Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/368

356 Even as she struggled she could see the barefooted gypsy, running with a smooth roly-poly gait, like that of the under sized Italian labourers that work on our ditches, straight towards the underbrush, cocking his rifle as he ran. A little to the west, she thought she heard the thicket crackling under the feet of someone—probably Yeo—a cry, then no more.

They forced her back through a labyrinth of vines and bushes into the heart of the forest, not pausing until they reached a naturally fortified glen, where they found Pete on guard, half way, she reckoned, not as the crow flies but on an angle, from the Cape to the headland. The fastness was well-buttressed by giant trees, equipped with a chevaux de frise by the thicket and interlacing vines, and darkened even at noontide by their heavy cordage and the thick foliage overhead. Now the only illumination was the flame licking up the pile of fagots, over which the old man raised three pronged sticks like the poles of a wigwam, suspending a rusty kettle from their juncture.

A little later the two huskies returned, one with a box, a slab of bacon, and a shoulder of ham, under his arms, the other with two gunny sacks of provisions slung over his back.

"A lead-pipe cinch," Pete reported. "He fell for it like a sucking baby."

The series of manœuvres was easily analysed now,—the message, borne by the impressed black had been a decoy, those sacks and cases prizes from her own camp, lifted while the gypsy searched the underbrush after her warning. For