Twice had the boats returned, until a hundred of his corsairs
stood ranged along that foreign beach. The other hundred he left on
guard aboard. He took so great a force upon an expedition for which a
quarter of the men would have sufficed so as to ensure by overwhelming
numbers the avoidance of all unnecessary violence.
Absolutely unobserved he led them up the slope towards Arwenack through
the darkness that had now closed in. To tread his native soil once more
went near to drawing tears from him. How familiar was the path he
followed with such confidence in the night; how well known each bush and
stone by which he went with his silent multitude hard upon his heels.
Who could have foretold him such a return as this
Who could have dreamt when he roamed amain in his youth here with dogs
and fowling-piece that he would creep one night over these dunes a
renegade Muslim leading a horde of infidels to storm the house of Sir
John Killigrew of Arwenack?
Such thoughts begot a weakness in him; but he made a quick recovery when
his mind swung to all that he had so unjustly suffered, when he
considered all that he came thus to avenge.
First to Arwenack to Sir John and Rosamund to compel them to hear the
truth at least, and then away to Penarrow for Master Lionel and the
reckoning. Such was the project that warmed him, conquered his weakness
and spurred him, relentless, onward and upward to the heights and the
fortified house that dominated them.
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