped, as
it would seem, all peril, and for whom death seemed to
wait, distant and unseen, at the end of a far perspective.

At the termination of half an hour, there was a motion, a
strife—the water had reached the nostrils of the charger.
He tossed his head a few times, angrily; then, after rearing
once or twice, with his rider yet erect in his saddle, subsided
into deep water, and all was over.

Eadwulf crept away up the bank, found a thick dingle
in the wood, and, coiling himself up in its densest spot, slept,
dreamless and unrepentant, until the morrow's sun was high
in heaven.