head.

And then Dick Bellamy ran; ran as he had not run since he broke the tape
in a certain sprint of four hundred metres at Buenos Ayres, in forty
nine and a quarter seconds. But that was when his legs were an equal
pair.

Amaryllis saw it all; Mut-mut on the sky-line of the ridge, hesitating;
Melchard and his pistol in eccentric parabolas; Dick, with a wisp of
black hair over his wounded cheek, "flying," she called it, down the
last of the slope, and crossing the level ground to her and the car; a
wild man running, she thought, with the pace of a racehorse, and the
movement, not of a runaway, but of a winner. "And, oh!" she would say to
him afterwards, "your funny eyes! How they blazed!"

Within four strides of the car.

"Let her rip," he grunted, and taking the low door of the tonneau in his
stride, landed on the back seat.

The car rushed forward.

Dick looked round him. Melchard was on his feet, bent and searching the
long grass and scrub of the lower slope.

"The beast's got some guts," muttered Dick.

Melchard stood erect and began to run towards them, slowly and
painfully.

"He's found his gun," said Dick.

A raised arm and a sharp crack proved his words.

"Throw in the top speed," said Dick. "We _must_ go through the Bull's
Neck. No cover the other way."

He looked up at the ridge. Mut-mut was not there nor anywhere in sight.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE BAAG-NOUK.

The car rushed at the slope, and the shoulder of the cutting hid it from
Melchard the fraction of a second before his next shot was heard.

Amaryllis took the double bend of the little canon with an assurance
which satisfied Dick of her ability.

The sprint had exhausted his reserve of nervous force, for the moment
slender; and he lay back in the ample seat of the tonneau scarcely more
than half-conscious.

The road straightening before her and still climbing, Amaryllis glanced
at him over her shoulder.

"There's some brandy left," she shouted, her eyes again on her work, "in
your left pocket. Finish it."

Her voice roused him; with an effort he found and unscrewed the flask.

He had hardly drained it before sight came back to his eyes and he
remembered the danger ahead.

Mut-mut!

They had reached a strip of road level and straight, some two hundred
yards in length, which crossed the breadth of the ridge, on its way to a
descent as steep as the climb already accomplished. But even this, the
highest part of their road,