At that instant he stumbled over a large stone. He bent, picked
it up, and turned round. Four or five yards behind them, and plainly
to be marked by its eyes shining green in the darkness, was the dog,
which, by its mere power of drawing enemies upon them, was, at the
moment, the most terrible enemy of all.

For a second Jack hung on his aim, the heavy stone poised high in his
right hand. Then he hurled it with all his force. Crash! He heard the
missile strike the brute with a heavy thud. The dog gave one last
frightful yelp of pain, then dropped and lay silent Whether the beast
was dead or only stunned Jack did not know, nor did he care. He knew
that he had silenced the miserable cur, and that was all he wished.

Enough harm had been done already. A bunch of dancing lights now shot
into view, and he saw them borne swiftly on. The watchmen, carrying
torches, were running to the spot where the dog had given the alarm.

Jack now caught up his friends with a few swift strides, and all the
party hurried on, the woman leading the way and guiding them.

"Well done, Jack," murmured his father. "Well done, my lad. If you
hadn't put a stop to that brute's yelping, he'd have brought those
fellows on us as straight as they could run. Now they've got to look
for us in the dark, and that's a very different affair."

"Do you think they'll pick up our trail from the spot where they find
the dog?" asked Jack.

"Oh, no," said Mr. Haydon, "not easily. The ground is hard, and
running a line by torchlight is a very different thing from running it
by daylight. I hope to goodness we can make good headway before the
dawn, for with the first peep of day they'll be after us as fast as
they can lay foot to ground."

At this moment both looked back and saw the plump of torches come to a
stand. The watchmen had reached the spot where Jack had struck down
the dog, and, through the silence of the night, the eager, excited
voices of the Kachins could plainly be heard as they debated hotly
about the dog's fate, and what it meant.

Then the bunch of lights scattered and began to flicker here and
there. The guards were looking for the trail of those who had struck
down the dog. On and on ran the fugitives, and soon Jack saw that his
father had been right about the difficulties of tracking by
torchlight. The points of fire behind them became more and more
scattered, and not one came on or followed them. Then they turned the
shoulder of a hill, a