A NIGHT PURSUIT.
I rushed across the room and looked out through the dim glass. At
first I could make out nothing until a faint form resolved itself
suddenly into a face, gray and set as the block of stone it looked
over.
It never moved, but remained thus as if it were a sculptured death
designed to take stock forever with a petrified stare of the crumbling
mill.
Then, as my eyes grew accustomed to the outlines, I saw that it leaned
down in reality, with its chin resting on its hands that were crossed
over the top of the parapet. Even at that distance I should have known
the mouth, though the whole pose of the figure were not visible to
convince me.
Jason looked at me like a dying man when I returned to him. The full
horror of a mortal fright, than which nothing is more painful to
witness, spoke from his lungs, that heaved as if the sweet air had
become a palpable thing to enter within and imprison his soul from all
hope of escape. He tried to question me, but only sunk back with a
moan.
“Now,” I said, “you must summon all your resolution. Act promptly and
in half an hour you will be beyond reach of him.”
My own nerves were strung to devouring action. A kind of exultation
fired me to master this tyranny of pursuit. Whatever might be its
justification, the tactics of aggressive force should at least be open
and human, I thought.
“You don’t want to pass the night here?”
He made a negative motion with his head.
“I think you’re right. It might only be postponing the end. Will you
place yourself in my hands?”
He held out his arms to me imploringly.
“Very well. Now, listen to me. There he will remain in all likelihood
for some time, not knowing he is discovered. We must give him the
slip--escape quietly at the back, while he is intent on the front.”
I could only make out that his white lips whispered: “You won’t leave
me?”
“Not till all danger is past. I promise you.”
I went over the house and quietly tested that every bolt and catch was
secure. Then I fetched a dram of spirit, and made the poor,
demoralized wretch swallow it. It brought a glint of color to his
cheek--a little firmness to his limbs.
“Another,” he whispered.
“No,” I answered. “You want the nerve to act; not the overconfidence
that leads to a false step. Come.”
Together we stole to the rear of the building where the little
platform hung above the race. I locked the door behind us and pocketed
the key.
“Now,” I said, “quietly and no hesitating. Follow me.”
The stream here sought passage between the inclosed mill-head, with
its tumbling bay and waste weir--the sluice of which I never remember
to have seen shut--on the one side, and on the other the wall of an
adjoining garden. This last was not lofty, but was too high to scale
without fear of noise and the risk of attracting observation.
Underneath the heavy pull of the water would have spun us like straws
off our feet had we dropped into it there.
There was only one way, and that I had calculated upon. To the left
some branches of a great sycamore tree overhung the wall, the nearest
of them some five feet out of reach. Climbing the rail of the
platform, I stood upon the outer edge and balanced myself for a
spring. It was no difficult task to an active man, and in a moment I
was bobbing and dipping above the black onrush of the water. Pointing
out my feet with a vigorous oscillating action, I next swung myself to
a further branch, which I clutched, letting go the other. Here I
dangled above a little silt of weed and gravel that stood forth the
margin of the stream, and onto it I dropped, finding firm foothold,
and motioned to Jason to follow.
He was like to have come to grief at the outset, for from his nerves
being shaky, I suppose, he sprung short of the first branch, hitting
at it frantically with his fingers only, so that he fell with a
bounding splash into the water’s edge. The pull had him in an instant,
and it would have been all up with him had I not foreseen the result
while he was yet in midair and plunged for him. Luckily I still held
on to the end of the second branch, to which I clung with one hand,
while I seized his coat collar with the other. For half a minute even
then it was a struggle for life or death, the stout wood I held to
deciding the balance, but at last he gained his feet, and I was able
to pull him, wallowing and stumbling, toward me. It was not the depth
of the water that so nearly overcame us, for it ran hardly above his
knees. It was the mighty strength of it rushing onward to the wheel.
He would have paused to regain his breath, but I allowed him no
respite.
“Hurry!” I whispered. “Who knows but he may have heard the splash?”
He needed no further stimulus, but pushed at me to proceed, in a
flurried agony of fear. I tested the water on the further side of the
little mound. It was possible to struggle up against it along its
edge, and of that possibility we must make the best. Clutching at the
wall with crooked fingers for any hope of support, we moved up, step
by step, until gradually the wicked hold slackened and we could make
our way without bitter struggle.
Presently, to the right, the wall opened to a slope of desert garden
ground that ran up to an empty cottage standing on the fall of the
hill above. Over to this we cautiously waded, and climbed once more to
dry land, drenched and exhausted.
No pause might be ours yet, however. Stooping almost to the earth, we
scurried up the slope, passed the cottage, and never stopped until we
stood upon the road that skirts the base of the hill.
A moment’s breathing space now and a moment’s reflection. Downward the
winding road led straight to the bridge and the very figure we were
flying. Yet it was necessary to cross the head of this road somehow,
to reach the meadows that stretched over the lap of the low valley we
must traverse before we could hit the Southampton highway.
Fortunately no moon was up to play traitor to our need. I took my
brother by the coat sleeve and led him onward. He was trembling and
shivering as if with an ague. Over the grass, by way of the watery
tracks, we sped--passing at a stone’s throw the pool where Modred had
nearly met his death, breaking out at last, with a panting burst of
relief, into the solitary stretch of road running southward. Before
us, in the glimmering dark, it went silent and lonely between its
moth-haunted hedges, and we took it with long strides.
My brother hurried by my side without a word, subduing his breathing
even as much as possible and walking with a light, springing motion on
his toes; but now and again I saw him look back over his shoulder,
with an awful expression of listening.
It was after one of his turns that Jason suddenly whipped a hand upon
my arm and drew me to a stop.
“Listen!” he whispered, and slewed his head round, with a dry chirp in
his throat.
Faintly--very faintly, a step on the road behind us came to my ears.
“He’s following!” murmured my brother, with a sort of despairing
calmness.
“Nonsense,” I said; “how do you know it’s he? It’s a public highway.”
“I do know. Hark to the step!”
It was a little nearer. There was a queer dragging sound in it. Was it
possible that some demon inspired this terrible man to an awful
species of clairvoyance? How otherwise could he be on our tracks?
Unless, indeed, the splash had informed him!
There was a gap in the hedge close by where we stood, and not far from
it, in the field beyond, a haystack looming gigantic in the dark. With
a rapid motion I dived, pulling Jason after me--and stooping low, we
scurried for the shelter, and threw ourselves into the loose stuff
lying on the further side of it. There, lying crushed into the litter,
with what horror of emotion to one of us God alone may know, we heard
the shuffling footsteps come rapidly up the road. As it neared the
gap, my brother’s hand fell upon mine, with a convulsive clutch. It
was stone cold and all clammy with the ooze of terror. As the footstep
passed he relaxed his hold and seemed to collapse. I thought he had
fainted, but mercifully I was mistaken.
The step behind the hedge seemed to go a little further, then die out
all at once. I thought he had passed beyond our hearing, and lay still
some moments longer listening--listening, through the faint rustling
sounds of the night, for assurance of our safety.
At length I was on the point of rising, when a strained hideous
screech broke from the figure beside me and I saw him sway up,
kneeling, and totter sideways against the wall of hay. With the sound
of his voice I sprung to my feet--and there was the pursuer, come
silently round the corner of the stack, and gazing with gloating eyes
upon his victim.