much for the nerves of Tam
Dyke. As the man turned towards us in his bowings and bendings, Tam
suddenly sprang to his feet and shouted at him a piece of schoolboy
rudeness then fashionable in Kirkcaple.

'Wha called ye partan-face, my bonny man?' Then, clutching his
lantern, he ran for dear life, while Archie and I raced at his heels.
As I turned I had a glimpse of a huge figure, knife in hand, bounding
towards us.

Though I only saw it in the turn of a head, the face stamped itself
indelibly upon my mind. It was black, black as ebony, but it was
different from the ordinary negro. There were no thick lips and flat
nostrils; rather, if I could trust my eyes, the nose was high-bridged,
and the lines of the mouth sharp and firm. But it was distorted into
an expression of such a devilish fury and amazement that my heart
became like water.

We had a start, as I have said, of some twenty or thirty yards. Among
the boulders we were not at a great disadvantage, for a boy can flit
quickly over them, while a grown man must pick his way. Archie, as
ever, kept his wits the best of us. 'Make straight for the burn,' he
shouted in a hoarse whisper; we'll beat him on the slope.'

We passed the boulders and slithered over the outcrop of red rock and
the patches of sea-pink till we reached the channel of the Dyve water,
which flows gently among pebbles after leaving the gully. Here for the
first time I looked back and saw nothing. I stopped involuntarily, and
that halt was nearly my undoing. For our pursuer had reached the burn
before us, but lower down, and was coming up its bank to cut us off.

At most times I am a notable coward, and in these days I was still more
of one, owing to a quick and easily-heated imagination. But now I
think I did a brave thing, though more by instinct than resolution.
Archie was running first, and had already splashed through the burn;
Tam came next, just about to cross, and the black man was almost at his
elbow. Another second and Tam would have been in his clutches had I
not yelled out a warning and made straight up the bank of the burn.
Tam fell into the pool--I could hear his spluttering cry--but he got
across; for I heard Archie call to him, and the two vanished into the
thicket which clothes all the left bank of the gully. The pursuer,
seeing me on his own side of the water, followed straight on; and
before I knew it had become a race between the two of us.

I was hideously fright