To his horror, as he stopped short, there came an answering shout from above, and another from higher up the gully.
“Send a couple down into the river bed!” shouted the voice below. “I’ll stop him here.”
Hilary ground his teeth, for cunning as he thought himself, it was evident that the same idea had occurred to his pursuers.
What was he to do? If he climbed up the banks he was certain to be seen; if he kept on along the bed of the stream he would walk right into an enemy’s arms; and the same if he worked upward.
He stopped, thinking, but no fresh idea struck him; and setting his teeth and drawing a long breath, he stepped on into a more open place.
“I’ll make a fight for it,” he said sharply, “for I don’t mean to be taken back.”
Just then he caught sight of a hollow that had evidently been tunnelled out of the rocks by centuries of floods. There was a perfect curtain of thin stranded holly, ivy, and bramble hanging before it, and creeping cautiously forward he parted the hanging strands, passed in, and they fell back in place, almost shutting out the light of day.
The hollow did not even approach the dimensions of a cave, but was the merest hollowing out of the soft sand rock; still, it was sufficient to conceal him from his pursuers, and, cutlass in hand, he crouched down, holding open one little place in the green curtain and listening for the next hint of the coming of his pursuers. A dead silence ensued, during which he could feel the heavy throb, throb of his heart and the hard labouring of his breath, for his exertions had been tremendous. But still no sound reached his ears; not a shout was heard, and he began to grow hopeful.
Five minutes must have passed, and he had recovered his breath. From out of the tiny opening he had left he saw a robin flit down and perch upon a twig. Then came a blackbird to investigate the state of the commissariat department in the gully, turning busily over the leaves; and so calmly did the bird work that Hilary felt still more hopeful, for he knew that no one could be near.
Vain hope! All at once the bird uttered its sharp alarm note and flew like a streak of black velvet up into the dense growth above, but still there was not a sound to be heard.