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.