Victory and Glory to Hesus!"

CHAPTER VI.

THE FOREST OF CARDIK.

"What a war! What a war!" exclaim the warriors of Louis the Pious,
leaving at every step some of their companions behind among the rocks
and the marshes of Armorica. "Every hedge of the fields, every ditch in
the valleys conceals a Breton of steady eye and hand. The stone of the
sling, the arrow of the bow whiz everywhere through the air, nor miss
their aim. The pits of the precipices, and the bottoms of the stagnant
waters swallow up the bodies of our soldiers. If we penetrate into the
forests, the danger redoubles. Every copse, the branches of every tree,
conceal an enemy!"

Neroweg, having barely escaped with his life from the disaster of the
marsh of Peulven, spends the night upon the hill with the remaining
fragment of his army. At early dawn the next morning he orders the
trumpets and clarions to call his men to their ranks. At the head of his
warriors he again steps upon the narrow jetty of the marsh. He is
determined to force his way into the forest of Cardik. Footmen and
horses again trample over the heaped-up corpses in the wide trenches. No
ambush now retards the passage of the Franks. By sunrise the last
detachments have crossed the marsh, and all the forces still at the
command of Neroweg are deployed along the skirts of the forest that is
now serving as a retreat to the Gauls of Armorica, and where they have
taken their next stand.

The primeval forest extends, towards the west, as far as the steep banks
of a river that runs into the sea, and towards the east, up to a chain
of precipitous hills. Furious at the defeat he suffered on the previous
evening, the Frankish chief is hardly able to restrain his ardor. Always
accompanied by the monk, he advances into the forest. The oaks, the
elms, the ash trees, the birch trees, raise their gigantic trunks and
interlace their spreading branches. Between these trunks, all is
underwood, bramble and briar. Only one narrow and tortuous path presents
itself to Neroweg's sight. He enters it. Daylight barely penetrates the
walk through the dense vault of verdure, shaped overhead by the foliage
of the stately trees. Thickets of holly seven or eight feet high fringe
the way. Their prickly leaves render them impenetrable.

Unable to wander off either to the right or to the left, the soldiers
are compelled to follow the defile of verdure. Laboring under the shock
of their recent disaster