So, in obedience to Scarlett, and also because the girl's quick manoeuvres at once astonished and fascinated him, Wat abode still where he was. But his eyes were chained to the slight form of the Little Marie, who lay behind the broom perfectly plain to them from their fortress eminence, but wholly hidden from the line of the enemy's advance. It seemed an unconscionable time before the pursuers came near, because on this occasion they took the utmost precautions to avoid surprise; and it was not till Haxo himself had ascended the knoll within thirty feet of where the girl lay that the foremost of the approaching skirmishers came within range. But Marie was either so careless of her life or so sure of the line of her retreat that she appeared to pick and choose deliberately among her enemies. The persons of many of them were doubtless well known to her, and it is possible that she had private scores to pay off while thus fighting the battles of Wat and Scarlett. Presently one of her pistols spoke again and a third man fell wounded. Haxo stood up to mark the spot from which the reek of the powder floated lazily into the air, and as he did so, Marie, wheeling about on her elbows, steadied her weapon on the edge of the sand between the broom-bush and the sea-holly. It cracked, and Haxo, with a cry of anger and pain, clapped his hand upon his ankle, for all the world like a boy that runs barefoot and whose toe meets a stone unexpectedly. But this time it was impossible for Marie to conceal the line of her flight. She had to make a considerable detour to the right; for, in order to pick her men, she had allowed some of the enemy to pass her by, and these now bent hastily round to intercept her. The rest, following Haxo's frenzied directions as he leaped and swore with the pain of his hurt, pursued with might and main, getting glimpses of her as she ran. For on this occasion Marie took no care whatever to keep to the bottoms, but on the contrary chose the hardest surface and the most direct road for the shore, as though she had been fleeing to a boat which lay in waiting at the sea edge. It was soon obvious that this was the idea of the pursuers, for those on the left who had passed her place of ambush exerted themselves to reach the shingle of the beach by the narrow and deep defile in front of the wall of the fort. They paused occasionally to fire, and cheered and shouted all the time in order to encourage one another--which doubtless they were much in need of, for it must have been most discomfortable to see their comrades dropping here and there about them without so much as the pleasure of getting a shot at the assailant.