"She is gone!" I moaned; and then, striking my breast with my clenched fist, I muttered, "And thou, villain, must answer for her fate."
Then, hoping that she had but strolled a little way to find me, I rushed along the edge of the ravine to a rock that hung over the deep cleft. From this point I could see down to the bottom of the gorge where the stream ran into the river. Just within this creek lay a boat, which only too clearly discovered the reason why Lady Biddy was no longer where I had left her.
At that very moment I heard her voice calling faintly as from a great distance—
"Benet, Benet!" Then there was silence while I looked in vain to see her down the ravine, doubting not that she was being carried away to the boat below.
"Benet!" she cried, yet a little louder, yet still faintly. "Benet!"
I felt sure that she saw me and was crying for help, and it maddened me that I could not see her. Nor could I guess from her voice in what part of the ravine she had been taken for the breaking of the waters and the echo of the rocks. But leaping to another rock and craning my neck over, I caught sight of two fellows, whom I knew for Rodrigues' rascals, rounding a bend of the gorge below. And one of them, facing about, lifts his finger warningly as if to signal those who followed that they should stifle Lady Biddy's cry for help.
CHAPTER XXIX.
I FIND MY LADY BIDDY, AND WE DESPOIL OUR ENEMIES; WITH OTHER FACETIOUS MATTER.
The moment I concluded that those wretches at the foot of the ravine were carrying off Lady Biddy I threw myself down the rocks to her rescue; and had the chances of breaking my neck thereby been a hundredfold as great I should not have hesitated. For I considered that it was by my fault she had been taken, and that therefore I owed my life for hers; indeed, I valued not my life as a straw, save as it might be of service to her, for what use was life to me without her? I might as well be dead and forgotten as alive and she lost; nay better, for to live bereft for ever of her, or in doubt as to her fate, would be continual misery and the cause of never-abating self-reproach.