It was over his head, but his feet touched ground almost immediately. Then he rose again, and keeping under cover of the bank began to swim upstream. The current being deep was sluggish, and Gerard, who was a strong, powerful swimmer, made good headway. Carefully avoiding the slightest splash he had swum about two hundred yards, when he became sensible of a strange, but ever so slight vibration. It was caused by the tread of footsteps on the bank.
He dived and swam beneath the surface in order to avoid leaving any ripple. When at last he arose to breathe he found he was beneath a huge overhanging bush, whose branches trailed down into the water. Nothing could be better for his purpose.
Holding on by a bough, he drew a long deep breath. Then peering cautiously forth through the foliage he watched and listened. Again came that barely perceptible vibration of the bank, and he thought he could detect the muffled sound of voices.
The shadow of the tree-fringed bank lay in an irregular line upon the water. The sun was now almost straight upstream, reducing the shadow to a mere three or four yards of width. And, a short distance below him, projecting from this line of shadow, Gerard, from his concealment could make out the moving silhouettes of three or four heads. His ruthless pursuers were right over his hiding-place. Would they discover it or pass it by?
Chapter Seventeen.
How Dawes Fared.
Having parted with his young companion, John Dawes rode on, outwardly cool and unconcerned, though in effect his mind misgave him. For he knew that in all human probability he had but a few minutes more to live. The critical moment would be that of the discovery of Gerard’s defection, and if he and his party escaped massacre in the outburst of fury which was sure to follow, why their escape would smack of the nature of a miracle about as much as anything he had ever known in his life.
Fortune favoured him, favoured them both, so far. In their impatience to get back to the scene of the revels, the messengers had increased the distance between themselves and the horsemen, and when Gerard had made his dash for it, the shouting and stamping of the wild war-dance had so far deadened all other sounds that the receding of his horse’s hoofs passed unnoticed by the escort, to whose ears, in fact, during the general tumult, the tread of one horse made as much noise as that of two.