Cabot arranged his chair legs at four of the windows, took a few shots at the barricade to let them know that his “force of defenders” was still active, and then hurriedly withdrew to the rear of the house with his real rifle and the few remaining rounds of ammunition.
The street in the rear was vacant. There were still many simple points of the art of war, which the black rulers of Poros had yet to learn. But evidently they were learning very quickly; for Cabot had scarcely gone two blocks before the alley behind him was filled with rattling Formians intent on entering the dwelling which he had just quitted. Luckily he gained the cover of a doorway without their seeing him; and finding the door unlocked, he entered his second house of refuge.
Within it was a Cupian. Eagerly the earthman rushed forward to greet him. But the Cupian, giving one horrified look at the intruder’s hair and beard, fled frantically to the upper floors. He could not hear Cabot’s words of reassurance, nor could Cabot hear the shriek of terror which he must have given. Undoubtedly he would spread the alarm; so there was no time to be lost.
Rushing through this house as he had through the other, Myles found that the rear of this house looked out upon open fields with woods beyond; and soon he was rapidly running toward this new haven.
But before he could gain the woods, the black pack debouched from the city in pursuit. It was now evening. The red sky in the west enabled Myles to get his sense of direction, and to proceed due northward through the woods, which fortunately he reached in advance of his pursuers. But still the pack gained.
Finally he arrived at the top of a cliff, beneath which lay a placid lake. And in the middle of the lake rose a turreted island. He had reached his journey’s end after forty days of weary wandering. For this was Lake Luno!
There were only a few more paraparths of daylight left: so, lying down behind a fallen tree-trunk at the very edge of the bank, Cabot opened fire at the oncoming Formians. They, too, at once took cover, and thus both sides sniped at each other as the velvet blackness of the Porovian night crept up out of the eastern sky. Between shots the earthman took many a longing look at his home across the water.
Soon it would be too dark to see to shoot, and then the black horde would rush Cabot’s position. So, just before the pink light had completely faded in the west, he rapidly fired all his remaining ammunition among the trees before him, heaved his now useless rifle over into the water, dived off into the lake below, and struck for his island, his family and his home.
As he cleaved the water with the long measured sweep of the trained swimmer that he was—for he had been a distinguished member of the aquatic team at Harvard and had never let a day go by without a dip in the tank—his heart sang to the time of his strokes: “Going home, going home, going home.”