The escaping convict, however, has this advantage: that his mind is strung to a far higher pitch than his pursuers'; and, given a certain ecstasy, everything can be accomplished.
So O'Hara separately dodged the two pickets, and was making bolt for the copse before three rifles, aimed at a large vague ghost, rang out, and did not hit. He plunged madly into the brambly bush.
Immediately a bleating like a child's trumpet was heard from its midst; and in a few seconds, not one, but four, men were seen to rush toward the river, all in convict knickerbockers, stockings, caps, all in black overcoats: and one carried a bundle.
Beyond the river one was shot in the leg—a black sailor, who, with two roughs, had undertaken the risk for lucre. The rest escaped.
XVI. — THE ROPE
Soon after this Hogarth was taken with vomitings, his heart retching at Colmoor. His dark cheeks jaundiced; those mobile nostrils of his small bony nose yawned, like an exhausted horse's; his face was all a light of eyes.
Whether or not some suspicion of his complicity with O'Hara had occurred to the authorities, he now found himself transferred to another “graft”: from quarrying was set to trenching.
Four things are inexhaustible in the earth: the hope of a gambler; the sea; the lip of a lover; and the capacity of Colmoor to be trenched and quarried.