I was about to emerge from my place of concealment, when again the tramp of horses fell upon my ear, and, looking out, I saw Sir Nicholas and several of his officers come riding slowly along. They stopped quite close to me, and, dismounting, made a survey of the land all around, but, my star favouring me, they moved to the further side of the stream.
“Let the camp be pitched here,” said Sir Nicholas, “and do you remain until the men come up.”
I guessed that he had been told of my presence in Galway, and had immediately ordered the soldiers to set out to catch me so that we should have no advantage from our being warned of his purpose.
My position was now one of extreme peril; I was cut off from returning to my galley; and I could see nothing for it but to remain where I was until the soldiers had gone on on their journey, unless I took the chances of the darkness.
There I lay, and, as the night fell, the men of Sir Nicholas marched up and lit their watch-fires not more than a stone’s throw from where I hid. For hours, not daring to move, I heard them singing and talking and jesting with each other. When, at length, silence came upon the sleeping camp, I stole as softly as I could out of the bushes, and moving on, like a cat, so that each step of mine was no more noticed than a puff of wind, I managed to gain the road that leads past Oorid and Sindilla at the foot of the mountains. I walked fast, and sometimes ran, until the day broke, when I turned aside, and, having sought for and found a dry cave on the side of a hill, fell down utterly exhausted, and ere long was in a deep slumber.
I was awakened many hours later, for it was dark again, by a strange sort of cheeping noise at my very ears.
I started up, and the noise ceased; I lay down, and the sound began once more. As I listened, my face to the rocky floor of the cavern, I fancied I could distinguish words, but, as it were, coming from a great way off.
Now, thoroughly aroused, I listened yet more earnestly, and I made out that there were two or three voices, and that the sound of them was not coming from the inside of the cave, nor yet from the outside, but seemed to issue, like a thin whistle, through the rock itself.