The foremost of them had just passed the hillock on the top of which Marie lay when "Crack! crack!" a couple of pistol-shots rang out loudly on the slumberous air. One man pitched heavily forward on his face, while another and younger man spun round like a rabbit, bent himself double, clawed convulsively at the sand, and then slowly collapsed across the path. The scattered trackers here and there about the mounds and hollows stood rooted to the ground with vague alarm at the sight. Some of them, indeed, put their heads down and ran up the hill of sand from which the shots had come. But when they reached the summit all they saw was the reek of burned powder lazily dispersing in the hot haze of the afternoon, while upon the dune's extremest edge were the marks of a pair of elbows in the sand, where Marie had reclined as she took aim. But of their dangerous assailant they found no further trace. For immediately upon firing Marie had snatched her pistols and descended into the winding lane of sand at the back of the dune. Then, being perfectly acquainted with her line of communication, and mindful ever to keep upon the shady side, she glided from shelter to shelter with the silence and skill of one bred to such guerilla warfare. Haxo and his party were manifestly discouraged by their misfortune, and still more by the immunity of their unseen foe. What had happened once might very well happen again. Nevertheless, trusting to their numbers, they came on with still more infinite pains, Haxo himself climbing a high dune and crying directions to his men how they were to advance by this pass and that dell, in which from his post of vantage he could be certain that no enemy lurked. CHAPTER XX CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN Marie had made good her retreat till she halted within a few hundred yards of the little fort where Wat and Scarlett kept their watch. Here she lay crouched behind a bush of broom which had escaped the general destruction as the shifting sand advanced, and which had made good its position by associating itself with stubborn clumps of pink and sea-holly. For these are both brave, self-helpful plants, and can bind the sand together with their own proper roots without the aid of bent-grass. Behind this ambuscade Marie crouched, and Wat would have descended to her assistance but that Scarlett forcibly withheld him. "Lie still, man; can ye not bide and watch? It is as bonny as a painted picture. Think you that our muckle clumsy bodies could run and hide as featly? I trow not! Let the lass do her own ways. She has, indeed, a very pretty notion of war--aye, far better than many of our boasted generals, and nigh hand as good as the prince himself. For, to my thinking, there is more generalship in delaying and harassing the advance of a superior force than in defeating an equal number with trumpets, drums, and all the paraphernalia of war."