bounded
off to the right, firing his gun to confuse the chase.

Rudolph obeyed, and, running at top speed, dimly understood that he had
doubled round a squad of grunting runners, whose bare feet pattered
close by him in the smoke. Before him gaped a black square, through
which he darted, to pitch head first over some fat, padded bulk. As he
rose, the rasping of rough jute against his cheek told him that he had
fallen among bales; and a familiar, musty smell, that the bales were his
own, in his own go-down, across a narrow lane from the nunnery. With
high hopes, he stumbled farther into the darkness. Once, among the
bales, he trod on a man's hand, which was silently pulled away. With no
time to think of that, he crawled and climbed over the disordered heaps,
groping toward the other door. He had nearly reached it, when torchlight
flared behind him, rushing in, and savage cries, both shrill and
guttural, rang through the stuffy warehouse. He had barely time, in the
reeling shadows, to fall on the earthen floor, and crawl under a thin
curtain of reeds to a new refuge.

Into this--a cubby-hole where the compradore kept his tally-slips,
umbrella, odds and ends--the torchlight shone faintly through the reeds.
Lying flat behind a roll of matting, Rudolph could see, as through the
gauze twilight of a stage scene, the tossing lights and the skipping men
who shouted back and forth, jabbing their spears or pikes down among the
bales, to probe the darkness. Their search was wild but thorough. Before
it, in swift retreat, some one crawled past the compradore's room,
brushing the splint partition like a snake. This, as Rudolph guessed,
might be the man whose hand he had stepped on.

The stitches in the curtain became beads of light. A shadowy arm heaved
up, fell with a dry, ripping sound and a vertical flash. A sword had cut
the reeds from top to bottom.

Through the rent a smoking flame plunged after the sword, and after
both, a bony yellow face that gleamed with sweat. Rudolph, half wrapped
in his matting, could see the hard, glassy eyes shine cruelly in their
narrow slits; but before they lowered to meet his own, a jubilant yell
resounded in the go-down, and with a grunt, the yellow face, the
flambeau, and the sword were snatched away.

He lay safe, but at the price of another man's peril. They had caught
the crawling fugitive, and now came dragging him back to the lights.
Through the tattered curtain Rudolph saw him flung on