Having passed Caudebec-en-Caux, he followed along the rising ground the road which runs through the woods and meadows to the Seine. Just as on the day on which he had first made love to Josephine, the Nonchalante was there, looming large through the dim light. He saw that the window of the cabin which she occupied was lit up.
“She must be dressing,” he said to himself. “Her carriage will be coming for her. Perhaps Leonard has got to her and made her start sooner than she intended. Too late, my lady!”
He drove on the machine as hard as he could. But half an hour later, as he was riding down a steep hill, he felt his wheel meet some obstacle; and he flew over the handles, over a heap of stones by the road side, and came to a stop scratched and bruised, but with no bones broken, in a thick and thorny bush twenty feet down the hill.
Two men—he saw them dimly—came out of the bushes and hurried to his bicycle.
“It was him! It must have been him! The rope got the machine! I told you it would,” cried Oscar de Bennetot in a tone of great excitement.
“Yes. But where’s he got to?” growled Godfrey d’Etigues.
Ralph made haste to scramble up through the bushes to the top of the high embankment.
They heard him; but they could not see him. They rushed after him, cursing furiously. But they had little chance of finding him in that darkness.
Then Beaumagnan’s voice came faintly from below; “Don’t bother about him! We’ve no time to waste! Smash his machine! That puts him out of action.”
They made haste to obey. Ralph heard them go bustling down to the road. Then he heard them stamping on the wheels of his bicycle.