From his hiding-place in the bushes Dunn slipped out, as the big man
vanished into the darkness down the road, and for the fraction of a
second he seemed to hesitate.
The lights in the house were coming and going after a fashion that
suggested that the inmates were preparing for bed, and almost at once
Dunn turned his back to the building and hurried very quickly and softly
down the road in the direction the big man had just taken.
“After all,” he thought, “the house can't run away, that will be still
there when I come back, and I ought to find out who this big chap is and
where he comes from.”
In spite of the apparent clumsiness of his build and the ungainliness of
his movements it was extraordinary how swiftly and how quietly he moved,
a shadow could scarcely have made less sound than this man did as he
melted through the darkness and a swift runner would have difficulty in
keeping pace with him.
An old labourer going home late bade the big man a friendly good night
and passed on without seeing or hearing Dunn following close behind,
and a solitary woman, watching at her cottage door, saw plainly the big
man's tall form and heard his firm and heavy steps and would have been
ready to swear no other passed that way at that time, though Dunn was
not five yards behind, slipping silently and swiftly by in the shelter
of the trees lining the road.
A little further beyond this cottage a path, reached by climbing a
stile, led from the high road first across an open field and then
through the heart of a wood that seemed to be of considerable extent.
The man Dunn was following crossed this stile and when he had gone a
yard or two along the path he halted abruptly, as though all at once
grown uneasy, and looked behind.
From where he stood any one following him across the stile must have
shown plainly visible against the sky line, but though he lingered for
a moment or two, and even, when he walked on, still looked back very
frequently, he saw nothing.
Yet Dunn, when his quarry paused and looked back like this, was only a
little distance behind, and when the other moved on Dunn was still very
near.
But he had not crossed the stile, for when he came to it he realised
that in climbing it his form would be plainly visible in outline for
some distance, and so instead, he had found and crawled through a gap in
the hedge not far away.
They came, Dunn so close and so noiseless behind his quarry he might
well have seemed the other's shadow, to the outskirts of the wood, and
as they entered it Dunn made his first fault, his first failure in an
exhibition of woodcraft that a North American Indian or an Australian
“black-fellow” might have equalled, but could not have surpassed.
For he trod heavily on a dry twig that snapped with a very loud, sharp
retort, clearly audible for some distance in the quiet night, and, as
dry twigs only snap like that under the pressure of considerable weight,
the presence of some living creature in the wood other than the small
things that run to and fro beneath the trees, stood revealed to all ears
that could hear.
Dunn stood instantly perfectly still, rigid as a statue, listening
intently, and he noted with satisfaction and keen relief that the
regular heavy tread of the man in front did not alter or change.
“Good,” he thought to himself. “What luck, he hasn't heard it.”
He moved on again, as silently as before, perhaps a little inclined to
be contemptuous of any one who could fail to notice so plain a warning,
and he supposed that the man he was following must be some townsman who
knew nothing at all of the life of the country and was, like so many of
the dwellers in cities, blind and deaf outside the range of the noises
of the streets and the clamour of passing traffic.
This thought was still in his mind when all at once the steady sound of
footsteps he had been following ceased suddenly and abruptly, cut off on
the instant as you turn off water from a tap.
Dunn paused, too, supposing that for some reason the other had stopped
for a moment and would soon walk on again.
But a minute passed and then another and there was still no sound of
the footsteps beginning again. A little puzzled, Dunn moved cautiously
forward.
He saw nothing, he found nothing, there was no sign at all of the man he
had been following.
It was as though he had vanished bodily from the face of the earth, and
yet how this had happened, or why, or what had become of him, Dunn could
not imagine, for this spot was, it seemed, in the very heart of the
wood, there was no shelter of any sort or kind anywhere near, and though
there were trees all round just the ground was fairly open.
“Well, that's jolly queer,” he muttered, for indeed it had a strange and
daunting effect, this sudden disappearance in the midst of the wood of
the man he had followed so far, and the silence around seemed all the
more intense now that those regular and heavy footsteps had ceased.
“Jolly queer, as queer a thing as ever I came across,” he muttered
again.
He listened and heard a faint sound from his right. He listened again
and thought he heard a rustling on his left, but was not sure and all
at once a great figure loomed up gigantic before him and the light of
lantern gleamed in his face.
“Now, my man,” a voice said, “you've been following me ever since I left
Bittermeads, and I'm going to give you a lesson you won't forget in a
hurry.”
Dunn stood quite still. At the moment his chief feeling was one of
intense discomfiture at the way in which he had been outwitted, and he
experienced, too, a very keen and genuine admiration for the woodcraft
the other had shown.
