Hunger like a gnawing pain bore into the pit of my stomach. Since we had left the island on the morning before, we had eaten no food except the few nuts that we came upon. A kind of sickening weakness overtook me. My legs were trembling as though they were made of straw and the soles of my feet ached as though I were standing over a burning fire. “If they catch us now,” I said, “it’s all over with me. I can go no further.” Charles clapped me on the shoulder and laughed, but it was a laugh that was meant only to encourage me and had no heart to it. “We’ll snap our fingers in their faces yet, Henri,” he said. “Look what we’ve passed through already.” I only shook my head and stared hopelessly towards the ground. “We have no weapons,” I replied. “Even the dagger that I was to carry to the Abbot of Chalonnes is with my clothes at the bottom of the river.” There was no more said. We were both worn out. We went forward through the trees. There was no path. Indeed, the ground seemed to have been trodden now for the first time since the beginning of the world. The moss was everywhere on the earth. The little unexpected stones, as sharp as the tips of arrows, cut into our feet. Above all the darkness and sombreness of the forest was about us like a blanket as gloomy as the night. We came upon an irregular rising in the ground. There was a solid piece of rock as big as an ordinary house, but with no shape to it. All about, it was cut into crevices. The earth itself broke into risings and depressions. Parts of it were like an uneven wall of stone with great blocks of the rock in a rounded line. It seemed as though nature had begun to build a fortress here, but for some reason or other had left off. We climbed in among the boulders and found ourselves on smooth ground covered with coarse grass and weeds, with great trees over and about us. Through the middle flowed a stream that had its starting place in a spring that bubbled up like a fountain from the earth. For a moment we stood gaping in amazement. “If we only had a few bows and arrows here,” said Charles, “we could hold off an army.” “At any rate,” I answered, “we can hide here and rest. They will think we have gone on through the woods.” We turned and faced the great rock which, I said, was as big as a house. The front of it was like an overhanging shed. Underneath was what seemed an opening to the mouth of a cavern—dark and smelling of dampness. Step by step we ventured forward. The ground under our feet grew sticky like wet clay. The light slowly faded. A mustiness like the odor of the cellar of an old inn crept into our nostrils. The opening widened and as we advanced the light was so far gone that we had to feel along the rough wall with our hands.