CHAPTER XVIII.

THE SANDS.

Splendor in heaven, and horror on the main! Sunshine and storm at once--a troubled day; Clouds roll in brightness, and descend in rain. Now the waves rush into the rocky bay, Shaking the eternal barriers of the land; And ocean's face is like a battle-plain, Where giant demons combat hand to hand.

EBENEZER ELLIOTT.

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 furnace.

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 lakeland 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 foothold was, moreover, less firm than before, and his heavy brogues sank to the latchet in the yielding 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 appall 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, out-running the trampling squadrons of the foamy waves; a fierce hail storm smote them; and, in an instant, every thing--shores, billows, skies--vanished 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 demipique 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.