Szilard rushed after him.
"Take care," screamed blind Juon. But none heeded him. Fatia Negra flew away before his enemy. At first he left him far behind, but gradually the continuous loss of blood began to weaken him and it also occurred to him that even if he succeeded in distancing his adversary, he would still leave a trail of blood behind him. To complete his confusion the moon made the whole region as light as day. He was forced to sit down on a tree stump to tie up his wounded hand; at least he would stop the flow of blood and make the trail more difficult to follow.
While with the help of his left hand and his teeth he was binding up his useless right hand, his pursuer overtook him.
"Fatia Negra—surrender!"
The only reply the adventurer gave was to try to fire his pistols and finding them only flash in the pan he hurled them one after the other at his enemy's head. Szilard then had practical experience of the rumor that Fatia Negra could throw very well even with his left hand,—had he not leaped aside at the nick of time the pistols would have dashed his brains out.
Then up Fatia Negra started to his feet again and fled away still further. The pursuer and the pursued now sped along with pretty equal energy, though the loss of blood continued to weaken the robber. Yet he made one desperate effort to scale the steep side of the mountain. An ordinary man could rarely breast such an ascent, yet he tried it. But he soon found that even thus he could not shake off his enemy. He remained indeed some hundreds of paces behind but he could not dodge out of his sight in the now open glade.
On the brow of the hill the adventurer stopped to pant and surveyed the undulating thickly wooded hills stretching away on every side of him. He drew a silver whistle from his bosom and gave with it three penetrating signals which re-echoed from among the distant mountains. But it was only an echo, only the note of the whistle that he heard, he waited in vain for anything else. All his accomplices had evidently hidden away.
And again the pursuer overtook him. He waited till he was only two paces off and then he seized a stone weighing half a hundred weight and hurled it at him—the tree trunk behind which Szilard had taken refuge bent beneath the blow. Then Fatia Negra fled down towards the valley.
It was a desperate way for him to take, for down hill his adversary could cover the ground as quickly as he could; the distance between them was never more than ten paces, the wound the robber had received began to enervate his whole body, and he was not long in finding out that the hurling of missiles is a very profitless mode of warfare when you have only one hand at your disposal.
Panting hard he fled on further seeking refuge. And now he took to zigzagging through the wood in the hope of dodging his pursuer if only for an instant as a flying fox is wont to do when he is already nearing his hole whose entrance he does not wish to betray to his pursuer.