When two people are running at top speed in the same line, but from opposite extremes, it stands to reason that, sooner or later, they will meet. And this is exactly what happened now. They met, Lucius and the leading man of the racing sentinels—met with a crash, like two charging footballers—with the result that both went down in a heap upon the ground.
Lucius was the first to recover himself, and the shock seemed to clear his brain, so that he realised sharply what he was doing in thus throwing himself into the arms of his foes. He was a slow thinker as a rule—or, rather, he seldom troubled himself to think at all; but now his plans were formed upon the instant, such a stimulus is necessity.
Tearing himself free from the man upon the ground, he leaped to his feet, and running a few paces, still towards the advancing crowd, wheeled round suddenly, and with a loud shout of ‘This way! Over here!’ rushed back by the way he had come, only at a much slower pace.
Fortunate it was for him that it was so dark. Guided by his voice, the soldiers hurried after him, surrounded him, noted him running in their midst in the same direction as themselves, and—passed him by.
Still Lucius held on, slowing down at every stride, till the last man of the supports, puffing and blowing, shot ahead of him, and then he turned in his tracks once more, and sped like a deer towards the Confederate lines.
He took a diagonal path, making by instinct for the corner of the wood, which more than once that day had been their means of salvation, and reaching it after a tearing run of nearly a mile, plunged just inside its border and flung himself face downwards to recover his wind.
All at once, as he lay, a sharp pang shot through him. The Grizzly! Where was he? Was he, too, running for his life in the open? Had he reached the wood? Or, bitter thought, had he been captured after all? The bare possibility stung Lucius into action, and he leaped again to his feet, glaring wildly round him in the dark.
What would they do with him if he were taken? Would they shoot him then and there? Or would they take him back to the camp, and after a mere formality of a trial, hang him like a dog? Lucius strained his ears until they pained him, listening for the fatal shot. But he heard nothing. ‘Oh, Grizzly,’ he thought bitterly, ‘if you are taken, if you are shot, and I have run away and left you to your fate!’
He was hardly fair to himself in his sharp self-upbraiding. To run had been the Grizzly’s own command, and he had obeyed implicitly. He began to take a little comfort. Perhaps they had only missed one another in the dark. Perhaps the Grizzly was even now in safety, waiting opportunity to make a dash for the Confederate lines. He would go on. Then again the cruel thought, ‘What if he be a captive while I am free?’ ‘Go on and save yourself, at all events,’ whispered self-preservation. ‘It is what he himself would have you do.’
‘And just because it is what he would have me do,’ answered the spirit of manliness in the boy’s breast, ‘I will not do it. I will go back and find him, if I have to march right into the Federal camp.’