A Rogue by Compulsion | Page 5

knocked the
breath out of me. By a stroke of luck I must have crushed my
opponent's hand against one of the bars, for with a cry of pain he
momentarily slackened his grip.
That was all I wanted. Wrenching my left arm free, I brought up my
elbow under his chin with a wicked jolt; and then, before he could
recover, I smashed home a short right-arm punch that must have landed
somewhere in the neighbourhood of his third waistcoat button. Anyhow
it did the business all right. With a quaint noise, like the gurgle of a
half-empty bath, he promptly released me from his embrace, and sank
down on to the grass almost as swiftly and silently as he had arisen.
I doubt if a more perfectly timed blow has ever been delivered, but
unfortunately I had no chance of studying its effects. Through the fog I
could hear the sound of footsteps--quick heavy footsteps hurrying
towards me from either direction. For one second I thought of
scrambling back over the railings and taking to the wood again. Then
suddenly a kind of mischievous exhilaration at the danger gripped hold
of me, and jumping over the prostrate figure on the ground I bolted
forwards into the mist. The warders, who must have been quite close,
evidently heard me, for from both sides came hoarse shouts of "There
he goes!" "Look out there!" and other well-meant pieces of advice.
It was a funny sort of sensation dodging through the fog, feeling that at
any moment one might blunder up against the muzzle of a loaded
carbine. The only guide I had as to my direction was the slope of the
ground. I knew that as long as I kept on going uphill I was more or less
on the right track, for the big granite-strewn bulk of North Hessary lay
right in front of me, and I had to cross it to get to the Walkham Valley.
On I went, the ground rising higher and higher, until at last the wet
slippery grass began to give way to a broken waste of rocks and heather.
I had reached the top, and although I could see nothing on account of
the mist, I knew that right below me lay the woods, with only about a
mile of steeply sloping hillside separating me from their agreeable

privacy.
Despite the cold and the wet and the fact that I was getting devilish
hungry, my spirits somehow began to rise. Good luck always acts on
me as a sort of tonic, and so far I had certainly been amazingly lucky. I
felt that if only the rain would clear up now and give me a chance of
getting dry, Fate would have treated me as handsomely as an escaped
murderer had any right to expect.
Making my way carefully across the plateau, for the ground was stiff
with small holes and gullies and I had no wish to sprain my ankle, I
began the descent of the opposite side. The mist here was a good deal
thinner, but night was coming on so rapidly that as far as seeing where
I was going was concerned I was very little better off than I had been
on the top of the hill.
Below me, away to the right, a blurred glimmer of light just made itself
visible. This I took to be Merivale village, on the Tavistock road; and
not being anxious to trespass upon its simple hospitality, I sheered off
slightly in the opposite direction. At last, after about twenty minutes'
scrambling, I began to hear a faint trickle of running water, and a few
more steps brought me to the bank of the Walkham.
I stood there for a little while in the darkness, feeling a kind of tired
elation at my achievement. My chances of escape might still be pretty
thin, but I had at least reached a temporary shelter. For five miles away
to my left stretched the pleasantly fertile valley, and until I chose to
come out of it all the warders on Dartmoor might hunt themselves
black in the face without finding me.
I can't say exactly how much farther I tramped that evening. When one
is stumbling along at night through an exceedingly ill-kept wood in a
state of hunger, dampness, and exhaustion, one's judgment of distance
is apt to lose some of its finer accuracy. I imagine, however, that I must
have covered at least three more miles before my desire to lie down and
sleep became too poignant to be any longer resisted.
I hunted about in the darkness until I discovered a small patch of fairly

dry grass which had been more or less protected from the rain by an
overhanging rock. I might perhaps have