“Swift!” he said, as he threw down the second corpse. “Shut the door. I caught sight of horsemen riding through the trees. Nay, they saw nothing.” So they locked the massive door and barred it, and with beating hearts waited in the dark, expecting every moment to hear soldiers battering at its timbers. But no sound came; the searchers, if such they were, had passed on to seek elsewhere. Now while Wulf made shift to fasten up the horses near the mouth of the cave, Godwin gathered stones as large as he could lift, and piled them up against the door, till they knew that it would take many men an hour or more to break through. For this door was banded with iron and set fast in the living rock. Chapter XV. The Flight to Emesa Then came the weariest time of waiting the brethren had ever known, or were to know, although at first they did not feel it so long and heavy. Water trickled from the walls of this cave, and Wulf, who was parched with thirst, gathered it in his hands and drank till he was satisfied. Then he let it run upon his head to cool its aching; and Godwin bathed such of his brother’s hurts and bruises as could be come at, for he did not dare to remove the hauberk, and so gave him comfort. When this was done, and he had looked to the saddles and trappings of the horses, Wulf told of all that had passed between him and Lozelle on the bridge. How at the first onset his spear had caught in the links of and torn away the head-piece of his foe, who, if the lacings had not burst, would have been hurled to death, while that of Lozelle struck his buckler fair and shattered on it, rending it from his arm. How they pushed past each other, and for a moment the fore hoofs of Smoke hung over the abyss, so that he thought he was surely sped: How at the next course Lozelle’s spear passed beneath his arm, while his, striking full upon Sir Hugh’s breast, brought down the black horse and his rider as though a thunderbolt had smitten them, and how Smoke, that could not check its furious pace, leapt over them, as a horse leaps a-hunting: How he would not ride down Lozelle, but dismounted to finish the fray in knightly fashion, and, being shieldless, received the full weight of the great sword upon his mail, so that he staggered back and would have fallen had he not struck against the horse.