It was nearly three when we issued from the pavilion. The rain had taken off; the sun shone quite cheerfully. I had never seen the gulls fly so close about the house or approach so fearlessly to human beings. On the very doorstep one flapped heavily past our heads, and uttered its wild cry in my very ear. "There is an omen for you," said Northmour, who like all freethinkers was much under the influence of superstition. "They think we are already dead." I made some light rejoinder, but it was with half my heart; for the circumstance had impressed me. A yard or two before the gate, on a patch of smooth turf, we set down the dispatch box; and Northmour waved a white handkerchief over his head. Nothing replied. We raised our voices, and cried aloud in Italian that we were there as ambassadors to arrange the quarrel, but the stillness remained unbroken save by the seagulls and the surf. I had a weight at my heart when we desisted; and I saw that even Northmour was unusually pale. He looked over his shoulder nervously, as though he feared that some one had crept between him and the pavilion door. "By God," he said in a whisper, "this is too much for me!" I replied in the same key: "Suppose there should be none, after all!" "Look there," he returned, nodding with his head, as though he had been afraid to point. I glanced in the direction indicated; and there, from the northern quarter of the Sea-Wood, beheld a thin column of smoke rising steadily against the now cloudless sky. "Northmour," I said (we still continued to talk in whispers), "it is not possible to endure this suspense. I prefer death fifty times over. Stay you here to watch the pavilion; I will go forward and make sure, if I have to walk right into their camp." He looked once again all round him with puckered eyes, and then nodded assentingly to my proposal.