With sea birds
hovering and crying and larks mounting and singing over this, and the sun
shining, and a northwest breeze that tasted like dry champagne, and
myriads of wild flowers, yellow, blue, white, red, pink, and purple,
underfoot, I felt almost too light-hearted. In fact I actually started
singing, and only stopped when I bethought me that it was a trifle
inconsistent with the character of a man slinking about in fear of his
life, looking for a fellow miscreant to befriend him.
But it was quite impossible not to feel elated. Now that I realised the
limited size of the place and its open surface, it was obvious that no
man could lurk there unknown to the inhabitants. He must live in a house
and pass for one of themselves. It seemed then impossible to believe
(especially with an ally in prospect) that a spy whom I had actually seen
and talked with (and knew moreover to have a foreign accent) could escape
my clutches. And, apart from patriotic motives, of what a lift that would
give to my tarnished character!
"Let me recall the fellow carefully," said I to myself, "and get his face
and voice well into my head against our next meeting."
I tried to reconstruct our first meeting exactly as it had happened, to
see again that dark figure rise in my path, and look into the face
beneath the sou'wester.
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