At that second, two shots crackled.
Darlés flung himself into mad, headlong flight toward the Viaducto. At first he heard a voice behind him, screaming:
"Stop him! Stop the thief! Stop thief!"
It was a horrible, nightmare voice. Then came the thunderous tumult of the pursuing mob. Before him, the pedestrians opened out. He saw astonishment and fear in their faces. As he rushed into the Calle de Bordadores, a man brandished a stick and tried to stop him. Darlés veered to the left, and ran up the grade of the Calle Siete de Julio with the speed of a hare.
Some one threw a chair at him, from a doorway. It hardly grazed him, but tripped up his nearest pursuers. When the human hunting-pack, raging and giving tongue, rushed in under the archways of the Plaza Mayor, its menacing tumult echoed louder than ever:
Beside himself with terror, the student flung himself along. He kept straight ahead, reached the park railing and leaped it with one bound. This saved him. The dim light and the shadows under the trees masked his figure. Still, he kept on running till he came to the fence again, and once more jumped it.
This time as he landed, his knees could no longer hold him up. They doubled, and he almost fell on his face. But he struggled up, once more, and still ran on and on. Now the pursuers' voices sounded far-off, under the echoing archways of the Plaza.
Darlés kept fleeing down the Calle Toledo. He noticed that a good many women were looking at him with uneasiness. One woman cried:
"He's wounded!"