How he managed to force her to the top and bundle her over the parapet, she could never remember, any more than she could forget Ockley's next shot, which was discharged as their figures showed against his sky-line for the two seconds which it took them to cross the road and fling themselves recklessly down the slope of its other side.
"Brace up," said Dick at the bottom. "You've got some guts, anyhow; and once we're well into that undergrowth, your hairy friend may come after us with a Vickers and be damned to him."
To get to it he had to lift her over a swampy patch in a hollow to a stony place beyond it; whereafter they were soon as well hidden from the road as its outline lay exposed to the search of their eyes.
But Amaryllis at first left the watching to his, closing her own and lying still, in sheer womanly terror of being sick. Somewhere within was a doubt as to whether she did not already adore him, and a pitiable anxiety that "nothing horrid" should be associated in his mind with her person.
Dick, lying at full length, turned his eyes every now and again from his watch on the road to look at the girl's face; and saw, with anxiety as well as pity, how pale it was, and how wasted already by hunger, fear and running—and perhaps by the drug they had given her the night before. He must ask no further exertion of her until she was fed and rested.
His object was to make his way as quickly as possible to "The Coach and Horses," his car, and safety.
But he dared not move from this shelter, nor even stand upright, until he knew what Ockley intended. Already he had tasted the man's quality, and, with the girl on his hands, held him in healthy fear.
"They've gone too far," he reflected, "to back out."
Had Black Beard been playing 'possum when he ought to have been laid out? He must, it would seem, have been pretty fit all the time to get away without making a sound.
Then a thought which sent fear through him like a knife: