Faint and harassed, his great brute strength of no avail, his hands and face streaming with blood, Jarker now made a fierce rush up stream; but his progress was slow with the water so deep; when, as if fearing to lose their prey, the rats redoubled their efforts and leaped upon him furiously, till, half-mad with the horror of their fearful assault, one he had never known before in his many sewer wanderings through having been provided with a light, Jarker drew in a long breath, exhaled it again, thoroughly inflated his lungs as he beat off his assailants, and then plunged beneath the water, groping his way slowly up stream, and keeping under the foul water for nearly a minute, when he raised his head for breath, and plunged under again and again. His plan succeeded; for, evidently at a loss, the tribe of rats had gone down with the stream; and then he was alone and afraid to stir, lest he should bring them back, as he stood panting and dripping with the noisome water, and leaned against the slippery wall. "I did say as I'd keep a dawg," growled Jarker at last; "and if I'd ha' had one--" And then he burst out into a hideous string of oaths and curses at what he called his ill luck, as, after listening for some time, he resumed his way in the echoing subterranean labyrinth, trembling lest the rats should have heard his voice. But he did not go far before he stopped as if puzzled, and stood thinking, and listening to the rush of the stream and the trickling of drain after drain as it emptied itself into the main current, itself but a tributary of a greater. He dared not retrace his steps on account of the rats, but went slowly on; stopped, went on again; stopped once more to scratch his dripping head; and then he gave a leap and a cry of terror as he felt an enemy swim up once more and try to effect a lodgment. Then he hurried forward through the dense black darkness, then back a little way in a strange, excited way, tearing and splashing about furiously as a new horror assailed him; and at last muttering low blasphemies, muttering them in a low whisper lest they should be heard by the rats, he made another push on for many yards, cursing the police, the rats, and his ill luck. Once he stumbled and fell with a heavy splash, to be swept along over and over by the stream before he recovered his footing to stand half-drowned and clinging to the bricks, giving vent now to a whimpering, sobbing howl, that seemed as if it had come from a dog; for, with his courage gone and his head in a whirl, he stood now in the intense darkness afraid to move, as his imagination peopled the sewers around him with horrors at the very thought of which he shuddered; for in spite of scores of rambles in these subterranean channels, with whose many turns he had considered himself perfectly familiar, Bill Jarker had lost his way. ------------------------------------------------------------------------