Klopetee klop, klopetee klop, klopetee, klopetee, klopetee klop.
Pit pat, pit pat, pit pat pat, pit pit pat. Ten yards apart, no more no less.
Nor nearer might the dog attain,
Nor farther might the quarry strain.
“They have done me between them,” thought poor Robinson. “I could have run from either singly, but one blows me, and then the other runs me down. I can get out of it by fighting perhaps, but then there will be another crime.”
Robinson now began to pant audibly, and finding he could not shake the hunter off, he with some reluctance prepared another game.
He began to exaggerate his symptoms of distress, and imperceptibly to relax his pace. On this the pursuer came up hand over head. He was scarce four yards behind when Robinson suddenly turned and threw himself on one knee, with both hands out like a cat's claws. The man ran on full tilt; in fact, he could not have stopped. Robinson caught his nearest ankle with both hands and rose with him and lifted him, aided by his own impulse, high into the air and sent his heels up perpendicular. The man described a parabola in the air, and came down on the very top of his head with frightful force; and as he lay, his head buried in his hat and his heels kicking, Robinson without a moment lost jumped over his body, and klopetee klop rang fainter and fainter down the road alone.
The plucky pursuer wrenched his head with infinite difficulty out of his hat, which sat on his shoulders with his nose pointing through a chasm from crown to brim, shook himself, and ran wildly a few yards in pursuit—but finding he had in his confusion run away from Robinson as well as Robinson from him, and hopeless of recovering the ground now lost, he gave a rueful sort of laugh, made the best of it, put his hands in his pockets and strolled back to meet No. 1.
Meantime, Robinson, fearful of being pursued on horseback, relaxed his speed but little and ran the three miles out into Sydney. He came home with his flank heating and a glutinous moisture on his lip, and a hunted look in his eye. He crept into bed, but spent the night thinking, ay, and praying, too, not sleeping.