"This is no time to listen to your nonsense!" "What do you mean?" stammered the old fellow, utterly bewildered. "Mean? Why, shut up!" And the young man leapt into the saddle: "Are you coming, Antonio?" "Yes. My mates will follow our trail. I shall leave a mark from spot to spot; and I hope we shall all be united again to-morrow." As they were starting, Dolores, on horseback, brought up her mount alongside theirs. "No!" said Antonio. "You come on with the others. The professor can't walk all the time." She made no reply. "I insist on your keeping with the others," repeated the half-breed, more severely. But she set her horse at a trot and caught up with Simon. For more than an hour they followed a direction which Simon took to be south by south-east, that is to say, the direction of France. The half-breed thought the same: "The main thing," he said, "is to get near the coast, as our beasts have only enough food to last them till to-morrow evening. The water question also might become troublesome." "I don't care what happens to-morrow," Simon rejoined. They made much slower progress than they had hoped to do. Their mounts were poor, spiritless stuff. Moreover, they had to stop at intervals to decipher the tracks which crossed one another in the wet sand or to pick them up on rocky ground. Simon became incensed at each of these halts. All around them the scene was like that which they had observed early in the afternoon; the land rose and fell in scarcely perceptible undulations; it was a dismal, monotonous world, with its graveyards of ships and skeleton steamers. Prowling figures crossed it in all directions. Antonio shouted questions to them as he passed. One of them said that he had met two horsemen and four pedestrians leading a couple of horses on which were bound a man and a woman whose fair hair swept the ground. "How long ago was this?" asked Simon, in a hoarse voice. "Forty minutes, or fifty at the most." He dug his heels into his horse's flanks and set off at a gallop, stooping over the animal's neck in order not to lose the scoundrel's track. Antonio found it difficult to follow him, while Dolores erect in her saddle, with a serious face and eyes fixed on the distant horizon, kept up with him without an effort. Meanwhile the light was failing, and the riders felt as though the darkness were about to swoop down on them from the heavy clouds in which it was gathering. "We shall get there . . . we must," repeated Simon. "I feel certain we shall see them in ten minutes. . . ."