He caught also a whirling impression of many heads and arms, far off, tiny, black, and crowded in rushing disorder; of pale torches in the road; and of a hissing, snarling shout, a single word, like "_Sha, sha_!" repeated incessantly in a high key.
The flame at the club shot up threefold, with a crash; and a glorious criss-cross multitude of sparks flew hissing through the treetops, like fiery tadpoles through a net.
He turned and ran on, dazzled; fell over some one who lay groaning; rose on hands and knees, groped in the dust, and suddenly fingered thin, rough cloth, warm and sopping.

In a nausea of relief, he felt that this was a native,--some unknown dying man, who coughed like a drunkard.
Rudolph sprang up and raced again, following by habit the path which he and she had traversed at noon.

Once, with a heavy collision, he stopped short violently in the midst of crowded men, who shouted, clung to him, wrestling, and struck out with something sharp that ripped his tunic.

He kicked, shook them off, hammered his fists right and left, and ran free, with a strange conviction that to-night he was invincible.

Stranger still, as the bamboo leaves now and then brushed his bare forehead, he missed the sharp music of her cicadas.
The looming of a wall checked him.