Now also for the first time the Prince and his
men became aware that a great army was moving upon the eastern
side of them, streaming southward in the hope of cutting off their
retreat to the sea. The sky glowed with their fires at night, and
the autumn sun twinkled and gleamed from one end of the horizon to
the other upon the steel caps and flashing weapons of a mighty
host.
Anxious to secure his plunder, and conscious that the levies of
France were far superior in number to his own force, the Prince
redoubled his attempts to escape; but his horses were exhausted
and his starving men were hardly to be kept in order. A few more
days would unfit them for battle. Therefore, when he found near
the village of Maupertuis a position in which a small force might
have a chance to hold its own, he gave up the attempt to outmarch
his pursuers, and he turned at bay, like a hunted boar, all tusks
and eyes of flame.
Whilst these high events had been in progress, Nigel with Black
Simon and four other men-at-arms from Bordeaux, was hastening
northward to join the army. As far as Bergerac they were in a
friendly land, but thence onward they rode over a blackened
landscape with many a roofless house, its two bare gable-ends
sticking upward--a "Knolles' miter" as it was afterward called
when Sir Robert worked his stern will upon the country. For three
days they rode northward, seeing many small parties of French in
all directions, but too eager to reach the army to ease their
march in the search of adventures.
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