A black-topped stone post marked the beginning of the workings, and at this post the advance party halted again. The officer in charge held a drawn sword; the sword flashed and pointed, and the party broke up into disorder. The scarlet coats scattered and began to appear and disappear and reappear among the shale-heaps of the bellpits; the place was perfect for an ambuscade. The black wings of the following away down the road extended farther out, but did not advance. It took twenty minutes to beat the workings as far as the distant shaft-timbers. At the end of that time the party reassembled in the road. The scrubby gorse at the foot of the High Moor was three hundred yards away; it was not searched. One or two stragglers had now detached themselves from the black wings, and their heads and shoulders bobbed and disappeared in the heather. Cope sat insecurely on the white horse. He had brought the stirrup-irons over the saddle, where he held them one on either side with his hands. His legs barely reached the saddle-flaps. He neither spoke to nor looked at the officer on the brown horse, and his head was thrust forward between his narrow shoulders and his lids fluttered with a little regular movement. The officer in charge of the advance party returned and saluted his superior. “All clear, sir,” he said. “Station your men to keep it so,” Captain Ritchie replied. He, too, seemed to be in an ill humour. He gave the word to advance. Cope managed his stirrups in a manner that suggested he had made use of the contrivance before, and he had thrust a pistol between the buttons of his waistcoat. The soldiers set forward deeper into Back o’ th’ Mooin. Down in the bottom of a bellpit the bracken stirred. A hand emerged from it, and a grey cap; and Mish Murgatroyd’s right arm was thrust over the baulk that crossed the old shaft. He clambered to the baulk, and looked to see that the bracken closed of itself behind him. Then he flung down the end of the rope that he had retained. He crawled on his hands and knees half way up the sloping mouth, and from under the thick bracken he drew two guns. He set the flints at half-cock, and drew back the pins of the priming pans. Then, a gun in either hand, he issued stooping from the bellpit, and began to move with little crouching runs among the slack-heaps. Round one heap he peered cautiously; he could see the road not forty yards away. Then swiftly he crossed the narrow gully and disposed himself along the shale of a mound a little farther on. Cautiously he hoisted his cap on a gun-muzzle above the hillock, as if for a signal to somebody up the High Moor. The calf-licks on either side of his bull’s-front of hair started constantly into little glistening points of sweat. He set the guns at full cock. The head of the advancing company reached the black-topped guide-stone.