And then he raised his revolver feebly as Gleason heard a crackling in the underbrush some little distance away. He thought he heard the pattering of feet.
He was right. He did.
Gleason fled. He fumbled with the dynamite sticks. They were wet. The dynamite was useless. He flung it aside. He plucked at the revolver shells. Wrong! For Maehoe had the revolver, and was essaying to hold off the pursuing bushboys as a desirous member of the Native Constabulary Force of the Solomon Island Protectorate should do. But Maehoe was dead before the first bushboy appeared.
An arrow slithered across the way before Gleason. It missed him by inches only. He snapped a shot from his own weapon and panted on. He saw a hideous face, tattooed out of all semblance of humanity, with goggle-like circles painted in white about its eyes. It vanished before he could fire. He saw another, and another....
Gleason began to scream. He emptied his revolvers and had no more shells. He flung the useless things aside and began to run. And suddenly he was laughing. Henderson had said, “The wicked flee when no man pursueth.” He’d repeated it and re-repeated it until it became a tiresome saw. Henderson was wrong.
Gleason howled with hysterical laughter as he fled like a deer from the men who hunted him earnestly. Even Maehoe had quoted the thing at him. “The wicked flee when no man pursueth.” But they were wrong, now. He was fleeing, all right, but men were pursuing him. The jungle was full of the noise of the chase. Men were pursuing him, all right....
And they caught him.
Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the February 1929 issue of Adventure Trails magazine.