Count Hannibal

La Tribe tore through the thicket, imagining Carlat and Count Hannibal

hot on his heels. He dared not pause even to listen. The underwood

tripped him, the lissom branches of the alders whipped his face and

blinded him; once he fell headlong over a moss-grown stone, and picked

himself up groaning. But the hare hard-pushed takes no account of the

briars, nor does the fox heed the mud through which it draws itself into

covert. And for the time he was naught but a hunted beast. With elbows

pinned to his sides, or with hands extended to ward off the boughs, with

bursting lungs and crimson face, he plunged through the tangle, now

slipping downwards, now leaping upwards, now all but prostrate, now

breasting a mass of thorns. On and on he ran, until he came to the verge

of the wood, saw before him an open meadow devoid of shelter or hiding-

place, and with a groan of despair cast himself flat. He listened. How

far were they behind him?

He heard nothing--nothing, save the common noises of the wood, the angry

chatter of a disturbed blackbird as it flew low into hiding, or the harsh

notes of a flock of starlings as they rose from the meadow. The hum of

bees filled the air, and the August flies buzzed about his sweating brow,

for he had lost his cap. But behind him--nothing. Already the stillness

of the wood had closed upon his track.

He was not the less panic-stricken. He supposed that Tavannes' people

were getting to horse, and calculated that, if they surrounded and beat

the wood, he must be taken. At the thought, though he had barely got his

breath, he rose, and keeping within the coppice crawled down the slope

towards the river. Gently, when he reached it, he slipped into the

water, and stooping below the level of the bank, his head and shoulders

hidden by the bushes, he waded down stream until he had put another

hundred and fifty yards between himself and pursuit. Then he paused and

listened. Still he heard nothing, and he waded on again, until the water

grew deep. At this point he marked a little below him a clump of trees

on the farther side; and reflecting that that side--if he could reach it

unseen--would be less suspect, he swam across, aiming for a thorn bush

which grew low to the water. Under its shelter he crawled out, and,

worming himself like a snake across the few yards of grass which

intervened, he stood at length within the shadow of the trees. A moment

he paused to shake himself, and then, remembering that he was still

within a mile of the camp, he set off, now walking, and now running in

the direction of the hills which his party had crossed that morning.