Panic—mad and unreasoning—possessed them. Behind, an oblong of lesser gloom through the blackness showed the location of the door.
And through the door they surged pell-mell.
Down the steps they rushed and flung themselves upon their waiting horses. Out of the grounds they galloped and down the road.
A hundred yards farther on they drew rein as by common consent. But before they could bring their mounts to a halt the clatter of hoofs behind them sent their scared gaze backward.
By the pale starlight they could just distinguish their half-clad foe—enormous and ghostly in the dim light—astride a monster horse, bearing down on them at the speed of an express-train. The sword still gleamed above his head.
There was no pause; there was no consultation; there was no impulse to investigate.
Swayed by a single purpose, the four guerrillas urged their tired horses to a run. Down the road they streamed, their ghostly foe in close pursuit.
Presently—or, as it seemed to them, after a thousand years of terror-flight—the foremost of them reached the by-road. And, with the instinct of a burrow-seeking rabbit, he wheeled his horse into it. His three comrades followed his example.
They had ridden for perhaps a mile when the rear-most of them paused to make certain of what he had begun to hope, that their terrible ghost-foe had ceased his pursuit.
One by one the guerrillas drew in their exhausted horses. No hoof-beats or any other sound came to them on the summer night’s still air.