At length, after temporarily felling one of his detainers with a sudden blow, he had flung himself upon the other in a daemonic ecstasy of bloodthirstiness, shrieking that he would 'jump high in the air, and burned his way through anything that stopped him'. Family and neighbours had now fled in a panic, and when the more courageous of them returned, Slater was gone, leaving behind an unrecognisable pulp-like thing that had been a living man but an hour before.