scabbards clinking, to prevent the fugitive's escape.

A howl of contempt went up from the crowd. The pink and white subaltern
made what was almost a movement of the arm to intercept his superior's
command.

It was too much for Long Jim's last mate, the youthful blackbeard who
had pluckily descended the shaft after the accident. He had been
standing on a mound with a posse of others, following the man-hunt. At
his partner's crack-brained dash for the open, his snorts of
indignation found words. "Gaw-blimy! ... is the old fool gone dotty?"
Then he drew a whistling breath. "No, it's more than flesh and blood
.... Stand back, boys!" And though he was as little burdened with a
licence as the man under pursuit, he shouted: "Help, help! ... for
God's sake, don't let 'em have me!" shot down the slope, and was off
like the wind.

His foxly object was attained. The attention of the hunters was
diverted. Long Jim, seizing the moment, vanished underground.

The younger man ran with the lightness of a hare. He had also the
hare's address in doubling and turning. His pursuers never knew, did he
pass from sight behind a covert of tents and mounds, where he would bob
up next. He avoided shafts and pools as if by a miracle; ran along
greasy planks without a slip; and, where these had been removed to balk
the police, he jumped the holes, taking risks that were not for a sane
man. Once he fell, but, enslimed from head to foot, wringing wet and
hatless, was up again in a twinkling. His enemies were less sure-footed
than he, and times without number measured their length on the oily
ground. Still, one of them was gaining rapidly on him, a giant of a
fellow with long thin legs; and soon the constable's foot filled the
prints left by the young man's, while these were still warm. It was a
fine run. The diggers trooped after in a body; the Flat rang with
cheers and plaudits. Even the Commissioner and his retinue trotted in
the same direction. Eventually the runaway must land in the arms of the
mounted police.

But this was not his plan. Making as though he headed for the open, he
suddenly dashed off at right angles, and, with a final sprint, brought
up dead against a log-and-canvas store which stood on rising ground.
His adversary was so close behind that a collision resulted; the
digger's feet slid from under him, he fell on his face, the other on
top. In their fall they struck a huge pillar of tin-dishes, ingeniously
built up to the h