Reinecke’s eyes were already gleaming with triumph. He shouted a word or two which Tom could not catch, and then fired his revolver. In face of odds, Tom had already started to make good his escape: but when he heard the German’s bullet whistle past him, he snatched out his revolver, wheeled round, and fired. Reinecke flung up his arm, stopped short, and yelled to the askaris at his heels. Tom sprinted across the few yards of open ground, dashed into the bush, and ran, at first blindly, for he heard the askaris close behind: one or two of them were shooting at random in the hope of hitting him as he ran. He was fleet of foot, and guessed that he could easily outstrip the askaris, laden with their service packs. The danger was that he might lose his way in the forest. All his men had disappeared; they would probably find their way back to the nullah without difficulty. It was important, however, that he should not be long behind them, for if they should report that he was captured or killed, the people might be seized with panic, and all his work be overthrown. He had left the glade at a different point from that at which he had entered it, and so could not follow the track made by his men. But fortune favoured him. He had not pushed his way far among the trees when he struck a game track, along which, if the askaris also did not discover it, he could make still swifter progress than they, hindered by the bush. Some few minutes later, the track brought him to a small stream: it had no doubt been trodden by animals in quest of water. He jumped into the stream, ran a short distance in the same direction as the current, then made a long jump into a clump of low shrubs on the right bank. Replacing as well as he could the disarranged vegetation, so as to give no clue to his pursuers, he plunged once more into the bush, in the hope of coming by and by upon a cross track that would lead towards the nullah. CHAPTER XIV--THE TRAIL Never before had Tom been alone in the bush. On the few occasions when he had gone shooting alone, during his sojourn in Reinecke’s bungalow, he had always followed well-defined tracks. Since then, Mwesa or Mirambo or some other native had been with him. But now he had no guide, and he was seized with a feeling of helplessness. Rain had begun to fall, and the obscure sky could not be read for the points of the compass. Brushwood grew to his knees; thorn bushes threw out tentacles that caught at his clothes and tore his flesh. Dodging obstructions, he sometimes found that he had only worsened his plight, and was forced to tear a way for himself at the cost of bleeding hands. Rarely he came to open spaces; then he quickened his pace, though his wet boots dragged heavily upon his feet. Once, in crossing a grassy glade, he sank over his ankles in morass, and swerved hastily into the bush again, to avoid being engulfed.