They could not see him, or hear him, or even smell him in that tumult of wind unless on his way to the gate he ran into them.

In that moment he would have given a year of life to have known where they were.

Still listening, still fighting to hear some sound of them in the shriek of the storm, he took his first step out into the pit of darkness.

He did not run, but went as cautiously as though the night was a dead calm, the club half poised in his hands.

He had measured the distance and the direction of the gate and when at last he touched the saplings of the stockade he knew that he could not be far off in his reckoning.