Close by, however, a big tree stretched its branches over the wall. If I could climb it I could let myself down on to the top of the wall and so drop down on the other side. I went to the tree and looked up, and at the same moment a hand fell on my shoulder and a voice spoke at my ear. The words were Russian and I could not understand them. But the man’s presence and action were clear enough and this was no time for parley. I turned quickly and struck him in the face with the hand on which I wore the ring. He gave a hoarse cry and staggered back, and I swung myself up into the tree and began to climb. By feeling my way carefully I managed to get out on a limb that overhung the wall. My weight made it sag until I could step off on to the wall. Here with the limb still in my hands I looked down. The ring had not yet lost its effectiveness; for in the starlight I could make out the body of a man, prone on the ground beneath me, his face turned up to the sky. And so I released the branch, scrambled down the outer side of the wall until I was hanging by my hands, and let go, landing with a thud on the soft ground at the foot of the wall. I was free! Chapter XXI Beating Back Almost as soon as my feet touched the ground I struck straight out from the wall which stretched away on either hand, for I had a wholesome respect for the people I had left behind me there. The Chief—or Emperor as Ivanovitch had called him—was doubtless waiting for the latter’s return with news of me, and it would not be long, probably, before the deaths of Ivanovitch and his assistant were discovered. To be frank, there was a quality of cold and deadly chill in the tones of the man who had spoken to me in the room of the voices that filled me with an urgent desire to put a lot of country between myself and him. I seemed to be in some kind of an orchard now, and the grass, while it was wet and pretty long, made decent walking, and silent. The night was clear and dark and I could make out the dim bulk of the trees without much trouble, so that I made pretty good going. By locating the North Star in the sky, I made out that the wall where I left it ran west by southeast. My own direction at right angles to it was about northeast, so that I was going away from town. I knew nothing about my surroundings, of course, nor what obstructions I should find, so, for a time, I kept on in as nearly as possible a straight line. I might be on either side of the Island or in the middle for all I knew. But it was possible that we had followed a winding course in coming to the place, and I might not be so far from town and from reënforcements after all. And presently the urge came to me to strike off to the northwest, and later bear around to the southwest again and so encircle the place and at least find myself going in the direction in which New York lay. For at present I was going away from it all the time.