Part 8 (1/2)

Then, of a sudden, a last, shrill paean rose high; the hosts of our pursuers paused, billow-like, reared, and scattered--my poor Yahoo leapt clear.

For an instant once again in this wild journey I was poised, as it were, in s.p.a.ce, then fell with a crash, still clutched, sure and whole, to the broad shoulders of my rescuer.

When my first confusion had pa.s.sed away, I found that I was lying in a dense green glen at the foot of a cliff. For some moments I could think of nothing but my extraordinary escape from destruction. Within reach of my hand lay the creature who had carried me, huddled and motionless; and to left and to right of me, and one a little nearer the base of the cliff, five of those sorrel horses that had been chief of our pursuers. One only of them was alive, and he, also, broken and unable to rise--unable to do else than watch with fierce, untamed, glazing eyes (a b.l.o.o.d.y froth at his muzzle,) every movement and sign of life I made.

I myself, though bruised and bleeding, had received no serious injury.

But my Yahoo would rise no more. His master was left alone amidst his people. I stooped over him and bathed his brow and cheeks with the water that trickled from the cliffs close at hand. I pushed back the thick strands of matted yellow hair from his eyes. He made no sign.

Even while I watched him the life of the poor beast near at hand welled away: he whinnied softly, and dropped his head upon the bracken. I was alone in the unbroken silence.

It seemed a graceless thing to leave the carca.s.ses of these brave creatures uncovered there. So I stripped off branches of the trees, and gathered bundles of fern and bracken, with which to conceal awhile their bones from wolf and fowl. And him whom I had begun to love I covered last, desiring he might but return, if only for a moment, to bid me his strange farewell.

This done, I pushed through the undergrowth from the foot of the sunny cliffs, and after wandering in the woods, came late in the afternoon, tired out, to a ruinous hut. Here I rested, refres.h.i.+ng myself with the unripe berries that grew near by.

I remained quite still in this mouldering hut looking out on the glens where fell the sunlight. Some homely bird warbled endlessly on in her retreat, lifted her small voice till every hollow resounded with her content. Silvery b.u.t.terflies wavered across the sun's pale beams, sipped, and flew in wreaths away. The infinite hordes of the dust raised their universal voice till, listening, it seemed to me their tiny Babel was after all my own old, far-off English, sweet of the husk.

Fate leads a man through danger to his delight. Me she had led among woods. Nameless though many of the cups and stars and odours of the flowers were to me, unfamiliar the little shapes that gamboled in fur and feather before my face, here dwelt, mummy of all earth's summers, some old ghost of me, sipper of sap, coucher in moss, quieter than dust.

So sitting, so rhapsodising, I began to hear presently another sound--the rich, juicy munch-munch of jaws, a little blunted maybe, which yet, it seemed, could never cry Enough! to these sweet, succulent gra.s.ses. I made no sign, waited with eyes towards the sound, and pulses beating as if for a sweetheart. And soon, placid, unsurprised, at her extreme ease, loomed into sight who but my ox-headed Rosinante in these dells, cropping her delightful way along in search of her drowned master.

I could but whistle and receive the slow, soft scrutiny of her familiar eyes. I fancied even her bland face smiled, as might elderliness on youth. She climbed near with bridle broken and trailing, thrust out her nose to me, and so was mine again.

Sunlight left the woods. Wind pa.s.sed through the upper branches. So, with rain in the air, I went forward once more; not quite so headily, perhaps, yet, I hope, with undiminished courage, like all earth's travellers before me, who have deemed truth potent as modesty, and themselves worth scanning print after.

IX

_A ... shop of rarities._

--GEORGE HERBERT.

A little before darkness fell we struck into a narrow road traversing the wood. This, though apparently not much frequented, would at least lead me into lands inhabited, so turning my face to the West, that I might have light to survey as long as any gleamed in the sky, I trudged on. But I went slow enough: Rosinante was lame; I like a stranger to my body, it was so bruised and tumbled.

The night was black, and a thin rain falling when at last I emerged from the interminable maze of lanes into which the wood-road had led me. And glad I was to descry what seemed by the many lights s.h.i.+ning from its windows to be a populous village. A gay village also, for song came wafted on the night air, rustic and convivial.

Hereabouts I overtook a figure on foot, who, when I addressed him, turned on me as sharply as if he supposed the elms above him were thick with robbers, or that mine was a voice out of the unearthly hailing him.

I asked him the name of the village we were approaching. With small dark eyes searching my face in the black shadow of night, he answered in a voice so strange and guttural that I failed to understand a word.

He shook his fingers in the air; pointed with the cudgel he carried under his arm now to the gloom behind us, now to the homely galaxy before us, and gabbled on so fast and so earnestly that I began to suppose he was a little crazed.

One word, however, I caught at last from all this jargon, and that often repeated with a little bow to me, and an uneasy smile on his white face--”Mishrush, Mishrus.h.!.+” But whether by this he meant to convey to me his habitual mood, or his own name, I did not learn till afterwards. I stopped in the heavy road and raised my hand.

”An inn,” I cried in his ear, ”I want lodging, supper--a tavern, an inn!” as if addressing a child or a natural.

He began gesticulating again, evidently vain of having fully understood me. Indeed, he twisted his little head upon his shoulders to observe Rosinante gauntly labouring on. ”'Ame!--'ame!” he cried with a great effort.

I nodded.

”Ah!” he cried piteously.

He led me, after a few minutes' journey, into the cobbled yard of a bright-painted inn, on whose signboard a rising sun glimmered faintly gold, and these letters standing close above it--”The World's End.”