ng the case, did
the others gainsay her.

Now at length the summer day began to break, and while it was
still too dark to travel, Godwin and Rosamund let the horses
graze, holding them by their bridles. Masouda, also, taking off
the hauberk of Wulf, doctored his bruises as best she could with
the crushed leaves of a bush that grew by the stream, having
first washed them with water, and though the time was short,
eased him much. Then, so soon as the dawn was grey, having drunk
their fill and, as they had nothing else, eaten some watercress
that grew in the stream, they tightened their saddle girths and
started. Scarcely had they gone a hundred yards when, from the
gulf beneath, that was hidden in grey mists, they heard the sound
of horse's hoofs and men's voices.

"Push on," said Masouda, "Al-je-bal is on our tracks."

Upwards they climbed through the gathering light, skirting the
edge of dreadful precipices which in the gloom it would have been
impossible to pass, till at length they reached a great table
land, that ran to the foot of some mountains a dozen miles or
more away. Among those mountains soared two peaks, set close
together. To these Masouda pointed, saying that their road ran
between them, and that beyond lay the valley of the Orontes.
While she spoke, far behind them they heard the sound of men
shouting, although they could see nothing because of the dense
mist.

"Push on," said Masouda; "there is no time to spare," and they
went forward, but only at a hand gallop, for the ground was
still rough and the light uncertain.

When they had covered some six miles of the distance between them
and the mountain pass, the sun rose suddenly and sucked up the
mist. This was what they saw. Before them lay a flat, sandy
plain; behind, the stony ground that they had traversed, and
riding over it, two miles from them, some twenty men of the
Assassins.

"They cannot catch us," said Wulf; but Masouda pointed to the
right, where the mist still hung, and said:

"Yonder I see spears."

Presently it thinned, and there a league away they saw a great
body of mounted soldiers--perhaps there were four hundred.

"Look," she said; "they have come round during the night, as I
feared they would. Now we must cross the path before them or be
taken," and she struck her horse fiercely with a stick she had
cut at the stream. Half a mile further on a shout from the great
body of men to their right, which was answered by another