Korree had dimmed his headlight and the two men kneeled down and carefully lighted the fuse of their bomb with Robin's flint and steel. The end of the fiber sputtering, Robin took Cheeky and pressed the glass vial into the monkey's paws. "Over there," he whispered to the monkey urgently, and pointed a finger to the darkness opposite the direction in which they would be heading. "Take it over there and leave it," he whispered.
He'd often taught Cheeky to fetch and carry, and he hoped the animal would obey. It did. Grabbing the glass tube with its smoking fuse, the monkey dashed off into the darkness.
"I hope he remembers to drop it and come back," said Robin. Peter nodded. "Let's get started."
The men and Korree started slowly out of the cave. There was a very faint dimness about them, a starlight glow that was just enough to distinguish the presence of objects. They moved slowly, avoiding the telltale lights of passing Glassies. Korree kept his own stalklight dark.
Suddenly the peace and darkness were split by a sharp, violent explosion somewhere behind them. Immediately following was a screeching, recognizable as the sound of an angry monkey and almost as frightening.
For an instant there was stunned silence and then pandemonium broke loose. Glassies came running in all directions, slamming into each other, not knowing what had happened. Some were running away from the noise, some were running to investigate the terrible bang, and others were simply running for cover in the caves. In the mad helter-skelter, Robin and Peter and Korree ran as fast as they could to the far end of the cleft.
They dodged tree stalks, pushed through other patches, stumbled occasionally over obstacles, but carried on. Robin noticed even as he ran that the vegetation was already drying up and dying rapidly. The cessation of sunlight had probably been quite abrupt as the sun had sunk behind whatever crater walls made up the horizon above them. Evidently the growth here was geared to a short, heavy life and sudden death.
Over the frightened, high-pitched voices of the Glassies, Robin now heard another sound, the roaring voice of a man. Von Borck had been brought out. He was yelling something, shouting angrily.
Peter called to Robin as they dashed along. "He's trying to get them to order. He knows we did it. But they don't understand him."
On they ran. Now behind them they heard some signs of pursuit. Evidently Peter was overoptimistic. Somehow Von Borck must have managed to get the Glassies to realize his meaning. Hitting some and shoving others, he had clearly gotten a few, who were still in awe of his "magic," to follow him. They could hear the sounds of stalks cracking far behind them as they ran. But they had a good head start.