Dick's men were anxious to send random bullets in reply into the thickets, but he restrained them.
It would be only a waste, and while it was annoying to be held there, it could not be helped.

Some of the horses reared and plunged with fright at the shots, but silence soon came.
Dick still watched the sergeant as he edged forward, inch by inch.
Had not his eyes been following the dusky figure he could not have picked it out from the general darkness.

But he still saw it faintly, a darker blur against the dark earth.

Yielding a little to his own anxiety, he handed the bridle of his horse to his orderly, and moved toward the edge of the woodland strip, bending low, and using the tree trunks for shelter.
At the last tree he knelt and looked for those on the other side.
The sergeant was already beyond cover, but he lay so low in the grass that Dick himself could scarcely discern him.
The wind was still driving the thin sheets of rain before it, and was keeping up a howling and whistling in the pass, a most sinister sound to one not used to the forest and darkness, although Dick paid no attention to it.
Twice the clouds parted slightly and showed a bit of moonlight, but the gleam was so brief that it was gone in a second or two.

Nevertheless at the second ray Dick saw crouched beside a tree at the far side of the road a small hunched figure holding a rifle, the head crowned by an enormous flap-brimmed hat.