With no time to think of that, he crawled and climbed over the disordered heaps, groping toward the other door.

He had nearly reached it, when torchlight flared behind him, rushing in, and savage cries, both shrill and guttural, rang through the stuffy warehouse.

He had barely time, in the reeling shadows, to fall on the earthen floor, and crawl under a thin curtain of reeds to a new refuge.
Into this--a cubby-hole where the compradore kept his tally-slips, umbrella, odds and ends--the torchlight shone faintly through the reeds.
Lying flat behind a roll of matting, Rudolph could see, as through the gauze twilight of a stage scene, the tossing lights and the skipping men who shouted back and forth, jabbing their spears or pikes down among the bales, to probe the darkness.

Their search was wild but thorough.

Before it, in swift retreat, some one crawled past the compradore's room, brushing the splint partition like a snake.