"Up with thee, Wolfric," cried one of the men to one who seemed the chief. "Up with thee! There is no time to lose. We must swear him when we have entered the cave. Forward comrade; this way lies your safety." And, with the words, he pointed up the slippery chasm of the waterfall. Up this perilous ladder, one by one, where to an unpracticed eye no ascent appeared possible, the outlaws straggled painfully but in safety, the spray effacing every track of their footsteps, and the water carrying off every trace of the scent where they had passed, until they reached the topmost landing-place. There the stream was projected in an arch from the rock, which jutted out in a bold table; and there, stooping under the foamy sheet, the leader entered a low cavern, with a mouth scarce exceeding that of a fox earth, but expanding within into a large and roomy apartment, where they ate and caroused and slept at their ease, during the whole day and all the succeeding night; for the robbers insisted that no foot must be set without their cavern by the fugitive, until they should have ascertained by their spies that the Normans had quitted their neighborhood. This they did not until late in the following day, when they divided themselves into three parties, and struck off northwesterly toward the upper sands at the head of the bay, for which they had evidently concluded that Eadwulf was making, after they had exhausted every effort of ingenuity to discover the means of his inexplicable disappearance, on the verge of that tiny rivulet, running among open moors on the bare hill-sides. So soon as they were certain of the direction which the enemy had taken, and of the fact that they had abandoned the farther use of the bloodhounds, as unprofitable, the whole party struck due westerly across the hills, on a right line for Lancaster, guiding their companion with unerring skill across some twenty miles of partially-cultivated country, to the upper end of the estuary of the Lon, about one mile north of the city, which dreary water they reached in the gloaming twilight. Here a skiff was produced from its concealment in the rushes, and he was ferried over the frith, as a last act of kindness, by his entertainers, who, directing him on his way to the sands, the roar of which might be heard already in the distance, retreated with all speed to their hill fastnesses, from which they felt it would be most unsafe for them to be found far distant by the morning light. The distance did not much exceed four miles; but, before he arrived at the end, Eadwulf met the greatest alarm which had yet befallen him; for, just as it was growing too dark to distinguish objects clearly, a horseman overtook him, or rather crossed him from the northward, riding so noiselessly over the sands, that he was upon him before he heard the sound of his tread.