The driver kept his head, switched off his lights, and the dreadful fight started in the black darkness of the wood. Blake turned his lights off and started to back his car, but in the darkness and excitement ran her into the ditch at the side of the road, where she overturned.
He shot clear of the car, and on regaining the road realised that at present it was useless to try and get away with his prisoner, so he shouted to his orderly to guard O’Hara until the fight was over, and went forward to help the Auxiliaries.
Blake found them lying down on each side of the road, firing at the flashes of the ambushers’ guns, while the leader and driver were struggling to remove the barricade of timber and big stones across the road under a hail of bullets and shot. By this time a Cadet had got a Lewis gun into action, and at once sprayed the edge of the wood on each side of the road with a magazine. Promptly the ambushers’ fire died down, and after two more heavy bursts of fire from the Lewis gun their fire ceased. The Cadets quickly switched on the lights of the Crossley, and started to clear away the barricade.
Blake suddenly thought of O’Hara, and ran back to his car to find that he had completely vanished, the orderly lying pinned to the ground by the overturned car, unconscious.
The only chance now of recapturing O’Hara was to push on to Ballybor as fast as possible, collect all the police available, and search the country round the scene of the ambush. Without a motor it would be impossible for the fugitive to get far during the next few hours.
But again the Crossley jibbed, and again a priceless hour or more was wasted before the barricade could be removed and the car induced to start. Nearly another hour was spent in reaching the barracks, getting out the men, and starting on the hunt.
Until long after dawn they beat the country within a large radius of the fatal wood, using powerful acetylene lamps, but to no avail: neither in the open country nor in any village could they find any sign or get any tidings of the missing prisoner.
As soon as the light was good, Blake climbed a tree on some high ground which overlooked the country, and searched in vain with a powerful pair of Zeiss glasses. At last, thoroughly exhausted, the police returned to Ballybor, beaten.