hadows, now jogging
in a path, now threading the boundary of a rice-field, or waiting behind
trees; and all the time, though devious and artful as a deer-stalker,
crept toward the centre of the noise and the leaping flames. When the
quaking shadows grew thin and spare, and the lighted clearings
dangerously wide, he swerved to the right through a rolling bank of
smoke. They coughed as they ran.

Once Rudolph paused, with the heat of the fire on his cheeks.

"The nunnery is burning," he said hopelessly.

His guide halted, peered shrewdly, and listened.

"No, they are still shooting," he answered, and limped onward, skirting
the uproar.

At last, when by pale stars above the smoke and flame and sparks,
Rudolph judged that they were somewhere north of the nunnery, they came
stumbling down into a hollow encumbered with round, swollen obstacles.
Like a patch of enormous melons, oil-jars lay scattered.

"Hide here, and wait," commanded Wutzler. "I will go see." And he
flitted off through the smoke.

Smuggled among the oil-jars, Rudolph lay panting. Shapes of men ran
past, another empty jar rolled down beside him, and a stray bullet sang
overhead like a vibrating wire. Soon afterward, Wutzler came crawling
through the huddled pottery.

"Lie still," he whispered. "Your friends are hemmed in. You cannot get
through."

The smell of rancid oil choked them, yet they could breathe without
coughing, and could rest their smarting eyes. In the midst of tumult and
combustion, the hollow lay dark as a pool. Along its rim bristled a
scrubby fringe of weeds, black against a rosy cloud.

After a time, something still blacker parted the weeds. In silhouette, a
man's head, his hand grasping a staff or the muzzle of a gun, remained
there as still as though, crawling to the verge, he lay petrified in the
act of spying.

CHAPTER XVII

LAMP OF HEAVEN

The white men peered from among the oil-jars, like two of the Forty
Thieves. They could detect no movement, friendly or hostile: the black
head lodged there without stirring. The watcher, whether he had seen
them or not, was in no hurry; for with chin propped among the weeds, he
held a pose at once alert and peaceful, mischievous and leisurely, as
though he were master of that hollow, and might lie all night drowsing
or waking, as the humor prompted.

Wutzler pressed his face against the earth, and shivered in the stifling
heat. The uncertainty grew, with Rudolph, into an acu