Then at last Prosper reined up, listening too. "Hush!" he said, "what
is that?"
This was a new sound, more hasty and murmurous than any girl's heart,
and much more dreadful than the music of the still distant hounds; it
was very near, a rushing and pattering sound, as of countless beasts
running. Isoult knew it.
"Wolves!" she said; "let be, there is no harm from them save in the
winter."
As she spoke a grey bitch-wolf came trotting through the trees,
swiftly but in pain, and breathing very short. She was covered with
slaver and red foam, her tongue lolled out at the side of her mouth
long and loose, she let blood freely from a wound in the throat, and
one of her ears was torn and bleeding. She looked neither to right nor
left, did not stay to smell at the scent of the horse; all her pains
were spent to keep running. She broke now and again into a rickety
canter, but for the most part trotted straight forward, with many a
stumble and missed step, all picked up with indescribable feverish
diligence; and as she went her blood flowed, and her panting kept pace
with her padding feet. So she came and so went, hunted by what
followed close upon her; the murmur of the host, the host itself--dogs
and bitches in a pack, making great pace. They came on at a gallop, a
sea of wolves that surged restlessly, yet were one rolling tide. Here
and there a grinning head cast up suddenly out of the press seemed
like the broken crest of some hastier wave impatient with his fellows;
so they snarled, jostled, and snapped at each other. Then one, playing
choragus, would break into a howl, and there would be a long anthem of
howls until the forest rang with the terror; but the haste, the
panting and the padding of feet were the most dreadful, because
incessant; the thrust head would be whelmed, the sharp voice drowned
in howls; the grey tide and the lapping of it never stopped.
The fugitives watched this chase, in which they might have read a
parable of their own affair, sweep past them like a bad dream. In the
dead hush that followed they heard what was a good deal more
significant for them, the baying of the dogs.
"What now?" said Prosper to himself, "there are the dogs. If I make
haste they can make it better; if I stay, how on earth shall I keep my
convoy out of their teeth?"
It was too late to wonder; even at that moment Isoult gasped and
caught at his arm, leaning from her saddle to cling to him as she had
done once before. But this was a danger not to be shamed away by a man
armed. He followed her look, and saw the first dog come on with his
nose to the ground. A thought struck him. "Wait," he said.