We rode northward and inland along the downs high over the left bank of the Fowey River; with good turf and heather underfoot, and with the moon behind our right shoulders.  She was the harvest moon, now in her last quarter, and from her altitude I guessed it, by west country time, to be well past four of the morning or within an hour of daybreak.  But because she hung bright up here, we pricked forward warily, using every pit and hollow.  We had left our breast-pieces, back-pieces, and gorgets behind us, with Penkevill’s standard, for the main troop to carry; and rode in plain gray jerkins—­bareheaded too, since on mounting the rise above the valley-fog we had done off our morions (for fear of the moonlight) and hidden them in a furze-brake, where belike next summer the heather-bees found and made hives of them.

Fog, rolling up from the sea—­seven or eight miles away—­filled all the valley below us:  and this fog was the reason of our riding.  For the valley formed the neck of a trap in which the King held our general with two thousand five hundred horse, six thousand infantry, and I know not how many guns.  His own artillery lined the heights under which we rode—­that is, to left or east of the river; he had pushed across a couple of batteries to the opposite hills, and between them easily commanded the valley.  It was just the ease of it that made him careless and gave us our chance.  He had withdrawn the better part of his horse to the coast, to make a display against our scattered base; and our general, aware of this, was even meditating an assault on the heights when the sudden fog changed his plans and he resolved to march his horse, under cover of it, straight through the trap.  The risk, to be sure, was nearly desperate; since, for aught he knew, the King was marching back his troops under the same cover, and to be caught in that narrow valley (which was plashy, moreover, and in places flooded) would mean the total loss of his cavalry.  Yet he had spoken cheerfully when I took leave of him and rode off with my seven men—­our business being to watch along the enemy’s lines for any movement, to sound a warning if necessary, and, if surprised or caught, so to behave as to lead suspicion away from the movement of the main body.

The enemy kept loose watch up here.  We could see his camp-fires dotted on the ridge between us and the dark woods of Boconnock, where the owls hooted; but either we were lucky or his outposts had been carelessly set.  Clearly no alarm had reached these encampments.  But Heaven knew what might be happening, or preparing to happen, in the valley.  There at any moment the report of a single musket might tell us that all was lost.

Penkevill—­a good lad—­insisted that all was well.  Our men had been due to start at two o’clock, and all delay allowed for, by this time they should be past the gut of the valley, where an opposing force would certainly choose to post itself.