“I’m going to the end,” Hi said. “I believe your figures are wrong. I believe you’re four yards out.”
“A pace won’t beat a yard-measure, chum.”
“I’ll talk in a minute,” Hi answered, still counting. “Just a minute, if you don’t mind: I don’t want to lose count.”
He went on counting mechanically, thinking of a strangely different mark of a vanished race not far from his home in Berkshire. Someone had told him long before that that monument was 375 feet long. He counted his pacing of this temple wondering if it would not prove to be the same, and if it were the same why it should be. All the time he was terrified, lest he should be shot in the back: the sweat was dripping from him. Hope kept surging up in him that he might escape: despair kept urging him to fling himself at the man’s feet and squeal for mercy. All sorts of thoughts, of home and Carlotta and the things he wanted to do, seemed to be protecting him. His life was from second to second; “eighty-one,” he was alive, “eighty-two,” no bullet, “eighty-three,” not dead yet. Dudley Wigmore was there: he could see his expression; very sad, yet hopeful. Dudley Wigmore was not there; the end of the temple was there, in a great corner-god, helmeted in the snake and eagle, whose mouth crunched the leg of a man. By this time he was up to the hundred. Suddenly Dudley Wigmore was there again, showing him the forest beyond the end of the temple: the ground was sloping down there in a cover of greyish thorn and greenish scrub, topped by what looked like ilex. He went on pacing, repeating his count aloud: “a hundred and ten; a hundred and fifteen.”
“Hey, chum,” the man called. “Hold on a minute. Wait for me a moment.”
Possibly he began to suspect suddenly: at any rate, he snapped-to the breech of his rifle, rose, and began to walk steadily towards Hi.
“I’m just finishing,” Hi called. “I’m sure it must be more than you make it. I make it 127 paces.” He turned to see where the man was, measured his distance as about fifty yards, and then quietly, as though exploring some ruin at home, turned the corner of the building.
The instant that he was out of sight, he darted across the end of the temple into cover: he forced his way through the scrub, ducked well down into it so as to be hidden, and ran downhill as he had never run. He had gone perhaps seventy yards, head down and arms across eyes against the thorns, when something hard took him across the leg, just below the knee, so that he fell headlong violently into a thicket. It was a severe fall, which knocked all the breath out of him. He came to himself with a pain in his leg. “I’ve been shot,” he thought, “shot and hit in the leg.”
Up above him on the plateau of the temple, he heard Letcombe-Bassett call: “Chum. Heya, chum. Are you there, chum?” He heard him probe at some of the near-by cover, seemingly with the barrel of his rifle. “I’ve not been shot,” Hi thought, “I fell over a snag.” He dared not stir a muscle, he hardly dared to breathe: Letcombe-Bassett seemed so near, almost looking down upon him.
“Sing out, chum,” Letcombe-Bassett called. “Where have you got to? Answer.” He listened for an answer, and, having none, muttered a curse.