"Down!" whispered Deveril. "Crawl for it! And quiet!"
On hands and knees they crawled into the thicket. Already hands and faces were scratched, but they did not feel the scratches; already their clothes were torn in many places. In a wild scramble they went on, squeezing through narrow spaces, lying flat, wriggling, getting to hands and knees again. And all the while with nerves jumping at each breaking of a twig. It was only the shouting voices and the pounding boots behind them that drowned in their pursuers' ears the sounds they made.
"Still!" admonished Babe Deveril in a whisper.
And very still they lay, side by side, panting, in the heart of the thicket. A voice called out, not twenty paces behind them:
"They're in there!" And another voice, louder than the first and more insistent, they thanked their stars, boomed:
"No, no! They skirted the brush, off to the left, beating it for the open! After 'em, boys!" And still other voices shouted and, it would seem, every man of them had glimpsed his own tricking shadow and had his own wild opinion.
Thus, for a brief enough moment, the pursuit was baffled.
"Slow and quiet does it!" It was for the third time Babe Deveril's whisper, his lips close to her hair. "I see an opening. Follow close."
Lynette, still lying face down, lifted herself a little way upon her two hands and looked after him.
"String 'em up!" a voice was calling. It was like the voice of a devil down in hell, full of mob malice. She shivered. "They're murdering devils. String 'em up!"
"Catch 'em first, you fool," called another voice. Again pounding boots and ... far more sinister sound ... snapping brush where a man was breaking his way straight into the thicket.
Like some grotesque, curiously shaped snake, Babe Deveril was writhing along, ever deeper into the brush tangle, ahead of her. She began crawling after him. Voices everywhere. And now dogs barking. A hundred dogs, it seemed to her taut nerves. She knew dogs; she knew how they went into a frenzy of excited joy when it was a question of a quarry, any quarry; she knew the unfailing certainty of the dog's scent. She began hurrying, struggling to get to her knees again....
She dropped down again and lay flat, scarce breathing. But once more she saw the vague blot of Deveril's flat form wriggling on ahead of her, almost gone now. It was so dark! She threw herself forward; she threw her arm out and her hand brushed his boot. It was a wonderful thing, to feel that boot. She was not alone. She began again following him; dry, broken, and thorny twigs snared at her; they caught in her clothes and in the laces of her boots; they tore at her skin. Yet this time she was as silent a shadow as the shadow in front of her. On and on and on, on endlessly through an eternity of darkness shot through with dim star glimmerings, and pierced with horrible voices, she went. She came out into an opening; she stood up. She was alone! And those voices and the yelping of dogs and the scuffling of heavy, insensate, merciless boots....