For a while all went well with me, and having a good start I began to hope that I should outrun these beasts, as I had the shepherd’s dog and the retriever.  But I did not know Jack and Jill.  Just as I reached the borders of the moor I heard the patter of their feet behind me, and looking back saw them coming up, about as far away as I was from Tom when he shot me.

They were running quite close together and behind them galloped the judge and other men.  There was a fence here and I bolted through a hole in it.  The greyhounds jumped over and for a moment lost sight of me, for I had turned and run down near the side of the fence.  But Tom, who had come through a gap, saw me and waved his arm shouting, and next instant Jack and Jill saw me too.

Then as the going was rough by the fence I took to the open moor, always trying, however, to work round to the left in the hope that I might win the shelter of the wood.

On we went like the wind, and now Jack and Jill were quite close behind me, though before they got there I had managed to circle so that at last my head pointed to the wood, which was more than half a mile away.  Their speed was greater than mine, and I knew that I must soon be caught.

At last they were not more than two yards behind, and for the first time I twisted so that they overshot me, which gave me another start.  Three times they came up and three times I wrenched or twisted.  The wood was not so far away now, but I was almost spent.

What was I to do!  What was I to do!  I saw a clump of furze to the left, a big clump and thick, and remembered that there was a hare’s run through it.  I reached it just as Jill was on the top of me, and once more they lost sight of me for a while as they ran round the clump staring and jumping.  When they saw me again on the further side I was thirty yards ahead of them and the wood was perhaps two hundred and fifty yards away.  But now I could only run more slowly, for my heart seemed to be bursting, though luckily Jack and Jill were getting tired also.  Still they soon came up, and now I must twist every few yards, or be caught in their jaws.

I can’t tell you what I felt, Mahatma, and until you have been hunted by greyhounds you will never know.  It was horrible.  Yet I managed to twist and jump so that always Jack and Jill just missed me.  The farmers on the horses laughed to see my desperate leaps and wrenches.

But Tom did worse than laugh.  Noting that I was getting quite near the wood, he rode between me and it, trying to turn me into the open, for he wished to see me killed.

“Don’t do that!  It isn’t sportsmanlike,” shouted the Red-faced Man.  “Give the poor beast a chance.”

I don’t know whether he obeyed or not, as just then I made my last double, and felt Jill’s teeth cut through the fur of my scut and heard them snap.  I had dodged Jill, but Jack was right on to me and the wood still twenty yards away.