He looked over his shoulder. An agitated crackling of branches announced that Emily had not yet worked clear, and Hugo had apparently stopped to render first aid. With a silent shudder Chimp stepped into the tank and, lowering himself into the depths, nestled behind a water lily. Hugo was finding the task of extricating Emily more difficult than he had anticipated. The bush was one of those thorny, adhesive bushes, and it twined itself lovingly in Emily's hair. Bad feeling began to rise, and the conversation took on an acrimonious tone. "Stand still!" growled Hugo. "Stand still, you blighter dog." "Push," retorted Emily. "Push, I tell you! Push, not pull. Don't you realize that all the while we're wasting time here that fellow's getting away?" "Don't wriggle, confound you. How can I get you out if you keep wriggling?" "Try a lift in an upward direction. No, that's no good. Stop pushing and pull. Pull, I tell you. Pull not push. Now, when I say '_To_ you ...'" Something gave. Hugo staggered back. Emily sprang from his grasp. The chase was on again. But now all the zest had gone out of it. The operations in the bush had occupied only a bare couple of minutes, but they had been enough to allow the quarry to vanish. He had completely disappeared. Hugo, sitting on the wall of the tank and trying to recover his breath, watched Emily as she darted to and fro, inspecting paths and drawing shrubberies, and knew that he had failed. It was a bitter moment, and he sat and smoked moodily. Presently even Emily gave the thing up. She came back to where Hugo sat, her tongue lolling, and disgust written all over her expressive features. There was a silence. Emily thought it was all Hugo's fault, Hugo thought it was Emily's. A stiffness had crept into their relations once again, and when at length Hugo, feeling a little more benevolent after three cigarettes, reached down and scratched Emily's head, the latter drew away coldly. "Damn fool!" she said. Hugo started. Was it some sound, some distant stealthy footstep, that had caused his companion to speak? He stared into the night. "Fat head!" said Emily. "Can't even pull somebody out of a bush." She laughed mirthlessly, and Hugo, now keenly on the alert, rose from his seat and gazed this way and that. And then, moving softly away from him at the end of the path, he saw a dark figure. Instantly, Hugo Carmody became once more the man of action. With a stern shout he dashed along the path. And he had not gone half a dozen feet when the ground seemed suddenly to give way under him.