] blood flushed up in his cheeks, and his thin Punic
lips curved into a snaky smile. Perhaps the old Punic treachery in his
heart; for all that he was heard to reply was, "We must not disturb the
good-fellowship of a Cornish wedding."
The stranger, nevertheless, and the Princess likewise, had seen that
bitter smile.
Men drank hard and long that night; and when daylight came, the strangers
were gone.
In the morning the marriage ceremony was performed; and then began the
pageant of leading home the bride. The minstrels went first, harping and
piping; then King Hannibal, carrying his bride behind him on a pillion;
and after them a string of servants and men-at-arms, leading country
ponies laden with the bride's dower. Along with them, unarmed, sulky, and
suspicious, walked the forty Danes, who were informed that they should go
to Marazion, and there be shipped off for Ireland.
Now, as all men know, those parts of Cornwall, flat and open furze-downs
aloft, are cut, for many miles inland, by long branches of tide river,
walled in by woods and rocks, which rivers join at last in the great basin
of Falmouth harbor; and by crossing one or more of these, the bridal party
would save many a mile on their road towards the west.
So they had timed their journey by the tides: lest, finding low water in
the rivers, they should have to wade to the ferry-boats waist deep in mud;
and going down the steep hillside, through oak and ash and hazel copse,
they entered, as many as could, a great flat-bottomed barge, and were
rowed across some quarter of a mile, to land under a jutting crag, and go
up again by a similar path into the woods.
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