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"Out and charge!" the Major shouted. "Forward, Captain Batts!" he cried at the foot of the stairs, and the men came leaping down. The cry was taken up, and from every building about the square the men were pouring. Mayo had no time to rally his force; indeed, it was beyond his power, for his men were panic-smitten. Into the fields and toward the woods they ran for their lives. It was now a chase.

There was no good reason for tarrying on the slope, and, as soon as Otto had finished loading his gun, Deerfoot signified they were to leave. For a brief spell nothing was to be feared from the panic-smitten Indians, but the Shawanoe glanced furtively down the gorge before leaving the partial shelter of the excavation in the rocks.

It was, upon the one side, the outcry of a wholly undisciplined, hungry, and panic-smitten public; and, upon the other side, the irresponsible, more than half-hysterical action of a group of terrified and incompetent politicians.

It was a careful, silent stalk until the hunters were within ten yards of the quarry, and then with a terrifying yowl of triumph, a living rope of dingoes four of them, nose to tail was flung between the big mother kangaroo and the rest of the mob. The red old-man gave one panic-smitten look round his flock, and then they were off like the wind, in big twenty-foot bounds.

"I know there are," she said, her eyes lifted to his, but the next instant was so panic-smitten and shamed that she ran into a lamp post. And when he called that his fault her denial was affirmative in its feebleness, and with the others she presently resumed the carriage and said good-night. "Flippantly!" thought the one left alone on the crowded sidewalk.

In hot pursuit came the ravening Yemassees, yelling like fiends, assisted by the reinforcements of Captain Jonathan Wellsby. What saved the lives of these panic-smitten pirates was the dramatic explosion of that great treasure chest when it fell and smashed upon the log. Indians and Englishmen alike forgot their intent to shoot and slaughter.

Hard men who had their knives drawn to fight for their financial lives put away the weapons and wished him God-speed, while half a dozen panic-smitten tin-pot toads perked up their heads and spoke of the wonderful things they would have done had not Cheyne buried the hatchet. It was a busy week-end among the wires; for now that their anxiety was removed, men and cities hastened to accommodate.

The poor contadini, who lately chaffered so vivaciously over their macaroni and chestnuts, were flying panic-smitten in all directions; some clasped their crucifixes, and called wildly upon the saints for protection; others leaped frantically into boats and rowed themselves dead, in the needless endeavor to escape death; while the general expression of the people was that of a multitude who, the next minute, expected to see the skies fall to crush them, or the earth open to swallow them up forever.

Grizzly's years of experience with cattle apprised him of a gratifying truth. The course of the stampeded herd was changing. Instead of fleeing away from the main body they were veering around, so that, if the change of course continued, they would return to the neighbourhood from which they started. Panic-smitten cattle are not apt to do a thing of that kind of their own accord.

At nearly every street corner little groups of civilians had collected and were talking and gesticulating in a terrified manner. When a big shell came with a hoarse, rattling noise through the air, like a racing motor cycle on the track at Brooklands, they would rush into their homes, panic-smitten. If death winked, and passed them over, out they would creep again.