Hugh laid the spurs to The Jade’s sides and, as she ran, instinctively bent himself forward. Behind him he heard a shot, then the patter of many hoofs upon the turf, and a second shot. Right upon it he felt a dull shock above the shoulder blade; the ball must have rebounded from his cuirass. After that he was in among the trees once more; through the wood behind him men were crashing and shouting; and even such scant shelter as the oaks gave was ending, as they grew sparser and sparser, till he dashed into an open stretch that sloped to the Arrow. To the front he had a dizzy sight of more horsemen straggling from cover; there were two patrols closing in on him, he realized, and with that, jerking the mare to the right, he headed for the river. Before him he could see the slope of hillside, the dark water under the bank beyond, even the dusky sedge of the low opposite shore. He saw, too, a horseman, bursting out from the trees, halt across his path, but he neither stayed nor swerved, just drove the spurs into The Jade and braced himself for the shock. He must have struck the other horse on the chest; he had an instant’s sight of a trooper’s tense face and a horse’s sleek shoulders, then only black water was before him and men behind him were shouting to pull up. There came a sickening sense of being hurled from the earth; a great splashing noise and spray in his face. After that was a time of struggling to free his feet from the stirrups, to clear himself from the frightened mare; all this with water choking and strangling him and filling his ears and beating down his head. He had no thought nor hope nor conscious plan of action, only with all the strength of his body he battled clear till he found himself in mid-stream, with the current tugging at his legs, and his boots and cuirass dragging him down. Once his head went under, and he rose gasping to a dizzy sight of gray sky. He struck out despairingly while he tried in vain to kick free from his boots. The current was twisting and tossing him helplessly; he turned on his back a moment, and still the sky was rushing past above him and whirling as it went. Above the din of the water he heard faint shouts of men and crack of musket-shot. A base end for a soldier, to drown like a rat! he reflected, and at the thought struck out blindly. The water swept him down-stream, but he fought his way obliquely shoreward till of a sudden he found the tug of the current had abated. He could rest an instant and look to his bearings; quite near him lay the shore, a dark sweep of field with a hedge that ran down to the water, and on the farther side the hedge he saw horsemen following down the stream.