The Green Gauntlet [antikvár]

PART ONE The Beleaguered chapter one Hit and Run The gull, canting uncertainly into the wind, rose from its ledge a hundred feet above the landslip and flew along the tideline before turning inland over the first cottages of Coombe Bay, searching for its first circling point, Smut Potter's tall brick chimney, near the foot of the steep village street. From the elevation of the Bluff the Valley was seen as a great gauntlet, a green and russet gauntlet of the kind falconers used centuries ago. The glove was left-handed, with the knob of the Bluff, the highest point of the coast, as the thumb. The fore-finger, pointing due north, was the wooded Coombe, with its three farms showing as blood or rust stains. The less-soiled middle and third fingers were the green inroads of Shallowford Woods and the more open coppices of French Wood and Hermitage Clump. The little finger, crooked at a wide angle, was Blackberry Moor, now almost obliterated by the Royal Marine Camp and showing slate-green on the far side of the silver streak that was the River Sorrel. The back of the gauntlet, a great flattish wedge extending between the Bluff and the western crest of the moor, was not as blotched as the fingers but seamed with age, here stubble fields showing as regular brown patches, there I ; I -¦ I f , Il ! '