Count Hannibal growled a word in his beard, and, turning in his saddle,
looked back the way he had come. Half a mile away, two or three dots
could be seen approaching across the plain. He turned again.
"You know the road?" he said, curtly addressing the young man.
"Perfectly. As well as Carlat."
"Then lead the way, Monsieur, with Badelon. And spare neither whip nor
spur. There will be need of both, if we would lie warm to-night."
Tignonville nodded assent and, wheeling his horse, rode to the head of
the party, a faint smile playing about his mouth. A moment, and the main
body moved off behind him, leaving Count Hannibal and six men to cover
the rear. The mist, which at noon had risen for an hour or two, was
closing down again, and they had no sooner passed clear of the wood than
the trees faded out of sight behind them. It was not wonderful that they
could not see Carlat. Objects a hundred paces from them were completely
hidden.
Trot, trot! Trot, trot! through a grey world so featureless, so unreal
that the riders, now dozing in the saddle, and now awaking, seemed to
themselves to stand still, as in a nightmare. A trot and then a walk,
and then a trot again; and all a dozen times repeated, while the women
bumped along in their wretched saddles, and the horses stumbled, and the
men swore at them.
Ha! La Garnache at last, and a sharp turn southward to Challans. The
Countess raised her head, and began to look about her. There, should be
a church, she knew; and there, the old ruined tower built by wizards, or
the Carthaginians, so old tradition ran; and there, to the westward, the
great salt marshes towards Noirmoutier. The mist hid all, but the
knowledge that they were there set her heart beating, brought tears to
her eyes, and lightened the long road to Challans.
At Challans they halted half an hour, and washed out the horses' mouths
with water and a little guignolet--the spirit of the country. A dose
of the cordial was administered to the women; and a little after seven
they began the last stage of the journey, through a landscape which even
the mist could not veil from the eyes of love. There rose the windmill
of Soullans! There the old dolmen, beneath which the grey wolf that ate
the two children of Tornic had its lair. For a mile back they had been
treading my lady's land; they had only two more leagues to ride, and one
of those was crumbling under each dogged footfall. The salt flavour,
which is new life to the shore-born, was in the fleecy reek which floated
by them, now thinner, now more opaque; and almost they could hear the
dull thunder of the Biscay waves falling on the rocks.