He pressed the pace to the uttermost. The machine toiled up and up; the uproar behind grew louder. He was beginning to despair. The cycle seemed to be crawling. Would the engine hold out? At last, with what appeared to be a final heave, it crept over the crest. The downward slope had begun, and the cycle dropped down with a rush which carried it easily to the top of the farther rise. With a sigh of thankfulness Tim knew that he had now increased his lead.

At this point the track began to wind round the face of the cliff on his right. A few minutes would bring him within sight of the bridge. But there was still one long climb before him, and here, if the pursuers could last the pace, they would have the advantage of him. He glanced back; they were just rounding the curve, perhaps a quarter-mile distant. This was the crisis of the chase. As the cycle laboured up the hill, Tim was aware that the gap was rapidly diminishing. When he gained the top, he had scarcely fifty yards to spare. But now for three or four hundred yards the track was level, and the horsemen yelled with rage as they saw their quarry once more slipping from their clutches. They had no chance against him on the flat. By the time he reached the point where the track dipped to the mile-long descent to the bridge, they had lost more than a hundred yards.

The bridge was not yet in sight. The track bent to the left somewhat sharply. In ordinary circumstances Tim would now have clapped on the brakes, but he was strung up to attempt any feat of daring, and after the first hundred yards of the hill he contented himself with closing the throttle. He swung perilously round the bend, and looking ahead, saw the bridged ravine three-quarters of a mile away. A horseman was galloping towards it--doubtless one of his vedettes. But why was he dashing so desperately towards the bridge?

Tim lowered his eyes, for he wore no goggles, and the wind created by his pace made them smart and tingle. He was halfway down the slope when a dull report below him caused him to look up again. Where, a few seconds before, the bridge had been, there was now a cloud of smoke. His orders had been carried out only too thoroughly: the bridge was blown up!

He was thunderstruck. Reckless and impulsive as he was, prone to play many a mad prank on his bicycle, he had never attempted such a feat as now, in the twinkling of an eye, he saw himself committed to. The ravine was more than thirty feet across. He would reach it in half a minute. No power on earth could check his descent. He must either plunge into the chasm, fifty feet deep, or leap the gap.

How can his sensations be described! Every second his speed was quickening. The steepness of the slope induced the feeling that he was dropping into space. He was conscious of the strange heaving sensation that a person feels on descending in a rapidly-moving lift. His body seemed to be flying upward. The air rushed past, scarifying his flesh, catching his breath, stunning his ears so that he did not hear the report of a dozen rifles across the gap. Down, down, faster than an express train, as fast as a racing motor-car, his body rigid, his mind working swifter than the electric flash--down to he knew not what.

On either side of the bridge the ground had been cleared. He must avoid the ruins of the bridge; he would steer to one side of it. As he swooped meteor-like towards the gap the space on his right widened out, and the ground made a slight ascent to the brink of the ravine. A touch on the handle-bar altered his course a point or two. Barely conscious of the rise, breathless and dizzy, he shut his eyes at the fateful moment--and the machine shot off the brink of the ravine like a stone from a catapult. For a fraction of a second he was in mid air, the wheels whirring beneath him. Then there was a tremendous thud as they struck the ground 011 the opposite side. The machine raced up the incline; the speed slackened; instinctively he applied the brakes; and in a few more seconds he fell rather than jumped from the saddle, and dropped panting, a mass of quivering nerves, upon the track.

A group of Japanese flocked about him. One gave him water from a mug. All were trembling with excitement. When he had collected himself, and inquired what had become of the pursuers, he learnt that, as they rode headlong down the hill behind him, two of the horses had slipped and brought their riders to the ground. The rest had reined up at the volley from the Japanese. Apparently none had been hit, but recognising that further pursuit was hopeless, they had stood watching the last few hundred yards of the cycle's flashing course. The Japanese had been too much amazed and alarmed to fire again. Both the parties looked on as at a thrilling spectacle. After the cycle had made its leap their amazement held them motionless for a while. Then, at a second volley, the enemy wheeled round and galloped away.

Tim asked why the bridge had been fired. The vedette explained that, descrying the heads of a large number of horsemen over the tops of the bushes on the crest of the hill, he had dashed back to give the alarm according to orders. The cycle, being lower, had been invisible to him. His comrades were so eager to carry out their instructions that even when Tim came into view they were too much occupied to see him, and only when the match was kindled, and they ran back to a position of safety, did they perceive with horror that they had, as they thought, cut off their master's chance of escape. Tim waived away their humble apologies; they had obeyed orders; and now that the strain of his nerve-shattering experiences was relaxed, he could afford to smile. The eastern track, at any rate, was impassable to the enemy.

CHAPTER XXIV