“Can’t see no more,” he said. “If you’ll fetch one of the gig lamps, Mr Corder, us will know where we are. You’ll want the lamp in a minute anyway, when we come to the plate, for ’twas all thrown loose into the earth.”
Without answering, the big policeman fell into the trap. He had to go nearly three hundred yards for the lamp, and, allowing him above a minute for that journey, Daniel Sweetland made his plunge for liberty. Suddenly, without a moment’s warning, he turned upon Gregory as the inspector bent beside him, and struck the man an awful blow with his spade full upon the top of the head.
“Sorry, Greg!” he cried, as the officer fell in a heap, “but if I’ve got to swing, it shall be for something, not nothing.”
Even as he spoke Daniel had reached to the length of his rope and collared Bartley. The strong man he had struck senseless according to his intention; the weak one he now prepared to deal with. Bartley screamed like a hunted hare, for he supposed that his hour was come. Then Daniel saw the distant light leap forward. Only seconds remained, and only seconds were necessary.
“Be quiet and hand me your knife, or I’ll smash your skull in too!” he shouted to the shaking policeman; then he stretched for the handcuffs, which Corder had put on a stone beside him, and in a second Luke Bartley found himself on the ground beside his colleague. A moment later and he was chained to the recumbent and senseless person of the inspector, while Daniel knelt beside him and extracted from his pocket the knife he now required. With this he cut the rope that held him prisoner and, during the ten seconds that remained, before Mr Corder rushed upon the scene, Daniel had put forty yards of darkness between himself and his guards.
The Plymouth man now found his work cut out for him. Gregory was still unconscious and Bartley had become hysterical and was rolling with his face on the earth howling for mercy. Mr Corder liberated him and kicked him into reason. Then Luke told his tale while the other tended the unfortunate inspector.
“He falled upon the man with his spade, like a devil from hell, an’ afore I could start my frozen limbs an’ strike him down, he’d got me in his clutches an’ handcuffed my wrist to this poor corpse here.”
But Gregory was not a corpse. In two minutes he had recovered his senses and sat up with his feet in the pit.
“What’s happened?” he asked. “Where’s Daniel Sweetland to? Who hit me? Was it lightning?”