Now, what happened next Smith cannot describe at all clearly. He knew
he was on Giltar, looking across the waves to Caldy; he heard all the
while the hollow, booming tide in the caverns of the rocks far below
him, And yet he saw, as if in a glass, a very different country--a
level fenland cut by slow streams, by long avenues of trimmed trees.
"It looked," he says, "as if it ought to have been a lonely country,
but it was swarming with men; they were thick as ants in an anthill.
And they were all dressed in armour; that was the strange thing about
it.
"I thought I was standing by what looked as if it had been a
farmhouse; but it was all battered to bits, just a heap of ruins and
rubbish. All that was left was one tall round chimney, shaped very
much like the fifteenth-century chimneys in Pembrokeshire. And
thousands and tens of thousands went marching by.
"They were all in armour, and in all sorts of armour. Some of them had
overlapping tongues of bright metal fastened on their clothes, others
were in chain mail from head to foot, others were in heavy plate
armour.
"They wore helmets of all shapes and sorts and sizes.
Pages:
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53