By the mercy of Heaven he rolled onto the top of the lumber just as the watchman, on a pile twenty feet below him, flashed the glare into the corridor where Hitch had stood a moment before.
Hitch was blowing like a bellows, streams of perspiration poured down his body, and his giant frame shook like the body of a man with an ague.
Days of dissipation in New Orleans, a drunken spree just a few hours before, nothing to eat since breakfast, half an hour of violent exercise running and climbing lumber, and a fright which clutched at his heart, weakening and almost suffocating him—all of these things were handicaps for Hitch Diamond in the effort he was making to escape.
He knew that capture meant certain death. Capture was not even necessary—a flash of light, a well-directed pistol-shot, and his career was ended.
Suddenly his soul was filled with terror.
Twenty men had mounted the lumber-piles and were moving across the tops, lashing the lumber with their lights, driving everything before them as a woman shoos a lot of chickens. Below him, on the ground, men were standing at the end of each main thoroughfare, and were lashing them with light, while one man was walking down each by-path!
The searching party had organized, and was moving with perfect precision to cover the entire yard.
“Good-by, fair worl’!” Hitch Diamond mourned as he crawled to the edge of the lumber and looked down. “’Tain’t no hope fer pore old Hitchie onless I kin hop offen dis lumber atter dat man is done passed down in de alley.”
But the men on the ground had foreseen that possibility, and were measuring their progress down the by-paths by the progress of the men on the lumber-piles.
Seeing this, Hitch Diamond’s heart turned to lead, his blood to water, and his giant frame seemed to crumble like chalk. Already he felt himself mortally stricken and dying.