I caught up a second musket, and, to make sure, let fly into the mass of them as they choked the gateway.  Then, without waiting to see the effect of this shot, I snatched musket number three, and ran through the drifting smoke to where my first victim lay face-downwards in the grasses, his swine’s mask bowed upon the forelegs crossed—­as a man crosses his arms—­inwards from the elbow.  As I ran he lifted himself in agony on his knees—­a man’s knees.  I saw a man’s hand thrust through the paunch, ripping it asunder; and, struggling so, he rolled slowly over upon his back and lay still.  I stooped and tore the mask away.  A black-avised face stared up at me, livid beneath its sunburn, with filmed eyes.  The eyes stared at me unwinking as I slipped his other hand easily out of its case, which, even at close view, marvellously resembled the cleft narrow hoof of a hog.  I could not disengage him further, his feet being strapped into the disguise with tight leathern thongs:  but having satisfied myself that he was past help, I turned on a quick thought to the gateway again, and ran.

A second hog—­a real hog—­lay stretched there on its side, dead as a nail.  Its companions, scampering in panic, had by this time almost reached the head of the glade.  Forgetting my promise to my father, I started in pursuit.  The thought in my mind was that, if I kept them in sight, they would lead me to my comrades; a chance unlikely to return.

The glade ran up between two contracting spurs of the hill.  As I climbed, the belt of woodland narrowed on either side of the track, until the side-valley ended in a cross ridge where the chestnuts suddenly gave place to pines and the turf to a rocky soil carpeted with pine needles.  Here, in the spaces between the tree-trunks, I caught my last glimpse of the hogs as two or three of the slowest ran over the ridge and disappeared.  I followed, sure of getting sight of them from the summit.  But here I found myself tricked.  Beyond the ridge lay a short dip—­short, that is, as a bird flies.  Not more than fifty yards ahead the slope rose again, strewn with granite boulders and piled masses of granite, such as in Cornwall we call “tors”; and clear away to the mountain-tops stretched a view with never a tree, but a few outstanding bushes only.  Yet from ridge to ridge green vegetation filled every hollow, and in the hollow between me and the nearest the hogs were lost.

I heard, however, their grunting and the snapping of boughs in the undergrowth:  and in that clear delusive air it seemed but three minutes’ work to reach the next ridge.  I followed then, confidently enough—­and made my first acquaintance with the Corsican macchia by plunging into a cleft twenty feet deep between two rocks of granite.  I did not actually fall more than a third of the distance, for I saved myself by clutching at a clematis which laced its coils, thick as a man’s wrist, across the cleft.  But I know that the hole cannot have been less than twenty feet deep, for I had to descend to the bottom of it to recover my musket.