The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1855-02-08

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 few mo-
ments 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 southwark, 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 plashv
and that the silvery line which marked the mar
gin of the waters, where the sun glinted on their
qniet ripples, appeared nearer than when he
had descended from the solid strand.
But on the other hand, the sun-hghted slopes
and crags of the opposite Lancastrian shore,
near Peterborough Head, and the green point
/ of Westmoreland, between the mouths of Win
andermere and the river Kent, lying in the full
blaze of the uninterrupted morning, looked
| much nearer than they really were, and seemed
to beckon him forward with smile of well
| come. "Even if it be that the tide is turning"
he thought Il have yet the time to outstrip it;
! and the quick er 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
moment every thought of the time, the tide,
the peril of the sands. 1t was the keen blast
of bugle, clearly winded on the shore from
which he had just departed, but at point
little higher up, to the northward, than that at
which he had himself left it. In an instant,
1 -. L IL IL
| reconnoitre, a second bugle, yet farther to the
| north, took up the cadence, and, as that died
| away, yet third, so faint, and so far to the
northward, that it seemed like 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 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 pennonceles which adorned their long
| lances.
| There was now no longer doubt. His pur-
suers had divided themselves into scattered
parties, the better to scour the country, two of
| which had already discovered him, while there
| was evidently 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
/ iovial hunters that the beast of chase is afoot,
rang wildly over the sands, was repeated once
4 Il al a.
ring their heavily barbed horses, and brandish-
ing 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, al
most directly northward, with his long shadow
streaming westward over the dank sands, cutting
the bright sunshine with a blue, ripping wake.
The second, taking the passage higher up, gal
loped at an oblique angle to the first pursuers,
laying up to the point of Westmoreland, in Or
der to cut off the fugitive; and, in few mo-
ments afterward, yet another group might be
seen skirting the shore line, as if intent to in
| tercept 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 FLASHING in the sunshine like
showers of metallic dust. 1t was a fearful race,
race for life and death, with Odds as it would
seem, not to be calculated, against the painting
| fugitive.
At first, the horses galloped 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 STUN
bled at almost every step. The horses gained
| upon him at every stride, and the riders shout
ed already in triumph. 1t seemed, indeed, as
I boD Oh,
ed the first channel it had widened little,
| yet perceptibly, since Eadwulf had crossed it !;
but the horses leaped it or galloped through it,
without an effort
| The fugitive was now nearly in the middle
OF the sands; but his pursuers had already
crossed, In few minutes, one half of the space
which it had cost him painful two hours toll
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 stoop-
| ed to ladlo up a few drops in the hollow of his
hand, to battle 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 widest terror, now
wakened a slight hope of safety.
If he could yet reach, yet pass, the channel
| OF the Kent, which lay, widening every mo-
ment, 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 thoroughbred
| horses was hard, as yet, behind him.
he paused a moment to watch, as the first
party, his direct pursuers, reached the broad
rver-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 galloped onward, it was clear to Fad
wulf 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 les, trouble; and
and these were now within two miles of the
painting slave, shouting their war-cries. and
squirting yet more furiously onward having
lost, if they had ever entertained anv. all idea
of danger in the furious excitement of the
| chase, and taking no heed of the tokens of inn
minent 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 pillows and flash
| of snowy surf, but swift and silent as the pesti-
lence that flies by night, is harbingered by no
outward and visible sight or sound, but by the
| gradual and at first imperceptble conversion
/ of the solid sands into miry and ponderous