I should fall. They had forgotten that they had tortured me the
night before, and one clapped me on the shoulder and seemed to
encourage me. Another pointed to my raw shins, and wound some kind of
soft healing fibre round my feet and ankles. I did my best to keep a
stout face, and when the shot came, I waved my hand to them and plunged
boldly into the leafy darkness.

But out of the presence of men my courage departed, and I became the
prey of dismal fear. How was I, with my babyish woodcraft, to contend
for a moment against an Indian who was as subtle and velvet-footed as a
wild beast? The wood was mostly of great oaks and chestnuts, with a
dense scrub of vines and undergrowth, and in the steepest parts of the
hill-side many mossgrown rocks. I found every movement painful in that
rough and matted place. For one thing, I made an unholy noise. My
tender limbs shrank from every stone and twig, and again and again I
rolled over with the pain of it. Sweat blinded my eyes, and the
fatigues of yesterday made my breath labour like a foundered horse.

My first plan--if the instinct of blind terror can be called a plan--
was to lie hid in some thick place and trust to getting the first shot
at my enemy when he found me. But I realized that I could not do this.
My broken nerves would not suffer me to lie hidden. Better the torture
of movement than such terrible patience. So I groped my way on,
starting at every movement in the thicket. Once I roused a deer, which
broke off in front of me towards my adversary. That would tell him my
whereabouts, I thought, and for some time I lay still with a
palpitating heart. But soon the silence resumed its sway, a deathlike
silence, with far off the faint tinkle of water.

By and by I reached the stream, the course of which made an open space
a few yards wide in the trees. The sight of its cool foaming current
made me reckless. I dipped my face in it, drank deep of it, and let it
flow over my burning legs. Then I scrambled up the other bank, and
entered my enemy's half of the wood. He had missed a fine chance, I
thought, in not killing me by the water's edge; and this escape, and
the momentary refreshment of the stream, heartened me enough to carry
me some way into his territory.

The wood was thinner here, and the ground less cumbered. I moved from
tree to tree, crawling in the open bits, and scanning each circle of
green dusk before I moved. A red-bird fluttered on my right, and I lay
lo