Prester John | Page 7

seemed an equally sure way
to discovery. I whispered to Archie, who was for waiting a little longer.
'Something may turn up,' he said. It was always his way.
I do not know what would have turned up, for we had no chance of
testing it. The situation had proved too much for the nerves of Tam
Dyke. As the man turned towards us in his bowings and bendings, Tam
suddenly sprang to his feet and shouted at him a piece of schoolboy
rudeness then fashionable in Kirkcaple.
'Wha called ye partan-face, my bonny man?' Then, clutching his lantern,
he ran for dear life, while Archie and I raced at his heels. As I turned I
had a glimpse of a huge figure, knife in hand, bounding towards us.
Though I only saw it in the turn of a head, the face stamped itself
indelibly upon my mind. It was black, black as ebony, but it was
different from the ordinary negro. There were no thick lips and flat
nostrils; rather, if I could trust my eyes, the nose was high-bridged, and
the lines of the mouth sharp and firm. But it was distorted into an
expression of such a devilish fury and amazement that my heart became
like water.
We had a start, as I have said, of some twenty or thirty yards. Among
the boulders we were not at a great disadvantage, for a boy can flit
quickly over them, while a grown man must pick his way. Archie, as
ever, kept his wits the best of us. 'Make straight for the burn,' he
shouted in a hoarse whisper; we'll beat him on the slope.'
We passed the boulders and slithered over the outcrop of red rock and
the patches of sea-pink till we reached the channel of the Dyve water,
which flows gently among pebbles after leaving the gully. Here for the
first time I looked back and saw nothing. I stopped involuntarily, and
that halt was nearly my undoing. For our pursuer had reached the burn
before us, but lower down, and was coming up its bank to cut us off.
At most times I am a notable coward, and in these days I was still more
of one, owing to a quick and easily-heated imagination. But now I think

I did a brave thing, though more by instinct than resolution. Archie was
running first, and had already splashed through the burn; Tam came
next, just about to cross, and the black man was almost at his elbow.
Another second and Tam would have been in his clutches had I not
yelled out a warning and made straight up the bank of the burn. Tam
fell into the pool - I could hear his spluttering cry - but he got across;
for I heard Archie call to him, and the two vanished into the thicket
which clothes all the left bank of the gully. The pursuer, seeing me on
his own side of the water, followed straight on; and before I knew it
had become a race between the two of us.
I was hideously frightened, but not without hope, for the screes and
shelves of this right side of the gully were known to me from many a
day's exploring. I was light on my feet and uncommonly sound in wind,
being by far the best long- distance runner in Kirkcaple. If I could only
keep my lead till I reached a certain corner I knew of, I could outwit
my enemy; for it was possible from that place to make a detour behind
a waterfall and get into a secret path of ours among the bushes. I flew
up the steep screes, not daring to look round; but at the top, where the
rocks begin, I had a glimpse of my pursuer. The man could run. Heavy
in build though he was he was not six yards behind me, and I could see
the white of his eyes and the red of his gums. I saw something else - a
glint of white metal in his hand. He still had his knife.
Fear sent me up the rocks like a seagull, and I scrambled and leaped,
making for the corner I knew of. Something told me that the pursuit
was slackening, and for a moment I halted to look round. A second
time a halt was nearly the end of me. A great stone flew through the air,
and took the cliff an inch from my head, half-blinding me with splinters.
And now I began to get angry. I pulled myself into cover, skirted a rock
till I came to my corner, and looked back for the enemy. There he was
scrambling by the way I had come, and making a prodigious clatter
among the