Bang went his carbine, and at the same instant, with a second loud report, the tire of my back wheel abruptly collapsed.  It was a good shot if he had aimed for it, and what’s more it came unpleasantly near doing the trick.  The old bike swerved violently, but with a wild wrench I just succeeded in righting her.  For a second I heard him shouting and running behind me, and then, working like a maniac, I bumped up the rest of the slope, and disappeared over the protecting dip at the top.

Of my progress for the next mile or so I have only the most confused recollection.  It was like one of those ghastly things that occasionally happen to one in a nightmare.  I just remember pedalling blindly along, with the back wheel grinding and jolting beneath me and the moonlit road rising and falling ahead.  It must have been more instinct than anything else that kept me going, for I was in the last stages of hunger and weariness, and most of the time I scarcely knew what I was doing.

At last, after wobbling feebly up a long slope, I found I had reached the extreme edge of the Moor.  Right below me the road dropped down for several hundred feet into a broad level expanse of fields and woods.  Six or seven miles away the lights of Plymouth and Devonport threw up a yellow glare into the sky, and beyond that again I could just see the glint of the moonlight shining on the sea.

It was no good stopping, for I knew that in an hour or so the mounted warders would be again on my track.  So clapping on both brakes, I started off down the long descent, being careful not to let the machine get away with me as it had done on the previous hill.

At the bottom, which I somehow reached in safety, I found a sign-post with two hands, one marked Plymouth and the other Devonport.  I took the latter road, why I can hardly say, and summoning up my almost spent energies I pedalled off shakily between its high hedges.

How I got as far as I did remains a mystery to me to this day.  I fell off twice from sheer weakness, but on each occasion I managed to drag myself back into the saddle again, and it was not until my third tumble, that I decided I could go no farther.

I was in a dark stretch of road bounded on each side by thick plantations.  It was a good place to lie up in, but unfortunately there was another and more pressing problem in front of me.  Half delirious as I was, I realized that unless I could find something to eat that night my career as an escaped convict was pretty near its end.

I picked myself up, and with a great effort managed to drag the bicycle to the side of the road.  Then, clutching the rail that bounded the plantation, I began to stagger slowly forward along the slightly raised path.  I think I had a sort of vague notion that there might be something to eat round the next corner.