Evidently, all the time he had known, or at any rate, suspected, that
he was being followed, and choosing this as a favourable spot he had
quietly doubled on his tracks, come up behind his pursuer, and taken him
unawares.
Dunn had not supposed there was a man in England who could have played
such a trick on him, but his admiration was roughly disturbed before he
could express it, for the grasp upon his collar tightened and upon his
shoulders there alighted a tremendous, stinging blow, as with all his
very considerable strength, the big man brought down his walking-stick
with a resounding thwack.
The sheer surprise of it, the sudden sharp pain, jerked a quick cry from
Dunn, who had not been in the least prepared for such an attack, and in
the darkness had not seen the stick rise, and the other laughed grimly.
“Yes, you scoundrel,” he said. “I know very well who you are and what
you want, and I'm going to thrash you within an inch of your life.”
Again the stick rose in the air, but did not fall, for round about his
body Dunn laid such a grip as he had never felt before and as would for
certain have crushed in the ribs of a weaker man. The lantern crashed to
the ground, they were in darkness.
“Ha! Would you?” the man exclaimed, taken by surprise in his turn, and,
giant as he was, he felt himself plucked up from the ground as you pluck
a weed from a lawn and held for a moment in mid-air and then dashed down
again.
Perhaps not another man alive could have kept his footing under such
treatment, but, somehow, he managed to, though it needed all his great
strength to resist the shock.
He flung away his walking-stick, for he realized very clearly now that
this was not going to be, as he had anticipated, a mere case of the
administration of a deserved punishment, but rather the starkest,
fiercest fight that ever he had known.
He grappled with his enemy, trying to make the most of his superior
height and weight, but the long arms twined about him, seemed to press
the very breath from his body and for all the huge efforts he put forth
with every ounce of his tremendous strength behind them, he could not
break loose from the no less tremendous grip wherein he was taken.
Breast to breast they fought, straining, swaying a little this way or
that, but neither yielding an inch. Their muscles stood out like bars of
steel, their breath came heavily, neither man was conscious any more of
anything save his need to conquer and win and overthrow his enemy.
The quick passion of hot rage that had come upon Dunn when he felt the
other's unexpected blow still burned and flamed intensely, so that he
no longer remembered even the strange and high purpose which had brought
him here.
His adversary, too, had lost all consciousness of all other things in
the lust of this fierce physical battle, and when he gave presently a
loud, half-strangled shout, it was not fear that he uttered or a cry
for aid, but solely for joy in such wild struggle and efforts as he had
never known before.
And Dunn spake no word and uttered no sound, but strove all the more
with all the strength of every nerve and muscle he possessed once again
to pluck the other up that he might dash him down a second time.
In quick and heavy gasps came their breaths as they still swayed and
struggled together, and though each exerted to the utmost a strength few
could have withstood, each found that in the other he seemed to have met
his match.
In vain Dunn tried again to lift his adversary up so that he might hurl
him to the ground. It was an effort, a grip that seemed as though it
might have torn up an oak by the roots, but the other neither budged nor
flinched beneath it.
And in vain, in his turn, did he try to bend Dunn backwards to crush him
to the earth, it was an effort before which one might have thought that
iron and stone must have given away, but Dunn still sustained it.
Thus dreadfully they fought, there in the darkness, there in the silence
of the night.
Dreadfully they wrestled, implacable, fierce, determined, every primeval
passion awake and strong again, and slowly, very slowly, that awful grip
laid upon the big man's body began to tell.
His breathing grew more difficult, his efforts seemed aimed more to
release himself than to overcome his adversary, he gave way an inch or
two, no more, but still an inch or two of ground.
There was a sharp sound, like a thin, dry twig snapping beneath a
careless foot.
It was one of his ribs breaking beneath the dreadful and intolerable
pressure of Dunn's enormous grip. But neither of the combatants heard
or knew, and with one last effort the big man put forth all his vast
strength in a final attempt to bear his enemy down.
Dunn resisted still, resisted, though the veins stood out like cords on
his brow, though a little trickle of blood crept from the corner of his
mouth and though his heart swelled almost to bursting.
There was a sound of many waters in his ears, the darkness all around
grew shot with little flames, he could hear some one breathing very
noisily and he was not sure whether this were himself or his adversary
till he realized that it was both of them. With one sudden, almost
superhuman effort, he heaved his great adversary up, but had not
strength enough left to do more than let him slip from his grasp to fall
on the ground, and with the effort he himself dropped forward on his
hands and knees, just as a lantern shone at a distance and a voice
cried:
“This way, Tom. Master John, Master John, where are you?”