It had been strange if I thought of anything but the sport.  I knew there were two horsemen close by, a little wide on either flank, but behind me.  So we took the bird after a good chase, and then I knew that we had in some way shaken off the Saxons, and that we three vikings were together.  It did not trouble us, for one looks for such partings, and Ethelnoth had his own bounds.  So we went on, and found another bustard, and took it.

“Now we must go back,” I said; “one must have a thought for the king’s horses.”

So we turned, and then a heron rose from a boggy stream below us, and that was a quarry not to be let go.  I unhooded the falcon and cast her off, and straightway forgot everything but the most wonderful sight that the field and forest can give us—­the dizzy upward climbing circles of hawk and heron, who strive to gain the highest place cloudwards, one for attack, the other for safety.

The evening sunlight flashed red from the bright under feathers of the strong wings as the birds swung into it from the shadow of the westward hill, and still they soared, drifting westward with the wind over our heads.  Then with a great rushing sound the heron gave up, and fell, stone-like, from the falcon that had won to air above him at last.  At once the long wings of his enemy closed halfway, and she swooped after him.

Then back and up, like a sword drawn at need, went the heron’s sharp beak; and the falcon saw it, and swerved and shot past her nearly-taken prey.  Again the heron began to tower up and up with a harsh croak that seemed like a cry of mockery; then the wondrous swing and sweep of the long, tireless wings of the passage hawk, and the cry of another heron far off, scared by its fellow’s note; and again for us a canter over the moorland, eye and hand and knee together wary for both hawk above and good horse below, till the falcon bound to the heron, and both came to the ground, and there was an end in the grey shadow of the Dartmoor tors.  Ay, but King Alfred’s hawk was a good one!

“Now, where shall we seek Ethelnoth?” I said.

“No good seeking him,” said Harek.  “We had better make our way back to the village.”

We coupled up the greyhounds again and hooded the falcon, and rode leisurely back over our tracks for some way.  The sun set about that time into a purple bank of mist beyond the farther hills.  One does not note how the miles go when one finds sport such as this, and presently we began to be sure that we had ridden farther than we had thought.  We knew, as we thought, the direction from which we had come, and steered, sailor-wise, by the sunset.  But we could take no straight course because of the hills, and we were as often off the line as on.

Then crept up the mist from the valleys, and we had nought to steer by, for the wind dropped.  Then I said: 

“Let the horses take us home; they know better than we.”

So we rode on slowly until darkness came, but never saw so much as a light that might guide us.  And presently we let the dogs loose, thinking that they would go homewards.  But a greyhound is not like a mastiff, and they hung round us, careless, or helpless, in the mists and darkness.