Those who had followed him had disappeared like shadows, and Winn could
not detect a sound save the suppressed breathing of the man who had
been detailed to guard him, and who now held his arm.
Suddenly a dog's bark broke the stillness, and a loud challenge,
followed by a pistol shot, rang out through the night air. There was a
confused trampling; the forest echoed with a roar of guns; the door of
the hut was burst open, and a furious rush was made for the interior.
In his excitement Winn's guard loosed his hold of the boy's arm and
took a step forward, the better to distinguish what was going on.
Winn was free, and acting upon the impulse of the moment, he slipped
behind a great tree-trunk, stole noiselessly a few paces farther, and
then dashed away with the speed of a deer back over the trail leading
to the river. He did not pause when he reached the camp in which he
had passed the night so unhappily, but bounded down the bank to the
water's edge. Here he cast loose the painter of the skiff that had
brought Mr. Riley and his men to the island, and, with a mighty shove
towards the channel, gave a spring that landed him at full length in
its bottom. Here he lay breathless and almost motionless for the next
thirty minutes, or until his craft had drifted below the tail of the
island, and was spinning down the main channel of the great river.
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