“Stop thief!” he shouted, dashing down the lane.
For some minutes he had been so confused that he only now guessed that Mr. Slocum’s barrow had entered by the gateway through which Butler had been forced; otherwise it could scarcely have disappeared so suddenly. As he ran, calling for help, he noticed that a large gateway, with a wicket beside it, stood wide open on his left. He rushed up to the first man he overtook.
“There is villainy going on,” he said. “Help me!”
“I’m helping myself,” the man growled; and the strangeness of his figure was accounted for by the huge bundle he carried on his back. He was one of the fugitives who were conveying their possessions to the river in the hope of finding a boat.
Martin ran on, and in the fast-gathering darkness cannoned into another man laden almost as heavily.
“Mind your steps!” shouted the man; and with his free hand he dealt Martin a blow that sent him staggering against the wall. Recovering himself he dashed on, his cries to one and another going unheeded. People were too much concerned with their own troubles to regard the vague demands of a lad.
And then suddenly he found himself on the edge of a little quay stretching into the river. There was a reddish glow reflected from the water, and by this light he recognised, at the farther end of the quay, the handcart he had lost sight of. It was standing deserted. A boat was putting off, piled with boxes. The glow of the fire glinted on their brass-bound corners and on the swarthy face of Blackbeard, who held the tiller strings while two other men rowed steadily down stream.
Beyond the quay there were two or three other boats into which fugitive citizens were dumping their goods.
“Row after that boat!” Martin cried to the watermen. “It contains stolen goods.”
“Not the only one,” chuckled one of the men.