gathered together for a leap did he realise the ravine ahead. And then
he reaIised it only to misunderstand and interfere. He was leaning
forward on his horse's neck and sat up and back all too late.

But if in his excitement he had failed to leap, at any rate he had
not forgotten how to fall. He was horseman again in mid-air.
He came off clear with a mere bruise upon his shoulder, and his horse
rolled, kicking spasmodic legs, and lay still. But the master's sword
drove its point into the hard soil, and snapped clean across, as
though Chance refused him any longer as her Knight, and the splintered
end missed his face by an inch or so.

He was on his feet in a moment, breathlessly scanning the onrushing
spider-webs. For a moment he was minded to run, and then thought
of the ravine, and turned back. He ran aside once to dodge one drifting
terror, and then he was swiftly clambering down the precipitous sides,
and out of the touch of the gale.

There under the lee of the dry torrent's steeper banks he might
crouch, and watch these strange, grey masses pass and pass in safety
till the wind fell, and it became possible to escape. And there
for a long time he crouched, watching the strange, grey, ragged
masses trail their streamers across his narrowed sky.

Once a stray spider fell into the ravine close beside him--a full
foot it measured from leg to leg, and its body was half a man's hand--
and after he had watched its monstrous alacrity of search and escape
for a little while, and tempted it to bite his broken sword, he lifted
up his iron-heeled boot and smashed it into a pulp. He swore as he did
so, and for a time sought up and down for another.