k."

"Well, he's not here now."

"But his gun---?"

"Confound it!" swore Cossar, "where's everything got to?" He strode a
step towards the black shadows on the hillside that masked the holes and
stood staring. Then he swore again. "If they _have_ dragged him in---!"

So they hung for a space tossing each other the fragments of thoughts.
Bensington's glasses flashed like diamonds as he looked from one to the
other. The men's faces changed from cold clearness to mysterious
obscurity as they turned them to or from the moon. Every one spoke, no
one completed a sentence. Then abruptly Cossar chose his line. He
flapped limbs this way and that and expelled orders in pellets. It was
obvious he wanted lamps. Every one except Cossar was moving towards the
house.

"You're going into the holes?" asked Redwood.

"Obviously," said Cossar.

He made it clear once more that the lamps of the cart and trolley were
to be got and brought to him.

Bensington, grasping this, started off along the path by the well. He
glanced over his shoulder, and saw Cossar's gigantic figure standing out
as if he were regarding the holes pensively. At the sight Bensington
halted for a moment and half turned. They were all leaving Cossar---!

Cossar was able to take care of himself, of course!

Suddenly Bensington saw something that made him shout a windless "HI!"
In a second three rats had projected themselves from the dark tangle of
the creeper towards Cossar. For three seconds Cossar stood unaware of
them, and then he had become the most active thing in the world. He
didn't fire his gun. Apparently he had no time to aim, or to think of
aiming; he ducked a leaping rat, Bensington saw, and then smashed at the
back of its head with the butt of his gun. The monster gave one leap and
fell over itself.

Cossar's form went right down out of sight among the reedy grass, and
then he rose again, running towards another of the rats and whirling his
gun overhead. A faint shout came to Bensington's ears, and then he
perceived the remaining two rats bolting divergently, and Cossar in
pursuit towards the holes.

The whole thing was an affair of misty shadows; all three fighting
monsters were exaggerated and made unreal by the delusive clearness of
the light. At moments Cossar was colossal, at moments invisible. The
rats flashed athwart the eye in sudden unexpected leaps, or ran with a
movement of the feet so swift, they seemed to run on wheels. It was all