“Let us have something to eat first,” said Paul. “Where is the bread? There is plenty left, isn’t there?”
There was not plenty, but there was enough. They sat and ate hungrily. Then Ranni rose, and everyone got up too.
“Now to find the river again,” said Ranni. “We will skirt the Secret Forest until we come to the rushing water. Then we will follow it upwards to the mountain!”
The Terrible Storm
Meanwhile, what had happened to the two girls? They had done as the boys had suggested, and had awakened Tooku and Yamen at once. The couple sat up in their bed, bewildered at the children’s extraordinary story. Ranni and Pilescu captured by the robbers! The statue that split into two! All the boys gone! It seemed like an unbelievable nightmare to Yamen and Tooku.
“We can do nothing tonight,” said Tooku, nursing his injured arm. “The servants would be of no use to hunt for the boys and the others. They would be too afraid. Tomorrow, early, we must send the servants to gather together the villagers of the mountain-side.”
The girls did not want to wait so long, but there was nothing else to be done. They went back to bed, but not to sleep. They cuddled together on a small couch, covered with a warm fur rug, and talked together, worried about the boys. At last, just before dawn, they dozed off, and were awakened by Yamen.
Soon everyone in the castle knew what had happened the night before. The servants went about with scared faces. Paul’s mother heard the girls’ story again and again, tears in her eyes as she thought of how Paul had marched off to rescue his men.
“He is a true little Baronian!” she said. “How glad I am that Mike and Jack are with him! Oh, why didn’t they wait until we could send soldiers or armed villagers to find Ranni and Pilescu?”
A band of people came climbing up on mountain ponies, fetched by servants of the castle and by the goatherd, Beowald. They had been amazed at the tale told to them, but all of them were determined to rescue their “little lord” as they called Paul.