s full of astonishment and
terror. He rushed across my path with arms extended and open hands,
as one might try to stop a runaway horse. He shouted some nonsense.
He seemed to want to dissuade me, as though dissuasion had anything
to do with it now.

"Not you, you fool!" I said hoarsely. "Not you!" But he hid Nettie
nevertheless.

By an enormous effort I resisted a mechanical impulse to shoot
through his fat body. Anyhow, I knew I mustn't shoot him. For
a moment I was in doubt, then I became very active, turned aside
abruptly and dodged his pawing arm to the left, and so found two
others irresolutely in my way. I fired a third shot in the air, just
over their heads, and ran at them. They hastened left and right; I
pulled up and faced about within a yard of a foxy-faced young man
coming sideways, who seemed about to grapple me. At my resolute
halt he fell back a pace, ducked, and threw up a defensive arm,
and then I perceived the course was clear, and ahead of me, young
Verrall and Nettie--he was holding her arm to help her--running
away. "Of course!" said I.

I fired a fourth ineffectual shot, and then in an access of fury
at my misses, started out to run them down and shoot them barrel to
backbone. "These people!" I said, dismissing all these interferences.
. . . "A yard," I panted, speaking aloud to myself, "a yard! Till
then, take care, you mustn't--mustn't shoot again."

Some one pursued me, perhaps several people--I do not
know, we left them all behind. . . .

We ran. For a space I was altogether intent upon the swift monotony
of flight and pursuit. The sands were changed to a whirl of green
moonshine, the air was thunder. A luminous green haze rolled about
us. What did such things matter? We ran. Did I gain or lose? that
was the question. They ran through a gap in a broken fence that
sprang up abruptly out of nothingness and turned to the right. I
noted we were in a road. But this green mist! One seemed to plough
through it. They were fading into it, and at that thought I made
a spurt that won a dozen feet or more.

She staggered. He gripped her arm, and dragged her forward. They
doubled to the left. We were off the road again and on turf. It
felt like turf. I tripped and fell at a ditch that was somehow
full of smoke, and was up again, but now they were phantoms
half gone into the livid swirls about me. . . .

Still I ran.

On, on! I groaned with the violence of my effort. I staggered
again and swore