Either they were wondrous heavy
sleepers or else the noises that I made were really much less than
they seemed to me.
I was about to leave the rack when my attention was attracted by
the revolvers. I knew that I could not carry more than one away
with me, for I was already too heavily laden to move quietly with
any degree of safety or speed. As I took one of them from its pin
my eye fell for the first time on an open window beside the rack.
Ah, here was a splendid means of escape, for it let directly upon
the dock, not twenty feet from the water's edge.
And as I congratulated myself, I heard the door opposite me open,
and there looking me full in the face stood the officer of the guard.
He evidently took in the situation at a glance and appreciated the
gravity of it as quickly as I, for our revolvers came up simultaneously
and the sounds of the two reports were as one as we touched the
buttons on the grips that exploded the cartridges.
I felt the wind of his bullet as it whizzed past my ear, and at the
same instant I saw him crumple to the ground. Where I hit him I do
not know, nor if I killed him, for scarce had he started to collapse
when I was through the window at my rear. In another second the
waters of Omean closed above my head, and the three of us were
making for the little flier a hundred yards away.
Xodar was burdened with the boy, and I with the three long-swords.
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