How good it was to gird the sword on me again, and to feel the cold rim of the good helm round my hot forehead!  I was myself again, and as I slipped Gerent’s gold ring on my arm I thought that it was almost worth the bondage to know what pleasure can be in the winning of freedom.  I forgot that I was troubled with thirst and hunger, having touched nothing since I broke my fast with Owen; though, indeed, there was little matter in that, for I had done well at that meal with the long ride before me, and one ought to be able to go for a day and a night without food if need be, as a warrior.

Still, I was not yet out of the trouble.  Thorgils had gone to some place that I knew nothing of, and I had yet to learn if there was any hope from Evan’s shore going, which might make things easier or might not.  I could hear no one moving about the ship, so I pushed the door open for an inch or two, and looked out into the moonlight, with my drawn sword ready in my hand.

We were in a strange place.  The ship’s bows were landward, so that as I looked aft I could see that we lay just inside the mouth of a little cove, whose guarding cliffs towered on either side of the water for not less than ten-score feet above the fringe of breakers, falling sheer to the water with hardly so much as a jutting rock at their feet.  There was no sign of house or man at the hilltop, so that it was plain that we were not at Tenby.

Then I was able to see that we were alongside a sort of landing place that was partly natural and partly hewn and smoothed from the living rock into a sort of wharf at the foot of the cliff.  From this landing place a steep road, hewn with untold labour at some ancient day, slanted sharply upward and toward the head of the cove along the face of the rocks, which were somewhat less steep on this side than across the water.  I could not see the top of this road, but no doubt it was that along which Thorgils and the princess had gone, and no doubt also Evan thought to carry me up it before long.

I had a hope that my friend would return too soon for that, but it was a slender one.  It was plain that he had gone too far for me to call to him.  Yet could I win clear of the ship I might find or fight my way up after him, and that seemed easy with only these three Welshmen against me, and they expecting no attack.

I looked for the two who were left if I slew Evan.  One sat under the weather gunwale, wrapped in a great cloak, and seemed to be sleeping.  The other was not far off on the landing place, watching Evan, who was speaking with a dozen men at the foot of the rock-hewn road.  I suppose that the coming in of the ship had drawn idlers from the camp I had heard of to see her, for they all had arms of some sort.

This was bad, for it seemed certain that the whole crowd would join with Evan in falling on me if he called on them.  If I came forth now I had full twenty yards to cover before I reached them from the ship’s side after I had settled with the men on watch.  In that space all would be ready for me, and they were too many for me to cut through to the roadway.  I thought too that I heard the voices of more who came downward toward the ship, though I could not see them whence I was.