My eye was caught by an object moving on the opposite shore. When my gaze grew accustomed to the distance I counted six men. Some of them were armed with bows and arrows. The rest were cutting down young trees and dragging them to the river. Now and then I saw the flash of a sword-blade in the light of the sun.
There was no doubt of it. Our enemies were on foot. They were building a raft to carry armed men over to the island. They would search it from end to end. When they learned that we were gone, they would make for our side of the stream. They would leave no stone unturned to find us. They would examine every blade of grass for traces of us. They would be on our heels like hounds. We were in a country that was unknown to us, while they were as familiar with it as I was with my own.
The Black Prince with his army lay twenty or at most thirty leagues to the west. I had information that would save them. One thought drove us headlong on and on--if our enemies should come upon us, there would be no parleying or hesitation. They would shoot us down like dogs.
That day we went on as fast as our legs could carry us. We gauged our position by the sun. During the morning we kept it in our rear while in the afternoon we made sure of ourselves by the shine of it (when there was an opening in the woods) in our faces.
There were no roads that you could speak of--only rutted trails of mud hardly wide enough for two ox-carts to pass without touching the hubs of each other's wheels. Once in a while we saw the hut of a peasant or a charcoal burner. These we carefully avoided, for we hoped to leave no sign behind us for our enemies to follow, nor did we wish to fall stupidly into a trap. Fortunately it was the season of the year when the nuts were beginning to ripen and we contented ourselves with what we could get of these.
We slept curled up beside each other at the root of a tree. The next morning we were on our way again, but I may say with less speed, for our feet were sore from the unevenness of the ground and our bodies were stretched and tired from the uncomfortable position in which we had spent the night.
About noon we halted for a rest. There was a little brook running over irregular stones down the hill-side where we washed ourselves and drank of the fresh water. I was sitting on a boulder with my back to a tree as limp and wearied as an old cloth. My stomach was rumbling and growling from hunger. I was wishing with all my heart that there would soon be an end to my difficulties. To amuse myself I picked up a stone and threw it aimlessly at a tree. It struck the bark with a resounding crack. I threw another. It missed and went on far beyond. But where it lighted on the ground, I noticed that it stirred up a cloud of dust like fine ashes and with it a few scattered sparks--the smouldering remnants of a fire.