slithered here and stuck fast there, dodging obstacles with an
awkwardness that was painful to see. He could be heard sobbing and
cursing as he ran.

At this point the Commissioner, half turning, signed to the troopers in
his rear. Six or seven of them shook up their bridles and rode off,
their scabbards clinking, to prevent the fugitive's escape.

A howl of contempt went up from the crowd. The pink and white subaltern
made what was almost a movement of the arm to intercept his superior's
command.

It was too much for Long Jim's last mate, the youthful blackbeard who
had pluckily descended the shaft after the accident. He had been
standing on a mound with a posse of others, following the man-hunt. At
his partner's crack-brained dash for the open, his snorts of indignation
found words. "Gaw-blimy! . . . is the old fool gone dotty?" Then he drew
a whistling breath. "No, it's more than flesh and blood . . . . Stand
back, boys!" And though he was as little burdened with a licence as the
man under pursuit, he shouted: "Help, help! . . . for God's sake, don't
let 'em have me!" shot down the slope, and was off like the wind.

His foxly object was attained. The attention of the hunters was
diverted. Long Jim, seizing the moment, vanished underground.

The younger man ran with the lightness of a hare. He had also the hare's
address in doubling and turning. His pursuers never knew, did he pass
from sight behind a covert of tents and mounds, where he would bob up
next. He avoided shafts and pools as if by a miracle; ran along greasy
planks without a slip; and, where these had been removed to balk the