of the horse that was scorching and noxious against his cheek, like the breath of the bloodhound on the murderer's. There were barely six paces between them, going headlong thus down the sloping ridge, and through the cactus thickets; as he turned backward, with that dastard gesture of pitiful despair, they looked on one another by the light of the moon, and the fairness of the Greek's face was ghastly with a coward's prayer, and the dark bronze of his pursuer's was set in deadly menace, in fierce lust of blood. Phaulcon knew why, with that lean tube flashing in the starlight, he was still spared; he knew, too, that once side by side in fair struggle, he would be hurled from his saddle, and crushed out under a just retribution, till all life was dead, as pitilessly as righteously as men crush out the snake whose fangs have bit them.
And the pursuit gained on him. Erceldoune rode him down, dashing through the wilderness of vegetation, with the surf of the sea thundering loudly below, and a loathing hate, a riotous joy seething through his veins. The horses ran almost neck by neck now, nothing between them and the billows lashing below hut a span's breadth of rock and a frail fence of cactus. One effort more and he
