He started to his feet.Several missiles rattled among the boughs, and the wood echoed with battle-cries.Whence they came he could not tell, for noises in these huge woods are so reverberated, that a stranger is always at fault as to their whereabout; but they seemed to fill the whole air.Presently there was a lull; then he heard the fierce galloping of hoofs; and still louder shouts and cries arose, mingled with shrieks and groans; and above all, strange and terrible sounds, like fierce claps of thunder, bellowing loud, and then dying off in cracking echoes; and red tongues of flame shot out ever and anon among the trees, and clouds of sulphurous smoke came drifting over his head.And all was still.
Gerard was struck with awe."What will become of Denys?" he cried.
"Oh, why did you leave me? Oh, Denys, my friend! my friend!"Just before sunset Denys returned, almost sinking under a hairy bundle.It was the bear's skin.
Gerard welcomed him with a burst of joy that astonished him.
"I thought never to see you again, dear Denys.Were you in the battle?""No.What battle?"
"The bloody battle of men, or fiends, that raged in the wood a while agone;" and with this he described it to the life, and more fully than I have done.
Denys patted him indulgently on the back.
"It is well," said he; "thou art a good limner; and fever is a great spur to the imagination.One day I lay in a cart-shed with a cracked skull, and saw two hosts manoeuvre and fight a good hour on eight feet square, the which I did fairly describe to my comrade in due order, only not so gorgeously as thou, for want of book learning.
"What, then, you believe me not? when I tell you the arrows whizzed over my head, and the combatants shouted, and - ""May the foul fiends fly away with me if I believe a word of it."Gerard took his arm, and quietly pointed to a tree close by.
"Why, it looks like - it is-a broad arrow, as I live!" And he went close, and looked up at it.
"It came out of the battle.I heard it, and saw it.""An English arrow."
"How know you that?"
"Marry, by its length.The English bowmen draw the bow to the ear, others only to the right breast.Hence the English loose a three-foot shaft, and this is one of them, perdition seize them!
Well, if this is not glamour, there has been a trifle of a battle.
And if there has been a battle in so ridiculous a place for a battle as this, why then 'tis no business of mine, for my Duke hath no quarrel hereabouts.So let's to bed," said the professional.And with this he scraped together a heap of leaves, and made Gerard lie on it, his axe by his side.He then lay down beside him, with one hand on his arbalest, and drew the bear-skin over them, hair inward.They were soon as warm as toast, and fast asleep.
But long before the dawn Gerard woke his comrade.
"What shall I do, Denys, I die of famine?""Do? why.go to sleep again incontinent: qui dort dine.""But I tell you I am too hungry to sleep," snapped Gerard.
"Let us march, then," replied Denys, with paternal indulgence.
He had a brief paroxysm of yawns; then made a small bundle of bears' ears, rolling them up in a strip of the skin, cut for the purpose; and they took the road.
Gerard leaned on his axe, and propped by Denys on the other side, hobbled along, not without sighs.
"I hate pain." said Gerard viciously.
"Therein you show judgment," replied papa smoothly.
It was a clear starlight night; and soon the moon rising revealed the end of the wood at no great distance: a pleasant sight, since Dusseldorf they knew was but a short league further.
At the edge of the wood they came upon something so mysterious that they stopped to gaze at it, before going up to it.Two white pillars rose in the air, distant a few paces from each other; and between them stood many figures, that looked like human forms.
"I go no farther till I know what this is," said Gerard, in an agitated whisper."Are they effigies of the saints, for men to pray to on the road? or live robbers waiting to shoot down honest travellers? Nay, living men they cannot be, for they stand on nothing that I see.Oh! Denys, let us turn back till daybreak;this is no mortal sight."
Denys halted, and peered long and keenly."They are men," said he, at last.Gerard was for turning back all the more."But men that will never hurt us, nor we them.Look not to their feet, for that they stand on!""Where, then, i' the name of all the saints?""Look over their heads," said Denys gravely.
Following this direction, Gerard presently discerned the outline of a dark wooden beam passing from pillar to pillar; and as the pair got nearer, walking now on tiptoe, one by one dark snake-like cords came out in the moonlight, each pendent from the beam to a dead man, and tight as wire.
Now as they came under this awful monument of crime and wholesale vengeance a light air swept by, and several of the corpses swung, or gently gyrated.and every rope creaked.Gerard shuddered at this ghastly salute.So thoroughly had the gibbet, with its sickening load, seized and held their eyes, that it was but now they perceived a fire right underneath, and a living figure sitting huddled over it.His axe lay beside him, the bright blade shining red in the glow.He was asleep.
Gerard started, but Denys only whispered, "courage, comrade, here is a fire.""Ay! but there is a man at it."
"There will soon be three;" and he began to heap some wood on it that the watcher had prepared; during which the prudent Gerard seized the man's axe, and sat down tight on it, grasping his own, and examining the sleeper.There was nothing outwardly distinctive in the man.He wore the dress of the country folk, and the hat of the district, a three-cornered hat called a Brunswicker, stiff enough to turn a sword cut, and with a thick brass hat-band.The weight of the whole thing had turned his ears entirely down, like a fancy rabbit's in our century; but even this, though it spoiled him as a man, was nothing remarkable.They had of late met scores of these dog's-eared rustics.The peculiarity was, this clown watching under a laden gallows.What for?