han men, and with cunning or
instinct had found out such secrets for themselves: for on finishing
a quick spurt, after which I intended to take a moment's breathing
space, I suddenly saw ahead of me two or three forms swiftly passing
behind a mound to the right.

I was in the spider's web now indeed! But with the thought of this new
danger came the resource of the hunted, and so I darted down the next
turning to the right. I continued in this direction for some hundred
yards, and then, making a turn to the left again, felt certain that I
had, at any rate, avoided the danger of being surrounded.

But not of pursuit, for on came the rabble after me, steady, dogged,
relentless, and still in grim silence.

In the greater darkness the mounds seemed now to be somewhat smaller
than before, although--for the night was closing--they looked bigger
in proportion. I was now well ahead of my pursuers, so I made a dart
up the mound in front.

Oh joy of joys! I was close to the edge of this inferno of dustheaps.
Away behind me the red light of Paris was in the sky, and towering up
behind rose the heights of Montmarte--a dim light, with here and there
brilliant points like stars.

Restored to vigour in a moment, I ran over the few remaining mounds of
decreasing size, and found myself on the level land beyond. Even then,
however, the prospect was not inviting. All before me was dark and
dismal, and I had evidently come on one of those dank, low-lying waste
places which are found here and there in the neighbourhood of great
cities. Places of waste and desolation, where the space is required
for the ultimate agglomeration of all that is noxious, and the ground
is so poor as to create no desire of occupancy even in the lowest
squatter. With eyes accustomed to the gloom of the evening, and away
now from the shadows of those dreadful dustheaps, I could see much
more easily than I could a little while ago. It might have been, of
course, that the glare in the sky of the lights of Paris, though the
city was some miles away, was reflected here. Howsoever it was, I saw
well enough to take bearings for certainly some little distance around
me.

In front was a bleak, flat waste that seemed almost dead level, with
here and there the dark shimmering of stagnant pools. Seemingly far
off on the right, amid a small cluster of scattered lights, rose a
dark mass of Fort Montrouge, and away to the left in the dim distance,
pointed with stray gleams