, and would conclude that I would try to
escape by the road. In that case there might be a chance on the moors
to the right or left. I wheeled the machine a hundred yards from the
highway, and plunged it into a moss-hole, where it sank among pond-weed
and water-buttercups. Then I climbed to a knoll which gave me a view
of the two valleys. Nothing was stirring on the long white ribbon that
threaded them.

I have said there was not cover in the whole place to hide a rat. As
the day advanced it was flooded with soft fresh light till it had the
fragrant sunniness of the South African veld. At other times I would
have liked the place, but now it seemed to suffocate me. The free
moorlands were prison walls, and the keen hill air was the breath of a
dungeon.

I tossed a coin--heads right, tails left--and it fell heads, so I
turned to the north. In a little I came to the brow of the ridge which
was the containing wall of the pass. I saw the highroad for maybe ten
miles, and far down it something that was moving, and that I took to be
a motor-car. Beyond the ridge I looked on a rolling green moor, which
fell away into wooded glens.

Now my life on the veld has given me the eyes of a kite, and I can see
things for which most men need a telescope ... Away down the slope, a
couple of miles away, several men were advancing, like a row of
beaters at a shoot ...

I dropped out of sight behind the sky-line. That way was shut to me,
and I must try the bigger hills to the south beyond the highway. The
car I had noticed was getting nearer, but it was still a long way off
with some very steep gradients before it. I ran hard, crouching low
except in the hollows, and as I ran I kept scanning the brow of the
hill before me. Was it imagination, or did I see figures--one, two,
perhaps more--moving in a glen beyond the stream?

If you are hemmed in on all sides in a patch of land there is only one
chance of escape. You must stay in the patch, and let your enemies
search it and not find you. That was good sense, but how on earth was
I to escape notice in that table-cloth of a place? I would have buried
myself to the neck in mud or lain below water or climbed the tallest
tree. But there was not a stick of wood, the bog-holes were little
puddles, the stream was a slender trickle. There was nothing but short
heather, and bare hill bent, and the white highway.

Then in a tiny bight of road, beside a heap of stones, I found