the force with which he wielded it
by the fact that it cut the air with a keen _swishing_ sound. It
descended upon the back of the mulatto's skull with a sickening thud,
and the great brown body dropped inert upon the padded bed--in which
not Smith, but his grip, reposed. There was no word, no cry. Then--

"Shoot, Petrie! Shoot the fiend! _Shoot_!..."

Van Roon, dropping the candle, in the falling gleam of which I saw
the whites of the oblique eyes, turned and leapt from the room with
the agility of a wild cat. The ensuing darkness was split by a streak
of lightning ... and there was Nayland Smith scrambling around the
foot of the bed and making for the door in hot pursuit.

We gained it almost together. Smith had dropped the cane, and now held
his pistol in his hand. Together we fired into the chasm of the
corridor, and in the flash, saw Van Roon hurling himself down the
stairs. He went silently in his stockinged feet, and our own clatter
was drowned by the awful booming of the thunder which now burst over
us again.

Crack!--crack!--crack! Three times our pistols spat venomously after
the flying figure ... then we had crossed the hall below and were in
the wilderness of the night with the rain descending upon us in
sheets. Vaguely I saw the white shirt-sleeves of the fugitive near the
corner of the stone fence. A moment he hesitated, then darted away
inland, not toward Saul, but toward the moor and the cup of the inland
bay.

"Steady, Petrie! steady!" cried Nayland Smith. He ran, panting, beside
me. "It is the path to the mire." He breathed sibilantly between every
few words. "It was out there ... that he hoped to lure us ... with the
cry for help."

A great blaze of lightning illuminated the landscape as far as the eye
could see. Ahead of us a flying shape, hair lank and glistening in the
downpour, followed a faint path skirting that green tongue of morass
which we had noted from the upland.

It was Kegan Van Roon. He glanced over his shoulder, showing a yellow,
terror-stricken face. We were gaining upon him. Darkness fell, and the
thunder cracked and boomed as though the very moor were splitting
about us.

"Another fifty yards, Petrie," breathed Nayland Smith, "and after that
it's uncharted ground."

On we went through the rain and the darkness; then--

"Slow up! slow up!" cried Smith. "It feels soft!"

Indeed, already I had made one false step--and the hungry mire had
fastened upon my foot, almost tr