A savage voice behind them shouted, “Halt!” and then a bullet sang past and a rifle went off with a noise like a cannon—or so it seemed to Stewart; then another and another. It was the sentry, of course, pumping bullets after them. Stewart’s flesh crept at the thought that any instant might bring a volley, which would sweep the track with a storm of lead. If he could only look back, if he only knew——
Suddenly the girl pulled him to the right, and he saw there was a cleft in the steep bank. Even as they sprang into it, the volley came, and then a second and a third, and then the sound of shouting voices and running feet.
Savagely the fugitives fought their way upward, over rocks, through briars—scratched, torn, bleeding, panting for breath. Even in the daytime it would have been a desperate scramble; now it soon became a sort of horrid nightmare, which might end at any instant at the bottom of a cliff. More than once Stewart told himself that he could not go on, that his heart would burst if he took another step—and yet he did go on, up and up, close behind his comrade, who seemed borne on invisible wings.
At last she stopped and pressed close against him. He could feel how her heart was thumping.
“Wait!” she panted. “Listen!”
Not a sound broke the stillness of the wood.
“I think we are safe,” she said. “Let us rest a while.”
They sat down, side by side, on a great rock. Gradually their gasping breath slackened and the pounding of their hearts grew quieter.
“I have lost my cap,” she said, at last. “A branch snatched it off and I did not dare to stop.”
Stewart put his hand to his head and found that his hat also was gone. Until that instant he had not missed it.