"A signal!" I said to Cludde, riding at my side. "Are they calling assistance?"
"'Tis a call for a boat, without doubt," he replied. "They have got to the shore."
Sick with fear that we were too late, I pressed my horse forward at a mad and reckless gallop, outpacing Cludde altogether. We were now again among trees, and, having come out of the moonlight, I could not at first see more than a yard or two ahead. But on a sudden the dim track before me was wholly blotted out by a dark figure. It loomed larger as I approached, and my heart leapt with the hope that it was Vetch's overburdened horse dropping behind. The rider could not escape; there was a bank on either side of the track. I was within a dozen yards of him when he reined up as if to dismount and seek the shelter of the woodland, and then I perceived with distress that whoever it might be it was not Vetch; the horse had no second burden.
Next moment there was a flash and a roar; a bullet grazed my arm; finding himself closer pressed than he thought, the fellow had turned in his saddle and fired at me. He uttered an oath when he saw me riding towards him unchecked. I was level with him, I drew my horse alongside; and raising my cutlass above my left shoulder I brought it down with a swinging cut upon the man. With a cry he toppled from his saddle, and I shot past, in a headlong rush towards the now thunderous rumbling of the sea.
'Twas but a few moments afterwards that I found myself falling as it seemed into space. In my heedless and impetuous course I had come unawares to the edge of a cliff. My horse fell, flinging me clean over his crupper. I had given myself up for lost when I was suddenly caught as by outstretched arms, in the entangling foliage of a shrub, and as I lay there, dazed, I heard a sickening thud far below me, and guessed that no such friendly obstacle had saved my poor horse from death.
Barring the shock, and a few scratches, I was unhurt, and with great thankfulness of heart for my merciful deliverance I crawled carefully out of the shrub, and set to scrambling up the steep slope to the top. There I met Cludde pale and shaking with horror. My involuntary cry as I fell had warned him. He reined up in time to escape my mishap, and hearing shortly afterwards the thud as the horse came to the bottom, he believed that I must be a mangled corpse.
"Too late!" he gasped, clutching me by the arm and pointing down to the sea.
Clear in the moonlight lay the dark shape of a brig with bare yards. At that very moment a boat was drawing in under her quarter, and as we stood helpless there we saw a cradle let down over the side, a form placed in it and hoisted to the deck, and then the boat's crew mounting one by one.
'Twas not until Uncle Moses came up with Joe that we found the circuitous path by which Vetch had reached the shore. We raced down, but Vetch, you may be sure, had left no boat in which we might follow him. We came upon his horse, quietly cropping the plants that grew at the foot of the cliff. The moon shining seawards, we were in shadow, so that had Vetch been looking from the brig, he would not have seen me as I raged up and down in impotent fury, nor my companions as they sat themselves down, troubled, like myself, but not with the same yearning.
My grief and rage bereft me for a time of all power of thought. All that I was conscious of was the fact that Lucy was gone, irrevocably, as I feared. But by and by order returned to my confused and gloomy mind, and, observing suddenly that the tide was running in, and that the breeze was blowing inshore, I felt a springing of hope within me.