"Take him!" he cried, and his voice had a queer note of exasperation as he tried to make it vehement and yet hold it below the level of a shout. He led the charge which raced across the herbage. Aylmer, carried away by the sudden infection of repressed excitement, thundered at his side. The dark spot of brown made by the _djelab_ of the fugitive seemed, for the moment, to comprehend all that was vital in existence. He must not reach the tents, he must not give the alarm. Although he was a matter of fifty yards or more behind his quarry, owing to the start the runner had gained by the intervening palms, Aylmer began to lean forward in the saddle, to thrust out his arm, feel a tenseness, a twitching in his fingers as if he already grasped the hood of the garment which rose and fell with its owner's every stride. A yell burst from Perinaud's lips--a yell of rage and warning! "A trap!" he cried. "The silos! The silos! Pull wide! Pull wide!" Aylmer heard a crash. A Goumier on his right seemed to have been swallowed with his horse into the very earth. He gripped his own rein, moved by a sudden and imperfectly comprehended pulse of fear, and wrenched at his bridle. His horse fought under the strain, made a half-hearted attempt to halt, and was carried by mere impetus another fifty yards. There came another crash; another Goumier's horse disappeared, while the man, spilled from the saddle, rolled over a dozen times across the hardened flat. Perinaud's stallion, its eyes wild, its nostrils round with terror, spread out its legs and skated forward to the very brink of--what? A huge round hole, beneath which was darkness only. Aylmer saw it, saw that he himself must reach it, and comprehended as in a flash the sergeant's cry. The silos! Even his narrow experience of things Moroquin had taught him what the word meant. They were the underground grain cellars of the villagers, sunk in the earth, unfenced, often coverless, and, as now, open traps for the unwary. The thought and the flash of apprehension which it kindled added force to the grip with which he tore at the reins. Too late! His realization of the hideous fall which was inevitable was swift as a lightning flash, and yet at the same time the thing itself seemed to arrive with a horrible deliberation. His thews were tense, his knees clutched the saddle. And then, and the feeling was as if he watched for the culmination of a well-understood and expected movement of familiar machinery--his horse's feet slid grudgingly over the edge. The black hole in the earth rose instantly--rose and sucked him down. There was a shock and then night fell--a night impenetrable. CHAPTER XIV ONE SIDE OF A BARGAIN "It's the pig man," said a childish voice. "The man what lifted me out of the way of the boar."