As he stood thus, Leslie, who had been looking at the mysterious symbols around the circle, was seized with an impish impulse, and leaning forward with his walking-stick, he made in the dust inside the circle, and just behind the Blind One’s heel, the form of a cross.
In doing this, the point of the stick touched the Blind One’s heel.
CHAPTER III
THE LOST ONE
A congreve rocket incautiously touched by a match could not have given a more surprising result.
Flinging the pipe from him with a yell, the Blind One sprang clear over the circle, and stood for an instant panting and blowing at the sun.
He seemed blowing away things that were trying to enter his mouth; then, the staff attached by a thong to his wrist flying about wildly, he began to tear at himself all over his body and fling things away from him, as though he were attacked by a hundred thousand scorpions; then as if bitten by some more serious enemy, he seized his staff, and striking about him wildly, began to run. Hither and thither, hitting right and left, dashing against trees and seeming utterly regardless of them, bleeding, torn, and all the time fighting his phantom pursuers he ran till he vanished round the bend leading towards Nikko. The two Scotchmen ran to the bend of the road, and there down the road they saw him still running, and fighting as if for his life; striking above him as if at things in the air, and around him as if at things leaping at him from the ground. Suddenly he vanished round a further bend, and was lost to view.
“He’s gone gyte!” said Mac as they returned.