“Bogota!” called one.  “Bogota! where are you?”

He gripped his spade still tighter, and advanced down the meadows towards the place of habitations, and directly he moved they converged upon him.  “I’ll hit them if they touch me,” he swore; “by Heaven, I will.  I’ll hit.”  He called aloud, “Look here, I’m going to do what I like in this valley.  Do you hear?  I’m going to do what I like and go where I like!”

They were moving in upon him quickly, groping, yet moving rapidly.  It was like playing blind man’s buff, with everyone blindfolded except one.  “Get hold of him!” cried one.  He found himself in the arc of a loose curve of pursuers.  He felt suddenly he must be active and resolute.

“You don’t understand,” he cried in a voice that was meant to be great and resolute, and which broke.  “You are blind, and I can see.  Leave me alone!”

“Bogota!  Put down that spade, and come off the grass!”

The last order, grotesque in its urban familiarity, produced a gust of anger.

“I’ll hurt you,” he said, sobbing with emotion.  “By Heaven, I’ll hurt you.  Leave me alone!”

He began to run, not knowing clearly where to run.  He ran from the nearest blind man, because it was a horror to hit him.  He stopped, and then made a dash to escape from their closing ranks.  He made for where a gap was wide, and the men on either side, with a quick perception of the approach of his paces, rushed in on one another.  He sprang forward, and then saw he must be caught, and swish! the spade had struck.  He felt the soft thud of hand and arm, and the man was down with a yell of pain, and he was through.

Through!  And then he was close to the street of houses again, and blind men, whirling spades and stakes, were running with a sort of reasoned swiftness hither and thither.

He heard steps behind him just in time, and found a tall man rushing forward and swiping at the sound of him.  He lost his nerve, hurled his spade a yard wide at his antagonist, and whirled about and fled, fairly yelling as he dodged another.

He was panic-stricken.  He ran furiously to and fro, dodging when there was no need to dodge, and in his anxiety to see on every side of him at once, stumbling.  For a moment he was down and they heard his fall.  Far away in the circumferential wall a little doorway looked like heaven, and he set off in a wild rush for it.  He did not even look round at his pursuers until it was gained, and he had stumbled across the bridge, clambered a little way among the rocks, to the surprise and dismay of a young llama, who went leaping out of sight, and lay down sobbing for breath.

And so his coup d’etat came to an end.

He stayed outside the wall of the valley of the Blind for two nights and days without food or shelter, and meditated upon the unexpected.  During these meditations he repeated very frequently and always with a profounder note of derision the exploded proverb:  “In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King.”  He thought chiefly of ways of fighting and conquering these people, and it grew clear that for him no practicable way was possible.  He had no weapons, and now it would be hard to get one.