Then Tom Chist scrambled up and ran away, plunging down into the hollow of sand that lay in the shadows below. Over the next rise he ran, and down again into the next black hollow, and so on over the sliding, shifting ground, panting and gasping. It seemed to him that he could hear footsteps following, and in the dreadful terror that possessed him he almost expected every instant to feel the cold knife-blade slide between his own ribs in such a thrust from behind as he had seen given to the poor black man.
How he ran the distance he never could tell, but it was almost as in a dream that he found himself at last in front of old Matt Abrahamson's cabin, gasping, panting, and sobbing for breath, his feet dragging behind him like lumps of lead.
As he opened the door and dashed into the cabin there was a flash of light, and as he slammed to the door behind him there was an instant peal of thunder as though a great weight had been dropped upon the roof of the sky, so that the doors and windows of the cabin rattled.
IV.
In Tom Chist's after recollections of that terrible time there was always a memory of a dreadful night of waking dreams mingled with the flashing lightning and the thunder of the storm that broke over the cottage, a downpour and beat of the rain upon the roof that lasted in an uproar of sound almost until morning.
Then came the dawning of a broad, wet daylight of sunshine that brought no relief.
As soon as he was up he went out of doors into the young day wet with the night's rain, and gazed out toward the offing where the mysterious sloop had been lying the day before.
It was no longer there.
It was some comfort to Tom to know that it was gone, and that it had taken those dreadful men with it. Were it not so he could not have walked a step through the day without a horrible fear that he might meet that dreadful man with the long shining knife.
He shuddered and gasped as a sudden keen memory of it all came upon him.