"Leave the horses then! There's a hill there that will break his neck. We'd better stop him if we can!" cried Cooke, dismounting.
They threw their reins to the driver of the wagon, who had been brushed from his seat by the impatient adjutant-general, and was chanting weirdly to himself at the roadside.
The wagon, piled high with trunks and boxes, was dashing forward, Gillingwater belaboring the mules furiously, and, hearing the shouts of strange pursuers, yelling at the team in a voice shrill with fear.
"Come on, boys!" shouted Ardmore, thoroughly aroused, "catch the spy and traitor!"
The road dipped down into the shadow of a deep cut, where the moon's dim rays but feebly penetrated, and where the flow of springs had softened the surface; but the pursuers were led on by the rumble of the wagon, which swung from side to side perilously, the boxes swinging about noisily and toppling threateningly at the apex. Down the sharp declivity the wagon plunged like a ship bound for the bottom of the sea.
The pursuers bent gamely to their task in the rough road, with Cooke slightly in the lead. Suddenly he shouted warningly to the others, as something rose darkly above them like a black cloud, and a trunk fell with a mighty crash only a few feet ahead of them. The top had been shaken off in the fall, and into it head first plunged Ardmore.
"There's another coming!" yelled Collins, and a much larger trunk struck and split upon a rock at the roadside. Clothing of many kinds strewed the highway. A pair of trousers, flung fiercely into the air, caught on the limb of a tree, shook free like a banner, and hung there somberly etched against the stars.
Ardmore crawled out of the trunk, screaming with delight. The fragrance of toilet water broke freshly upon the air.
"It's his ammunition!" bawled Ardmore, rubbing his head where he had struck the edge of a tray. "His scent bottles are smashed, and it's only by the grace of Providence that I haven't cut myself on broken glass."
"Thump! Bump!" sounded down the road.